I nodded. Then for the next few minutes I spoke long and earnestly to Master Shapwick, watching his face lengthen first with astonishment and then with consternation. To his credit, however, he made no attempt to interrupt me with questions, and spared me any exclamations of disbelief. And when at last I had finished, he simply reached up and clasped my hand.
‘You may rely on me,’ was all he said.
As I rode back through the town and along the causeway which leads towards Wells, I felt happier for having taken the stablemaster into my confidence. (I have always thought it wrong to lay all the burden for my well-being upon God’s shoulders when there are precautions I can take myself.) It was now past midday and the heat was growing oppressive, although there was only an occasional glimpse of sun between the lowering clouds.
With Wells visible on the horizon, I turned off the main causeway on to a rougher, narrower path which took me across the moor directly to the foot of the Mendip Hills. Here it forked, one track leading on to the Pennards’ house and its outbuildings, the other joining what remained of the old Roman road. I urged Barnabas along the latter until I came to the stand of trees where Peter Gildersleeve had tethered Dorabella eight days earlier. Here I dismounted and did the same with the cob, stroking his nose.
‘I’ll be back,’ I assured him.
He showed me the whites of his eyes, as though sensing danger, before lowering his head to crop the grass. I paused to look around, but there was no point in wasting time, so I took my cudgel from the saddle-bow and swathed one end in the strips of the fat-soaked linen, which I extracted from my pouch. As I stepped clear of the trees I glanced up at the heights above me, searching for any sign of human life, any indication that I was being watched. But I could see no movement except for the sheep, placidly grazing. I wondered uneasily where Abel Fairchild was, and also Anthony Pennard’s two sons. At the same time, I was thankful for their absence.
I descended into the hollow, glancing briefly at the shepherd’s hut, but it no longer held any interest for me. I hoped I had solved that riddle, and also that I knew where Peter had gone once Abel had made off in terror. As I mounted to the higher ridge of ground which separated the hollow from the little valley, the first drops of rain began to fall. Somewhere away to my right, above the crest of Mendip, thunder rolled, preceded by a jagged flash of lightning. I quickened my pace, proceeding as best I could with the wrapped end of my cudgel protected beneath my jerkin. It was awkward but I managed it somehow, making my way around the bluff until I reached the matted curtain of foliage.
My heart was beating so fast that I could scarcely breathe. Now was the moment when I should discover if my powers of deduction had steered me aright, or if this strange case, with its echoes of events almost a thousand years old, was beyond my ability to solve. I pushed aside the hanging trails of ivy and ferns and the long, attenuated branches of some tree to reveal a narrow fissure in the rock-face. And cautiously I eased myself through the gap, stepping into the darkness beyond.
* * *
It took a moment or two for my eyes to adjust to their surroundings, so little daylight filtered through the foliage which hung down across the almost invisible entrance. From the outside, looking into the blackness, I had been able to see nothing except what appeared to be solid rock; but once past that curtain of fronded green I found myself standing in a cave. I felt exultant, and it was several seconds before I mastered my elation sufficiently to get on with the business in hand and light my home-made torch.
I withdrew the tinder-box from my pouch and struck a spark from the flint. As soon as I had kindled a flame I set light to the fat-soaked linen strips which bound the end of my cudgel, and immediately I could see that I was in a kind of passageway whose floor was liberally studded with rocks and with what appeared to be frozen icicles hanging from the ceiling. I moved forward cautiously, my makeshift torch illuminating my path through the muffled darkness, and as I did so colours rushed at me along the walls — green and brown, pink and red — only to be engulfed in the following gloom as the light swept onwards. Fear and excitement made my hand shake, and hovering somewhere at the edges of my mind was the image of a bejewelled reliquary housing the fabulous Grail of the stories and legends — those legends in which I did not believe, but which I was half convinced might, after all, prove to be a reality.
My footfalls echoed dully in that rock-bound tunnel until suddenly the quality of sound altered; and even before the flaring light from my torch told me the reason I was aware of a withdrawing of the rocks, a sense of height and breadth and space. I was standing in the cave proper; a vaulted chamber where the varying density of shadow marked boulder and stone, and whose ceiling was ragged with the same frozen icicles I had noted in the passageway: some a pure, ethereal white, others leaden grey or a faint, translucent pink. Yet more tumbled down the walls, as though Merlin had transformed them with his magic wand and turned the cascading waters into stone.
All this I noticed in the first few, fleeting moments before other things began to encroach upon my consciousness, the chief of which was the realization that there was a far greater brightness all around me than my single light could possibly provide. The reason for this was not hard to discover. Three or four iron stands supported torches of which my own was but a poor, truncated imitation. The smell of pitch and burning rags assailed my nostrils as the flames licked sideways in a brief and sudden draught which blew through some fissure in the rocks.
At the same time I also became aware of three large wooden chests standing in the middle of the floor. One was open, its lid flung back to reveal, as I approached it, the glint of precious metal and the sparkle of jewels. Not the Holy Chalice, but gold and silver artefacts: candlesticks, goblets and gem-encrusted boxes, plates and knives and spoons. There were also belts and necklaces, bracelets and rings, all set with glittering stones …
How long I stood there staring I have no idea — a few seconds, perhaps, before I became aware that I was not alone. I raised my head and saw Anthony Pennard, his two sons ranged behind him, watching me from the furthest recess of the cave. They had just emerged from what I now realized was another opening which led even deeper into the heart of the Mendip Hills.
‘You don’t seem surprised to see us, Master Chapman,’ Anthony said, strolling forward.
At his words I felt a prickle of fear which raised the hairs along my skin. I held my burning cudgel like a lance before me and slowly began to back against the nearest wall.
‘What have you done with Peter Gildersleeve?’ I asked. ‘And where is his brother?’
‘Both dead,’ Thomas Pennard cut in before his father could answer. ‘Once that interfering idiot Peter had clapped eyes on those — ’ he indicated the chests of stolen goods — ‘there was no way we could let him live.’
‘No, I suppose not. Not once he realized that you and your father and brother were the gang of thieves who had been robbing the people of this district for so long. What have you done with his body?’
The eldest Pennard grinned and waved his hand towards the opening in the corner.
‘Beyond this cavern is a whole warren of other caves and passageways. It would take a lifetime to master the ins and outs of all of them, and perhaps even then there would be places that a stranger would never find.’
‘And what about Mark? Is his body with his brother’s?’
When there was no answer, I went on, ‘You’ve killed him too, haven’t you, even though he was one of you? A disgruntled young man, jealous of the brother to whom their father had left everything including his second-best bed. Oh, Peter would have looked after Mark and seen to it that he wanted for nothing, but it wasn’t quite the same as being an equal partner. He wanted money of his own so that he would be independent of his brother. When he grumbled to you and your sons, you saw him as an easy recruit; someone who heard a good deal of gossip and careless chatter in the course of his work. Mark very often delivered the finished parchments himself, both in the town and the surrounding countryside. He knew the insides of his neighbours’ houses, the weaknesses of their defences, and when the occupiers would be from home. He must have been very useful to you. So why did you kill him?’