“The abbey has nothing to hide.”
“Then it is not like any abbey that I have ever known!” said Ralph with a chortle. “They usually have secrets as dark as their black cowls.”
But Prior Baldwin and Subprior Matthew were already marching side by side down the hall to return to their home. All the papers had now been gathered up from the table and put back into their satchels.
Brother Simon bore the largest, but Gervase kept a substantial number of documents himself. He needed to study them again before confronting the abbey delegation on the morrow. It was his knowledge of legalities that would be crucial in what promised to be a ferocious debate.
Ralph Delchard was about to lead the others out when he noticed a figure hovering inside the far door. He was a stout man of middle height, close to Ralph’s own age but with none of the latter’s vigour.
Washing his hands nervously, he was trying to compose his features into a state somewhere between gravity and ingratiation. Clearly a person of some consequence, his rich tunic was covered by a mantle that was held at the shoulder by a gold brooch. His belt, too, was that of an affluent man and his cap was trimmed with fur. Ralph despised the gartered trousers of the old Saxons almost as much as their fondness for beards. The stranger had neither of these defects of his nation.
Seeing his opportunity, the man moved in to intercept Ralph. There was authority in his tone, but it was weakened by his over-eagerness to please.
“I am Saewold, the town reeve,” he said. “I was delayed with business or I would have been here to bid you a proper welcome to Bedwyn and to offer what help I may.”
Ralph introduced the others, then took the newcomer aside to weigh him up in private conference. Saewold had the fussiness of a man who likes to draw attention to the importance of his office and he used the name of the lord sheriff, Edward of Salisbury, with oily familiarity. Ralph did not warm to this over-helpful reeve but saw that he was a useful source of information. He therefore asked after Wulfgeat and his earlier impression of the man was confirmed.
Wulfgeat was indeed a leading burgess and one with much influence in the town. The commissioners could look for trouble and dissension from that quarter. Though he praised the man’s many fine qualities, Saewold could not conceal his patent dislike of Wulfgeat. If any new taxes were levied, it would be the job of the reeve to collect them, and he knew that Wulfgeat would offer the most vociferous resistance.
About Alric Longdon he was also informative, mixing fact with anecdote to draw a portrait that was anything but attractive. The miller was widely disliked. Hard-working and successful at his trade, he was also mean-spirited and highly unsociable. He liked to browbeat people in argument and only the quality and low price of his flour saved him from losing his customers. When Saewold was into his stride, scattering local gossip like handfuls of seed, there was no holding him.
“Yet Alric could surprise us,” he said. “When his first poor wife died, we felt that no other woman would ever dare to share his bed, and yet he wed Hilda-as gentle a creature as you could wish to meet-within the year. What goodness did she see in such an ogre?
What love could he inspire in such an angel?”
“You say he had few friends,” noted Ralph, “but did the miller have any real enemies?”
“Dozens. I tell you this,” said Saewold confidingly, “if that wolf had not killed Alric Longdon then, sooner or later someone else would have done so.”
Ralph terminated the conversation by turning to join his companions, but the reeve would not be shaken off so easily. He stood in front of all four of them and opened his arms in a gesture of welcome.
“It would please me greatly if you would consent to dine with me tomorrow. My wife and I would be delighted to offer you the hospitality of our humble abode.”
Ralph thanked him on behalf of the others and was about to frame an excuse that would liberate them from a meal at the table of this garrulous official when he became aware of another figure entering the hall. She was a woman of such luminous beauty that even Canon Hubert was taken aback. She was no longer young, a few years beyond thirty perhaps, but she had a mature loveliness that made her oval face shine. Moving with the grace of a dancer, she came to stand beside Saewold with a quiet dignity that identified her at once as his wife. Ralph was mesmerized. She wore a blue kirtle of some fine material beneath a short-sleeved gunna of a darker shade of blue. A gold-braided belt encircled a slim waist, then hung down to one side of her hips. Her long fair hair was held by a gold fillet and cascaded down from her wimple to rest on her right shoulder and brush a full breast. Her shoes were buckled at the ankles. The wife of the town reeve of Bedwyn was dressed like the lady of a Saxon earl.
Saewold presented her to the four commissioners.
“This is my wife, Ediva,” he said proudly.
She acknowledged each of them in turn with a soft and confident smile, but she held Ralph’s gaze marginally longer and all barriers of language, custom, and degree between them dissolved in an instant.
In her brilliant green eyes, he saw something which his colleagues would never dare to look for and which her husband would never recognise for what it was. When Ralph’s interest quickened, she let him see that she was pleased.
He countermanded his original decision.
“Dear lady,” he said with a gallant half-bow, “your husband has kindly invited us to dine with you tomorrow. We are delighted to accept that invitation.”
“Thank you, my lord,” she replied. “I wait upon you.”
Ralph Delchard felt that a bargain had been sealed.
Chapter Three
Brother Luke was a fresh-faced youth whose religious ardour was at last beginning to hear the vague whispers of doubt as he approached the end of his yearlong novitiate. He was tall and angular, with a gawkiness that had not yet been cured by the sombre pace of monastic life. Though he wore the cowl willingly, it still looked like a garment he had just tried on that minute rather than a home in which he had taken up permanent and unquestioning residence. He was alert and well educated but reticent in the presence of strangers. Ralph Delchard left it to Gervase Bret to set up a dialogue with their guide.
“How long have you been a novice, Brother Luke?”
“Ten months, master.”
“It was your own choice to enter the abbey?”
“Mine and that of my parents,” said Luke. “They entered me as a postulant and look to see me a brother of the order soon. I hope I will not disappoint them.”
“There is surely no chance of that?”
The youth shook his head without conviction and lapsed back into silence. All three of them were entering Savernake Forest, tracing the same path along the river that Alric Longdon had taken on that fateful evening. Abbot Serlo had given Brother Luke permission to take the two commissioners to the scene of the miller’s death, and the novice obeyed without demur. Gervase tried to reach the youth with other subjects of conversation, but his replies were laconic and the exchanges soon dried up. Ralph Delchard threw in a piece of information that jolted Luke out of his reserve.
“Gervase almost took the cowl,” he said jovially. “The monks thought they had won his heart and mind for God, but he learned that there is more to life than prayer and fasting.”
“Is this so?” asked the novice with interest.
“It is only part of the truth, Luke,” said Gervase.
“You entered a Benedictine house?”
“The Abbey of St Peter, at Eltham. It was founded by King William himself not long after Battle Abbey was raised. Both abbot and monks were from Normandy, but they soon mastered our tongue.”
Luke was surprised. “You are a Saxon?”
“Half Saxon, half Breton,” explained Ralph. “But we rescued him from misery by turning him into a Norman.”
Gervase enlarged on the jocular comment. “My father was killed at Hastings; my mother and her family had limited means. The abbey was very close and the monks
were very friendly. At eight, I was being schooled by them. At ten, I was allowed to spend whole days within the enclave. At twelve, I became a kind of servant and got my learning in place of wages.”
“An abbey is an education for life,” said Luke solemnly as he quoted the master of the novices. “All that there is to know may be gleaned from within the cloister.”
Ralph’s mocking laugh disagreed, but he said nothing.
Luke was intrigued. “But how did you come to rise so high in the king’s service?”
“By listening and learning,” said Gervase. “Eltham is close to London.
Travellers of all types and all nations sought our hospitality. I helped to prepare their beds. They all had tales to tell, sometimes in languages that were so strange on the ear that I barely understood a word at first. But I was a patient student. If you know Latin, you may pick up Italian without too much confusion. If you speak Breton-and my father had instructed me in his tongue when I was a tiny child-you will be able to master Norman French and even stray close to Welsh, for there are Celtic echoes in Breton.”
“Did you become a novice at the abbey?”
“In the fullness of time.”
“For how long did you stay?”
“Six months or more.”
“What made you leave?” asked Luke with keen interest.
“Gervase must tell you another time, lad,” intervened Ralph as they came to a fork in the river. “You spoke of a stream to the left. Is this the place?”
“Yes, my lord.”
“Lead on. We follow hard on your heels.”
Luke began the uphill climb, with the others behind him. Ralph winked knowingly to Gervase. They had not only made a friend inside the abbey, they had chosen one untutored in the arts of debate and prevarication of which monks like Prior Baldwin were so patently masters. The novice was a useful ally. By the same token, he would not lose at all by their acquaintance. He had evidently been drawn to Gervase when the latter’s history was recounted, and there was clear affinity between them. Brother Luke was experiencing the kinds of anxieties and misgivings that had afflicted Gervase himself in a similar position. There would be more talk between the two of them in private.
“It is not far now,” said the pathfinder.
“You are a true forester,” praised Ralph.
“The stream goes below ground here, but we will find it again a little higher up.”
It was early evening and the sun was still slanting its rays down through the trees. Birdsong surrounded them and the cheerful buzz of insects swelled the effortless music of the forest. There were other, louder, unexplained noises in the middle distance, but they did not delay the little trio. At length, they reached the ruined yew and looked upon the bank where Brother Luke had first found the dead body of the miller.
“It was here,” he said, pointing an index finger.
“Be more precise, lad,” said Ralph. “Which way did he lie? Where were his body, his feet, his head?”
“He was on his back, my lord, and his head was in the stream.
I will show you if you wish.”
“I do, Luke.”
The youth needed no more encouragement. He lay on the ground beside the stream and adjusted himself so that he was hanging over it. Stretching out too far, he lost his balance and fell backwards, submerging head and shoulders in the water. Ralph gave a hearty laugh, but Gervase dived forward to grab the novice by the folds of his cowl and pull him back up onto the bank. Sodden and spluttering, Brother Luke was not distressed by the mishap.
“That was how I found him, sirs,” he explained. “Even as I was then. On this bank and in that stream.”
Ralph became serious and moved him aside. Taking up the same position, he looked all around him and saw the bushes to the side of the yew. A wolf concealed in those could launch a surprise attack, but its coat might leave some memory of its passage through the brambles. Ralph instituted a careful search and quickly found what he expected.
“Fur,” he said triumphantly. “Our wolf lurked here and leapt upon the miller to push him backwards. This much seems certain. But there are still two larger questions.”
“What are they?” asked Gervase.
“Wolves kill for food or when they are threatened. That heavy body in the mortuary chapel would have made a good meal for a hungry wolf and its family. Why did it take only one bite of its supper?”
“Perhaps it was disturbed,” suggested Gervase.
“In as quiet and lonely a spot as this?”
“Another wolf may have disputed the carcass. They may have chased each other away. Foresters may have been on patrol. Their scent would be caught well before they came to this exact place.”
Ralph was back among the brambles again, finding another piece of fur and holding it to his nose to sniff. He located a third tuft and repeated the process.
“It smells like a wolf,” he said, “and, then again, it does not. I wonder if we are naming the wrong animal as the murderer. A mad dog would kill for the sake of it and leave a victim to bleed to death.”
He crouched behind the bushes, then jumped up by way of demonstration. “If it sprang up high enough and hard enough, it could knock him flat, then sink its fangs into him.”
“You forget something, my lord,” said Luke diffidently.
“What is that?”
“Those marks upon his chest.”
“Front paws would leave such grim reminders.”
“Not in Savernake,” continued the novice. “Forest law is strict. All dogs in and around Bedwyn are lawed. They must have three claws removed from each of their front paws so that they may not bring down game.”
“Even hunting dogs?” said Ralph.
“Only a few escape the rigour of this law.”
“And who would own such mastiffs, excepting the Warden of Savernake himself? This is a royal forest, but the king cannot ride here often. Who else has hunting privileges?”
“None but the lord of Chisbury.”
Gervase was curious. “Hugh de Brionne?”
“The same. He keeps a pack of hounds.”
Ralph and Gervase exchanged a meaningful glance. When the problem of the abbey lands came before them on the next day, Hugh de Brionne would be called as a principal witness. They had so far liked nothing that they had heard of the domineering lord, and the fact that one of his mastiffs might possibly have killed an innocent man did not endear him to them any the more. Ralph put his first question aside and turned to the other, but he did not wish to ask it in the presence of Brother Luke. When the novice got back to the abbey, he would be catechised by the prior about his walk in Savernake Forest. Ralph did not wish the abbey to be party to all his researches.
“Walk further on, Gervase,” he said casually. “If wolf or dog came down this way, find the route by which it left. It would seek cover in its flight. See if you can choose its direction.”
Gervase understood that he was being asked to get Luke out of the way and did so with such natural ease that the youth did not suspect for a moment why he was being taken farther up the hill by way of a ruse. To help in the search for clues gave the novice a sense of excitement, but it paled beside the chance of being able to question Gervase further about his release from his vows in Eltham Abbey.
As soon as they were out of sight, Ralph took out his sword and used its point to describe the shape of Alric Longdon as he lay on the bank beside the stream. Why had the miller come to such a place alone? It was not an area of the forest into which anyone could stray accidentally. He stood on the chest of the dead man and looked around with utmost care, but not even the ghost of an answer flitted across his path. He turned to gaze down into the stream. Gushing out of its underground passage, it was no more than six or nine inches deep, but he was unable to see the bottom of its channel. The foliage above formed such a complete covering that the stream was in shadow even on the brightest day.
He used his sword point to prod through the wat
er and test its chalk base. Ralph jabbed the weapon in a dozen different places, as if he were trying to spear fish, and his enterprise was eventually rewarded. The sword met resistance and he jiggled the point around before thrusting hard to penetrate the object. He brought his hand up slowly to see what he had caught. It was no fish but a far more valuable catch. What was impaled on the end of his sword was a dripping leather pouch. Its draw-string was loosened and it was empty, but Ralph’s mind was racing now. If the miller had been tumbled into the stream with the pouch in his hand, its contents might even now be still resting on the bottom.
Putting sword aside, he knelt down and thrust an arm into the stream. Groping fingers soon located a prize and he brought it out. It was a coin of high value, much more than would normally be paid for a sack of flour. When he dipped in his hand again, he came up with three coins of the same kind. Two minutes of stretching and feeling about beneath water earned him a substantial amount of money and one more item which helped to explain the hoard. Ralph Delchard found a key. Alric Longdon finally spoke to him.
The miller had brought his treasure to a hiding place in the forest.
He was about to stow it away when he was attacked and killed. If he was kneeling when the animal lunged at him, then his position in relation to the stream would be more easily accounted for, since a standing man would have been knocked much farther back. Exhilaration made him smile. His instincts had been right all along. Alric Longdon did have a purpose. When he knelt where the man must have knelt, all became clear. The yew tree was the object of the secret visit at dusk.
Ralph leaned forward to look into its hollow shell, but it was far too dark within. Once again his sword was used to reconnoitre and it met with something hard and solid deep inside the yew. He had to stretch both arms to reach the heavy lump that his fingers now encountered. Alric Longdon had chosen his hiding place well. It was safe and dark and well protected from the elements. No human being could stumble upon it and no animal could do it any harm. It was wedged so tightly in place that he had to apply some strength to heave it loose. Out it came with a shower of moss and wood lice dropping from it.
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