Kate Sedley - The Tintern Treasure

‘I know how rumour has it,’ I snapped, ‘and rumour lies! I know King Richard! I know he would never harm his nephews.’

I was shouting, Margaret Walker was looking affronted and all four children were regarding me round-eyed, uncertain as to the cause of my displeasure.

‘I shall be going,’ Margaret announced. She kissed her granddaughter and nodded at her cousin. ‘You know where to find me, Adela, should you need me. I still think you’re the biggest fool in Christendom.’

And with that parting shot she was gone, the street door banging behind her.

‘Oh, Roger!’ Adela said reproachfully, but I could see the smile glimmering at the back of her eyes. She handed Luke to me and fetched me a beaker of ale. ‘Have you had any breakfast?’

‘Of a sort, in an ale-house at Whitchurch.’ I shifted Luke’s weight to my left arm and took a long swallow of Adela’s homemade beer. ‘But never mind that. We’ve things to talk about. First and foremost, are you sure about raising Luke?’

She smiled, a little wryly, I thought. ‘Tell me what else we can do? Mistress Spicer was adamant in her refusal to keep him. And if you’re satisfied that he is indeed your half-brother’s son. .’

I hesitated, then nodded. ‘I feel sure he must be.’

‘Then there’s no more to be said, is there? Talking is simply a waste of breath. Besides, he’s a very lovable child.’

And as if to confirm this, Luke gave me a beaming smile and put up a hand to tweak my nose, an action which caused his foster siblings a great deal of amusement.

This argument having been settled with far less aggravation than I could possibly have imagined, even in my most sanguine dreams, I turned to the second and far more serious matter. ‘Margaret says the house has been robbed again.’

Adela gathered up the horn books and put them away. ‘Not “robbed”,’ she demurred, ‘and not “again”. On the first occasion, if you recall, whoever it was didn’t manage to get in, thanks to Hercules, and this time nothing was taken. Oh, everything had been turned upside down, the contents of every drawer and cupboard strewn about the floor, but neither the children nor I could discover a single thing that was missing.’

Elizabeth, Nicholas and Adam vociferously confirmed this statement.

‘When did this happen?’

‘The day before yesterday, Wednesday, while we were all at market.’

‘Margaret said you’d taken Hercules with you. She had some story that you thought he was being poisoned.’

Adela suspended a pot of stew from the hook over the fire, to heat. ‘I thought he might have been. He was sick twice, each time after Bess had reported seeing a man giving him meat.’

I turned to my daughter. ‘What was he like, this man?’

Elizabeth wrinkled her forehead. ‘A big man. Not anyone that I knew.’

‘Did he have a scar or scratch marks on his face?’

Again she furrowed her brow, but to no avail. ‘I can’t remember.’

‘Did either Nicholas or Adam see him?’

But my stepson and son denied all knowledge of the stranger.

‘If I’d seen him,’ Adam declared stoutly, ‘I’d have run him through with my knife. Right through the belly button.’

There it was again, that jolt of recognition that told me he had, as once before, said something of importance, something of significance. And if I remembered rightly, he had used almost exactly the same words. But try as I would, the memory refused to resolve itself. I could only sit there, fuming with frustration.

I spent the rest of the morning until the dinner hour going around the house, satisfying myself that nothing had been taken that Adela and the children had failed to remember was there. This was not as difficult a task as it sounds for, whatever other people imagined, we were not rich and our possessions were few. The rest of the world might think me an agent of King Richard and assume I was paid accordingly, but most of the missions I had undertaken on his behalf had happened either by accident or out of a sense of loyalty to a man I greatly admired. That I had received very little payment was entirely my own fault because I preferred to keep my independence and be beholden to no man. It was all the more ironic, therefore, that people now assumed I was the very thing I had striven so hard to avoid.

Nothing, however, appeared to be missing. This did not surprise me. It merely confirmed my belief that the intruder — or intruders — had not been intent on general robbery but were searching for something in particular — the Tintern treasure. Whoever was behind these break-ins — and everything, to my mind, pointed to Sir Lionel Despenser and Gilbert Foliot — was growing desperate. The trouble was, of course, that like myself they had no proof that the treasure even existed. We might all be chasing our tails.

I had no doubt that the knight, with the assistance of his friend the goldsmith, had reached the same conclusion as I had done: that there was a strong possibility that Edward II, during his flight into Wales, had left something of value in the care of the then abbot of Tintern, hoping to return later to retrieve it. Unfortunately, there was no proof so far that this had actually happened. Nor was there any real proof that Sir Lionel Despenser and Master Foliot had transferred their loyalty to Henry Tudor and were working on his behalf.

My thoughts were interrupted at this point by the sound of Elizabeth shouting at the top of her voice and Adam yelling in return. My temper being at that moment not of the best, I descended wrathfully from what was now the former’s little attic room under the eaves, where I had been completing my inspection of the house, to the chamber next door to mine and Adela’s which was shared by the two boys.

‘Be quiet, both of you!’ I commanded. ‘What is this all about?’

‘He keeps stealing my things,’ Elizabeth said, pointing an accusing finger at her brother.

Adam, red-faced and mutinous, had his hands behind his back. His expression left no possible doubt as to his guilt.

‘He keeps going into my room,’ my daughter complained angrily, ‘and poking about. He helps himself to my toys and private treasures.’

‘Adam,’ I said sternly, ‘whatever you are hiding behind your back, return it to your sister immediately! If you do not, you will get a whipping.’

I saw him weighing up the chances of my carrying out this threat, so I took a menacing step in his direction.

‘I mean it, Adam.’ And, somewhat to my own surprise, I found that I did.

My son obviously reached the same conclusion because, after a brief moment of continued defiance, he sullenly held out to his sister a small leather bag closed by a drawstring of faded and rather ragged blue silk. Elizabeth snatched it and flounced out of the room just as Adela called us downstairs to dinner.

The meal being over, I announced my intention of visiting Henry Callowhill. I felt it was high time I shared my deductions and theories with the wine merchant as someone who had been involved in this affair from the beginning, and also as someone who, I felt, was not quite so sympathetic to Gilbert Foliot as he at first appeared. I recalled the goldsmith once treating his friend in a somewhat high-handed manner which I thought had been resented.

‘Well, don’t be too long,’ my wife instructed me as she cleared the dirty spoons and dishes from the table. ‘I want to visit Margaret and Bess must come with me. She is her grandchild, after all, the only true one Margaret has. And if I take Bess, Nicholas is bound to want to come as well, so I need you to keep an eye on Adam and Luke.’

‘Why do you have to see Margaret?’ I demanded peevishly, not relishing these sorts of domestic ties and beginning already, even after so short a time at home, to feel leg-shackled.