King Arthur's Bones Read online

  King Arthur’s

  Bones

  Also by The Medieval Murderers

  The Tainted Relic

  Sword of Shame

  House of Shadows

  The Lost Prophecies

  King Arthur’s

  Bones

  A Historical Mystery

  By

  The Medieval Murderers

  Susanna Gregory

  Bernard Knight

  Michael Jecks

  Philip Gooden

  Ian Morson

  London • New York • Sydney • Toronto

  A CBS COMPANY

  First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2009

  A CBS COMPANY

  Copyright © The Medieval Murderers, 2009

  This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.

  No reproduction without permission.

  All rights reserved.

  The right of The Medieval Murderers to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

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  Simon & Schuster Australia

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  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN: 978-1-84737-758-6

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Typeset in Baskerville by Ellipsis Books Limited, Glasgow

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by

  CPI Mackays, Chatham ME5 8TD

  The Medieval

  Murderers

  A small group of historical mystery writers, all members of the Crime Writers’ Association, who promote their work by giving informal talks and discussions at libraries, bookshops and literary festivals.

  Bernard Knight is a former Home Office pathologist and professor of forensic medicine who has been writing novels, non-fiction, radio and television drama and documentaries for more than forty years. He currently writes the highly regarded Crowner John series of historical mysteries, based on the first coroner for Devon in the twelfth century; the thirteenth of which, Crowner Royal, has recently been published by Simon & Schuster.

  Ian Morson is the author of an acclaimed series of historical mysteries featuring the thirteenth-century Oxford-based detective, William Falconer, and a brand-new series featuring Venetian crime solver, Nick Zuliani, the first of which, City of the Dead, has recently been published.

  Michael Jecks was a computer salesman before turning to writing full time. His immensely popular Templar series, set during the confusion and terror of the reign of Edward II, is translated into most continental languages and is published in America. His most recent novels are The King of Thieves and, the 27th in the series, No Law in the Land. Michael was chairman of the Crime Writers’ Association in 2004–5 but balances that by Morris Dancing enthusiastically – and badly.

  Philip Gooden is the author of the Nick Revill series, a sequence of historical mysteries set in Elizabethan and Jacobean London, during the time of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre. Among the titles are Sleep of Death and Death of Kings. He also writes 19th century mysteries, most recently The Salisbury Manuscript, as well as non-fiction books on language. Philip was chairman of the Crime Writers’ Association in 2007–8.

  Susanna Gregory is the author of the Matthew Bartholomew series of mystery novels, set in fourteenth-century Cambridge, the most recent of which are A Vein of Deceit and To Kill or Cure. In addition, she writes a series set in Restoration London, featuring Thomas Chaloner; the most recent book is The Westminster Poisoner. She also writes historical mysteries under the name of ‘Simon Beaufort’.

  The Programme

  Prologue – In which Philip Gooden describes how at Glastonbury Abbey in 1191 the remains of King Arthur are believed to have been discovered.

  Act One – In which Susanna Gregory describes how the bones are stolen during a violent skirmish between the Welsh and the invading Normans.

  Act Two – In which Bernard Knight relates how in 1282 a band of patriots retrieve the relics after the darkest day in Wales’s history.

  Act Three – In which Michael Jecks describes how a chance encounter with a pardoner and quack healer causes problems for Sir Baldwin de Furnshill, Simon Puttock and the church.

  Act Four – In which Philip Gooden’s player Nick Revill becomes involved with Arthur’s bones, William Shakespeare’s younger brother and a murder at the Tower of London.

  Act Five – In which Ian Morson recalls how rumours of Napoleon Bonaparte’s escape revives the old myth of King Arthur’s return.

  Epilogue – In which Bernard Knight returns to an archaeological dig near Tower Bridge, where the experts find something unexpected in the foundations of Bermondsey Abbey.

  Prologue

  Glastonbury, 1191

  The first he knew of it was the noise, like the sound of leaves rustling across dry ground. The abbot looked up from the parchment he was studying. It was a list of estimates, the costs of rebuilding. Listening more carefully, he heard not the sound of leaves but of voices. He wasn’t sorry to be distracted from his task. He got up and opened the window of the parlour. It was an overcast afternoon in mid-autumn. The air was still.

  Monks and lay brothers as well as ordinary workers were converging on an area of grass a few dozen yards from the abbot’s first-floor window. They were crowding around a tent-like structure of drapery curtains, crowding with such force that the whole construction quivered as if about to topple down. What surprised the abbot was not the fact that the workers or even the lay brothers should be running to reach the spot – obviously something had been discovered behind the dirty white curtains, and word had spread fast – but that his fellow Benedictines in their black garb were also moving at such an undignified rate. Whatever the something was, it must be significant. Almost despite himself, the abbot felt a tremor of excitement.

  Henry de Sully fastened the window. He moved towards his chamber door at a deliberate pace. There was no one to see, but it would not do to betray any sign of agitation, even to himself. Before he could reach it, there was a clatter and the door banged open. In the entrance stood Brother Geoffrey, his chaplain and secretary.

  The man was out of breath. He was not so old that a few stairs should have exhausted him. He clung to the door frame, with an expression on his face that was close to confusion. Henry de Sully smiled and made a calming gesture. He waited while Geoffrey regained control of himself, but the other was too impatient. His secretary-chaplain got as far as ‘They have found . . . have found . . .’ before being overcome by a bout of gulping and swallowing.

  ‘It’s all right, Geoffrey. Calm yourself. Whatever they have found I will discover for myself,’ said de Sully.

  The chaplain shifted to let his superior through the doorway and followed him down the stone steps to the lobby. The abbot moved without hurry although it cost him an effort to do so. Over his shoulder he heard the monk stuttering, ‘It’s . . . it . . . it is . . .’

  ‘Yes?’ said de Sully, halting at the foot of the stairs. ‘It is . . . what?’

  ‘Extraordinary,’ Geoffrey managed to get out.

  ‘We’ll see.’

  The abbot and his chaplain emerged into the open. The crowd around the tent was growing all the time, with monks and labourers still arriving from every quarter. They moved at a run or a brisk walk. There could not have been such a stir in the place, thought He
nry de Sully, since the great fire of a few years ago, the fire which destroyed the old church and much of the abbey before his own arrival in Glastonbury. At the thought, he glanced towards the Lady Chapel, which stood, fresh and fine, near the site of the original church. He’d never seen the church but had been told frequently of that simple wattle-and-daub edifice, many centuries old and transformed to ash in minutes.

  Abbot de Sully and Brother Geoffrey drew nearer to the tent-like construction. Located halfway between a pair of stone pillars, it consisted of discoloured white drapes slung over crosspieces supported on wooden uprights. It enclosed an area of a few square yards. The tent might have been primitive, but it was sufficient to give some protection from the weather and a measure of privacy to whatever was going on inside.

  No one noticed the approach of the abbot or his chaplain. Instead, the monks and lay brothers jostled each other to get closer to where the drapes had been pulled back to allow the workers to come and go past piles of earth and rubble. The buzz of questions and exclamations was like the sound of bees.

  Henry de Sully halted. Geoffrey clapped his hands several times and silence slowly fell as the crowd realized the abbot had arrived. They moved aside and left a passage to the entrance of the ‘tent’. At first sight it was hard to imagine what the exitement was about. Four men were kneeling or crouching by the entrance. On the ground between them lay a couple of stone fragments. Two of the men were labourers, identifiable by their caps and coarse clothing. Their faces were streaked with mud and sweat. The other two men were monks, Brother Frederick, who was the sacristan of the abbey, and Brother Owen, the cellarer.

  Brother Frederick looked up at de Sully and clambered creakily to his feet. There was the same mixture of confusion and excitement on his face which the abbot had seen on his chaplain’s. The sacristan brushed away the dirt from the knees of his cassock and came towards Henry.

  ‘I knew this must be the place!’ he said.

  ‘You have made a discovery?’

  ‘About six or seven feet down, we found . . . well, they found . . . come and see.’

  Forgetting himself, Brother Frederick tugged like a child at the abbot’s sleeve. Henry de Sully moved forward and looked down at the pieces of stones. Owen the cellarer stood up. Like Frederick, he raised himself with an effort, though more on account of his size than ageing joints. There was a strange, vacant look in his eyes. The two workmen remained on their knees but shifted so that Henry could have a better view.

  What the Glastonbury abbot saw first was a slab of stone. It was like a large piece of paving, apart from an indented section in the shape of an irregular cross. On the edges of the indentation were some rusting bands of iron. The other item was not stone at all but made of lead. It was the cross itself, not large, perhaps a foot in length. Lettering was inscribed in a straggling fashion on the side facing him. He stooped down. The light was poor from the overcast afternoon and the shadow of the tent, but Henry de Sully was able to pick out some of the Latin words despite the mud and grit embedded in the capital letters. One word in particular he could read, a name inscribed in Latinate style. Henry felt his heart thumping hard.

  His chaplain had been right. It was extraordinary. He looked around at the circle of monks who were standing at a respectful distance. He smiled at no one in particular. There was something disconcerting about the abbot’s smile, which was humourless and even threatening because of his rather pointed teeth. He was startled by a sudden grunt near him. It was Owen the cellarer. Lost in a world of his own, the man had said nothing so far.

  ‘Are you well, Brother Owen?’ said the abbot.

  Owen seemed to shake himself before saying, ‘The cross was attached to the underside of the stone by those brackets, isn’t that right, Michael?’

  One of the workmen raised his muddy face and pointed to the rusting iron bands.

  ‘The cross fell away, sir,’ he said, addressing the abbot. ‘When we lifted up the stone, the cross fell away.’

  ‘Is there anything else down there?’

  ‘Don’t know, sir. We stopped digging. We thought it best to report what we found.’

  The other labourer nodded in vigorous agreement.

  ‘Very well. Do no more digging today. You have done enough. Get a couple of your fellows to stay here and keep watch. Carry both the stone and the cross to the Hall.’

  ‘They’re dirty, sir. Should we clean them up?’

  ‘That doesn’t matter. Bring them straight away.’

  Henry de Sully turned away from the makeshift tent. He moved at his usual deliberate pace, his face composed. He indicated to the sacristan and the cellarer as well as to Geoffrey that they should accompany him. He needed time to consider the implications of this find.

  But if he’d hoped to keep the principal part of the discovery secret, it was too late. For, as the Abbot of Glastonbury moved towards his quarters, the hush that had fallen while he examined the cross was broken by a fresh outbreak of questions and whispers among the monks and the lay workers.

  One word stood out from the buzz. It was a name. Not in the Latin form that was etched into the cross but in its English version.

  ‘Whose is it? Who is it?’

  ‘Arthur,’ said the buzz. ‘King Arthur.’

  An hour later Henry de Sully, Owen, Geoffrey and Frederick were peering down at the cross. It had been laid on a table in the abbot’s parlour, with a cloth to protect the surface of the table. But, of course, the cross was infinitely more valuable than a mere tabletop.

  It was shaped like a great key, with a slope-sided head, stubby arms and a squared-off section at the end. The letters were quite crudely formed, almost crammed to fill all the available space. Frederick the sacristan had transcribed them – his veiny hand shaking with excitement – but each monk had the legend already fixed in his mind as if the cross-maker had inscribed it there himself: HIC IACET SEPULTUS INCLITUS REX ARTURIUS IN INSULA AVALONIA.

  ‘Here lies buried the renowned King Arthur in the Isle of Avalon.’

  This was Owen the cellarer. There was reverence in his lilting voice as he repeated, for the sixth time at least, the English meaning of the words. For all their seniority and air of wisdom, the four men had been reduced to little more than head-shaking and mute examination of the cross for several minutes now. They traced out the letters with disbelieving fingers. They stood back to marvel at the item.

  One peculiarity was that the face of the cross had been placed inwards against the stone.

  ‘Why should that be?’ mused the abbot.

  ‘Perhaps those who buried Arthur needed to keep his grave secret,’ said his chaplain-secretary Geoffrey. ‘His enemies would have despoiled his resting place if they found it, so the slab of stone was used to hide the face of the cross. That would also account for the small size of the cross. A great leader should have a fine grave, but Arthur was buried almost in secret.’

  ‘Remind me, Brother Frederick,’ said the abbot, ‘why you ordered the men to dig in that spot.’

  He knew perfectly well but felt it important to recapitulate events, to get a sense of order into the story. The sacristan, who had charge of the abbey library, was the obvious person to ask. He was an elderly, spare man but, apart from some stiffness in his joints, he had the stamina and memory of a man twenty years his junior.

  ‘As you know, Father, it was the late King Henry himself who passed on to your predecessor a story concerning the burial at Glastonbury of Arthur and his queen, Guinevere.’

  ‘And yet Robert of Winchester did not attempt to find the burial place, despite having a king’s directions?’

  ‘They were not directions, Father, so much as . . . as a fable told to Henry years ago by a bard from Brittany.’

  ‘A bard from Wales,’ said Owen.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ said de Sully, smiling in his humourless way. ‘Go on, Frederick.’

  ‘According to Abbot Robert, King Henry could not recall much except that the b
ody was reputed to be buried between two pyramids near the Old Church. The last abbot was not inclined to investigate any further. A “fable” was how Robert referred to it.’

  ‘But this is no fable,’ said Owen, brushing his hand over the surface of the cross.

  ‘We did not look for the tomb in earlier days because the hints from the late king were vague. It was not until you came to Glastonbury, Father, and told us to begin the search . . .’

  ‘The king has an interest here,’ said de Sully. ‘Our present king, I mean. He feels that the remains of his famous forebear should be more fittingly disposed of . . . if they can be found. I took my cue from him.’

  The others were silent for a moment, no doubt contemplating the fact that de Sully came from a noble family, a very well-connected one. King Richard himself had recently elevated de Sully to Abbot of Glastonbury.

  ‘It was Brother Frederick who thought that the “pyramids” in the old story might be the obelisks, the remains of ancient memorial crosses on the grass outside,’ said Geoffrey. ‘It was he who directed that the digging should start exactly midway between them.’

  ‘That is so,’ said Frederick, unable to hide his pleasure.

  ‘If this is truly Arthur’s cross, then why is it buried so deep?’ said the abbot.

  ‘In St Dunstan’s time, we were running short of burial space,’ said Frederick. ‘Dunstan ordered that layers of fresh earth be heaped over the old cemetery. It is possible that the stone and the cross were themselves buried then.’

  The sacristan talked as if he had witnessed Dunstan give his command a few years ago, yet the sainted abbot of Glastonbury had been dead for more than two centuries.

  ‘So Arthur or his remains, and perhaps those of his queen, should be further still below the same patch of ground?’

  ‘I do not believe so,’ said Brother Owen. ‘I do not think he will be found.’