The Medieval Murderers - Hill of Bones

‘That is Rowley. George Rowley. I remember him. He has been Maltravers’ creature these many years. He collects the merchant’s debts, for example.’

‘I reckon it was he who attacked you last night.’

‘Very likely.’

Speaking hardly above a whisper I indicated to Laurence and Abel who these gents were. The whispering was instinctive – and not really necessary since the wind was blowing in our direction. We could hear them, though, the wheezing and groans of Maltravers as he strove to climb the slope and the more regular panting of Rowley.

Then they stopped at a point between a spur of rock and a clump of stunted oak trees. Maltravers waited for a long time for his breath to come back. From a pocket he drew what looked very like Uncle Christopher’s black book, together with a larger sheet of paper, which he proceeded to unfold. I guessed he’d made a more detailed plan of the area. He consulted book and plan, nodded at his man, strode backwards and forwards a few times before finally settling on a spot where there appeared to be a slight hollow in the grass. Pointing at the place with his stubby forefinger, he marked it with his heel, nodded again at Rowley, then settled himself down on the spur of rock and watched while the excavation began.

Rowley started to break up the soil with the mattock. We heard the sound of the implement striking the ground, we heard his involuntary grunts when he struck a stony patch. Eventually he’d loosened enough topsoil to start digging properly. The next question was when we should reveal ourselves. William and I had not planned in much detail for this moment.

In the end we gave them a half-hour or so. I suppose the thought was in all our minds that this was not a wild-goose chase, that George Rowley the digger might actually turn up something. At several points the servant paused and looked in the direction of his master who, with a shake of that peremptory forefinger and a barked command, indicated that he should continue digging. Eventually – quite soon, in fact – the interest of watching a man dig a hole starts to fade. I looked at William Hawkins, who nodded his agreement. Abel and Laurence were already gazing elsewhere, up at the sky, around at the countryside.

‘Let’s do it,’ I said.

From the pouch that I was carrying I extracted four items that Laurence had filched, temporarily, from the tire-chest at the Bear Inn. These were the masks or vizards that had been worn for the lunatic scene in the first play we’d done in Bath, A House Divided . The masks were half animal, half devil. A couple had birdlike beaks, one a snout, the other the suggestion of horns. When they were combined with white smocks and wild gestures and gibbering speech, they proved most effective on stage, as Kate Hawkins told me when we first met. Now we were about to find out whether they’d put the fear of God – or the devil – into a couple of treasure-hunters. It was Kate’s reference to ‘spirits’ lingering on the hill that had made me think of using the masks. We looked at each other through the eye-holes. William Hawkins laughed nervously. Laurence and Abel grinned. This was meat and drink to them.

We were about to rise up from our hiding place behind the shrubbery when we were halted by a call from below. Rowley must have found something, for he beckoned to Maltravers and then pointed to the bottom of the little pit he’d made. Maltravers levered himself up from his rock and crossed the few yards to the place. He leaned forward, supporting himself by resting his fat hands on his bent knees. One hand still clasped the black notebook and sheet of paper. With his spade, Rowley gestured at some object in the hole. The servant moved back slightly. Maltravers bent forward a bit more. Any further and he might topple over.

Maybe the same idea occurred to Rowley for he raised the spade in a hesitant manner as if he might give his master a thwack on his rump. Or perhaps he was considering a more final stroke, for he now lifted the spade a little higher. From this position he might strike the merchant round the head. How many years of bad-tempered words and shouted orders and resentment lurked behind that moment? I was almost disappointed when Rowley lowered the spade just before Maltravers looked back over his shoulder. Evidently the merchant was not very impressed with the discovery, whatever it was. Time to move.

‘Ready?’ I said to the others.

We adjusted our masks with their beaks, horns and snouts. We bared our wolfish teeth.

‘Now!’ I said.

The four of us jumped up from where we had been concealing ourselves. With windmilling arms and ear-piercing shrieks, we raced around the bushes and launched ourselves at a downhill pelt. It took Maltravers and Rowley several seconds even to locate the source of all this hullabaloo. It took them several more to respond. Rowley dropped the spade. Maltravers let go of the black book. The sheet of paper fluttered to the ground. They turned and took to their heels, running, if anything, even faster than we were. Maltravers stumbled and fell. He rolled several yards like a barrel before scrambling to his feet once more. Unfortunately for them, the path of their flight nearer the base of the hill led through a patch of boggy ground. Maltravers and Rowley squelched and floundered into this. Neither man showed any concern for the other. They reached the far side of the boggy stretch and staggered towards the waiting carriage. The coachman was staring apprehensively. At least I assume he was, since all I could see was the white dot of his face.

Meanwhile Laurence, Abel, William and I had halted our pursuit in the region of the little excavation made by Rowley. There was no point in going any further. We had accomplished our task of scaring off these ne’er-do-wells and, into the bargain, we had regained Uncle Christopher’s black book. We would not have wanted to go on with the chase anyway because we were curious to see whether there really was any buried treasure. Also because we were out of breath ourselves, what with the running and our shrieks and laughter.

I picked up the black notebook and waved it in the air in triumph. We tore off our masks and made gleeful whooping noises at the runaways, who stopped and gazed at the spectacle for a moment before clambering aboard the carriage. The driver turned it as fast as he could – I had hopes it might overturn but it did not – and within little more than a minute they were bumping and rocking down the track in the direction of Bath.

We turned our attention to the hole in the ground. Rowley’s digging had indeed turned up something. I bent down and picked up what appeared to be part of a helmet. Was I holding a relic of Arthur’s time? Perhaps. But it was made of leather and a strip of rusted metal, which was probably a nose-piece, not an artefact of gold or silver or precious stones. I threw it back into the hole. William Hawkins retrieved the sheet of paper that John Maltravers had dropped in his panic. It was a larger drawing of this aspect of the hillside, with the oaks and the stone outcrop crudely depicted and a cross roughly at the point where we stood.

‘Do you think there’s anything further down there?’ said Laurence.

‘We could dig,’ said Abel, eyeing the mattock and spade abandoned on the ground.

‘It is all a story, a fable,’ said William. ‘There’s nothing there.’

‘And we must return to town,’ I said. ‘We have a play to do.’

A slight sense of disappointment came over us. Into the distance jolted the coach belonging to Mr Maltravers, citizen of Bath. After a brief time we strolled down the lower slopes of Solsbury Hill, taking care to avoid the marshy patch near the bottom. We threaded our way back, past the fields and orchards, through the lanes of tumble-down houses outside the city wall and so on through the North Gate.