The answer lay, without doubt, in the widespread fame of the priory. Many pilgrims who came here were of high rank, not only knights and nobles but even, some years ago, Queen Katherine herself with all her retinue. She had stayed in the prior’s guest house on three occasions, on her way to the holy shrine of Our Lady at Walsingham.
But it was not only pilgrims who enjoyed the hospitality of the priory. Travellers of every rank stayed here too, and there was undoubtedly a coming-and-going of men who wore fine linen shirts. Such guests would, it was hoped, make generous gifts to the priory. And what would be more natural than for a departing nobleman to discard a worn shirt, in the knowledge that the monks would put it to charitable use? It was the duty of all Christians to feed the hungry and clothe the naked, and there were always beggars at the priory gates.
So far, Will thought, his argument was sound. A would-be murderer planning to disguise the body of his victim – or needing to disguise it after the deed had been done – would know that anonymous garments were to be had from the almonry. They would be serviceable, but he could slash them to give the corpse the appearance of a vagabond’s.
But there was more to it than that. The victim would have been clothed when he was set upon. What had been done by the murderer with the man’s own clothing, including his boots?
The church bells had begun to ring, and Will looked up. The priest would be preparing to say Mass, as he did every day, though there was no obligation for parishioners to be present save on Sundays and holy days. But it was an obligation upon the old beadsmen from the almshouses to pray every day for the souls of their Throssell benefactor and his family, and now – cloaked, capped and badged, and clutching their rosaries – they were entering the churchyard in tottering procession.
Will quickly added his own prayer for Anne to theirs, then gathered up the ragged clothes to return them to the mortuary. But it occurred to him that the shirt, foul as it was, might yet provide some further information. Rather than allow the whole garment to be thrown into the grave, he drew his knife from his belt and cut off a piece of the pleating at the neck. Before leaving the churchyard he concealed the scrap of linen in a convenient chink of the stone wall.
Castleacre was creaking into life as Will rode down again towards the river. On their feet at last after the excesses of the feast day, entertainers and pedlars were setting out for the next town. Pilgrims, uplifted by their candlelit glimpse of new blood on St Matthew’s bones, and assured of a remission of their sins, were going buoyantly on the next stage of their pilgrimage. All of them made their way down Southgate street, where the keepers of food shops and taverns and alehouses stood outside to cry their trade, doing their best to delay the departing customers with pots of ale or to sell them pasties to sustain them on their journey.
Will rode with the wayfarers as far as the ford, where he caught a final sight of the dancing bear as it shambled away in its chains to its next performance. Splashing across the river, he turned immediately west along the wooded bank. A short path had recently been hacked and trodden along here, for this was where the constable’s men, sent from Southacre, would have retrieved the dead body from the water. Will dismounted, and hitched his horse to a low branch of an ash tree, out of the way of those who were crossing the ford.
He had become increasingly uneasy that Gilbert might be charged by default with murder. If – God forbid – Walter Bostock could not be found at Bromholm, it would be assumed throughout Castleacre that the corpse was his, even though he might have met with some accident elsewhere. But if clothing or other possessions were to be found in or near the river, they could be shown to Sibbel Bostock. If she could not identify them as her husband’s, then Gilbert could not be accused of murdering him.
Will had seen the good condition of the victim’s feet. The man was a rider, and his possessions would have included a horse with harness, saddle and saddle-bags. The murderer might well have taken the horse and sold it in another town, but the saddle-bags and their contents would be too easily identified. It seemed to Will that the murderer would have wanted to rid himself of them, and of his victim’s clothing, as soon as possible.
He looked about him, swatting as he did so at the insects that buzzed round his head. Most of the trees stood well back from the river, apart from the pollarded willows that liked to dip their roots in the water. Both banks, on either side, were overgrown with seeding thistles and willow-herb, and with bushes bearing an abundance of hips, haws, sloes and blackberries. There were any number of places where clothes and boots and saddle-bags could have been concealed. And apart from the banks there was the river itself, deep-edged with reeds and thickly grown with water-weed.
The prospect of searching single-handed was daunting. Again, Will missed Ned Pye – and felt aggrieved when he thought of him, even now riding across Norfolk like a gentleman. But this task was too important for the honour of the Ackland family to be shirked.
His horse, surrounded by a dance of insects, was stoically swishing its tail and stamping to drive them away. Will hung his doublet on the pommel of his saddle, cut himself an ash plant, and began to beat along the tangled river bank, searching as he went.
The going was uneven, squelchy in some places and impenetrable in others. Down here in the valley the day was airless, with a richly thick smell of damp earth, river weed, mushrooms and ripe berries. Insects clustered round Will’s sweating face, and burrs and floating seeds clung to his clothes. Brambles, reaching out to catch hold of him, declined to let go. But he was wearing his least-good shirt and hose and cared nothing for the damage they sustained as he continued his search, making his way along both banks of the river above and below the ford.
His task was enlivened by wayfarers who called out greetings to him as they crossed the river, and also by the birds that gathered to feed on seeds and berries, and rose in great flocks when he disturbed them. But he found nothing of interest, and as the morning lengthened so did his thirst.
When the noonday bell rang, Will returned to his horse and led it to the ford to drink. Noticing that one of its shoes was loose, he led it up Southgate street and left it with the farrier until later in the day.
He had intended to refresh himself at the sign of the Angel, until he saw two old friends dozing over their sticks on a bench outside the Green Man. They were both rheumy of eye and did not at first recognise him, although they had spent their lives in the service of his family.
‘Well met, Luke!’ he exclaimed. ‘Well met, George! You know me – Will Ackland, home at last. Shall we drink a pot of ale together?’
The old men, their fading embers stirred into life by his greeting, touched their caps respectfully and champed their sunken mouths with pleasure. Luke, who had been a shepherd, was long in the face and lean in the shank. A man of few words, as shepherds are, and those words always the same, he contrived to croak them with a meaning suitable for every occasion. George, the livelier of the two, had been cook at the castle. Still rounded from a lifetime of tasting and supping, he was grievously short of breath.
Will called to the landlord for hot mutton pasties and ale, and they all drank deep. As the old men savoured their food, they recalled their days at the castle.
‘You were a young rogue, Master Will!’ wheezed George. ‘I mind the time you were six years old, and I beat your backside with a ladle for stealing raisins.’
‘So you did,’ agreed Will. ‘And I hollered, for the ladle was hot, having just come out of the broth. And my mother came and beat me again, thinking I had fouled my hose!’
‘Ah, Jesu, how the whole kitchen laughed …’ George wiped his eyes, and Luke gave a creaky chuckle: ‘Ho-ho – ’tis as I say!’
Then the cook sobered. ‘My duty to your sister, Dame Margaret,’ he said hoarsely. ‘But as for Master Ackland your brother – in truth I know not what your father, God rest his soul, would have thought of his conduct.’
The shepherd agreed, with a solemn shake of his head. ‘Aye –
’tis as I say …’
‘He has much on his mind,’ said Will, by way of apology.
‘He’s too free with his anger. And ’a has too loose a tongue. Forgive me for blunt speech, Master Will – an old servant’s privilege. But your brother Gib is like to be hanged afore he’s much older.’ Will gave him a guarded look over his pot of ale. ‘How so?’
‘Why, ’ a has threatened in this very alehouse to kill the prior’s bailiff. And’ – the cook struggled for breath – ‘and now there’s a man found murdered in the river, the bailiff is gone, and Gilbert Ackland is said to be the miscreant!’
‘Aye, aye, ’tis as I say …’ intoned Luke sorrowfully.
‘This is naught but rumour,’ Will protested. ‘No man has reason to believe the prior’s bailiff is dead. And I’ll wager my brother is not the only tenant who has spoken against him.’
The shepherd raised his old head, suddenly hopeful. ‘’ Tis so! As I say …’ he informed his friend.
George gave a grudging nod. ‘Aye, there’s not a tenant who hasn’t spoken ill of the bailiff – no, not even the constable himself. But Gilbert Ackland was the only one to threaten him.’
He paused to gather his breath. ‘Mark our words, Master Will,’ he wheezed, and the shepherd, doleful again, nodded his agreement. ‘’Tis Walter Bostock who lies murdered. And when your brother’s tried for the evil deed, there’s none in Castleacre will speak for him.’
Chapter Eleven
Will loped down to the river again with a new sense of urgency. Some evidence of the murder must lie there, and he intended to find it. Whether or not it would point to his brother was no longer his chief concern. If Gib had indeed committed murder, then he must suffer for it. But Will could not allow him to be considered guilty without any evidence at all.
Now that St Matthew’s feast was over, the number of travellers on the Peddars’Way had shrunk to an everyday level. With none to observe him, Will stood on one of the stepping stones and surveyed the ford, the dusty road on either side, and the nearby trees. It would not have been difficult for the murderer, guessing when his victim would ride that way, to have lain in wait, detained him on some pretext, and stabbed him without being seen.
Disposing of the body would have been more difficult. The fact that it had been left in the river convinced Will that only one man was involved in the murder. Had there been two, they could have carried their victim well away from the road and either buried or concealed him. But a solitary murderer might well have decided to take advantage of the river by pushing the body in, and letting the fast-flowing water carry it away downstream.
If so, the barrier of the fallen bough had spoiled his plan. Perhaps it was only then, with the body held fast within sight of the ford, that the murderer had hit on the plan of destroying his victim’s face and changing his clothes. And that made it more likely that he would have hidden the dead man’s own clothing somewhere nearby.
Will had already searched both banks. Now it was time to search the river itself. He splashed downsteam, across the shallow ford, and then waded on, thigh-deep in the invigoratingly cold water, to the place where the bear had found the body.
The fallen bough, stretching more than halfway across the river, had gathered an accumulation of dead branches and reeds, together with oddments dropped by wayfarers as they crossed the ford. Will heaved aside the branches and sorted through the debris, but the only items he could recognise were a shoe with more hole than sole, a tattered blanket, and a leather hat whose brim and crown had parted company.
He waded on downstream, in and out of the shade of the pollarded willow trees. Their roots spread wide in the water and provided any number of hiding places, and where the banks were treeless there were concealing growths of reed and tangled watermint. Will zig-zagged from one side of the river to the other, prodding every likely place with his ash-plant, while coloured dragonflies hovered and hummed over the water and kingfishers dived in brilliant flashes of blue, emerging from their living larder with dinners by the beakful.
Not noticing where he trod, he took an occasional plunge up to his armpits when the river bed deepened unexpectedly. It was during one such sudden dip, by the southern bank, that he found what he had been looking for. Grabbing at a tree root to keep his balance, he saw that a saturated bundle of cloth was crammed into an underwater hollow between that root and another.
With some relief, not least because the coldness of the water had begun to make his weaker leg ache, Will tossed the bundle up on to the bank and hoisted himself after it. Shaking out his find, he spread the garments on a bush and examined them.
The clothes were too sodden for their colours to be discerned, but everything was of good yeoman quality: a cap, a sleeveless leather jerkin, a doublet, a shirt, a pair of hose; no boots, but a pair of boot-hose. It was certain that they belonged to the murdered man, for a knife thrust had penetrated jerkin, doublet and shirt. And there was little doubt that these clothes had been hurriedly exchanged for others, for some of the garments had been roughly slit from top to bottom for ease of removal.
Whether they had belonged to the prior’s bailiff, though, was another matter. Sibbel Bostock would be able to give an instant yea or nay when she saw them – but Will could not approach her with so alarming a question unless he had reason to doubt that her husband was alive.
Until Ned brought news from Bromholm, there was nothing to be done with the garments. Will rolled them up again and stowed them in a cleft in a nearby ash tree, slashing the bark with his knife so that he could find it later.
His search was only half-completed. The murdered man’s heavier possessions – in particular his saddle-bags – were still undiscovered. Walter Bostock would have been carrying in his bags the rent rolls for the priory’s lands at Bromholm, and if these were found there could be no doubt that he was the victim.
The simplest way for the murderer to have rid himself of the saddle-bags would have been to throw them in the river. In such a swift current they could well have been carried some distance before finally sinking. Will slid into the water again, and resumed his downstream course.
This time he concentrated on the river bed. Though the water was brilliantly clear, it contained deep layers of weed that wavered in the current, offering concealment. As he went, Will slashed at every clump of weed with his staff, disturbing shoals of tiny fish and sending spotted trout gliding away with an easy flick of their tails.
He was so intent on peering into the water that he was not at first aware that the river had emerged from trees and scrub, and was now running between green banks. When he looked up, he saw that on his left was grazing land tenanted by Thomas Gosnold. Some of the constable’s cattle were clustered at a drinking place, and they raised dribbling heads and blinked in mild surprise as Will came wading through their water.
The right bank – where a heron stood in the shallows like a tall grey sentinel, poised to strike at fish or frog with its pick-axe beak – formed the southern boundary of the priory’s precinct. Beyond the meadow where the monks’dairy herd grazed, there rose the splendour of the priory itself.
It was years since Will had seen the priory from this river viewpoint. He stood still for a few moments, under the sound of the bell that marked the ending of the monks’ afternoon Choir Office, and leaned waist-deep against the current while he admired what he saw.
The monastic buildings, added to over the centuries and now clustered together in all their diversity of age, shape and material – stone, flint and red tile; buttress, arch, corbel, roof, gable and traceried window – gave the appearance of some noble foreign town, overtopped by the tower of the great church.
The nobility of its appearance was apt, for the Cluniac order had always attracted men of aristocratic birth to the religious life. Nicholas de la Pole, who had been prior of Castleacre for as long as Will could remember, had Plantagenet blood in his veins, and the long face and narrow nose that went with it.
Cluniac monk
s did no manual work. As all Castleacre knew, their work was to praise God in solemn splendour, and to pray for the welfare of the living and the dead, especially for their own benefactors. They lived within a framework of attendance at the seven daily Choir Offices, from Matins at two in the morning to Compline at dusk, and the rest of their time was required to be spent in private prayer and study.
There had of course been some backsliding over the centuries, and all Castleacre knew that too. Some monks had found it impossible to keep their triple vow of poverty, chastity and obedience, and the townspeople enjoyed repeating and embroidering the old scandals. But those who had the benefit of being employed at the priory were inclined to be tolerant of the monks: ‘After all,’ they reminded each other, ‘they are but men, as we are.’
The Castleacre monks were few in number now, no more than a dozen where there had once been thirty or more. The roughest of the manual work was done by lay-brethren, who lived in obedience in return for a lifetime of food and shelter. But demands upon the priory’s hospitality, from guests, travellers, pilgrims and the poor, were so great that many craftsmen and additional servants had to be employed.
From where he stood, Will could see some of them as they went about their business among the various domestic buildings on the river side of the priory. Laymen were not permitted there unless they were employed, and he had not realised how extensive these buildings were – workshops, stables, storehouses, dairy, laundry, granary, malthouse, brewhouse, and the great kitchens with their smoking chimneys. The air was heady with a mingled brew of malted barley and hops, for Castleacre priory was famed for its beer.
New Blood From Old Bones Page 10
