A Corpse at St Andrew's Chapel Read Online Free

you?”
    The reeve shook his head. “Nor have I. I think no man alive in Bampton has ever heard a wolf howl.”
    “Some other beast, then?” Shillside offered.
    “What? A bear? Even in Scotland they are unknown. Wild dogs? What other ravages have been done? Hounds would take a sheep and leave the remains to mark their work, as would a wolf, I think. No such loss has been reported to me, or on the bishop’s lands either, or I should have heard of it.”
    Another matter had troubled me. Alan’s feet were bare. “We found Alan’s staff, but where are his shoes? Would a man,” I asked my companions, “go out of a night to enforce curfew unshod?”
    The reeve and coroner looked down to Alan’s feet. Shillside sucked on his lower lip, but neither man spoke. We all knew the answer to that question: not likely.
    We bent again to the task of lifting Alan to Bruce’s broad back. The old horse shuffled when he realized what he was asked to bear. But the animal had borne Lord Gilbert in battle at Poitiers and had smelled blood and death. He did not flinch from his task. John took the halter and, at Bruce’s slow pace, our cortege moved to the town and Alan’s house on Catte Street.
    The beadle’s home was like its neighbors. Built of timbers, wattle and daub, with a roof perhaps better thatched than most. A wisp of smoke drifted from the gable vent. We found Matilda planting onions in the toft behind the house. There is work which must be done even when a spouse has disappeared. No one had sought her out with the news that her husband was found. No one wanted to be the source of bad tidings or have the responsibility of comforting the disconsolate. So I did it. Hubert Shillside stood beside me as I spoke the words Matilda had feared for twenty-four hours. The knees of her surcoat were stained with earth, as were the hands which first dropped, then came up to cover the sobs which broke from a face new twisted in grief.
    I saw a bench at the rear of the house and brought it to the woman. She sat, or rather, collapsed, gratefully upon it. Her sobs must have penetrated the house. Matilda had no sooner sat than an echoing wail arose from within. She had been trying to get work done before her son awoke.
    The child’s cries brought Matilda’s to an end. She rose, brushed past me and the coroner, and ran to comfort her babe. She reappeared with the sobbing lad a moment later. The child blinked in the sunlight under sleep-tangled hair and peered suspiciously at me from the safety of his mother’s arms.
    Matilda knew grief. She had renewed its acquaintance four months earlier, just before Christmas, when a newborn daughter died before ever seeing the light of day. The midwife, Katherine Pecham, was known by all to be competent. There was no fault in her work. Rare indeed the mother who sees all her children past the graveyard to maturity.
    The woman stood in the doorway, then leaned heavily against the jamb. I felt compassion for her, but knew her sorrow would not endure long. There were in Bampton and the Weald five men under thirty-five or so years who were widowers or who had not yet taken a wife. One had lost a wife in childbirth. After a decent interval for her mourning, some would call. And as they cast jealous eyes on each other, the period allotted for Matilda’s mourning might become indecent. Well, she would have something to say about that.
    Matilda was no more than twenty-five years old and prettier than most tenant’s wives who, by that age, are already worn with work and worry. And she would bring to a new marriage a half-yardland. She would be required to pay a heriot, and an entry fee for her son and heir when he was old enough to assume his father’s land. But these would not be burdensome. I knew this because, in the absence of Lord Gilbert and his steward, Geoffrey Thirwall, I would determine these fines.
    “Where was he found?” Matilda asked.
    The coroner told her, and explained that Alan’s death