A Trail of Ink (31 page)

Sir John Trillowe was indeed Sheriff of Oxford from July to November, 1365. I do not know if his term was brief due to illness, death, incompetence, or malfeasance. I chose the last of these.

A few medieval Oxford streets, like St Fridewide’s Lane, no longer exist. Many other streets have undergone name changes. Here are some examples:

Canterbury Hall no longer exists, but its location is preserved in Christ Church’s Canterbury Gate opening into Oriel Square, at the intersection of Oriel Street and Merton Street.

The conflict between secular and religious scholars was real. John Wyclif lasted only until 1367 as warden of Canterbury Hall.

Salley Abbey is today, like many other monastic establishments, a ruin. Its current name is Sawley Abbey and the remains lie a short distance north of the A59 in Sawley.

The current Magpie Lane was indeed the fourteenthcentury haunt of Oxford’s prostitutes.

An extract from the fourth chronicle of Hugh de Singleton, surgeon

§houting and pounding upon the door of Galen House drew me from the maslin loaf with which I was breaking my fast. It was a fortnight after Hocktide, in the new year 1366, and the sun was just beginning to illuminate the spire of the Church of St. Beornwald. It was Hubert Shillside who bruised his knuckles against my door. He was about to set out for the castle and desired I should accompany him. The hue and cry was raised and he, as town coroner, and I as bailiff of Bampton Manor, were called to our duties. Thomas atte Bridge had been found this morn hanging from the limb of an oak at Cow-Ley’s Corner.

Word of such a death passes through a village swiftly. A dozen men and a few women stood at Cow-Ley’s Corner when Shillside and I approached. Roads to Clanfield and Alvescot here diverge; the road to Clanfield passes through a meadow where Lord Gilbert’s cattle watched serenely as men gathered before them. To the north of the corner, and along the road to Alvescot and Black Bourton, is forest. From a tree of this wood the corpse of Thomas atte Bridge hung, his body but a few paces from the road. Shillside and I crossed ourselves as we approached.

Most who gazed upon the dead man did so silently, but not his wife. Maud knelt before her husband’s body, her arms wrapped about his knees. She wailed incomprehensibly, as well she might.

Thomas atte Bridge hung by the neck from the limb of an oak, suspended there by a coarse hempen cord twisted about his neck. The cord passed round the branch and down to the tree trunk, where it was fastened at about waist height. The branch was not high - did I stretch a hand above me I could nearly touch it. The man’s feet dangled from his wife’s embrace little more than two hands-breadth above the ground. Near the corpse lay an overturned stool.

“Who found him?” I asked the crowd. Ralph the herder stepped forward.

“Was on me way to see to the cattle. They been turned out to grass but a short time now, an’ can swell up like. Near walked into `im, dark as it was, an’ him hangin’ so close to the road.”

Hubert Shillside wandered about the place, then approached me and whispered, “Suicide, I think.”

Spirits are known to frequent Cow-Ley’s Corner. Many folk will not walk the road there after dark, and those who do sometimes see apparitions. This is to be expected, for any who take their own life are buried there. They cannot be interred in the churchyard, in hallowed ground. Their ghosts rest uneasy, and are said to vex travelers who pass the place at night.

“Knew he’d be buried here,” Shillside continued, “an’ thought to spare poor Maud greater trouble.”

That Thomas atte Bridge might wish to cause little trouble to anyone did not seem likely, given my experience of the man. He had twice attacked me, leaving lumps upon my skull. But I made no reply. It is not good to speak ill of the dead, even this man.

Kate had followed us from the house, and now she looked from the corpse to Maud to me, and spoke softly. “You are troubled, Hugh.”

This was a statement, not a question. We had been wed but three months, but Kate is observant and knows me well.

“I will call a coroner’s jury here,” Shillside announced. “We can cut the fellow down and see him buried straightaway.”

“You must seek Father Thomas or one of the other vicars,” I reminded him. “Thomas was a tenant of the Bishop of Exeter, not Lord Gilbert. They may wish otherwise.”

Shillside set off for the town while two men lifted Maud from her knees and led her sobbing in the coroner’s track.

“Wait,” I said abruptly. All turned to see what caused my command. “The stool which lies at your husband’s feet,” I asked the grieving widow, “is it yours?”

Maud ceased her wailing long enough to whisper, Aye.

Another onlooker righted the stool and prepared to step on it to cut down the corpse, when I bid him halt. Kate spoke true, the circumstances of this death troubled me.

I saw a man hanged once, in Paris, when I studied surgery there. He dangled, kicking the sheriff’s dance and growing purple in the face until the constables relented and allowed his friends to approach and pull upon his legs until his torment ended. Thomas atte Bridge’s face was swollen and purple, and he had soiled himself as death approached. His countenance in death duplicated the unfortunate cut-purse in Paris. It seemed as Hubert Shillside suggested; atte Bridge brought rope and stool to Cow-Ley’s Corner, fixed the noose and placed it about his neck, then kicked aside the stool he’d stood upon. All who stood there peering surely thought the same.

I circled the dangling corpse. The hands hung limp and were cold to the touch. A man about to die on the gallows will be securely bound. Not so a man who takes his own life. I inspected atte Bridge’s hands and pushed up the frayed sleeves of his cotehardie to see his wrists.

Upon one wrist I saw a small red mark, much like a rash, or a place where a man has scratched a persistent itch. No such scraping appeared upon the other wrist, but when I pushed up the sleeve of the cotehardie another thing caught my eye. The sleeve was of coarse brown wool, and frayed with age. Caught in the wisps of fabric I found a wrinkled thread of lighter hue. I looked up. This filament was much the same shade as the hempen cord from which the dead man hung. Perhaps it found its way to his sleeve when atte Bridge adjusted the rope about his neck.

I stood back from the corpse to survey the place. I was near convinced that Hubert Shillside must be correct. My life would have been easier had he been so. But my duties as bailiff to Lord Gilbert Talbot have made me suspicious of others and sceptical of tales they tellwhether dead or alive. It was then I noticed the mud upon Thomas atte Bridge’s heels.

I knelt to see better, and Kate peered over my shoulder. Mud upon one’s shoes is common when walking roads in springtime, but this mud was not upon the soles of atte Bridge’s shoes, where it should have been, but was drying upon the backs of his heels. Kate understood readily what we saw.

“Odd, that,” she said softly, so others might not hear. She then turned to the righted stool and gazed down at it thoughtfully. I saw her brow furrow and knew the cause. I drew her aside so we might converse unheard by others.

“A man who walks to his death will have mud upon the soles of his shoes,” I whispered, “not upon the backs of his heels.”

“And he will leave muddy footprints where he stands,” Kate replied. “I see none on yon stool.”

“Walk with me,” I said. “Let us see what the road may tell us.”

It told us that many folk had walked this way. The previous week there had been much rain, and the road was deep in mud. Footprints were many. Occasionally the track of a cart appeared. A hundred paces and more east of Cow-Ley’s Corner I found what I sought. Two parallel lines, a hand’s-breadth apart, were drawn in the mud of the road. These tracks were no more than one pace long. Kate watched me study the grooves.

“Did the mud upon his heels come from here?” she asked.

“Perhaps. It is as if two men carried another, and one lost his grip and allowed the fellow’s feet to drop briefly to the road.”

“How could this be? Was he dead already?”

“Nay. I think not. His face is that of a man who has died at the end of a rope. But if he did not perish at his own hand someone bound him or rendered him helpless so to get him to Cow-Ley’s Corner.”

While Kate and I stood in the road, Hubert Shillside and eleven men of Bampton approached. The coroner saw us studying the mud at our feet and turned his gaze there also. He saw nothing to interest him.

“What is here, Hugh? Why stand you here studying the road?”

“See there,” I pointed to the twin grooves in the mud. As Shillside had not seen Thomas atte Bridge’s heels he could not know my suspicion. He shrugged and walked on. The coroner’s jury followed and would have obliterated the marks in the way had not Kate and I stood before them so they were obliged to flow about us like Shill Brook about a rock.

There was nothing more to be learned standing in the road. Kate and I followed the men back to Cow-Ley’s Corner. They studied the corpse, the rope, the stool, and muttered among themselves. The coroner had already voiced his opinion that atte Bridge died at his own hand. His companions, thus set toward a conclusion of the matter, found no reason to disagree. When a man has adopted an opinion it is difficult to dissuade him of it, but I tried.

I took Shillside to the corpse and bid him bend to inspect the stained and mud-crusted heels. “The tracks you saw me studying in the road… made by atte Bridge’s heels, I think. Why else dirt upon the backs of a man’s feet?”

“Hmmm… perhaps.”

“And see the stool. If he stood upon it to fix the rope to the limb he made no muddy footprints upon it.”

Shillside glanced at the stool, then lifted his eyes to atte Bridge’s lolling head.

“The fellow is dead of hanging and strangulation,” he declared. “I’ve seen men die so, faces swollen any purple, tongue hangin’ from `is mouth all puffy an’ red.”

“Aye,” I agreed. “So it does seem. But if he stood upon that stool to fasten rope to tree he left no mark. How could a man tread the road and arrive here with clean shoes … but for the back of his heels?”

Shillside shrugged again. “Who can know? But this I’ll say; not a man in Bampton or the Weald will be sorry Thomas atte Bridge is dead. He tried to kill you. Be satisfied the fellow can do no more harm to you or any other.”