Gilbert squatted in front of the hole and thrust his arm inside to check that it went deeply into the ground. Satisfied, he pushed the bag inside as far as he could reach, then kicked earth back into the burrow and tamped it firmly with his fist to hide all trace of the treasure.
As he peered into the hole to satisfy himself that the bag was completely hidden, a sudden sound behind him made him wheel around to find Maurice looming over him with a knife held high in his hand. With a yell, Gilbert threw himself sideways as his clerk lunged desperately downwards, aiming to bury the blade between the cellarer’s shoulder blades.
The puny Maurice was no match for the other man, who grabbed his ankle and pulled him violently to the ground, the knife skittering away out of reach. Leaping to his feet, Gilbert gave the clerk a vicious kick in the belly to keep him down, then unsheathing his own knife, drove it deep into Maurice’s chest.
‘Stab me in the back, would you, you bastard!’ he hissed. ‘I was going to kill you anyway. Did you think I was going to share any of my hard-won spoils with you?’
His former assistant made no reply as he was already dead, the long blade having sliced through the root of his heart. Gilbert pulled it out and wiped it on the grass, then stood quivering as he regarded the corpse.
‘Now I’ve got to hide you as well, damn you!’ he muttered.
He climbed the outer bank and looked around cautiously, but the hill top was deserted, apart from the still figure of Eldred tied to his tree.
Going back down to the body, Gilbert seized one hand and unceremoniously dragged it along the bottom of the ditch, looking for a large enough hiding place. He wanted to get away as fast as he could and this further encumbrance was highly unwelcome. He staggered along for a few hundred paces without finding any suitable grave for the clerk, so went out through a gap in the outer rampart and walked until he found a gaping hole under the roots of a solitary beech tree, which grew on the edge of a depression half filled with dead leaves. It must have been an old badger sett, but was large enough for him to push Maurice’s body inside. Thankfully, the former monk was small and skinny, and when Gilbert had pulled down a small avalanche of earth from the upper lip of the hole and liberally scattered armfuls of leaves, nothing was visible. As he did so, he wondered why he was bothering to hide Maurice’s corpse, as one more killing would make no difference to his final penalty if he was caught. The act was an almost instinctive one, to hide all traces of his most recent felony.
Then, almost exhausted by his recent efforts, he trudged back towards the ditch in order to get his bearings, as he had become disorientated and urgently needed to set off along the ridge that led northwards through the forest. Deciding that the clearest view would be from the flat top of the hill, he clambered up the inner bank of the dyke – and came face to face with a very large and very angry man!
Some years earlier, Riocas had explored Solsbury Hill, hoping to trap animals for his trade. However, the effort of climbing up and down every few days proved not worth the few rabbits he managed to snare, but he had learned something of the layout of the hill. This proved helpful now, as he laboured straight up the steep slope, stopping every few yards to listen for any sign of Eldred or his captors. As Gilbert had gone diagonally to the left, their paths diverged and when Riocas came out of the trees below the ditch and bank, he was on the southern side, a considerable distance from the other men.
All was silent, apart from the birds and the breeze. The cat-catcher stood for a moment on the lip of the first embankment, uncertain what to do next. Deciding that the higher he could get, the better the view, he climbed down into the ditch and up the other side to gain the grassy field on top. Across on the other side of the enclosure, he could see the dense trees of the ridge, but there was no movement to be seen anywhere and no cries of help. He began walking around the edge, peering down as he went into the ditch and at the trees lower down the hill. He stayed wary and alert, his only weapons being his dagger and a heavy stick, part of a fallen branch that he had picked up in the woods.
As he neared the trees on the north side, his eye caught a distant movement, which at first he thought was due to the wind. Then, a few yards further on, he saw that something was thrashing up and down. Hurrying towards it, he saw a leg waving and kicking back against a tree. It belonged to a figure tied to the trunk and a seconds later, he saw it was Eldred, bound and gagged.
Racing towards him, Riocas tore off the crude gag and untied the bonds that held him. The frail lay brother promptly collapsed at his feet and Riocas, surprisingly gentle for such a hulking fellow, cradled him in his arms and murmured reassurance into his ear.
When Eldred had recovered a little, he managed to flap a hand towards the further trees and whisper, ‘They went that way – Gilbert and Maurice, just a few minutes ago!’
After making sure that his friend had suffered no serious injury, Riocas propped him sitting up against the tree.
‘Selwyn has ridden for help – there will be city men here very soon, so you’re quite safe now.’ He rose to his feet and grabbed his makeshift club. ‘I’m going to follow those swine! When Selwyn and the posse get here, they’ll need to know which way they’ve gone.’
Leaving a limp and very apprehensive Eldred slumped against the beech, Riocas ran back to the ditch and climbed once again to the summit, unknowingly stepping over the rabbit hole that contained a small fortune.
On top, he reasoned that the only safe way off the hill for the fugitives was northwards through the forest, so he marched across the ancient enclosure in that direction. As he once more reached the rampart, he heard a noise and stopped to listen. Right in front of him came the sounds of scrabbling and heavy breathing, and a moment later the ruddy face of Gilbert appeared over the edge.
Shock, surprise and rage passed in succession over those belligerent features as he recognised who was glaring down at him – for everyone in Bath knew the oversized cat-catcher. Riocas had similar emotions and with a roar of anger, raised his impromptu club to strike the head of the man who was now heaving himself over the lip of the embankment. But just as he had bested Maurice, Gilbert now grabbed Riocas’ leg and toppled him over. The cudgel flew from his hand.
Though not nearly as large as his opponent, Gilbert was strong and fit, and was now fighting for his very life. He crawled over the edge and grappled with the fallen Riocas, the two men rolling about, each trying to kick, punch or strangle the other, all the while shouting abuse at his adversary.
The combat was short, sharp and nasty. Riocas managed to get on top and, lifting his huge body momentarily, let it fall on to Gilbert, squeezing the breath out of him like the closing of a bellows. Then the furrier leaned back and punched the other in the face with a fist the size of a boot. Somehow, both men crawled to a crouch, but Riocas ended the fight by seizing Gilbert by the throat and an ankle and throwing him bodily over the edge into the ditch.
Panting, and with blood running into one eye from a cut, Riocas staggered to his feet to look into the ditch, prepared to go down and continue the fracas, but there was no need. Gilbert was lying motionless at the bottom, his head against a large stone, a remnant of the ancient fortifications.
Riocas waited for a few moments to get his breath back, then clambered down the bank and warily approached the inert figure, in case he was shamming. Close up, the furrier thought that Gilbert must be dead, but then saw his chest moving slightly. Prodding him with the toe of his boot produced a guttural sigh, but he was obviously deeply unconscious.
‘I hope you’ll live long enough to be hanged!’ muttered Riocas, as he turned and began making his way back to where he had left Eldred.
The lay brother had recovered a little and was now leaning against the tree, rubbing his throat, which was sore after Gilbert’s prolonged armlock.
‘I heard you shouting just now,’ he croaked. ‘What’s happened? Have they escaped?’
‘I don’t know where Maurice has gone, but that swine Gilbert is
lying up there, his wits completely lost from a blow on the head.’
Riocas picked up the two girdles that had fallen to the ground and went back to the fallen man. As he was tying Gilbert’s flaccid arms and legs together with the plaited cords, Eldred appeared, having stumbled wearily after his friend.
‘What’s going to happen now?’ he asked anxiously. ‘Am I still accused of this theft?’
The cat-catcher shook his head. ‘Everyone knows that you’re as innocent as a newborn lamb, Eldred! It looks as if Maurice has made off with the chalice and pyx, but that’s not our concern now.’
That evening, Selwyn and Riocas called at Eldred’s dwelling, where Gytha was fussing over her man like a hen with one chick. Tearfully grateful to the two men for saving her husband, she plied them with rabbit stew and ale before being brought up to date with events.
‘Gilbert is in the city gaol, as the prior has disowned him as a monk and won’t have him in the abbey infirmary,’ reported Selwyn. ‘He has regained his senses, but won’t admit to anything. That evil man blames it all on Maurice, whom he says has run away with the treasure.’
‘No one believes it was all Maurice’s idea, surely?’ exclaimed Eldred. He looked pale and wan, but unharmed after his ordeal on Solsbury Hill.
‘Of course not. The facts speak for themselves,’ said Selwyn. ‘He’ll hang for this. The bishop has waived his right to try him before his own court and has left him to the custody of the sheriff’s men.’
The King’s steward had met the search party just outside the city that morning and twenty men had hastened back to Solsbury, where they found Riocas and Eldred on top of the hill, guarding Gilbert, who was trussed like a fowl.
They talked about these momentous happenings for a while, until there was a rap on the door into the lane. It was Hubert of Frome, come to enquire after his assistant.
The black-robed sacrist looked uneasy at being out of the abbey, which he rarely left, but was very solicitous about Eldred’s health. ‘You must rest for a few days, brother, before you return to your duties.’
This was the most welcome thing he could have said to Eldred, who had feared for his beloved job in the cathedral.
‘I will miss my task of cleaning the chalice and the pyx, sir,’ he said sadly. ‘I am told that the posse comitatus found no sign of Maurice or the treasure he stole, even though they searched the forest almost as far as Sodbury.’
Hubert shrugged. ‘It must be God’s will, Eldred. The Almighty will extract vengeance one day, though it may be a long time before Maurice is found.’
The squinting sacrist was right, but he had no idea how long it would be before the cellarer’s clerk was discovered.
ACT THREE
Brean, Somerset, Good Friday, 1453
Old Joan found the first corpse just before dawn or, to be more accurate, she fell over it and banged her knee hard on a sharp rock jutting out of the sand. She cursed loudly as she massaged the bruise, but she could not afford to indulge her pain for long. Distant voices, carried towards her on the salt breeze, compelled her to focus her attention on the man lying on the beach.
There was no question that he was dead. His bulging eyes were open and glassy, staring sightless up at the ghost of the moon. Strands of wet grey hair clung to his forehead and a crust of salt was already beginning to frost the stubble on his grizzled chin. Wincing, Joan crouched down on the damp sand. She slid her hand over the stranger’s fish-cold face and closed his eyes.
She crossed herself, muttering a swift prayer to St Nicholas, patron saint of sailors, and Our Lady of the Sea, for them to have mercy on this stranger’s soul. Then, in less time than it takes to say a ‘Paternoster’, Joan ran her callused fingers over the body of the corpse and stripped it of what few items of value she could find – an enamel amulet in the form of a blue eye, a small leather bag containing a couple of silver coins and a belt with a broad brass buckle. Painfully, the old woman struggled to her feet and moved on, searching for another corpse or, if she was lucky, a barrel or chest she could prise open.
She knew there would be other bodies. Last night there had been a storm. Seeing the purple clouds massing, all the local boatmen had beached their little fishing boats high up on the shore long before nightfall. But when the villagers left the church of St Bridget, after the vigil for the Eve of Good Friday, they spotted the lanterns of a ship rising and falling in the darkness far out in the bay. They stood silently huddled against the wind, watching the ship being driven relentlessly towards the cliffs of Brean Down at the far end of the sands. They saw the wind rip her sails into rags and her back break on the rocks. Then, as one, the villagers crossed themselves as the foaming waves surged over her decks, dragging men and masts alike down into the thundering depths.
The sailors and fishermen among the villagers – and there were many – shook their heads. The storm was a bad one, to be sure, but it was not so violent as to drive a well-manned ship onto the rocks, not if the sails had been furled in time and the captain had been doing his job. They muttered darkly that the ship was on a doomed voyage, cursed from the outset. Maybe an enemy had hidden a hare’s foot on board, or else a sailor’s daughter had neglected to crush the shell of her boiled egg, but whatever the cause, once the ship was on the rocks there was no saving her, nor any man who sailed on her.
The villagers had gone to their beds then, knowing that neither kegs nor corpses would drift ashore until the tide turned. The priest had remained a while on his knees before the altar, praying for the souls of the men drowning out there, but at the same time he could not help adding a plea to the Blessed Virgin for the ship to be carrying a valuable cargo that might wash ashore, for the church was badly in need of repair.
And so it was that as the rind of the sun crept above the horizon, the shoreline was already crawling with villagers, who, like Joan, were searching for anything of value they could salvage from the stricken ship and drowned men. They worked in haste, not only to beat their neighbours to the treasures that might be strewn along the sand, but also because they knew only too well the penalties of getting caught.
Anything washed up on the shoreline belonged to King Henry, a milksop of a king, they all agreed, who had once vomited so violently at the sight of a traitor’s quartered body, that he gave orders that no such mutilation was to occur again. But a feeble king cannot control his own officers, and the local sheriff interpreted the law exactly as he pleased, inflicting cruel punishment on anyone who deprived him of spoils that would otherwise mysteriously disappear into his own coffers. The villagers had learned to spirit away anything they could salvage before the sheriff’s men arrived to search their homes – that was the way of it and had been for generations.
Old Joan was losing ground. Years of beachcombing had lent her fingers skill in searching, but in payment those same years had taken swiftness from her feet and strength from her back. She couldn’t carry off the great barrels like the men, nor run like the girls to be first at a corpse. So, like the gulls, she sidled around the other villagers, her eyes searching for any unfamiliar shape against the distant rocks she knew so well, in the hope of spotting a body lying apart from the others.
Joan was in desperate need of any scrap she could find. First her poor daughter had died in childbirth. Then, within weeks, her grieving son-in-law had been crushed by an overturned wagon, and Joan had suddenly found herself the sole provider for her three grandchildren. And if that was not trouble enough to heap on any old woman’s head, the eldest grandchild, Margaret, had of late been struck down with pains in the guts and frequent vomiting, which no amount of purges or physic could cure. If ever a woman deserved a crumb of good luck in her life, poor old Joan did.
Her attention was caught by a pair of gulls repeatedly diving at something on the water’s edge. She raised her hand to shield her eyes and squinted against the sun dazzling off the sea. There was something drifting out there in the shallows, though it might be nothing more than a splintered plank fro
m the ship. She edged cautiously along the shore, trying to look as if she was still searching the ground at her feet so as not to draw attention to the distant shape. When she was close enough not to be overtaken, even by the young men, she hurried over.
The top of a ship’s mast was floating in the shallow water, rising and falling in the gentle wavelets. The wood had broken off in such a way as to form the shape of a cross. But it was not the shape of the wood that made Joan gasp and stare. The body of a man was stretched out on the mast. The corpse’s feet were bound fast to the down spar with a stout rope. His arms had been stretched out on either side of him, and his wrists were bound equally firmly to the cross spar.
As the old woman stared, a larger wave lifted the wooden mast, pushing it higher up the beach, as if the sea was offering her a gift. She hitched her skirts into her belt and waded into the water. Seizing the top of the spar, where the man’s head lolled, she tried to pull it higher up the sand. It was so heavy that at first she could only drag it an inch or two, but using the force of the next wave to lift it, she finally managed to beach it where it would not easily be pulled back into the sea.
Joan stared down. The eyes of all the other corpses had been opened wide as if desperate for a last glimpse of this world before they entered purgatory. But not this one; his eyes were closed and there was an expression that you might almost have called triumph about those slightly parted lips. He looked to be in his thirties. His hair and beard were long, thick and, beneath the salt shimmer, dark as a mussel shell. With a straight, thin nose and sharp cheekbones, he would have been a striking figure when he lived – not handsome exactly, but with the kind of face that would command a second look.
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