Mel Starr - The Unquiet Bones

“’Tis not Sir Robert’s, I think,” Lord Gilbert decided as he turned the weapon in his hands. “Mediocre craftsmanship. And the stones are poor.”

He turned to Walter, who was rooted in place before Lord Gilbert’s horse, his hands yet lifted as if he expected to see the dagger replaced in them. That would not be, but Lord Gilbert was a fair man.

“I will have this,” he told the woodcutters. “There is too much puzzle about this business. This,” he held the dagger out to me and Sir John that we might have a better view, “must have to do with Sir Robert’s cotehardie, but what, no man can tell. But I will not rob you of your find,” he said as he turned back to Walter. “I will send my reeve with two shillings. A fair price, I think.”

Walter’s chin dropped. He had probably thought of no way to turn the dagger to ready cash. Lord Gilbert’s offer would both stun and please him. He stammered thanks for the offer. Lord Gilbert cut him off. “And I will pay well for any other articles you may find in that forest…so long as you register the place where it was found and seek me immediately.”

“Aye. We will surely do that, m’lord.” I thought that promise true enough. When word got through Alvescot of Lord Gilbert’s past and promised generosity, the entire able-bodied population of the hamlet would comb the forest for traces of Sir Robert and his squire.

Our small party approached Bampton Castle an hour later from the west road as the search party, wet and cold, straggled through the gatehouse. Some turned to observe our approach, their faces betraying exhaustion and failure. The muddy surface of the castle yard was beginning to freeze. But the snap in the air did not prevent castle inhabitants of all stations from gathering about the hungry search party. Lady Petronilla and Lady Joan were prominent among the crowd. To his wife’s question, Lord Gilbert produced the small dagger.

My eyes were attracted to movement as Lord Gilbert displayed the weapon, and I turned in the direction of the motion. It was Lady Joan who attracted my attention, not an unusual event in itself. Her hand had come up to cover an opened mouth. Her eyes were wide, visible in the flickering light of torches. I knew then, before she spoke, that she recognized the dagger.

A sharp intake of breath accompanied Lady Joan’s startled expression. I could not hear this from my perch atop Bruce on the fringe of the crowd, but many closer to her turned toward her, including Lord Gilbert.

“Do you know this?” he asked her.

Lady Joan moved toward her brother; the gathering parted to give her a path. “If there is a letter inscribed on the pommel, yes, I know it.”

Lord Gilbert bent down from his horse and put the dagger in her hand. She turned it to better see the rounded end of the pommel in the flickering of the nearest torch. There followed another brief gasp, which even I heard, for the throng had fallen silent.

“What letter is there?” Lord Gilbert asked quietly.

“G,” Lady Joan replied. “This is Geoffrey’s dagger. Sir Robert’s squire. I saw him crudely pick his teeth with it at table,” she replied with some distaste.

“Then we have discovered foul work this day,” Lord Gilbert muttered. He glanced across the heads separating us and spoke: “Master Hugh…attend me in the morning. We have much to consider.”

I gave Bruce over to the marshalsea and made my way through dark, frozen, rutted streets to Galen House. As I approached my door I saw, silhouetted against the whiteness of the snow, what first appeared to be a pile of rags. I nearly stumbled over it, for there was no moon this night and the heap was nearly invisible. But as I approached the bundle moved, and from the folds a slight figure stood to greet me.

“You be the surgeon…Master Hugh?” the now-animate rag-bag said.

“I am. But you have the better of me. Who are you?”

“Alice, sir.”

“And why are you at my door in the dark? Curfew bell will sound soon.”

“I’ve come for you. It’s me father. He slipped on t’ice this mornin’ an’ cannot rise. I am sent to fetch you.”

“Well, come in for now while I assemble some instruments. How long have you awaited me?”

“Since mid-day, sir.”

“Then, here, take this loaf while I am about my work.”

The girl gnawed hungrily at the maslin loaf. I could not remember having seen her before, which I thought strange, for there were few young people of her age or younger in the town. Not for nothing was the return of pestilence two years past called the “Children’s Plague.”

“Where is your father?” I asked as I pulled tight the drawstring of my bag.

“At Weald. He has a quarter yardland of the Dean of Exeter.”

That explained why she was unknown to me; her father was a tenant of the Bishop, not Lord Gilbert. A quarter yardland would keep a family alive, with perhaps a small surplus to sell, if it was a small family, and if the land was fertile. “Is your mother attending him?” I asked.

“Got no mum…she died o’ plague when I was newborn.”

The girl recited her family history as we made our way back across Shill Brook, past the entrance to the castle, where all seemed quiet now, then turned left down a narrow track to a group of small huts. She was, I learned, the only child of her father’s second marriage, he having lost two wives. She had two older half-brothers. Two of the huts at Weald belonged to them.

The girl opened the door to her hut and led me inside, announcing to the dark interior the tardy appearance of the town surgeon as she did so.

I could see nothing. There was little enough starlight outside the door. None of that came through the oilskin window or the open door. I asked for light, and after a time of rummaging about in the dark, the girl produced a cresset and lit it from a coal which glowed dully on the hearthstone.

The hut was smoky from the nearly exhausted fire, so the flame from the cresset did not at first illuminate the patient. But I detected the sound of his labored breathing from a dark corner. A haze of stale wood-smoke enveloped everything in the hut. I could not see above, but it was my impression that the thatching of the roof must have begun to collapse over the gable wind-holes, so that fumes had nowhere to go and so filled the small room. I knew I would reek of smoldering fire for hours after this visit.

Alice put sticks on the fire as I made my way, coughing, to the bed. Blessings on the man who invented the fireplace.

I was surprised to see how old the girl’s father was. The pain of his injury surely added lines to his face, but even considering that, he was a man of sixty years at least. I asked what had befallen him and learned that it was he I had seen carrying a sack of hides to the tanner across Shill Brook that very morning. Though but half a day earlier, the event seemed in my mind to have occurred a lifetime ago. His name, he said, was Henry; Henry atte Bridge.

He had fallen, he said, on icy cobbles before the tanner’s shop. He had gone there with three hides: he had butchered a boar and two aged sheep of his small flock. He was taking the skins to the tanner when he fell under the load. He could not stand on his leg. The tanner and his apprentice helped him home, where he had awaited me in his bed. I feared a broken leg. No, that was not my greatest fear; a broken leg might mend. I feared a broken hip.

I drew the blankets from the man and went to probing his right hip, where he indicated the greatest pain was located. It took little prodding before I was certain of my diagnosis. A broken hip. I saw no gain to prevarication, so I told him plainly of the nature of his injury.

“As I feared,” he said softly. He coughed twice in the smoke, then spoke again. “I’m finished, then.”