“Yes, yes.”
“Be patient, man, I am reporting as best I may. Well, Wynkyn said that if he did not return then I was to return the casket to his home friary. Sweet saints above! It took me months, and much gold,” he looked at Thomas significantly, but Thomas ignored the hint, “to find a merchant who would take it for me. The Lord alone knows whether or not it ever arrived.”
Thomas shook his head, worried and disappointed beyond measure. “It did not come back to Saint Angelo’s—”
“To his home friary, man! Have you not understood a word of what I’ve said?”
“But Saint Angelo’s—”
“Saint Angelo’s was not Brother Wynkyn’s home friary. Like you, he was an Englishman—do you all have such inexcusable manners?—and his home friary was on the edge of Bramham Moor. You must know of it. It is, I believe, in the north of your country.”
Thomas stared gape-mouthed at the obese prior. Wynkyn de Worde was English, and he came from Bramham Moor?
“Ah, yes, yes, I have heard of it, but I have never been there … Wynkyn is not an
English name, surely… he was English? And the casket went back to England?”
Guillaume stood up just as Brother Gerhardt came in with a pitcher of water and a beaker.
Guillaume waved him away again.
“I’m sure you will need to be on your way,” he said to Thomas. “Now.”
“But—”
“There is nothing more I can tell you, Brother Thomas. Your answers lie back in England. I wish you a good day, and a good journey.”
Thomas finally managed to rise, and he stiffly inclined his head in Guillaume’s direction.
“I do thank you for your hospitality,” he said. “You have been most gracious.”
Guillaume flushed. “You must understand, brother, that the name Wynkyn de Worde brings nothing but bad memories with it. It is a blessed thing that he has gone. I hope he did not die unshriven.”
“It is the worst possible thing that he is gone,” Thomas said, barely keeping his anger under control, “for without him the world descends ever deeper into ungodly chaos. I wish you good day, Brother Prior.”
And with that he was gone.
CHAPTER FIVE
The Feast of St. Swithin
In the fifty-first year of the reign of Edward III
(Thursday 15th July 1378)
— II —
THOMAS PAUSED IN NUREMBERG only long enough to purchase some food and a flask of watered wine in the market before he left the city by the northern gate.
He was furious at Guillaume, but most of his fury was displaced deep frustration at discovering that the book he so badly wanted to read had been dispatched to England. And that thirty years ago! The Lord Savior only knew what had happened to the casket and its contents on its perilous journey across a Christendom ripped apart by the chaotic aftermath of the pestilence.
The casket was home. England. Unless something else came to light Thomas would have to return to England to discover it. England. At this thought, Thomas felt both impatience and some degree of trepidation. Impatience because he seemed never to be getting any closer to the casket, and trepidation because of what might await him in England. So many memories from which he would find it impossible to hide. Not only that, but England was far distant, and to reach it Thomas would need to traverse a country slipping into war. Edward’s armies were even now in France.
He shuddered, and wondered if he would meet with them.
Thomas should have stayed the night in Nuremberg. He knew that. His horse was tired, and needed a feed and a rub down. He was tired and needed a feed and a place where he could collect his thoughts enough so he could pray in peace.
But anger and disappointment drove him forward. He would see if anyone in this village of Asterladen knew of Wynkyn de Worde and where the mysterious friar had gone in his journeys north of Nuremberg, but Thomas seriously doubted he would find much information lurking about the village. Thirty years had passed, most of the people who would have known of Wynkyn would be dead, and those that had been alive during the Christmastide that year would have been too young to know the location of the friar’s secretive hole in the woods.
A day and a night, that is all he would waste on Asterladen, and then he must needs begin the long and difficult journey home to England.
So great was his frustration Thomas found himself wishing that he was safe back in St. Angelo’s friary, studying its generally innocuous registers, and that St. Michael had found someone else to lead God’s armies against the invasion of evil. “The trail is too old,” he muttered. “What can be done?”
And so Thomas rode on.
This time of year the road that wound north was busy with carts piled high with hay, or fruits, or broodily grumbling calves or pigs, heading for the markets and stomachs of Nuremberg. Pedlars jangled by, their carts stacked with bright pots, cooking utensils, and ribbons and fripperies for goodwives to waste their hard-earned com on. There were innumerable pilgrims, traveling in bands that were sometimes small, sometimes huge. Thomas counted four-score in one gaily chatting band that passed him late in the evening.
And there were soldiers. Stragglers, rather than coherent units, and probably mercenaries moving south to look for work. Thomas had no doubt that when they heard of the impending war between the French and English forces they would head west with alacrity, intent on selling their skills to the highest bidder.
Among the carts of merchandise, pedlars, pilgrims and soldiers straggled the occasional peasant, perhaps wandering down to Nuremberg in the hope of picking up work somewhere. Since the pestilence, there were very few people who could find no work, but there were always some: the sick or crippled, those lingering on the borderlands of insanity, and the sheer malingerers who preferred a life drifting from employment to employment rather than settling down to establish a godly life for themselves.
Of all the travelers, Thomas hated the beggars the most. They were society’s pests— skulkers who had lost even the art of malingering—who no longer even wished to pretend an interest in work. Most had a missing limb, generally a foot, and they hobbled past on crutches, or rumbled by on ill-made, hand-propelled carts.
It was easier, Thomas realized, to hack off a foot than a hand.
Besides, a beggar did better with two hands with which to beseech alms.
Dusk drew in faster than Thomas had anticipated, and he realized that he’d left Nuremberg so late that he didn’t have a chance of reaching Asterladen before full night. He pulled his gelding to a halt and looked about.
The road was empty. Everyone else, even the malingerers and the beggars, had found shelter for the night.
Thomas swiveled in his saddle and looked behind him, then stood in the stirrups, peering as far as he could down the road.
There was no habitation in sight, not even a shepherd’s croft, let alone a village or inn.
He sat down in the saddle again, and his gelding heaved a great sigh, and shifted his weight wearily from one hind leg to the other.
“Ah,” Thomas said, “I have been so lost in my own troubles that I have forgot yours, my friend.”
He patted the horse’s neck, then dismounted, and the gelding swung his head about and butted Thomas in the chest in gratitude.
Thomas’ mouth twisted. His horse needed rest and feed, and so did he, and if he hadn’t been so lost in anger and frustration he wouldn’t have departed Nuremberg so precipitously without making sure he knew where he could have found both on the northern road.
Now both he and his mount were stranded on a deserted road with no aid in sight.
“Well, a night of roadside grasses for you,” Thomas said, taking up the horse’s reins and leading him forward, “and a meal of fallen acorns, if I’m lucky, for me.
Come on, there must be a sheltered spot nearby.”
He walked the horse along the road for a few more minutes until the deepening dark made further travel impossible. Just off the road to his left was a stand of beech trees, and Thomas supposed it would have to provide the both of them with enough shelter for the night.
He gave the reins a slight tug, and the horse obediently turned off the road, slipping a little down the loose earth on the embankment, and landing with a surprised snort on soft grass. Thomas led him into the stand of trees, unbuckled the girth and slipped the saddle off, then the bridle, using the reins to hobble him so he wouldn’t wander too far during the night.
He gave the horse’s rump a slap, and the gelding wandered off a few paces, then dropped his head to graze.