The Medieval Murderers - Hill of Bones

After another delay, the prior also became impatient and waved an imperious hand at his own secretary. ‘Go and hurry them up! Surely Brother Gilbert must have been able to find his own clerk by now!’

The nervous chaplain hurried off and the group waited with mounting impatience. It should have taken the messenger no more than five minutes to get to the cellarer’s office and back again, but a quarter of an hour went by without a sign of him. Then the door burst open, and he almost fell inside in his haste.

‘Prior, the cellarium is in disarray! It seems that both Brother Gilbert and Maurice have gone!’

Several hours later, two men in dark Benedictine habits rode their horses along the Chippenham road until they came to the foot of Solsbury Hill. Some way beyond where the lane turned up to Swainswick, they reined in and looked intently up and down the track to make sure that no one else was within sight.

‘This will do!’ said Gilbert harshly, sliding from his saddle and leading his brown mare into the trees at the side of the road. Maurice, on a grey pony, did the same, and in a moment they were out of sight amongst the greenery. The ground here was flat and heavily wooded, then sloped gently before the steeper gradient of the hill began. They threaded their way between the saplings and more mature trees until they found an open area where a large beech had fallen in last winter’s gales. A small stream ran at one side and the cellarer decided that this would have to do for an overnight stop, as the autumn evening was closing in and it was already twilight. They roped their horses to trees near the stream, so that the beasts could crop the grass between the bushes and get water to drink. Settling themselves down with their bulky saddlebags, they prepared to spend an uncomfortable night in the open.

Gilbert seemed the least affected by their sudden change of circumstances, but the weedy Maurice whined incessantly about their plight.

‘Are you sure that we needed to run away so precipitately?’ he complained, in a high-pitched voice that irritated his senior companion. ‘We had planned to leave our departure until next month.’

‘Of course we had to run, you fool!’ snarled Gilbert. ‘And don’t dare complain. It was your stupidity in leaving that sandal strap in the goldsmith’s shop that caused all this trouble.’

Chastened, the young monk began groping in his bag, pulling out some clothing, a loaf of bread and a block of cheese that he had hastily grabbed from their storeroom before their hurried flight from the abbey.

‘Shall we take off our habits now and change into these tunics and breeches?’ he asked humbly.

Gilbert climbed back to his feet and grabbed some of the more anonymous garments from Maurice. ‘We may as well – then use the robes to cover us during the night – it will be a lot colder than the abbey dormer!’

As he put on the dowdy garments, Maurice sadly dropped his cowled Benedictine habit to the ground, realising that he would never again wear this uniform of the religious life. He had agreed some time ago to join Gilbert in his ambition of forsaking holy office for the worldly pleasures of an affluent secular life. With this in mind, they had been systematically rifling the abbey finances to provide themselves with sufficient money and valuables to keep them in comfort for some time.

Now, while Maurice’s saddlebag had contained their clothing and food, that of the cellarer was heavy with a leather sack of silver pennies and some golden besants, as well as the chalice, pyx and other smaller items of considerable value.

They did their best to make themselves comfortable on the hard ground, eating half of the loaf and some cheese, and drinking water from the stream. It was impossible to light a fire, partly because of lack of the materials to do so, but also they needed to avoid drawing attention to themselves by making smoke.

As the gloom deepened, both in the sky and in Maurice’s mind, they rolled up in their discarded robes and attempted to sleep. Gilbert, a man nearing forty, was by far the most sanguine about their situation. He was not all that concerned about their premature departure, his main concern being getting clear of Bath before any pursuit caught up with them. This was obviously on Maurice’s mind as well.

‘Do you think we will get to your house safely, brother?’ asked Maurice, as he stared up at the stars, visible between the patchy clouds.

‘I see no reason why not,’ grunted Gilbert, irritated at his former clerk’s timidity. ‘We left openly by the West Gate, so when a hunt is begun – if it ever is – they will not know that we doubled back over the hills down to this road.’

They were aiming for Southampton, as Gilbert possessed a house within the walled seaport. He had been embezzling abbey funds steadily for several years, secretly selling stores to unscrupulous merchants and creaming off some of the cash obtained from the sale of wool from the abbey farms outside the city. He had invested some of the proceeds in buying a small burgage in Southampton, anticipating the time when he would slip away from the monastic life. Unfortunately, six months earlier, his clerk had discovered his nefarious activities and the only way that Gilbert could cover it up was by taking Maurice into partnership, though he had to admit that with both of them corrupted, their criminal enterprise had been much easier and more fruitful.

He had been fortunate in that the clerk had quite readily accepted the sacriligious partnership, mainly because Maurice had never been enthusiastic about the monastic life, his parents having dumped him on the abbey when he was a child.

As the sounds of the forest increased as darkness fell, with the hooting of owls and rustling and occasional crashes as larger beasts went about their nocturnal business, the two fugitives fell into an uneasy sleep, indifferent to the confusion that reigned in their erstwhile home back in Bath.

The prior had called a late evening meeting in the Chapter House to discuss the emergency caused by the disappearance of their cellarer and his clerk.

‘There is no doubt that Gilbert de Lacy is deeply involved in this heinous plot,’ brayed Thomas, the abbey treasurer. ‘Not only do we know that two men were involved in this murder of the goldsmith, but a large amount of money is missing from the cellarer’s chest downstairs. This was the fund that I regularly gave him to pay for all the provisions he purchased for the abbey.’

‘We need no convincing that Gilbert was involved,’ said the precentor sarcastically. ‘He was seen by the porters riding brazenly out of the West Gate with Brother Maurice – may they rot in hell for this!’

The prior’s usual benign expression had failed to survive the events of the evening. ‘Of course those two were the plotters!’ he snapped. ‘And I have little doubt that Gilbert was the main instigator. That clerk of his was a poor thing, with not the brains to do other than his master commanded.’ He chewed at his lip in agitation, looking around at the ring of senior monks huddled in the candle-lit gloom. ‘What matters now is how we are to proceed. The bishop has gone to Wells again today, but I know he will be livid with anger on his return tomorrow, when he hears of this catastrophe.’

Hubert the sacrist ventured a comment: ‘There is little we can do as a religious house, Prior. The miscreants have left the city, God alone knows where they have gone. We cannot mount any search, we have no men-at-arms, no constables apart from those two louts who act for the proctors.’

One of the older brothers, one of the proctors mentioned, protested. ‘They do their best, brother, but they are not equipped in mind nor body for this sort of disaster. We need the services of the King’s men, through his officers.’