The Abbot's Agreement by Mel Starr Page B

night?
    I was required twice to put an elbow into Arthur’s ribs before the new moon rose over the wood behind us. The man’s snoring would frighten off a host of poachers. If Abbot Thurstan would build a hut at the edge of the pond, and hire Arthur to sleep there, he would never lose another fish.
    We remained in shadow, but the pond was now faintly illuminated. If I were a poacher I would have come and gone by this time. Arthur agreed. “A man would have to be witless to cast a net into the pond now,” he whispered. I agreed, told him we would return to the guest house, and stood from my seat at the base of the old beech tree. This was not so easily accomplished as when I was a youth. Muscles had grown stiff with cold and inactivity. Arthur also stood slowly, then stretched. I heard a joint pop somewhere in his back. If his snoring did not chase poachers away, his stretching might.
    We returned to the guest house more rapidly than we had left it. The cresset in our chamber had gone out, but there was enough moonlight through a south window that I found my bed without stubbing a toe.
    Since monks do not break their fast, neither Abbot Thurstan nor his kitchener remembered to provide us with a loaf when the new day dawned. Very well. Some ancient Greek whose words I remember from my studies at Baliol College wrote that a man thinks most clearly when his stomach is empty. When he is well fed he becomes somnolent and neither his body nor his wit performs well. If this is so, I knew many scholars while at Oxford who might profitably have restricted their diet.
    The lay brother provided us with ewer, basin, water, and towel, and after washing, Arthur said, “What now?”
    I had asked myself the same question before I fell to sleep the night before, and was prepared with an answer.
    “John Whytyng was likely slain where we found his boot and pouch yesterday. We know that the key found in the pouch fits the lock used to secure the north porch to the church, and was perhaps made from a missing ladle. We may assume, I think, that the novice used the key to leave the abbey in the night. Whether or not he had done so many times, or but once, we do not know. Nor do we know if he made the key himself or had some other man make it.”
    “Might be useful to know that,” Arthur said.
    “Aye. We must keep the question in mind. But this morning I intend to walk a path between the pond and the place where we found Whytyng’s corpse. There may be some sign of how the novice was carried from the one place to the other, and Brother Gerleys said there is a boar’s head somewhere near where John was found. I would like to know if birds have found it yet, and if so, what damage they have done to it.”
    I had hoped, even expected, to find some track in the fallen leaves at the edge of the forest where a low stone wall divided woodland from meadow, which might show how the novice had been dragged from the pond to where Arthur, I, and the birds had found him. I found no such marks. Perhaps the last of autumn’s falling leaves covered the trail, or two men – one with small feet – had carried the corpse. Or perhaps the murderer had dragged the novice through the fallow field most of the way, where there are no leaves to disturb. I walked part of the way through this meadow, seeking some sign that grass had been disturbed, but if it had once been crushed down, it had sprung back up and grazing sheep had obliterated any sign.
    To my sinister side, as I walked the meadow, I saw birds perched upon an oak where woodland and meadow met near the stone wall. Occasionally two or three would descend to the ground where there was likely a boar’s head for them to feast upon.
    I thought it unlikely that a murderer would haul a corpse through an open meadow, where even on a moonless night aman with good vision might see the deed. So after visiting the place where the novice’s corpse had lain I returned to the abbey, skirting the wall at the verge