Hill of Bones

by The Medieval Murderers

  ‘Leave them. This is more important. I think I have a way to help your master. Have you heard of a man named Serkan?’

  ‘I’ve heard vague rumours; some kind of preacher isn’t he? A miracle-worker? They’re always springing up. The gullible will believe anything.’

  ‘This one’s different,’ the man said earnestly. ‘They say he really can work miracles and exorcise the most stubborn of demons. As it happens he’s set up camp not far from here, a place called Solsbury Hill. If your master were to take this mirror to him, he would be able to exorcise it and cure your master of this madness.’

  Godfrey waved a dismissive hand. ‘I tell you they’re all charlatans. Neither that foul spring-water the monks are dipping him in nor any miracle-worker is going to restore his sanity.’

  ‘What harm can it do to try?’ the man persisted.

  ‘It’s a waste of . . .’ Godfrey suddenly paused. It had taken a few moments for that little word ‘harm’ to penetrate the wine fumes fogging his brain, but now that it had, he fastened upon it. Harm, yes, just what harm could it do? Perhaps the harm in question could even prove to be lethal. Richard of York was a generous benefactor and would reward with wealth and position anyone who helped him to take his rightful place on the throne. Not even Richard would risk openly raising his hand against the King, but if the King’s death could be blamed on some vagabond miracle-worker, that might be very fortuitous. Richard could have the man hanged, drawn and quartered, or burned alive for treason, in a suitable display of grief and outrage that would gain him only favour with the populace. Of course, it would not be so fortuitous for this Serkan, whoever he was, but then prophets loved to be martyred. It’s what they dreamed of, wasn’t it?

  Godfrey grinned. ‘Solsbury Hill, did you say? Can you tell me how to find it?’

  ‘Rouse yourself,’ William bellowed in Alfred’s ear. ‘Do you call this a faithful watch?’

  The old man started violently and gazed bemusedly around him as if he couldn’t recall where he was. ‘I was only closing my eyes, Master, the better to listen.’

  ‘But you didn’t hear me coming, did you?’

  Alfred shrugged sullenly. ‘Anyway, it’s near dawn. Them evil spirits has to return to the earth at cockcrow. They’ll not work mischief now.’ He shivered and held out the stump of his right arm towards the little fire, one of several fires William had ordered to be lit around the perimeter of the hill top.

  ‘Demons are at work night and day without ceasing, Alfred. We must constantly be vigilant.’

  But as William watched the first streaks of red creeping into the eastern sky, he felt the tightness in his chest ease just a little. He was almost sure the demon who was hunting him would not risk attacking in daylight. The danger was over for another night.

  He patted Alfred on the shoulder. ‘Go and rest awhile ’till it’s time to eat.’

  Alfred painfully levered himself to his feet with his staff and glanced across the hill top towards the east. The sun was rising as a ball of blood into the fiery sky.

  He grunted. ‘Don’t like the look of that. You know what they say – “A red sun has water in his eye.” I reckon we’re in for a soaking afore it rises again.’

  For the last two nights since Letice had been murdered, William had posted men on watch through the night. The excuse was that the devil’s minions, angry that he was casting out demons, were massing, prowling around their fortress, trying to destroy them. He was vague about whether these dogs of the devil were human or spirit.

  His followers had, of course, noticed the absence of Letice, not least because of her constant mutterings, but also because of her skill at catching anything that moved for her cooking pot, which was constantly bubbling away. William said only that Letice had been taken from them and that they should not try to seek her, for there were mysteries on this hill that had no earthly explanation, forces that were stronger than any power they had yet encountered. Even Martin seemed willing to be convinced now that Letice had not met her death by any human hand, and little wonder, for though as a sexton’s son he had seen more corpses than most village lads, none had been so strangely adorned.

  The sudden vanishing of Letice, and William’s warning, had been unnerving enough to have every one of his disciples volunteering to keep watch, swearing to rouse their master at the first sign of attack. Not that William would have taken much rousing. What little sleep he’d had these past two days had been disturbed by dreams in which serpents, as huge as dragons, had erupted out of the hillside and wriggled up on all sides towards him, their long fangs dripping with green poison that burst into flames as it fell. William would wake screaming and sweating. His disciples watched him wide-eyed, whispering that his spirit had been wrestling with demons as he slept. That much was true, but the demons William fought in his sleep were not the spirits that haunted Solsbury Hill.

  A rose-pink light had begun to trickle down into the valley. Despite the sun not yet having fully risen, it was already beginning to feel close and airless, even up on the hill. William glanced down. Two horses and their riders were approaching along the track leading from Bath. He stiffened, and then tried to calm himself with the knowledge that Edgar would never approach him so openly and in company. The riders tethered their mounts to some trees at the bottom of the hill and toiled slowly up towards the camp.

  Martin, as always, bustled up to greet them and soon led them over to where William stood on the rim of the hill, before respectfully withdrawing.

  As soon as the lad was out of earshot, one of the two men bowed in courtly manner and cleared his throat. ‘My master seeks your help. He is suffering from . . . a melancholia.’

  William scarcely needed to be told that. The man’s master was a thin, sallow-faced man, his skin made paler by his black clothes. He stared into the middle distance, his eyes dull and unfocused, his shoulders hunched as if he was hiding even from himself.

  ‘And is it a lover’s melancholy, a malcontent’s melancholy or a melancholy of reason?’ The question came out of William’s lips without thought. When he had learned his trade as a physician it was the first thing he had been taught to ask.

  The servant uneasily glanced at his master. ‘Of reason, but more than that. My master possesses a silver mirror, the nature of which troubles him.’

  ‘How does it trouble him?’

  ‘He sees things in it that are not reflections of what stands before it. He sees the face of a man long dead.’ Again the servant glanced at his master, but the man gave no sign he’d even heard what was said.

  William frowned. ‘I must see this mirror.’

  It took the servant several attempts to rouse his master to respond, as if his spirit had travelled a long way from his body and had to be recalled. Finally, and with great reluctance, the master opened his black coat and revealed a leather bag hanging from his neck. With hands trembling so violently he could scarcely unfasten the buckles, he withdrew a flat, round object about the span of his own hand.

  As soon as William laid eyes on it the blood began to pound in his temples. It was as if the sun itself had fallen to earth, for the gold and silver and blood-red rubies glittered so brightly in the morning light that he could scarcely look at it without being dazzled. The mirror must be worth a king’s ransom.

  His mind raced. These men would probably pay him something for a cure, but judging by the plainness of their clothes, he guessed it wasn’t going to be a generous amount, not nearly enough to buy passage on a ship. But if he could get his hands on this mirror, he could go to any distant land he pleased and live in the lap of luxury when he got there.

  But it was plain from the way this man reverently clasped the mirror, unable to tear his gaze from it, that he was not simply going to hand it over, even if William convinced him it was cursed. No, something more elaborate would be required if he was going to part this man and his mirror.

  William adopted his most authoritative voice. ‘There is a demon in this mirror, whi
ch takes the semblance of a dead man. It is a trick they often use.’

  For the first time, the thin man spoke, but still did not lift his eyes from the mirror. ‘No, you are wrong. It bears the image of a holy saint,’ he said in a dull tone.

  ‘On the reverse,’ William said firmly. ‘The saint faces away from the mirror, so that the demon is able to hide behind the holy image, just as on a coin the head of the King can never see what is stamped on the other side. You must return tonight, so that I may exorcise it and when I do, the melancholy and all else that troubles your mind will vanish with the demon.’

  A look of desperate hope flickered across the man’s face. ‘But why can you not do so now?’

  To William’s surprise it was the servant who came to his rescue. ‘Master, the mirror is silver and it’s the moon that governs that element. Therefore, the chances of success will be greatly improved if the exorcism is carried out under her domain.’

  His master seemed to wilt again, retreating back into himself.

  The servant nodded to William. ‘I will bring my master back tonight, as soon as it is dark. I assure you, he will be here.’

  Godfrey purchased a beaker of tepid cider from one of the market stalls and threw it down his throat almost in a single swallow. He drew out a kerchief and waved it ineffectually at a cloud of flies buzzing round his head, before mopping the sweat from his forehead. The air was as hot and sticky as a blacksmith’s armpit. Since noon thick clouds had been building in the sky, giving it a dense yellowish haze that seemed only to intensify the heat. The stench from the rubbish and offal lying around the market place was enough to sicken the stomach for life. But, he consoled himself, if all went to plan he had to endure only one more day in this stinking sewer of Bath.

  This man Serkan had proved to be all he had hoped for and more. He had gambled that this prophet would take little persuasion to perform his healing at night. Such things were always more dramatic and appealing to the crowd then, and these charlatans loved to perform for a crowd. He had little doubt the unwitting Serkan would play his part beautifully; all Godfrey had to do was to arrange a little performance of his own, but for that he needed a player.

  He’d been watching the actors at the far end of the market place for a couple of hours now. Five men, and a couple of lads dressed as women, had been struggling to entertain the crowd, but most people were either too occupied with the business of buying and selling, or too exhausted by the heat, to want to stand around and watch. The players had given up the struggle and were packing up their wooden wagon for the day.

  Godfrey sidled up to one of them, a giant of a man, who was sitting on a barrel, pulling off a mask. He’d been playing the part of a lion or perhaps it was a wolf – the costume was so ragged it was hard to tell.

  ‘You want to make some money?’ Godfrey said, trying not to show his disgust at the overpowering stench of sweat and onions, which was oozing out of every pore.

  ‘Make a change,’ the actor grumbled. ‘People in this city are so mean they’d not even share their fleas with you. So what are you offering?’

  Godfrey tipped the contents of a leather purse into his own palm and thrust it out. The man whistled, as well he might for it would take him months to earn as much.

  ‘Half now, the other half when the job’s done.’

  ‘And what’s the job? You want me to kill a man for that?’ He sounded as if he wouldn’t have objected even to a spot of murder for that size of a purse.

  Godfrey grinned. ‘No, nothing like that. I just want to play a little jest on a friend of mine. Tonight he’s going up to Solsbury Hill. You know it?’

  The actor nodded.

  ‘There’s some new prophet camped up there. You know the type, says the world is going to end in thirty days.’

  The man rolled his eyes and grimaced.

  ‘I’ve been teasing my friend that this hill is haunted by the ghosts of the wild men and outlaws who’ve lived there. So what I thought was, you could dress as a wild man and leap out at him, give him a bit of a fright.’

  ‘I could dress up as an outlaw, that’d be easier,’ the actor said.

  ‘No,’ Godfrey said hastily. ‘It must be a wild man. It’s a private jest, you understand. His wife calls him her wild man.’

  The player grinned. ‘Gets a bit carried away in the bedchamber, does he?’

  ‘Something like that,’ Godfrey agreed. ‘Here, see, I have a costume already for you.’ He opened a sack and showed the actor the bundle inside. ‘What do you say?’

  The proffered coins disappeared into the player’s scrip in less time than it takes for a hound to swallow a piece of meat. Hands were shaken and pressed to the market cross to seal the bargain, and they parted, both men grinning to themselves at their good fortune.

  Godfrey watched the player amble off in the direction of the nearest inn, clutching the sack. He only hoped the actor wouldn’t get too drunk and forget to turn up, but he was counting on the man’s greed for the other half of the purse.

  Though he said so himself, the costume had been a masterstroke: linen cloth, covered in pitch to which had been stuck frazzled hemp, so that the wearer would appear as a shaggy monster covered in long hair from head to foot. The final addition was a set of light chains that would clank whenever the wearer moved. It was identical to the now infamous costume Henry’s grandfather Charles had worn at a ball, a costume that had nearly cost the French King his life.

  Henry was teetering on the very brink of madness; the appearance of his grandfather would be just the little push he needed to send him over the edge of sanity, and as he fled in terror, over the edge of the hill too, with a dagger between his ribs. King Charles had miraculously survived his attempted assassination. Godfrey would make quite sure his grandson would not be so lucky.

  Ursula looked somewhat less appealing in the daylight than she had three nights ago in the dark. Her swollen, red-rimmed eyes didn’t help, but nevertheless there was something about the way she was frantically wringing her hands and gazing up so helplessly at William that made him long to kiss her again. But kissing was evidently the last thing on the girl’s mind.

  ‘My father has discovered I was out all night. The watchman on the city gate told him he’d seen me go out and what time I returned. Father is furious. He says my reputation is ruined. He’s going to send me to a nunnery. He means it. But I can’t be walled up in one of those places for the rest of my life. I won’t! I’d go mad. I’d kill myself !’ She lifted her chin with a flash of her old spirit. ‘That’s why I’ve run away.’

  William stared distractedly at her. ‘Run away. Where will you go? Have you friends who—’

  ‘Here. I’ve run away here to you. I’m going to stay with you, become one of your disciples. And . . .’ she hesitated, blushing, ‘. . . when we are married, then—’

  ‘Married!’ William repeated aghast.

  ‘Of course we will be married. Did you think I wouldn’t consent to be your wife? You said that I was chosen to be your consort. You said our lovemaking would create the divine energy that would transform the world, like the alchemist can turn lead into gold.’ She beamed at him. ‘Did you think I wouldn’t accept you as my husband? How modest you are.’

  For a moment, William was at a loss for words, then he recovered himself. ‘What . . . what about your father – does he know this is where you were that night?’

  ‘He questioned the stable boy and the snivelling little sneak told him everything.’

  William groaned. The last thing he needed tonight was some irate father storming up the hill to retrieve his runaway daughter and interrupting the exorcism. That would ruin everything. If he didn’t get his hands on the mirror tonight, he’d never get another chance, for the man would hardly be likely to return, not if some merchant arrived and accused him of seducing the girl.

  ‘Ursula, you can’t stay here. This is the first place your father will look when he finds you missing and you don’t want him disco
vering you here and dragging you straight off to that nunnery.’

  ‘But where can I go? I can’t go back home.’ She was struggling to hold back the tears.

  William suddenly saw that she was no wanton seductress, only a scared little girl. A spasm of guilt flickered through him, but it passed almost before he recognised it.

  ‘Do you have an aunt or uncle, a cousin perhaps, in some neighbouring town?’

  ‘My grandmother lives in Saltford, but I can’t go there. She’s more strict than my father. She’d take me straight to the nunnery herself, probably an even worse one.’

  William frowned, thinking rapidly. ‘If I send Martin to your father’s house with a message to say you are with your grandmother that will give you time to get away.’

  And, he thought, stop the old man charging up here, at least for tonight. Tomorrow, he didn’t care where the girl’s father searched, he would be on his way to a port with that mirror.

  Ursula’s fearful expression melted away and, smiling, she held out her hand to him. ‘Then I can stay here.’

  ‘No!’ The word burst out of William more forcibly than he had intended.

  Ursula’s eyes opened wide in alarm.

  William tried to speak more calmly. ‘Martin’s message will buy you only a night and, perhaps a day, at the most. Sooner or later your father is bound to find out you are not with your grandmother and come searching up here. Do you have money with you?’

  The abrupt question seemed to startle her. ‘A . . . a little and my jewels.’

  At least that was something, William thought. Best to send her to a city where she could easily lose herself among the crowd and where the arrival of a girl travelling alone would pass unremarked and unremembered.

  ‘You must ride to Bristol, Ursula. There, take lodgings at an inn and wait for me.’

  Ursula looked stricken. ‘But I’ve been there only once with my parents. I can’t travel alone. You have to come with me!’

  ‘There are many troubled souls coming to see me tonight. I must stay to help them, but in a day or two my work here will be over and I will follow you. There is a woman in the city who sells spices in the market place near the cross. Everyone knows her. Goes by the name of Pavia. I will leave word with her when I’ve arrived and tell you where to meet me.’