Free A Corpse at St Andrew's Chapel by Mel Starr Page B

taken seriously the maxim that winter bathing might cause serious health issues.
    Henry, the woman said, lived in the next hut. She was the wife of his brother, Thomas. The wife of a quarter yardland tenant cannot lead an easy life, I reflected, as I gave her thanks and left her to her pot and child.
    The next dwelling gave a better first impression. The roof was newly thatched, and freshly oiled skins stretched across the windows. I thumped on the door to no result but sore knuckles. In the silence between my assaults on the door I heard distant voices. After a third attempt at the door I gave up and circled the house to the garden toft in the rear.
    A woman was there, spading manure into her vegetable beds. It was her voice I had heard, directing children who were assisting in the work by breaking the clods she turned over. The woman used an iron spade. This surprised me. Most cotters can afford only wooden tools with which to work their land.
    This woman was as robust as her sister-in-law was frail. And also the children appeared well fed. She rested a foot on the shovel and eyed me suspiciously as I approached. The appearance of a lord’s bailiff seems often to create that expression on the faces of the commons.
    “Good day,” I greeted her in my most cordial tone.
    The woman remained silent, as if there was no need to reply if she had no argument about the quality of the day.
    “Is your husband at home?”
    “Nay,” she finally spoke. “Workin’ on the bishop’s new tithe barn.”
    I knew of that project. The Bishop of Exeter, in a fit of abundance, had ordered his old tithe barn at Bampton demolished and a new and greater structure raised in its place.
    Beams had been hewed over the winter, and now the framework was rising on the bishop’s land north of the town. I remember Master John Wyclif speaking of a passage in the Gospel of St Luke where our Lord spoke to his disciples about a wealthy man who pulled down an old barn and built a greater one, but died before he could enjoy the wealth he had stored there. I tactfully avoided mentioning this scripture when discussing the new barn with Thomas de Bowlegh, whose duty it is to oversee construction for the bishop.
    Master John, I think, would not be so considerate, for I often heard him condemn prelates for their venality. The criticism of an Oxford master, however, is of little consequence to those in Avignon.
    I told the woman I would return in the evening to speak to her husband and made my way around the house to return to the castle. As I passed the gable end a gust of wind brought the scent of roasting meat to my nostrils. I looked up to the gable vent. Wisps of smoke, common enough from such a hut, drifted from the opening.
    At the front of the house, out of sight of the toft, I stopped at a window and tested the oiled skin which covered the opening. I found a loose corner and lifted it to peer inside.
    The hut was dark and my eyes were accustomed to the bright afternoon sun. But eventually I saw in the smoky interior a small child turning a spit over the central hearth. A low fire glowed there on the stones, and an occasional drop of fat from the haunch on the spit sizzled on the coals. The child stared blankly back at me as he turned the spit. I dropped the skin and, guiltily, I confess, hastened to the path and back to Mill Street.
    Perhaps, I thought, it was mutton the child was turning. But where would a quarter-yardlander – well, half-yardlander if he now possessed his father’s meager estate – get a roast of mutton? I believed I knew the smell of roasting mutton, and this was not it. And the haunch on the spit was large, larger than a sheep, more closely the size of a deer. A small deer, perhaps, but yet larger than any ewe or even a ram. I knew where a joint of venison would come from: poaching.
    From the appearance of Henry atte Bridge’s wife and children, they had eaten well for many months. Most cotters would think themselves fortunate to