Hill of Bones

by The Medieval Murderers

  ‘Who can do no harm?’

  This was John Sincklo speaking, the senior member of the King’s Men on our tour. He had caught the last words of our anxious conversation. A serious individual, John Sincklo would not approve of anything that I and the others had been doing that day away from the stage. So we made light of our comments and readied ourselves for the final performance in Bath.

  All was going well with A Fair Day, or so it seemed. The audience enjoyed our antics as stall-holders, con men, customers. There is not much of a plot to the play but there is a lot of coming and going and confusion of identities and a good measure of bawdiness mixed with finely crafted insults. Among all this, I strode as Mr Justice Righthead, denouncing the pleasures of ordinary folk and trying to put a stop to them. I quickly forgot about the presence of John Maltravers and George Rowley in the audience, carried away with my windy proclamations and buoyed up by the laughter in the inn yard.

  Trouble did not start until quite near the end of the action. In my part as Justice Righthead, I had just received my comeuppance. Among the visitors to our fictional fair were an innocent young man and a comely young woman. I had taken both under my wing, especially the woman, upon whom I had designs. Now this pair were exposed as a notorious cutpurse and his wench. So Mr Justice Righthead was in his turn exposed as both a fool and a hypocrite, when the woman gleefully described his clumsy attempts to seduce her. Instead of hanging my head in shame, I launched on a fresh tirade. Attack is the best defence. I was in full flow when I became aware of a disturbance among the audience. The weighty figure of John Maltravers lumbered to his feet and, wagging his finger in the style that I’d been imitating on stage, started his own rant.

  I won’t bore you with the details of what he said. Plays were a disgrace, players were a blot upon the commonwealth, authority was being undermined, we should be whipped for our pains, et cetera. This was so much an echo of the lines that I was delivering that at first people might have believed Maltravers’ words were all part of the action. But some among the audience recognised him and, pretty soon, everyone was able to distinguish between play-acting and the real thing. Curiously, he did not sound as convincing as an actor would have done. Edward Downey and Dr Price made ineffectual attempts to hold him back but he waddled to the edge of the raised stage and continued his harangue.

  Now we of the King’s Men are used to dealing with interruptions. Usually they come from drunks, occasionally from mischief-makers. They tend to be short-lived. This Maltravers man went on and on. He was genuinely angry, working himself up further with every spluttered sentence. His round face turned a dark red and his finger waggled ever more furiously. The audience were reduced to mutters, interspersed with a bit of booing and some laughter. They might not have been entertained as we’d been entertaining them, but they could not take their eyes off the merchant. I’d stopped speaking some time ago since there was no point in continuing with my own rant. My fellows were all on stage, for it was the climax of the action. We formed a ragged semi-circle staring at our attacker, waiting for him to exhaust himself. John Sincklo looked outraged, since there is nothing to rouse the ire of a player like an attack on his profession.

  Then I noticed that George Rowley was nowhere to be seen. The stocky servant was not sitting on the bench, nor could I spot him in the gathering gloom of the inn yard. Some instinct caused me to glance sideways at the little curtained-off tire-room where our costume baskets and other effects were stored. I broke away from the group and within a few strides had reached the side of the stage.

  Inside the tire-room everything was in a state of disorder. Costumes, props were tumbled out of the baskets. Among the pile was a frantically rummaging Rowley. I could guess what he was looking for. Instantly I realised that John Maltravers’ intervention in our play was planned. Oh, he meant every one of the words he was still booming out in condemnation of the players. He’d love to see us whipped, run out of town and the rest of it. But he was acting too. It was a diversion to keep all eyes in the audience fixed on him and to give his man a chance to sneak into the tire-room and ransack our property. Undoubtedly, Maltravers had realised the identity of his ambushers on Solsbury Hill this morning, had seen us retrieve the black book, and, driven by fury, was determined to get it back. It was a desperate scheme, guaranteed to make an exhibition in front of his fellow citizens. But perhaps he did not care.

  All this passed through my mind in a flash. About as long as it took Rowley to look up from his mad search and observe that there was someone else in the tire-room with him. This was when things turned serious. He grunted and produced from somewhere in his garments a wicked little knife. Humiliated this morning on Solsbury Hill, discovered now in the middle of his wrongdoing, he was driven by the same rage as his master. He slashed out at me and, more by luck than design, I staggered back out of range. But I tumbled over a heap of clothing and lay there sprawled on my back, helpless. Time seemed to slow down. From outside I could hear the continued ranting of Maltravers, from within this curtained-off space the heavy breathing of my assailant. Above me was the darkening summer sky and the same old moon and a corner of the gable and the little window from which Katherine Hawkins had spied on me at the beginning of this business.

  Rowley paused for a second to position his dagger so that he might make a more effective strike. My hand closed round a dagger, one of our props, but it was a paltry wooden thing. Rowley stamped on my hand, then fell forward, intending to stab me in the guts. If he’d known he would be hanged for the deed, it would have made no difference. I cried out but the sound was feeble to my own ears. There was murder in his eyes, the real thing and not the simulated rage you see on stage. From playing dead two nights ago I was about to become genuinely so.

  Yet I was saved by the part I played as Mr Justice Righthead. I’d wound padding about my stomach in imitation of Maltravers’ fatness, and Rowley’s knife became buried and deflected among all the stuffing, the fustian cloth and rags bulking out my midriff. Rowley looked confused and I twisted away from him. He extricated the knife and was lifting it to strike once more when the front curtains to the tire-house were not so much opened as torn away. Rowley paused, then faltered.

  We must have presented a dramatic tableau, the player lying on the ground and the knifeman with his arm raised uncertainly. Crowded in the entrance to the tire-room were the Hawkinses and the two members of the night watch. I’ll think twice before saying again that they’re never there when you need them.

  We finished the play, by the way. It would have been unprofessional not to.

  We had to wait until the watch took charge of George Rowley, whose guilt couldn’t be doubted since he was caught knife-in-hand. Like his master, Maltravers, he had some hectic words to say before he was dragged off. It was an accusation against John Maltravers – that he had put him up to this, that he was the one responsible. I remembered that moment on the hillside when Rowley appeared willing to strike his master about the pate with his spade. Maltravers, crestfallen after all his shouting, looked increasingly uncomfortable. His face went from pure red to mottled red and white. Eventually he strode out of the yard, but I noticed Downey the lawyer and Price the physician gazing after him, and I would have bet they had a few questions of their own to put to him.

  The assumption was that Rowley was rummaging through the tire-room gear in search of some valuables. It was merely bad luck that I had stumbled across him. And good luck that I was unharmed. No one mentioned the black-bound commonplace book belonging to Uncle Christopher. It was no longer in my possession anyway, since I had already returned it to William Hawkins while we were on Solsbury Hill.

  After a half-hour or so we resumed A Fair Day. I took up my part as Mr Justice Righthead, although my costume was somewhat torn and shredded about the middle, with the stuffing coming out. It was only when we were all done that I started to shiver and shake at having so nearly escaped a severe wounding or even death. It took the company of my fellows and a
few drinks in the Raven afterwards to steady my nerves.

  For their part, the Bath citizens sitting or standing in the yard of the Bear appreciated our resilience and our dedication to the craft of the stage play. They cheered us loudly at the end, so much so that we were encouraged enough to take up an extra collection of money. John Sincklo looked doubtfully at me and Laurence and Abel after it was all over, as if we knew more about the incident than we were letting on, but he did not ask any questions. In fact, he was gratified at the way the crowd showed themselves to be on the side of the players, and pleased by the additional money that came in. We did better than that when we received an extra subvention from Bath corporation as if in tacit apology for the misbehaviour of one of their own at our final performance.

  Later, when we reached Bristol, I gave Sincklo an outline of the story. I felt that I owed him that much.

  We left Bath the next day. As we passed through on our way to the West Gate and the fresher air of the Bristol road, we paused to observe that some preliminary justice had been meted out to George Rowley. He was standing in the pillory by the Guild Hall, smeared with rotten fruit and draped with vegetable peelings. The pigs were still waddling about at liberty on the city cobbles, in expectation of what they might scavenge. I was glad to see Rowley in the pillory, although it does not usually give me much pleasure to watch the public punishment of malefactors.

  Much later, when we had returned to London, Kate Hawkins wrote to me, a genuine ‘privy message’ this time. She thanked me for the service I had performed for her dying uncle (but made no mention of our later connection). She said that an indictment was being laid against John Maltravers largely on the testimony of George Rowley. But the evidence was thin and, Maltravers being a respectable citizen and his accuser a mere servant, he would probably wriggle his way out of punishment. His standing in the town had been irredeemably harmed, however, by his ranting in the yard of the Bear Inn. Edward Downey and Dr Price had turned against their old friend and even apologised to her for their unseemly behaviour on the morning of Christopher’s death. She and William were still grieving for Uncle Christopher but she wrote that, when a suitable period of mourning was passed, they intended to marry. I thought it was a happy ending and very similar to the plot of the second play we’d done in Bath, the one entitled A City Pleasure.

  As for the black notebook, which might have revealed the whereabouts of precious items buried on Solsbury Hill, that had been locked away as a family keepsake. Neither she nor William had any interest in scrabbling about on a bare hill in search of Arthur’s gold or any other relics. They had enough treasures to look forward to in their domestic lives, which was a nice comment, although one that for a moment made me feel envious. If there were any relics to be found on Solsbury Hill, Kate added in a postscript, let’s leave them to the future. That’s what the future’s for, after all.

  ACT FIVE

  A Deadly Dig

  Having removed the outer layers of bindings that covered the body, Joe Malinferno delicately cut away the lower garment from the corpse’s torso. It resembled a bag that had been doubled and seamed on two sides. A fringe decorated the bottom hem. Under the garment he found little ornaments decorated with figures of ancient gods. He laid these aside on the surface of the polished oak table he was using as a makeshift mortuary slab. He stood up for a moment, easing the ache in his lower back caused by his bent posture. He heard a church clock chiming somewhere nearby, and he estimated he had been working on the body for almost an hour. He would have to hurry. Wiping the beads of sweat from his brow with the back of his hand, he continued the process of discovery.

  His next step was to reveal the corpse’s face. The lips were pulled back in what resembled a grimace of horror. It seemed as if the man had died a violent death, but Malinferno as yet had no idea if that were true. In fact he had not yet even figured out the identity of the man who lay under his steady hands. He continued his examination in absolute silence, noting that the hair of the head, eyebrows and beard were all shaved off. The skin was a livid grey colour, and when he touched it, it felt greasy. There was a layer of something perfumed over the skin, the odour redolent of cinnamon. The facial features were shrivelled, and the eyes were still in their orbits. He looked at the hands, which were crossed over the body’s chest. Their well-manicured fingernails reflected the person’s privileged lifestyle. What he didn’t know and was endeavouring to find out was the cause of his death.

  For the first time, Malinferno broke the silence that hung like a pall over the assembled throng.

  ‘I estimate this body is . . .’

  There was a communal intake of breath as those gathered to hear the professor’s deductions awaited his opinion. Malinferno did not disappoint them.

  ‘. . . three thousand years old.’

  There was a gasp from the crowd, followed by a ripple of noise as gloved hands were slapped together in the most refined of ways to applaud his skill, and their hostess’s generously proffered entertainment.

  Rosamund, Duchess of Avon, was a widow with too much money, and too much time on her hands since the death of her elderly husband, the fifth duke. Her cold and echoing mausoleum of an ancestral home had for all too long induced in her a stultifying boredom that she ached to assuage. Her childless life was tedious and unfulfilled. The idea of purchasing an Egyptian mummy had suddenly come to her over a dull breakfast one day.

  She had been reading the Bathhampton Packet, to which her husband had subscribed, and which, by an oversight, she had failed to cancel after his death. In fact she had never previously read the slender sheet, it being her husband’s predilection to monopolise the rag. A week after his death, she had had occasion to pick it up idly from the breakfast table where the duke’s old butler had continued to reverently lay it in lieu of other orders. She had been going to tell Goring to dispose of it, but an article caught her eye. It appeared that one of her neighbours had set up shotguns attached to tripwires to dispose of unwanted trespassers on his land. A court case had ensued on the death of a gypsy, and the wrangling of the lawyers and judge, as reported in the Packet, was all about whether in such circumstances human life was as forfeit as an errant dog. Lady Rosamund was clear as to her own opinion on the matter, and snorted with satisfaction that the editor of the Bathhampton Packet seemed to concur. Since that date, she had read the newssheet assiduously.

  On one particular rather dull and drizzly morning, next to a piece about the scandalous goings-on of the Prince Regent, she saw an item concerning Countess Shrewsbury and an Egyptian mummy. It seemed the latest craze was to unroll these beastly things at a soiree, and offer your neighbours the chance of some grisly voyeurism. She instinctively realised this would provide the ideal opportunity to demonstrate her new-found intention to be the centre of social, if not exactly intellectual, life in her corner of the county. She had undertaken enquiries, and soon made the necessary purchase from a man at the British Museum, who was willing illicitly to supply her needs. Along with a man who could effect the unrolling.

  For his part Il Professore Giuseppe Malinferno had been delighted when he had been contacted by his old friend from the BM, Thomas Elder, with a request to examine a mummy. He had been both eager to lay his hands on such a rare object, and fearful that his limited knowledge might be exposed. He realised he need not have worried. The unrolling was not going to take place in the presence of expert Egyptologists – of which there were a small but growing number – but at some remote and exotic site before a bunch of provincial socialites, leavened with the odd vicar and bibulous Member of Parliament. Malinferno soon saw that he could bamboozle them with any old nonsense he cared to utter. This he had proceeded to do, along with a subtle touch of showmanship.

  When he had stepped out in front of his audience, a magnificent, white-robed figure, a gasp had come from the gentry present in the marquee. He seemed preternaturally tall as his head was topped with a cruel, staring jackal’s mask, its ears abnormally pricked. It
was the very embodiment of Anubis – God of the Dead, Guide through the Underworld, and Hearer of Prayers. Several ladies recoiled in terror, and had to fan themselves for fear of fainting. The unbearable heat in the tent and the anticipation was literally breathtaking. Malinferno as Anubis threw his arms high into the air, and cried out, causing another frisson to run through the crowd.

  ‘O Great One who became Sky,

  You are strong, you are mighty,

  You fill every place with your beauty,

  The whole earth is beneath you, you possess it!

  As you enfold earth and all things in your arms,

  So have you taken this great lady to you,

  An indestructible star within you!’

  The audience was enraptured. But beneath the mask, beads of sweat were pouring down Malinferno’s forehead, and stinging his eyes. However, he was in no position to wipe them away, and blinked, shaking his head slightly. The mask of Anubis wobbled, and settled at a more uncertain, rather jaunty angle on his brow. He invoked the gods once more.

  ‘Oh Imsety, Hapy, Duamutef, Kebehsenuef,

  Who live by maat,

  Who lean on their staffs,

  Who watch over Upper Egypt,

  O Boatman of the boatless just,

  Ferryman of the Field of Rushes!

  Ferry Ankh-Wadjet to us.’

  This had been Doll’s cue, but nothing happened. He had cursed under his breath, and called out again, louder this time, ‘Ferry Ankh-Wadjet to us.’

  At the last moment, a form appeared as if by magic at the head of the mummy. It was a tall, voluptuous figure wearing the horned mask of Hathor. The diaphanous robe did little to hide the curvaceous attractions of his mysterious companion, whom he had named as Madam Nefre. She was scandalously nude underneath her robe, and the audience loved the fact.