New Blood From Old Bones

by Sheila Radley

  Gib made no comment. He had resumed his throwing and was preoccupied by it, taking aim at the arrow-slit with another flint. He missed, and cursed with greater vexation than such a failure warranted.

  ‘Are all your serving men accounted for?’ persisted Will. ‘Those in your household, and on the fields?’

  ‘How should I know?’ snapped Gilbert, aggrieved. ‘The men take every saint’s day as a holiday, and will do no work.’

  ‘They do so everywhere. But today’s the holiday. Was any man absent yesterday, when the body was found?’

  Gib shrugged for answer, and threw at a passing crow.

  It was time, thought Will, to come to the point. ‘The justice has had reports of missing men,’ he said, ‘but most have proved false. One man who’s certainly absent from his home, though, is the prior’s bailiff.’

  About to throw again – massive weight on his back foot, right hand holding the missile poised behind his head, left arm forward for balance – Gilbert paused.

  ‘How do you know that?’ he growled, without changing his stance.

  ‘I made some enquiries to aid Justice Throssell. I went along Priorygate, and so to the bailiff’s house, but did not find him.’

  Gilbert straightened, taking his time. ‘You wouldn’t expect to find the bailiff at this season, were you a tenant of the priory and tormented by him as I am!’ he glowered. ‘He’s over at Bromholm for the reckoning.’

  ‘So I heard,’ said Will. ‘His wife told me that he’s accounted for.’

  He spoke lightly, and his brother’s response took him by surprise. Gilbert’s face – so much of it as was visible between hair and beard – darkened. He became bull-like, hunching his great shoulders and lowering his head in anger.

  ‘You went to the bailiff’s house and spoke with his wife? God’s death, is there no end to your prying! I know full well where Walter Bostock is – he’s about his proper business. And you can go about yours, brother, for you’ve outstayed your welcome here. Take your servant and your horses, and go!’

  Will stood his ground. Blood from his cut head was trickling into his eye again, but he would not acknowledge the hurt by wiping his face.

  ‘As you wish, Gib,’ he said, humouring him. ‘I came only for a week, but I won’t stay where I’m not welcome. I’ll leave tomorrow, and my child shall leave too. But first, I must ask Meg what’s to be done with Betsy. No doubt our sister will have an opinion on this matter.’

  Gib shifted at once. ‘Aye, well …’ he conceded gruffly. ‘A week, did you say? Well, stay so long if you must – but I allow it only for Meg’s sake. Listen to me, brother –’

  He drew a great breath. His anger refuelled, his eyes glittering, he stabbed a thick finger in Will’s face. ‘Spy on me no more! And pry no more into Castleacre affairs, for you’re as unwelcome in the town as you are in this castle.’

  ‘That’s not what I was told when I walked the streets this morning.’

  ‘It’s what I tell you now.’ Gib gave Will’s cheek a sudden. stinging, upwards slap, then brought away his hand and showed his brother the blood on it.

  ‘You bleed already, Master William!’ he jeered. He thrust his face closer, and Will felt the tainted heat of his breath. ‘Spy or pry again, and by the Mass you will bleed more!’

  Will clenched his jaw and his fists, but forced himself to turn silently away. He would not show his own anger, for his brother’s eyes were those of a man who had caught a glimpse of hell.

  Late that night, unable to sleep, Will rose from his bed, dressed, and slipped quietly out of the house. A full moon rode high over the castle walls. He walked by its light through the orchard, kicking at fallen apples and releasing their heady, fermenting smell. As he walked, thinking uneasily about Gilbert, he willed Ned Pye to make all possible speed to Bromholm and back with news of the prior’s bailiff.

  He had concealed his cut head from the rest of the family that evening by attending to it himself and changing his blood-smeared shirt. Meg had thrown him several anxious, questioning looks, but poor Alice had been with her in the parlour both before and after supper, and he had had no opportunity to speak to her.

  As for supper itself, Gilbert had made it a thoroughly disagreeable occasion. The meal was a cold one, for most of the servants were either merry-making in the town or sleeping off a day’s drinking. Gib, who hated to eat his meat cold, had attacked it savagely, railing throughout the meal at the solitary, clumsy old serving woman. Will had done his best to entertain Meg and Alice by telling them of outlandish foreign customs and manners, but his heartiness had been as forced as their amusement. It was a relief, now, to be out of the house and alone in the dewdrenched night.

  All was quiet, apart from the distant bark of a dog fox and the hooting of an owl. After the long day of celebration, the whole populace of Castleacre – townsfolk, pilgrims and wayfarers alike – had fallen into an exhausted sleep. Ordinarily, Will would not have been able to leave the house at night without tripping over and waking some of the servants, for they slept on straw pallets that they put down wherever they chose. But tonight, though some of the men were sprawled, snoring, across the screens passage, they were so far gone in drink that Will could step over and even on them without making them stir.

  The dogs seemed to be asleep too, both in the house and in the yard – and that was strange. The door of the house was always left unbarred, because the dogs could be relied on to bark at any unusual movement.

  When Will had first begun to grow tall and fidgety, the too-easily wakened dogs and servants had been a great inconvenience to him. Often enough he had wanted to sneak from the castle at night, against his father’s orders. But there were some things that he had been glad enough to learn from his elder brother: one was that the servants could be forewarned with a wink, the other was that the dogs could be quietened with marrowbones.

  He turned and looked about him, listening. Then he saw a glimmer of light coming from the open door of one of the stables, over against the castle walls, and heard the muffled clop of iron-shod hooves on straw-covered stone. One of the horses was being led out, by a large man who carried a horn lantern.

  Will had no doubt that the man was Gib, even before he emerged into the moonlight and blew out the lantern. But what was he doing? Fleeing because he had committed murder?

  From that distance, there was nothing Will could say or do to stop his brother. He watched Gib lead the horse hurriedly to the mounting block, heard the creak of the stirrup leathers as he settled himself in the saddle, saw him ride through the gatehouse, and heard him gallop away into the night.

  Chapter Ten

  Will rose in the grey mist before dawn, when cocks were crowing from every dung-hill in the castle yard and throughout the town. He had hoped to find that Gilbert had returned during the night, but his brother’s horse was not in the stables.

  ‘How now, Jacob?’ he called, as the yardman stumbled from the gatehouse yawning and scratching. ‘My brother’s cob is not here.’

  The old man seemed unperturbed. ‘Aye, well –’ he mumbled through his toothless gums. ‘Master Ackland sometimes rides out early to the fields.’

  ‘But not at midnight, I think. Didn’t you hear the hooves – or were you too full of ale?’

  ‘That I was not!’ protested Jacob, who would never admit to any negligence for fear of being turned off his work and out of his house on account of age. He splashed a handful of water from the horse trough on to his whiskery face, and wiped it with his sleeve. ‘I heard nothing,’ he said stubbornly.

  Will gave a significant sigh, and shook his head. ‘My father, God rest his soul, always said that no man could ride through the gatehouse without your knowledge. But time passes, old friend …’

  ‘Nay, Master Will!’ Jacob caught him by the arm. ‘’Tis not that I did not hear,’ he pleaded, his faded eyes fearful. ‘’Tis that your brother is my master and I dare not displease him. My best way is to hear naught, see naught and say na
ught.’

  ‘So it is, then,’ agreed Will, giving the old man a reassuring clap on the shoulder. He went into the stable to attend to his own horse, which had heard his voice and whinnied an enquiry. Within a few minutes, the sound of hooves came galloping up Castlegate street, and then Gilbert’s voice shouted for the yardman.

  Will stayed where he was, conscious that he was indeed spying but unrepentant so long as Gib’s innocence was in any doubt. He waited until his brother had left the yard to go to the house, and then until old Jacob brought Gib’s heavyweight cob back to the stable.

  ‘You won’t tell your brother that I spoke of him, Master Will?’ Jacob begged as he unsaddled the horse.

  ‘Never fear,’ said Will. ‘It shall be a secret between us.’

  He lingered to pat the cob. It was sweating after being ridden hard, but by no means exhausted. Wherever Gilbert had been that night, it was not far from Castleacre.

  The mist was beginning to rise and the castle-dwellers were astir, though the servants went about their work sluggishly, thick of head and bleary of eye. Gilbert, in contrast, seemed at first in a better humour as he sat down to breakfast in the hall. He ignored his wife as usual, but spoke respectfully to his sister and almost with civility to his brother.

  But this morning’s harmony did not last long. The cook had spoiled the bread by dropping it in the ashes, and the egg pancakes were tough as saddle-leather. Gilbert shouted for hot meat, but when the gangling boy came running with a hurriedly roasted coney it was blackened on one side and raw on the other.

  Gilbert’s anger exploded like gunpowder. He cursed, threw aside the dishes, kicked the boy to the floor, and stamped out to the kitchen shouting abuse at the cook. Poor Alice flinched, her pale eyes wide with fear. Meg immediately led her sister-in-law from the hall, denouncing Gib’s behaviour and saying that the two of them would breakfast peacefully in her parlour on wafers and a honeycomb. But as she left she glanced at Will, signalling that she wanted to speak to him.

  ‘What did Gib say last night?’ she asked, when she returned quickly to the hall.

  ‘Nothing of any significance,’ said Will. He had been tussling with a pancake, but now he gave up the unequal contest. ‘It seems that he mistrusts me – he accused me of spying on him.’

  ‘With reason?’

  ‘Not without,’ he admitted. ‘But he’s on the edge of violence, as you warned me, so I’ll take your advice and leave him be. And now,’ he added lightly, to give her no cause for alarm, ‘for my own satisfaction, I intend to call on Gosnold the constable to hear whether the man I found in the river has been named. Justice Throssell means to have the corpse buried by nightfall, named or not – and that will put an end to the matter.’

  As Will mounted his horse and rode out, he found himself regretting the absence of his servant. It was not Ned Pye’s slap-dash services he missed, for Meg had ensured that he was adequately cared for at the castle. But – though he did not mean to tell him so – he missed Ned’s company, his irreverent loyalty, and their exchanges of opinion. Remembering the constable’s insistence that the corpse was a stranger’s, and his haste to have it buried unknown, Will would have liked to hear Ned’s opinion of Thomas Gosnold.

  The early sun was no more than a haze behind the mist as Will rode along Castlegate. Weavers’looms were already clacking busily, and the women who sat spinning within their open doors called out greetings as he passed. But the refuse-strewn market place and Southgate street were silent and deserted, save for scavenging dogs and those revellers who lay snoring beside the ashes of last night’s bonfires. None of the alehouses and shops had opened their doors as yet, though judging by the oven smells the bakers were astir.

  Hoping to find the constable at his Southacre farm, Will cantered down beside the priory wall to the river, and splashed across the ford. Southacre stood well back from the Peddars’Way, and to the east of it, screened by trees and approached along a track. The farmhouse, timber-framed between high gableends of flint and brick, had been built by the priory nearly a hundred years before to house its long-established tenants, the Gosnold family. With all its barns and outhouses and orchards, the farmstead was of greater extent than the Acklands’ castle, even including the ruins. But Will acknowledged this to be fitting, for the Gosnolds were wealthy enough to own the great flocks of sheep that grazed the wide downland of Bartholomew’s Hills, where the roads crossed and the gibbet stood.

  As Will approached the gateway to the farmstead, Thomas Gosnold came pounding out on his horse, shouting over his shoulder a fierce injunction to his men to work harder. From the half-hearted thump of flails that came from his threshing barn, it seemed that his servants were in no better condition for work after the feast day than Gilbert’s.

  Will raised a hand and called a greeting. ‘Give you good day, master constable!’

  Surprised to see him, Thomas Gosnold hauled his heavy horse to a standstill. He was equally courteous, as they sat their mounts side by side and head to tail, but his sharp blue eyes were unmistakably wary in his florid face.

  ‘Good day to you, Master Will Ackland. What brings you to Southacre?’

  ‘Mere curiosity,’ said Will lightly. ‘I come to ask if you’ve put a name to the murdered man?’

  The constable sat square upon the dignity of his office. ‘That is a matter for the law – as you should know, sir, from your studies in London. I shall make my report to Master Justice Throssell in due course. No doubt he’ll tell you of it when he sees fit.’

  It was a just reproof, and Will gave a nod of acknowledgement. ‘But if you recall, master constable,’ he pointed out, ‘it was I who sent you word of the body in the river. Knowing my interest, Justice Throssell told me yesterday that two men of the parish had been reported missing. Since then, I’ve heard that a third man is absent.’

  Thomas Gosnold’s eyes, small above his heavy jowls, narrowed further. His reddish hair bristled below his cap.

  ‘A third man?’

  ‘So I’m told.’ Will turned his horse and brought it back to stand beside the constable’s. ‘The first, as you know, is one-armed old Tom Pardew, whose corpse it cannot be. The second was drunken Jack Broach, who has been found. The third, who is certainly absent from Castleacre, is the prior’s bailiff.’

  ‘Walter Bostock is not missing! Whoever says so, lies!’ said the constable fiercely. ‘Every tenant of the priory knows he’s gone to Bromholm—’

  ‘For the Michaelmas reckoning – so my brother tells me. And every tenant thanks God for his absence, according to Gilbert, for Walter Bostock watches too closely and exacts too much in tithes and rent.’

  ‘Pah!’ The constable kicked his horse into motion. ‘Master Ackland’s anger against the prior’s bailiff is well known, and does him no credit. For my part, I have naught to complain of. Walter Bostock does his duty to the priory, as I do mine to the law.’

  He urged his horse to a canter, but Will caught up with him. ‘And the murdered man, master constable? Is anyone from the parish unaccounted for?’

  ‘None!’ asserted the constable. ‘As I said from the first, the corpse is a stranger’s. We’ll bury him unknown, and that will be an end on’t. Good day to you, sir!’

  Will checked the pace of his own mount and watched Thomas Gosnold thunder away towards Bartholomew’s Hills, his horse’s hooves leaving a green track in grass that was white with heavy dew.

  Despite the constable’s hopes, Will’s interest in the murdered man could not end with the burial. He would not be easy in his mind until he was sure that the corpse was not Walter Bostock’s. But while he was waiting for news from Bromholm, he could at least take a closer look into the circumstances of the man’s death. And he would begin with an examination of the rags the corpse had been found in, before they were buried with him.

  Hob the sexton and Hob his son had, it seemed, been celebrating the feast of St Matthew late into the night. Will found them snoring prodigiously in a sheltered corner of th
e churchyard, earthy and hairy as two moles, their heads pillowed on the mound of a grave.

  Glad of their absence, for he could do without their inquisitive help, Will entered the mortuary. It was dimly lit by a tallow candle, placed in front of the tall wooden cross, and the gloom was tainted with the first sweet-foul smells of mortal corruption.

  Will crossed himself in the presence of the corpse, lying humped under its shroud, and then retrieved the man’s rags from the corner where they had been thrown. Carrying them out into the daylight, and away from an overshadowing yew tree, he spread them on a grave and went down on his haunches to examine them.

  The blue woollen hose had been made for a man more full-bellied than the corpse. They were of medium quality, such as a yeoman or an impoverished gentleman would wear – but they were not Gilbert’s, for the darns on either knee were clumsily done, and both Meg and poor Alice prided themselves on their handiwork. Below the knee, both legs were in tatters. This had given the garment the appearance of being ragged, but Will could now see that it had been slashed with a knife.

  The shirt – made for someone considerably taller than the dead man – was of a different origin. Stained as it was from close contact with the corpse, its quality was unmistakable, for it was made of the finest linen delicately pleated and stitched. Though it was well worn, in that the linen was thin in places with a slight fraying at the neck, there was neither patch nor darn. Both sleeves were ragged, as was the lower half; but once again the garment appeared to have been deliberately slashed.

  Will sat back on his heels and considered what he saw. The shirt was of finer quality than he himself had ever possessed, and certainly better than any of Gilbert’s. Better too, he judged, than his godfather would wear, for though Lawrence Throssell was the wealthiest man in the parish he was always modest in his attire. A shirt of this quality would have been owned by a knight, or more probably a nobleman, and there were none such this side of Swaffham. If, as Will supposed, the garments had been put on the corpse after death, how had such a shirt come to be here in Castleacre?