King Arthur's Bones Read online

  Two days passed from the first unearthing of the cross until the skies cleared and the water in the excavation began to drain away. By the time the hollowed-out space was dry enough for work to start again it was decided to erect a more substantial shelter to protect the area, and so a further twenty-four hours had elapsed. And by that stage a small band of men was arriving on the waterlogged fringes of Glastonbury from across the wide channel that separated England from Wales. They did not stay in the town, fearing to draw attention to themselves, but found lodging in villages and settlements outside. They waited for word from Glyn. And he was waiting for word from Owen.

  The abbot detailed extra men to dig in the burial ground, although it was hard to increase the work-rate much because of the cramped space. They did turn up more than a few bones, showing that the spot had indeed been a graveyard, itself buried under fresh earth. These bones were carefully removed and stored in a temporary coffin in the Lady Chapel. But the workmen reached a depth of fourteen feet or more without finding anything that might clearly signify the remains of a dead king. No sign of a ceremonial interment, no elaborate sarcophagus, no finely wrought coffin.

  Henry started to regret the letter to King Richard. Was it possible that the cross denoting the presence of Arthur was a fake relic or that the fabled king was buried somewhere else altogether or that – as the legends of the Celts had it – the king would never be found because he had never died in the first place. The abbot remembered his cellarer expressing some such belief.

  Then, almost as he’d begun to lose hope, the labourers toiling in the old graveyard seemed to reach their goal. This time there was no buzz of excitement, no crowd of monks and lay brothers hastening towards the enclosed space on the grass. Henry de Sully had instructed Michael, the most reliable of the workmen, to tell no one else but to inform him personally of any discovery. This Michael had done, his seamed, mud-streaked countenance alight with excitement and privilege as he stood on the threshold of de Sully’s quarters. The abbot, acting with his customary calm, summoned only Frederick, Owen and Geoffrey. So it was the same quartet of Benedictines – the sacristan, the cellarer, the abbot and his secretary-chaplain – who gathered about the excavation, now completely shielded from prying eyes not only by the curtained sides of the tent but by the piles of soil surrounding it.

  The hole was both wider and deeper, so much deeper that three men standing on each other’s shoulders would scarcely have reached the rim. A long ladder was required to clamber down to the bottom where, amid a slurry of mud and bones and wood fragments, stood a couple of artisans. Their faces pale and sweaty, they looked up expectantly at the monks.

  ‘There is a log down there, sir,’ said Michael, ‘a tree trunk which has been hollowed out. There are bones in the hollow. They have the form of a body.’

  ‘That is an old method of interment,’ said Frederick. ‘It is all of a piece with the hidden cross. We are not looking for a grand mausoleum; we are looking for a hidden burial site.’

  ‘Some of the bones in the tree hollow are very large,’ said Michael. ‘Look.’

  With a conjurer’s flourish he produced what appeared to be a shin-bone. He placed it beside his own lower leg for comparison. It was true: the bone was visibly longer – and Michael was not slight.

  ‘Careful, man! Do not handle it so carelessly.’

  This was Owen. He took the bone as reverently as if he were handling the host.

  ‘There was this too, sir, down among the bones.’

  Michael produced a leather pouch, shrunken and dirty, and handed it to the abbot. Henry unwrapped its stiff folds. Inside lay coiled a golden tress of hair, human hair. It was fresh and bright as if it had just been cut off. As when he had first seen the cross, the abbot felt the hammering of his heart. Beside him, Owen stumbled in excitement and would have fallen into the hole had not the wiry sacristan held him back with a restraining hand.

  ‘A woman’s, I’d say,’ said Michael, who was starting to feel himself on an equal footing with the monks.

  ‘A queen’s, you mean,’ said Owen breathlessly.

  ‘Do not be so hasty,’ said the abbot.

  Then Frederick said: ‘That is from a royal head. Whose else can it be except . . . ?’

  ‘Except Queen Guinevere’s,’ said Henry de Sully.

  The monks and the workmen conveyed the bones and the precious fragment of hair to the abbot’s Hall. The golden tress was tightly secured again within the pouch lest exposure to the air should cause it to perish. Yet even this find had been outmatched by another discovery in the hollowed-out log: a man’s skull with a great dint to one side. It indicated a sudden, violent death.

  The great bones were not sufficient to make a complete man but rather to suggest the possibility of such a giant. Each of the individuals who stared at these remains in the abbot’s parlour was lost for a time in his imagination, seeing a great and final battle in which a warrior-king had been fatally struck down. They put out their hands – even Michael and the other labourers – to touch the skullcap, the jaw-bone, the mighty shin-bone, the fragments of a ribcage, as if some trace of Arthur’s spirit might be transmitted to their own blood and sinew.

  Then, in a humble mood, the monks went to the Lady Chapel to pay their devotions. All of them, in addition to their public prayers, sent up silent thanks to God for having blessed Glastonbury with such legendary relics.

  When they returned to the abbot’s parlour, the bones and the pouch containing the golden tress had gone.

  There was a council of war late that night in the same chamber from which the relics had disappeared. At first it seemed as though the bones and the pouch containing the Guinevere tress had been spirited away by some supernatural means. The door to the abbot’s parlour was locked; he had made sure of that, the last man out of the room as they proceeded to vespers. There was no sign of forced entry and no other access except the windows, which were glazed and fastened from the inside. Besides, the parlour was on the first floor of the Hall.

  Fortunately the cross was still secure in the locked chest, but its presence seemed merely to mock the monks with what they had so recently found and lost again.

  Theft was rare in the abbey, despite the number of pilgrims and outsiders who frequented the place. It was unheard of in the abbot’s own quarters. So Frederick assured Henry de Sully. In fact the shock of the vanishing of the bones and hair was so dreadful that it caused one of their number – Brother Owen the cellarer – to collapse on the floor as if he was about to have a fit. He was now being cared for in the infirmary.

  So it was just the three, the abbot, chaplain and sacristan, who sat by the fire, musing over what had occurred and wondering what to do next.

  ‘Did we dream this?’ said Geoffrey. ‘Did we dream that we had found those bones?’

  ‘Of course not,’ said Henry. ‘Nor have they been taken by magic.’

  ‘Brother Owen seemed to think so,’ said Frederick. ‘He has been more affected than any of us.’

  ‘It is the Celt in him,’ said Henry. ‘But we shall all be affected if we do not act to remedy this situation. I mean, the good name of Glastonbury will suffer if it ever becomes known that we had Arthur’s bones in our care . . . and then mislaid them. Or allowed them to be taken from under our noses.’

  ‘No one knows yet that we have found the relics,’ said the sacristan.

  ‘No one apart from we four,’ said Geoffrey, pedantically counting on his fingers, ‘and Michael and the others who were present when they were exhumed. How long do you think they will keep it a secret?’

  ‘There is only one thing to do,’ said Henry de Sully.

  He stood up so that his back was to the fire. He smiled without humour at the other two. He outlined his plan. There were, he said, other pieces of bone which had been disinterred during the excavations. It should not be too hard to find some larger-than-usual items that might be substituted for the missing ones belonging to the king. Even a skull which, b
y dint of artful bashing, might be given a blow simulating a fatal wound. They would pick among the bones in the coffin in the Lady Chapel and select those that might be fit for a monarch. ‘And after all,’ added the abbot, ‘we still have the cross signifying that Arthur was buried here.’

  ‘With respect, Abbot, it is an imposture,’ said Frederick the sacristan.

  ‘Good Brother, how is anyone to say with absolute certainty that the bones we choose are not a king’s?’

  ‘What about the lock of hair?’ said Geoffrey.

  Henry de Sully turned and gazed into the depths of the peat fire. When he turned back again, his face was flushed from heat or inspiration.

  ‘There is a woman in the town, Margaret the wife of the tavern-keeper, I mean. She has a fine head of hair, fair hair. Brother Owen . . . talks to her from time to time, doesn’t he?’

  The other two exchanged glances.

  ‘Our brother hears her confessions, yes,’ said Geoffrey.

  ‘He shrives her,’ said Frederick.

  ‘Well, then,’ said the abbot, ‘nothing could be simpler. When he has recovered, get Brother Owen to see what he can do to get a tress from this Margaret. Remember, meanwhile, that we do this not for personal profit or glory but for the sake of the abbey; we do it to protect our future.’

  So it was that under the brightly coloured vaulting of the Lady Chapel and in the secrecy of night, the abbot, the sacristan and the chaplain rummaged among the human remains that had already been disturbed in the graveyard. They found what they were looking for: large bones for a man, even a skull that might be taken for the king’s, especially after it was given a great tap with a hammer.

  Meanwhile, in the infirmary, Owen sighed and sweated with guilt. He turned on his side on his hard, narrow bed and remembered how he had copied the key to the abbot’s parlour, how he had slipped it to the tavern-keeper as he walked across the green on the way to evensong. He had already alerted Glyn, knowing from the abbot’s earlier summons that something of signifi cance had been found.

  Lying on his sickbed, eyes staring into blackness, he had visions of men stealing into the abbey precincts while the monks were occupied at vespers, of dark shapes scurrying on the edge of the cloisters and the back of the kitchen quarters. It would not have taken the group long to get into the abbot’s parlour and scoop up Arthur’s relics.

  Where were the bones now, he wondered?

  But if he did not know exactly where they were, he knew in which direction they were going. They were being ferried across the marshes and peat bogs to the great channel separating England from Wales, they were being carried to the west under the protection of the guardians.

  Once Arthur’s bones were safe from discovery by the English, Owen the cellarer did not much care if his own role in this affair was discovered. He had played his part, he had done his duty. Even so, once he was out of the infirmary the next day, he took the precaution of disposing of the duplicate key by throwing it in a stew in the abbey grounds. A large fish swam towards the surface to inspect Owen. Its mouth gaped. Owen was reminded of the abbot’s teeth.

  There was no sequel to the disappearance of the bones. No one mentioned it. In fact, to his amazement he was invited to feast his eyes on those very items once again in the abbot’s quarters. Nods and hints gave him a good idea of what had occurred. As did Henry de Sully who, drawing him aside, explained that he should use whatever influence he had with the tavern-keeper’s wife to get her to surrender a lock of her golden hair.

  ‘Do you think you can manage that?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Owen cautiously.

  ‘Suggest she give it up as an act of penitence,’ said the abbot, smiling. ‘Her hair is a snare in which the hearts of men are caught. I refer to secular men, Brother Owen, who must be protected from the perils of golden hair. Penitence, I say.’

  ‘Yes, Abbot.’

  ‘She has much to be penitential about, I dare say.’

  ‘We all have,’ said Owen the cellarer. ‘We all have.’

  Many miles across the water and among the hills to the west, at the time when Brother Owen was gazing open-mouthed on the substitute bones, a similar scene was taking place in an isolated, long-abandoned church. A second group of men was assembled in a circle around the genuine relics which had been taken from the abbot’s Hall in Glastonbury. They spoke little but their words were solemn. The men were dressed in the garb of artisans, which some of them were.

  The church was a shell rather than a building, with ragged walls and a roof which was more holes than thatch. Tucked away in a fold among the hills, it had fallen into disuse when the village it served had withered away through sickness and migration. All that remained inside was a stone altar, as rough and fissured as a boulder newly tumbled from a hillside. The bones of Arthur and the leathern pouch containing the tress of hair were spread across the altar, illuminated by nothing more than the light of the moon and the stars which soared above the gaping roof. Yet to each man in that place the relics of the king seemed to shine with their own light.

  They had paid their homage to the bones and now their leader – a slight man whose name was Meurig ap Rhys, a man with a widow’s peak as sharp as a flint dagger – gave his instructions on the safeguarding of the remains of the great king. When their duties ended, which they surely must at the conclusion of their own mortal existences, the task would pass to their offspring, he said. They were the Guardians. They held in trust the future lives of their race. He predicted that the day would come – not in their lifetime, nor that of their sons or even their sons’ sons, perhaps, but come it would – when the bones of the great warrior-king would be required once more. The crisis when the descendants of the present company would be called on to throw off the invader’s yoke. He swore them to silence on pain of those same lives.

  Ap Rhys may have been slight of stature but his word was law. Two of his own sons were among the group. He nodded at them with particular emphasis as he bound the group to silence.

  None of those standing in a ring about the bones doubted him. When the ceremony was finished, ap Rhys dismissed everyone save for his sons. He waited until the sounds of footsteps and horses’ hooves had died away on the still, frosty night. Then the three men retrieved the bones and leather pouch from the top of the altar-stone and reverently folded them in silken wrappings and deposited them in a small chest which had been brought to the dilapidated chapel for this very purpose. The chest was not large, certainly not large enough to draw attention, being no more than the length of a man’s arm and about two-thirds as wide. Placing the chest in a cart to which was tethered a small but sturdy pony, the men bowed their heads under a moon which was nearly at the full. After a moment’s silence, with the father leading the horse and the sons on either side of the cart, they paced off down the track towards the lowlands.

  ACT ONE

  I

  Carmarthen, February 1196

  Meurig was dying. The battle to repel the invaders was lost, and the castle was ablaze. The town rang with victory cries from Lord Rhys’s men, screams of terror from hapless civilians, and the roar of flames. The billowing smoke was making it difficult for Meurig to breathe, but an arrow had lodged in his spine and his legs no longer worked – he could not move to a more comfortable place to die. In an agony of despair, he wondered what would become of King Arthur’s remains now.

  He had thought the bones he had spirited away from Glastonbury would be safe in Carmarthen. The pretty little town in southern Wales was under Norman control, it was true, but this paled into insignificance when its history was taken into account. It was said – and Meurig believed the tale with every fibre of his being – that Merlin the magician had been born there. And Merlin had always been Arthur’s protector.

  He thought back to the perilous journey from Glastonbury, some five years before. It had taken weeks to trek through the wet countryside, always travelling at night so as not to be seen. All three of his sons had been with him – Hywe
l the eldest, jealous and brooding; jovial Young Meurig in the middle; and shy Dewi, his favourite. The box he had fashioned for the precious cargo was not very large – as long as a man’s arm, two-thirds as wide, and high enough to accommodate Arthur’s impressive skull. The wood was hard and black, and Meurig had coated it with a damp-repelling resin.

  Once the bones were safely in Wales, he had dismissed the other men he had appointed to be Arthur’s Guardians – too large a party would have attracted attention – and continued the journey with only his sons for company. Naturally, the others had objected. Arthur was so important to Wales that they were appalled at the notion of leaving him, but Meurig had insisted. And they, dutiful souls, had deferred to his wishes and had returned to their homes, to carry on with their lives until they were summoned again. As the son of a Welsh prince, Meurig had always been a leader, and the Guardians – trusted friends, close kin and long-time allies in battle – were all men who acknowledged him as such.

  Of course, he had paid a terrible price for his decision. A robbers’ ambush near Dinefwr had almost seen the bones lost, and afterwards . . . Meurig bit back a sob. When the raid was over, and the villains had been successfully repelled, his beloved Dewi lay dead. He was not sure he would ever forgive himself for that.

  He took a deep, shuddering breath, pushing the painful memories from his mind as he focused his thoughts on his current predicament. What was he going to do about Arthur? How was he to protect the bones if he could not even climb to his feet? And why had Merlin failed to watch over his erstwhile protégé? Meurig closed his eyes in despair. Carmarthen had been a good choice. The ancient king should have been safe there.

  But Meurig had reckoned without the Lord Rhys, who had always resented the fact that Normans occupied the strip of land south of his stronghold – and who had finally elected to do something about it. It was ironic, Meurig thought bitterly, that the hope of Wales should be put at risk, albeit unwittingly, by one of Wales’s greatest heroes. It was even more ironic that the feisty old warrior-prince was Meurig’s own father. Bitterly, Meurig ap Rhys reflected on the events that had seen him racing to defend the treasure he had hidden – and that had resulted in him being mistaken for a Norman and shot by Welsh bowmen.