His exclamation brought the rest of the band around them in a circle. They craned their necks to hear the tidings.
‘When?’ asked one of them.
‘Soon,’ said Abraham, ‘judging by the preparations. I saw them taking provisions to the castle. I stopped a butcher and asked him why he had just delivered so many carcasses to the gate.’
‘I know which carcass I’d like to deliver!’ said Madog and gained a patriotic cheer. ‘The King, is it? Well, he’s no King of ours.’
‘Why is he here?’ asked someone else.
‘I have no idea,’ admitted the archdeacon.
Madog was thoughtful. ‘Bring word as soon as he arrives.’
‘I will.’
‘This may be an accident that heaven provides. King William.
Coming to Gloucester.’ He gave a grim laugh. ‘Within reach at last.’
Canon Hubert was delighted when he was summoned by Abbot Serlo, and that delight increased when he saw that the latter already had a visitor. The venerable Bishop Wulfstan was waiting to greet him. Educated in a Norman abbey, Hubert took a lordly view of Saxon prelates and held them in low esteem. Wulfstan was the signal exception. Hubert admired him for his intellect and revered him for his spiritual commitment. He just wished that the Bishop of Worcester would divest himself of the filthy lambskin cloak which was already filling the room with a smell of decay.
‘Bishop Wulfstan brings interesting news,’ said Serlo.
Wulfstan hunched his shoulders. ‘Hubert may already know it.’
‘Know what?’
‘That the King is riding towards us.’
‘Coming to Gloucester?’ said Hubert in surprise.
‘There,’ said Serlo. ‘He is as astonished as I was.’
‘Was the fact of this visit kept from you, Hubert?’
‘It appears so, Bishop Wulfstan,’ said the latter, annoyed to learn something so important in this way. ‘What is the nature of the visit?’
‘Nobody knows until King William actually gets here.’
‘I would value time alone with him myself,’ said Serlo hopefully.
‘Do urge him to visit the abbey. We can discuss my plans for rebuilding the church. That will surely arouse his interest.’
‘I will speak up on your behalf, Abbot Serlo.’
‘Thank you.’
‘When the time calls.’ He turned to Hubert. ‘It is good to renew our acquaintance, Canon Hubert, if only by accident, so to speak.
I hear that you are doing valuable work as a royal commissioner.’
‘It is a responsibility I shoulder willingly.’
‘That is characteristic of you. But let us turn to the reason why I wished to see you,’ said Wulfstan, sucking air in noisily through his few remaining teeth. ‘This appalling crime in the abbey.’
‘A sickening event, Bishop Wulfstan.’
‘It falls to the sheriff to apprehend the culprit but he, it seems, is convinced that the guilty man is actually a monk at the abbey.’
‘A ludicrous notion!’
‘That is what I told Durand,’ said the abbot.
‘You have my endorsement,’ promised Wulfstan. ‘I would not listen to such nonsense from the sheriff. It is why I turn to you for I believe that you and your colleagues have instituted an inquiry on your own account. Is that true?’
‘Up to a point, Bishop Wulfstan.’
‘What point is that?’
‘We have other demands on our time.’
‘Accepted. But you still manage to turn your gaze upon this disgusting act of murder and Abbot Serlo is rightly grateful. Until the crime is solved, the unpleasant atmosphere here will continue.’
Hubert believed that much of the unpleasantness could be dispelled if the bishop’s cloak was either set alight or sprinkled with frankincense but he tactfully suppressed the observation.
Instead, he tried to raise all their spirits while parading his own virtues before them.
‘There is a hideous symbolism in the murder of a Benedictine monk,’ he declared, ‘and nobody appreciates that more than I do.
Limited as my time is, I will devote as much as I can to the pursuit of the killer. I have already examined the two boys who actually stumbled upon the corpse and, I feel, drawn information out of them which Durand the Sheriff failed to elicit. I know the mind of a novice, he does not.’
‘Your colleagues, too, have been active,’ remarked Serlo.
‘That is so, Abbot Serlo. Under my direction, the lord Ralph and Gervase Bret have been diligent officers. They have searched for clues in the abbey and, at my suggestion, they will look further afield.’
‘Most encouraging,’ said Wulfstan. ‘Has progress been made?’
‘We believe so.’
‘Then you are to be congratulated, Canon Hubert.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Serlo, exuding approval. ‘It was a happy coincidence that you came among us at this time. The sheriff is an industrious man but he lacks your insight. Also, of course, he will be rather preoccupied with a royal visitor in his household. My fear is that the murder inquiry will lose impetus. The trail will go cold.’
‘Not as long as I am here!’ boasted Hubert.
‘The abbey is indebted to you.’
‘We all are,’ said Wulfstan. ‘Tell me. What conclusions have you so far reached? Where do you think the killer will be found?’
Hubert inhaled deeply and enjoyed his moment in the sun.
On the long ride back to the castle, Ralph Delchard and Gervase Bret had ample time to review their visit to the Westbury Hundred.
Though largely inconclusive, it had given them some valuable information.
‘We saw the lord Hamelin in his true light,’ said Ralph. ‘He is a different person with armed men at his back.’
‘And without his wife.’
Ralph grinned. ‘I did note her absence.’
‘If only his sub-tenants had been more forthcoming.’
‘They are frightened rabbits, hardly daring to peep out of their burrows while the lord Hamelin is about.’
‘He certainly likes to make his presence felt.’
‘I’ll do the same when I have him in the shire hall again.’
‘With his wife.’
‘With, as you predict, the gorgeous lady Emma. How can someone so beautiful be taken in by someone so perfidious?’
‘His perfidy has yet to be proven, Ralph.’
‘More’s the pity!’
‘All that we have established is that the lord Hamelin cleverly blurred the boundaries between the various hides. It enabled him to snatch Strang’s land from under his very nose.’
‘I suspect that he did the same to Querengar.’
‘We need to question them all much more closely.’
Gloucester appeared on the horizon and they rode on in silence for a few minutes, grateful when a light drizzle fell to cool their warm brows. After a period of meditation, Gervase turned to his friend once more.
‘I am surprised he has not come to your attention before, Ralph.’
‘The lord Hamelin?’
‘Yes. If he hails from Lisieux, his estates cannot be far from your own. Has he never been mentioned in reports from Normandy?’
‘Only in passing.’
‘Yet he spends much time there, it seems,’ said Gervase. ‘That is where he met the lady Emma no doubt. He would certainly not encounter such a woman here.’
‘It is the one thing the French can do well.’
‘What is?’
‘Produce glorious creatures like that.’
‘Hereford has its own crop, remember.’
‘I do,’ said Ralph guiltily, ‘and Golde is a prime example. In praising the lady Emma, I do not dispraise my own wife. Not to mention yours, Gervase. Alys is living proof that Winchester also has its share of remarkable beauties.’
‘I think so.’
‘Do you miss her?’
‘Sorely.’
‘And so you should.’
‘I still believe I did right to leave her behind. Alys does not care to travel. She has none of Golde’s vitality, I fear. That is the difference between us, Ralph. While I ride back to the castle to pine for my wife, you can look forward to seeing yours.’
‘Yes,’ said Ralph.
But the word was a burning cinder in his throat. He knew that he would face stern questions from Golde.