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prudent to say no more for a time. I held my tongue, and when the woman was able to contain her weeping she again spoke.
    “Do you know what has become of John?”
    The answer to that question should not be delivered through a window, I thought. “Aye,” I said, and went to the door, which had remained unlocked since felons had ransacked the house.
    “John Thrale,” I continued, when I stood before her in the house, “lies in a grave in a churchyard near to Bampton.”
    “Dead? John is dead?”
    The woman began to sway unsteadily. She seemed likely to swoon, and I made ready to catch her before she toppled to the rushes. But she steadied herself, choked out a great sob, then spoke again.
    “What has befallen my John?”
    Her John? The pepperer’s wife said the chapman was not married.
    “Did he take ill upon his rounds? He was well when he set out. Did some sickness strike him down?”
    The woman thought of more questions as she spoke. “Why does a bailiff visit his house? And why,” she glanced about the room, “is John’s house so ruined? Some felons have done hamsoken while John was gone. Do you seek them? Why does a bailiff from Bampton seek villains here, in Abingdon? John is dead?”
    The woman fell silent, and then stumbled to the chapman’s ruined bed, where she sat and renewed her sobs.

    “You spoke of John Thrale as ‘My John.’ A neighbor said he was not wed.”
    The woman seized control of her emotions and answered, “The banns was to be read at St. Helen’s Church soon as John returned. Said he’d be home today. I came to greet ’im, and found all this ruin, an’ no John. Was about to begin to try an’ set things right when you came.”
    “So many tears for a broken table and chest, and torn mattress and pillow? Did you guess some harm had come to him?”
    “Nay. Thought he’d be home soon.”
    “Why, then, such sorrow?”
    The woman looked from me to the corner where fragments of the larger chest were mixed with pieces of the small chest and the table leg which had been used to batter it open. “Stolen,” she sniffled. “Wealth we was to use to repair the house.”
    “Ah… you wept for the silver coins and jewelry Thrale had locked in his chest?”
    My greatest success in this interview seemed be in regularly causing this woman’s eyes to open wide in wonderment, followed by a renewed flow of tears.
    “How did you know what was in John’s chest?” she sobbed.
    I sat on the ripped mattress beside the woman and explained my presence there. I told her of John Thrale’s death (leaving out that information which could only cause her more sorrow), my discovery of his cache of coins and jewelry, the attack upon my wife and child, and the theft of the chapman’s hoarded wealth.
    “You knew of the silver and gold Thrale possessed,” I concluded. “Where did he come by it?”
    The woman’s tears had begun again when I told her of the chapman’s death, but by the time I concluded the sad tale she had composed herself again.
    “Didn’t tell me. I asked. Said as how he knew women like to gossip. If I didn’t know where his wealth come from, I couldn’t tell another, he said. All I know is, when he come home from makin’ rounds to sell goods, he’d have more coins an’ such.”
    “What is your name?”
    “Amice… Amice Thatcher.”
    “You never wed?”
    “Nay. I’m a widow. Husband dead three years now, an’ two children to feed.”
    “How do you live?”
    “Brew ale. Keeps me an’ children alive.”
    “John Thrale was older than you, was he not?”
    “Aye. But a good man is… was John.”
    “And with the supply of Roman coins he had found, he could ease your life.”
    “’Tis hard for a widow. You’d not understand.”
    She spoke true. It is difficult to put one’s self into another’s place. From what I knew of the chapman, and what I’d seen of his corpse, he was a decade older than Amice Thatcher, perhaps more. Unlikely he would have attracted a comely