“Aye. As you say. I have heard that he had sisters. Do you know where they might be found? Some of his goods were not taken, and I seek heirs so as to give what remains of Thrale’s possessions to them.”
The tanner pursed his lips and scratched his head, shoving aside his cap to do so. “’E did speak of kin, but where they may be I cannot tell. Gone often, was John. Would hitch ’is cart to a leather harness ’e made to go over ’is shoulders an’ about ’is waist, then off ’e’d go.”
“He drew his cart himself?”
“Aye… well, not for some months. ’Bout Whitsuntide ’e bought a new cart, an’ a horse to pull it. Had no barn; kept the beast in the house with ’im till ’e went to St. Helen Street.”
“The new cart was larger than the old, then?”
“Oh, aye. Wouldn’t be pullin’ the new cart by hisself. I bought the old one from ’im. Use it to haul hides about. There it sits.”
The tanner pointed behind his house to a shed where, at the side, a small cart was parked against a fence. “Gave three pence for it,” the tanner added.
John Thrale, near the end of May, had come into money. He bought first a horse and cart, then moved to a larger house in a respectable part of town, for which he paid perhaps as much as ten pounds. The tanner spoke true. An itinerant chapman was not likely to live so well on the profits of his business. And some men more dangerous than the tanner had noticed this also.
I bid the tanner good day and left him to his work. Perhaps a visit to the silversmith on East St. Helen Street should be my next call. The silversmith was not likely to know of Thrale’s sisters, but he might be the buyer of the ingots the chapman had made upon his hearth.
He was not, or if he was he did not wish to say so. I asked the silversmith first how he came by the metal which he fashioned into spoons and cups and jewelry. This was a poor beginning. The man was immediately on his guard, which was, perhaps, a clue that some of his supply was acquired in a manner unacceptable to the King.
“From Devon,” he said warily, “an’ from folks as wish to sell what they may have so to raise funds.”
“From mines in Devon?”
“Aye. Cornwall, too.”
“And merchants bring bars of silver from the mines to craftsmen such as you?”
“Aye. King’s seal stamped on ’em to show taxes paid.”
“If a silversmith purchased a silver ingot without the King’s seal…”
“He’d pay a fine.”
“But if you purchased silver from some man in financial embarrassment, what then?”
“No law against that, so long as the silver was ’is to sell, an’ not stolen.”
“Have you done so recently?”
The man’s eyes narrowed again, and the wary tone returned to his voice. “Not for many months. Next time the King demands taxes to war with France there’ll be folk wantin’ to sell their plate, but while we’re at peace… well, mostly at peace, I’m not offered much.”
“Did you know the chapman, John Thrale, who purchased a house a few doors from here at Lammastide?”
“A chapman? On East St. Helen Street?”
“Aye.”
“Oh… I’ve seen a fellow with cart an’ horse nearby the house. That him?”
“Aye, probably. Did he offer to sell silver to you?”
“Where would a chapman come by silver? ’Course, had he any, he might want to sell so’s to have coin to buy more stock.”
The coin which had fallen from John Thrale’s mouth was in my purse. Thieves had the others, but that first coin I had kept with me. I withdrew it from my purse and held it before the silversmith.
“Have you seen such a coin since Whitsuntide?”
The silversmith took the coin and squinted at it, turned it over, then held it at arm’s length. He was not a young man. He would soon need to purchase eyeglasses to see work close before his face.
“Nay, never seen such a coin.”
More conversation with the silversmith yielded no acknowledgment that the man had ever purchased silver, or any jewel or gold, from John Thrale. I believed him. But what did Thrale do with the ingots he so laboriously made?
Arthur is not a man to miss a meal, so I expected to find him awaiting me at the New Inn. Some things in life are predictable, if others are not. Arthur awaited me before the inn. We made a supper of wheaten bread and cheese, and ale, and sought our beds. Arthur had seen no mark of a broken horseshoe, though he had prowled Abingdon’s streets with his head down till dark.
The man who falls to sleep first in an abbey guest house or inn will sleep the best. I lay awake while others, including Arthur, fell to sleep and filled the chamber with their snoring. I did not find rest until some time after the abbey sacrist rang the bell for vigils.
Chapter 5
During a wakeful hour in the night another method of discovering John Thrale’s sisters came to me. He had purchased his house on East St. Helen Street from someone. Perhaps the seller knew more of the chapman than his name and the weight of his purse.
Monks do not break their fast, but after lauds set about their work until prime and terce, after which they take their dinner. As the abbey owned the New Inn, the guest master there saw no need to offer a loaf to us who sought lodging there. We could live as monks and be grateful for the well-thatched roof over our heads in the night.
A few paces from the New Inn is an ale house, and across the marketplace a baker has his shop, so we were able to eat and slake our thirst. In a busy town any print of a broken horseshoe upon the street would likely be soon obliterated, but having no better plan, I sent Arthur to roam Abingdon’s streets again, and told him to keep to the better sections of the town. No poor man would own a horse, broken shoe or not, and there would be small chance of finding the mark I sought on a street of paupers.
I set off again for East St. Helen Street and the pepperer’s shop.
“Good day,” the fellow smiled. He could not be certain I would make no purchase some other day, so greeted me pleasantly, as he would any customer.
“Aye, so ’tis,” I replied. “And a good day to you, also. John Thrale” — the pepperer crossed himself when he heard his neighbor’s name — “lived next door since Lammastide. Who owned the house before him?”
“A widow. Husband died when plague returned six years past. A tailor, was Walter.”
“Where does the woman make her home now?”
“Went off to Oxford to live with a son, Thomas. He’s a tailor, also. Shop on St. Michael’s Street, near to the Northgate, I hear tell. Maud tried to keep Walter’s business, she bein’ a good seamstress upon a time, but she’s the disease of the bones, an’ it pained her to ply a needle. Knuckles was all swollen.”
“How long was the house empty?”
“Near two years since Maud went to Oxford. There’s more’n one house stands empty in the town. She was right pleased to find a buyer, I’m thinkin’. No one to care for the place since Maud left, an’ she could do little enough the last few years she was there.”
“John Thrale got a good price, then?”
“Oh, aye. Six pounds, four, I heard. Don’t know what’ll become of the place now. Thatchin’ is goin’ bad, an’ rafters will soon rot, does no one see to it.”
The previous owner of Thrale’s house would be able to tell me nothing of his kin, being two years gone from Abingdon before the chapman made his purchase, so there was no need to seek her. I left the pepperer with no other scheme in mind to seek either John Thrale’s sisters or the felons who slew him. As I stood in the street, pondering what I might do next, my eyes wandered to Thrale’s empty house. The shutters, closed, were in need of repair and did not fit tightly against each other. In the crack between the shutters of the left-side window I thought I saw movement, but when I cast my eye back to the fissure all was dark. Perhaps I had imagined a cheek and eye peering out at me?
But perhaps not. Had the chapman’s murderers come back to search again Thrale’s house? I had no pressing business, so decided to investigate the house. Even if no person was within its walls, perhaps a close examination might reveal some clue I had missed which might lead to sisters or murderers.