The Medieval Murderers - Hill of Bones

‘What the devil are you doing following me?’ William demanded, the staff still raised menacingly, for it occurred to him that this youth might yet be in the pay of Edgar.

‘M-Master, I came to join you… on your journey. I want to be your disciple.’

‘My disciple?’ William said incredulously, lowering his weapon.

The youth bounced to his feet, and brushed his ginger hair out of his eyes. ‘Yes, master. I saw how you cast out that demon and how you were saved from the wreck on the cross. I know you are a holy man. I believe in you. I have the faith, Master. Take me with you.’

‘But why creep up on me like that?’

‘I wasn’t creeping,’ Martin protested. ‘I couldn’t join you openly. Not till we were away from the village. My father would thrash me black and blue if he thought I was running off. You too, if he could, for taking me away.’

William, remembering the sexton’s blows in the church, knew the lad was probably not exaggerating.

‘How long before you’re missed?’ William asked. He had enough troubles already without some irate bull of a father lumbering after him as well.

‘He thinks I’ve gone out with one of the boats. He’ll not look for me till after he comes back from the alehouse tonight.’ Martin suddenly sank to his knees, his hands clasped and his eyes closed as if in prayer. ‘Bless me, Master; make me your disciple.’

He looked so solemn that William almost laughed, until he saw the lad was in earnest.

It was on the tip of his tongue to send the boy packing, but it occurred to William that a companion might be just what he needed. The lad was short but stocky, with a chest as broad as an ox and, judging by the way he’d dug those graves, he had the strength of a man twice his size. Martin would be another pair of eyes to keep watch, especially in the night, and if Edgar did attack, then it would be two against one. The lad would surely fight to the death to defend his master, if he really believed he was a prophet. Besides, disciples did all the cooking and tending to their master’s needs, didn’t they? It would be as good as having his own manservant again.

Solsbury Hill, August 1453

The horses’ flanks were soaked with sweat by the time they finally crested the steep slopes of the hill. Even the five young women who rode them were breathless with the effort of keeping their balance in the saddles on the steep incline. Their grooms, who had been forced to climb alongside the horses, almost dragging them upwards, were more exhausted than the beasts. Their faces were flushed to the colour of ripe plums and beads of perspiration burst out on their foreheads. The sun burned relentlessly down from a cloudless blue sky, baking the valleys below, but at least up on the flat table top of the hill there was the blessing of a breeze to ruffle the brown grass stalks and cool the air. With undisguised relief the grooms assisted their mistresses to dismount and led the palfreys away to a clump of gorse bushes where they might be safely tethered until they were wanted again.

It was several minutes before the falconer and his lad managed to reach the party. The tiny merlins were not heavy to lift on the wooden frame, but they had to be carried smoothly. Any sudden jerking and they would start to flap or even throw themselves from their perches, breaking feathers, legs or even wings. The falconer could not afford to slip or stumble.

For once, though, the merchants’ daughters were not impatiently demanding to begin their sport or stamping their pretty little shoes. They too were far too grateful for the breeze to make a fuss. Arm in arm, they strolled around on the flat top of the hill, listening to the trilling of a hundred larks as they flew for sheer joy up into the hot blue sky.

Ursula, the youngest of the five friends, caught the distant glint of the river, and breathed deeply, filling her lungs with the sweet air after the foul stench of Bath. It was hard to know if the city was more unpleasant in the winter or summer. In winter the streets were ankle-deep in the mud and filth from the blocked and overflowing ditches and sewers. In summer the pigs snuffled among the rotting waste from houses and butchers’ shops, thrown haphazardly into the streets where it was left to stink beneath writhing heaps of bone-white maggots.

Ursula had often begged to move out of the city at least for the summer months. As she repeatedly told her father, no one, by which she meant no marriageable nobleman, lived in Bath any more. Even the Bishop of Bath had sought a more comfortable abode in Wells. But as her doting but practical father told her, a good businessman keeps a constant eye on his livelihood, and since the wool and cloth trade was flourishing in Bath, he had no cause to move. And, he added, before she started turning her nose up at the stench of a good honest trade, she should remember that it was wool and cloth that put the food on her plate and the jewels in her hair.

‘Ursula, come and choose your bird,’ one of the girls sang out and Ursula sauntered across to join her friends as they clustered around the falconer.

The girls donned their leather gloves and collected their favourite birds, laying wagers amongst themselves as to which would be the first to bring down the quarry. Then they released them. As the merlins took flight, the larks rose, still singing, higher and higher into the sky. The little birds of prey winged up after them, until they were almost invisible in the glare of the sun. Then the tiny songbirds dropped as if they had been pierced by an arrow, slipping sideways at the last moment before they hit the ground, as their pursuers swooped down after them. The merlins were forced to twist and turn as they reversed their dive and climbed back up after the soaring larks again. It could take as much as half an hour for a merlin to kill a lark, and the girls gasped, laughed and held their breath as a kill seemed inevitable only for the lark to escape by a mere feather’s breadth.

They were but an hour into their sport when Ursula, turning to follow the progress of her bird, glimpsed a man scrambling up the last few feet of the rise and onto the flat top of the hill. Soon more heads appeared, then still more, until a small crowd stood rather breathlessly on the top of the hill, heaving their packs off their backs and bending over their staves as they tried to regain their breath.

One by one the young women turned their attention from the battle of the birds in the sky to stare at the newcomers who had so rudely interrupted their pleasure. The twenty or so people who stood gazing around the flattened hill were of mixed ages: some had grey hair, others were barely more than children. But it was plain from their patched and dung-coloured clothes, their worn shoes and filthy coarse-spun cloaks that they were not the kind of people who could afford to own falcons, much less enjoy the leisure time to fly them.

The grooms moved swiftly in front of their mistresses, knives at the ready, in case they should be required to defend the ladies from this pack of beggars and vagabonds, but the little band made no move to approach the women.

A man stepped a little apart from the crowd and all eyes turned expectantly to him. He flung himself down on his knees and the rest of the group followed suit. A clamour of voices rose into the hot sunshine, like some great cliff-side colony of nesting gulls, and with as little meaning in sound. Their arms were flung up to heaven, their eyes closed and their heads thrown back. They seemed to be praying with as much fervour as a man condemned to death might desperately beg clemency from a judge.

Finally their leader rose and turned to face the kneeling crowd.

‘Yes, yes, my chosen ones. This is the very place I saw in my vision. I know it! I can feel it! And now God has confirmed it!’