Hill of Bones

by The Medieval Murderers

  ‘What should I do with him, Master?’

  ‘Wait, boy,’ Edgar said. ‘Before you do anything with me, there are things you need to know. Things about this master of yours.’

  ‘Ignore him,’ William snapped. ‘Fetch my staff and help me to my feet. We’re leaving. This wretch can stay here until someone eventually comes up and stumbles upon him.’

  ‘Don’t you want to know why I was trying to kill your master?’ Edgar said calmly. ‘Aren’t you at all curious about why I followed him here?’

  ‘Fetch my staff now, I command you,’ William said with all the authority he could muster.

  Martin hesitated, looking at the two men on the ground. Then he picked up William’s staff and Edgar’s dagger, and sat down a little way from the two men, holding the dagger ready in his hand.

  ‘I want to hear what he has to say. You!’ He pointed with the dagger at Edgar. ‘You called my master “brother”. Is he really your kin?’

  Edgar arched his back, trying to ease the ache of the tight bonds. ‘He is my father’s son, though by God, I swear he has shown no brotherly loyalty to me.’

  Martin frowned. ‘I used to fight with my brothers all the time, but I never wanted to see them dead. What was the quarrel between you?’

  ‘Will you tell him, William, or shall I?’

  ‘Don’t listen to him,’ William roared.

  ‘I’ll tell it then, shall I?’ Edgar said coldly. ‘The quarrel, as you put it, happened when I was just sixteen and my brother here, a year younger. We were both apprenticed to a great physician and alchemist, a man much respected in the district. I was betrothed to Aliena, the physician’s only child, whom I adored, and it seemed that my life was mapped out for me. Aliena and I would marry and raise our children. In time I would inherit my father-in-law’s business and devote my life to healing the sick.

  ‘I worked hard, eager to become as good a physician as my master. But William had no interest in studying. He didn’t need to; knowledge came easily to him and somehow he managed to convince our master that he was studying diligently. He always had a gift for words, but the truth was that when the master left us alone, my brother would sneak off to lay wagers on the cockfights or seduce some tavern wench.

  ‘One day, our master set us both to making up potions and purges for the patients he would visit later that day. He left recipes, which we were to follow to the letter. But a pretty young maid called with a message for the physician. William was supposed to be making up a sleeping draught for a woman who suffered much pain, but he was so busy flirting with the maid that he forgot he had already added the drops of hemlock to the potion and added more. Of course, the woman died. My dear brother swore that it was I, not he, who had prepared that sleeping draught and everyone believed him.

  ‘I was terrified I would be hanged, but my master pleaded that it was an accident and my sentence was commuted to a public flogging in the market place, and then I was sold to a ship’s captain to pay the heavy fine imposed on my master.

  ‘I had lost everything, while my brother had it all. He even took my beloved Aliena, until he tired of her and left her with a child swelling her belly. For fifteen years I sweated and slaved before the mast, rowing till my hands were raw and my muscles screamed in agony, climbing the rigging as storms raged, blistering in the heat, shivering in the ice of winter, eating food rotten with maggots and drinking foul water. And if my strength failed me, there was always the encouragement of the lash to spur me on.

  ‘Then a few months ago a passenger came aboard. I recognised him at once, but he didn’t even notice me. Why should he? He scarcely glanced at the filthy, sunburned sailors toiling over the rigging. I thought time might have improved his character, but it hadn’t. The captain’s mistress was aboard, and it wasn’t long before I saw him groping her in the castle of the ship, when the captain was occupied elsewhere.

  ‘I confronted him and he finally realised who I was. He grabbed an iron grappling hook and swung it at my head, determined to silence me for good. But years of dodging heavy ropes and tackle on a rolling ship had taught me swiftness. The hook missed my head, but broke my arm. One of my shipmates saw what he did and when the captain questioned me about the quarrel, I told him all about William and his mistress.

  ‘The captain flew into a rage, threatening to throw them both overboard. His mistress protested that William had forced his attentions on her. So the captain had William lashed to the topmost mast to suffer the full motion of the ship and punishment of the weather. And finally, after fifteen years, I felt a little crumb of justice had fallen my way; for once in his life my brother was going to understand what it meant to endure hunger and thirst, burning sun and biting rain.

  ‘But in all the commotion no one had noticed how close we were to the headland. Almost at once the storm hit us. The mast was the first thing to topple into the sea. We were driven onto the rocks and fought for our lives. I struggled ashore, though how I did so with a broken arm was more than I could fathom. Rage and bitterness spurred me on. I searched for the others, but they were all drowned. I thought William had perished as well, and I was glad of it. Until I heard that a man had survived, a man tied to the mast of the ship. And I knew then that somehow that bastard had once again survived. But I was determined that this time he would not get away with it.’

  The look of disgust on Martin’s face had been deepening all the time Edgar had been speaking, and now the lad turned to look at his master.

  ‘It’s all lies,’ William shouted, his face contorted. ‘You’re surely not going take his word over mine. Remember the miracles I’ve performed. I am Serkan, and he is . . . is nothing!’

  ‘Like me, you mean.’ The boy sprang to his feet. ‘I’m nothing to you either, am I? You let me think that you were a prophet, a holy man. I left my family, my village, everything, to follow you and all this time you’ve lied to me. Everything you’ve done has been nothing but cheap swindler’s tricks.’

  Martin raised the dagger and ran at him, but William grabbed a handful of sulphur from the pot behind him and dashed into the lad’s face. Martin squealed, and blindly staggered backward. William reached out and grabbed his ankle, bringing him crashing to the ground. The knife flew from Martin’s hand.

  William rolled onto his knees and crawled towards the blade. He stretched out his hand, but just as his fingertips touched it, a large leather boot came down on the dagger, pinning it to the ground.

  William stared up. One of the sheriff’s men was looking down at him, his sword pointed straight at William’s throat. A second soldier had his sword pointed at Martin’s chest, an unnecessary precaution since he could do nothing except rub his streaming eyes.

  Two men came panting over the rise. The stouter of the two stood bent double for a few minutes, evidently suffering from a stitch. But the second, a bailiff, hurried across to the group.

  ‘Which of you is the man they call Serkan?’

  ‘He is,’ Edgar jerked his head towards William.

  The bailiff turned to William and said rather breathlessly, ‘Master Thomas says his daughter’s run away and he thinks she’s come here. He claims that four nights ago you seduced his daughter, Ursula. And yesterday, when he returned home after seeing to his business affairs, his maid reported that a lad had come with a message that Ursula had gone to her grandmother’s house. So Master Thomas set off to bring her home, only to discover the good lady hadn’t laid eyes on her granddaughter. So, is the girl with you?’

  The stout man, who by now had joined them, rounded on William, his eyes bulging in fury. ‘What have you done with my little Ursula? Where is she?’ He stared around the flat hilltop as if he thought to see her standing there.

  ‘I haven’t seen her.’

  The bailiff hauled William to his feet by the front of his robe. He yelped at the pain in his ankle.

  ‘Where is she?’ the bailiff demanded. ‘It would be wiser for you to tell me now. I’ve other ways of getting the informat
ion I want, far more unpleasant ways,’ he added with a nasty grin.

  ‘All right!’ William groaned. ‘She came here yesterday afternoon. I told her to go home, but she wouldn’t, she said she was going to Bristol.’

  ‘Bristol!’ Master Thomas shouted, his face turning scarlet. ‘What would my daughter want to go to Bristol for? She knows no one there. She wouldn’t even know the way. What have you done with my little girl?’

  William swayed in the bailiff’s grip. ‘I swear on the Holy Cross, I—’

  But they never learned what William was going to swear, for at that moment there was a shout from another soldier struggling over the rise.

  ‘We found her, bailiff. Leastways we found a body. It was buried in a shallow grave near the bottom of the hill. The rain must have washed some of the soil and stones off the grave. That’s how we saw the corpse, else we might never have found it.’ He turned to Master Thomas, gnawing his lip. ‘I’m sorry, sir. Body’s been burned, but there’s no mistaking it’s a woman. I reckon it must be your daughter.’

  The merchant rocked on his heels, his mouth working convulsively. ‘Not my daughter. Please, not her . . . My little Ursula dead . . . burned!’ He flung himself at William and it took the strength of two soldiers to hold him back. ‘He murdered her . . . He murdered my innocent child!’

  William stared aghast, his face blanched to the colour of whey. ‘No, no, that’s not her, that’s not Ursula. I didn’t kill her. I swear by all the saints in Heaven, Ursula’s alive. She’s in Bristol. Tell them, Martin, tell them it isn’t Ursula in that grave.’

  For a long moment Martin stared at him through swollen and bloodshot eyes. Then he said quite calmly, ‘But who else could it be, Master. Who else could it possibly be?’

  Historical Notes

  After the truce was agreed between France and England in 1396, Richard II of England and Charles VI of France exchanged gifts every year at the time of the New Year feast. Some of the gifts are well documented, and were lavish and costly pieces such as drinking vessels and ornaments. The mirror in the story is not recorded, but is typical of the kind of work done at that period, decorated with rouge cler enamel, which was in use from the beginning of the fourteenth century.

  During his reign, Charles VI suffered several bouts of ‘madness’, violently attacking courtiers and friends. The entrances in his castles even had to be walled up to prevent him escaping. On one occasion at a party he dressed as a wild man with several of his lords, who chained themselves together and cavorted about. The King’s brother, Louis of Valois, approached the wild men with a flaming torch, allegedly to determine their identity. The pitch that covered their costumes was set alight and four of the lords perished. Charles was only saved by a quick-thinking lady-in-waiting, who smothered the flames with the train of her dress. Whether this was, as his brother claimed, an accident or a deliberate attempt at assassination we shall probably never know, but the incident became known as Bal des Ardents, the Ball of the Burning Men.

  In the summer of 1453, following the loss of his lands in France, the gentle and saintly Henry VI suffered his first period of ‘madness’. Whether it was, as he feared, a condition inherited from his grandfather Charles, or a nervous breakdown brought about by stress, is difficult to determine. Richard of York, who had an equal claim to the throne, was appointed as Protector in March 1454. When Henry regained his sanity for a short time in 1455, Richard of York was dismissed, but took up arms against the Crown in May of that year, in a conflict that was later to be called The War of the Roses.

  The ritual that Serkan used to exorcise the demon from the mirror was based upon the detailed instructions for conjuring of spirits recorded by authors such as Pietro d’Abano, 1250–1316, in his treatise Heptameron seu elementa magica. Pietro d’Abano was an Italian physician, who is said to have ‘accidentally died’ while being interrogated by the Inquisition.

  ACT FOUR

  I

  I’d been dead for about five minutes now and it was a comfortable experience. I had taken care to fall on my back and lay there quite at ease, arms outstretched, gazing up at the darkening sky. The moon, almost at the full, was poised on the gable of one of the buildings overlooking the yard. If I squinted slightly I could make out a white face peering from a window in the gable. Some child, probably, or a penny-pinching adult who was reluctant to pay up to see me dead.

  From a few yards away came the sound of several voices raised in argument. I was aware that I was being referred to, and not in a complimentary way. No one seemed to regret my death. Indeed, there was talk of vengeance and justice. Then the argument turned to scuffling, accompanied by blows and gasps, and the thud of another body hitting the ground. The dead man had the good manners and the skill to fall a little distance away, leaving me to contemplate the moon and the face at the window. Now, after more scuffles and groans, the bodies began to fall as fast as rotten fruit from the tree. I counted three more thuds followed by silence apart from the odd satisfied groan or murmur of approval from the dark pit beyond where we lay scattered, all five of us.

  Then it was time for the summing-up. One of the few survivors of this violent action – his name was Malcontento – spoke up to explain how these five sudden killings had been necessary on account of other and earlier murders. Naturally, being dead, I didn’t turn my head but kept my eyes fixed on the moon, which was inching its way above the rooftops. In my mind’s eye, though, I saw Malcontento pointing an accusatory finger at me and my fellow corpses. I heard him as he ran through a list of poisonings, stranglings and stabbings before wrapping things up with a couple of little rhymes.

  ‘An honest life, however low, outweighs

  The deeds of these. Each one his debt now pays.

  So Heaven’s law trumps false device and reason,

  May their guilty blood wash off all sin and treason.’

  There was a pause to allow this harmless moral to sink in, before we corpses rose from the dead and joined our fellows at the front of the makeshift stage to acknowledge the plaudits of the audience. To judge by their clapping and their calls, they seemed pleased with our depiction of the lechery and violence that everyone expects to find at the court of an Italian duke, especially one who’s planning to marry his half-sister after disposing of her husband. We – or rather our author – had even included a scene in a madhouse, something that audiences of every type and class always appreciate.

  Finally we players did a little jig in gratitude and as a way of bringing our performance of A House Divided to a merry close. In truth, we were already well disposed towards the audience. They had been more respectful than a London crowd – but then any crowd is more respectful than a London one – and although we didn’t have an exact tally on the amount of money brought in by the ‘gathering’ taken before the performance the word was that the citizens of the city of Bath had been open-handed. And this sum would be supplemented by a grant from the town corporation, since they wanted to keep in good odour with our royal patron.

  We finished our jig with a flourish and filed behind the curtained screens that provided the off-stage area. We were playing in the yard of the Bear Inn, which lies off Cock Lane in the central part of Bath. The Bear didn’t have the amenities of our own Globe Theatre or fashionable London venues such as Blackfriars. In fact, it didn’t have any amenities at all apart from the hastily erected stage, some moth-eaten drapes and, for furniture, a table, a few stools and an imposing chair (the duke’s throne) provided by the landlord, Harry Cuff. Everything else – props, costumes, masks, face-paints – had to be laboriously transported from town to town across the kingdom by wagon. But there’s a special quality to being out on the road when the weather is fair and the audience is made up not of jaded Londoners but honest provincials eager for entertainment provided by the cream of the capital’s players.

  We of the King’s Men certainly regarded ourselves as that cream, pouring out our riches as we progressed across the West Country to our last de
stination of Bristol. This was home territory for me, Nicholas Revill, a member of the King’s Men for more than six years by now. In the latter days of Queen Elizabeth’s reign I had arrived in London from the village of Miching, which lies to the south-west of Bristol. If you climb the hills above this village there is a fine view of the channel that separates England from Wales. My father was the parson of the village and my mother the parson’s wife. They and many other folk in Miching died in an outbreak of the plague. I was in Bristol at the time, vainly seeking employment as a player, and although I returned home disappointed I soon realised there were greater blessings than finding a job: I was still alive.

  With my good parents no longer in this world and no other family to keep me behind, I escaped to the metropolis where I once again had a piece of good fortune when I fell among the Chamberlain’s Men, as they were called at the time. Even then, as the Chamberlain’s, they had a high reputation, with the Burbage brothers as the principal shareholders and William Shakespeare as their principal author. Now King James was our patron, and the Burbages and Shakespeare enjoyed the royal link with a quiet pride. Perhaps it made them reluctant to leave London, for neither the brothers nor WS were with us on this trip to the west.

  ‘A good audience, this Bath one,’ I said to my friend Abel Glaze. It was he who had tumbled down dead on stage right after my demise, landing a careful distance away.

  ‘Yes,’ chipped in Michael Donegrace, one of our boy players. A dozen of us were taking turns to shuck off our costumes in the cramped and dimly illuminated area to one side of the stage, before folding our garments and storing them away in one of the tiring-chests. Being on tour meant we had no tire-master to nag us about the tears and lost buttons and stains on our outfits, but equally it meant that each individual was responsible for stowing his garb and keeping it fit for the next performance.