The Medieval Murderers - King Arthur's Bones

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.