King Arthur's Bones

by The Medieval Murderers

  ‘Just a quick look, to make sure there really are bones in there,’ said Owain, rather hesitantly.

  ‘It’s not locked – just a tight-fitting lid,’ observed his nephew, tentatively poking at the top edge. It took more than that to open it, as the wood had swollen and distorted over the years, and Owain had to use the edge of a large, rusty hay-knife to prise it apart. Eventually the lid creaked open on its corroded brass hinges, revealing a layer of mould-stained linen covering the contents. Gingerly pulling that aside, they gazed down on a jumbled heap of mottled brown bones, some of which even their inexpert eyes recognised as human, especially as they glimpsed the rounded calvarium of a skull. They stared for a moment in awe, then spontaneously crossed themselves and mumbled a prayer in Welsh.

  ‘That’s enough!’ said Owain abruptly and pulled the linen back across the remains. ‘Let greater men than us do what they must with them.’

  As he was about to lower the lid, Madoc pointed to something lying between the cloth coverlet and the side of box.

  ‘There’s a pouch there. It might be important.’

  Owain lifted it out, a damp leather bag with a drawstring, patches of green mould growing thickly on its surface. Loosening the string, he looked inside, but there was nothing there but a small quantity of yellowish slime at the bottom. With a shrug, he put the pouch back again and closed the lid, pounding the warped wood until it sat firmly in place.

  They pushed the heavy box back under the straw and returned to Madoc’s house, but just as they reached the door they heard the sound of hooves coming at a canter, and a brown gelding dashed into the yard, bearing Arwyn on its back. He almost fell off in his haste and rushed across to them.

  ‘Owain, you must hide. They are searching for you!’ he gasped, grabbing at his uncle’s sleeve. ‘A man I often employ to help me with the thatching is working at Grosmont, and he came just now to tell me that Crouchback’s sergeant-at-arms has gone out of the castle with a couple of men to arrest you!’

  Owain stared at him in surprise. ‘What the hell for?’

  ‘It seems someone has denounced you as a traitor, intending to join the rebels fighting the king!’ gabbled Arwyn. ‘You must flee at once – hide yourself, for when they know you are not at home in Hoadalbert, my house and this place will be their next targets!’

  ‘Bloody Ralph Merrick, that’s who it will be!’ snarled Madoc. ‘He’d sell his own brother to curry favour with those bastards at Grosmont.’

  The two nephews hustled Owain away, urging him to vanish into the countryside for the time being and hide somewhere until he could slip away to North Wales.

  ‘We’ll meet you after dark at the dead elm on the banks of the Monnow,’ promised Arwyn. ‘I’ll bring some food and a blanket for you. Now go, for God’s sake. We’ll put them off with some tale about you having already gone away!’

  Dazed, but responding to their genuine fears, Owain trotted out of the barton and then downhill past the church, keeping going until he reached the thickly wooded strip of land that ran along the river. He vanished into the trees and loped for a mile deeper into the woods until he found a badger sett and sank into it gratefully, pulling his cloak around him as tightly as he could. Thankfully, the really icy weather had moderated and the wind was coming from the west, which meant rain by tomorrow. He sat there pondering who might have given him away, to send him scurrying into the forest like a hunted animal. Though Madoc had immediately put the blame on Ralph, Owain could hardly believe that his own brother would denounce him to the English.

  Others knew about the plan to go up to Gwynedd to join Dafydd’s army. There were the two sons, William and John, who had never got on with Owain and looked down on him as a peasant. Ralph’s wife and daughter knew of the plan, thanks to Caradoc’s big mouth, but of course there could be many others. At the Skirrid, Dewi had warned him against the landlord, though again he found it hard to accept that Eifion would knowingly betray him. What about the priest? He was a Welshman but, as far as Owain knew, he was not aware that they were planning to join Dafydd.

  The culprit was probably someone working at Kentchurch, who had picked up the gossip from Ralph or one of his family. Maybe they had not denounced him directly, but gossiped with folk at Grosmont, which was very near and had close connections with the Scudamore estate.

  There was nothing he could do about it now, except try to keep out of sight until he could slip out of the district and make his way north. Accepting this philosophically and giving thanks for the fact that he had no wife or children to abandon, he settled down into his badger hole and waited for dusk.

  ‘The swine’s not here, so let’s see if he’s holed up with his kin in Garway,’ growled the sergeant, aiming a kick at a stool, sending it flying in pieces across the room. He and one of his men had already trashed the place, ripping up the mattress and overturning the table in frustration. Outside, the others had pulled out the oxen’s hay from the byre and chased the pig from its sty, in a futile search for Owain ap Hywel.

  They mounted their horses and cantered off back to Grosmont, then on past Kentchurch towards Garway, where Sergeant Shattock burst first into Arwyn’s cottage half a mile outside the hamlet and then into Madoc’s at the barton. Neither of the men were at home, and after terrifying the wives and children, who genuinely knew nothing of what was going on, they scoured the neighbourhood until they found the two brothers, who professed similar ignorance of anything amiss.

  ‘What our uncle intends doing is none of our business,’ protested Arwyn. ‘He never tells us anything about his own affairs.’

  ‘His father has just died. You shouldn’t be hounding him like this!’ declared Madoc. ‘What mischief-maker told you these lies?’

  Shattock, a heavily built, florid man with a surly nature, gave the reeve a shove in the chest. ‘Watch your tongue, damn you! None of your business who told the steward. If we find you’ve been hiding him, you’ll both be wearing rope necklaces down at the castle gallows!’

  They soon lost interest and rode away, the sergeant complaining that he had missed his dinner because of this futile mission. It was obvious that they were not going to take this allegation about Owain all that seriously, unless the steward, Jacques d’Isigny, sent them out once again to hunt him down.

  Back at Grosmont, the sergeant went for his food before seeking out Jacques to report their failure. The castle was in state of chaos, and it was just as well that the recent defeat of the main Welsh forces had reduced any risk of a local attack, for a length of the curtain wall and one of the main towers had been pulled down in order to rebuild them according to the ambitious designs of Prince Edmund.

  The steward, the principal officer of the barony and ruler of the castle when Edmund Crouchback was absent, took Shattock’s news calmly.

  ‘If the bastard turns up, just arrest him and then we’ll hang him,’ he said casually. ‘With the prince arriving in a few days, I’ve got better things to do than chase some local peasant.’

  Jacques d’Isigny was a tall, smooth-faced man of forty, with an olive skin that suggested a family origin in southern France. He dressed in clothes that were modest in style, but of the very best quality. His calm manner hid a ruthless nature, which made him a most efficient administrator. The fact that he was the senior civil servant of the king’s brother gave him a status well above the usual steward.

  As his lord was coming soon to check on the progress of the remodelling of his favourite castle, Jacques was understandably more concerned with this than catching some local renegade. If it had not been for a message from Sir Vincent Scudamore’s manor at Kentchurch, to the effect that he had been given news of this man’s seditious intentions, he probably would not have stirred himself to bother with the matter.

  But by the following morning Jacques d’Isigny would be very keen to lay hands on Owain ap Hywel.

  That night, Arwyn and Madoc met their uncle at the prearranged spot on the banks of the Monnow, about two miles from G
arway. They took him food and a carthen, a thick woollen blanket, and sat with him in the dark while he ate his fill.

  ‘We’ll take your pig down to your sister and bring the oxen up to the farm,’ said Madoc reassuringly, though in fact he was worried sick, not only about Owain’s plight but also about the risk to him and his family if they were found to be giving aid to a rebel.

  ‘What about the relics now?’ asked Arwyn. ‘We can’t leave them in the barn for long. They’re bound to be discovered sooner or later.’

  Owain shook his head sadly. ‘There’s no way I can take them up to Gwynedd now, even if I can get there myself. I doubt Dewi and the others will risk coming. It will be obvious after this treachery where they’ve gone, and their families would suffer.’

  ‘So what shall we do with the box?’ persisted Madoc. ‘Take it back to Abbey Dore?’

  Owain considered for a moment. ‘No, not yet anyway. Find somewhere safe to hide the bones, preferably in consecrated ground. It may be that I can come back and collect them later, if Prince Dafydd thinks it’s worth while.’

  They agreed and left their uncle to a solitary night, apart from the indignant badgers whose sett he was blocking. But a couple of hours later and a couple of miles distant, greater trouble was brewing.

  A shadowy figure lurked within sight of the bailiff ’s house at Kentchurch Court, patiently waiting in the gloom. Though there was a half-moon, the gathering rain clouds often blocked its light, but eventually the watcher’s persistence was rewarded. Before going to bed each night, Ralph Merrick did his rounds of the farm buildings to make sure everything was secure. At the stables, the bailiff checked that the hurdles were in place across the doorways and that the two ostler-boys were sleeping in their proper places on piles of hay. He had to make sure that the chicken pens were locked against foxes and the fire damped down in the kitchen shed.

  Ralph carried a lantern to light the interior of the buildings, a candle within a case that had thin sheets of pared horn as windows. As he began to walk back to the house, he thought he heard a noise in the bushes that ringed the yard. Holding up the lantern, he tried to see if there were the shining eyes of a fox or even a wolf, but the dim light of the single candle was too feeble.

  Shrugging, he turned away, but after only a couple of steps there was a commotion behind him and a heavy cudgel smashed down on the back of his head. He fell like a poleaxed bull, and by further ill chance his forehead landed on a large stone embedded in the pathway.

  Though the noise brought the stable-boys running to his aid, they found him deeply unconscious – and within the hour he was dead.

  ‘It’s that evil brother of his,’ sobbed Alice Merrick, sagging against her daughter in a melodramatic fashion. ‘He did this awful thing!’

  Jacques d’Isigny motioned to his wife to help the woman to a chair, and the silent, black-haired woman moved forward to assist Rosamund in settling her mother in a leather-backed chair. They were in the first-floor chamber of the north tower of Grosmont, the sound of hammering and sawing coming through the window-slits.

  ‘Tell me again what happened,’ commanded the steward.

  Alice related her brief tale through her sobs. ‘My husband went out to close down for the night, sir, as he always did,’ she blubbered. ‘Then one of the stable-hands rushed in to say that he was lying in the yard. There was a wound on the back of his head and a great bruise on his temple. We brought him in, but he died without recovering his wits.’

  A grey-haired man, dressed in a sombre but good-quality cote-hardie, nodded his agreement. ‘I can confirm that, steward, as they came rushing up to my court to tell me my bailiff had been assaulted and I was there when the poor man died.’

  This was Sir Vincent Scudamore, and Jacques was careful to be deferential to a man who was second only to Prince Edmund in the hierarchy of the district.

  ‘It seems this carter is the obvious suspect, sir. We were already seeking him as a renegade Welshman intent on continuing their hopeless fight.’

  Sergeant Shattock, lurking near the doorway with one of his men, was bold enough to speak up. ‘We’ll get him today, sirs, never fear. I already have all my men-at-arms out seeking this Owain.’

  Scudamore nodded his approval. ‘I suggest that you use my hounds in your search – their master is the son of the dead man, so he will have an added reason to succeed.’

  This brought forth a fresh bout of howling from Alice Merrick, and her daughter Rosamund tried to soothe her, though the girl herself did not seem unduly distressed at the loss of her father.

  Vincent Scudamore walked to the door and jerked his head at the steward to accompany him. Outside, with the sergeant in attendance, he spoke to d’Isigny in a low voice.

  ‘This man Owain had a dispute with my bailiff a few days ago, so one of his sons tells me. On the eve of Christ’s Mass he came to their house and uttered threats if they disclosed that he intended to go off to join the rebels in the north.’

  The steward nodded. ‘So I heard from the other son, the butcher, who came with the news of the murder earlier today. Obviously the miscreant must have decided that his elder brother had revealed his treachery to us – as, of course, was his duty.’

  ‘And had he?’ asked Vincent bluntly.

  ‘No. As it happens, it came from someone else. But nevertheless, the carter exacted his revenge on your bailiff with the sin of Cain on Abel.’

  The Lord of Kentchurch shook out the heavy riding cloak that he had been carrying over his arm and swirled it about his shoulders, ready to leave. ‘This is damned inconvenient, losing such a good servant,’ he snapped. ‘Now I shall have to find another to take his place.’

  As he started down the steps to the cluttered bailey, which looked more like a builder’s yard, he gave an exhortation to the steward. ‘Do everything you can to find this bloody man! I’ll send John down with his hounds as soon as I get home.’

  As Scudamore went to his horse, Jacques made a mental note to have the gallows put back up in the bailey, in spite of the builder’s objections.

  While more than a score of soldiers and a pack of hounds were beating the countryside, Madoc and Arwyn were worrying about the box of bones as well as the safety of their uncle. The news of the bailiff ’s death had already reached Garway by noon, and they had realized that Owain would immediately be the prime suspect.

  ‘With all this searching, that chest is not safe under the straw,’ declared Madoc. ‘We need to hide it somewhere well away from here, best of all back in Abbey Dore. There’s no chance now that Owain will be able to take it to Gwynedd as he’d planned.’

  ‘He’ll be lucky to get there himself,’ growled Arwyn. ‘But how are we going to move it? It’s too big to go in the pannier of a packhorse.’

  ‘I’ll have to bring the oxen back here, or they’ll starve. We can use them for the time being. The preceptory has to have some transport when our uncle’s gone.’

  They were standing outside Madoc’s cottage, well above the church and the preceptory, and he stared out westwards across the undulating countryside to the dark mountains that formed the edge of Wales. They agreed that Madoc would go to Hoadalbert to fetch the oxen, take the pig to Rhiannon’s house and give her the disturbing news about Owain now being a fugitive.

  ‘You’d better have a quiet word with Dewi in the mill,’ advised Arwyn. ‘Tell him to keep his head down for a while.’

  The two brothers moved to sit on a log outside the door, each with a quart of ale brewed by Madoc’s wife Olwen. They were silent for a while, staring out over the countryside, which today at least lay under a watery sun.

  ‘You don’t think he could have done it, do you?’ said Arwyn eventually. ‘His mood has been desperate since Llewelyn was killed.’

  Madoc looked indignantly at his younger brother. ‘For God’s sake, man! Of course not! He wouldn’t harm Ralph, other than perhaps with his tongue. He was his brother, objectionable though he might have been!’

 
; ‘Well, who did it, then?’ persisted Arwyn. ‘Someone lay in wait for Ralph and it must be a local, otherwise they wouldn’t know he had that regular round of the farm each night.’

  Madoc was implacable in his defence of the uncle who had virtually brought them up.

  ‘Anyone with bad intentions could spy on the place for a couple of nights and discover that . . . and almost every bailiff does the same. And how could Owain get up there last night, when he’s holed up in a badger sett two miles away?’

  Arwyn muttered something about two miles being nothing for a tough man like Owain, but he wanted to be reassured that his fears were unfounded. When their ale was finished, he went off to repair the thatch on one of the preceptory outbuildings. Madoc returned to his duties at the farm, checking on two labourers who were whitewashing the back of the calf shed, before he went for the ox-cart. In the yard he met one of the three Templar Knights who lived in the preceptory. This was Brother Robert de Longton, a thin, cadaveric man who had returned from the Holy Land some years before, following a severe illness.

  ‘What are all those men doing down in the lower fields, Madoc?’ he demanded.

  The reeve had no option but to tell him that they were searching for his uncle, in the mistaken notion that he had murdered the Kentchurch bailiff. The Templar clucked his tongue in concern.

  ‘A sad thing to disturb the peace of this village. We cherish the serenity of this innocent place.’

  Gathering his heavy black cloak around him, he stalked away, the eight-pointed red cross on his shoulder glowing in the pale sunlight. Madoc wondered how many Saracens he had killed in his time, which was seemingly at odds with his present pacifism.

  As the warrior-monk reached the gate leading into the grounds of the preceptory, he saw that the two other Templars had appeared, John de Coningham and the preceptor himself, Ivo de Etton. They began talking earnestly and de Longton’s gesturing hand told Madoc that he was relaying the latest news to his brothers-in-God.

  Later, as he set out on his pony to Hoadalbert, he saw more evidence of the soldiers from Grosmont. At the end of the strip fields sloping down to the river, iron helmets were bobbing among the bushes at the edge of the woods. As he neared the castle he saw another dozen men-at-arms marching out with menacing clubs dangling from their wrists, and when he had gone a little way along the road beyond Grosmont towards his uncle’s house the baying of hounds came clearly across the still winter air.