The Medieval Murderers - Hill of Bones

All this passed through my mind in a flash. About as long as it took Rowley to look up from his mad search and observe that there was someone else in the tire-room with him. This was when things turned serious. He grunted and produced from somewhere in his garments a wicked little knife. Humiliated this morning on Solsbury Hill, discovered now in the middle of his wrongdoing, he was driven by the same rage as his master. He slashed out at me and, more by luck than design, I staggered back out of range. But I tumbled over a heap of clothing and lay there sprawled on my back, helpless. Time seemed to slow down. From outside I could hear the continued ranting of Maltravers, from within this curtained-off space the heavy breathing of my assailant. Above me was the darkening summer sky and the same old moon and a corner of the gable and the little window from which Katherine Hawkins had spied on me at the beginning of this business.

Rowley paused for a second to position his dagger so that he might make a more effective strike. My hand closed round a dagger, one of our props, but it was a paltry wooden thing. Rowley stamped on my hand, then fell forward, intending to stab me in the guts. If he’d known he would be hanged for the deed, it would have made no difference. I cried out but the sound was feeble to my own ears. There was murder in his eyes, the real thing and not the simulated rage you see on stage. From playing dead two nights ago I was about to become genuinely so.

Yet I was saved by the part I played as Mr Justice Righthead. I’d wound padding about my stomach in imitation of Maltravers’ fatness, and Rowley’s knife became buried and deflected among all the stuffing, the fustian cloth and rags bulking out my midriff. Rowley looked confused and I twisted away from him. He extricated the knife and was lifting it to strike once more when the front curtains to the tire-house were not so much opened as torn away. Rowley paused, then faltered.

We must have presented a dramatic tableau, the player lying on the ground and the knifeman with his arm raised uncertainly. Crowded in the entrance to the tire-room were the Hawkinses and the two members of the night watch. I’ll think twice before saying again that they’re never there when you need them.

We finished the play, by the way. It would have been unprofessional not to.

We had to wait until the watch took charge of George Rowley, whose guilt couldn’t be doubted since he was caught knife-in-hand. Like his master, Maltravers, he had some hectic words to say before he was dragged off. It was an accusation against John Maltravers – that he had put him up to this, that he was the one responsible. I remembered that moment on the hillside when Rowley appeared willing to strike his master about the pate with his spade. Maltravers, crestfallen after all his shouting, looked increasingly uncomfortable. His face went from pure red to mottled red and white. Eventually he strode out of the yard, but I noticed Downey the lawyer and Price the physician gazing after him, and I would have bet they had a few questions of their own to put to him.

The assumption was that Rowley was rummaging through the tire-room gear in search of some valuables. It was merely bad luck that I had stumbled across him. And good luck that I was unharmed. No one mentioned the black-bound commonplace book belonging to Uncle Christopher. It was no longer in my possession anyway, since I had already returned it to William Hawkins while we were on Solsbury Hill.

After a half-hour or so we resumed A Fair Day . I took up my part as Mr Justice Righthead, although my costume was somewhat torn and shredded about the middle, with the stuffing coming out. It was only when we were all done that I started to shiver and shake at having so nearly escaped a severe wounding or even death. It took the company of my fellows and a few drinks in the Raven afterwards to steady my nerves.

For their part, the Bath citizens sitting or standing in the yard of the Bear appreciated our resilience and our dedication to the craft of the stage play. They cheered us loudly at the end, so much so that we were encouraged enough to take up an extra collection of money. John Sincklo looked doubtfully at me and Laurence and Abel after it was all over, as if we knew more about the incident than we were letting on, but he did not ask any questions. In fact, he was gratified at the way the crowd showed themselves to be on the side of the players, and pleased by the additional money that came in. We did better than that when we received an extra subvention from Bath corporation as if in tacit apology for the misbehaviour of one of their own at our final performance.

Later, when we reached Bristol, I gave Sincklo an outline of the story. I felt that I owed him that much.

We left Bath the next day. As we passed through on our way to the West Gate and the fresher air of the Bristol road, we paused to observe that some preliminary justice had been meted out to George Rowley. He was standing in the pillory by the Guild Hall, smeared with rotten fruit and draped with vegetable peelings. The pigs were still waddling about at liberty on the city cobbles, in expectation of what they might scavenge. I was glad to see Rowley in the pillory, although it does not usually give me much pleasure to watch the public punishment of malefactors.

Much later, when we had returned to London, Kate Hawkins wrote to me, a genuine ‘privy message’ this time. She thanked me for the service I had performed for her dying uncle (but made no mention of our later connection). She said that an indictment was being laid against John Maltravers largely on the testimony of George Rowley. But the evidence was thin and, Maltravers being a respectable citizen and his accuser a mere servant, he would probably wriggle his way out of punishment. His standing in the town had been irredeemably harmed, however, by his ranting in the yard of the Bear Inn. Edward Downey and Dr Price had turned against their old friend and even apologised to her for their unseemly behaviour on the morning of Christopher’s death. She and William were still grieving for Uncle Christopher but she wrote that, when a suitable period of mourning was passed, they intended to marry. I thought it was a happy ending and very similar to the plot of the second play we’d done in Bath, the one entitled A City Pleasure .

As for the black notebook, which might have revealed the whereabouts of precious items buried on Solsbury Hill, that had been locked away as a family keepsake. Neither she nor William had any interest in scrabbling about on a bare hill in search of Arthur’s gold or any other relics. They had enough treasures to look forward to in their domestic lives, which was a nice comment, although one that for a moment made me feel envious. If there were any relics to be found on Solsbury Hill, Kate added in a postscript, let’s leave them to the future. That’s what the future’s for, after all.

A Deadly Dig

Having removed the outer layers of bindings that covered the body, Joe Malinferno delicately cut away the lower garment from the corpse’s torso. It resembled a bag that had been doubled and seamed on two sides. A fringe decorated the bottom hem. Under the garment he found little ornaments decorated with figures of ancient gods. He laid these aside on the surface of the polished oak table he was using as a makeshift mortuary slab. He stood up for a moment, easing the ache in his lower back caused by his bent posture. He heard a church clock chiming somewhere nearby, and he estimated he had been working on the body for almost an hour. He would have to hurry. Wiping the beads of sweat from his brow with the back of his hand, he continued the process of discovery.