The Bookseller's Tale (Oxford Medieval Mysteries Book 1) Read online

  The student shook his head. ‘He never said. Kept mostly to himself, did William, though he was a good scholar and would always help a fellow out.’ He grinned. ‘I struggle sometimes, and he pulled me out of many a hole.’

  Then he paused and frowned. ‘There was one day last week, though. When we came out of the Ethics lecture, on the way back to our halls for dinner, there were two men waiting for him. They took him aside, and I think he did not want to speak to them. He seemed afraid.’

  ‘What were they like, these men?’ I asked. ‘From the university? From the town?’

  I was not sure what I hoped he would answer. If the men who had accosted William were from the town, and were somehow involved in his murder, that meant trouble. On the other hand, did I hope they were university men? I could hardly wish for the university to be harbouring murderers.

  The student frowned again. ‘Difficult to say. I do not think they were university men. They did not wear academic dress, nor were they tonsured. But . . . somehow I do not think they were townsmen from Oxford.’ He scratched the top of his head, where his own tonsure was growing back as ginger-coloured stubble.

  ‘Not from Oxford?’ I prompted. ‘Why do you say so?’

  ‘Well, they were quite prosperous looking. There are few prosperous in Oxford these days.’

  I knew what he meant. Oxford, once a busy manufacturing town, had been in decline even before the pestilence had cut down half the population. Once famous for the weaving and fulling of high quality woollen cloth, and for skilled work in leather, it had lost its leading position to other towns. It was recovering slowly from the many deaths, but there was much poverty. The university had not always behaved well, either, buying up property cheaply, charging its tenants high rents, but paying niggardly fees for services provided by the town. John Baker’s complaints about the money paid for his bread echoed those of other tradesmen.

  ‘You think they were strangers, these men?’

  He shrugged. ‘I cannot be sure. I had never seen them before. Perhaps they came from London,’ he ended vaguely.

  London, distant and foreign to these sheltered students.

  ‘What is your name?’ Crowmer asked abruptly and the student looked alarmed.

  ‘Why do you want to know?’

  ‘The coroners may want to know.’

  The boy looked even more worried, but admitted that his name was Peter de Wallingford and he was a fifth year student at St Edmund Hall.

  ‘Hey, you!’ I said, grabbing one of the younger students who was thrusting something into the breast of his student gown. He had taken advantage of the distraction provided by Peter de Wallingford to steal a handful of my best quills.

  ‘Put those back, or pay for them!’

  Reluctantly he stuffed the quills back into the pot, bending one as he did so.

  ‘You’ll pay for the damage. That will be a farthing.’

  Glowering at me, he handed over a bent coin which looked as if it had been snipped, even as poor in value as it was. I took the coin and clipped him over the ear, as he sidled past me toward the door. The other younger boys followed him. I turned to Peter.

  ‘You should find better companions than those young louts,’ I said. ‘And should you not be at a lecture?’

  He had the grace to look ashamed.

  ‘Aye, well, if I hurry I will be in time for the seven o’the clock. I’m sorry, Master Elyot, they are not my friends. I came because I wanted to know what happened to William.’

  ‘I think we would all like to know that,’ I said. ‘No doubt we shall know more after the inquest. Be off with you now.’

  Crowmer followed him out of the shop and I watched them go: the student half running toward the Schools, the vintner making his stately way to his shop. When they had both vanished from view, I stood for several minutes, pondering what Peter had said, which bore out Jordain’s opinion of the dead student. A bright, pious young man, planning to proceed to an advanced degree and to take holy orders. A future high in the church might have lain before him, a bishop’s mitre, even a cardinal’s hat. How could such a young man have become entangled in a web of evil which led to murder?

  Chapter Three

  It would be another hour before Jordain returned. I chided myself for wasting the morning, so I sat down to my accounts, a task I always postpone as long as I may. Money was owing to me from more than one of the colleges; it was time I sent them renewed bills for the books and writing materials I had supplied and for which I had not been paid.

  I began with Merton College, whose debt was greatest and which should have no difficulty paying me. Like other tradesmen in the town I harboured some grievances against the colleges of the university on account of their miserly dealings and tardiness in settling their accounts. As a sometime member of the university, I seemed to be regarded as a man who should rise above such petty matters as cash in hand, but without the chinks I could neither feed my family nor purchase the materials that I sold. I would soon need to replenish my stock of fine parchment, for I had an order for a book of hours, to be copied from my own as soon as Roger finished the French book of Robin Hood. And the French book would need to be bound before I could deliver it to the merchant’s wife, Mistress Lapley. Moreover the Carmelite Friary, out beyond Broken Hays, had put in a large order for parchment, paper, quills, and ink.

  Concluding the bill for Merton with a humble request for payment, I signed it with a flourish, realising – to my considerable relief – that there was one simple task awaiting me which I could carry out however distracted I might be. I sealed the bill, stamping the wax with my ring with the onyx bezel. This was a ring which my father had given me when I graduated as a Bachelor of Arts. That was in the days before I fell into disgrace for abandoning my studies and marrying Elizabeth.

  ‘Walter,’ I said, ‘as soon as you have finished copying that pecia, I want you to take this round to Merton. Do not leave it with the porter. Make sure you place it in the bursar’s hands yourself, so there may be no pretence that it has gone astray.’

  ‘Aye, Master Elyot.’

  I could see that both Walter and Roger were eager to learn more about my discovery of William’s body, but since the constable had left I had refused to speak more of it, merely saying that all would no doubt become clear at the inquest.

  ‘I am going through to the kitchen to sort the goose feathers I fetched yesterday,’ I said to Roger. ‘If business becomes busy, you may call me.’

  Sorting the feathers was always best done away from the shop, for the good flight feathers suitable for quills were always mixed with fine down and bits of straw and dust, which would fly about and settle amongst the books and the supplies of writing materials, which must be kept clean.

  ‘Nay,’ Margaret said, when I fetched the sack and prepared to open it in the kitchen. ‘I have just finished scrubbing. I want none of your mess in here. You must take that into the garden.’

  She pointed an accusing broom at the sack.

  ‘You know that the slightest breeze will blow them about,’ I objected.

  ‘Then you must find somewhere else.’

  I sighed. Sometimes Margaret lords it over my household worse than my mother used to, though my mother was a little more tolerant, living on a farm. Where could I go? I could not sully my storeroom any more than the shop. The stillroom was Margaret’s domain. Even on a quiet spring morning the garden would be too windy. Besides, the children were out there playing with the new puppy. Picking up the sack I carried it upstairs to my bed chamber. Morosely, I thought I should be sneezing all night, after sorting the feathers there.

  The coffer would need to serve as a table, so I dragged a stool over to it and began to pick out the flight feathers from the sack, setting the smaller feathers and the fine, soft down on to the end of my bed. Margaret would use them later to fill pillows and feather beds. As a by-product of my business, my family slept softer than many a lord. To avoid any disturbance of the air, I kept the sh
utters closed, but I could hear the children playing in the garden and smiled. The puppy might be one more mouth to feed, but it would more than repay the cost in happiness for the children.

  Once I had emptied the sack, I bundled all the small feathers from the bed back into it and tied the neck shut. Not all the flight feathers were of the best quality, so I divided them into two piles. I sold the poorer ones cheap and untrimmed, for the students who could afford no better. Some of the better ones I would trim and shape, for a few of my customers preferred to buy quills ready to use, the others I would leave untrimmed. I have never understood how anyone can write with a quill shaped by someone else, for every writer’s hand is different. Some like a broad tip, some a narrow. Some like a straight end, some a slope. The length of the slit controls the flow of ink. However, I could charge a little more for those quills that were ready to use.

  I was just gathering up the good feathers when I heard Jordain talking to Margaret down in the kitchen. It must be past eight and his lecture finished. His foot was on the stair as I opened my chamber door.

  ‘Stay!’ I called. ‘I am coming down.’

  Jordain sat down at the table as I came into the kitchen, flushed as if he had been running. Over his shoulder he carried the worn leather satchel which he had brought when he came up to Oxford, stuffed then with all his worldly possessions. Now, I knew, it would contain books from which he would have cited passages during his lecture, and notes to which he never referred, since he was always carried away by his enthusiasm for his subjects, an enthusiasm which overrode any need for notes.

  I had teased him about this from time to time.

  ‘I feel more sure of myself if I have the notes with me,’ he would say, patting the satchel as if it were a pet dog. ‘Though I may never need to refer to them, it is a comfort to know that they are there.

  ‘Let me put these away,’ I said, walking through to the storeroom, where I laid the feathers in the appropriate boxes until I could deal with them further. I put my head round the door to the shop, where Roger was painting in a tendril down the margin of a page.

  Walter was just returning, wiping his face on his sleeve. The day must be growing warm.

  ‘You gave the account to the bursar?’ I asked.

  ‘Aye, Master Elyot, and he swears he’ll pay it before the week is out. Must have been overlooked. He says.’

  We exchanged grins of disbelief.

  ‘They know all about the drowning, over at Merton,’ he said. ‘The porter tried to question me about what you had seen and done, but I told him I knew nothing.’

  ‘Aye, that’s best.’

  I withdrew to the kitchen and sat down facing Jordain.

  ‘So?’ I said.

  ‘I spoke to my lads this morning, before they went off to lectures, but they could tell me nothing useful. William was quiet, always at his studies or in church. He generally attended Mass three times a week. The more I think on it, the more I am sure we can persuade the coroner he would not have killed himself. It must have been an accident.’

  ‘Jordain?’ I looked at him in surprise. ‘I told you of the blood and the slash in the back of his cotte. Why are you talking now of an accident?’

  He looked uncomfortable. ‘Surely you must have been mistaken. It was already getting dark when you found him. The stains on his clothes were most likely from some rubbish in the river – you know what it is like. His clothes probably snagged on a branch and tore. Or on the timbers of the East Bridge, for the posts are rough and splintered. And I saw no sign of blood when we laid him out in the church.’

  ‘You barely looked at him in St Peter’s. And it was very dark inside, with nothing but the churchwarden’s torch.’

  He shook his head. ‘It is better this way, Nicholas. A tragic accident, and an end to it. Best not to sully the poor lad’s name and cause distress to his family with talk of murder.’

  I tried to contain my astonishment at this change in Jordain’s attitude.

  ‘There is something else you need to know,’ I said, ‘that I only discovered this morning. William was seen with two strangers and seemed afraid of them.’

  While he listened with his head bowed over his clasped hands, I repeated all that Peter de Wallingford had told me that morning. I could not understand why Jordain wanted to forget the evidence of stabbing, but maybe it arose from his desire to protect the students under his care.

  He sighed. ‘Perhaps we should look again at William’s body, now that we have light to see by. Then we can be sure whether there really are the marks of violence on him.’

  ‘Aye.’ I jumped to my feet.

  Margaret was just coming in from the garden, where she had spread out my clothes from the previous day to dry, having left them to soak overnight and scrubbed them clear of the river filth this morning.

  ‘Jordain and I are going round to St Peter’s,’ I said. ‘I’ll not be long gone.’

  ‘Have you not the shop to mind?’

  ‘Walter can fetch me if I am needed.’

  Leaving word with my scriveners, we hurried down the High and into Hammer Hall Lane. There were a few idlers lingering around the churchyard gate, but the churchwarden had taken the precaution of guarding it. He gave us a nod and allowed us into the churchyard.

  ‘Rector locked the church last night,’ he said. ‘We must, nowadays, with that scum living along there.’ He gestured up the alleyway to the cluster of ramshackle cottages. ‘But he opened for Mass this morning and he’s still there now, if you are wanting him.’

  I mumbled something, hoping that the rector would not be offended if we began to examine William’s body.

  Light flooded into the church. Though not a large church, it had fine tall windows, some with stained glass which patterned the floor with pools of crimson, blue, and gold. The rector was on his knees before the altar, and although we entered as quietly as we could, he rose to his feet and shook the dust from his cassock.

  ‘Ah, Master Elyot and Master Brinkylsworth, have you word as to what is to be done with the poor student? Am I to be permitted to bury him yet?’

  ‘There must be an inquest,’ I said gently. ‘And we do not yet know the wishes of his family. They may want to bury him at home.’

  Jordain nodded. ‘I will write to his family today. But nothing can be done until after the inquest. We would like to look again at William, if you do not mind?’

  ‘Nay, you must do as you wish.’ The rector shuddered slightly and turned back to his prayers.

  The body lay as we had left it the previous night, covered with the old altar cloth. No one seemed to have disturbed it, thanks to the locked church during the night and the vigilance of the churchwarden this morning. Jordain lifted the cloth carefully and laid it aside. We stood looking down at the body.

  Someone must have closed his eyes. Perhaps the rector had done so last night while we were still in the churchyard.

  ‘I know very little about these things,’ I said, ‘except what we were all forced to learn during the pestilence. Does not the body stiffen after a certain time?’

  ‘Aye.’ Jordain knelt down and peered at the front of William’s cotte. Now that the cloth was dry, the stain seemed less visible, but it was still there.

  ‘We need to turn him on his side,’ I said, ‘so we can look at his back.’

  Jordain nodded and gritted his teeth. Between us we managed to roll the stiffened body on to its side.

  ‘There, you see?’ I pointed to the slit and the larger stain around it. The cloth which had been under the body was still damp.

  Jordain pulled up the cotte and then the shirt, exposing the boy’s naked back. Somehow it made him look even younger. The wound was narrow, but clearly visible and caked with blood. We lowered the body to the floor again and I spread the altar cloth carefully over it.

  There were tears in Jordain’s eyes.

  ‘You are right,’ he said.

  ‘So you see,’ I said, ‘you must report this to the c
oroner, lest it be overlooked.’

  A spasm of alarm passed over Jordain’s face. ‘But you were the one to find William’s body!’

  I shook my head. ‘This is a university matter. He was your student at Hart Hall. And I am no longer part of the university. The matter must be dealt with by the university.’

  ‘We do not know that.’ Jordain frowned. ‘The coroners are town, not gown. At any rate, they are Oxford county, laymen, no part of the university. And I cannot believe the killer came from the university. It must have been a townsman. It would not be the first time.’

  Nor would it be the last, I thought, but did not speak the thought aloud. As long as there were wild young men in the town, and wild young students in the university, and as long as they all carried knives, there would be fights and there would be deaths.

  ‘We cannot know who killed William,’ I said, ‘and it is not for us to discover.’

  Even as I spoke, I felt guilty. William had not been the kind of student to become involved in a fight. Besides, he had been stabbed in the back, which did not suggest a fight, but an unexpected attack from behind. Someone must avenge his death, but neither Jordain nor I would know where to begin.

  We stood there amongst the fresh green grass of the churchyard, with the birds singing from the yew trees. Perched on an overhanging branch from an apple tree on the other side of St Edmund’s wall, a blackbird was giving joyous voice to the beauty of the morning.

  ‘We cannot leave it thus,’ Jordain said.

  ‘What can we do?’

  Jordain and I looked at each other in dismay.

  ‘There is one thing we might do,’ he suggested tentatively.

  ‘Aye?’

  ‘We could look in his room. See whether there is anything there to suggest what connection he might have with these two men he was seen with. He shares with two other students, but they will be attending lectures until they come back for dinner at eleven o’the clock.’

  I nodded. ‘Very well. It can do no harm. Though I hardly expect we shall find anything.’