The Medieval Murderers: King Arthur's Bones

Asprey claimed this as his expertise. ‘Again, impossible to date it, given the rotten state of the timber. It looks like oak and there seem to be some bits of rusty iron left, which were probably bands or hinges.’

‘What can you tell from the bones themselves?’ persisted the student. ‘Even I can tell that the remains of that skull are male.’

Gwen Arnold hefted the partial thigh-bone in her hand. ‘It’s a man, all right – and a big fellow too, judging by the diameter of this femoral head. But I’ll need some time to look at all this stuff properly.’

‘What about carbon dating?’ asked Asprey. ‘Can we afford it from what’s left of our budget?’

‘Probably, but if there’s a shortfall I’ll wangle it from the Cardiff grant. As soon as these have dried a bit, I’ll drill some samples and send them off to Oxford, together with some from the wood.’

‘When you write this up for publication, can you mention my name?’ asked Philip wistfully.

Three weeks later they met again in Asprey’s office, which was even smaller than the Portakabin he had had at Bermondsey.

Gwen Arnold held a few sheets of paper in her hands, the results of the tests carried out by the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit.

‘I can’t tell you much more about the skeleton, which is very incomplete and in a bad state of fragmentation and decay. He was a man probably between forty and fifty years of age. As I said before, he was a big chap, at least six feet tall, with no evidence of bone disease, but, although his skull is badly crumbled, it looks as if he had a severe head injury which didn’t have time to heal before he died.’

‘All that could apply to a million people over the last few hundred years,’ observed Edward cynically.

‘Make that fifteen hundred years,’ said Gwen, waving her papers at him. ‘The carbon dating on four bone samples all agree on a date of AD 530 plus or minus forty years!’

Philip whistled in surprise. ‘Dark Ages, be damned! We didn’t expect him to be that old.’

‘What the devil’s he doing in a nineteenth-century iron box in South London?’ exclaimed Asprey, for once too astonished to be cynical. ‘But what about that wooden case that he was in?’

Gwen again cast her eye at her papers. ‘That’s even more curious! Two samples both showed it was late twelfth century. So nothing ties up – a sixth-century skeleton in a twelfth-century box inside a metal coffin possibly contemporary with the Napoleonic Wars!’

They discussed the conundrum for a while, but concluded that there was no way in which the matter could be resolved more definitely.

‘So what are we going to do with them?’ asked Asprey finally, gesturing towards a brand-new plastic storage box that sat on a bench. ‘They obviously have no bearing at all on our medieval abbey. They must have been dumped there by some bloody antiquarian two hundred years ago.’

‘I’d like to do some more work on them back at our department,’ offered Gwen. ‘There are new techniques we’re developing about discovering what food people ate in ancient times. We might get some clue as to where they originated.’

‘Take them, then,’ said Asprey. ‘One less box of junk for us to store here.’

The little Ford crested the hill on the M4 motorway west of the Almondsbury interchange and began rolling down the incline towards the Severn Bridge. In the distance shone the river, and beyond it the hills of Wales came into sight. The back seat was piled high with her belongings, the boot being almost filled by the plastic box.

Happy to be going home after three months in London, Gwen began to sing softly, crooning an old folk melody in Welsh, as she was born and brought up in Carmarthen. Some of her contentment was also because, during her stay in Bermondsey, her divorce had finally come through and she intended reverting to her maiden name of Merrick.

As the car reached the approach to the huge bridge, a feeling of well-being crept over her and she was somehow suddenly aware of the anonymous bones sharing in her happiness, an extraordinary feeling that intensified as she neared the two huge towers at the centre of the bridge.

Sixty miles further west, at the top of the Vale of Neath, the remote rock of Craig y Ddinas reared above the little village of Pont Nedd Fechan. In a huge cave, deep within the crag, sixty armed warriors slept in a circle around another sleeping figure, a taller man dressed in finer clothes and armour reminiscent of the Roman legions.

As the Ford crossed the centre line of the bridge, he briefly opened his eyes and a beatific smile creased his strong face, before he turned over and contentedly went back to sleep.

A small group of historical mystery writers, all members of the Crime Writers’ Association, who promote their work by giving informal talks and discussions at libraries, bookshops and literary festivals.

Bernard Knightis a former Home Office pathologist and professor of forensic medicine who has been writing novels, non-fiction, radio and television drama and documentaries for more than forty years. He currently writes the highly regarded Crowner John series of historical mysteries, based on the first coroner for Devon in the twelfth century; the thirteenth of which, Crowner Royal , has recently been published by Simon & Schuster.

Ian Morsonis the author of an acclaimed series of historical mysteries featuring the thirteenth-century Oxford-based detective, William Falconer, and a brand-new series featuring Venetian crime solver, Nick Zuliani, the first of which, City of the Dead , has recently been published.

Michael Jeckswas a computer salesman before turning to writing full time. His immensely popular Templar series, set during the confusion and terror of the reign of Edward II, is translated into most continental languages and is published in America. His most recent novels are The King of Thieves and, the 27th in the series, No Law in the Land . Michael was chairman of the Crime Writers’ Association in 2004-5 but balances that by Morris Dancing enthusiastically – and badly.

Philip Goodenis the author of the Nick Revill series, a sequence of historical mysteries set in Elizabethan and Jacobean London, during the time of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre. Among the titles are Sleep of Death and Death of Kings . He also writes 19th century mysteries, most recently The Salisbury Manuscript , as well as non-fiction books on language. Philip was chairman of the Crime Writers’ Association in 2007-8.

Susanna Gregoryis the author of the Matthew Bartholomew series of mystery novels, set in fourteenth-century Cambridge, the most recent of which are A Vein of Deceit and To Kill or Cure . In addition, she writes a series set in Restoration London, featuring Thomas Chaloner; the most recent book is The Westminster Poisoner . She also writes historical mysteries under the name of ‘Simon Beaufort’.