King Arthur's Bones (22 page)

Arriving at the preceptory on a grey mare, he first accepted some liquid refreshment, then went over to the churchyard with one of the Templar clerks, as he had brought no one to record the proceedings. A small crowd had assembled outside the lychgate that led into the churchyard, including Madoc, Arwyn and their aunt Rhiannon. Several of the preceptory lay brothers were there, as well as their sergeant, in his brown habit and cloak. Standing well apart was another sergeant, Shattock from the castle, holding a watching brief with one of his men-at-arms.

The chaplain from the preceptory, who aided the parish priest in conducting the holy offices, led out Owain, who was dressed in a rough smock of hessian, with a length of thin rope for a girdle. He had made a crude cross from two branches from the churchyard trees, lashed together with twine.

‘Let’s get on with this. I want to get back to Hereford before nightfall,’ grunted the coroner, indicating that the supplicant was to kneel before him at the gate. He was illiterate, but had learned the ritual phrases by heart and began to gabble rapidly in Norman French, before offering a shortened version in English. ‘You have to confess your crimes, fellow,’ he grunted.

‘What am I to confess? I murdered no one!’ answered Owain stubbornly. His nephews groaned when they heard him throwing away his last chance of survival.

De Bosco glowered at him. ‘Are you going to waste my time after riding all this way?’ he bellowed. ‘I’m told you killed a man – your brother, no less!’

Owain shook his head vehemently. ‘I killed no one. But if it pleases you, I’ll confess to being a true Welshman, one willing to fight for his country.’

The coroner was in no mood for arguing. ‘Sedition and rebellion!’ he grunted. ‘That’ll do me – you’ve confessed to that.’

Owain then had to repeat a formal declaration of confession and take an oath of abjuration, before de Bosco again gabbled a long instruction in French, from which Owain was able to pick out enough words to get the gist of what the coroner was saying. He would have to take the shortest route to the port of Chepstow, wearing a white robe and not straying from the high road even to walk on the verge. He must not spend more than two nights at any one place – which was a pointless rule, as Chepstow was less than twenty miles away.

‘When you get to the harbour, you must take passage on the first ship,’ rumbled the coroner, suddenly switching to English. ‘If there is no ship, you must wade out into the tide each day up to your knees, to show your eagerness to depart!’

After muttering some more half-understood phrases, he gave the kneeling Owain a shove with his foot that sent him sprawling on the ground, then he turned and addressed the dozen people watching the proceedings with mystified curiosity.

‘Let no man interfere with this man as he abjures the realm. As long as he keeps to the road, he is inviolate. But should he depart from it, he becomes an outlaw and any of you is entitled to behead him without peril to yourselves!’

With this morbid injunction, Humphrey de Bosco left without so much as a glance at Owain, and headed back to the preceptory, where Ivo de Etton had promised him food and especially more drink before he set off back to Hereford.

The onlookers drifted away and Sergeant Shattock took his bad temper back to Grosmont to report. Though the new abjurer legally had thirty-seven days left to stay unmolested in the church, he was keen to be off before anything worse happened, such as the arrival of Edmund Crouchback, who might decide to ignore sanctuary and seize him for his gallows.

‘You can’t start today. It’s well after noon,’ advised the chaplain. ‘Stay in the church again for tonight, and we’ll find you a white robe in which to make an early start for Chepstow in the morning.’

Afterwards, Owain sat in the church porch with his sister, his nephews and their wives, eating and drinking the victuals that the women had brought. It was almost a festive occasion, as although they knew that Owain was leaving, probably for good, at least he was alive. Later, when the women had gone, the men had a serious discussion.

‘I don’t trust any of those from Kentchurch or Grosmont,’ said Madoc. ‘They’ll not take this as calmly as it seems. I’m sure the bastards will have some plan up their sleeves.’

They discussed contingency plans for a while, then Owain asked about the relics.

‘We’ll take them back to Abbey Dore the day after tomorrow,’ promised Madoc. ‘We want to be on hand when you step outside that churchyard gate.’

After a good breakfast, again brought by his nephews’ wives, Owain pulled on a plain white tunic supplied by the Templars, though it was bare of their striking red insignia. Grasping his makeshift cross, he went with Madoc and Arwyn to the churchyard gate and, with a slight hesitation at leaving his safe sanctuary, stepped out into the lane. Embracing his sister, as well as Olwen and Bronwen, they said fervent farewells, with wishful hopes that one day he would come back to them from Gwynedd.

Then he set out past the preceptory, where several of the lay brothers stood to wish him Godspeed, and plodded up to the road that ran through the village. The route from Garway to Chepstow first went eastwards to Skenfrith, then south through Monmouth and down the Wye Valley. His two nephews were firm in their decision to escort him for the first few miles. Somewhat to their surprise, Dewi and his son Caradoc arrived from Pandy to join them.

‘Like you, I don’t trust those sods from Kentchurch,’ Dewi growled to Madoc. ‘Nor the bastards from Grosmont!’

As they walked steadily down the long incline towards the Monnow, leaving the strip fields for dense woodland on either side, Owain and his escort looked suspiciously around them for any signs of men lurking in the trees. Every few hundred paces, Arwyn looked behind him to make sure that they were not being followed. Owain was careful to keep in the centre of the narrow road, well away from the verge, even though there was no one in sight.

‘Once well away from the village, I’ll be safe enough,’ he protested. ‘You can’t come all the way to Chepstow!’

‘We’ll keep with you as far as Skenfrith,’ declared Madoc. ‘I doubt even those bloody cousins of mine will stray further afield than that.’

He was not sure what they would do even if they were attacked, for since the king’s edict they dare not carry swords or maces and had to rely on the usual countryman’s knife on their belt and a stout staff or a cudgel in the hand. The five men strode warily onwards, keeping in a tight group, but as nothing untoward happened after the better part of an hour they began to relax.

‘A pity about the relics,’ said Dewi. ‘It would have been a great boost to have got them up to Prince Dafydd. If that swine of a brother of yours – begging your pardon, Owain – had not betrayed you, all this would not have come about and you could have taken the bones up north.’

‘We’re not certain it
was
Ralph who told Grosmont about him,’ said Madoc.

‘It was either him or one of his poxy family,’ growled the fuller. ‘I admit it was the fault of this stupid boy of mine, but no one else there knew of your intention to join the prince’s army.’

‘At least the bones will be as safe as they were before,’ said Arwyn, anxious to damp down any controversy. ‘We’ll get them back to the abbey tomorrow.’

Further talk was suddenly brought to a stop by a warning cry from young Caradoc, who was walking slightly ahead of them.

Around a bend in the track, between tall trees that came right to the verge, they saw the figures of four men sliding out of the wood and menacingly blocking the road. Owain recognized his two nephews, John and William Merrick, as well as a blacksmith from the Kentchurch barton and a soldier from the castle, now without his uniform jerkin and helmet. This last man brandished a sword, and the others had clubs and knives.

They advanced towards Owain and his friends, yelling insults and threats, though Madoc sensed that they were disconcerted to find Owain escorted by four other men.

‘Out of our way, damn you!’ yelled Madoc. ‘The coroner laid a charge on all men to give safe passage to an abjurer, on pain of the most severe penalties.’

‘Yes, he said the highway is a place of safety!’ hollered Arwyn. ‘You can be hanged and excommunicated for violating the law.’ He felt that stretching the truth a little was justified.

Though the two sons of Ralph hesitated, the soldier and the farm worker seemed indifferent to cautions and rushed at them, waving their weapons, leaving William and John to scream allegations of murder at their uncle, before lumbering after the first two men.

It was five to four, but one of the attackers had a sword. A melee began immediately, and Owain, the only experienced campaigner, reversed his stout cross and began laying about him as his companions also started flaying around them with their clubs and knives. The first casualty was the blacksmith, who made the mistake of attacking Owain with his staff and received a stunning blow from the end of the abjurer’s cross, which laid him senseless in the road.

Madoc and Arwyn were not inhibited by family constraints in squaring up to their cousins, and a spirited battle with staves and cudgels began, while Dewi and his son Caradoc took on the man-at-arms with the sword. Caradoc danced behind him and swiped at him repeatedly with the heavy stick he carried, trying to stop the soldier from jabbing his broadsword at his father. He failed, and Dewi received a severe wound across his left shoulder which sent him staggering, blood pouring from between the fingers of his other hand. His son, screaming with rage, belaboured the attacker, managing to land several blows with his cudgel that sent the soldier staggering, giving Owain the chance to land another few on him with his penitent’s cross that sent the fellow groaning to the ground.

It was all over within a couple of minutes, as the two Merrick sons, seeing both their accomplices stretched out on the road and their stronger cousins gradually beating them back, suddenly threw down their weapons and raised their hands in the air.

‘Enough, we give in!’ yelled John, dropping to his knees in supplication. He and his brother were grabbed by Madoc and Arwyn, but there was no fight left in them. Then they were ignored, as Owain and Caradoc shouted for their attention. These two had gone to Dewi, who had slumped to the grass at the edge of the track, his head on his chest.

‘My father, he’s badly wounded!’ wailed Caradoc, dropping to his knees alongside the stricken man.

Owain saw the bright red blood still pumping from between Dewi’s fingers, running down his chest on to the ground, and knew that this was a mortal injury. Ignoring the Merricks, he called Madoc and Arwyn to his side. ‘We can try to get him back to the hospitaller at the preceptory, but I fear it will be of little use,’ he murmured to them as Caradoc cradled his father in his arms, tears streaming down his face.

‘He’s trying to say something,’ he sobbed. ‘He wants you, Owain.’

Kneeling in the dirt of the road, Owain put his head near that of his old friend, to catch the words coming from his weakening lips.

‘I brought this on you, Owain. I am sorry,’ he whispered. ‘I had so much hate for that Ralph, who not only shamed my son by forbidding him his daughter, but betrayed you to the English.’

‘Are you saying you killed him, Dewi?’ said Owain incredulously.

‘I didn’t mean to . . . just injure him. But he fell on to a rock . . .’

His voice tailed off and his head slumped down again. He was not yet dead, but certainly dying.

Owain rose, leaving Caradoc to try to comfort his father, and walked over to his other nephews. William and John were aghast at having been involved in a death, even though it was not their hand that had directly caused it.

‘Did you hear what he said?’ he asked in a voice like steel.

William nodded. ‘He killed our father, not you,’ he said shamefacedly.

‘Dewi attacked your father because he believed Ralph had denounced me,’ grated Owain. ‘Was he right about that?’

John lifted his bowed head and shook it. ‘It was our mother. She never liked you and told that sergeant at the castle, when she saw him at Grosmont market. When father was killed, we all assumed it was you getting revenge.’

Madoc and Arwyn, who had been listening, interrupted them.

‘Now that it’s clear you are no murderer, you can come back to the village,’ pleaded Arwyn.

Owain shook his head. ‘Maybe no killer, but still a hunted rebel. I’ve been granted sanctuary and the chance to leave the country and I’m taking it.’

He turned to the Merrick brothers. ‘You’ll have some explaining to do about all this!’ He swept his arm across the two fallen men in the road and the dying man on the verge.

‘Madoc and Arwyn, you had better get these stupid relations of ours to help you carry poor Dewi back to the preceptory – though I fear you will be carrying a corpse for most of the way.’

He embraced them both, then picked up his battered cross and strode away down the road.

After another mile, he checked that the track was deserted, then tossed his cross into the bushes and vanished into the trees.

From the start, he had had no intention of going anywhere near Chepstow and now he went deeper into the forest to wait until dusk, when he would make his way across country back to Pandy. He had already arranged with Rhiannon for her to collect clothes and a hidden cache of money from his cottage. With a backpack of food, he would then slip away into the nearby Black Mountains and work his way northwards to Gwynedd.

It was a pity he was unable to take Arthur’s bones, but at least they would soon be safe again and ready to await some future crisis that might afflict the true Britons.

The old ox-cart once again creaked its way back to Abbey Dore without incident, the heap of straw concealing the stout oaken box in the back. Madoc and Arwyn were the Guardians this time and sought out the sexton without difficulty.

Meredydd heard out their tale philosophically and readily agreed to resume care of the relic box and make sure that its position was safeguarded by being passed on to the next generation.

‘But I can’t put it back in that same grave again,’ he announced. ‘The soil was disturbed so much getting it out that it might be too obvious if I go digging the same spot up again so soon.’