King Arthur's Bones

by The Medieval Murderers

  Madoc looked at his uncle in concern. ‘Are you going to ask us to leave Garway and go with you to fight in Snowdonia? We both have wives and children.’

  Owain placed a fatherly arm around their shoulders. ‘No, never fear, I’ll not prise you from your Bronwen and Olwen. It may be that I will need you to help me hide these bones, which are within a few miles of here. But that is all, apart from learning of their hiding place, in case I am killed tomorrow!’

  He pulled them closer and their heads bent together so that they almost touched, as he whispered the old secret into their ears.

  On the morning after the day of Christ, the hooves of a pony clattered to a halt on the frozen track outside Owain’s cottage in the tiny hamlet of Hoadalbert. This was a handful of dwellings midway between Pandy and Grosmont Castle.

  The carter, who lived alone in the single-roomed bwthyn that used to belong to his father, rose from putting fresh logs on his fire to peer through a crack in the boards of the door. Seeing a lad slide off a shaggy mountain pony, his first thought was that this was a message to say that his father had died, until he realized that the boy had come from the direction of Grosmont, not from his sister’s home. In fact the messenger was a stable-boy from Kentchurch Court, just beyond Grosmont on the English side of the Monnow.

  Owain opened the door and waited for the lad to come in. His nose was bright red from the cold, and he was beating his arms to get warm. Around his thin shoulders he wore two oat sacks as a cloak, and his hands were wrapped with rags in lieu of gloves.

  ‘I come with a message from Bailiff Merrick, sir,’ he announced, using the English language. ‘He says that he wishes you to come to a family meeting at his house at noon and bring your sister with you.’

  ‘Is that all he said?’ Owain was surprised, as his elder brother rarely communicated with him and never invited him to his home, which was in the grounds of the large fortified manor house where the Scudamore family lived.

  Taking pity on the lad’s frozen appearance, Owain ladled some cawl from an iron pot at the side of the fire and handed him a wooden bowl of the leek and mutton stew. Gratified, the groom fished a spoon fashioned from a cow’s horn from his pouch and, between appreciative slurps, confirmed that Ralph Merrick had said nothing else at all but had appeared to be in a bad temper – though this seemed to be his usual state of mind.

  The boy knew nothing else and after warming himself at the fire for a few moments, he rode off towards Grosmont, this being the caput of the barony, held by Prince Edmund Crouchback, brother of the hated King Edward.

  Owain pondered for a while, wondering what crisis could have caused his brother to deign to summon him. Possibly their father’s imminent demise had prompted Ralph to talk about the division of Hywel’s property, though there was precious little of that, as he had not been able to work on his smallholding in Hoadalbert for years, due to his chest troubles. He had given it to Owain for his home and had moved in with Rhiannon.

  Owain shrugged and thought he would let events take their course. He decided not to use the cart to take his sister to Kentchurch, but instead saddled up his old mare. Rhiannon could sit behind him on the blanket that underlaid the simple saddle. When he reached Pandy, she was as surprised as he was to learn of their brother’s invitation – or rather command – but she refused to leave her father, who was getting weaker and was now only half-conscious. Her husband was working in the mill, and she would not leave her two children alone with a dying man.

  Owain knew better than to try to persuade her, for she was a strong-willed woman – and indeed, by the looks of his father, he was not likely to last the day.

  ‘I’ll come back as soon as I can, cariad,’ he promised, ‘to tell you what our dear brother wanted and to sit with Tâd for the rest of the day – and night, if needs be.’

  As it was approaching mid-morning, he rode back along the track, taking care to avoid the worst patches of ice so that his mare would not lose her footing. The wind had dropped and it was a clear, still day, with patches of pale blue sky appearing between the clouds. As he passed through the village of Grosmont, he saw that work had already restarted on the castle after the holy day break. Prince Edmund was strengthening the fortifications of the compact but menacing fortress and increasing the living accommodation. Edmund Crouchback, so called from the Cross he had emblazoned on his shoulders at the Crusades, was Earl of Lancaster and Leicester and, though he had numerous possessions elsewhere, he seemed intent on making this remote corner of the Welsh Marches his principal home.

  Cursing Edmund, Edward and all the damned Plantagenet brood as he rode past, Owain crossed the little bridge over the Monnow and turned down the long track that led through the wide Scudamore lands to Kentchurch Court. However, he did not need to ride that far, as his brother’s house was near the barton, the demesne farm that served the domestic needs of the Scudamores. As bailiff, the controller of all outside work at the manor and overseer of all the bound and free workers, he had a substantial dwelling. It was a stone building with three rooms and a stable at one end. A chimney protruded from the other end, as there was a hearth instead of the cruder fire-pit, and it was in this room that Ralph Merrick had assembled his family for the meeting.

  His wife, Alice, a thin woman with a sharp face and a tongue to match, sat on a settle near the fire, with her pretty daughter, Rosamund, seated alongside her, looking pale and nervous.

  The two sons sat on a bench opposite, looking ill at ease in their father’s presence. The elder was John, at twenty-five a huntsman for the Scudamores, in charge of the hounds. He was a stocky fellow, with fair hair inherited from his Saxon mother, and a narrow rim of beard running around his jaw. He wore a dark green tunic over breeches and riding boots, with a hunting horn hanging from a thick leather belt.

  His brother, William, two years younger, was heavily built like his father. He had a mop of dark brown hair, shaved up to a line above his ears in the old Norman style. A jerkin and serge breeches were usually covered by a thick leather apron, but he had left this in the stable, as his job as the estate butcher and slaughterman had fouled it with bloodstains. His otherwise comely features were marred by a bad turn in his left eye, which failed to follow the movements of the other.

  The focal point of this family gathering was Ralph Merrick, a tall, erect man with a permanently truculent expression. He was forty-five, born seven years before Owain. Heavy features and a ruddy complexion made him unlike his brother, apart from the deep-set eyes that were a family trait.

  ‘I told you to bring our sister,’ he snapped as a greeting. ‘Where is she?’ He spoke in English, though he also had a fair grasp of Norman-French, the language of his masters.

  ‘She cannot leave our dying father, and her husband has to be in the mill all day,’ replied Owain, deliberately speaking in Welsh.

  ‘For God’s sake, speak in English,’ snapped his brother irritably. ‘You know Alice can’t understand the peasants’ talk.’

  ‘It was good enough for you when you were young!’ retorted Owain. ‘You never heard a word of English until you were ten years old.’

  He suspected that Alice understood far more than she admitted, but this pretence was all part of their craven attachment to the Marcher lords and their tenants, who were ruthlessly annexing what for untold centuries had been Welsh lands.

  ‘Why have you asked me here today?’ he demanded, never one to be overawed by his domineering brother. ‘Our father cannot live much longer, so I trust you are going to come to visit him while he still breathes?’

  ‘I was there last week,’ growled Ralph. ‘And if my duties here permit, I will ride over in the morning.’

  ‘You may well be too late,’ retorted Owain. ‘Since Idwal died, you are the eldest son and must lead the family.’

  Ralph dismissed this with a wave of his hand. ‘I summoned you here because I have heard very disturbing news about your activities,’ he began ominously. ‘It has come to my ears that you are
encouraging men to go with you to join the rebel Dafydd. Are you mad, brother!’ His voice had risen to a shout.

  Owain was shocked, for this meant that someone had betrayed him. ‘Who has told you this? I am a Welshman, as you are, and I am free to fight this oppression against my homeland!’

  ‘The king has declared all such rebels as traitors and the penalty is death,’ thundered Ralph. ‘You say I will soon be the head of this family, so I intend to prevent it from falling into disrepute by having a traitor as a brother!’

  Owain, now in a rage himself, pointed a quivering finger at Ralph. ‘You’ll not tell me what I can or can’t do, Rhodri ap Hywel!’ he shouted, deliberately using his brother’s real name. ‘If you were not so besotted with crawling around the English who have settled on our land, you would join me on this journey to Gwynedd!’

  Alice squealed her protests at the quarrel that had flared up, and the two sons had risen to their feet, looking aggressively at their uncle. Ralph, bright red in the face, advanced on Owain, shaking a fist at him.

  ‘This part of the March is now at peace. Would you see all our efforts wasted by your mad schemes? We are prosperous, both Welsh and English. Why would you wish to stir up conflict once again?’

  ‘And what’s this nonsense about taking King Arthur’s bones to the north?’ cut in the son John. ‘Everyone knows that they lie in Glastonbury, so are we going to suffer you as a charlatan as well as a rebel?’

  His uncle was too aghast at this further disclosure to censure his nephew for his insolence in speaking in such a way to a family elder. How in God’s name did they learn about the relics?

  ‘Who told you this?’ he demanded. ‘Was it Eifion at the Skirrid?’

  To his further surprise, Rosamund suddenly burst into tears, bending over where she sat and sobbing into her folded arms.

  Ralph threw out a hand dramatically towards her as he continued to rant at his brother. ‘See how you and your treacherous friends cause such anguish to my family?’ he rasped. ‘Some common fellow of your acquaintance has had the impudence to try to pay court to my daughter. It was from him she has heard these tales of rebellion, before I forbade her today ever to lay eyes again on the ruffian.’

  This provoked a fresh outburst of sobbing from Rosamund, which caused her mother to give her a good shaking rather than to comfort her. Owain, though incensed at the way in which his secrets had been bandied about, felt obliged to come to the defence of the culprit.

  ‘The lad is no ruffian! Caradoc is the son of the fuller at Pandy, a respectable and prosperous freeman,’ he protested.

  Privately, if Owain had had Caradoc here now, he would have boxed his ears soundly for his loose mouth, even if it was to his girlfriend.

  ‘I care not if he has a chest of gold, he will not approach my daughter ever again!’ snarled Ralph. ‘I have given orders that if he sets foot on this estate again, he will be flogged!’

  Rosamund wailed again and got another shaking from her mother.

  ‘I suppose he is another of your rebellious knaves – so let him go off to Gwynedd and be killed, and good riddance to him! All who are foolish enough to rally to Dafydd ap Gruffydd will be slain,’ ranted the bailiff. ‘But I forbid any member of this family to sully our name by turning to treachery!’

  Owain glared at his elder brother, containing his anger with difficulty. ‘Is that why you called me here today?’ he demanded. ‘Dragging me from the side of our dying father to lecture me on your craven obedience to the people who have stolen our land and our heritage?’

  ‘Don’t speak to our father like that!’ bawled William. ‘The Scudamores have been good masters. We live better now than we ever did before.’

  John, emboldened by his brother’s defiance, weighed in with his denunciation: ‘A damned sight better than you who live across the Monnow and up into the hills – squalid shacks to live in, scratching an existence from stony ground and few sheep!’

  Owain ignored them and continued to glare furiously at his brother. ‘So what are you going to do about it? Denounce me to your English overlords and have me hanged? Edmund Crouchback’s castle is just down the road, and he has the highest gallows in these parts!’

  ‘Of course not, you foolish man!’ glowered Ralph. ‘You are my brother and for all your wrongdoing you are still my kin.’

  He swept his hand around the room to indicate his wife and offspring. ‘But look what danger you have brought on me and my family, damn you! By concealing my knowledge of your folly, I risk being branded as a traitor myself.’

  Owain shrugged. ‘None will hear it from me – so if you tell your daughter to keep her chattering mouth closed, no one will be any the wiser. I’ll deal with Caradoc. He’ll say no more to anyone.’

  He turned to go, convinced that staying would only worsen the antipathy between them. As he reached the door, he turned to face them again. ‘Whatever has passed between us, remember that your father is dying, Ralph. If he could walk or even crawl, he would be with me on this venture, but, as it is, he at least deserves to hear his son say farewell!’

  With that, he stalked back to his horse and rode away.

  Ralph and his two sons did come to Pandy the next day, but they were too late. Hywel had died peacefully in his sleep in the small hours and now lay in the Church of St Michael, near the Skirrid alehouse, until he was buried in the churchyard the next day. Owain walked out of the cottage near the mill when Ralph appeared, too incensed at his brother’s dilatoriness, leaving Rhiannon to exchange a few stilted words with him.

  He took his empty cart, which he had used to carry his father’s body to the church, down to Llanfihangel and sought out the priest to make arrangements for the burial.

  ‘The ground is rock hard with frost, Owain,’ said the parson sadly. ‘How will we dig the grave? Our sexton is sick with a fever, though in any case he’s too old to hack his way through such ice-bound earth.’

  Owain promised that he would come himself with friends and with picks and iron bars, to lever away the topsoil to get at the softer earth beneath. The priest, Father Samson, was Welsh-speaking, unusual in this area. When Owain had gone with his nephews to Christ’s Mass in Garway, the priest there conducted the whole service in Latin, of which no one apart from a couple of Templars understood a word. Owain knew that this was the usual practice everywhere, except that often the short sermon was delivered in English. Here in Llanfihangel, still within the diocese of Llandâf, the incumbent was a native, and Owain suspected that his sympathies were similar to his own. It would have been difficult for Father Samson not to have been aware of the politics of some of the men in the parish, such as those who met covertly in the Skirrid.

  Later that day he returned with Dewi, Caradoc and Islwyn, another of their coven, and began the arduous task of digging a grave pit near an old yew in the corner of the graveyard. They had to avoid the roots, but the shelter of the tree had slightly lessened the depth of the frost, and within two hours they had gone down a sufficient depth to accommodate the rough coffin that one of the mill workers had fashioned. As they finished digging the hole, Owain took Dewi and Caradoc aside and gave the younger man a stern warning about his loose mouth.

  ‘But it was only to Rosamund!’ he protested. ‘How was I to know she would carry tales to her father?’

  ‘Well, she’ll carry no more, by the looks of it,’ snapped Owain. ‘Ralph Merrick says he’ll have you whipped if you set foot in Kentchurch again – and probably he’ll have you hanged if you try a second time!’

  Dewi responded by giving his son a smart clout across the ear, which made the young man stagger. ‘You silly fool, you put all of us in danger with your idle chatter! Let’s pray that none of this comes to the ears of those in Grosmont!’

  Their altercation was cut short by the return of the parish priest, who came to see if they had finished the grave. After he had inspected it, and declared it better than their sexton could have done, Owain took him aside and spoke in a low voice.
‘Father, talking of sextons, do you happen to know who is the sexton at Abbey Dore now? Is it still a Welshman called Meredydd?’

  The parson looked at him covertly, suspecting this was no casual enquiry. ‘I think he is still there, but why do you ask?’

  Owain became evasive, still not sure of where the priest’s sympathies lay. ‘Digging this hole made me think of sextons – and I had heard that that post at the abbey was almost a family benefice, handed down from father to son.’

  ‘I would not know about that, Owain, but certainly the fellow there now is called Meredydd. It is not often I go there, as local priests are not always welcome at Cistercian houses.’

  Abbey Dore was a large and very rich abbey at the bottom of the Golden Valley, which ran down the eastern edge of the Black Mountains.

  Owain was on the point of letting Father Samson into the secret, but after having castigated Caradoc for the same indiscretion he decided to keep quiet.

  The diggers adjourned to the Skirrid for well-earned refreshment, during which Owain was beset with people offering their sympathy for the loss of his father. Eventually he was able to retire to a corner of the taproom with Dewi, his son and two others, Alun and Cynan, who had offered to go with him to Gwynedd.

  ‘We have to see my father safely into the ground tomorrow,’ he began soberly. ‘Then we need to carry out his last wishes, by recovering these relics and taking them to our prince up north.’

  Dewi nodded in agreement. ‘The will of a dying man, especially one with the courage of Hywel ap Gruffydd, must be respected. So what are we going to do?’

  ‘It’s time to tell you where the bones of Arthur rest,’ said Owain. ‘And this time, no one – and I mean no one,’ he added, glaring at the abashed Caradoc. ‘No one breathes a single word until our task is accomplished . . . is that understood?’

  There were nods and grunts from the four heads that were inclined close to his. Then he stood up and swallowed the rest of his ale. ‘Come outside. I’ll not reveal the hiding place in an alehouse, as I said before.’