“Tildy, Master Hugh’s a surgeon — a doctor. Thought he might help you with your back, you bein’ afflicted an’ all.”
The door opened a little wider, slowly. I stood silently behind Edith, afraid that at any movement of mine the door would shut and Matilda would flee my presence like a doe in the forest.
Edith motioned me to follow her. The bent form I could dimly see at the door retreated to the dark, smoky interior as we approached. It took some time for my eyes to become accustomed to both the gloom and the stinging haze. When I managed to blink my vision clear I saw that we would stand for this interview. The only piece of furniture, if that it could be called, was a low cot strewn with rags which served as bed and bench to the frail, twisted woman before me.
“Come here, Tildy. Let Master Hugh have a look at you.”
The woman did as she was bidden, all the while keeping a wary eye on me. She was bent over a stick which she propped before her to support the weight of an upper body warped to a nearly horizontal position. I had seen elderly folk bent like her before, most often old women. The cause eludes me, and physicians who have written of human ills do not remark on the condition. As I do not know the cause of the infirmity, I am unable to assist those afflicted. I told this to the women. They seemed neither surprised nor distressed, for truth be told, we who deal with human ills most often find ourselves incompetent to change the course of human faults. This the two women knew.
I waited for Edith to continue the conversation. An abrupt change of subject from Matilda’s ailment to nocturnal activities in the churchyard last spring would likely raise the guard of a woman whose guard was permanently aloft at the best of times. Edith did not disappoint me.
“Have ye been by t’churchyard these days?” Edith asked.
“Aye,” the bent woman replied. “Go there most every day an’ it’s not rain nor snow.”
“I think I would see you about more often,” Edith replied with some surprise in her tone.
“Oh, I go after curfew bell. Want to be alone, see…account of I talk to my Ralph, an’ if folks were about an’ heard, they’d think I was daft.”
Ralph, I assumed, was Matilda’s late husband, resting now in the churchyard until our Lord Jesus should call him forth.
“You see any more suitors with their maids there?” Edith asked calmly.
“Nay. An’ them as I saw wasn’t suitors. Quarrelin’, they was.”
“Lovers sometimes quarrel,” I said.
Matilda looked up at me from under her hunched posture, as if surprised I was yet present. “Aye. S’pose they do. Not like as them I heard, though.”
“Why do you say so?” I asked.
“There was to be no arrangement. ’At’s what the lad said. Sounds like no suitor to me.”
“You could hear their conversation?”
“Aye, mostly. They was whisperin’, but in a wrathful whisper.”
“What did the maid say then?” I asked.
“Oh, she were right distressed. Said over and again as how he’d promised care for ’er if she got with child. Said she’d make it hard for him.”
“And what did the lad reply?”
“Laughed, he did. Didn’t say nothin’ more, just laughed.”
“And that ended their conversation?”
“Nay. Margaret jumped up on a stump an’ said as she’d tell her father. Him bein’ a smith, she said, he could make a point to run through the lad’s black heart. An’ he’d do it too, did he know what the fellow’d promised.”
“And then?” I queried.
“The lad began to turn away, laughin’ yet, he was. He stopped an’ he told her she an’ her father’d both regret should she do such a thing. Then he walked away. I had to hide behind the wall. Margaret stayed, cryin’.”
“Did she stay long?”
“Don’t know. Went home. Couldn’t talk to Ralph with all that goin’ on.”
“No, I expect not. You are sure the girl was Margaret Smith?”
“Aye, saw her plain. Moon were shinin’ full on her face.”
“And the lad? You saw him, also?”
“Oh…were Thomas Shilton.”
“Then you saw him?”
“Not so clear, like Margaret, but were him. Tallish. Fair hair. I’d know him. I ought to, I birthed him.”
That caught me off guard, and I looked through the smoky haze of the hut at Edith. “Matilda was midwife to most ’round here twenty years an’ more ago,” she explained.
I turned back to Matilda. “You know that Margaret was murdered within a few days after you overheard that quarrel?”
“I do now. Didn’t ’til Edith told me. Folks don’t tell me much, an’ I don’t ask, ’cept to be left alone. Thought were odd, though.”
“What was odd?” I asked.
“After that night I didn’t see her at the smithy ’cross the river like I would most days.”
I thanked the women for their assistance and paid each a penny. Matilda had probably not seen more than two farthings together for many years, but I was feeling charitable. I chided myself later for giving away my new-found wealth before I possessed it, but the expression on Matilda’s wizened features made the expenditure worthwhile.
I decided on another visit to Thomas Shilton on my return, but first I must find shelter at the inn and press on to Northleech.
I found the inn. I also found coarse bread, gristly meat, watered ale, and vermin. I did not find sleep, for it was my lot to share a room with two men who snored through the night like dogs worrying a bone left over from supper.
Chapter 10
Bruce and I ambled into Northleech next day before noon. Sir Geoffrey Mallory heard the news of his son’s death with equanimity. He had three other sons, so the loss of one affected him less, perhaps, than a father with but one heir. And he had had five months to prepare himself for the news that his missing offspring might be dead.
I told him that Lord Gilbert would bring Sir Robert’s body in his train. Sir Geoffrey nodded, then asked the question I was expecting. “What was the manner of his death?”
I explained, tactfully, what I had learned of Sir Robert’s demise, and what Lord Gilbert and I speculated about the event. “Did he,” I concluded, “have enemies who might wish him dead?”
Sir Geoffrey chuckled. I was not prepared for this response, although Lord Gilbert’s appraisal of Sir Robert’s habits should have readied me. I waited for an explanation; certainly he would know such was expected. He did.
“Robert had many friends. He had a winning way about him. But enemies as well. Many husbands ’tween here and London, I expect, would be pleased to see him come to harm. And some fathers, too.”
“Sir Robert was fond of the ladies?” I asked.
“He was that,” the man chuckled. “I warned him he might play court to the wrong maid some day. What son listens to his father? Especially on the subject of women?”
“You think his…uh…pursuit of a lady might have led to his death?”
“’Twould be my guess. But she wouldn’t need to be a lady.”
I asked for a list of angry fathers or cuckolded husbands, but Sir Geoffrey fell silent. He would not name any his son might have offended. “I cautioned him,” was all he would say. I could get no more from the man. He thought he knew what had happened to his son, and why, and seemed to hold no great grudge against any who had acted against him.
I found the inn at Northleech and settled myself for another long and noisy night. I admit that the table at this inn was better than at Burford, so that my lack of sleep could not be charged to an offended stomach.
I set out for Burford and home at dawn next morning. As Bruce sauntered across the empty marketplace past the church, I noticed the vicar about some morning errand. A question or two could do no harm, I decided.
I reined Bruce to a halt and addressed the man from across the churchyard as he was about to disappear into the porch. He arrested his progress and waited for me under the arch as I tied Bruce to the gate and approached.
I introduced myself as the surgeon from Bampton, uncertain whether my new position as bailiff would generate more consideration than my other occupation. The vicar was tall and angular and well wrapped against the cold. He peered at me from both sides of a truly impressive nose, which he held aloft in such a manner as to indicate that surgeons weighed little on his scale. I should have proclaimed myself bailiff.