Arthur and I stood in the muddy street before the Red Dragon and exchanged puzzled expressions. Was Lord Gilbert Talbot present he would have lifted one eyebrow to show perplexity. I had tried to master the expression, but failed. I could no more raise one brow at a time than I could discover a murderer or twenty-one missing books. I had succeeded in but two endeavors since beginning the quest for Master John's books: I had found Sentences, and I was soon to wed a comely and agreeable lass.
Why, I wonder, must it be that my failures so occupy my mind that I spare little thought for my successes? I resolved to think upon more cheerful things. This would have been less difficult had events of the next hours chanced differently.
The sun was low in the southwest when Arthur and I approached the gate to Canterbury Hall. Few townsmen or scholars were about. Streets were near empty. Was our return earlier in the day, when folk were about their business, I might not have noticed the giant from Eynsham Abbey. Indeed, the fellow was a hundred paces and more behind us. The light was poor, and he trod the shaded side of the street, so that his face was obscure. His size was not. He walked with another of normal stature. Had he been alone, at that distance I might not have noted his bulk. But aside a man of ordinary height his size was obvious. That I noticed him at all was but a matter of a random glance up the street before I passed through the gate.
Even so I might have given the man no more notice. But when he saw that I studied him from before the gate of Canterbury Hall, he and his companion seemed to exchange words and turned quickly into an alley off St John's Street.
Arthur had paid no attention to me or those I observed, but strode on through the gatehouse. When he saw I lingered on the street he returned, a puzzled expression upon his face. Perhaps he worried that we might miss our supper of warmed-over pottage did we not hasten to the hall. I thought an explanation due him.
"Two men have followed us, I think."
Arthur peered up St John's Street in the direction of my gaze.
"They have ducked into an alley, or perhaps set off up Grope Lane."
"You think they sought your purse? 'Tis not yet dark enough for thieves to be abroad. Perhaps they were about some business."
"Perhaps, but I think not. When they saw I paid them notice they turned aside. And one I have seen before. At Eynsham Abbey, when I went there to consult the abbot, I saw a servant there larger than any man I ever saw. This was the same fellow. I have never seen in Oxford a man of such size."
Arthur stared thoughtfully down the darkening street, then spoke. "Odo Grindecobbe."
"You know the fellow?"
"Heard of 'im. 'Tis said he bested Hamo the Tanner when Hamo and 'is troupe passed through Eynsham."
This was troubling news. Hamo the Tanner challenged all to wrestle when the jugglers and contortionist in his troupe were done with their performances. His neck was as thick around as my thigh. I had never seen him lose. It was the tanner's daughter who was found in Bampton Castle cesspit two years past, murdered and hid there by Sir Robert Mallory.
Arthur and I turned from the empty street and went to our supper. I was not much pleased to think that a man like Odo Grindecobbe might have an interest in me, and his appearance this day was not but coincidence.
I fell to sleep a short time later to the music of Arthur's snores, lulled to my slumber by the pleasant thought that on the morrow at the Church of St Peter-in the-East, and at St Beornwald's Church in Bampton, the banns would be read for the third time. I might then wed Kate Caxton.
I had become accustomed to Arthur's snores, so it was not the nocturnal din which awakened me, but the lack of it. His rumbling was muffled, then ceased. A heartbeat later I heard a scrambling and tossing about from Arthur's pallet, as if a hog was rooting for acorns in the straw. I had no time to contemplate this curiosity. At the same moment a hand clamped over my mouth and another went about my throat.
The uproar from Arthur's side of the chamber increased, but I was too much absorbed in my own struggle to take notice of it. Two men were upon me, perhaps three, for I felt hands, arms, and legs pinioning me from all sides.
I attempted to yell for help, but as soon as I opened my mouth a woolen rag was stuffed in to muffle my cry. It might have been linen. The flavor was indistinct.
The tumult caused me to fall from my bed to the stones of the floor, but this did not gain me any escape from my assailants. I was turned to my stomach and my arms were bound tight behind me. A cloth was wrapped about my head to keep me from spitting out the fabric stuffed in my mouth, and another was tied about my eyes. My legs were then seized and a cord tightened about my ankles. I was trussed up like a Christmas goose.
Arthur received similar treatment, but he is a brawnier fellow than me, and battled our captors more vigorously, if the noise from his pallet was any indication. As I lay bound upon the flags, with a man sitting upon my rump, I heard the sound of a fist or club delivering a blow. I did not identify the thump then, but learned later what it was that silenced Arthur. After this blow I heard nothing but the heavy breathing of men who had exerted themselves, and the thumping of my own heart.
My mouth and vision were stopped, but not my ears. I heard the chamber door swing open and a moment later a hushed voice spoke that the way was clear. Two men lifted me at feet and shoulders and carried me from the chamber.
I was taken to the Canterbury Hall yard, so attempted to signal my plight by shouting through the gag in my mouth. I produced little sound, but a great response. Someone striding near struck me a great blow across the ear and though I was blindfolded, I saw the stars of the heavens in all their glory.
After twenty paces or so one of my captors slung me over a shoulder and I was carried up a ladder. I did not understand the motion at the time, addled as I was from the blow across my skull, but did a moment later when I was pitched over the wall and felt the world drop from me until my head and shoulders met the sod at the base of the wall.
I was briefly stunned, but the ground was soft and did me no great injury. And when my face met the grass the cloth tied about my eyes was brushed up against my forehead. I found that I could see under the veil, though enough yet covered my eyes that my captors would assume I was yet blind.
I lay in the wet grass, considering my plight, and heard another body strike the sod beside me. Arthur grunted as the breath left his lungs, but I heard no more from him. He was insensible from the blow delivered in the chamber.
Our captors began to speak in low tones, careless of being heard. "Don't know why we didn't just kill 'em."
"We're not to leave bodies where they might be found, as Salley was. And this one," I felt a boot in my ribs, "has questions to answer."
I was once again lifted by ankles and shoulders and carried off. But not far. I felt myself lifted to the air, then dropped, belly first, across a smooth, hard, rounded surface. The object under me moved. I was splayed across a saddle. In the silence of the night I heard horses blowing and shifting their hooves. I heard another speak softly to his horse and we began to move. I could see little from the slit between my cheek and the cloth over my eyes, but saw enough to observe the mud of town streets under the hooves of the beast which bore me. I assumed that Arthur was likewise transported, for the sound of many horses mingled with the squeak of harness leather.
We had traveled this way but a short while when I heard hooves striking stone rather than mud. I turned my head and could see a bridge beneath me. We were leaving the city, but by which bridge? Did we travel east, across the Cherwell and Eastbridge? Or perhaps south, across the Folly Bridge? Or west, across the Castle Mill Stream Bridge to Oseney Island?