Hill of Bones

by The Medieval Murderers

  ‘Eldred, what are you doing here?’ he rasped. ‘Why have you left your duties?’

  There were a dozen monks within hearing distance and Eldred sidled up to the sacrist to murmur in his ear, ‘You must come to the presbytery at once, brother! An evil thing has happened!’

  Hubert scowled at his lowly assistant, but something in Eldred’s voice persuaded him not to make a public issue of it in the cloister. He followed Eldred as he scurried back to the presbytery and crossed to the other side without acknowledging the high altar. Hubert crossed himself as he bent a knee, then prepared to berate the other man for not doing the same. But his protests died in his throat as Eldred reached the aumbry and with a dramatic gesture, pulled open the doors to display the broken lock and the bare shelf.

  ‘The chalice and the pyx, Master! Gone!’

  The sacrist was speechless. Then with a moan, he dropped to his knees and peered inside the aumbry. His hand groped blindly at the back of the upper shelf, as if his sense of touch might reassure him that his sight was defective. When he rose to his feet, his normally pallid features were almost dead white with shock.

  ‘How can this be? What have you done, fellow?’

  ‘Nothing, Master! I found it like this, not ten minutes ago,’ wailed Eldred. ‘See, the staple has been torn from the wood!’

  With trembling fingers, Hubert rattled the still-closed padlock and prodded the long rivets hanging loosely from the staple.

  ‘You swear by Almighty God that you had no hand in this?’ he hissed. He would liked to have yelled at the top of his voice, but the sanctity of this place overcame even the horror of the situation.

  ‘Of course, Master!’ said the terrified but still outraged Eldred. ‘I carry a key – why should I break the doors?’

  Hubert of Frome managed to pull himself together and his pallor began to change to a rising flush as anger and fear of retribution flooded his system.

  ‘Prior Robert must be told at once! The chalice was priceless, as well as being a historic legacy. And the pyx . . .!’ A sudden thought occurred to him and his face blanched once again. ‘Holy Mary! Was there Blessed Host within it?’

  Eldred shook his head emphatically. ‘None was reserved after the last Mass – it was all used.’

  Hubert puffed out a long breath of relief. ‘Thank God for that!’ he sighed, crossing himself fervently. If consecrated wafers had been stolen along with the sacred vessels, not only would it have been a greater sacrilege, but the pillaged Host would have had a high monetary value. Witches and necromancers set great store by such rare material for their evil rituals and spells.

  With sudden resolve, the sacrist grabbed the loose sleeve of Eldred’s robe and pulled him towards the doorway into the side passage.

  ‘Come with me, we must find the prior immediately!’ he brayed, releasing Eldred’s arm and padding ahead of him back to the cloister door. The unhappy lay brother followed him, his feet slapping on the flagstones as they went into the cloister. The sacrist grabbed the ring of a nearby door, which led into the stores.

  ‘I saw the prior go in here after dinner. He was seeking Brother Gilbert,’ he said in a voice trembling with agitation, as he pushed the stout door open. Inside it was gloomy, the only light coming from small apertures high up on the walls, laced with wicker mesh to prevent birds from entering to steal the grain that was stored in large tubs. Partitions divided the long chamber into sections, but left a central aisle running its full length.

  ‘He will be down at the end, in Brother Gilbert’s cell,’ muttered Hubert, pattering down the aisle, past cubicles piled with flour, oats, wheat and fresh vegetables, others containing bales of coarse cloth, kegs of French wine, furniture, candles and all the provisions necessary to sustain a monastic house.

  At the end was an arch, beyond which was a chamber stretching across the width of the building, with double doors on the right leading into the abbey yard. A large table was set in the centre, and to the left was a desk where another monk was perched on a high stool. He was busily writing lists of merchandise with a quill on sheets of parchment, held flat with small pebbles from the nearby River Avon.

  The sacrist marched up to the table, where two more monks were hunched over a large pile of silver pennies, counting them into leather bags. One was the cellarer, Brother Gilbert, a squat, heavily built man, with black hair shaved high on the back of his neck and temples in the Norman style, leaving a dense rim below his tonsure. The other was Prior Robert, the dictatorial head of the abbey. Though an abbey should have been led by an abbot, the monastery had reverted to a priory a century before, when John of Tours, King William Rufus’ physician, moved the bishopric of Somerset from Wells to Bath and built a great new cathedral on the site.

  The present prior was a corpulent man with wiry dark hair. His chubby face carried an almost permanent benign smile, but the responsibilities of his office had eroded his patience so that if he was crossed, this could vanish, to be replaced by a show of temper. At the sound of someone approaching, his bag of money dropped with a clunk onto the table, as he turned his head to beam at his sacrist, whose job he had held himself before his elevation to prior.

  ‘Dear Brother Hubert, you seem in a hurry! I cannot be disturbed now, we are accounting for the wool sales.’

  ‘Prior, you must come at once!’ the agitated sacrist cried. He clutched the prior’s arm with his hand, which Robert shook off irritably, but before he could protest further, Hubert gabbled out the story of the missing treasures.

  The sanctimonious prior placed the palms of his hands together high before his face in an attitude of prayer and rolled his eyes upwards towards heaven.

  ‘O Lord my God, I beseech Thee to assure me that this is some grave mistake. Surely this cannot be!’

  Then he dropped his hands and spun round, snarling at both Hubert and Eldred, who was cowering behind the sacrist.

  ‘What have you done, you wretched souls? Which of you has stolen these priceless relics – or forgotten to lock the aumbry, eh?’ He was quivering with rage, arms upraised, his fingers clawing the air.

  ‘The fastenings have been smashed, Prior,’ quavered Hubert. ‘You must come and see for yourself!’

  Robert shoved the two men aside and stormed ahead of them to the cloister door, with the others, including the cellarer, hurrying after him, leaving the young clerk Maurice to guard the bags of money on the table. In the presbytery, it was a matter of a moment for the prior to confirm both that the staple had been wrenched out of the door and that the top shelf was empty.

  ‘I possess a key, Prior!’ whined Hubert, determined to get his alibi in first. ‘So I could not be involved in this sacrilege!’

  ‘Nor I, for I too hold one,’ boomed Brother Gilbert, aggressively. He was a short-tempered man, as most of the residents of the abbey could testify.

  The three monks swivelled to glower at Eldred, who nervously grabbed the ring on his belt and held up his own key.

  ‘I also have a key! It is my task to clean those blessed vessels,’ he said timorously. ‘Which I have done faithfully these past four years,’ he added.

  The prior took one last desperate look into the aumbry, as if the chalice and pyx might have miraculously reappeared during the last half-minute. Then he moved to the centre of the presbytery and dropped to his knees before the altar. Once again lifting his supplicant hands before his face, he prayed in loud high-pitched voice for God, his Son, the Holy Mary and all the saints and angels to reveal who had done this awful act and to restore the sacred vessels to them, so that their humble servants might continue to worship in the manner to which they were accustomed.

  The others, well aware of Prior Robert’s ostentatious show of piety, listened with varying degrees of impatience, more concerned with their own vulnerability when the prior unleashed his ire upon them. They had not long to wait, for as soon as Robert had finished talking to his Creator, he rose to his feet and with a face like thunder, pointed a quivering finger
at Eldred.

  ‘Sacrist, send for the proctor’s men to seize this fellow!’

  The fact that Eldred had suspected that he would be made the scapegoat did not lessen the terror with which he heard these words.

  ‘Prior, I am innocent!’ he screamed. ‘It was I who ran to tell the sacrist. I handle those holy things almost every day! Why should I steal them after all this time?’

  Surprisingly, Hubert spoke up for him. ‘Prior, he does have a key. Why would he break the fastenings?’

  Robert ignored him. ‘Send for the proctors, I say! Let the processes of canon law and the judgement of Almighty God decide on his guilt.’ He crossed himself vigorously again. ‘And now, set up a search throughout the abbey . . . throughout the whole town! Go, marshal every monk, every lay brother, every kitchen boy to leave no stone unturned! We must find those sacred treasures!’

  The two proctor’s men were what passed for the police force of the abbey, keeping order amongst the lay brothers, the servants and, less often, the monks themselves. They were nominally lay brothers in that they enjoyed the Church’s protection from the secular law, but in reality were a pair of strong-arm men not over-imbued with intelligence. The actual proctors were a pair of the more senior monks, charged with the discipline of the brethren, but it was their two servants who carried out the day-to-day policing of the large abbey compound, which behind its high wall, occupied most of the south-eastern quarter of the city.

  Within minutes of the prior’s peremptory command, they had grabbed Eldred and marched him off to the detention cell, a small outhouse built on to the end of the stable block at the south end of the abbey yard. As well as for the storage of animal fodder, it was used mostly for housing drunks, beggars and troublemakers found in the abbey yard, which was open to the public.

  Servants, lay brothers and even novitiate monks who had transgressed the rules were also incarcerated in the cell on a diet of bread and water until they had expiated their sins. The Church jealously guarded its independence from the legal apparatus of the State, strengthened by old King Henry’s penitent promise after the murder of Thomas Becket.

  After the first shock of arrest had passed off, Eldred became more philosophical about his plight, as he was sure that his innocence would soon become apparent. Although it was well over a century since King William the Bastard had conquered England, there was still a prejudice against Saxons such as himself, even though generations of intermarriage had blurred the distinction. He was being set up as the villain by the largely Norman Church, mainly because of his name and fair Saxon hair and complexion.

  Despondently, he sat on the bare board that formed the bed and looked at the rest of the furnishings – a pile of hay, a battered leather bucket for his ablutions and a large wooden cross on the wall, set there by the pious Robert to remind prisoners that the Almighty was always watching them. There was nothing else to comfort him, apart from a rough blanket folded on the end of the bench. There was no window and the only light came through a gap above the heavy oaken door, which also admitted a strong stench of horse manure from the adjacent stables.

  Eldred’s first concern was for his wife, Gytha. Before he was dragged away, he had managed to plead with Hubert to let her know of his arrest, so that when he failed to return home that night, she would not think that he was either dead or had abandoned her. The Abbey did not oblige lay brothers to be either celibate or resident, and Eldred and his wife lodged with two other families in a small house in Binnebury Lane, only a few hundred paces away from the main abbey gate. They had no living children and their one half of a room, divided by a curtain from a family of four, was enough for them to be content with their lot.

  A few hours passed and no one came near him. As the afternoon waned, he heard the bells of the abbey church tolling for compline. It was hot and stuffy in the little room, but there was no water to drink. Eldred assumed that the prior was not going to starve him to death, or until he confessed to a crime he had not committed, but he was getting hungry, having missed his midday meal in the servants’ hall.

  The thick door had no cracks for him to peer through, so he had only sounds to tell him what was happening outside. The abbey yard was a busy place, as townsfolk came in on many errands, and it was a focus for gossip and business dealings. Goods came constantly to the cellararium, ox-wagons and handcarts bringing supplies to feed and clothe the many inhabitants of the abbey. Horses whinnied nearby as they were taken in and out of the stables and the shouts of yard boys rang out as they sluiced down the soiled floors. Farriers came to shoe horses at the forge opposite, and the saddlery at the other end of the stables was always busy. But no one came near Eldred and he began to wonder if he had been totally forgotten.

  His dry tongue was cleaving to the roof of his mouth and his empty stomach was rumbling before he heard the noise of the bar being lifted from its sockets on the outside of the door. Almost blinded by the light of the early evening sun, he squinted as the welcome figure of Gytha was silhouetted in the doorway. Behind her, he saw the burly figure of William, one of the proctor’s men, who pushed her inside and slammed the door, though he did not replace the bar.

  ‘I’ll give you a couple of minutes, that’s all!’ he yelled from outside.

  The plump goodwife of about thirty, another fair-haired Saxon, put a basket on the floor, then threw her arms around Eldred.

  ‘What have you been up to, you silly man?’ she cried, with an attempt to cover her distress with scolding bravado. ‘I’ve brought you a skin of ale and some bread and meat. Now tell me what’s been going on!’

  They sat down side by side on the board and he explained how he had been unjustly accused of the theft.

  ‘It counts as sacrilege and a mortal sin!’ he wailed. ‘Unless I can prove my innocence, Prior Robert will probably hand me over to the sheriff, for it’s common knowledge that the Chapter despises us Saxon servants. Then I’ll hang, that’s for sure.’

  Gytha tried to console him, saying that his status as a lay brother would protect him through ‘benefit of clergy’, but Eldred was pessimistic. ‘The bishop’s Court can’t hang me if they find me guilty, but they can choose to hand me over to the King’s men for sentence and execution.’

  Again his wife tried to soothe him. ‘When I leave here, I’ll go straight to Selwyn and ask him for help. He’ll think of something!’

  Selwyn was Eldred’s best friend – in fact, almost his only friend, for in the restricted orbit of his life, he was confined to work in the abbey for twelve hours a day and spent most of the remainder on his bed. Selwyn was a servant in the King’s House, a substantial residence built in the abbey precinct three years before by the new King John. The monarch rarely visited it, but used it when his country-wide perambulations brought him to this part of the West Country. More often, it was loaned to other favourites in his court, so a permanent staff was kept there and Selwyn was one of the two stewards who maintained it. Though not a Saxon himself, he had struck up a friendship with Eldred, who often visited him in the kitchen of the King’s House and shared a pot of ale and a gossip.

  Before Gytha could elaborate on how Selwyn might be able to help, the door was flung open and William hustled her out. Before it was slammed shut again, she called out that she would bring him more food and drink in the morning.

  Eldred ate and drank the simple fare that Gytha had brought. Then, though it was still early, he settled down on the hay in preference to the hard bed, more hopeful now that his faithful wife was seeking some aid for him.

  When Gytha left her husband, she went straight to the King’s House to seek Eldred’s friend, Selwyn Vassel.

  Gytha was a determined woman who loved her husband, and she was grimly set upon rescuing him from the unjust predicament in which he now found himself. She marched across the abbey yard beside the high wall that separated it from the bishop’s palace, which occupied the south-western corner of the precinct. This barrier turned sharply left to reach the abbey’s
outer curtain wall. The King had built his house against this, almost opposite the West Front of the cathedral.

  At the front of the house was a wide flight of steps leading up to the main door, used only by the King himself or his invited guests. Gytha used a small door for servants and tradesmen on the further side. This led into a scullery and storeroom, beyond which was a large kitchen, where Selwyn was usually to be found. As the house was presently unoccupied by any of the nobility, none of the other servants was present, his fellow steward being away visiting his parents in Cheddar.

  Selwyn was a tall, erect man of forty years, with powerful shoulders and dark hair cropped short. He had a handsome and kindly face and as soon as Gytha entered, he jumped from his stool by the fire and sat her down opposite, giving her a pot of small ale to match his own. She hastily poured out her story and beseeched Selwyn to help his friend, swearing that he was innocent of the baseless accusation.

  ‘But they’ll hang him, I know!’ she wailed. ‘They have no idea who did this awful thing, but they need a scapegoat to satisfy the bishop.’

  Selwyn did his best to soothe her agitation and promised to do all he could to help. Eventually he rose and went to the door.

  ‘You bide here, Gytha. I’m off to talk to people around the abbey and see what the latest news might be.’

  He vanished, leaving the goodwife sitting anxiously by the small fire that burned in the hearth. When he returned half an hour later his face bore a grave expression, which further increased Gytha’s concern.

  ‘Virtually all the monks and servants have been searching the precinct, looking for the stolen vessels,’ he said. ‘This must be the only place they have not visited, as it is the King’s property.’