Hill of Bones (18 page)

‘He must be excommunicated, of course,’ the precentor angrily declared, but the prior’s response was scathing.

‘What use is that, brother? Will it restore our chalice and pyx?’ he snapped, his usual veneer of affability now stripped away.

Hubert, the sacrist, had a more practical observation. ‘We have heard that the workshop of Ranulf was pillaged when he was killed last night. I dislike slandering the dead, but he had a poor reputation for honesty. Could it be that he had obtained our treasure from whoever was the thief and it was then stolen again by others, who had learned that it was in his possession?’

As usual, the cellarer was keen to deride the sacrist’s opinion.

‘Brother Hubert, you need not include “whoever was the thief” in your speeches. We all know it was Eldred, may God curse him!’

‘I rather thought that the Almighty was the fount of forgiveness,’ retorted Hubert in his mild voice. ‘And I still need some proof before I am satisfied that my assistant is guilty of this crime.’

Brother Gilbert muttered, ‘Then you are an old fool!’ under his breath, but the prior brought them to order.

‘It is useless for us to bicker over this matter, brothers. We have searched the abbey time and again with no result, so we have no option but to leave it to the sheriff and his men.’

The cellarer was determined to have the last word. ‘I still suspect that royal steward had a hand in this, somehow. The damned man was too thick with Eldred. I’ve seen them together many times.’ He glowered around at his colleagues. ‘If I was the sheriff, I’d put him to the torture, King’s man or not!’

Up on Solsbury Hill, Eldred decided to explore a little. He had spent an uncomfortable night in his rocky cleft, but now that the day had improved, he felt the need to stretch his legs. Though he was still nervous about meeting others on the hill, whether human or fiendish, he urgently needed a change from the constriction of the rock face. Leaving his blankets hidden under some fern fronds in his sleeping place, he moved sideways to regain the trees and clambered up from them onto a grassy bank. A deep groove ran beyond this, a long-overgrown ditch the height of a man, which ran almost entirely around the top of the hill, which was a flat, rounded triangle.

The inner bank of the ditch was steep and rose higher than his head, but some yards to his left there was a break in the rampart, with a gap that went through at an angle to give easier access to the enclosure, a couple of acres of weedy grass. He knew from years of listening to gossip and old men’s tales, that in ancient times this had been a fortress with a stockade all around it. There were many lurid theories as to who once lived up here, varying from a race of giants to the Roman legions, but today it was deserted as Eldred ventured warily through the gap on to the small plain. The sun was shining intermittently between the scudding clouds and in the brightness of an autumn afternoon, he felt more confident about being on this hill, which had such a mystical and often threatening reputation. There was a striking view, especially to the south and west, and he could see the tower of the abbey church and the city walls alongside the silver streak of the Avon, as it ran at the foot of the many hills that surrounded Bath.

His eyes misted as he wondered if he would ever see his wife and the familiar things of his everyday life back in the city. Unless his two staunch friends could discover who had stolen the abbey’s treasures, he would become a hunted outlaw, cut off from God and man for the rest of his miserable life. Overcome by grief and self-pity, he sank on to the grass and began to sob.

After a few moments, Eldred pulled himself together and wiped his eyes with the sleeve of his tunic. He had abandoned his lay brother’s brown cassock for this exile in the countryside, and wore instead the thigh-length belted tunic and worsted breeches that were the usual garb of the commoner.

Squatting there in the sunshine, he plucked a grassy stem and chewed it ruminatively, staring unseeingly at the distant view as he tried to make sense of the catastrophe that had so suddenly disrupted his ordered life. He fully realised that he’d had to take the blame for the theft merely because he was the nearest and most convenient scapegoat, rather than that he was the target of some foul conspiracy. But who could possibly be the true culprits?

The abbey was a tightly knit community, full of petty squabbles and jealousies, for all that the religious life was supposed to be a haven of peace, tranquillity and benign tolerance. Monks and their acolytes had the same emotions and faults as men anywhere, saints being very few and far between. Many were there because their families had pushed them into the life as children, others were escaping from problems with their personal affairs – and others merely sought advancement in the ecclesiastical hierarchy, often linked to secular politics, the prime example being the ambitious Bishop Savaric.

But who had stolen the chalice and the pyx, agonised Eldred. Was it someone from outside or was it an inhabitant of the abbey? And if the latter, was it a lay brother or a monk? But what would a monk, many of whom were ordained priests, want with gold and silver?

Eldred immediately realised that that was a stupid question, as many of the higher ranks of the clergy were amongst the richest men in England – and rich men often coveted even more wealth. However, he could hardly credit that the bishop or the prior were likely to have stolen treasures from their own church.

As he sat looking over the rolling hills of Somerset, he could not help thinking of those he disliked most in the abbey. Though a mild-natured fellow, like all men Eldred had those whose company he preferred to avoid. His immediate master, the sacrist Hubert, was a miserable, carping man, but had never caused him any serious trouble, and indeed, had been the only Chapter member to express doubts about Eldred’s guilt.

He thought of Prior Robert as a ‘whited sepulchre’, as the Bible had it, for his permanent affability and ostentatious devoutness was a sham, but he was an unlikely robber. This applied also to the mean-minded precentor, Brother Seymour, whose Spartan existence suggested that he would not know how to spend gold even if he had any. The treasurer, Thomas de Granville, was an unknown quantity to Eldred, a silent, rather sinister character who spoke rarely and then only in French or Latin, as he had never bothered to learn English since coming from an abbey in Normandy.

Time and again, Eldred’s mind came back to the cellarer. Brother Gilbert was a bluff, worldly man who had been a soldier and then a cloth merchant before taking the vows of a Benedictine a dozen years ago. As with so many monks, some of whom had something to hide in their past, little was known of his previous life except that he was originally a Bristol man. He had gained the post of cellarer because of his previous experience of commerce. Certainly his efficiency in running the complex business of feeding and housing the abbey community was notable, exceeding his enthusiasm for devotional duties, which he often evaded with the excuse that he had to attend to some urgent matter in his stores. Eldred had not a shred of evidence that Gilbert might be involved in the theft, but his personal antipathy to the man’s abrasive character and contemptuous manner made him a possible candidate in the lay brother’s mind.

A cloud passed over the sun and a sudden cold breeze brought Eldred out of his reverie, so he rose and began walking around the inside of the ditch, eating the last of his bread and cheese, which he had saved in the pouch on his belt. He felt a sudden overwhelming loneliness and yearned for the next morning, when he would go down to the track to meet Riocas and, he hoped, learn some good news that would end his exile in this strange place.

Riocas and Selwyn were endeavouring to find that good news for their lonely friend when they met again in the fur-trader’s shop late that afternoon. The steward would have preferred to have used his royal kitchen for their discussion, as the pervading smell of partly cured animal pelts was not particularly pleasant, but he realised that if Riocas was seen to be visiting him too often in the abbey enclave, it might arouse suspicion about who might have been responsible for Eldred’s escape.

The cat-catcher pushed aside a basket of rabbit skins from his table and replaced it with a crock of cider and two pottery mugs.

‘What do we do now, my friend?’ he asked, as he poured out the murky liquid. ‘If all the sheriff’s men have failed to find Ranulf’s thieving killers, what chance do we have?’

‘That’s assuming that they have any connection with the missing valuables from the abbey,’ added Selwyn, rather despondently. ‘We have no evidence that the murder of Ranulf is anything to do with the theft.’

Riocas disagreed, thumping his mug down on the table. ‘It’s too much of coincidence that the night-soil man heard about two men offering what must have been the pyx to Ranulf, on the very day of his killing.’

‘You may be right,’ admitted the steward. ‘But what can we do about it?’

After some more discussion, the two men decided, mainly from a lack of any other ideas, to visit the scene of the crime to see if they could find anything that may have escaped the attention of the sheriff’s men. When they had fortified themselves with some bread and the remains of a rabbit pie, together with what was left of the cider, they walked across the town almost to the West Gate, which led out on to the Bristol road. A lane ran around inside the town wall, in which was a row of houses and shops, the first being Ranulf’s premises. The two heavily shuttered windows on each side of the door were firmly closed, but when Riocas banged on the panels, the door was opened and a timorous face appeared. They recognised the late owner’s assistant, who was qualified as a craftsman by his guild, but had not yet been able to set up his own business. Being paid by the day or
journee
, he was known as a ‘journeyman’.

Selwyn and Riocas commiserated with him over the loss of his master and learned that, much to the man’s relief, the business had been taken over by Ranulf’s cousin, so his job would be saved. They explained that they wanted to see the place where his master had been fatally assaulted. To justify this strange request, they truthfully explained that they were trying to clear their friend Eldred’s name, though carefully omitting any mention of their part in his escape.

Their frankness – plus the passage of a silver penny from Riocas’ purse – persuaded the smith to let them into the shop, which consisted of a front room where articles were displayed for sale, together with a workshop at the back and living quarters on the upper floor.

‘I found him in this room,’ explained the journeyman. ‘He was lying here, in the middle of the floor, his head covered in blood!’ He made a dramatic gesture with his arm. Though the floor had been washed, there were still ominous brown stains between the cracks in the flagstones.

Selwyn looked around at the trestle tables against three walls, where a few silver brooches, bracelets and earrings were on display.

‘They took nothing made of gold then?’ he asked.

‘The master kept all that locked in a stout chest in his chamber upstairs,’ explained the journeyman. ‘They took some silver bracelets and necklaces from here, which were quite valuable. I suspect that when they found that they had killed him, they ran away without looking for anything more.’

Riocas looked around the shop, where a chair lay against a wall, one of its legs broken off and a large pot lay smashed on the floor.

‘There was quite a struggle, by the looks of it!’

‘My master was a big man, with a quick temper,’ declared the smith, with some feeling. ‘He would not have given in easily!’

Selwyn noticed something on the floor and bent down to retrieve it from behind one of the legs of a trestle table. He showed a small piece of leather to Riocas, then questioned the journeyman again.

‘Is this room cleaned often?’

The man stared at him in surprise at such an odd query. ‘Our apprentice brushes it out every morning without fail – though since the shock of discovering the master’s bloody corpse, he has not been coming to work.’

Selwyn held up the object he had found. ‘So this is unlikely to have been on the floor before the robbery?’

As the journeyman shook his head in mystification, Riocas took the piece of leather from his friend and stared at it with a frown on his big face.

‘What’s this, then? Looks like part of a strap.’

Selwyn nodded. ‘And it’s part of a sandal strap. Look, it’s worn through where the buckle crossed it.’

Riocas, for whom leather goods were part of his trade, held it nearer to his eyes. ‘Yes, torn across at the weakened part. But what use is this to us?’

‘If it fell to the floor when Ranulf was killed, then it may well have been lost by one of the robbers during the fight.’

Riocas still looked dubious. ‘Half the citizens of Bath wear sandals, so how does that help?’ He turned to the journeyman. ‘What did your master wear on his feet?’ he demanded.

‘Good stout shoes, for he could well afford them,’ said the man, rather bitterly. ‘So that didn’t come from him.’

Selwyn had taken the strap back from the cat-catcher and was examining it intently. ‘I know where this came from,’ he said, tense with excitement. ‘Look there, near the tip.’ He pushed it back under Riocas’ nose. ‘There’s a small punch mark, see?’

The short-sighted furrier peered again at the worn leather. ‘A little cross, you mean?’

‘Yes! The abbey cordwainer always marks his work with that. It must have come from there, so almost certainly the owner of the sandal is either a monk or a lay brother!’

Both Riocas and Selwyn knew that all the leather-work for the abbey was done in the saddlery, next to the farrier’s forge on the end of the stable block furthest from the proctor’s cell. The present cordwainer was Roger of Devizes, who had given up his shop there to become a lay brother. He had a cobbler and a novice to help him, as they had to look after all the abbey’s harness and leather-work.

Riocas and Selwyn hurried back towards the precinct, and as they turned in through the main gate, Riocas wondered if it would be possible to match the broken sandal-strap to any particular person.