King Arthur's Bones

by The Medieval Murderers

  The first task was to repair the castle. The Marcher lords had learned their lesson with fortresses made of wood, so Carmarthen was rebuilt in stone. It was not long before the keep had been given a sturdy curtain wall studded with towers. The bailey was extended too, and deeper ditches dug for defence. Meanwhile, the townsfolk plundered the surrounding forest for wood and pilfered nails from the castle-builders, so houses and shops were soon restored as well. Apart from a grassy knoll in St Peter’s churchyard, where those killed in the raid had been buried, there was little to remind the inhabitants of the horrors of Lord Rhys’s visit.

  It was a busy time for Gwenllian. As constable, it was Cole’s responsibility to oversee the building work, and once he had recovered he flung himself into the physical side of the operation with great enthusiasm, leaving his wife to manage what he considered the mundane tasks – organizing labour rotas, commissioning supplies and hiring suitable craftsmen. With his brute strength and her talent for administration, the work proceeded apace, and she had scant opportunity to dwell on Meurig’s death or the loss of Arthur’s bones.

  One day, when the project was nearing completion, they stood together on the new battlements, enjoying the warmth of a summer evening as the sun set in a blaze of red-gold over the Tywi Valley. By standing on tiptoe, Gwenllian could see the topmost branches of Merlin’s oak, just visible between St Peter’s Church and the towers of the priory beyond. Some judicial pruning had corrected its lopsided appearance, and the great gash in its bark had healed.

  Although she rarely thought of the chest Meurig had buried, she did consider it then, wondering again who had stolen it. She had expected to hear of the relics being offered for sale – Lord Rhys had sired a number of children, legitimate and otherwise, which meant Gwenllian had a large complement of half-brothers and sisters to supply her with news and gossip, and little happened that was not reported to her. But there had not been so much as a whisper about the bones. It both puzzled and irritated her – she did not like mysteries.

  She had been pondering the matter for some time before it occurred to her that Cole was unusually quiet. He was normally full of chatter at the end of the day, eager to tell her whom he had met and what he had done, and it was rare for him to be silent. She regarded him in concern.

  ‘What is wrong, Symon?’

  He pulled himself from his reverie and shot her an unconvincing smile. ‘Nothing.’

  She narrowed her eyes. ‘Do not lie – we both know you are hopeless at it. So tell me what is the matter. I am sure we will be able to find a solution – we usually do.’

  ‘You usually do,’ he corrected glumly. ‘Very well, then. Daniel was murdered last night.’

  ‘Our chaplain?’ she cried in horror. ‘Why would anyone kill him? Who have you arrested?’

  Cole grimaced. ‘No one – I do not know who was responsible.’

  ‘Then what are you doing to find the culprit? I cannot imagine Daniel had enemies – he had his faults, of course, but he was a tolerant, patient confessor and that alone made him popular.’

  ‘What faults?’ asked Cole, a little sharply. Daniel was his friend – two Normans a long way from home, who shared a fondness for horses and fine wine.

  Gwenllian touched his arm sympathetically, seeing it was not a good time to remind him that the monk had been rather worldly for a man sworn to poverty – he preferred the rich foods available at the castle to the simple fare of his priory, and never declined gifts from his flock. But his gentle compassion in the confessional meant people tended to view his weaknesses with indulgent affection. She doubted anyone would have killed him over them.

  ‘He was wealthy for a monk,’ she mused, trying to think of another motive. ‘Perhaps he was the victim of a robbery.’

  ‘No, because he still had his purse – it was the first thing I checked. It contained six pennies and a little phial of something I assumed to be holy water.’

  ‘Tell me what you know of his death,’ she ordered, not bothering to point out that felons tended to run away if they were disturbed, so the presence of the purse proved nothing one way or the other.

  ‘He celebrated a special Mass for the castle carpenters last night. Afterwards he and I shared a jug of wine in the hall, and it was dark by the time he left. He was killed on his way home.’

  ‘How did he die?’

  ‘He was hit over the head with something heavy.’

  ‘Where did it happen?’

  ‘By Merlin’s oak, which is within spitting distance of his priory.’ Cole’s voice broke as he added: ‘He was almost home.’

  ‘When was he found?’ asked Gwenllian, touching his arm a second time.

  ‘This morning. His brethren did not worry when he failed to return last night, because his duties as castle chaplain often keep him out late. His body was discovered at dawn, by my clerk.’

  ‘What was John doing there at such an hour?’ Gwenllian was immediately suspicious. ‘He lives here in the castle and has no reason to be on the other side of town at dawn.’

  ‘I did not ask. I suppose I shall have to interview him again.’ Cole did not sound enthusiastic.

  ‘Are there any witnesses to this horrible crime?’

  ‘If there were, they would have told me the name of the culprit, and he would be in my prison,’ replied Cole, uncharacteristically curt. ‘So, no, Gwen. No one saw what happened.’

  But she knew what was really troubling him. ‘You offered to escort him home after the wine was finished. I heard you. But he refused. Do not even think of blaming yourself.’

  He stared morosely into the bailey below. ‘I should have insisted. The people of Carmarthen have a poor bargain in me – I fail to protect them from raiders, and I fail to protect their monks.’

  ‘They could do a lot worse,’ she said briskly before he could grow too dejected. ‘And we shall avenge Daniel’s death by bringing his killer to justice.’

  Cole regarded her doubtfully. ‘And how will we do that, when the villain left no witnesses and no clues as to his identity?’

  ‘By using our wits.’ She shot him a mischievous glance. ‘Well, my wits and your authority as constable, to be precise. No wicked murderer shall best us.’

  Gwenllian spent a restless night reviewing all Cole had learned about the murder, although it was frustratingly little. Daniel had left the castle at roughly nine o’clock, and John had found him dead just after first light. Priory Street was a major thoroughfare, and although there was a curfew during the hours of darkness it was not very rigorously enforced, and she was sure someone must have seen something that would help them solve the crime.

  She decided her first task would be to question John, to ascertain what he had been doing out discovering bodies at such an hour, and her second would be to inspect the scene of the murder. Cole claimed the culprit had left no clues, but he would have been thinking along the lines of dropped weapons or easily identifiable items of clothing, and it would not have occurred to him to look for more subtle evidence. And if grilling John and examining the place where a man had been bludgeoned to death did not provide answers, then she would interview the residents of Priory Street. Cole said that Boleton – whose remit it was to investigate crime – had already done that, but Boleton’s legendary laziness meant Gwenllian could not be sure he had been sufficiently diligent, and she felt it needed to be done again.

  She was awake and dressed long before dawn, and she and Cole ate a hurried breakfast of bread, cheese and summer berries in the hall, both eager to begin their search for answers as soon as possible.

  ‘Is Daniel’s body in the priory?’ she asked, wondering whether anything might be gained from examining it. She doubted Cole – or Boleton, for that matter – would have thought to check it for clues.

  ‘I brought him here.’ Cole hesitated, but then pressed on. ‘Mistress Spilmon said it was wrong to foist a bloodstained corpse on his brethren, and asked if she might be allowed to . . . She will come to tend him this mor
ning.’

  ‘Mistress Spilmon?’ asked Gwenllian, mystified. The wives of wealthy merchants did not usually volunteer to prepare bodies for the grave – that was a task performed by impoverished widows who needed the money. ‘Why would she do that?’

  Cole shrugged sheepishly, in a way that made her sure he was holding something back. ‘He was her confessor – perhaps she wanted to perform this one last service in return. Did you want to see him?’

  Gwenllian followed him across the bailey to the chapel, an unassuming building with wooden walls and a thatched roof. Daniel lay on a trestle table, and someone had covered him with a clean blanket. Cole removed it, then rolled the monk on to his side, so she could see the back of his head. The wound was not as fearsome as she had anticipated, and it seemed Daniel had been unlucky – the blow had caught him at an odd angle and he might have lived had it struck a little higher or a little lower.

  ‘Mistress Spilmon must have tended him already,’ she remarked. ‘There would have been some blood, but someone has washed it away. And his hair is damp.’

  ‘I did that last night,’ said Cole. ‘There was blood, and I did not want her to see it.’

  Gwenllian regarded him askance. ‘She offered to lay him out, Symon, so I doubt she is squeamish about gore. But it was kindly done, and it certainly helps me, because I can see the wound has a very clear imprint. Can you?’

  Cole bent over the body, squinting in the unsteady light of the lamp. Then he looked at her in confusion. ‘It looks like a cross. There is a long mark that leads from his crown towards his neck, and a shorter one that transects it.’

  ‘Precisely.’

  He continued to regard her uncertainly. ‘Are you saying the culprit is another monk – that a cross from the priory was the murder weapon?’

  His face was pale, and she understood this was not a very desirable solution – the Church was powerful and would object to a secular official accusing one of its members of heinous crimes.

  ‘Not necessarily, although we should bear it in mind. But crosses are not the only cruciform objects in existence. Look at your sword, for example. Were you to strike someone with its hilt, it would produce a wound shaped exactly like this one.’

  He glanced at it. ‘I am not the killer – I was tucked up in bed with you when Daniel died.’

  She said nothing, but his claim was not entirely true. She had heard Daniel leave, but it had been some time before Cole had joined her upstairs. She had asked him where he had been, and he had mumbled something about a raid on the kitchens for food. It was something he did not infrequently, and she had thought no more about it.

  ‘If Daniel was killed with a sword, then none of your soldiers is responsible,’ she went on. ‘Their hilts are too thick to have made this mark. In other words, the murder weapon would be a knight’s blade, not one owned by a common man.’

  ‘Then Daniel was killed with something else,’ said Cole firmly, ‘because the only knights in Carmarthen at the moment are Boleton and me. What else might it have been?’

  Gwenllian was not surprised to hear him dismiss the possibility that Boleton might be responsible, given their close friendship. Personally she disliked the man, and had still not forgiven him for what she saw as his abandonment of Cole during Lord Rhys’s raid – not to mention his unattractive habit of running up debts and persuading Cole to settle them. Fortunately, though, a recent inheritance had made him comfortably wealthy, so he was currently paying for his own wine, whores and fine clothes.

  ‘Some pots have bases that are cruciform,’ she suggested. ‘Spilmon showed me one only last week, which he had bought in Bristol. It was very heavy, and might well kill a man.’

  ‘Spilmon,’ mused Cole. He did not add anything else, but his expression was troubled. ‘Can the body tell you anything more?’

  She wished he had not washed it, feeling all manner of clues might have been lost in his misguided attempt to be sensitive. She inspected the rest of Daniel, noting that his habit bore two muddy patches where he would have fallen to his knees, and dust on the chest and stomach – from pitching forward into the dirt.

  Then she picked up his purse, and emptied the contents into her hand. As Cole had said, it contained six pennies and a small phial. And there was something else too, caught in some loose stitching at the bottom. It was a finger-bone – one that suggested its owner would have been enormous.

  Gwenllian’s mind reeled as she stared at what lay in her hand. Then she flung it away, frightened by it. Cole regarded her in astonishment, but it was a moment before she could speak.

  ‘Do you remember me telling you how my brother hid King Arthur’s bones under Merlin’s oak?’ she asked unsteadily. ‘And how someone overheard, and got them before I could do as he asked, and move them somewhere safe?’

  Cole grimaced. ‘Yes – you were delayed, because you were nursing me. You had several suspects, although I cannot recall them all now.’

  She began to list them for him. ‘I virtually told Gilbert the Thief that the oak held something worth stealing, while your clerk John has a nasty habit of eavesdropping. Did you know he was listening to you and Daniel two nights ago, by the way? I saw him in the shadows when I went to fetch a cup of water from the kitchen.’

  Cole blinked. ‘Why would he do that? All we talked about was horses and the recent spate of thefts that have been plaguing the town.’

  ‘Have you asked Gilbert about those?’ asked Gwenllian dryly.

  ‘Of course. But Boleton and I searched the caches he usually uses for his stolen property, and they are empty. Besides, Boleton has been watching him, so he cannot be the culprit this time. Personally I suspect outsiders – outlaws from the forest, who sneak into the town after dark.’

  They were getting away from the subject. ‘Boleton was on my list of suspects too,’ she said.

  Cole scowled. ‘He was rounding up our men, to prevent trouble. He did not take your bones.’

  Gwenllian did not argue, but she had her doubts. She had given the events of that fateful night a lot of thought, and could not escape one obvious conclusion – that Symon had been knifed to create a diversion, to prevent her from retrieving Meurig’s chest. She had done everything in her power to make him talk about what he had seen, but he had resisted, doggedly maintaining that it had been too dark to be sure of anything. Why would he keep his silence, unless he suspected the culprit was someone dear to him – a friend he was determined to protect?

  ‘Spilmon and Kyng own the houses on either side of Meurig’s,’ she continued, prudently steering the discussion away from murky waters. ‘That in itself is no reason to suspect them, but they recouped their losses very quickly after the raid. Is it because they sold valuable relics?’

  ‘The invasion started at the opposite end of the town from Priory Street,’ Cole pointed out. ‘Perhaps that gave them enough time to bury their own treasure – in other words, they did not lose as much as they claimed.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ acknowledged Gwenllian. She hesitated, but then pressed on. ‘I hate to include a family member on such a list, but Hywel has always been an enigma to me. He does not work, but never lacks for bread, and will not explain how.’

  ‘He has changed since his father’s death.’

  It was an understatement of enormous proportion. Hywel had never been particularly amiable, but since the raid he had grown surly and withdrawn. It was entirely possible that he had delayed fetching Daniel in order to eavesdrop, and had then hurried off to attack Cole and steal the bones once his father was dead. Gwenllian recalled his curious insistence on acquiring a coffin – surely not a priority for most recently bereaved sons. And then what had he done? Sold the relics to the first religious house willing to buy them? Was that what kept him in ale when he did nothing to earn an honest day’s pay?

  She closed her mind to the awful possibility and turned to the last of her suspects – the one who suddenly loomed larger than the others because of what she had just found in his pu
rse.

  ‘Daniel was in the vicinity too,’ she said quietly. ‘He came to pray over Meurig’s body.’

  Cole’s jaw dropped. ‘You suspected Daniel? But he was a monk!’

  ‘And monks cannot steal?’ Gwenllian pointed to where the bone had fallen. ‘I wager anything you please that this huge finger belonged to Arthur – Meurig said the bones in the chest were massive, and there cannot be that many enormous relics in existence. So how does it come to be in Daniel’s purse?’

  Cole bent to retrieve it. He was a large man, but the bone dwarfed his hand. He stared at it for a while, and she could almost hear his mind working.

  ‘Do you really believe King Arthur was so vast?’ he asked eventually. ‘I have listened to dozens of ballads about the man, but none says he was a giant. Surely, if he were, one account would have drawn attention to the fact?’

  It was a valid point. Could he be right, and the fact that Meurig said his chest contained a behemoth meant it was not Arthur? Gwenllian tried to recall what her brother had told her about the discovery at the abbey in the English marshes.

  ‘When Arthur’s leg was measured against that of a Glastonbury workman, it was almost twice as long. And the skull was so large that the distance between the eye sockets was more than the width of a hand. This was seen as proof that the skeleton belonged to a special man.’

  ‘Very special!’ remarked Cole caustically. ‘If you are right, then Arthur would have towered over his fellow warriors, and that would have made him very vulnerable in battle – any common bowman could have picked him off. Personally I do not believe he was a monster.’

  ‘Those were ancient times,’ she suggested tentatively. ‘Perhaps everyone was bigger then.’

  ‘In that case, you cannot use their unusual size to contend that they belonged to a special man,’ he argued with uncharacteristically impeccable logic. ‘They might belong to anyone. Was there anything in this Glastonbury tomb that might make identification certain? A sword, for example – perhaps one with an engraving on it?’