The Huntsman's Tale (Oxford Medieval Mysteries Book 3) Read online

  The

  Huntsman’s

  Tale

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  The

  Huntsman’s

  Tale

  Ann Swinfen

  Shakenoak Press

  Copyright © Ann Swinfen 2017

  Shakenoak Press

  Ann Swinfen has asserted her moral right under the

  Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified

  as the author of this work.

  All Rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, copied, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the copyright holder, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than

  that in which it is published and without a similar condition

  being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Cover design by JD Smith www.jdsmith-design.co.uk

  For

  My nephews & nieces:

  David, Susan, Steven,

  Alison, Nadine, & Nicholas

  Chapter One

  Oxford, Late Summer 1353

  The carter leaned in over the drop-counter of the shop, waving a folded paper in his hand. The man was familiar, for I had known him since boyhood. His regular route took him in circular fashion around the villages and small towns of northwest Oxfordshire: Witney, Burford, North Leigh, Woodstock, Long Hanborough, and all the small settlements on the fringes of Wychwood Forest. About every three or four weeks he came into Oxford.

  ‘Geoffrey Carter!’ I said. ‘What brings you here?’

  I hoped I did not sound anxious, for a letter from my old home might bring bad news. My mother had been ill in the spring and we had received no recent word of how she did.

  ‘Letter from your mother, Master Elyot,’ he said, leaning further in and handing it to me.

  Reassured, I looked down at it. My mother was not greatly lettered, but she could read and write well enough, and had kept the books on the farm while my father lived. Her writing was a little more shaky than in the past, but if she could write to me, she must be in good health.

  ‘Come you in-by, Geoffrey,’ I said, ‘and take a sup with us. I was about to close the shop for dinner.’

  ‘Aye, I will that,’ he said.

  He disappeared from view, but I could hear him hitching his horse to the ring in the wall of my shop, followed by the rustle of a nosebag. He passed my scriveners Walter and Roger in the doorway as he came in and they left for their dinner at a tavern in the High Street. I laid the letter down beside the book whose cover I had been polishing and shuttered the shop window.

  ‘Will you not read it?’ he said, nodding toward the letter.

  ‘Come through to the house first,’ I said. ‘Margaret will be pleased to see you.’

  We found Margaret in the kitchen, just dishing up a vegetable potage, for it was Friday, not a day for meat. Alysoun and Rafe were already seated at the table, but jumped down when they saw the carter.

  ‘Master Carter!’ Alysoun cried. ‘Have you brought me something?’

  ‘Alysoun,’ Margaret said, chiding, ‘that is no way to greet a guest. Back to your places, both of you. Good day to you, Geoffrey.’

  ‘And to you, Mistress Makepeace.’ He doffed his knitted cap, leaving his hair standing up in spikes, like an untidy hedgehog. ‘I hope I find you well.’

  ‘In good health, I thank you. Sit you down. ’Tis but bread and a vegetable potage, I fear. And I can see that you are yourself in good health.’

  Indeed the man’s blooming – if weatherbeaten – countenance bore witness to that good health, although I knew that in winter time or prolonged rainy seasons his was a hard life.

  The children were seated again, but were watching Geoffrey keenly. He sat down opposite them, with a deceptively bland look on his face, while he felt about the many pockets of his rough coat. Then he drew out a small bag and looked at it in astonishment, as if he had no idea how it had come there. He placed in on the table beside his dish as I spoke the Lord’s blessing over the meal.

  ‘Whatever can that be?’ he said, after the Amen. He gazed at the bag in wonder.

  ‘Well,’ I said dryly, ‘I observe that it is stained red. I hope you have not been poaching conies, Geoffrey.’

  ‘Ah, now there is a thought.’ He shook his head and pushed the bag across the table to Alysoun. ‘Perhaps you should open it, my maid.’

  Alysoun looked uncertainly from Geoffrey to me, and back again, while Rafe stuck his thumb in his mouth, a habit which neither I nor Margaret had been able to cure. Clearly deciding that the bag was too small for a dead rabbit, Alysoun loosened the drawstring and peeped inside.

  ‘Strawberries!’

  ‘Aye.’ Geoffrey grinned at her. ‘Came across a patch of wild ’uns this side of Cassington. I thought I might meet someone who could make use on ’em.’

  Margaret picked up the bag and laid it beside her plate.

  ‘That was kind of you, Geoffrey. I have some good thick cream from Mary Coomber’s dairy. We shall have them after the potage. But why are you here? Is all well back at home?’

  ‘All’s well, mostly,’ he said, taking the thick slice of bread she passed him. ‘I’ve brought a letter for The Master.’ It was an on-going jest of his, that my university education had made me a Master of Arts, though I suspected he really thought my cousin ranked higher, as master of his own farm.

  ‘A letter?’ Margaret asked.

  ‘From our mother.’ I took my penknife from the pouch at my belt, and lifted the unmarked wax seal from the folded paper. I scanned the few lines quickly.

  ‘Aye, as Geoffrey says, all’s well. She regrets we were obliged by her illness to put off our visit earlier, but she is quite hearty now, and hopes we may come before the busy time in the shop at the start of the Michaelmas term.’

  Folding the letter and placing it beside my bowl, I took up my spoon. Margaret had flavoured the potage well with garlic and thyme, and the vegetables were fresh from our own garden this morning.

  ‘What say you, Meg? Shall we pay our visit to the farm?’

  I saw that both children had stopped eating, and were watching their aunt keenly, having the wisdom not to interrupt.

  ‘Geoffrey said that all is mostly well,’ Margaret said. ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘No more nor less than the usual, mistress. The hay is in, though it took near a fortnight longer than usual. And the harvest looks to be good, but Master Edmond fears he may lose much of it.’

  ‘But why?’ Margaret frowned. ‘The weather seems set fair.’

  ‘’Tis not the weather that worries ’un, ’tis the want of hands.’

  Geoffrey paused to wipe round the inside of his bowl with the heel of his bread.

  ‘Ever since the Death, labou
r has been wanting, and it grows worse year by year. Near half the village perished, as you know, and of those that lived, some who were villeins to the manor have upped and left, mebbe to get their freedom here or in Banbury, like. Those who live by day labour go where they are paid the most. And with a new lord at the manor, that is not Master Edmond.’

  ‘So the manor has been sold, then?’ I said.

  Geoffrey screwed up his face. ‘Aye, some fellow from London. A merchant, or some such, not a true lord. He’s not liked.’

  I was prepared to take that with a grain of salt. There is no greater prejudice than that of the true countryman against strangers, especially Londoners. And for the place of a much loved lord to be usurped by such a stranger was an affront to the entire community. The de Veres had been lords of the local manor back beyond memory, probably since the Normans came.

  ‘And he pays well, this new man?’

  ‘Aye.’ Geoffrey smiled grimly. ‘Twice what your cousin can pay, and what’s a poor man to do? There is little enough work for the day labourers. Harvest is the one time o’ the year when they may earn enough to put a little aside for the bad times. Most o’ them will go to work for this new fellow. A few will stand out against him and work for Master Edmond, but ’twon’t be enough to get all the harvest in, he’s thinking, even if the weather does hold.’

  I was not surprised Geoffrey was so well versed in my cousin’s affairs. Talk flies round a village. A man need only keep his eyes and ears open.

  ‘This man who has bought the de Vere manor,’ I said, ‘what is he called?’

  ‘Gilbert Mordon,’ Geoffrey said, as though the name had a bad taste in his mouth.

  ‘You dislike him yourself?’

  He made a snorting noise. ‘Speaks to me as if I was some serf of his, or a piece of dirt under his boot. Tries to order me about.’

  I nodded, with a sympathetic smile. Geoffrey Carter might not be a wealthy man, nor did he own land, but he made a comfortable living with his independent business of carting, and owed fealty to no one. His house was one of the most pleasant in the village, Leighton-under-Wychwood, near which our family farm lay, though he possessed no more than a modest toft and croft. His wife was the respected village midwife, and his children went warmly clothed and well shod in leather. Any man who tried to treat him as a serf was either woefully ignorant or a fool.

  Margaret brought a jug of cream to the table and began to dish out the strawberries, keenly watched by the children to see that all had fair shares.

  ‘And what is his business, this Master Mordon?’ she said. ‘He must have considerable means if he has purchased that manor, for it holds rights of warren and even some rights to hunt in the royal forest. Pass the strawberries to your father and Master Carter, Alysoun.’

  ‘He is a pepperer, so they say.’ Geoffrey spoke with some contempt. ‘How can a man become lord of a manor by selling pepper?’

  ‘That generally means he buys and sells all manner of spices,’ Margaret said, taking her seat again. ‘Not only pepper. You would have to possess a fair amount of coin even to make a start in such a business. You do not need me to tell you that spices from Africa or Arabia are costly indeed. They must be brought hundreds of miles from far off countries. Though I’ve heard that some businesses have been bought up cheap in London since the Pestilence.’

  ‘Does he mean to live on the manor?’ I asked. ‘Or stay on in London?’

  ‘From what I have heard, he has left his business to be run by his journeyman and now plans to lord it over us all in Leighton-under-Wychwood. He has come down this two-three weeks ago with his wife and a parcel of his London friends, to live at the manor house. The last four months there’s been all manner of “improvements” afoot there, though no one is sure what that means.’

  I smiled down into my dish of strawberries. I could imagine the frustrated gossip and speculation travelling through the village as builders and plasterers and painters came and went. Since the whole de Vere family had perished in the Death, the manor and its demesne lands had been under the supervision of a steward acting for the heir, who lived in Leicestershire and had no interest in retaining the manor.

  ‘You have not given me your answer, Meg,’ I said. ‘Shall we go to visit Mother and Cousin Edmond? I can lend my help with the harvest. It will be one more pair of hands.’

  ‘He will be glad of you,’ Geoffrey said.

  ‘Aye, we must go,’ Margaret said, ‘for Mother has not seen us since last summer, and she will hardly know the children.’

  ‘We did not go at Christmastide,’ Alysoun pointed out, ‘because of the snow.’

  ‘That is settled then,’ I said. I turned to Geoffrey. ‘I generally close the shop for a time in the summer, since most of my business is done when the students are here in Oxford. It will take me a few days to finish work I have in hand. Do you go back home after this?’

  ‘I’ve an errand in Woodstock first, then home after that.’

  ‘You should be there before us. Do you tell my cousin that we are coming. It may be that I can bring one or two others with me to help with the harvest. We shall see.’

  ‘He will be glad of any pair of willing hands,’ Geoffrey said. ‘I will tell him, surely.’

  I looked across the table at Jordain and smiled persuasively. ‘It will do you nothing but good,’ I said. It was the following day, and I was in search of more labourers.

  ‘I cannot leave the lads.’ Jordain glanced across the room in Hart Hall which served for both eating and studying. The two students who had failed their disputations at the end of Trinity Term had been obliged to remain in Oxford for the summer, preparing to try again at the start of Michaelmas Term. Although their heads were bent over their texts of Boethius’s De Topiciis Differentiis, it was perfectly clear that they were listening intently.

  ‘Bring them with you,’ I said. ‘It will cause them no harm to have a rest from their studies for a fortnight. Three weeks at most. They will work all the better afterwards for some fresh air and exercise.’

  One of the students, Giles Wetherby, slid his eyes toward me. His expression was hopeful.

  I raised my voice, as if I had not known that they were listening.

  ‘Can you wield a scythe, Giles?’

  ‘Indeed I can, Master Elyot,’ he said eagerly. ‘If I were at home now, I should be helping with the harvest.’

  ‘And so can I.’ Guy Trevick half rose from his stool in his eagerness.

  Their claims did not surprise me. Though both came of the landed gentry, they were not so nobly born that they would have regarded harvest work as beneath them. When the yield of the harvest stands between life and death for every soul on a manor, it is the duty of all those who are fit to lend their labour, even women and children. Certainly had these boys gone home for the summer, they would have been working in their fathers’ own fields during the next few weeks.

  ‘But how would we get there?’ Jordain asked. ‘It must be all of fifteen miles.’

  I could see that he was weakening.

  ‘I shall be hiring a horse and cart from the Mitre,’ I said, ‘as well as the horse Rufus. I shall ride, while Margaret drives the cart with the children. You may ride in the cart, unless you wish to hire horses yourselves.’

  I knew that Jordain would hardly have the cost of a horse in hand, but the students might.

  The argument went back and forth, but I could see that I would prevail. The victory was determined when Guy urged that they might bring their books to continue their studies in the evening, after the day’s work was done. I thought it wiser not to point out that they would be far too tired to study after the exhausting hours of unaccustomed physical labour in the fields.

  ‘You will close the shop, then?’ Jordain said, as he walked with me to the door. Behind us I sensed that the two students were exchanging grins of pleasure.

  ‘Aye. It will be well for Walter to have a time for rest. His back has been troubling him for some weeks no
w and it grows worse when he crouches over his work. His sight is failing for close work. I have offered to purchase a set of spectacles for him, but he is suspicious of them. That is a battle I have yet to win. Roger will visit his mother over to Otmoor, but if he finds her in better case, he will borrow a horse from a friend and ride over to join us.’

  ‘So with you and Margaret, as well as the three of us, you will add five and perhaps six to Edmond’s harvesters.’

  ‘Aye. I might have one other in mind. I cannot have this upstart Londoner forcing Edmond to lose the bulk of his harvest.’

  It was early evening by the time I left Hart Hall, but I thought I had time to walk out past the East Gate before Margaret would expect me home for supper. I was aware that this was one of the evenings Philip Olney usually visited his woman and their son in the cottage just this side of the East Bridge. I knew little of Philip’s earlier life and was not sure whether he would know how to handle a scythe, but even he, surely, could learn how to stook corn. Beatrice Metford, I knew, was country born, and was likely to have helped with the harvest when she was a girl. As for their crippled son, Stephen, he would surely benefit from a little time in the country. During this hot summer weather Oxford was not the healthiest of places for a delicate child.

  The town authorities did their best to keep the streets clean, but here in the town, as in the country, labour was short. The Camditch, which encircled part of the town, and in older days had served as a sort of moat when it needed defending, was now little better than an open sewer, used by many to dump every manner of rubbish. To clear it would be a major task, and in summer it bred any number of diseases.