Mel Starr: Unhallowed Ground

Afortnight after Hocktide, in the new year 1366, shouting and pounding upon the door of Galen House drew me from the maslin loaf with which I was breaking my fast. The sun was just beginning to illuminate the spire of the Church of St Beornwald. It was Hubert Shillside who bruised his knuckles against my door. He was about to set out for the castle and desired I should accompany him. The hue and cry was raised and he, as town coroner, and I as bailiff of Bampton Manor, were called to our duties. Thomas atte Bridge had been found this morn hanging from the limb of an oak at Cow-Leys Corner.

Word of such a death passes through a village swiftly. A dozen men and a few women stood at Cow-Leys Corner when Shillside and I approached. Roads to Clanfield and Alvescot here diverge; the road to Clanfield passes through a meadow, where Lord Gilbert’s cattle watched serenely as men gathered before them. To the north of the corner, and along the road to Alvescot and Black Bourton, is forest. From a tree of this wood the corpse of Thomas atte Bridge hung by the neck, his body but a few paces from the road. Shillside and I crossed ourselves as we approached.

Most who gazed upon the dead man did so silently, but not his wife. Maud knelt before her husband’s body, her arms wrapped about his knees. She wailed incomprehensibly, as well she might.

Atte Bridge’s corpse was suspended there by a coarse hempen cord twisted about the small oak’s limb and his neck. After winding about the limb the cord was fastened about the trunk at waist height. The limb was not high above my head. If I stretched a hand above me I could nearly touch it. The man’s feet dangled from his wife’s embrace little more than two hand-breadths above the ground, and near the corpse lay an overturned stool.

“Who found him?” I asked the crowd. Ralph the herder stepped forward.

“Was on me way to see to the cattle. They been turned out to grass but a short time now, an’ can swell up, like. Near walked into ’im, dark as it was, an’ him hangin’ so close to the road.”

Hubert Shillside wandered about the place, then approached me and whispered, “Suicide, I think.”

Spirits are known to frequent Cow-Leys Corner. Many folk will not walk the road there after dark, and those who do sometimes see apparitions. This is to be expected, for any who take their own life are buried there. They cannot be interred in the churchyard, in hallowed ground. Their ghosts rest uneasy, and are said to vex travelers who pass the place at night.

“Knew he’d be buried here,” Shillside continued, “an’ thought to spare poor Maud greater trouble.”

That Thomas atte Bridge might wish to cause little trouble for his wife did not seem likely, given my experience of the man. He had twice attacked me in nocturnal churchyards, leaving lumps upon my skull. But I made no reply. It is not good to speak ill of the dead, even this dead man.

Kate had heard Shillside’s announcement at Galen House and followed us to Cow-Leys Corner. She looked from the corpse to Maud to me, then spoke softly: “You are troubled, Hugh.”

This was a statement, not a question. We had been wed but three months, but Kate is observant and knows me well.

“I will call a coroner’s jury here,” Shillside announced. “We can cut the fellow down and see him buried straight away.”

“You must seek Father Thomas or one of the other vicars,” I reminded him. “Thomas was a tenant of the Bishop of Exeter, not of Lord Gilbert. They may wish otherwise.”

Shillside set off for the town while two men lifted Maud from her knees and led her sobbing in the coroner’s track.

“Wait,” I said abruptly. All turned to see what caused my command. “The stool which lies at your husband’s feet,” I asked the grieving widow, “is it yours?”

Maud ceased her wailing long enough to whisper, “Aye.”

Another onlooker righted the stool and prepared to climb to the limb with a knife, when I bid him halt. He had thought to cut the corpse down. Kate spoke true, the circumstances of this death troubled me, although I readily admit that when I first recognized the dead man I felt no sorrow.

I saw a man hanged once, in Paris, when I studied surgery there. He dangled, kicking the sheriff’s dance and growing purple in the face until the constables relented and allowed his friends to approach and pull upon his legs until his torment ended. Thomas atte Bridge’s face was swollen and purple, and he had soiled himself as death approached. His countenance in death duplicated the unfortunate cut-purse in Paris. It seemed as Hubert Shillside suggested: atte Bridge brought rope and stool to Cow-Leys Corner, threw the hemp about the limb and tied it to the tree and then to his neck, then kicked aside the stool he’d stood upon to fix cord to limb. All who stood peering at me and the corpse surely thought the same.

I circled the dangling corpse. The hands hung limp and were cold to the touch. A man about to die on the gallows will be securely bound, but not so a man who takes his own life. I inspected atte Bridge’s hands and pushed up the frayed sleeves of his cotehardie to see his wrists.

Upon one wrist I saw a small red mark, much like a rash, or a place where a man has scratched a persistent itch. No such scraping appeared upon the other wrist, but when I pushed up the sleeve of the cotehardie another thing caught my eye. The sleeve was of coarse brown wool, and frayed with age. Caught in the wisps of fabric which marked the end of the sleeve I found a wrinkled thread of lighter hue. I looked up to the branch above atte Bridge’s glassy stare. This filament was much the same shade as the hempen cord from which the dead man hung. Perhaps it found its way to his sleeve when atte Bridge adjusted the rope about his neck.

I stood back from the corpse to survey the place. I was near convinced that Hubert Shillside must be correct. My life would have been easier had he been so. But my duties as bailiff to Lord Gilbert Talbot have made me suspicious of others and skeptical of tales they tell — whether dead or alive. It was then I noticed the mud upon Thomas atte Bridge’s heels.

I knelt to see better, and Kate peered over my shoulder. Mud upon one’s shoes is common when walking roads in springtime, but this mud was not upon the soles of atte Bridge’s shoes, where it should have been, but was drying upon the backs of his heels. Kate understood readily what we saw.

“Odd, that,” she said softly, so others might not hear. She then turned to the righted stool and gazed down at it thoughtfully. I saw her brow furrow and knew the cause. I drew her from the corpse to the trunk of the tree where we might converse unheard by others.

“A man who walks to his death will have mud upon the soles of his shoes,” I whispered, “not upon the backs of his heels.”

“And he will leave muddy footprints where he stands,” Kate replied. “I see none on yon stool.”

“Walk with me,” I said. “Let us see what the road may tell us.”

It told us that many folk had walked this way. The previous week there had been much rain, and the road was deep in mud. Footprints were many, and one man who had walked there was unshod. Occasionally the track of a cart appeared. A hundred paces and more east of Cow-Leys Corner I found what I sought. Two parallel lines, a hand’s breadth apart, were drawn in the mud of the road. These tracks were no more than one pace long. Kate watched me study the grooves.

“Did the mud upon his heels come from here?” she asked.