Landscape of Lies: The Thrilling Race for Treasure

by Peter Watson

  Michael took back the photocopied documents from Isobel Sadler and arranged them in front of him. ‘Monksilver, I have found out, was a rich monastery. The monks were medical men, would you believe? And they had a number of wealthy patrons – patients, in effect, whom they had cured.’ He noticed a puzzled look on Isobel Sadler’s face and explained what he had himself learned only days before. ‘This was before the age of medicine proper, don’t forget. The monks were educated men and a lot of them were travellers: they picked up cures and treatments on their travels and learned how to use herbs as drugs. There was another similar monastery at Evesham and that also became rich through medicine – it was by no means unheard of.’

  ‘Rich monks?’

  ‘The monks took a vow of poverty of course but the money they made went back to the monastery and not just into the fabric of the building – they bought books and manuscripts, commissioned candlesticks, reliquaries, jewelled crosses. It became famous for its treasures – most of which were silver. That’s why the village is now called Monksilver.

  ‘None of it was ever found, either then by Sir William or later. According to legend – I’ve checked this in the books too – the monks took the silver north, intending to hide it in one of the many caves in the Mendip Hills. Unfortunately, they were in so much of a hurry that they took a short cut across the estuary of the River Parrett north of Bridgwater. So weighed down were the carts they were using, allegedly, that they could only travel at two miles an hour. Hence the need for a short cut. Unfortunately, they made the crossing of the Parrett in October when the tides in the Severn Channel are especially strong.’ Michael picked up a pair of scissors and dropped them on to the desk in front of him. ‘They got caught halfway across the estuary and the whole lot sank in quicksand and disappeared.’

  Isobel Sadler groaned, but Michael held up his hand. ‘However, an inventory was found, a list of the most beautiful things that once adorned the abbey. Sir William even refers to it in one of his letters. Look –’ Michael took another file from his drawer. He drew out a sheet and turned it so that Isobel could read what he was pointing at:

  Monksilver was as barren as a nun’s belly. Deceiving Order! Roman Rogues! An Index of furnishings showed a dowry that the King, and I, had been jilted of. Monksilver wasn’t worth a copper.

  Michael rubbed the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger and went on, ‘The monks, obviously having good connections through their medical work, had been given a warning about Sir William’s visit. It didn’t happen that often, but it happened. Now, look at this inventory.’

  Isobel Sadler leaned forward. Michael turned another paper and pushed it across to her. ‘This is a rough translation from the Latin. My sister’s got a new husband who’s an Oxford don. He helped.’

  What Isobel read was:

  ‘Oh Lord, protect us and all that is yours.

  Grant us thy vision and a faithful spirit to follow thy

  path in troubled times.

  Lead us, Lord.

  Those who seek the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth

  shall surely find thee, for thou hast said,

  “I am the Way.”

  The keys to the Kingdom of Heaven are thine alone.’

  The Abbey of St Peter, at Monksilver

  This Register was writ

  in the year of Our Lord

  1537

  *One hand reliquary, in silver, with an emerald ring on the third finger. Ruby windows (no bones).

  *One map of the True Cross, in silver with emerald stations.

  *An eagle vase, in polished porphyry with a gold head and, as handles, gilt wings.

  *An elephant-ivory crosier, showing three scenes from the Life of Christ. The knop set with cloisonné enamelled plaques representing the Blessed Virgin and Child. Silver-gilt panels show saints and angels.

  *Four candlesticks, silver-gilt, showing fish, lions, dragons and griffins, overcome by man.

  *Jewelled gospels from France, showing the Passion with the blood of rubies and a silver clasp.

  *Incense boat and censer in German silver, a lion at each end of the boat, and the censer filigreed.

  *Silver-gilt chalice from Spain, an ivory collar carved with leaves and, at the lip, the words ‘From hence is drunk the pure flow of the Divine Blood’.

  *Altar cross, silver-gilt, set with amethysts and cornelians, and bearing miniatures painted on vellum. Tablets of glass cover lists of relics inside the cross.

  No key but this ┼

  ‘What’s a hand reliquary, and ruby windows?’ said Isobel Sadler. ‘And a map of the True Cross? The rest I think I understand. Just.’

  ‘Yes, they confused me too, so I asked an old friend at the V and A. A reliquary, as you know, is some sort of device containing the relics of a saint. A hand reliquary means it is a statue in the form of a hand. This one is made of silver and originally contained the bones of the saint’s hand – that’s why it was fashioned into that shape. Ruby windows means that the little glass panels in the fingers of the statue, so you can see the relics, were in fact made of rubies. A map of the True Cross, I now know, means it was a silver map of Europe and the Middle East showing all the places where pieces of the True Cross were believed to exist. The holy places were marked by emeralds. Hand reliquaries are not that unusual but silver ones are. The map is rarer – there is only one other known, in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.’

  ‘Engrossing, and grisly. But what has this to do with the picture?’

  ‘I was just coming to that. In the first place, there are apparently grounds for disbelieving that the Monksilver silver, so to speak, actually disappeared as legend has it.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Yes. Reverend Hope told me about that. Apparently, the Monksilver legend is identical with the story of the loss of King John’s state treasure, which disappeared in the sands of the Wash in October 1216. The details are exactly the same, down to the carts which could travel at only two miles per hour. The King John treasure really is in the quicksands of the Wash, for anyone to stumble across even today. So the Monksilver story may be just a smokescreen, to put Bad Bill and others like him off the scent.’

  ‘Are you saying –?’

  ‘Hold on. Hear what else I have to say first.’ He picked up his cigar from the ashtray and pulled on it. ‘Now, here’s the hot news. There is a link between the inventory and your painting.’

  ‘What?’ She stared at him. ‘There is?’

  ‘How many objects are listed in the inventory?’

  She looked down and counted. ‘Nine.’

  ‘And how many figures in the painting?’

  She turned and started to count again. ‘. . . nine, but –’

  ‘That’s right. Now look closer. Each figure in your picture is associated with something from this list! The man in the funny tunic is standing next to the eagle vase, the skeleton is holding the crosier – see? – one monk has the gospels, and the other has the candlestick. They are all there, all nine.’

  She turned back to face Michael. ‘What does it mean?’

  Now Michael got up and walked around his desk. He stood in front of the picture. ‘From here on, it’s guesswork. Pure theory. I haven’t checked what I’m going to say with any authority so I may be completely off the rails. But see if I can convince you.’ He paused and drew on his cigar. ‘Okay, here goes.’ He nodded towards the papers on his desk. ‘Have another look at the inventory. It tells us one thing we didn’t know before: the name of the abbey.’

  ‘St Peter’s.’

  ‘Exactly. Now look at the very last words on that list.’

  Isobel Sadler moved her eyes down the paper. ‘“No key but this” – and then there’s a – well, it looks like a cross.’

  ‘Right! But a very special cross –’

  The eyebrows were lifted, then lowered and bunched together as Isobel Sadler frowned. ‘The cross bar is lower than it should be?’

  ‘Abloodymazing! Ten out of ten. You’ve sp
otted it. Except that the bar is exactly where it ought to be – because it’s upside-down. Start with the fact that Monksilver was dedicated to St Peter. In the Bible, Peter was given the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven by Jesus. That’s why the papal insignia, at St Peter’s in Rome, are crossed keys. Then, according to legend, at the end of his life Peter was crucified upside-down.’ Michael loosened his tie and unbuttoned the collar of his shirt. ‘Now move on to the possibility that these nine items were not lost in the sands of the Severn Estuary near Bridgwater but were hidden somewhere else. I think that the phrase “No key but this” followed by a drawing of an upside-down cross was intended as an indication of where the St Peter’s treasures had been put. The writer of the inventory is saying, in effect: “Look for another upside-down cross.” Now look at this.’

  Michael turned and with the end of his finger traced the edge of the red curtain that partly shielded the chapel in the painting from view. Going from top to bottom, about half the way down, the curtain fell down a fraction to reveal, half hidden behind it, a small religious memento hanging on a wall. It was a metal moulding of a man being crucified upside-down.

  ‘And you think –’

  ‘Think is too hefty a word. If my sister were here she would say I’m playing Micawber again. But it is possible . . . possible that, taken with everything else, this upside-down cross links Monksilver Abbey, the inventory and your painting. The medieval mind adored riddles. They loved nothing so much as a session on the conundrums. They believed that secret wisdom was hidden in that way to keep it special. I reckon it is at least on the cards that the monks at Monksilver hid their treasures before Sir William arrived and that, not knowing what would happen to their order, whether they would be dispersed or imprisoned, or worse, the abbot commissioned this picture as a secret record of where the main treasures were hidden.’

  ‘Micawber? Or Machiavelli?’

  ‘Cruel – but hear me out. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries pictures were full of symbols, and educated people prided themselves on being able to “read” them. The abbot at Monksilver may have meant to keep the picture himself, or he may have intended to send it to another monk or abbot at a safer monastery. On the other hand, look at that prayer which was written as a preamble to the inventory. That’s also the kind of thing they did in those days . . . but read it again, knowing what you know now. It’s all about following paths, having a special vision, seeking heaven on earth, finding the key. Follow, seek, find: those are the verbs. Any other monk reading the prayer would also have known by then that the Monksilver treasures had gone. But no one else did get a chance to read it. Bad Bill got there first. Since it’s been in your family for such a long time, the picture must have been among the few things that Sir William did confiscate at Monksilver.’

  Isobel Sadler frowned. ‘It’s neat, I grant you that, Ryan was certainly right about you – you do think like a detective. But you’re a gambler too. This sounds like long odds to me.’

  ‘Maybe. But there’s something else. Cobbold inadvertently suggested it when I showed the painting to him. He was the one who noticed the half-hidden crucifix. He told me that, although your picture wasn’t by Holbein, this device was borrowed from one of Holbein’s own pictures – in the National Gallery here in London, as it happens. The picture, called The Ambassadors, was painted in 1533 and shows two men wearing furs and surrounded by astronomical and mathematical instruments. But it also shows a crucifix half hidden by a curtain – I went to look at it only yesterday, to refresh my memory.’

  ‘You mean it’s the same crucifix?’

  ‘The similarity is marked, except that in Holbein’s painting the figure isn’t upside-down of course. Anyway, this device, according to Cobbold and all the textbooks, which I’ve also dipped into, is generally held to mean that the artist is saying that the truth, the Christian truth, is always hidden and that it can only be discovered through diligence and study. It all fits.’

  He could see from the sparkle in Isobel Sadler’s eyes that, despite herself, she was beginning to believe him and to share his excitement. The silvery sheen coming off the wet paving stones in the Yard outside was reflected in her eyes. But she had one more doubt. ‘Why didn’t Sir William make the connection you have made? He was there, alive at a time when, as you say, they thought in conundrums.’

  ‘Good question. As a matter of fact I think Sir William did have some idea of what was afoot. That’s why I think he confiscated both the inventory and the picture. I think he intended to look for the treasure himself at a later date but he never got the chance. The king kept him very busy, and Bad Bill had better fish to fry than go chasing off after hidden silver. There were plenty of other monasteries less well organised than Monksilver. According to the Reverend Hope, Sir William was in Gloucester later that same month and Worcester after that. And, as you well know, he died before the year was out. It may have been then that the inventory and the picture were separated.’

  ‘But . . . wherever they were hidden, surely the monks retrieved them as soon as they could. You don’t think they are still – well, buried or locked up somewhere, do you? This all happened over four hundred years ago.’

  Michael shrugged. ‘Now we get to the difficult bit. Do we go looking – or is that a romantic idea but a waste of time? Micawber mania, as my sister might call it. As you rightly say, it’s been four whole centuries since these things were hidden.’ He picked his cigar out of the ashtray and sucked the end. ‘But works of art do go missing for very many years. There is a censer and incense boat in the V and A which disappeared for five hundred years before turning up in Cambridgeshire – discovered by a man who was hunting for eels. Every year there are half a dozen great old masters found in someone’s attic or an old house in the country. The point is, so far as anyone knows, none of these nine very valuable objects has turned up anywhere. That means the odds are they are still in their hiding place – or lost for ever.’

  ‘How valuable are they?’ Isobel Sadler’s eyes gleamed.

  ‘Ah! Another good question. You may find your judgement even more muddled when you look at this.’ Michael returned to his desk and dipped into his drawer again. ‘It’s not easy to value objects like these, you know, since no two art works are exactly alike. But my friends at Sotheby’s helped out, checking against their computer records.’ He retrieved another sheet from the drawer and handed it to Isobel Sadler. ‘This is the best I can do, in the circumstances. The figures on the right are the auction records for objects as similar as I can find to those on the Monksilver list.’

  Isobel Sadler put both elbows on the desk in front of her and leaned forward to look at the list. Almost immediately, she grunted involuntarily. What she read was:

  1.Hand£2,000,000

  2.Map£3,500,000

  3.Eagle vase£750,000

  4.Ivory crozier£450,000

  5.Candlesticks£1,000,000

  6.Gospels£4,000,000

  7.Censer etc.£1,000,000

  8.Chalice£450,000

  9. Altar cross £2,000,000

  Total £15,150,000

  ‘I don’t believe it.’

  ‘You should. The figures are, if anything, on the conservative side. For example, the world record for a manuscript, the Hughes de Lionne gospels, is $11 million, £8.1 million. But that was in 1983. The Monksilver gospels could fetch twice the value I have put on them.’

  Isobel Sadler’s gaze kept alternating between Michael and the figures in front of her. ‘But . . . what I mean is. . . . if we found any of this, who would it belong to?’

  ‘Yet another good question. That depends partly on where it was found and partly on what happened to the order which St Peter’s belonged to.

  ‘The law on trove is clear: the stuff belongs to the Crown, which cedes it to the Treasury, which cedes it to the British Museum. If they take it – and they’d almost certainly take this – they pay the full market value to the finder.’ He paused. ‘In other words we would split
more than fifteen million pounds, fifty-fifty. You could buy a few tractors with that.’

  For a while there was silence in Michael’s office. The only sound was the distant hiss of traffic as it swished down Duke Street.

  At length Isobel Sadler said, ‘I just can’t believe that something could remain hidden for so long without anyone finding it – or stumbling on it by accident.’

  ‘I know. But if that had happened the world would certainly know about it. Some of the treasure is so important it would have ended up in museums. We know that isn’t the case. Besides, aren’t you forgetting one other thing?’

  ‘Oh yes? What?’

  ‘Your burglar. He was convinced there is something in all this. I’ve asked around the dealers who specialise in medieval things, and the auction house people, and no one has ever heard of anybody called Molyneux. So he may have given you a false name. He may read Latin and therefore spotted the significance of the inventory. By itself it wasn’t worth a lot of money, of course, but it had academic interest, enough certainly for him to spend what he did spend. Your presence in the auction room, however, was a bonus. When he found out you were a Sadler, he must have seen his chance immediately. He wouldn’t have known about the picture, of course, not at that stage. He probably came down to your house hoping to spot one or more of the treasures from the inventory which, he hoped, you weren’t aware were so valuable. That’s how coups are made in the art world all the time. But when he saw the painting he must have noticed that the figures are holding the items from the inventory and he would have realised immediately how significant it was. That’s why he wanted it and that’s why he tried to steal it.’

  ‘So you’re convinced it was him, are you?’

  Michael nodded.

  ‘How can you be so certain?’

  ‘For one very good reason, which I hope will finally convince you that we’re on to something. Look at this.’ He stood up again and walked round to the picture. He took a pencil from a jug and pointed to the part of the picture where the chapel altar was covered in a green cloth. ‘Look at the white lace edging. It’s very finely painted, see?’