The Abbot's Agreement by Mel Starr

may be, but poachin’ the abbey’s fish is the bailiff’s concern, or the abbot’s; not mine.”
    “You have not answered my question,” I said. “Do you awaken in the night and hear men prowling about the pond in the dark?”
    “Folks who’d be takin’ the abbey’s fish would be silent while about it.”
    “But a net thrown into the water would make a splash.”
    The reeve was silent for a moment, long enough for me to wonder if my first assessment of his character was in error. Perhaps he knew of villagers who dined upon the abbey’s fish, and had done so himself, and so intended to keep silence about the offense.
    “Folk be slayin’ pigs now. Most have no need to risk takin’ abbey fish,” the reeve finally said.
    “But when winter is past,” I said, “perhaps by Whitsuntide, when pork is gone, then you hear men at the pond?”
    “Aye,” he admitted. “But not now.”
    “When was the last time you heard men in the night and thought it likely they broke curfew to take abbey fish?”
    The reeve scratched at his beard as he considered the question. “Not since Lammastide… a fortnight after.”
    “But you neither heard nor saw any man near the pond at night last week?”
    “Last week? Nay.”
    The laborers had rested upon their spades during this conversation, listening intently, for any such talk of village gossip will excite attention. And perhaps among the ditchers was a man who had helped himself to an abbey pike at some time in the past.
    Arthur and I left the reeve and his workers to their labor and retraced our steps along Swinford Road to the village. When we were out of earshot of the reeve Arthur spoke.
    “Never heard of a reeve what didn’t know everyone else’s business. An’ what’s a reeve doin’ with them as is ditchin’? That’s a hayward’s work, seems to me.”
    “Perhaps,” I said, thinking out loud, “the pestilence carried off the hayward, and the reeve has taken upon himself some of the bailiff’s duty, the bailiff being old and incompetent. Men will not say to a bailiff the same words they would to a reeve… even a bailiff who is but a reeve.”
    “Hmmm. Mayhap.”
    We were passing a field where wheat stubble, left standing after harvest, was being cut to mix with hay for winter fodder. Arthur’s attention was drawn to the women who were busy with scythes at this task, one of whom was a comely lass. She stood from her work to watch us pass, but at a sharp word from an older woman – her mother, perhaps – turned away and bent to her labor. Most matrons would prefer that their daughters not catch the eye of passing strangers.
    The lass, or some other in the wheatfield, had caught another eye as well. A few paces beyond the west edge of the field, and on the opposite side of the road, was a large house, well thatched, surrounded by many barns and outbuildings; the residence of Eynsham’s lord, Sir Richard Cyne. A man stood at an upper window, which was open to the chill November breeze. Why it would be so was plain. The fellow stared over our heads toward the women cutting wheat stubble.
    Arthur saw me turn to look to my right and followed my gaze. As he did so the man at the window noticed us passing and withdrew. A moment later an arm appeared and drew the window closed. Arthur chuckled.
    “Wanted a better look at yon lass than he’d ’ave through the ripples of window glass, eh?”
    I agreed that this might be so.
    The sun lay low in the southwest, and it would soon benight. I had learned what I could this day, although this was little enough. A mighty castle may, however, be brought down by the incessant pounding of a trebuchet.
    We passed the west entrance to the abbey church, entered the door to the west range of the cloister, and found the door to the abbot’s lodging open. Nones had ended but a short while past. I saw the abbot, head in hands, seated at his desk and bent over an open book. I thought at first that he was deep in study and