Mel Starr - The Unquiet Bones

“When did you last see your daughter?”

The smith’s shoulders slumped as he thought back to the summer. “’Twas soon after Whitsunday.”

“Had she given sign that she might run off?”

“Nay. She were quiet, though, seems to me as I think back on it. Thought at first as she’d run off with her lad, but they’d no reason to do that. Tom’s a good lad. His father has a yardland near Shilton of Lord Thomas. Tom’ll come to it, as he’s oldest.” He paused. “Margaret were my youngest…all I had left. Her brother died at Poitiers, an’ two sisters gone when plague come first time.”

“Why did you think she might have run off with her lad?”

“He were gone, too. I went to see his father when I heard t’boy were gone. Tom’d gone off with a cart of oats to sell. Came back next day an’ seemed confused as t’rest of us.”

As he spoke the smith’s demeanor drooped with his shoulders until I feared he might fall. He seemed to want to talk of the girl, yet paid a terrible price for doing so. News of his daughter’s death would collapse him even more, but I thought it better to disclose what I knew than await a recovery of his distressed spirit, only to strike him down again.

“The dead girl, found in Lord Gilbert’s castle, had suffered a broken bone in her foot,” I told him.

The smith sat heavily on a sack of coals. “Which foot were it?” he asked.

“I cannot tell. I know only that one of her feet received a blow which broke a bone.”

For all his distress, the smith retained a keen mind. He saw the meaning of my answer. “She’s but a skeleton, like, then.”

“Aye. That is so.”

“How did she die?” he whispered.

I told him of the gouged rib, but could not bring myself to tell him where she was found.

“We’ve not buried her. We thought, when we discovered who she was, her family would want to do that.”

“Aye.”

“I have her at my house, in Bampton. Galen House. Will you send someone for her, or would you have me send her with one of Lord Gilbert’s men?”

“Nay. I’ll come for her tomorrow. I can borrow a cart.”

I told the smith where to find Galen House, bid him good day until the morrow, and left him sitting grief-stricken on the sack of coals.

I made my way to Bampton Castle early next morning to report my discovery to Lord Gilbert.

“The broken foot settles the matter, I’d say,” he remarked when I told him the news. I nodded agreement.

“Now you must discover who has done this. And soon. I wish to have this matter cleared before I go to Goodrich for Christmas.”

“I know not where to begin,” I protested.

“You have begun well already. Now you need but to conclude. A job well begun is near done…so wise men say.”

“I sometimes wish wise men would keep their thoughts to themselves,” I muttered.

Lord Gilbert chuckled. “I wish to leave for Goodrich in three weeks, after St Catherine’s Day and the procession. Find the killer in our midst by then, or I must return here on winter roads to do justice when you do find the man.”

Alard, good as his word, arrived with a horse and crude cart at the sixth hour next day. Together we lifted the box of his daughter’s bones to the bed of the cart. Alard could have done the work alone, but I felt it a last service I could perform for the girl. Surgery is a service for the living. I have no skills to aid the dead. Had I a wish to serve the dead, I might have taken holy orders. But what use was a priest now to Margaret, only child of Alard, the smith? To pray her out of purgatory? What priest would concern himself with a smith’s daughter? If she had not done the work to position herself for heaven, no priest or monk was likely to bother now. A wealthy father might endow a chapel where monks might pray for her soul. Alard the smith could not. So would she remain in purgatory, with no prayers to set her free? Did not our Lord himself say that it was more difficult for a rich man to enter heaven than for a camel to pass through the needle’s eye? Margaret was not rich. Would she then gain her soul’s rest more easily than Lord Gilbert? Lord Gilbert could endow a chantry for himself. Would this propel him past Margaret to the gates of heaven? I puzzled over these thoughts as Alard turned the cart and drove north past St Beornwald’s Church and out of the town.

Lord Gilbert had assigned me my next task. That’s what nobles are best at — assigning work to others. They would say in their defense that someone must organize society. I suppose that is so.

After a midday meal I wandered back to the castle. I had no reason. I did not need to see Lord Gilbert again. I saw no path open to me whereby I might discover a killer, but I look back now and think I must have believed proximity to the place of crime might provide some fresh interpretation. It did, to my chagrin.

My presence in Bampton Castle was so regular that no one paid me any attention as I wandered the castle yard and forecourt. I studied the garderobe tower, as I had done the day I was summoned to inspect the bones, and several times since. The garderobe tower had been added to Bampton Castle as an afterthought, some years after Aymer de Valence, Lord Gilbert’s grandfather, had received permission from King Edward II to fortify his house in Bampton. So the tower stood outside the wall, attached to it. But there was no danger of an enemy battering it down to gain entry to the castle. Its only openings were those inside the tower, at each level of the castle, and the opening outside the tower, at the base, now closed with wooden planks, from which Uctred and his companions were at work when they discovered the bones.

Could one man lift those planks? If so, Margaret’s bones might have entered the cesspit there. It seemed to me unlikely that a killer would try to stuff a body through a garderobe. I walked across the muddy yard to inspect the cover more closely. It was near two paces long and as high as my waist, and little more than an inch thick. Its maker had nailed planks together against two backing boards. I bent my knees, pushed my fingers under the cover, and strained at the planks. It resisted, then broke free. With little effort I had the cover ankle-high in its vertical tracks in the tower’s foundation stones. A whiff of the cesspit below persuaded me to let it drop back to its place. One man might lift the cover and push a corpse through the opening. But more likely, it seemed to me, two would be required for the task.

This did not answer my question; it merely raised another. Did the girl’s body enter the cesspit here? Certainly more people had access to the outside of the garderobe tower than to the inside. But this also meant possible witnesses to such a deed. Would a killer risk discovery here in the castle yard?

While I pondered this new discovery, my attention was diverted. A farm cart, loaded with hay, entered the castle forecourt, proceeded with Wilfred’s blessing through the gatehouse, then made its way across the castle yard to the marshalsea.

A stableman appeared from a darkened stall and together he and the carter pitchforked the load of hay to an empty corner of the stable.

I watched this activity because I could think of nothing else to do. I did not intend to eavesdrop on their conversation as the men worked. Indeed, they said little, concentrating on their labor. But as they finished their work the stableman addressed the carter.

“You can leave t’cart right here. Unhitch t’horse an’ put ’im in yon stall. You’ve got a nice soft bed of hay there t’keep you warm tonight. An’ if you ask at t’kitchen ’round back, they’ll have a loaf an’ more for your supper.”

I approached the stableman as the carter strode off to the kitchen. “You’ll be wantin’ Bruce, then?” he asked.