The Tintern Treasure (8 page)

‘No, indeed,' agreed the abbot. ‘A loyalty for which he paid with his life.' He gave another glance around the table. ‘Well, my masters, if everyone has finished, no doubt you would like to retire for the night. You have all had long and tiring journeys. I am sure you are ready for your beds. Compline will be in an hour's time, if any of you care to join us.'

There was a general murmur which might have signified assent or then again, might not. I think we all hoped that we could well be asleep by then and not to be roused without difficulty. I was good at feigning sleep when necessary, but felt that in the present case I wouldn't have to pretend. I was bone weary and could hardly keep my eyes from closing. I was sure the others must feel the same.

A general scarping back of stools ensued as we rose at last from the table. Half the pie remained uneaten, but I think I spoke for everyone when I pressed a hand to my belly and said I was unable to eat another crumb.

As we moved towards the dining-parlour door, it was suddenly flung open and one of the brothers appeared, out of breath and slightly dishevelled. He was plainly agitated and forgot to close the door behind him. Outside, the storm still raged.

‘Father Abbot, come quickly,' he urged. ‘There's someone in the old abbot's lodgings. I can see the glow of a lamp.'

T
he abbot frowned and lowered the glass he had been raising to his lips.

‘Are you sure, Brother Mark?' he asked. ‘No one uses those rooms now unless we have an important guest.' (Presumably none of those present rated this distinction.)

The brother nodded vigorously. ‘I saw the light between the slats of the shutters as I passed, Father. And I could hear someone moving about inside.'

‘You didn't go to investigate?' Gilbert Foliot queried, raising his eyebrows.

The brother gave a shamefaced gulp. ‘No, sir.' He added in extenuation, ‘There were other noises.'

‘Such as?'

‘Oh . . . I don't know how to describe them, sir.' Brother Mark turned back to his superior. ‘Please come, Father!'

The abbot heaved a sigh and got to his feet, glancing round the table as he did so.

‘Master Chapman,' he said, ‘you look a sturdy, broad-shouldered fellow. Perhaps you would accompany me. Meanwhile, Brother Mark, rouse some of the other brothers and come after us, although I feel certain you're starting at shadows. If there is anyone there, there will be a perfectly sound explanation for it.'

‘I'll come as well,' the goldsmith offered, rising briskly from his seat. He looked enquiringly at the others. ‘Anyone else?'

No one volunteered. I couldn't blame them. We could all hear the rain hammering down outside.

Gilbert Foliot shrugged. ‘Lead the way, then, Lord Abbot. Master Chapman and I will be right behind you.'

We followed the abbot out of doors, leaving the warmth of candle- and firelight to be soaked in the first two minutes by sharp spears of rain falling from a storm-riven sky. Fortunately it was only a short walk across a patch of muddy ground, past a couple of outhouses, before the abbot paused in front of a two-storey building, listened for a moment, then motioned us to accompany him round to the front. Here, there were two rows of three windows apiece, all being closed and silent except for one on the ground floor, which did indeed show chinks of light between the slats of the shutters. We moved closer.

‘Brother Mark is right,' the abbot said. ‘There is someone in there. One of the novices, no doubt, up to some mischief.'

He squared his shoulders, marching back around the corner to a side door which he pushed open with a resounding crack, before leading the way along a short passage to another door on the left. But just as he was about to fling this wide, words of reprimand on his lips, it was jerked open from inside and a figure stood framed in the doorway.

The abbot gasped and we all fell back a pace, startled by this sudden apparition, but that momentary hesitation was our undoing. The young man – for, despite the hood pulled well forward to obscure his face, there was no doubting either his youth or sex – simply charged between us and out into the night. I was the first to recover and, pushing Master Foliot unceremoniously aside, rushed after him. By this time, however, reinforcements had arrived in the shape of Brother Mark and an intrepid band of his fellow monks who, on sighting their quarry, gave an excited whoop and set off in pursuit. Confident that the intruder would soon be caught, I returned to the abbot's old lodging to discover what had been going on there.

This was immediately apparent. Several tiles had been prised loose from around the hearthstone, revealing a gaping hole beneath. The abbot and Gilbert Foliot were standing over it, regarding the empty space, but the latter turned his head sharply at my entrance. ‘Did you catch him?'

‘No. But don't worry. Brother Mark and his posse are hard on his heels.' I, too, stared into the hole. ‘Is this the . . . er . . .?'

The goldsmith nodded. ‘Yes, this is the secret hiding place that was accidentally found fourteen years ago.'

The abbot chewed a thumbnail. ‘But why would anybody want to open it up again? Everything that was in there was removed when it was discovered. Everyone knows that.'

‘I wonder,' I mused. ‘Is what we can see of the hole all that there is, Father?'

‘What do you mean?'

‘I'm wondering if the hiding place is perhaps bigger than was thought at the time. If it was properly explored back then.'

The abbot looked bewildered, but Gilbert Foliot nodded excitedly. ‘I see what you're getting at, Chapman. You mean that when the account books and scraps of old diary were found, nothing else was searched for. It was assumed that that was all there was.'

‘Yes.' I dropped to my knees and, leaning forward, thrust my arm into the aperture, bending lower so that I could probe sideways. Sure enough, there was a far larger space than was obvious at first sight. My arm disappeared almost up to the shoulder. I could also feel loose crumbs of cement as though some kind of barrier had been broken down.

I stood up and reported my findings. Once again, the goldsmith was the first to grasp the implications. ‘You're thinking,' he said, ‘that a century and a half ago, something was concealed in that hole and then sealed up with a wall of cement? The old accounts books and the pages of diary were put in to fill the remaining space and act as a decoy if anyone – for some unknown reason – should go searching for the secret hiding place?'

I nodded. ‘And the other noises which Brother Mark heard, and was unable to identify, was our young friend either chiselling up the hearth tiles or else breaking through the cement wall into the inner compartment.' I added, ‘I don't fancy the wall was very strong, and in any case, it may well have begun to crumble after a hundred and fifty odd years.'

‘But who would know about this inner compartment?' the abbot demanded fretfully. ‘I didn't know about it, and as far as I know, no one has talked or even thought about that secret hiding place for years. Well, certainly not within my hearing.'

‘We shall only have the answer to that,' I pointed out, ‘when we interrogate our prisoner.'

‘Do you think he found anything?' Gilbert Foliot asked me.

‘Yes.' I closed my eyes and tried to visualize the man as he had charged between us. ‘Yes,' I repeated. ‘I feel almost certain that he was holding something. Oh, not his bag of tools. That was in his right hand. But I would stake my life he was also clutching something in his left. Something small because his fist was clenched around it.'

The goldsmith nodded slowly.

‘I don't understand any of this,' the abbot complained even more fretfully than before. ‘So let's go and demand an explanation of this young man. Brother Mark and the others should surely have him in custody by now.'

But he was to be disappointed. Barely were the words out of his mouth than Brother Mark appeared in the doorway very much out of breath and wearing a distinctly hangdog expression. It didn't need his stumbling apology to know that our quarry had eluded us.

‘We . . . We thought we had him cornered, Father. We did indeed! He was about half a furlong ahead of us – maybe a little more – when he ran into the infirmary . . .'

‘Ah!' I exclaimed. ‘Of course! The unknown traveller who, according to the gatekeeper arrived here earlier today, but had kept to his bed with the curtains drawn, pleading a sick headache. He had to go back to the infirmary to collect the rest of his gear.'

‘Yes! You've got it, Master Chapman!' Gilbert Foliot clapped me on the shoulder.

‘Never mind that,' the abbot said impatiently. He turned back to Brother Mark. ‘Well? What happened then?'

The young monk shuffled his feet. ‘We . . . we all rushed into the infirmary, Father, thinking he couldn't possibly get away, but . . . but he'd gone.' The boy swallowed, his prominent Adam's apple bobbing up and down like a fisherman's float. ‘We . . . we forgot about the latrine drain. He must have followed it down to the cesspit, then climbed over the wall.'

The abbot closed his eyes and took a deep breath, the picture of frustration. But he was a fair-minded man and at last forced himself to say, ‘I suppose that wasn't your fault.'

‘He can't have got far,' the goldsmith said. ‘I'm going out after him. See if I can track him down.'

I laid a restraining hand on his arm. ‘Don't be a fool, man!' For the moment, I had forgotten the difference in our stations. ‘Listen to that rain! You'll be soaked to the skin in less than a minute. It's worse than it was quarter of an hour ago. You've only to look at Brother Mark, here. He's like a drowned rat.'

The boy nodded, shivering miserably, and the abbot added his voice to mine.

‘I beg you not to think of it, my son. We're not even sure the abbey's been robbed of anything yet. It's all speculation. It's certainly not something worth the risk of catching your death of cold.'

But Gilbert Foliot was not in the mood to listen to either of us. He shook off my hand and plunged out into the darkness.

It was at least half an hour before he returned, wet, furious and more than a little dishevelled. His hair was plastered flat to his head and his hands were covered in scratches where he had searched the scrubland on the slopes above the abbey. He was also limping, having, he said, badly twisted his ankle. There was a rent about three inches long in his fur-trimmed tunic.

The abbot and I had by this time rejoined the others in the dining parlour of the former's lodgings and given them a graphic account of the happenings so far.

‘We thought there was a lot of noise,' Henry Callowhill remarked comfortably.

‘We did look out,' Geoffrey Heathersett added, ‘but it was too dark and too wet to see anything clearly.'

They both roundly condemned the goldsmith's folly in continuing the pursuit and gave it as their considered opinion that he would be laid up tomorrow and unable to resume his journey. In the event, none of us could do so, the storm of the previous evening having worsened and there being rumours, brought by one of the lay brothers, of there being rebel forces in the surrounding hills. It was therefore reluctantly agreed by all of us that, for another twenty-four hours at least, we must stay where we were.

In the presence of the abbot and the infirmarian, I made a close search of the infirmary, particularly the bay occupied by the stranger, but to no avail. He had left no trace of himself. The porter confirmed that he had arrived on foot so there was no horse left behind in the stables which might have yielded up a clue to his identity.

‘A mystery,' the abbot said with dissatisfaction, but concluded in a resigned tone, ‘and a mystery I'm afraid it will have to remain. If he got what he came for – and if our friend the chapman is correct in what he thinks he saw, he probably did so – then he won't be visiting us again.'

And that was his last word on the subject, the daily running of a great abbey making too many demands on his time for him to waste any on a problem he was unable and unlikely to solve. But that didn't prevent the rest of us discussing the subject ad nauseum and propagating the wildest theories as to what the unknown might have found and how he knew of its existence in the first place. Only Gilbert Foliot seemed a little reluctant to take part, but that was because he was very tired and somewhat feverish. His stupidity of the evening before was taking its inevitable toll and he was eventually forced to admit that was feeling unwell. At his friends' insistence, he finally agreed to pay a visit to Brother Infirmarian and swallow one of his potions.

By dinnertime, the rest of us, cooped up together in the infirmary, unable to ease our cramped limbs with exercise and finding nothing new to say concerning the subject uppermost in all our minds, were beginning to get on one another's nerves. Oliver Tockney's north country speech, which I had at first found so fascinating, was now starting to irritate me beyond measure. And I could tell that my flat West Country vowels and Saxon diphthongs were annoying him equally. So, after dinner, between the services of Nones and Vespers, I took myself off to the abbey library and introduced myself to Brother Librarian. ‘Father Abbot told me that if I asked, you would be pleased to show me what was originally found in the secret hiding place,' I said, investing a somewhat loose remark of the abbot's with an authority it did not really warrant. ‘And I should very much like to see the diary, if nothing else.'

Brother Librarian was a sour-faced little man who, like so many others of his calling whom I have encountered from time to time, regarded the books and documents in his charge as his personal property, to be handed over to outsiders only with the greatest reluctance.

He began by claiming that he didn't know where the papers were: no one had asked to look at them for as long as he could remember and he had no idea where they were filed. I stared him down and repeated, mendaciously, that the lord abbot had promised me a sight of them, managing to convey that his superior would be extremely displeased if my desire were thwarted. So finally, after much grumbling under his breath and a token search, Brother Librarian produced the necessary papers with comparative ease from one of the lower shelves. They were enclosed in a cover bound with purple silk which he dropped on to one of the reading stalls, standing in a line along one wall.