A Corpse at St Andrew's Chapel Read Online Free Page B

help it. I am not as those who can dissemble easily and hide their thoughts from others.
    “Some things puzzle me,” I admitted. “His shoes…” I nodded toward the bare feet stiff at Bruce’s flank. “Where are they?”
    “I think,” Shillside observed, “they will be discovered on the feet of one of those who found him this morning.”
    “Mayhap, but they should not be a reward for the discovery. They are Matilda’s, to dispose of as she will.”
    “Will you seek them?” the widow asked. “Cobbler could cut ’em down for me, I think.”
    “I will,” I promised, and so began a journey in which I sought one thing and found another. Much of my life has been like that. I have seldom found what I most urgently sought, and only rarely sought what I found. Since much of what I enjoy is then the result of a good fortune which I knew not to seek, I attribute the laudable in my life to the will of God, who, it is written, knows what we need before we ask. He knows, for I have told him often, that I need a good wife, but no matter how I seek such a woman, she will not be found. I must not entertain these thoughts, else my mind will turn to Lady Joan Talbot, now the Lady de Burgh. Such meditations are bittersweet. I prefer to avoid them, but I cannot. Memories of Lady Joan are an itch which from time to time must be scratched.
    John, Hubert and I took Alan from Bruce’s back and laid him on the bed he had shared with Matilda. He was stiffening in death, so that the corpse wished to retain the bend it had assumed while slung over the horse. Inducing him to lay straight and flat on the bed was an awkward business, especially in the presence of his weeping wife.
    Shillside told Matilda that he would return in the afternoon with a jury, for any unexplained death must be examined and pronounced accidental or murder. The coroner had carried Alan’s stave all this time. He propped it in a corner of the house as we prepared to leave.
    I asked the grieving widow for the blue thread. The death troubled me, but at that moment the stolen shoes annoyed most. My sense of justice was violated. It seems a small thing, now. But I was determined to find the plundered shoes this day and return them to Matilda before nightfall. I knew not if the blue thread might lead me to the thief, but if I found a garment matching the thread I might also find a man who knew more than I of this death.

Chapter 2
     
    D inner at Bampton Castle was a simple affair while Lord Gilbert resided elsewhere. He permitted the serving of three meats – other than fast days, of course – in his absence. Lord Gilbert was more frugal than most of his class.
    I had had no breakfast, so stuffed myself on a roasted chicken, a coney pie, and cold venison. Some might think it strange that I had such an appetite after dealing with the dead all morning. My stomach is seldom discomfited. I would then sooner have had a nap, but a sense of injustice swept somnolence from my head.
    I determined to visit the plowmen first, so walked left on Mill Street when I left the castle yard. I found it necessary to pause at the bridge over Shill Brook. I have seldom been able to pass a stream without gazing at the moving water. I attribute this to my childhood along the Wyre at the manor of Little Singleton. The two streams are not alike. The Wyre is slow and muddy and tidal and home mostly to eels. Shill Brook dances between narrow banks, its water pure and clear, a home to trout.
    The plowmen were yet at work, their six oxen moving ponderously from one end of the strip to the other. I waited for them near the path, where they would turn for another pass down the field. In the bright light of a warm April day I saw as they approached that neither man wore a garment matching the blue thread in my pouch.
    The beadle, they insisted, was shoeless when they found him. I showed them the blue thread. This was a mistake, I realized later. But that is the nature of our errors. We recognize