Mel Starr - The Unquiet Bones

“You walk with pain,” I observed when she approached.

“Aye. Since Easter last I’ve suffered.”

“What is the cause?” I suspected the disease of the bones. She was of the age for it. It was unlikely her diet was rich enough to cause gout.

“It’s me toe. Swole up an’ red. ’At’s right, you be t’surgeon from Bampton. ’Eard of you.”

I wondered what she’d heard, but decided it could not have been too bad, as with her next breath she asked if I might examine the offending digit.

I followed her into her house, but the light there was too dim to properly diagnose either wound or injury. I carried a bench out to the sunlight, bade her sit upon it, and knelt before her to remove her shoe. I could see the swelling through the cracked, ancient leather, and heard her giggle softly behind her hand as I took her ankle to pull off the shoe. The giggle concluded with a gasp as the shoe abraded her toe.

Her pain was due to a badly infected ingrown toenail; one of the worst I’ve seen. The wonder is she could walk at all.

“Can you do aught for me?” she asked.

“Aye. But not now. I’ve no instruments with me.”

“Instruments?” She said it as a question, with a trace of alarm in her voice.

“You have an ingrown toenail. I must trim it back, and remove some putrefied flesh from about it.”

“Can’t you put somethin’ on it — a poultice, like?”

“I could, but that would serve only temporarily. The swelling might subside for a day, and the pain with it, but it would surely return. It does little good to treat pain. I must treat the cause of the pain.”

“I see; sore toes is much like other sorrows God’s children must endure.”

The old woman did not look like a philosopher, but surviving sixty or seventy years of the assorted trials common to mankind must turn all but the most shallow to contemplative thought now and again.

“I will return tomorrow to treat you. Can you find a flagon of wine?”

“You wants your pay in wine?” she said incredulously.

“No…no. I will bathe the wound in wine, to speed healing.”

“Wound,” she said limply.

“A small incision only. But I must tell you that we must do all we can to aid healing. You are not a young woman. The young heal more quickly than the old. And wounds of the extremities in the old heal even more slowly. I do not know why this is, but I have observed it so.”

“What fee, then, do you ask?”

“Some information. Is that reasonable enough?”

“Aye, if I got it.”

“If you do not, perhaps you can get it for me when I return tomorrow.”

“If I can. What you want t’know?”

“Perhaps we should go inside to talk. Here, I’ll help you stand.”

I assisted the woman to her feet. She leaned heavily on me as I helped her into the dim interior of her hut. She sat heavily on the first bench we came to. I went back for the other outside.

“The smith’s girl…Margaret. Had she other suitors than Thomas of Shilton?”

“Oh, la, she were always popular with the lads. But I don’t know as you could call all who gave her a look suitors.”

“What would you call them?”

“Pleasure seekers, maybe.”

“Were they likely to find it with Margaret?”

“Couldn’t say. Rumors ’bout town said maybe yes, maybe no. But folks didn’t gossip much ’bout Margaret ’cause they didn’t want to explain theirselves to her father, if you take my meanin’.”

“Then she was an attractive girl?”

“Oh, aye. A beauty. Could’ve had most any lad hereabouts, but she seemed set on Tom.”

“‘Seemed,’ you say?”

“Oh, she’d flirt with the lads some. You’ll not credit it now, but I were pert when I were a lass. I seen her with men a time or two, an’ I remember how it was.” Her eyes, once fixed on mine, wandered over my shoulder to the window. “A villein’s daughter has little to look forward to. So a little harmless dalliance wi’ the boys…it’s ’bout all she’s got.”

“Harmless?” I asked. “Is it always? Does dalliance sometimes lead to serious matters?”

“Aye, it does that.” She pursed her lips. “I could tell you stories…”

“Of Margaret?”

“Oh, no. I were thinkin’ of times long past, though there be folk hereabout younger’n me who’d remember well enough.”

“So Margaret’s flirting with other young men was not so serious as to lead them on, or cause Thomas to be jealous?”

“Well, I can’t say as what’d cause a lad to be jealous. Margaret was that pretty, I guess a fellow’d get anxious whenever she spoke to other lads.”

“You think Thomas of Shilton the jealous sort?” I asked.

“Can’t say. He don’t live in town, ’course. Seems a quiet lad. I probably heard him speak a time or two, but I couldn’t recognize his voice were he callin’ outside the door this moment. Not very helpful, eh? What you want to know all this for?”

“Lord Gilbert Talbot has charged me with finding Margaret’s killer.”

“Oh!” She sat up straight, eyes wide. “You think her Tom mighta done it, or one of t’others she’d trifle with?”

“I know not what to think,” I answered. “Perhaps you can help me. Can you find answers to my question by tomorrow, or should I wait another day or two?”

“I got friends who know what I don’t,” the woman smiled. “An’ I don’t wanna live with me toe a day longer than I got to. You come back tomorrow. I’ll have somethin’ for you, if there’s anythin’ to be knowed.”

“Don’t forget the wine.”

I intended to speak also to the smith that day. But I was of two minds. Should I interrogate a man, who two hours earlier had buried his daughter, about her friends and activities? Should I wait until the morrow, when my presence in the town would be bandied about? I’d ridden up and down the streets often enough that many saw me. A stranger in such a place is likely to create questions anyway, particularly one who seems to wander the streets aimlessly. The smith lived on the opposite bank of the river Windrush, but gossip would carry that far soon enough.

I turned Bruce north when I reached the High Street and crossed the bridge. As I approached the smith’s hut, I saw a wisp of smoke rise from his forge. Bereaved or not, a man must earn a living.

I heard the rhythmic pounding of his hammer before I dismounted. I had to speak his name twice before Alard laid down his hammer and turned to me.

“Oh. You have news? I must finish this hinge before it cools.” And he turned back to his work. A few more skilled blows, and the work was done.

“Now, then, you said as you’d tell me soon as you learned what befell my Margaret…” He left the phrase dangling, not as a question, but as an acknowledgment of either my competence or his faith.

“I did, but I do not know that yet. I am here to learn more of her, that I may solve this puzzle.”

“What good will that do? Know what you will of her…won’t tell who killed her,” he said with bitterness in his voice.

“It might. I think most who are murdered are done to death by someone they know, not some stranger or unknown thief on some deserted byway.”

Alard shrugged. “Then ask what you will.”

“Had Margaret any other suitors?”

“You mean more than Tom? Aye, she was one who caught men’s eyes. Like her mother.” He crossed himself.

“Any in particular?”

“None as had a chance with her. She’d set her cap for Tom Shilton.”

“Did the others know that?”

“Yer askin’ did she lead lads on, like?”

Alard was no fool. He saw the answers I sought before I asked the questions. “Yes, that’s what I wish to know.”