Unhallowed Ground Read Online Free PDF Page B

life is oft accompanied by sorrow. Woe is often the coin by which we pay for bliss.”
    “Then why have you left some custard in your bowl?” Kate had begun to serve me my dinner while we talked, and noted my lack of appetite, a thing highly unusual for me.
    “I have learned a troubling thing.”
    “Do you wish to speak of it?”
    “Aye. Perhaps you may discover some mitigating consideration. I have just come from speaking to Hubert Shillside. You will remember that I told you of Alice, the scullery maid? Shillside has told me she is not so penniless as I thought – or as she thought, I am sure.”
    “A cotter’s daughter with two rapacious brothers?” Kate frowned. “How could such a maid be aught but a mendicant?”
    “Her mother died when Alice was but a child. She brought to her marriage to Alice’s father a dower of a half-yardland. The property fell into the hands of Henry and Thomas atte Bridge when their father died.”
    “Did they know it was dower land?”
    “I am sure of it. But Alice was too young to understand such things, and all others who knew were dead, but for Henry and Thomas.”
    “How did Shillside learn of this?”
    “The haberdasher in Witney is Shillside’s friend and brother-in-law to Alice’s aunt. He knew the terms of the dower.”
    “Why is Hubert Shillside concerned with the business?”
    “Because Will is smitten with Alice.”
    Kate was silent, considering this. “Now Thomas is dead there is only Maud to protest Alice regaining her mother’s dower.”
    “And Emma,” I added. “Shillside is confident the bishop’s hallmote will award the land to Alice.”
    Kate looked pensively past me, toward the fire, before she spoke again. “Would a man murder another for a half-yardland?” she said softly, to herself as much as to me. I had no answer, so spoke none.
    “Would not the bishop’s hallmote award Alice her due even was Thomas atte Bridge alive to protest?” Kate continued.
    “Mayhap. But now that he is gone the issue may be in less doubt. And did he live and lose the suit, he might take vengeance upon those who bested him. Such a man was he.”
    “Will you pursue this?”
    “I must. I would rather spend a month in Oxford Castle dungeon.”
    “Will you confront Shillside with your suspicion?”
    “Nay. If he is guilty it will be easier to discover so does he not know of my suspicion. If he is innocent I would not have him aware that I thought him capable of such a felony.”
    “You believe he is… capable of such a felony?”
    “Nay, but I have been wrong before.”
    “Surely there are others in Bampton and the Weald Thomas atte Bridge has wronged more grievously than Alice.”
    “No doubt, but men may respond differently to similar insults.”
    “And women also,” Kate agreed.
    The May Day revelers had gone to their dinners. Most were away from their beds before dawn, and now, with full stomachs, sought rest more than continued merrymaking. So Bampton was silent, and the scream, when it came, was audible although it came from Rosemary Lane, near two hundred paces away. Kate looked to me with a frown, and I returned the expression. Folk will not shriek so unless they are in great pain or anguish. I expected a summons, and work for either a surgeon or a bailiff.
    Kate and I yet held each other’s questioning gaze when there came a thumping upon the door of Galen House. But it was Kate’s presence requested, not mine. Eleanor, the cobbler’s wife, was come to fetch Kate. The carpenter’s daughter, Jane, was about to deliver her child. Kate had agreed to act God’s sib at the birth.
    I heard another distant screech through the open door. The sound gave wings to Kate’s feet. She ran off down Church View Street to her duty. Another scream echoed up the street as Kate disappeared ’round the corner of Rosemary Lane. Such distress in childbirth was not unknown to me, although, all praise to God, the birth of a babe is work for the midwife, not the