King Arthur's Bones (20 page)

Vincent Scudamore walked to the door and jerked his head at the steward to accompany him. Outside, with the sergeant in attendance, he spoke to d’Isigny in a low voice.

‘This man Owain had a dispute with my bailiff a few days ago, so one of his sons tells me. On the eve of Christ’s Mass he came to their house and uttered threats if they disclosed that he intended to go off to join the rebels in the north.’

The steward nodded. ‘So I heard from the other son, the butcher, who came with the news of the murder earlier today. Obviously the miscreant must have decided that his elder brother had revealed his treachery to us – as, of course, was his duty.’

‘And had he?’ asked Vincent bluntly.

‘No. As it happens, it came from someone else. But nevertheless, the carter exacted his revenge on your bailiff with the sin of Cain on Abel.’

The Lord of Kentchurch shook out the heavy riding cloak that he had been carrying over his arm and swirled it about his shoulders, ready to leave. ‘This is damned inconvenient, losing such a good servant,’ he snapped. ‘Now I shall have to find another to take his place.’

As he started down the steps to the cluttered bailey, which looked more like a builder’s yard, he gave an exhortation to the steward. ‘Do everything you can to find this bloody man! I’ll send John down with his hounds as soon as I get home.’

As Scudamore went to his horse, Jacques made a mental note to have the gallows put back up in the bailey, in spite of the builder’s objections.

While more than a score of soldiers and a pack of hounds were beating the countryside, Madoc and Arwyn were worrying about the box of bones as well as the safety of their uncle. The news of the bailiff ’s death had already reached Garway by noon, and they had realized that Owain would immediately be the prime suspect.

‘With all this searching, that chest is not safe under the straw,’ declared Madoc. ‘We need to hide it somewhere well away from here, best of all back in Abbey Dore. There’s no chance now that Owain will be able to take it to Gwynedd as he’d planned.’

‘He’ll be lucky to get there himself,’ growled Arwyn. ‘But how are we going to move it? It’s too big to go in the pannier of a packhorse.’

‘I’ll have to bring the oxen back here, or they’ll starve. We can use them for the time being. The preceptory has to have some transport when our uncle’s gone.’

They were standing outside Madoc’s cottage, well above the church and the preceptory, and he stared out westwards across the undulating countryside to the dark mountains that formed the edge of Wales. They agreed that Madoc would go to Hoadalbert to fetch the oxen, take the pig to Rhiannon’s house and give her the disturbing news about Owain now being a fugitive.

‘You’d better have a quiet word with Dewi in the mill,’ advised Arwyn. ‘Tell him to keep his head down for a while.’

The two brothers moved to sit on a log outside the door, each with a quart of ale brewed by Madoc’s wife Olwen. They were silent for a while, staring out over the countryside, which today at least lay under a watery sun.

‘You don’t think he could have done it, do you?’ said Arwyn eventually. ‘His mood has been desperate since Llewelyn was killed.’

Madoc looked indignantly at his younger brother. ‘For God’s sake, man! Of course not! He wouldn’t harm Ralph, other than perhaps with his tongue. He was his brother, objectionable though he might have been!’

‘Well, who did it, then?’ persisted Arwyn. ‘Someone lay in wait for Ralph and it must be a local, otherwise they wouldn’t know he had that regular round of the farm each night.’

Madoc was implacable in his defence of the uncle who had virtually brought them up.

‘Anyone with bad intentions could spy on the place for a couple of nights and discover that . . . and almost every bailiff does the same. And how could Owain get up there last night, when he’s holed up in a badger sett two miles away?’

Arwyn muttered something about two miles being nothing for a tough man like Owain, but he wanted to be reassured that his fears were unfounded. When their ale was finished, he went off to repair the thatch on one of the preceptory outbuildings. Madoc returned to his duties at the farm, checking on two labourers who were whitewashing the back of the calf shed, before he went for the ox-cart. In the yard he met one of the three Templar Knights who lived in the preceptory. This was Brother Robert de Longton, a thin, cadaveric man who had returned from the Holy Land some years before, following a severe illness.

‘What are all those men doing down in the lower fields, Madoc?’ he demanded.

The reeve had no option but to tell him that they were searching for his uncle, in the mistaken notion that he had murdered the Kentchurch bailiff. The Templar clucked his tongue in concern.

‘A sad thing to disturb the peace of this village. We cherish the serenity of this innocent place.’

Gathering his heavy black cloak around him, he stalked away, the eight-pointed red cross on his shoulder glowing in the pale sunlight. Madoc wondered how many Saracens he had killed in his time, which was seemingly at odds with his present pacifism.

As the warrior-monk reached the gate leading into the grounds of the preceptory, he saw that the two other Templars had appeared, John de Coningham and the preceptor himself, Ivo de Etton. They began talking earnestly and de Longton’s gesturing hand told Madoc that he was relaying the latest news to his brothers-in-God.

Later, as he set out on his pony to Hoadalbert, he saw more evidence of the soldiers from Grosmont. At the end of the strip fields sloping down to the river, iron helmets were bobbing among the bushes at the edge of the woods. As he neared the castle he saw another dozen men-at-arms marching out with menacing clubs dangling from their wrists, and when he had gone a little way along the road beyond Grosmont towards his uncle’s house the baying of hounds came clearly across the still winter air.

Saddened at the turn of events, Madoc carried on with his task, all too conscious that there was no way he could warn Owain of the new hunt for him. They had arranged to meet again at the elm, for them to give him more food. To try to find him deep in the woods along the Monnow, with all these soldiers around, would be futile and probably suicidal.

With a sigh he carried on to collect the pig in the cart and take it down to Rhiannon, who would be devastated to hear this new turn in their lives.

Owain never had any realistic hope of eluding capture, especially as he was not even aware that he was being hunted for murder rather than for being an alleged renegade.

Late that afternoon he was woken from a sleepy reverie in his badger hole by the distant sound of baying hounds. At first he thought that it was probably a hunt for deer or foxes out of Kentchurch and decided to lie low and let them pass him by.

But soon it became apparent that they were closing in, and he began to hear men shouting and the crack of snapped branches.

Owain got up and listened more intently, then decided to make for the river, to wade across and lose any scent of him that the hounds may have picked up.

He was too late. Before he had got fifty paces, a dozen hounds broke cover, including several lymers and running-dogs, which hunted by scent rather than sight. Though they did not attack him, they surrounded him and began barking and howling, so that soldiers soon crashed through the undergrowth and seized him roughly, throwing him to the ground. As he managed to look up as they lashed his wrists behind his back, he saw his nephew John Merrick calling his hounds back, managing to avoid looking at his captive uncle.

‘John, for Christ’s sake!’ he called in a strangled voice, for a burly soldier had his boot planted on his back. ‘What’s this all about? Was it you who denounced me?’

The fair-haired man dropped his gaze to Owain, with a look of hate on his face. ‘Denounce you? You mean accuse you! You killed my father, you cowardly swine!’

As he was pulled to his feet by a couple of men-at-arms, Owain stared at John in bewilderment. ‘Killed Ralph? He is dead?’

‘Don’t play the innocent! You struck him a cowardly blow from behind! Could you not fight him like a man, face to face?’

Before he could respond, Owain was dragged roughly by the rope around his wrists towards the nearest path, where Sergeant Shattock appeared, out of breath.

‘Good work, lads. You’ve got the bastard!’ He accompanied his words with a vicious punch to Owain’s face, before turning and leading them away from the river, up towards the church and the village.

‘What are we going to do with him?’ asked one of the soldiers, a rough-looking man with a face like a pig.

‘Until he’s hanged, lock him up,’ snapped the sergeant.

‘The castle’s no good, then,’ grumbled the ugly man. ‘The tower that had the lock-up has been pulled down and half the outer wall of the bailey is missing.’

‘Do you think I don’t know that!’ rasped Shattock, who until that moment had not given it a thought. He rubbed his bristly chin as he strode forward, then made up his mind. ‘We’ll use the church tower for now, until the steward decides what to do with him. That’s used as a lock-up for drunks and poachers.’

It was true that a room at the base of the massive, squat tower of Garway was sometimes used for securing petty offenders and was known by the villagers as ‘the prison’. The tower had been erected some years earlier by the Templars when they rebuilt the ancient church and added their circular nave. It was a few yards distant from the church itself and intended more as a defence against marauding Welsh than for any religious function.

Owain was dragged out of the woods and across the now-bare strip fields towards Garway. The sergeant marched ahead, then dismissed most of his men, telling them to return to Grosmont, leaving himself and three soldiers to handle Owain. After a few pointless struggles against his captors, he gave up and stumbled along behind them, staggering now and then as they gave a malicious tug to the rope that bound him.

Below the tiny hamlet, they struck up the hillside, past the grey buildings of the preceptory, to reach the church. The familiar surroundings crowded into Owain’s consciousness: the farm, which he visited so often with his cart, and the church itself where he had taken the sacrament only a few days ago.

The sergeant and his men hustled him into the churchyard and across to the tower, which stood alone like a massive stone thumb, with its four-sided conical roof and a pair of arrow-slits high up on each side.

‘Hold him there, while I get that door open,’ snapped Shattock and left them pressing their captive against the cold stone alongside a heavy door. He marched into the church through the south door and returned with a large key, almost as long as his forearm. An elderly man followed him out, with grey hair and full beard, wearing the brown habit of a Templar lay brother. Recognizing Owain, he demanded to know what trouble he was in.

‘He’s a rebel and a murderer!’ snapped the sergeant. ‘We must keep him confined until he’s hanged.’

‘Are you sure you have consent for this?’ called the sexton, as the sergeant thrust the key into a hole in the tower door.

‘It’s at the command of the steward of Grosmont – and will be confirmed by Prince Edmund when he arrives,’ lied Shattock brusquely. ‘We have no means of keeping a prisoner at the castle while the building work is going on.’

The sexton was not impressed by this, as the Templars acknowledged no one except the Holy Father in Rome as their ruler and were unlikely to take orders from a castle steward. He went muttering under his breath towards the preceptory, to see what the knights thought of the situation.

Inside the tower, which was even chillier than outside, Owain’s wrists were freed, then he was thrust into a small side-room. Its door was slammed shut and a bar dropped into stout brackets. It was entirely empty, with some mouldy straw on the floor and a low window-opening the size of Owain’s face running through the massive wall like a tunnel. He heard the big key being rattled in the outer lock and Shattock’s harsh voice telling a guard to stand outside until he was relieved.

Then there was silence.

As dusk fell, Madoc and Arwyn came into the churchyard and bribed the freezing soldier on guard with two pence to let them talk to the prisoner. Though he had the key, the man would not let them into the tower and they had to hold a conversation through the hole in the wall. They also used it to pass in the food and drink that they were going to take to him in the woods.

‘Has anyone been to see you?’ whispered Arwyn to the shadowy figure at the other end of the tunnel.

‘Brother Robert came and brought me some milk and bread a few hours ago. He asked if I wanted to confess, and I told him I had done nothing wrong, apart from wanting to fight for my country.’

Arwyn sighed. ‘For the blessed Mary’s sake, Uncle, he’s from Normandy! He’s on the side of the bloody king. You shouldn’t admit anything to him.’

‘I swore on the Cross that I had not harmed my brother, and I think he believed me.’

‘Do you know what is going to happen tomorrow?’ asked Arwyn tremulously, for he already knew the answer.

‘They’ll take me down to Grosmont, no doubt. The steward will hold a mock trial in the name of Prince Edmund, then they’ll hang me.’

His voice sounded dull and resigned, as if he’d already given up any hope. His nephews could think of nothing to say that would deny his morbid anticipation, so they turned to Arthur’s relics instead, telling him of their intention to get them back to Abbey Dore when the present emergency was over – presumably when Owain was dead and buried.

He agreed, but impressed on them the need to pass on the secret of the chest’s whereabouts to their family when the time came. Arwyn had a baby daughter, though Madoc so far had no children, but they both swore that the family obligation would be honoured.

‘Tell Rhiannon to come to Grosmont when I am arraigned,’ pleaded Owain. ‘I must see her one last time before I join my father.’

But once again fate took a hand.

Next morning Madoc and Arwyn mournfully intended to follow their captive uncle down to Grosmont Castle to meet his accusers. A couple of hours after dawn, they went to the church expecting to see Owain being taken out of his cell by his gaolers, but apart from a different soldier stamping his cold feet outside there was no sign of activity. Ignoring the guard’s eavesdropping, Madoc called through the tiny opening in the wall. ‘Owain, has anything happened yet?’