Mel Starr: The Unquiet Bones

“Well, there is a lass missing from somewhere. Perhaps no one knows of it yet. But I assure you, these bones never held Sir Robert aright.”

Lord Gilbert called Thomas de Bowlegh and Hubert Shillside to the scene. Father Thomas is one of three vicars of the Church of St Beornwald. He spoke the sacrament over the bones in the dying light of a gray autumn day. Hubert Shillside, prosperous freeholder and the town haberdasher, is also the town coroner. He quickly assembled a jury of prominent citizens, inspected the bones in the fading light, and in consultation with his peers pronounced a probable homicide. No deodand could be found, nor could a perpetrator be identified.

Lord Gilbert made arrangements with Father Thomas to have the bones interred in the churchyard next day. I thought this hasty. A closer inspection in better light might yield some clues to identity, or the cause of death. I approached Lord Gilbert with a request that the bones be transferred to my dispensary for examination next day. They had been unburied for many months — at least, not buried in hallowed ground. One or two more days would matter little. Lord Gilbert’s response took me aback.

“No! I’ll not deny Christian burial to…to…to whoever has died in my castle.”

“Did she die in your castle?” I asked.

“How do I know?” he snapped. “I don’t…we don’t even know who she — it — is, much less where or how she died.”

His vehemence surprised me. I wondered why he wished the bones out of sight so soon. I confess to a moment of suspicion. “You make my point readily. Study of the bones in good light tomorrow may yield answers to those questions.”

Petronilla stood silent, listening to our debate. “It seems a small thing, Gilbert, to allow Master Hugh [I never completed my doctor’s degree, so could not properly be called “doctor,” although I was a practicing surgeon] a day or two to learn what he might. It will be of no difference to this soul,” she glanced down at the bones, “and God has waited for her to be buried in consecrated ground. He will not begrudge another day or two.”

Two against one will generally win the day, even against a knight who fought bravely at Poitiers alongside Edward, the Black Prince.

Uctred and his companions had by this time completed their malodorous work. Lord Gilbert reluctantly assigned him and another the work of boxing up the bones and conveying them to Galen House, which name I had given my abode in honor of the great physician of antiquity.

I did not sleep well that night, with a box of bones below me on a table. I tell myself now that my wakefulness was due to curiosity, that trying to sleep over what remained of a corpse was no cause of my insomnia. The truth lies somewhere between, as is often the case.

Behind Galen House was a small walled toft. The house blocked the rising sun to the east, but the diffused light there was better than the pale beams filtered through the small windows of the house. In the morning I dragged the table, box and all, through the door into the toft and set to my work.

Many small bones of feet and fingers were missing, Uctred and his fellows being not so thorough as they might have been. But the great bones — arms, legs, ribs, and most of the spine — were accounted for. And the skull. In this better light I could see that fragments of ligament and flesh held the mandible to the skull, and most of the vertebrae were yet connected. How long, I wondered, would it take for all flesh and connective tissue to dissolve? Would this happen slowly or quickly in a cesspit? Instinct told me that decomposition would occur rapidly in such a place, but I cannot verify this assumption. Such observations were not part of the curricula in Paris.

I assembled the bones, one by one, on the table. I had observed dissections and studied skeletons, so I could compare this human frame with others I had seen. I was more convinced than before that it was female. And young. The bones were small, and light. I visualized a young, delicate girl. Perhaps I romanticized. But I was right. More of that anon.

Would not the person who did such a murder expect the bones to be found? Perhaps not. Lord Gilbert was unusual in his sanitation habits, and then due mainly to the diligence of his wife. Most nobles, to the gratification of villeins to whom the task would fall, never evacuated their castle cesspits. Human remains in such a place might never be discovered. Bad luck, for someone.

There was another question. How did this young woman die? I peered at the bones again, all of them, turning them over, one by one, in my hands.

I nearly missed it — the scratch on the third rib — for traces of flesh and some skin remained on the bone. But I had no doubt of what I saw. A knife had glanced from that rib, and gouged out a fragment of bone as it passed on its way to her heart.

Who was she? Did she know her attacker? From where did she come to be here, in Bampton? Why should I care, or need to know?

Because someone was dead. Made in the image of God; a child of His. I felt bile rise from my stomach, and it was not because of the putrid flesh yet attached to the bone I held.

I walked south on Church View, turned right across Shill Brook, passed the mill, and entered Bampton Castle yard. Wilfred, Lord Gilbert’s porter (he whose horse had spooked in Oxford on the High Street some months before), greeted me at the gatehouse. He’d been promoted. Or perhaps Lord Gilbert thought he worked more effectively on foot.

“I would see Lord Gilbert. Tell him I have news of the bones.”

Wilfred was at his post at the gatehouse when the bones were found, so had not seen them as they were brought from the cesspit. But he knew of them. By dawn this day all the town would know. By the morrow Oxford would know — those who care about such things, or have nothing better to speak of.

Wilfred was a tall man, who could walk quickly without appearing to do so. Moments after he entered the inner gatehouse, he reappeared. “Lord Gilbert will see you,” he puffed, “in the solar. The chamberlain awaits you and will take you there.”

I told Lord Gilbert what I had learned. “You have no doubt of murder?” he queried.

“None. She was killed, and put in your cesspit to hide the crime.”

“Would it not have been easier,” Lord Gilbert wondered aloud, “for her slayer to have buried her in the country hereabouts? There is much uncultivated land now, since the plague. This place was once called Bampton in the Bush for its wild situation. The bushes are reclaiming what was once theirs, I have so few tenants and villeins to work the land.”

“I have considered that,” I replied. “Were I the killer, I would seek the easiest, most secure place to dispose of the body. Why would your castle be more convenient, or more secure than, let us say, the nearby forest?”

Lord Gilbert scratched the stubble on his chin. It was an affectation I had seen before when he was lost in thought. “Perhaps whoever did this evil was more familiar with my castle than with the surrounding country.”

“Perhaps,” I agreed.

“Or,” he scratched again, “she was killed here and to remove the body would risk discovery.”

“Do folk enter the castle grounds without someone, Wilfred or Arthur or John, or you, knowing of it?” I asked.

“No. Except, perhaps, at market time. The town is overrun at the Feast of the Assumption. We sometimes find folk wandering through the gate, usually so drunk they think themselves at the inn. And, of course, some poor reside in the forecourt huts.”

“But such as these,” I asked, “do not pass the inner gate?”

“Not any more! Wilfred is scrupulous about his duties, as well he might be. He fears yet I will put him in the fields for his defective horsemanship.” Lord Gilbert chuckled: “Wilfred will be a loyal servant for all that.”