by Max Gilbert
By Sylvian Hamilton The Bone-Pedlar The Pendragon Banner
THE BONE-PEDLAR
Sylvian Hamilton
ORION
An Orion paperback
First published in Great Britain in 2000 by Orion This paperback edition published in 2001 by Orion Books Ltd, Orion House, 5 Upper St Martin's Lane, London wczh gEA
Copyright Sylvian Hamilton 2000
The right of Sylvian Hamilton to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved No part of diis publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, widiout the prior permission of the copyright owner. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. isbn 07528442} 7
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, St Ives pic
With love to Patrick, prop-and-stay; to Deborah, beloved daughter and world's greatest hypnotherapist; and to my dear son Steven, Cathie his wife, and their children. With thanks to John, for his help and encouragement; and to Jane and Cass, for nudging me in the right direction. Thanks also to the staff of Duns Library, who manage against hard odds to get many of the books I need. And with affection and gratitude to Christine Green, best agent in the world I
Chapter 1
In the crypt of the abbey church at Hallowdene, the monks were boiling their bishop.
He had been a man of exemplary piety, whose eventual canonisation was a certainty, or at least a strong probability, and they were taking no chances. Over the bishop's deathbed, the calculating eyes of the sacristan and the almoner had accurately weighed up the advantages of a splendidly profitable set of skeletal relics, and Bishop Alain was barely cold before he was eviscerated, dismembered, and simmering in the largest pot the monastery kitchen could furnish.
'Isn't it a bit,--well, sort of hasty? the kitchener protested, when ordered to hack his bishop limb from limb. 'You sure e's dead?'
'Of course he is,' snapped the almoner.
'Only I thought I card him sigh.'
There was a flurry of panicky activity as the almoner laid his ear to the unmoving episcopal bosom, and the sacristan peered uneasily at the dulled eyes and fallen jaw of the revered corpse.
'Get on with it,' said the sacristan impatiently. The kitchener went to work with his knives and a cleaver borrowed from the butcher.
'In the Holy Land,' said old Brother Maurice, who had been there and never let anyone forget it, 'it was the custom to boil crusaders, them as wanted their bones shipped home for burial. But in the case of a holy body, we'd put it in an anthill. The ants'd pick the bones to a pearly whiteness. Truly beautiful. When you have to boil them,' he stared critically at the reeking cauldron, 'they go all brown.'
The youngest novice, who had been a favourite of the bishop, blew his nose on his sleeve and dabbed his eyes with the hem. 'It doesn't seem respectful,' he said.
'Who asked you?' demanded the sacristan. 'You can clear off out of this. Go and bang the dormitory mats outside!'
The boy mustered a flimsy courage to protest that a lay brother had banged the mats only that morning, but all that got him was a clip round the ear from the jittery sacristan, and he scurried off, snivelling.
'All the same,' said Brother Maurice, 'we probably shouldn't be doing this, not right away. We ought to wait a while. The new bishop ...'
The others looked shiftily at one another. There was no new bishop yet, nor likely to be for a long time, what with the Interdict, and His Grace King John so intransigent. But eventually there would be another bishop, who might very well take a dim view of them turning his predecessor into relics so precipitately. As it was, they'd get plenty of stick from the other religious houses in the diocese. It was sheer luck that the bishop had dropped dead at Hallowdene. He could have done it anywhere during his visitations, and those crafty Austin buggers, next on the road at Carderford, would have had him parcelled out among their fellow canons before you could say knife, with not even a knuckle-bone for the Benedictines.
'Well, it's too late now,' said the almoner briskly, peering into the greasy steam. 'How long does it usually take?'
'Hours,' said Brother Maurice. 'All day. And all night to cool off, if you don't want to burn your fingers.'
The almoner's high-bridged Norman nose flared with distaste, though whether at the greasy kitchen reek in the crypt or the thought of the grisly task still to come was not evident. But the abbey felt hard-done-by in the matter of relics, having lost its chief treasure, the priceless girdle of the Blessed Virgin Mary, to thieves as long ago as the year 1160 almost fifty years before.
In his private chamber, the abbot, who was keeping a discreet distance from the goings-on in the crypt in case at some future date it might be politic to assert his disapproval, was closeted with his secretary, discussing that very matter –the pilfered Holy Girdle.
“I think,' the abbot's secretary said, 'that there's no hope of getting it back now, My Lord. That man of yours has failed.' The abbot sighed. If he has failed, Petronius,' he said, in his weak whistly old man's voice, 'he would have reported back to us.' 'Why should he, My Lord? He was paid in advance, half his fee, and a very shocking sum it was, too. I think he simply pouched our gold and went off laughing at us. He never intended even to try and steal our relic back.'
'He was very strongly recommended,' the abbot said wearily. He had been fielding his secretary's arguments all afternoon and had just about had enough. 'My Brother in Christ, the Archbishop of York himself, spoke highly of him. He is no trickster. He was employed on a similar commission a few years ago, for the nuns of Sheppey, when a wicked Greek priest stole their Holy Foreskin. This man Straccan got it back for them.' So there, he thought with satisfaction. His secretary's opinions were too often exercised, the abbot was heartily sick of them; sick too of the man's dirty bitten fingernails and the coarse black hairs sprouting from his nostrils and ears.
‘It has been almost a year, My Lord,' sniffed his secretary. I think hope is lost, along with the relic and our gold.'
‘I don't believe so,' said the abbot stubbornly. He shifted his thin old feet in the silver bowl of warm rose-scented water. Petronius, seizing a gold-fringed towel from where it warmed beside the fire, knelt and patted the abbatical feet dry, easing them into lambswool socks. The old man sighed with pleasure, eyeing his secretary with more tolerance. 'It is no simple task,' he said patiently, accepting the cup of spiced Rhenish which Petronius offered. 'The thieves of Winchester guard the Holy Girdle with tenacious devotion, all the more so because they stole it and know they have no right to it. It is kept under lock and key. All these years they have feared our regaining it. Straccan cannot just walk in, pick it up and walk out again with it.'
'I wonder our Blessed Lady has not smitten them,' muttered the secretary pettishly, hanging the damp towel by the fire again. 'She has eternal patience,' said the abbot.
'She may, My Lord, but we who are only human would be glad of an end to this affair. / think we should send to enquire for this Straccan. Where does he come from?'
'I don't know. York bade him, and so he came to us.'
'Then we should send to His Grace of York to ask where we may find the fellow.'
'Not now,' said the abbot. 'The weather is treacherous. There will be snow. Look at the sky.'
It was an unpleasant sky, the massed low slate-coloured clouds hazed with a dirty threatening yellow.
'A swift rider could reach York before the snow,' Petronius suggested.
'And be snowed in until spring thaw, running up bills at our charges for food and drink,' said the abbot. 'No. We will giv
e Straccan more time.'
'As you say, My Lord. But / think--'
'To the devil with what you think,' snapped the abbot. 'I've heard enough of what you think! We will wait.'
Petronius shrugged. 'Of course, My Lord.' He picked up the footbowl and carried it carefully to the window, tossing the water out in a gleaming arc. A squawk of surprise came from below, where a gardener was working. Petronius leaned out and gazed down. The gardener had been tying up plants and fragile branches against the coming storm.
‘I think,' said Petronius, without thinking, 'we should have put in more pear trees this autumn. Twelve was not enough. Two or even three dozen would have been better.'
The abbot glared at his secretary's back with loathing.
The subject of their discussion was at that moment slinking--there was no other word for it –down a slushy back alley which led to one of Winchester's quieter brothels. The Two Bells was not the sort of place rowdier young men frequented. It was almost respectable, in its way, patronised by merchants and burgesses, and the occasional shamefaced monk. The abbey was just round the corner, its back wall easy to nip over, and after all a monk was a man like any other.
Snow had been falling all day, and kept all but the loneliest or most ardent at home. There was little chance of anyone noticing him but Richard Straccan was relieved to reach the Two Bells without meeting anybody. He pushed the door open and stepped into the warm dimly lit comforting fug. His entry caused a few grins and some raised eyebrows, but men had better things to do than stare at the newcomer. The bitter wind had whipped tears from his eyes and he wiped them on his sleeve as he glanced round, spotting his servant, Hawkan Bane, in the corner by the fire, a cheerful plump girl on his knee and a leather mug in his free hand. Seeing Straccan, Bane whispered something in his wench's ear before gently tipping her off his lap. Laughing, she sauntered into the kitchen with a fine rolling sway of hips that drew all eyes. Straccan sat down. Bane's girl returned with another mug of ale and two bowls of steaming pottage which she set on the board before them, giggling as she looked curiously at Straccan.
'Good lass,' said Bane, patting her ample bottom. 'Put it on my slate, eh? I'll see you later.'
'Put that on the slate too, will you?' Straccan asked. 'It's all right for you! I don't even get enough to eat in that bloody place!' He fished his spoon from its case on his belt and set to hungrily.
'How's it going?' Bane asked.
'Badly. It's been a sod of a job all along. Ten months we've been here and no chance of getting anywhere near the girdle. They guard it day and night. And now, would you believe it, just when I'd got something worked out, nice and neat, it all goes to hell in a handcart.'
'What d'you mean?'
Straccan drained his mug. 'They've sold it,' he said bitterly. 'The abbot has sold the relic to the King of France.'
'Shit,' said Bane. 'You mean it's gone?'
'Not yet. King Philip's man's at the abbey, he can't get away in this snowstorm. But they're supposed to hand the relic over to him at midnight.'
'That's torn it,' said Bane. 'Now what do we do?'
Straccan leaned across the table so that only Bane could hear him. 'Can you be ready tonight? It'll be a bugger travelling in this. Still, they won't be able to get after us for a while.'
'We're leaving tonight?'
'If you can have the horses at the stream two hours before midnight,' Straccan said.
Bane grinned wickedly. 'Course I can. All's not lost, then?' His face changed suddenly. 'We ain't going to ambush the French king's agent, I hope?'
'Not unless we have to,' Straccan said. 'No, touch wood.' He slapped the palm of his right hand hard on the oak table. 'I've got an idea.'
Chapter 2
The haggling was over, the bargain struck, the gold and silver counted (twice), bagged and tied, and locked in the abbot's strongbox. The two old men, the abbot and King Philip's agent, sipped wine, talking of this and that: the affairs of the world, their kings and lords, acquaintances in common, current scandal--mild and not so mild--and, more importantly, the blizzard that had raged for the past two days with considerable loss of life and, worse, destruction of property.
'Bring us wine, Brother,' the abbot had said, 'and some of those little savoury pastries.' Then, to his guest, as the kitchener hurried off, 'The chapel is in use until midnight. We cannot take the girdle from the altar until then.'
The visitor sniffed at his medicinal pomander. Half the community was down with a vicious winter cold, fourteen monks ill enough to be tucked up in the infirmary, full now to overflowing, with pallets having to be set up in the adjoining still-room and storerooms. The infirmarian himself was sick unto death and his very junior assistant in charge, while the rest of the brethren coughed and sneezed all over the place.
The abbot's parlour was small and cosy. An elegant brazier glowed, warming the room. Heavy hangings at the door and a snug shutter at the window kept out the November wind complaining and shrieking outside. The abbot's feet, in warm knitted socks, were toasting on a foot warmer tucked under his fur-lined over-robe. Pink plump and contented, he sat quietly, occasionally eyeing his visitor with an expression of smug satisfaction. Both men were pleased, the visitor because he'd paid less for the Girdle of the Blessed Virgin than he'd expected, the abbot because he'd got more than he'd thought he would. The hangings stirred slightly as gusts of draught raced down the passage outside but failed to penetrate this sanctum. Drowsy, they soaked up the warmth. King Philip's man like a dark and wrinkled basking lizard, Abbot William a cosseted, overfed lapdog.
A shaggy Saxon head, its tonsure much overgrown, appeared round the side of the curtain at the infirmary door, 'Is he dead yet?'
'Not quite.'
'Right then, shove over. Let the dog see the rabbit.' Brother Sylvestris, elbowed roughly aside by Brother Witleof, permitted his annoyance to show.
'Oh, sorry,' said Brother Witleof. 'Did I hurt you?' His tone and cheerful grin made it clear that he couldn't care less, and Brother Sylvestris made a visible effort to appear unconcerned. 'It's nothing,' he said. 'Hurry up, do! There isn't much time.' Brother Witleof looked undersized and almost lost in the voluminous habit hastily borrowed (against the rule) from a snoring, oblivious but much larger fellow monk in the dormitory. His own habit was saturated with blood from the pig-killing earlier that day, when he fell over a bucket of the stuff. He fumbled in the breast of the robe and took out what looked like a piece of old rope and placed it reverently on the breast of the dying man.
'Do you want to pray, or something? he asked.
Brother Sylvestris, about to do just that, thought better of it, shook his head and tucked his cold hands up his sleeves. 'No? Oh well, please yourself,' Witleof said. Til say a few words, then, shall I? Does it matter what?'
Encouraged by another shake of the junior infirmarian's head, he clapped his palms together, gazed upward and prayed. 'Holy Blessed Virgin, see us here below! This is Brother Alfred who's dying! And we've borrowed your holy relic, your blessed girdle, before it's taken away from here. We know it can restore our brother to vigour--'
'She won't listen to you,' snapped Sylvestris.
'Why not?'
'You're not praying in Latin!'
'That doesn't matter,' said Witleof irritably. 'Surely God's Mother understands English?'
'The language of pigs,' hissed the Norman Sylvestris, out of patience. 'It's disrespectful.'
'Bollocks,' retorted the Saxon Witleof. The two glowered unmonastically at each other over the body of the wheezing infirmarian, and Norman fist was on its way to Saxon nose when the dying man suddenly sneezed and his eyes snapped open.
'Brother Alfred!' Sylvestris grasped the sick man's hand fiercely. 'Alfred, it's me. Sylvestris! Are you cured?'
