King Arthur's Bones (19 page)

‘Best make sure, Owain,’ said Olwen ‘You don’t want to struggle all the way to Dolwyddelan and then find you’ve given the prince a load of stones or beef bones.’

They talked it over for a while and eventually, with Dewi’s added persuasion, Owain saw the sense of Olwen’s caution and agreed to open the box briefly before taking it away.

With the evening approaching, they took their leave and the cart rumbled away, leaving the great king to slumber under a pile of straw in a Templars’ barn, perhaps an appropriate place for such a devout warrior.

When they reached Hoadalbert, Dewi left to walk the couple of miles to Pandy. After settling his oxen, Owain threw a few logs on to the smouldering ashes in his fire-pit to warm the room for the night, then he wrapped himself in a couple of blankets and, after offering up a prayer for his father’s soul, settled down on the hay-stuffed mattress in the corner.

It would be the last time he ever slept in his house.

Next day Owain was back at Madoc’s cottage and went with him down to the barton, the home farm of the Templars, to check on the bones. Owain’s presence there would cause no comment from the few lay brothers and outside labourers, as being a carter he often came to the farm. In fact the preceptory was one of his main customers, as he brought in much of their supplies and carried a lot of their produce to market in Abergavenny, Monmouth and Hereford.

They went into the barn and pulled out the large box, handling it with some reverence. Though almost a century old, the hard oak looked in good condition despite being buried for so long.

‘Just a quick look, to make sure there really are bones in there,’ said Owain, rather hesitantly.

‘It’s not locked – just a tight-fitting lid,’ observed his nephew, tentatively poking at the top edge. It took more than that to open it, as the wood had swollen and distorted over the years, and Owain had to use the edge of a large, rusty hay-knife to prise it apart. Eventually the lid creaked open on its corroded brass hinges, revealing a layer of mould-stained linen covering the contents. Gingerly pulling that aside, they gazed down on a jumbled heap of mottled brown bones, some of which even their inexpert eyes recognised as human, especially as they glimpsed the rounded calvarium of a skull. They stared for a moment in awe, then spontaneously crossed themselves and mumbled a prayer in Welsh.

‘That’s enough!’ said Owain abruptly and pulled the linen back across the remains. ‘Let greater men than us do what they must with them.’

As he was about to lower the lid, Madoc pointed to something lying between the cloth coverlet and the side of box.

‘There’s a pouch there. It might be important.’

Owain lifted it out, a damp leather bag with a drawstring, patches of green mould growing thickly on its surface. Loosening the string, he looked inside, but there was nothing there but a small quantity of yellowish slime at the bottom. With a shrug, he put the pouch back again and closed the lid, pounding the warped wood until it sat firmly in place.

They pushed the heavy box back under the straw and returned to Madoc’s house, but just as they reached the door they heard the sound of hooves coming at a canter, and a brown gelding dashed into the yard, bearing Arwyn on its back. He almost fell off in his haste and rushed across to them.

‘Owain, you must hide. They are searching for you!’ he gasped, grabbing at his uncle’s sleeve. ‘A man I often employ to help me with the thatching is working at Grosmont, and he came just now to tell me that Crouchback’s sergeant-at-arms has gone out of the castle with a couple of men to arrest you!’

Owain stared at him in surprise. ‘What the hell for?’

‘It seems someone has denounced you as a traitor, intending to join the rebels fighting the king!’ gabbled Arwyn. ‘You must flee at once – hide yourself, for when they know you are not at home in Hoadalbert, my house and this place will be their next targets!’

‘Bloody Ralph Merrick, that’s who it will be!’ snarled Madoc. ‘He’d sell his own brother to curry favour with those bastards at Grosmont.’

The two nephews hustled Owain away, urging him to vanish into the countryside for the time being and hide somewhere until he could slip away to North Wales.

‘We’ll meet you after dark at the dead elm on the banks of the Monnow,’ promised Arwyn. ‘I’ll bring some food and a blanket for you. Now go, for God’s sake. We’ll put them off with some tale about you having already gone away!’

Dazed, but responding to their genuine fears, Owain trotted out of the barton and then downhill past the church, keeping going until he reached the thickly wooded strip of land that ran along the river. He vanished into the trees and loped for a mile deeper into the woods until he found a badger sett and sank into it gratefully, pulling his cloak around him as tightly as he could. Thankfully, the really icy weather had moderated and the wind was coming from the west, which meant rain by tomorrow. He sat there pondering who might have given him away, to send him scurrying into the forest like a hunted animal. Though Madoc had immediately put the blame on Ralph, Owain could hardly believe that his own brother would denounce him to the English.

Others knew about the plan to go up to Gwynedd to join Dafydd’s army. There were the two sons, William and John, who had never got on with Owain and looked down on him as a peasant. Ralph’s wife and daughter knew of the plan, thanks to Caradoc’s big mouth, but of course there could be many others. At the Skirrid, Dewi had warned him against the landlord, though again he found it hard to accept that Eifion would knowingly betray him. What about the priest? He was a Welshman but, as far as Owain knew, he was not aware that they were planning to join Dafydd.

The culprit was probably someone working at Kentchurch, who had picked up the gossip from Ralph or one of his family. Maybe they had not denounced him directly, but gossiped with folk at Grosmont, which was very near and had close connections with the Scudamore estate.

There was nothing he could do about it now, except try to keep out of sight until he could slip out of the district and make his way north. Accepting this philosophically and giving thanks for the fact that he had no wife or children to abandon, he settled down into his badger hole and waited for dusk.

‘The swine’s not here, so let’s see if he’s holed up with his kin in Garway,’ growled the sergeant, aiming a kick at a stool, sending it flying in pieces across the room. He and one of his men had already trashed the place, ripping up the mattress and overturning the table in frustration. Outside, the others had pulled out the oxen’s hay from the byre and chased the pig from its sty, in a futile search for Owain ap Hywel.

They mounted their horses and cantered off back to Grosmont, then on past Kentchurch towards Garway, where Sergeant Shattock burst first into Arwyn’s cottage half a mile outside the hamlet and then into Madoc’s at the barton. Neither of the men were at home, and after terrifying the wives and children, who genuinely knew nothing of what was going on, they scoured the neighbourhood until they found the two brothers, who professed similar ignorance of anything amiss.

‘What our uncle intends doing is none of our business,’ protested Arwyn. ‘He never tells us anything about his own affairs.’

‘His father has just died. You shouldn’t be hounding him like this!’ declared Madoc. ‘What mischief-maker told you these lies?’

Shattock, a heavily built, florid man with a surly nature, gave the reeve a shove in the chest. ‘Watch your tongue, damn you! None of your business who told the steward. If we find you’ve been hiding him, you’ll both be wearing rope necklaces down at the castle gallows!’

They soon lost interest and rode away, the sergeant complaining that he had missed his dinner because of this futile mission. It was obvious that they were not going to take this allegation about Owain all that seriously, unless the steward, Jacques d’Isigny, sent them out once again to hunt him down.

Back at Grosmont, the sergeant went for his food before seeking out Jacques to report their failure. The castle was in state of chaos, and it was just as well that the recent defeat of the main Welsh forces had reduced any risk of a local attack, for a length of the curtain wall and one of the main towers had been pulled down in order to rebuild them according to the ambitious designs of Prince Edmund.

The steward, the principal officer of the barony and ruler of the castle when Edmund Crouchback was absent, took Shattock’s news calmly.

‘If the bastard turns up, just arrest him and then we’ll hang him,’ he said casually. ‘With the prince arriving in a few days, I’ve got better things to do than chase some local peasant.’

Jacques d’Isigny was a tall, smooth-faced man of forty, with an olive skin that suggested a family origin in southern France. He dressed in clothes that were modest in style, but of the very best quality. His calm manner hid a ruthless nature, which made him a most efficient administrator. The fact that he was the senior civil servant of the king’s brother gave him a status well above the usual steward.

As his lord was coming soon to check on the progress of the remodelling of his favourite castle, Jacques was understandably more concerned with this than catching some local renegade. If it had not been for a message from Sir Vincent Scudamore’s manor at Kentchurch, to the effect that he had been given news of this man’s seditious intentions, he probably would not have stirred himself to bother with the matter.

But by the following morning Jacques d’Isigny would be very keen to lay hands on Owain ap Hywel.

That night, Arwyn and Madoc met their uncle at the prearranged spot on the banks of the Monnow, about two miles from Garway. They took him food and a
carthen
, a thick woollen blanket, and sat with him in the dark while he ate his fill.

‘We’ll take your pig down to your sister and bring the oxen up to the farm,’ said Madoc reassuringly, though in fact he was worried sick, not only about Owain’s plight but also about the risk to him and his family if they were found to be giving aid to a rebel.

‘What about the relics now?’ asked Arwyn. ‘We can’t leave them in the barn for long. They’re bound to be discovered sooner or later.’

Owain shook his head sadly. ‘There’s no way I can take them up to Gwynedd now, even if I can get there myself. I doubt Dewi and the others will risk coming. It will be obvious after this treachery where they’ve gone, and their families would suffer.’

‘So what shall we do with the box?’ persisted Madoc. ‘Take it back to Abbey Dore?’

Owain considered for a moment. ‘No, not yet anyway. Find somewhere safe to hide the bones, preferably in consecrated ground. It may be that I can come back and collect them later, if Prince Dafydd thinks it’s worth while.’

They agreed and left their uncle to a solitary night, apart from the indignant badgers whose sett he was blocking. But a couple of hours later and a couple of miles distant, greater trouble was brewing.

A shadowy figure lurked within sight of the bailiff ’s house at Kentchurch Court, patiently waiting in the gloom. Though there was a half-moon, the gathering rain clouds often blocked its light, but eventually the watcher’s persistence was rewarded. Before going to bed each night, Ralph Merrick did his rounds of the farm buildings to make sure everything was secure. At the stables, the bailiff checked that the hurdles were in place across the doorways and that the two ostler-boys were sleeping in their proper places on piles of hay. He had to make sure that the chicken pens were locked against foxes and the fire damped down in the kitchen shed.

Ralph carried a lantern to light the interior of the buildings, a candle within a case that had thin sheets of pared horn as windows. As he began to walk back to the house, he thought he heard a noise in the bushes that ringed the yard. Holding up the lantern, he tried to see if there were the shining eyes of a fox or even a wolf, but the dim light of the single candle was too feeble.

Shrugging, he turned away, but after only a couple of steps there was a commotion behind him and a heavy cudgel smashed down on the back of his head. He fell like a poleaxed bull, and by further ill chance his forehead landed on a large stone embedded in the pathway.

Though the noise brought the stable-boys running to his aid, they found him deeply unconscious – and within the hour he was dead.

‘It’s that evil brother of his,’ sobbed Alice Merrick, sagging against her daughter in a melodramatic fashion. ‘He did this awful thing!’

Jacques d’Isigny motioned to his wife to help the woman to a chair, and the silent, black-haired woman moved forward to assist Rosamund in settling her mother in a leather-backed chair. They were in the first-floor chamber of the north tower of Grosmont, the sound of hammering and sawing coming through the window-slits.

‘Tell me again what happened,’ commanded the steward.

Alice related her brief tale through her sobs. ‘My husband went out to close down for the night, sir, as he always did,’ she blubbered. ‘Then one of the stable-hands rushed in to say that he was lying in the yard. There was a wound on the back of his head and a great bruise on his temple. We brought him in, but he died without recovering his wits.’

A grey-haired man, dressed in a sombre but good-quality cote-hardie, nodded his agreement. ‘I can confirm that, steward, as they came rushing up to my court to tell me my bailiff had been assaulted and I was there when the poor man died.’

This was Sir Vincent Scudamore, and Jacques was careful to be deferential to a man who was second only to Prince Edmund in the hierarchy of the district.

‘It seems this carter is the obvious suspect, sir. We were already seeking him as a renegade Welshman intent on continuing their hopeless fight.’

Sergeant Shattock, lurking near the doorway with one of his men, was bold enough to speak up. ‘We’ll get him today, sirs, never fear. I already have all my men-at-arms out seeking this Owain.’

Scudamore nodded his approval. ‘I suggest that you use my hounds in your search – their master is the son of the dead man, so he will have an added reason to succeed.’

This brought forth a fresh bout of howling from Alice Merrick, and her daughter Rosamund tried to soothe her, though the girl herself did not seem unduly distressed at the loss of her father.