The Medieval Murderers - Hill of Bones

‘Joe Malinferno, you nearly made me jump out of my skin.’

Malinferno dragged her further away from the man in the gig before he spoke.

‘What were you doing, poking your nose in where it is not wanted? We have a job to do. I have been waiting ages for you to meet me behind the duchess’s tent. I had to come looking for you.’

He thrust a spade at her, and she stared at it in horror.

‘You don’t think I’m going to use that, do you? I will ruin my dress, and my gloves.’

Malinferno refrained from suggesting she take both off in that case. He knew when Doll was not in the mood for his innuendo. He simply growled in frustration, and stalked off through the encampment. His noble anger was spoiled by the fact that he tripped over a guy-rope and nearly fell headlong into someone’s tent. Whoever it was, their snores suggested Joe had failed to wake him with his clumsiness.

Doll stifled a giggle and followed him to the edge of the ring of tents where the duchess’s gilded bivouac stood. They huddled together round the back like two schoolboys bunking off school to attend a hiring fair. Malinferno produced the much-folded sheet of paper that Augustus Bromhead had given to him.

‘I’ve been looking at Hawkins’ map again, and I think at least one of the crosses marked is here.’ He scuffed the toe of his boot on a bare patch of earth a few yards away from the tent wall. Doll peered over his shoulder at the bewildering scratchings on the old piece of paper. She had looked at it before, but the blotchy arrows and crosses still meant nothing to her. She would leave it up to Joe, who seemed confident of his topographic skills. She shrugged, and offered to take his greatcoat.

‘The least I can do is hold it while you dig.’

Malinferno grunted and, shrugging off the heavy coat, he handed it to her. He spat on his hands, and picked up one of the spades. His first thrust in the unyielding turf convinced him this treasure hunt was going to be harder work than he had anticipated. After half an hour of toil, he removed his jacket and loosened his cravat. Much to his indignation, Doll spread his greatcoat on the ground, and lay down on it. She yawned, staring up at the almost full moon that illuminated the scene. Grimly, Malinferno dug on. After an hour, all he had to show for his efforts was a very deep hole, some rusty nails and two rather worn old coins. As well as some blisters on his palms. He rubbed the coins vigorously, but could not figure out whose head was on them.

‘I shall have to take them back to Augustus to see if they are worth anything. Maybe I should dig elsewhere.’

His comment as to the appropriateness of the site he had chosen was lost on Doll. She was fast asleep with his coat wrapped snugly around her. Just as he was about to call out to her and wake her up, there was a wail from within the duchess’s tent.

Doll started into wakefulness. ‘What on earth was that?’

‘Some noise from the duchess’s tent.’

By this time Doll was sitting up, clutching Malinferno’s greatcoat around her bare shoulders.

‘A noise? It was more like a banshee scream.’ She shivered. ‘Go and see what it was, Joe.’

‘Send the poor bloody infantry in, as usual.’

Doll huffed, and waved her hands at Joe, encouraging him to his feat of bravery.

‘Please, Joe.’

Malinferno was unsure what he might find in the tent, and gripped his spade all the tighter. He stalked round the tent’s perimeter, advanced towards the tent flap, and nervously lifted it. In the darkness, he could just make out the shape of the crate that held what was left of the duchess’s mummy. Beyond it was one of the largest beds he had ever seen. In fact he had never seen a larger one, especially one marooned on a hillside in the middle of nowhere. A woman sat on the edge of the bed staring fixedly at the wooden crate, the lid of which was askew. Malinferno breathed a sigh of relief. The duchess must have woken in the night, accidentally dislodged the lid of the crate, and been frightened by the rictus grin of the mummy’s embalmed head. But as he lifted the flap of the tent higher to gain access, the moonlight spilled inside, and he saw the woman was not the Duchess of Avon. It was the old trollop. She was breathing heavily, her bare bosom heaving, and pointing to the makeshift coffin. Malinferno took a step towards her, and tried to calm her nerves.

‘Don’t be afraid, madam. It is only the remains of a long-dead pharaoh. He can do you no harm.’

The woman took a deep breath, and with her Germanic accent, roughly put Malinferno right. ‘What is in the box is not long dead. And it can most assuredly do me great harm, young man.’

She waved a finger at the crate imperiously, and a puzzled Malinferno went to take a look. Inside the coffin was not the dried corpse of an Egyptian pharaoh, but the still-warm body of a once vigorous-looking, soldierly man with thick black hair and full moustachios. He looked back at the old woman, whose face appeared to go grey before his eyes. She looked as if she might expire in front of him, and he realised he was standing there with a weapon of violence in his hand. He laid the spade on the ground and, uneasily, called quietly to Doll.

‘Doll, I need your help in here.’

Hardly daring to tear his eyes off the old woman, he heard the rustle of Doll’s dress behind him. She hissed in his ear.

‘What’s up now? Lawks!’

Either she had peered over his shoulder and seen the body, or observed the state of her erstwhile companion of an hour ago. Whichever it was, Malinferno prayed that Doll would take control of the situation. Because it was going all to hell in front of his eyes. The old woman slumped on the bed, her fat rump presented to his view. Her swoon caused the bed to tilt alarmingly.

Doll slid past Joe, and pulled the bedsheet over Hattie Vaughan, feeling her wrist for a pulse. Hattie groaned and sat up, causing the bed once again to tip like a ship in a stormy sea.

‘I’m fine, dearie. I just had a funny turn, is all. My stomach feels queer, but then, that’s no surprise after seeing my dear Sacchi in that box there.’

Doll looked for the first time into the box that should have contained the mummy they had worked on that evening. She gasped.

‘Joe, there’s a body in the crate. And I don’t mean Ozzy, the old pharaoh.’

Doll had a penchant for naming all the mummies that passed through their hands as Ozymandias, after the great carved head that had been brought back to England from Egypt four years earlier. And when two years later, Shelley had written his poem of the same name, she was confirmed in her prejudice that all dead Egyptians were called by that wonderful name. Malinferno chose not to correct her, as he was none the wiser either concerning the name of the mummy they had recently unrolled. Besides, they had more urgent matters to resolve.

‘Yes, I know. The old girl called him Sacchi.’

Doll glared at Malinferno for calling Hattie so before her face. But then she began to look more closely at the body.

‘Look here. He’s got a big gash in his neck.’

Malinferno watched in amazement as Doll’s head and shoulders disappeared into the crate, leaving her hips and legs wriggling around as she squirmed further inside. Personally, he could not get so close to a fresh corpse, much preferring the musty odour of someone long dead. Hattie was looking on surprise too, and Doll’s antics must have tickled her. She broke out into a coarse peal of laughter.

‘Poor Sacchi, he would have loved a romp with you, dearie. But alas all that is over for him now.’

Doll wriggled back out of the box, rather red-faced from her exertions.

‘There is little blood in the box, so he must have been shoved into it some time after he was killed. And there are slashes on the fingers of his left hand. He must have got his hand on the blade, trying to save himself. But he was too late.’