Hill of Bones

by The Medieval Murderers

  I had not thought to see Katherine Hawkins again so as I left the Bear, in company with Laurence Savage and Abel Glaze, I was surprised to find her in the inn yard.

  ‘Nicholas,’ she called softly, nearly cooing my name. The evening was still light since our play tonight had not been as lengthy as the previous one. My heart beat slightly faster to see her standing there, tall and elegant, in the dusk of the inn yard.

  ‘Oh-ho,’ murmured the others, straining to catch a glimpse of her. ‘Oh-ho.’ I waved them on and went over to join her.

  She was not alone. A young man was standing a little behind her. It was William Hawkins, I recognised him before she introduced us. She was not so foolish as to maintain that we’d met before. I might have almost run from their house that morning but now curiosity got the better of me. Why were they here in the inn yard? Shouldn’t they be closeted in mourning for a dead father and uncle? And another equally pressing question: did this young man really look like me?

  From some remark he made it was apparent that she’d already described to her cousin how the two of us had become acquainted at the play the previous evening – which was true enough. I don’t suppose she said anything of the further services I did for her, either the one at his dying father’s bedside or the other up in the little gable room.

  ‘We must talk, Nicholas,’ Katherine said to me. ‘But not here or in the house in Vicarage Lane either. Too many eyes there.’

  ‘Cousin Kate tells me she trusts you,’ said William Hawkins.

  They were a trusting pair of cousins, these Hawkinses. What secrets was I going to find out now?

  The three of us went to a nearby tavern called the Raven. The interior was dim and smoky, ripe for a consultation. We found a quiet corner with a table, bench and stool. I sat opposite the cousins.

  I took a better look at William Hawkins. He was about my height and build, although his voice did not – to my ears – sound very much like mine. I suppose he would be accounted handsome, which I took as a kind of compliment (to myself, of course). Mr Hawkins did not seem to have changed since his arrival home that morning, for his clothes were creased and travel-stained. I guessed he was normally clean-shaven like me, but now he was stubbly, as if he’d had no time to attend to himself. The only mark of mourning worn by either cousin was a black armband.

  When we were seated and provisioned with drink – beer for William and me, canary wine for Katherine – I asked him where he had been all these years and how it happened that he returned to his father’s house just too late. He was not a boastful fellow and did not pretend to great adventures.

  He said that, after many arguments with his father, he left Bath and went to seek his fortune in London. It even crossed his mind to become a player, like me. Failing in that, and making little progress in anything else, he wrote to Cousin Kate that he was planning to try his luck in the Americas. Somehow he ended up in Edinburgh instead and become secretary to a wealthy cloth maker. Memories of his father’s much smaller business, together with a clear head and a neat hand, enabled him to get the post and even to prosper in it, but it was hardly the daring voyage of discovery he’d proposed to himself on quitting home. A mixture of pride and shame had prevented him communicating again with his father or his cousin, but lately he’d been contemplating a return south. The decision was made for him when the old manufacturer died. That happened a month ago. It had taken William that time to travel back to Bath. His arrival on the day of his father’s death was good fortune – or bad fortune – depending on which way you looked at it.

  ‘I will not say I had any great love for my father, Nick,’ he said. ‘But I would have been glad to have seen him for one last time and to have him see me.’

  Katherine and I exchanged looks. For certain, she had not told him of my pretence on the previous night. She squeezed her cousin’s hand – they were sitting side by side – and said, ‘I believe Uncle Christopher died content, William. Even if he could not see you, I know for a fact that you were in his mind’s eye.’

  William looked fondly at her. Considering what had passed between us the previous night, I might have felt jealous but I did not. Instead I thought of the play we had just staged, A City Pleasure, about the kissing cousins from the country. Then I ordered another round of drinks from the potboy.

  This – the life story of William Hawkins, the obvious affection between him and Katherine – was all beside the point. Why did the Hawkinses want to talk with me? Before we could get to that point I handed over the commonplace book to Katherine, happy to get rid of it. She was happy to receive it too, saying it was the very item that she wanted to speak to me about and that she had, in her confusion and grief that morning, brushed aside when I intended to return it.

  ‘I recognise this,’ said William. ‘It was father’s.’

  ‘I entrusted it to Nick,’ said Katherine. ‘And I am glad I did, for I fear that Uncle Christopher’s friends would have taken it otherwise.’

  ‘The gentlemen who were in the house?’ I said.

  ‘Yes. They came to condole with me but they seemed more interested in going through Uncle’s papers and documents.’

  ‘Looking for his will?’

  ‘Mr Downey the lawyer already has a copy of that. They were in search of something else.’

  I waited for her to explain. They seemed reluctant to say more. Katherine looked at her cousin.

  Eventually, as if confessing to something slightly shameful, William Hawkins said, ‘My father was much occupied with stories of olden times, the days of knights and damsels and chivalry. He read fables and poetry. He even wrote verses himself. For years he attempted a great romance about one of King Arthur’s battles.’

  That explained the scrawled pages of poetry, the tapestries depicting knights jousting and hunting in Uncle Christopher’s bedchamber.

  William said, ‘There is a tale that Arthur himself fought a final battle close to Bath, a battle in which he slew many of the Saxon foe single-handed.’

  ‘It was on a hill outside the town,’ said Katherine. ‘Solsbury Hill, it is called now, but then it was known as Badon.’

  ‘There are other stories about the place,’ pursued William. ‘I suppose there are bound to be stories in a very old region like this. They say that treasures are buried on Solsbury Hill. There is talk of a magical mirror, for instance. Even of items that date from Arthur’s time. My father went searching on the hill, although I do not know whether it was for inspiration or for relics.’

  ‘And found them?’ I said.

  William shrugged.

  Katherine said, ‘He carried this book with him wherever he went. He made notes, he took down sayings that he approved of. He had ideas about how the manufacture of cloth might be improved and tried to design better looms.’

  She flicked through the book and held it open at one of the mechanical sketches. I nodded, then noticed something different on the opposite page. It wasn’t a weaver’s loom but a drawing of a hillside, dotted with trees. There was an arrow indicating north. There were a couple of crosses and other arrows and question marks. There was even an image of a bear a couple of inches tall, delicately drawn. I indicated the page.

  Katherine examined it and said: ‘This is most likely Solsbury Hill. The bear was the emblem of King Arthur. My uncle believed he had found the place where Arthur slew more than nine hundred of the enemy.’

  ‘Nine hundred!’

  ‘It was an age of heroes,’ said William Hawkins with a straight face.

  ‘He did sometimes talk of treasure on Solsbury Hill and of spirits who still linger about the place but I think this is what he meant,’ continued Katherine, thumbing through more pages until she came to some of old Christopher’s verses. She recited:

  ‘Of gold and silver they interr’d many a pound

  When these knightes’ corses were laid i’th’ground

  And Britain’s foes no footing found perdee

  After Arthur won full soverayntee.�
��

  ‘He used to read his verses to me when I was young,’ said Cousin William. ‘I am afraid that I did not always show a proper reverence for his words, and he struck me more than once when I yawned.’

  We were interrupted by the potboy returning with our drinks. I took a draught of mine.

  ‘The gold and silver aren’t real,’ I said after a moment, feeling on familiar ground since we talked of gold and silver all the time on stage and it was nothing more than words. ‘This is the language of poetry. Your uncle merely means the fallen bodies of Arthur’s knights, and so on. Just as the bear stands for Arthur, the knights’ bodies represent the treasure that is buried there.’

  ‘I know that,’ said Katherine. ‘But I do not think that Mr Maltravers or Mr Downey or Dr Price know it. They believe my uncle left some . . . some guide . . . to finding hidden treasures on Solsbury Hill or elsewhere. Mr Maltravers asked me before he left the house today whether there were any other papers, anything hidden away.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I said the only papers my uncle valued were his poetry. Said they were welcome to look at Uncle Christopher’s work if they wished. He would be pleased to have readers. What is in this book is only scribbled bits and pieces. Uncle paid to have his Arthur poem copied out properly in the new italic style.’

  ‘And what did they say to that?’

  ‘They aren’t interested in his poetry, Nicholas. Mr Maltravers laughed when I mentioned it. He did enquire about his black book, though, and I remembered you said that someone had asked you for it at the baths.’

  ‘“Asked” is one way of putting it.’

  Now William Hawkins spoke up: ‘Then I stepped in to protect my dear cousin from these intrusive questions so soon after my father’s death. I said that they could direct their questions to me.’

  ‘They must have been surprised to see you again after so many years.’

  ‘They were, but their real concern was whether I’d get in the way of their search through my father’s effects.’

  ‘Are you sure there is nothing in that book?’ I said. ‘Other people certainly seem to think so.’

  ‘See for yourself,’ said Katherine, passing the volume back across the table. The very casualness of the gesture told me she thought the book held no secrets and I did not even bother to pick it up again. I was glad to see the back of it, to be honest. Let others attend to the tangled affairs of the Hawkins family.

  From outside the Raven tavern I heard the bellman pass, ringing his bell, telling us all that it was ten o’clock. Time for honest citizens and players to be in bed. I drained the last of my drink.

  ‘I wish you well,’ I said. ‘I am returning to Mother Treadwell’s.’

  We said goodbye rather formally. Perhaps Katherine would have embraced me had it not been for the presence of William as well as of a dozen other individuals in the tavern. Before leaving the Raven I stopped to relieve myself – being a modern place it had its own house of office in the back yard – and then I went out into the street via an alley. The moon was up and near the full, as last night, but it was veiled by thin clouds and cast only a faint light.

  Perhaps a couple of minutes had elapsed since I’d parted from the Hawkinses. I could just about make out two individuals walking close together ahead of me. The cousins, presumably. Were they arm in arm? Hard to tell in the gloom. Anyway, what business was it of mine?

  Even as I looked the two figures increased to three. For a moment I thought they had been joined by a friend, but no friend would be moving so fast or raising his arms in such a threatening way. The sounds that came from up the street, grunts and cries, then a woman’s scream, sent me running towards them. But the cobbles were slippery with muck and I slid in something and fell with a thump. By the time I’d got to my feet again, the noise had stopped and I could see no one at all up the street.

  Although moving less rapidly now, I almost stumbled over the figure of William Hawkins. He was crouching above Katherine, who lay stretched on the ground. Hawkins stood up, panting hard, expecting a fresh attack and ready to lash out.

  I said, ‘It’s all right, it’s me, Nick Revill. What happened?’

  ‘I don’t know. Some man . . . Kate . . . oh, Kate . . .’

  He sank to his knees next to her. For an instant, I feared the worst, but she groaned and tried to sit up. William sighed in relief and supported her as she rose shakily to her feet. I stepped back. In the distance I saw a dancing speck of light, a firefly, then two of them. I thought the attacker was returning with reinforcements before realising that they would hardly be carrying lanterns. The fireflies converged, then drew nearer. There were footsteps on the cobbles, the bark of a dog, the ting of a bell.

  Too late, of course. This was typical of the bellman and the watch in any town. Where were they when you really needed them?

  William Hawkins and I were sitting in the dining room of the Vicarage Lane house. It was nearing midnight. The cousins had returned home after giving what little information they had to the watch – an unidentified man springing out of the dark from the porch where he’d been lying in wait, followed by a quick theft. The theft of the black book, which Katherine had been still holding as she walked along. Naturally, I recalled the rogue who’d accosted me in the King’s Bath. The same man? It seemed likely.

  Since the real malefactor had escaped, the bellman and his watch did their duty and detained me instead, imagining that I had a hand in the attack. This, despite the assurances of the Hawkinses as they limped off to dress their wounds that the opposite was true: I had actually come to their rescue.

  It took me a quarter of an hour before my protestations of innocence were accepted. In the end, I was allowed to go only after stressing my elevated position in the company of the King’s Men and insinuating that King James himself would be displeased if he heard that one of his principal players had been thrown into the local lock-up. Quite casually I said that I had an appointment in Whitehall to see him – King James, that is – when I returned to London, and that I would assure His Majesty of the loyal and intelligent servants he possessed among the Bath watch. If they detained me for a moment longer, however, I would have a very different tale to tell.

  They believed me. I might have said they were men of limited understanding but I nearly believed myself by the time I was done speaking. In fact, we parted on such good terms that I urged them to attend our performance on the next evening. They could easily do this before they went on duty at ten o’clock.

  I could have returned to Mother Treadwell’s but my blood was up after all this activity and I decided to call on the Hawkins household and see how things stood there. I would almost have welcomed an attacker in the few hundred yards it took to reach the house, so ready was I for a fight, but I arrived unassailed.

  William Hawkins welcomed me in and now we sat in the dining room. The house was hushed. It was late. The body of his father was laid out upstairs. The funeral would take place in a couple of days. We were recovering with a dose of his father’s aqua vitae. I did not find the fiery liquid soothing.

  Cousin Kate was in bed recovering from her ordeal in the street. She was not badly hurt but she was bruised and shaken. William was angry, not so much for himself but on her behalf. He was angry too with Hannah, the old servant, who had been – unwittingly, perhaps – the indirect cause of what had happened. I had described to William my morning encounter with the rogue in the King’s Bath, and how he tried to take the black notebook from me. I said the only person who could have deduced it was in my possession was Hannah. She must have spoken to one of the men in the house that morning. Hawkins strode from the room and went upstairs to where the old retainer was attending on Katherine. He was back within minutes, looking a whit less angry, and confirming what I’d thought. Hannah had referred to my presence in the house the previous night as well as to my position in the King’s Men. She said I’d been taken to see the dying man. She couldn’t remember whether she�
�d said all this to John Maltravers or to the lawyer Downey. Or was it Dr Price? She was very distressed at the state of her mistress. She hoped she had not done any wrong.

  Anyway, one or more of the trio must have deduced I had the book and set the rogue on my trail – this was the conclusion William and I came to. The same rogue must have been watching us in the smoky, dim interior of the Raven tavern or else he had an accomplice there; had seen the book being passed back to Kate Hawkins; had lurked to waylay her and William on the way home.

  ‘He shall not get away with this,’ said William. ‘Whoever’s responsible will not get away with it either.’

  ‘Who is behind it?’

  ‘I do not know. One of the three men here this morning, surely. The doctor, the lawyer or the merchant. They are all respectable citizens but one of them is evidently prepared to resort to force . . . to attack my cousin . . .’

  ‘So there is something valuable in your father’s personal book after all?’

  ‘My father was an odd mixture of businessman and dreamer, Nick. What he wrote down in his little volume showed both sides. His plans for better machinery were the practical part, while the dreams were the verses about King Arthur.’

  ‘And drawings of Solsbury Hill with signs and markings . . .’

  ‘Yes, with markings that could cause someone to believe there was buried treasure there,’ conceded William.

  ‘But there is no treasure?’

  ‘I am not about to go off and dig up a hillside in pursuit of my father’s dreams.’

  ‘Others may be.’

  ‘Yes,’ said William.

  ‘If they’re going to search on this Solsbury Hill of yours they’re going to do it soon. To strike while the iron is hot.’

  ‘Yes, they are,’ said William.

  ‘I have an idea,’ I said.