Free Unhallowed Ground by Mel Starr

which implicated the curate in the blackmail scheme? There were others in Bampton who had greater reason to hate the priest and his betrayal of the confessional: Edmund the smith, whose dalliance with the baker’s wife Thomas and his brother Henry before him learned of and used to extract items made upon Edmund’s forge as payment for their silence; and the miller, whose cheating with short return on corn brought to the mill atte Bridge also knew of and exploited. These two had greater reason than Kellet, I thought, to wish revenge upon Thomas atte Bridge. Was one of them at Thomas’s shoulders, and Kellet at the feet, in the tenebrous hours following St George’s Day?
    “Wears a hair shirt now, too, does John,” Father Simon interrupted my thoughts. This was a startling revelation. The John Kellet I knew was concerned with little but his own comfort.
    “You saw this?”
    “Aye. Saw the hem of a sleeve hanging below his robe. I know your thoughts, Master Hugh. John Kellet is a different man, changed, as pilgrimage should do.”
    “It should,” I agreed, “’though there be pilgrims who remain unchanged. I have known such men.”
    “You suggest,” the vicar frowned, “that a saint cannot intercede for men with the Lord Christ?”
    “I am sure He hears the prayers of all men.”
    The priest harumphed grudging agreement as I stood from the bench to leave him. He heaved himself to his feet to honor my departure and it was then I noticed his belt. Why my eye should have been drawn to a mean cord wrapped about the fat priest I cannot say.
    A plain hempen rope circled his ample belly twice. The ends of this belt fell to his knees, one length knotted three times for Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. A string of rosary beads was fastened to the cord; a cord much like that taken from the neck of Thomas atte Bridge. Priests whose purses permit fine woolen robes will often circle themselves with a mean belt to pretend simplicity and penury.
    Father Simon saw me stare at the belt and peered down at it as well. The ends, dangling about his knees, were fresh-cut and unfrayed.
    “Your belt is new,” I remarked.
    “Aye, near so.”
    A puzzled frown furrowed his forehead. Few men show interest in another man’s girdle, especially is it made of simple stuff like hempen cord.
    “The cord used to drop the bucket in my well was worn. I purchased a length of rope; some I used for the well, and some for my belt,” Father Simon explained.
    “Have you the length your belt was cut from?”
    The request so startled the priest that he did not think to challenge such a question.
    “Aye.”
    “May I see it?”
    “A length of rope? Surely a bailiff can afford his own belt, and of better stuff than hempen cord.”
    “You speak true, but I seek a brief inspection. ’Tis much like the cord found about Thomas atte Bridge’s neck.”
    “One hempen cord is much like another, and what remains of my purchase hangs in a shed in the toft.”
    “May I see it?”
    The priest shrugged and called his servant. When the man appeared he instructed him to seek the shed and return with the hempen cord hung there. The man disappeared through the rear door of the vicarage and a moment later I heard Father Simon’s hens clucking disapproval at the disturbance to their pecking.
    The priest and I stood gazing at each other, awaiting the servant’s return. He was not prompt. Father Simon had begun to chew upon his lower lip in frustration and seemed about to turn to the door when it swung open and the servant reappeared. He carried no rope.
    “Ain’t there,” the fellow said, and raised his empty hands palms up.
    “Bah, ’twas hanging from a tree nail,” the vicar asserted, and set off for the toft.
    “I know where it was,” the servant said. “Hung it there myself.”
    I followed Father Simon into the toft. His servant shrugged and followed me. The vicar swung open the crude door to his shed, which was but half of his hen coop, and peered into