King Arthur's Bones

by The Medieval Murderers

  ‘John’s last words were meant for you,’ said Gwenllian, turning to her husband. ‘“Beware the one you love.” I thought he was speaking to me, but he was warning you of Boleton.’

  Cole looked sadly at the knight. ‘I wish I knew what led you to this.’

  Boleton opened his mouth to protest his innocence again, but then closed it. He regarded Cole sullenly. ‘Is it not obvious? I am more suited to high office than you in every way – I am a better administrator, I am infinitely more intelligent and I have ambition. I should have been constable, but the king gave the post to you, just because you are good with a sword.’

  ‘You did not have to come with me,’ said Cole reasonably. ‘You could have—’

  ‘I thought I could be content here, with a life of indolent leisure,’ spat Boleton. ‘But I was wrong. I am bored, and the more I think about it, the more it is apparent that the king made a mistake. You are a brainless fool who lets his wife make all the decisions.’

  ‘Symon, no!’ cried Gwenllian, when Cole took a firmer grip on his weapon and stepped forward. He did not care about the affront to himself, but no one insulted his wife. ‘Do not kill him in anger. Disarm him. Let the law be his judge.’

  For a moment she thought he was going to refuse, and although he was the better swordsman of the two, his old wound was clearly paining him that night. He might lose.

  ‘Gwen is right,’ Cole said eventually. ‘We should not fight each other. Yield to me.’

  Boleton also hesitated, but then did as he was told, dropping sword and dagger on the floor. Cole sheathed his own blade and indicated that Boleton was to precede him out of the house. It was too easy, and every one of Gwenllian’s senses clamoured that treachery was in the air. It was not long in coming.

  With a sudden roar, Boleton spun around, stabbing wildly with a knife he had concealed in his sleeve. Cole managed to duck away, but the manoeuvre unbalanced him and he fell. Boleton’s face was an impassive mask as he moved in for the kill.

  But he had reckoned without Gwenllian. She darted towards the table, grabbed a pot and brought it down on Boleton’s head. He crashed to his knees. Cole was quick to take advantage, and by the time Boleton’s wits had cleared there was a knife at his throat. Cole regarded his friend in silence for a moment, then stood back and nodded towards the open door.

  ‘Go, brother,’ he said softly. ‘Ride to the coast, take a ship and do not return.’

  ‘No!’ cried Gwenllian. ‘He will—’

  ‘I hate this house,’ interrupted Cole, looking around unhappily. ‘I almost died here after Hywel stabbed me, and now my dearest friend tries to complete the business. It has an evil aura.’

  Gwenllian gazed at him. ‘How long have you known Hywel was your attacker?’

  ‘I have always known – I saw him. But it seemed unkind to tell you when you had just lost your brother.’

  ‘Dear Symon.’ Gwenllian felt tears scald her eyes. ‘You kept your silence to protect me?’

  Cole shuddered as he surveyed Kyng’s parlour a second time. ‘There has been enough death and deceit in this house, and I do not want more of it.’ He gestured to the door, but he did not look at Boleton. ‘Go, and never come back.’

  Without a word Boleton slunk away into the night.

  III

  In the weeks that followed, Gwenllian was acutely uneasy, sure it was only a matter of time before Boleton came to wreak vengeance on his erstwhile friend. But then a cousin brought her some news. He spoke rapidly in Welsh, too fast for Cole’s meagre grasp of the language.

  ‘The sly knight tried to make the surviving forest folk attack the town, to create a diversion while he killed your husband, but they turned against him. Shall I tell you where they buried his body?’

  Gwenllian glanced at Symon. ‘No. I think it is better to believe he escaped. My husband has endured enough treachery, and he does not need to hear more of it.’

  Cole had placed a guard on the place where Hywel had hidden Arthur’s bones while Gwenllian made some enquiries about Abbey Dore. Within a month word began to trickle back that the Welsh sexton was indeed a man who could be trusted, so she resolved to follow her nephew’s plan and take them there. A Norman abbey in Herefordshire would not have been her first choice of hiding places, but Lord Rhys’s warring sons meant that southern Wales was currently an unstable, uncertain place. It was certainly time for Arthur to be moved – and to enlist the help of the men Meurig had appointed as Guardians.

  The moment she made her decision, she and Cole went to Merlin’s oak. It was a beautiful autumn evening, with the scent of the harvest in the air and the sun bathing the land in a warm, golden light.

  ‘It was clever of Hywel to put the bones back in Meurig’s original hiding place – the cradle of roots – after Daniel began to suspect they were in the priory,’ Cole remarked. ‘But why was there a pit on the other side of the tree too – the one Daniel was kneeling by when he was murdered?’

  ‘It was a decoy hole. Hywel dug it because he was afraid Daniel might guess where he had moved them. And he was right to be cautious, because Daniel was poking around it when he died – the mud on his knees attested to that.’

  ‘Meurig should not have told you his secret when he knew Hywel was listening,’ said Cole resentfully. ‘He should have known better.’

  It was a curious thing to say. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Dewi – Hywel’s brother – was shot by would-be robbers on the way from Glastonbury. Or so Meurig told everyone. But I saw Dewi’s body, and it was no arrow that killed him. He was stabbed.’

  Gwenllian’s mind reeled. ‘Stabbed?’

  Cole nodded. ‘I knew Hywel was the culprit from some incautious remark he made. But Meurig said it would upset you if I arrested one nephew for murdering another. It was a clever ploy – he knew exactly how to stay my hand.’

  Gwenllian stared at him. ‘You knew this terrible secret but did not think to share it with me?’

  ‘Meurig asked me not to. It was a nasty business – Hywel killed Dewi because Dewi was Meurig’s favourite. Meurig was deeply ashamed. He did not want you, or anyone else, to know.’

  Gwenllian shook her head slowly. She had wondered why Hywel had stabbed Cole in order to prevent her from claiming the bones – why not attack her, who was smaller and posed less of a threat? The answer was obvious now – he wanted revenge on the man who knew his dark secret. It explained why he had spent his dying breath trying to implicate Symon in a murder too.

  ‘But Meurig should not have told you about the bones when he knew Hywel was listening,’ Cole was saying. ‘It might have put you in terrible danger.’

  ‘Oh, Symon!’ said Gwenllian, exasperated. ‘I might have worked out what had happened to the bones years ago, if I had known all this! Do you really think I warrant such cosseting?’

  Cole considered the question carefully, then nodded, smiling as he did so. ‘There is nothing I would not do to protect you. And Meurig felt the same way.’

  There was nothing to say to such a remark, and they walked in silence for a while. Gwenllian found herself thinking about the people who had been touched by the events of the summer. No one missed Hywel’s drink-fuelled bitterness or Boleton’s acid tongue, but the castle clerks grieved for John, and the town’s merchants had been sorry when Kyng and Spilmon were banished from the realm.

  Meanwhile, Gilbert had recovered from his fall and, in exchange for his freedom, told Cole where Boleton kept the proceeds of his crimes. It had all been returned to its grateful owners.

  And people mourned Daniel as a good man. Gwenllian had completed what John had started, and had been appalled by the extent of Daniel’s dishonesty. But Cole, ever loyal, even to friends who did not deserve it, had persuaded her that nothing could be gained by exposing the monk’s penchant for the castle’s money. So Daniel’s reputation as a fine, generous, upright man remained unsullied.

  ‘We searched for one villain in all this, but it transpired there we
re many,’ she said ruefully. ‘Daniel stole from us and his priory, Hywel was a blackmailer, Kyng and Spilmon plotted murder, John and Gilbert joined forces with criminals, and Boleton—’

  ‘Boleton was the worst of them all,’ finished Cole flatly. ‘You were right about him all along. I should have listened to you more.’

  ‘If you had listened to me less, he might not have turned against you – it was the fact that I help you with your work that annoyed him.’

  ‘But then my men would have mutinied instead,’ he said with a rueful grin. ‘They know who organizes their regular pay, decent meals and clean bedding. No, Gwen. Listening to you is a very good idea.’

  When they arrived at Merlin’s oak, Cole unbuckled his sword and dagger, placing them on a wide, shelf-like branch to keep them out of the way. Then he touched the spade to the soil and began to dig. The soil yielded easily, as if the tree knew it was time to give up its treasure.

  ‘We never did learn who killed Daniel,’ said Gwenllian, settling down to watch him. The leaves whispered in the breeze, creating dappled patterns of sun and shade on the grass below. Then there was a rather harder gust, and Cole gave a yelp. The branch had swayed, causing the dagger to drop and strike his shoulder.

  ‘It was a good thing it was not the sword that fell,’ he grumbled, rubbing it. ‘Or you might be finishing this on your own.’

  ‘Daniel!’ exclaimed Gwenllian, as all became clear. ‘He stole the priory’s cross and Hywel found it next to his corpse. I understand now! No one killed him – it was an accident!’

  She hurried to the other side of the tree and saw a similar shelf-like branch over Hywel’s decoy pit, although it was much higher. Cole climbed up to see scuffs on the bark, where something had rested.

  ‘He must have set his stolen property here,’ he said, ‘while he dug for the bones—’

  ‘Lest someone walked by and caught him with it . . .’

  ‘But it fell on him as he was patting the last of the turf back into place. It was a heavy thing, and you told me it caught a vulnerable point on his skull.’ Cole shivered suddenly and lowered his voice. ‘But it was not an accident, Gwen – the tree killed him.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Gwenllian, walking around the mighty trunk to their own hole. She could already see the top of the plain, dark-wooded chest that contained the bones, and it would not be long before they had it out. ‘But I do not think it means us harm – it is willing to let Arthur go this time.’

  ‘I hope you are right,’ said Cole, glancing uneasily at the branches above. ‘The sooner he is in Herefordshire, the better. I hope he will be safe there.’

  ‘He will be,’ said Gwenllian softly, thinking of the sexton in Abbey Dore and of the group of silent, sober men who were even now waiting in the forest – the Guardians were ready to do their duty. One was Meurig’s middle son, Young Meurig, who had always been her favourite nephew. From now on, Arthur’s bones would be watched over by them and by their descendants.

  She rested her hand on her belly, smiling as she felt the kick of life within. And by her own sons, of course. After ten years she had all but given up hope of a child, but suddenly she was pregnant. She could not help but wonder whether she owed the miracle to Arthur, or perhaps Merlin, who wanted her heirs to guard Wales’s most precious treasure. She knew it was a son that grew inside her, and she also knew what he was going to be named – Meurig, after the brave, noble man who had set Arthur’s bones on the road to their rightful destiny.

  Historical note

  Norman-held Carmarthen was attacked by Rhys, Prince of Deheubarth, in 1196, when he sacked the town and burned the castle. The constable at the time was Symon Cole. Lord Rhys died the following year, and his sons turned on each other, giving the Sheriff of Hereford (William de Briouze) ample time to rebuild the fortress in stone. Rhys is thought to have sired at least eighteen children, although tracing them is difficult due to his penchant for giving them the same names (he had at least three Maredudds and two Gwenllians). As was the custom of the day, his daughters were married off to politically important allies.

  An entry in the Cartulary of St John, Carmarthen, dated between 1194 and 1198, refers to a deed in which de Briouze donated the church of Ebernant to Carmarthen’s priory. Ebernant had belonged to Lord Rhys, and the gift was to compensate the priory for his attack. The writ’s witnesses include Renald de Boleton, knight, John the clerk, Gilbert, Robert Spilmon, William Kyng and Daniel Adam the chaplain. King Street and Spilman Street are still extant in the town.

  There was a famous tree in Carmarthen called Merlin’s oak, but it was probably planted in the seventeenth century, perhaps to mark the Restoration. But local legend maintains it was put there by Merlin, who is said to have been born in the town. The last remnants of the oak were removed from the end of Priory Street in 1978.

  ACT TWO

  The Welsh Marches, December 1282

  The tavern-keeper filled a pottery mug with a pint of ale and reached up to place it almost fearfully on the centre of the blackened tree trunk that arched across the simnai fawr, the great fireplace that was built into the thickness of the wall.

  ‘On a night like this, the devil needs his brew!’ he muttered, crossing himself as paradoxically he pandered to an ancient superstition meant to placate Satan in such foul weather as this.

  ‘No need, Eifion!’ growled one of the dozen men hunched around the fire on benches. ‘The devil is safe up in Anglesey tonight – the bastard who calls himself King of England!’

  The snarl of agreement from the throats of the company was tinged with despair, as it competed with the howl of an icy wind that rattled the shutters and flickered the flames of the few candles and rushlights.

  ‘Almost two hundred bloody years we’ve fought those swine – and now it’s all over,’ groaned one old fellow, his voice ending in a sob.

  A much younger man, in his late thirties, with black hair and deep-set dark eyes, slammed his ale-jar down on a rough table.

  ‘No, it doesn’t have to be over, damn you! Prince Dafydd is still fighting on up in the north. It’s up to folk like us to give him all the help we can.’

  Another man, with a face scarred by old cow-pox, shook his head. This was Dewi, who worked in a fulling mill just up the road. ‘You mean he’s cut off in the north, Owain! And most of our army was massacred at Builth, after Llewelyn was ambushed. What’s the point of carrying on?’

  There was a rumble of dissent from some, but others sided with the speaker.

  ‘What can we few do down here in Erging?’ said one. ‘It’s a hundred miles or more to where Dafydd’s forces lie in the mountains – and Edward’s armies have them squeezed in tighter than an abbot’s arse!’

  The drinkers subsided into a doleful silence, hunched around the great hearth like a group of mourners around a coffin – which in reality was fairly near the truth. The main difference was that they had no corpse to mourn, as no one knew for sure where Llewelyn’s body lay, though his severed head was already stuck on a spike at the Tower of London.

  Eifion, the landlord, kept an anxious eye on the wooden screen behind the great oak door. He had stationed his unfortunate pot-boy outside, a lad of ten who, though wrapped from head to toe in a smelly sheepskin, would have to be called in soon before he perished from cold. The lad’s task was to scan the moonlit track outside and warn of any strangers on the road from Abergavenny to Hereford, though this seemed unlikely this late on such a freezing, blustery night, three days before the eve of Christ’s Mass. A warning was vital, as the group of men in the bleak taproom were all former Welsh soldiers, and their assembly could well be considered treasonous if the Sergeant of the Hundred or one of the lordship’s servants from Grosmont took it into his head to visit the Skirrid Inn that night. Even though this was geographically Wales, the Norman-English Marcher lords and their client landholders considered it their territory. Even the Welsh name ‘Erging’, for the area of what was rapidly becoming south-west Herefordshire,
had been eradicated by the English, who now called it ‘Archenfield’. It was true that many folk, even some English, accepted that the little river Monnow marked the border in this area, but the endless to and fro of frequent Welsh raids and relentless English acquisition made the idea of a frontier meaningless.

  The black-haired man broke the silence. ‘So what are we going to do about it?’ he growled. ‘If we could gather enough support, I’m willing to lead a party through the mountains to reach Dafydd in Eryri.’1

  Out of the muttering that this provoked, another voice dissented. ‘You may well say that, Owain ap Hywel! You have no wife or children left to starve while you go off to be killed.’

  Then Dewi, the scar-faced man, added his own caution. ‘Before you do anything rash, Owain, you had best take your father’s advice. He fought alongside our prince many times, though it was twenty years past.’

  ‘And got a spear through his chest for his trouble,’ added the inn-keeper. ‘You said Hywel was dying, Owain? This awful news must be breaking his heart?’

  The black-haired man nodded sadly. ‘My father has been sickening all autumn; his cough gets worse each day. I knew he could not last the winter, but this tragedy will kill him before Christ’s Mass.’

  He got to his feet and swallowed what was left in his pot. ‘I promised to call in on him tonight.There may not be many more chances before God takes him.’ He pulled a shoulder-cape of dark leather over the belted tunic of coarse brown wool that reached to his thighs, covering serge breeches pushed into thick boots. The cape had a hood, which he pulled up over his head as he made for the door.

  ‘I’ll see what my father has to say and we’ll meet here again on the eve of Christ’s Mass,’ he promised, passing behind the draught screens and tugging open the massive iron-banded front door.

  A blast of icy wind swirled a few flakes of snow past him, as he pushed the freezing pot-boy inside and heaved the creaking door shut behind him. For a moment he stood in the bright moonlight, checking that the road of frozen mud that went past the hamlet of Llanfihangel Crucorney was empty in both directions. The Black Mountains, the edge of Wales, loomed close behind him and a mile or two to the south he could see the strange silhouette of the Holy Mountain, Ysgyrid Fawr, the English corruption of which gave its name to the ‘Skirrid Inn’. The great cleft in its side was said to have been caused by an earthquake that occurred at the hour of Christ’s Crucifixion. Owain wondered bitterly what earthly disaster might have occurred somewhere in Wales at the dreadful hour of Prince Llewelyn’s ambush and assassination.