“The heavens,” I said, “declare the glory of God, but say nothing of a surgeon’s skill.”
“No skillful surgeon,” the prior growled, “would defy the stars and planets. Saturn must not be trifled with. ’Twas when Saturn conjoined with Jupiter and Mars that the Great Pestilence, with its choler and noxious vapors, struck down so many souls.”
“So it was said.”
Behind the three monks smoke arose from a chimney of the abbot’s kitchen. I wondered if he followed the Benedictine Rule as ardently as an abbot should. His girth said not. Abingdon is on the way between Oxford and Winchester and an abbot has an obligation to serve high-born guests at his table. Rule or not, I suspect that Abbot Peter partakes often of the beef and pork and lamb served to his visitors.
Abbot Peter dismissed me with a wave of his fleshy hand and turned toward the abbey church. The prior looked back briefly, then followed his superior. His glance said much: a message of dismissal and disdain. The cellarer continued toward the porter’s lodge.
“By heavens,” Arthur said when the abbot was a safe distance away, “I’d like to graze in ’is meadow.”
God will forgive a man his sins, if he asks, but his body may not. What other of the seven deadly sins Peter of Hanney may be guilty of I know not, but he is surely guilty of gluttony.
I was about to bid Brother Theodore good day, when four men stepped from the porter’s lodge at the cellarer’s approach. The cellarer did not break his stride, but passed through the gatehouse into the marketplace. The four men followed. They were not monks, and I saw that each man had a sword slung from his belt.
Brother Theodore followed the direction of my gaze and explained. “Four years past the town hired a lawyer, up from London, to plead against the monastery’s claims upon the town and market. M’lord abbot bribed the jurors, and the judges dismissed the case. There is much bad blood,” the hosteler sighed, “between abbey and town, so that monks cannot walk the streets unless they are defended.”
Arthur and I followed the cellarer to Burford Street, and watched as he walked toward St. Helen’s Church. A few men doffed their caps and bowed as the monk passed, but as many, when his back was to them, spat in the street behind him before continuing on their way. No cowl is so holy but that the devil can get his head under it.
Arthur and I sought the alley where Amice Thatcher dwelt and I soon stood before her door. No bushel topped the pole set there. The woman had no ale fresh this day, but as there was no sign of her or her children, I assumed she was at work brewing a fresh batch, her children perhaps joining in the labor.
I rapped upon the door, but received only silence in response. I thumped again, louder, so that the fragile assembly of planks seemed ready to collapse, but yet there was no sound from Amice Thatcher’s house.
The pounding had attracted the attention of a crone who dwelt across the street. “Ain’t ’ome,” she said. “Come ’ome, then went off again.”
“Amice returned here this morn?”
“Aye. Didn’t stay. Two fellas come by an’ she went off with ’em. Her an’ the children.”
Two men? Were these the same who had slain John Thrale? If so, how did they discover she was no longer under the protection of abbey walls?
“Was one of these men tall, wearing a red cap, and the other fat, with a blue cap?”
The old woman pressed a finger to her cheek, thought for a moment, then spoke. “B’lieve so. Didn’t pay ’em much mind. Folks often seek Amice’s ale… she don’t water it as some do.”
I looked to Arthur. He read my mind and said, “Too many folks about. If one of them rides a horse with a broken shoe, the track would be well covered.”
The crone heard him and said, “No man comes to the bury mounted. Streets be too narrow, an’ men hereabout don’t think much of gentlefolk.”
“When Amice departed with these men, which way did she go?”
The old woman pointed a bony finger to the declining sun, where the narrow lane curved around toward the south.
“Toward Ock Street,” she said.
Arthur and I elbowed our way through the crowded lane. Or, more truly, Arthur pushed through the mob and I followed. Arthur is well able to clear a path through a throng, and I trailed like a rowing boat drawn behind a great ship.
Where the narrow path entered Ock Street the crowd thinned, but yet the mud of the street was too trampled for a horseshoe, broken or whole, to be identified. Amice Thatcher was gone, likely now in the hands of men who sought silver and gold, and who thought she knew where it might be had. She did not, or so she had said. Did she speak true to me? If not, would she tell where John Thrale had found his treasure in order to save herself and her children? If she did not know where Thrale found the cache, what would wicked men do to her or her children to force from her that which she could not give?
The sun was low in the west and the evening was chill and threatened rain. There was nothing more to be done this day. I told Arthur we would seek the New Inn and a bowl of pottage, and renew our work next morn.
Sleep did not come readily that night. I thought of what I might have done to safeguard Amice Thatcher. Was not a monastery hospital as secure as any place where she might have found refuge? There was nothing to be gained by questioning now the decision I had made four days past to place Amice in St. John’s Hospital, but I did so anyway, thus forcing sleep from my troubled mind.
I thought also of the coin, and John Thrale’s dying words: “They didn’t get me coin.” Why had he but one coin, and that hid in his mouth? If he had visited his find earlier on his tour of villages and customers, would he not have had more of his treasure with him, hid somewhere on his person or in his cart? Perhaps he did, and his attackers found it. But he said not. And if the felons had discovered his treasure, why did they yet seek it? No, John Thrale had not visited the covert place where ancient coins and jewelry were hid before he was attacked in the forest near St. Andrew’s Chapel.
But if the cache was yet to be visited when Thrale made his rounds, why had he one coin hid in his cheek? The answer to that question drove sleep even farther from me. The chapman had one coin because it was there, in the wood to the east of St. Andrew’s Chapel, that he had found the hoard. If he had already visited the cache, he would have had more loot in his possession. Buried somewhere in that wood was the treasure Amice Thatcher’s captors sought. Perhaps John Thrale had been surprised as he uncovered the hidden wealth, and managed to hide it, but for one coin, before his assailants came upon him. If the treasure was at some place farther along his route, he would have had no coin with him.
I had more questions than answers, and slept little that night for considering these matters over and over again.
Chapter 8
Arthur and I left the New Inn early next morn, attended mass at St. Nicholas’s Church, sought the baker so as to break our fast with a loaf, then set out for the crooked lanes of the bury. I had some forlorn hope that Amice Thatcher might have returned to her home, or would do so early this day. If not, she would not know about or resent me entering her house to see if there was anything in it which might tell me of her abduction, if that was truly what occurred when she went off with the men who had slain John Thrale.
The hour was yet early, but the lane before Amice Thatcher’s hut was aswarm with those who lived or labored in that place. It would not do to break down her door, flimsy as it was and easily breached. Inhabitants of such a lane look out for each other, and I saw several sideways glances of suspicion as we stood before Amice’s door.
I rapped my knuckles smartly upon the decaying planks of the door. There was no response, not even from the crone who lived across the way. She was about some work of her own, no doubt, which was good. Busy with her own tasks, she would not see as Arthur and I left the street and sought the rear of Amice’s house.