Mel Starr - The Tainted Coin

“Good day,” the fellow smiled. He could not be certain I would make no purchase some other day, so greeted me pleasantly, as he would any customer.

“Aye, so ’tis,” I replied. “And a good day to you, also. John Thrale” — the pepperer crossed himself when he heard his neighbor’s name — “lived next door since Lammastide. Who owned the house before him?”

“A widow. Husband died when plague returned six years past. A tailor, was Walter.”

“Where does the woman make her home now?”

“Went off to Oxford to live with a son, Thomas. He’s a tailor, also. Shop on St. Michael’s Street, near to the Northgate, I hear tell. Maud tried to keep Walter’s business, she bein’ a good seamstress upon a time, but she’s the disease of the bones, an’ it pained her to ply a needle. Knuckles was all swollen.”

“How long was the house empty?”

“Near two years since Maud went to Oxford. There’s more’n one house stands empty in the town. She was right pleased to find a buyer, I’m thinkin’. No one to care for the place since Maud left, an’ she could do little enough the last few years she was there.”

“John Thrale got a good price, then?”

“Oh, aye. Six pounds, four, I heard. Don’t know what’ll become of the place now. Thatchin’ is goin’ bad, an’ rafters will soon rot, does no one see to it.”

The previous owner of Thrale’s house would be able to tell me nothing of his kin, being two years gone from Abingdon before the chapman made his purchase, so there was no need to seek her. I left the pepperer with no other scheme in mind to seek either John Thrale’s sisters or the felons who slew him. As I stood in the street, pondering what I might do next, my eyes wandered to Thrale’s empty house. The shutters, closed, were in need of repair and did not fit tightly against each other. In the crack between the shutters of the left-side window I thought I saw movement, but when I cast my eye back to the fissure all was dark. Perhaps I had imagined a cheek and eye peering out at me?

But perhaps not. Had the chapman’s murderers come back to search again Thrale’s house? I had no pressing business, so decided to investigate the house. Even if no person was within its walls, perhaps a close examination might reveal some clue I had missed which might lead to sisters or murderers.

I walked quietly and warily to the rear of the house. I did not really believe that some man was in the house, thinking my imagination or some play of light and shadow responsible for the apparition in the opening between shutters.

The window, missing the ripped skin which had closed it, was open to the cool breeze. It was also open to sounds. My cautious steps were silent, but not so the person inside the house. I neared the open window and heard soft sobbing from within the place.

I crept near the window and peered through the opening. The broken window covering and the cracks between closed shutters provided enough light that I could see the chamber and its inhabitant clearly. A woman sat upon the floor, her back to a wall, and wept into her apron. I felt guilty for intruding upon her grief.

Here, I thought, is one of John Thrale’s sisters. I was wrong. My error did not trouble me much when I learned of it, as I am become accustomed to the blunders, great and small, I make while investigating felonies upon Lord Gilbert’s lands.

The woman seemed to sense that some man looked upon her. She lifted her head abruptly, peered at the window, and drew a startled breath when she saw me gazing down upon her.

The situation required that I speak first. “Pardon me. I did not mean to encroach upon your sorrow,” I said through the window.

The woman scrambled to her feet, wiped her eyes again, and asked in a quavering voice, “Who are you?”

The woman who spoke was perhaps near thirty years old, and comely for a woman of her years.

“I am Hugh de Singleton.” This announcement would mean nothing to the woman, so I continued, “I am a surgeon, and bailiff to Lord Gilbert Talbot at his manor in Bampton. And you,” I added, “must be Edith or Julianna?”

The woman’s eyes opened wide. “Nay,” she said. “No sister.”

She was silent for a moment, as was I, having had my assumption of her identity so demolished. “No sister,” she repeated softly. “What does a bailiff from Bampton seek in this house?”

“Thieves and murderers,” I replied. This was a blunder, but when speaking to females I seem often to find the wrong thing to say, and say it before considering the consequence. Some men seem not to have this affliction. I envy them.

The consequence in this case was a renewed flood of tears. As I had already spoken unwisely, I thought it prudent to say no more for a time. I held my tongue, and when the woman was able to contain her weeping she again spoke.

“Do you know what has become of John?”

The answer to that question should not be delivered through a window, I thought. “Aye,” I said, and went to the door, which had remained unlocked since felons had ransacked the house.

“John Thrale,” I continued, when I stood before her in the house, “lies in a grave in a churchyard near to Bampton.”

“Dead? John is dead?”

The woman began to sway unsteadily. She seemed likely to swoon, and I made ready to catch her before she toppled to the rushes. But she steadied herself, choked out a great sob, then spoke again.

“What has befallen my John?”

Her John? The pepperer’s wife said the chapman was not married.

“Did he take ill upon his rounds? He was well when he set out. Did some sickness strike him down?”

The woman thought of more questions as she spoke. “Why does a bailiff visit his house? And why,” she glanced about the room, “is John’s house so ruined? Some felons have done hamsoken while John was gone. Do you seek them? Why does a bailiff from Bampton seek villains here, in Abingdon? John is dead?”

The woman fell silent, and then stumbled to the chapman’s ruined bed, where she sat and renewed her sobs.

“You spoke of John Thrale as ‘My John.’ A neighbor said he was not wed.”

The woman seized control of her emotions and answered, “The banns was to be read at St. Helen’s Church soon as John returned. Said he’d be home today. I came to greet ’im, and found all this ruin, an’ no John. Was about to begin to try an’ set things right when you came.”

“So many tears for a broken table and chest, and torn mattress and pillow? Did you guess some harm had come to him?”

“Nay. Thought he’d be home soon.”

“Why, then, such sorrow?”

The woman looked from me to the corner where fragments of the larger chest were mixed with pieces of the small chest and the table leg which had been used to batter it open. “Stolen,” she sniffled. “Wealth we was to use to repair the house.”

“Ah… you wept for the silver coins and jewelry Thrale had locked in his chest?”

My greatest success in this interview seemed be in regularly causing this woman’s eyes to open wide in wonderment, followed by a renewed flow of tears.

“How did you know what was in John’s chest?” she sobbed.

I sat on the ripped mattress beside the woman and explained my presence there. I told her of John Thrale’s death (leaving out that information which could only cause her more sorrow), my discovery of his cache of coins and jewelry, the attack upon my wife and child, and the theft of the chapman’s hoarded wealth.

“You knew of the silver and gold Thrale possessed,” I concluded. “Where did he come by it?”

The woman’s tears had begun again when I told her of the chapman’s death, but by the time I concluded the sad tale she had composed herself again.