The Medieval Murderers - King Arthur's Bones

Cole regarded her doubtfully. ‘And how will we do that, when the villain left no witnesses and no clues as to his identity?’

‘By using our wits.’ She shot him a mischievous glance. ‘Well, my wits and your authority as constable, to be precise. No wicked murderer shall best us .’

Gwenllian spent a restless night reviewing all Cole had learned about the murder, although it was frustratingly little. Daniel had left the castle at roughly nine o’clock, and John had found him dead just after first light. Priory Street was a major thoroughfare, and although there was a curfew during the hours of darkness it was not very rigorously enforced, and she was sure someone must have seen something that would help them solve the crime.

She decided her first task would be to question John, to ascertain what he had been doing out discovering bodies at such an hour, and her second would be to inspect the scene of the murder. Cole claimed the culprit had left no clues, but he would have been thinking along the lines of dropped weapons or easily identifiable items of clothing, and it would not have occurred to him to look for more subtle evidence. And if grilling John and examining the place where a man had been bludgeoned to death did not provide answers, then she would interview the residents of Priory Street. Cole said that Boleton – whose remit it was to investigate crime – had already done that, but Boleton’s legendary laziness meant Gwenllian could not be sure he had been sufficiently diligent, and she felt it needed to be done again.

She was awake and dressed long before dawn, and she and Cole ate a hurried breakfast of bread, cheese and summer berries in the hall, both eager to begin their search for answers as soon as possible.

‘Is Daniel’s body in the priory?’ she asked, wondering whether anything might be gained from examining it. She doubted Cole – or Boleton, for that matter – would have thought to check it for clues.

‘I brought him here.’ Cole hesitated, but then pressed on. ‘Mistress Spilmon said it was wrong to foist a bloodstained corpse on his brethren, and asked if she might be allowed to… She will come to tend him this morning.’

‘Mistress Spilmon?’ asked Gwenllian, mystified. The wives of wealthy merchants did not usually volunteer to prepare bodies for the grave – that was a task performed by impoverished widows who needed the money. ‘Why would she do that?’

Cole shrugged sheepishly, in a way that made her sure he was holding something back. ‘He was her confessor – perhaps she wanted to perform this one last service in return. Did you want to see him?’

Gwenllian followed him across the bailey to the chapel, an unassuming building with wooden walls and a thatched roof. Daniel lay on a trestle table, and someone had covered him with a clean blanket. Cole removed it, then rolled the monk on to his side, so she could see the back of his head. The wound was not as fearsome as she had anticipated, and it seemed Daniel had been unlucky – the blow had caught him at an odd angle and he might have lived had it struck a little higher or a little lower.

‘Mistress Spilmon must have tended him already,’ she remarked. ‘There would have been some blood, but someone has washed it away. And his hair is damp.’

‘I did that last night,’ said Cole. ‘There was blood, and I did not want her to see it.’

Gwenllian regarded him askance. ‘She offered to lay him out, Symon, so I doubt she is squeamish about gore. But it was kindly done, and it certainly helps me, because I can see the wound has a very clear imprint. Can you?’

Cole bent over the body, squinting in the unsteady light of the lamp. Then he looked at her in confusion. ‘It looks like a cross. There is a long mark that leads from his crown towards his neck, and a shorter one that transects it.’

‘Precisely.’

He continued to regard her uncertainly. ‘Are you saying the culprit is another monk – that a cross from the priory was the murder weapon?’

His face was pale, and she understood this was not a very desirable solution – the Church was powerful and would object to a secular official accusing one of its members of heinous crimes.

‘Not necessarily, although we should bear it in mind. But crosses are not the only cruciform objects in existence. Look at your sword, for example. Were you to strike someone with its hilt, it would produce a wound shaped exactly like this one.’

He glanced at it. ‘I am not the killer – I was tucked up in bed with you when Daniel died.’

She said nothing, but his claim was not entirely true. She had heard Daniel leave, but it had been some time before Cole had joined her upstairs. She had asked him where he had been, and he had mumbled something about a raid on the kitchens for food. It was something he did not infrequently, and she had thought no more about it.

‘If Daniel was killed with a sword, then none of your soldiers is responsible,’ she went on. ‘Their hilts are too thick to have made this mark. In other words, the murder weapon would be a knight’s blade, not one owned by a common man.’

‘Then Daniel was killed with something else,’ said Cole firmly, ‘because the only knights in Carmarthen at the moment are Boleton and me. What else might it have been?’

Gwenllian was not surprised to hear him dismiss the possibility that Boleton might be responsible, given their close friendship. Personally she disliked the man, and had still not forgiven him for what she saw as his abandonment of Cole during Lord Rhys’s raid – not to mention his unattractive habit of running up debts and persuading Cole to settle them. Fortunately, though, a recent inheritance had made him comfortably wealthy, so he was currently paying for his own wine, whores and fine clothes.

‘Some pots have bases that are cruciform,’ she suggested. ‘Spilmon showed me one only last week, which he had bought in Bristol. It was very heavy, and might well kill a man.’

‘Spilmon,’ mused Cole. He did not add anything else, but his expression was troubled. ‘Can the body tell you anything more?’

She wished he had not washed it, feeling all manner of clues might have been lost in his misguided attempt to be sensitive. She inspected the rest of Daniel, noting that his habit bore two muddy patches where he would have fallen to his knees, and dust on the chest and stomach – from pitching forward into the dirt.

Then she picked up his purse, and emptied the contents into her hand. As Cole had said, it contained six pennies and a small phial. And there was something else too, caught in some loose stitching at the bottom. It was a finger-bone – one that suggested its owner would have been enormous.

Gwenllian’s mind reeled as she stared at what lay in her hand. Then she flung it away, frightened by it. Cole regarded her in astonishment, but it was a moment before she could speak.

‘Do you remember me telling you how my brother hid King Arthur’s bones under Merlin’s oak?’ she asked unsteadily. ‘And how someone overheard, and got them before I could do as he asked, and move them somewhere safe?’

Cole grimaced. ‘Yes – you were delayed, because you were nursing me. You had several suspects, although I cannot recall them all now.’

She began to list them for him. ‘I virtually told Gilbert the Thief that the oak held something worth stealing, while your clerk John has a nasty habit of eavesdropping. Did you know he was listening to you and Daniel two nights ago, by the way? I saw him in the shadows when I went to fetch a cup of water from the kitchen.’

Cole blinked. ‘Why would he do that? All we talked about was horses and the recent spate of thefts that have been plaguing the town.’