I saw fright in Amice’s eyes as my shadow darkened her door. She was, I think, unwilling to shut out customers, but fearful of those who did enter her ale house. I told her of the sanctuary provided her at the hospital and saw her features relax.
“I brewed five gallons of ale fresh yesterday,” she said, “and have sold but a gallon this day. It will go stale. Must I remain long at the abbey, you think?”
“Perhaps the hosteler will have need of fresh ale for the guest hall. I will ask it of him.”
I was confident that, to retain my good will, Brother Theodore would purchase four gallons of ale. He did, and offered six pence (which price Amice was much pleased to accept), and sent a lay brother following Amice’s directions to fetch the cask and bring the ale to the abbey.
When the sacrist rang the abbey church bell for nones Amice Thatcher and her children were safe within St. John’s hospital. So I did believe.
In my travels about Abingdon I had seen several blacksmith’s forges. There was yet nearly three hours till dark, so I set out with Arthur to learn if any smith had recently plied his trade upon a horse with a broken shoe. None had, but I left each smith with a promise that, should he do so, and then report the labor to me at the New Inn, he would be rewarded.
Next day Arthur and I, after a dinner of stockfish and wheaten loaves, wandered the town searching the streets for the mark of a broken horseshoe. We saw none.
Thursday morn, after a pint of ale at the ale house across the marketplace from the inn, Arthur and I started for Bampton. There was little more to learn of John Thrale in Abingdon, and the sooner I could apply my skills to the hosteler’s fistula the sooner I would have a friend in the abbey.
I must learn to be more observant. We had crossed the Thames at Newbridge, more than halfway to Bampton, before I looked to the muddy road under Bruce’s hooves and saw that we followed the track of a horse with a broken shoe. I called to Arthur to bring his palfrey to a halt, dismounted, and squatted in the road to see better if the marks there seemed to be the same as those made by the beast which carried a man who had threatened my Bessie. They were, and Arthur, peering over my shoulder, was able to see clearly now the imprint he had before known only by my description.
“Not likely to forget that,” he said after his inspection. “That horse’ll soon be lame, I think, does his owner not see to him.”
I am not skilled in the care of horses, so I could not judge the accuracy of Arthur’s assertion, but it seemed to me I sought some gentleman who suffered from financial misfortune. The fellow had wealth enough that he could own a horse, but not enough to care for the beast properly, and he was willing to beat and murder another to gain what that other man possessed.
My next thought was that the man was headed toward Bampton. Kate and Bessie were safe within the wall of Bampton Castle, so I had no fear for them, but I wondered what other mischief the fellow might be about, or what he sought.
Had we followed the track since leaving Abingdon? Had I been more observant, I might have had answer to that question. The day was yet young. An extra hour or two backtracking to see where the broken-shoed horse had entered the road would not much delay our journey.
The nearer we approached to Abingdon the more folk had been upon the road, and the marks of their passage began to obliterate the track we followed. At one place, where for many paces we saw no mark of a broken horseshoe, Arthur dismounted and led his palfrey, studying the road before us for a resumption of our trail. He found it, briefly, at a place where the tower of the abbey church looked down upon us through an opening in a wood through which the road passed. But a hundred paces beyond, the mark we followed was again obscured by the passage of men and beasts, and this time, search as we would, we could not recover the track.
Before us was a crossroad. We went so far as to examine this lane, where a track would be easy to follow, for fewer travelers went there. We did not find the mark we sought.
I called to Arthur — who had explored the crossing path to the south, while I searched to the north — to give up the hunt. We resumed our interrupted journey to Bampton, followed again the track of a broken horseshoe to Newbridge, and this time searched for where our quarry went, rather than whence he had come.
A mile past Newbridge, nearly to Standlake, Arthur shouted, “Look there!” and drew his palfrey to a halt. He rode to my right, so when the hoof-print we followed broke from the road to a narrow track which led to the right, he saw it first.
Two horses had recently turned into this narrow lane, one well shod, the other the beast we followed. The path soon became so narrow and overgrown that we were forced to dismount, and at the place we did so the mark of a broken-shoed horse also disappeared. So few travelers had passed this way that grass and fallen leaves had covered the path, and no rider would gallop his horse here to throw clods of turf, where trees grew close over the way and a low limb might unseat him.
We tied Bruce and the palfrey to saplings and made our way afoot into the wood. Where this trail led I could not guess, for the forest soon closed in upon us. Where the mud gave way to turf we had seen the tracks of horses entering this overgrown lane, but there were no marks of any horses leaving it. This was a puzzle. Arthur and I had left our beasts behind, so overgrown was the path. If a man entered this forest track with his horse, he must do so afoot, leading with his beast behind. But where would he go that he would not return the way he came?
The path became so overgrown that I was required to push foliage aside to make a way through. At several places I saw where others had done so also. Twigs and small branches were snapped off, and recently — the breaks showing white and fresh. This was not a silent business, and it occurred to me that the felons I sought might be hidden in the forest, warned of our approach and waiting in ambush. I turned to Arthur, put a finger to my lips, then proceeded with new caution.
There was no need for this vigilance. A hundred or more paces from the road the path entered a clearing in the wood, edged with blackberry thorns. This opening was much like the clearing to the east of St. Andrew’s Chapel where I had discovered John Thrale’s cart. Was this another place where he had sought solitude for a night’s rest? Surely the way from the road to this place was not wide enough for his cart. But when he traveled harnessed to his small cart, might he then have penetrated to this quiet spot?
The forest opening was no more than twenty paces across, and when I studied the opposite side I saw a place where men and horses might have gone. I pointed, motioned to Arthur, and silently he followed me across the clearing to where another overgrown path led into the forest. Where the forest and a tangle of blackthorn met I noticed a strange thing. Several strange things. Spaced little more than one pace apart were hummocks rising from a large depression in the leafy mold. I counted four in one direction, and six in another, so that there were twenty-four of these mounds, identical in size and shape, in an orderly pattern where forest and clearing met.
My curiosity was aroused. I knelt beside one of the mounds, which rose to a height nearly to my knee, and with the point of my dagger prodded the lump to see what might lie in such orderly rows, under the decay of a forest floor. Arthur peered intently over my shoulder as I did so.
Masonry was there. The blade of my dagger struck something hard before I had poked it in the length of my little finger. I did not at first know what I had found, but a few moments with dagger and fingers cleared the moss and overgrowth from the pile enough that a short column of what appeared to be tiles and mortar became visible. These tiles were not a random assembly. They had been cut square and carefully stacked, and there were twenty-three more mounds like the one I had uncovered. What men had done this, and what these short pillars were to do, I could not tell.