I tied Bruce to a sapling and set off for the designated field. The ground was soft with recent rain, but not mud. Ideal for plowing. The two men looked my way as I crested the hill, but continued their work. The older man led the team, the younger held the plow expertly in the furrow. I met them at the end of the long, narrow field, where they would turn the team.
The field they plowed had been fallow. Sheep droppings indicated the use to which it had been put for the past year. Now the manure was being turned into the soil to improve the wheat which would be planted there in a few days.
“Are you Thomas?” I asked the younger man.
“Aye…as is he.” He nodded toward his father.
I introduced myself and my mission, and asked if he knew that Margaret, the smith’s daughter, had been buried in Burford churchyard the day before.
“Aye.” His eyes dropped to the freshly turned earth at his feet. “Knew of it.”
Thomas Shilton, the younger, was a large man, just grown to his full size, which was considerable. He was half a head taller than me, and heavier than Lord Gilbert. Twenty or so years of hard work and adequate food had produced a man of broad shoulders, strong arms and legs, and straight back. The stubble on his chin indicated that he was needing to shave more regularly now. His hair was fair, and matted in the wind which blew across the field.
“I am told that, early in the summer, you argued with Margaret on the banks of the River Windrush.”
“There, and other places,” he answered with a sardonic smile.
“You argued with Margaret often?”
“Aye. She were easy to dispute with.”
“Yet you wished to marry her, I am told.”
“I did,” he said softly.
“She had some, uh, other qualities?”
Tom smiled sheepishly, then said, “She forgot a dispute right readily.”
“You argued about another man, I was told.”
Tom seemed to think that, as I knew the source of their disagreement, my words required no comment. He stared at me, then studied the fresh earth at his feet once again.
“Who was it that caused your discord?”
“I do not know the man,” he replied with some heat.
“How is it that Margaret could be…uh…associated with someone you would not know?”
“He was not of this place.”
“From where, then? Burford?”
“Nay. She wouldn’t say. Farther, I think.”
“It is rumored that he was a gentleman.”
“So she said.”
“Did she think a gentleman would take up with a smith’s daughter?” I asked.
“’Tis what I asked her,” he replied, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.
“And what did she answer?”
“She laughed. Said as how I might find out.”
“How did you learn of this other fellow?”
“I’d been pressin’ her to have the bans read. She wouldn’t agree. Back about St George’s day she changed her mind. Said as we’d have the bans read soon…but by hocktide she’d turned cold again. Perhaps I pressed her overmuch. She told me I wasn’t the only man as wanted her. I knew that. But I told her she’d not do better than me. I’ll have my father’s yardland, an’ the Earl’s reeve has promised another soon’s I can pay the fine an’ the lease.”
“What did she reply to that?”
“Laughed at me. Said as how some men had many yardlands.”
“So you thought by that she meant a gentleman?”
“Not just then. I said as how I knew no one who had more than three yardlands. A man can’t work more’n that. She said as how some men needn’t work their own lands; have others do it for ’em.”
“That’s when you decided she spoke of a gentleman?”
“Aye. I told her she was a fool.” He looked away, across the unplowed portion of the field, and watched a flight of geese as it appeared over the bare-limbed oaks of the forest beyond. “That were a mistake,” he sighed.
“How so?”
“Margaret didn’t like to be told there was aught she couldn’t do.”
“Is that when the shouting began?”
“Shouting?” he questioned, brows furrowed like the field behind him.
“You were heard across the river.”
He smiled to himself once again. “Margaret could make herself heard some distance when she wished it.”
“When did you last see Margaret?”
“That were t’last time. She yelled somethin’ ’bout a gentleman always keeps his promise, an’ went off up t’riverbank to the smithy.”
“You didn’t follow?”
“Nay. I knew Margaret well enough to know I’d best be on my way. She’d cool in a few days an’ see more clearly. So I did think.”
“But she disappeared before you saw her again?”
“Aye. Near two months.”
“She was last seen the same day you took a cart of oats to Lord Gilbert Talbot, in Bampton.”
“Aye. Returned next day. Found her father at t’door.”
“’At’s right,” the father joined in. He had been standing silent beside the oxen during my conversation with his son. “Alard thought as how she’d run off w’Tom, ’specially as Tom wasn’t about. I tried to tell ’im where Tom’d gone.”
“You heard nothing of her after?”
“Not ’til Alard came through t’village on his way to Bampton t’bring her home. He told us you’d found her murdered.”
“Yes. Her state allows no other conclusion.”
“What state was that, then?” Tom asked through pursed lips.
I told him only that her body had been found and gave evidence of murder. The youth looked down at his feet again — and large specimens they were, too.
“Had Margaret spoken to you of any enemies? Did she fear anyone?”
“Nay. She had disagreements from time to time. No enemies. None in Bampton, anyway.”
“You had an argument with her and later you went to Bampton.”
Tom’s jaw dropped. I could see that the thought that he might be suspected in Margaret’s death had never occurred to him. Either that, or he was shocked and frightened that his guilt had been found out. He protested innocence, and his father vouched for his truthfulness. The youth spoke of his reasons for desiring Margaret for a wife, among which were her health, her likely fecundity, her reputation for hard work won at her father’s forge, and even her appearance. He did not mention love, but such emotion is trivial compared to the important issues of survival, work, and heirs.
I left the two men staring at my back as I climbed the hill back to town and Bruce. Thomas Shilton seemed to me the most likely suspect in this unhappy death, yet he seemed incapable of such a deed, and the fondness he felt for Margaret was revealed in his voice, his manner, and the empty expression in his eyes.
I do not know how to read a face or posture. The things hidden behind a man’s eyes remain a mystery to me. I have been trained to deal with visible wounds, not the invisible.
The wind had risen during the day, and now propelled thick gray clouds from the northern horizon. I wrapped my cloak about me as the wind blew Bruce and me toward home. Bare trees swayed in the gale, dancers rooted to one place, in graceful motion nonetheless.
I passed the woods where, earlier in the day, I had found the cotehardie. I wished to be home, out of the blast, and safe from the sleet or snow I thought likely before morning. But my curiosity was too strong. I had yet an hour before darkness. I tied Bruce to a sapling while he gazed at me with a wounded expression. He wished to be home and out of the storm as much as I. Cotehardie in hand, I penetrated the underbrush. It took a few minutes of casting about before I found the place where the cotehardie had lain.
The wind was quiet here, its gusts broken by the forest. As I studied the ground, and kicked through the leaves searching for more clothing, I heard from the distance a dull thud. Then, a few seconds later, another.
It was difficult to tell, with the wind and dense vegetation, from which direction the sounds came. And when I determined the source, it was not an easy matter to work my way through the undergrowth and coppiced saplings toward the sound.