I turned to them eagerly and was disappointed to see that there really was little more than a page and a half of black, spidery, very upright writing, very difficult to read. This was not the fault of the ink which had retained its colour after all those years and was still beautifully vivid. I wondered if it had been made from blackthorn bark or oak galls, or to one of the abbey’s secret recipes. (Most religious establishments had their own, which they zealously guarded.) It certainly wasn’t thickened blackberry juice mixed with blood, which faded early.
I applied my mind to deciphering the narrative. This wasn’t easy, the writing being extremely uneven and the style discursive. Almost all the first page was devoted, as the abbot had said, to squabbles amongst the brothers, with particular attention being paid to the disagreement between a certain Brother Barnabas and another named Philip. What it was about, I couldn’t have told you even ten minutes later, so rapidly did I skip the lines, searching eagerly for the incident of the strangers’ arrival.
I came to it at last at the top of the second page. ‘“They came last night as we had feared they might, having had warning that they were close by. Two others were with them; Reading, I think, and Baldock were the names, but I cannot be sure. We had begged Father Abbot not to give them sanctuary; their crime is too great, but he ignored our wishes. Perhaps he was afraid to do otherwise. It seems they will stay here again tonight, but after that Father Abbot has assured us they will be gone. God have mercy on their souls. They will need it.”’
This, disappointingly, was all on that head, and for the next twenty or so lines, the writer returned to the feud between Brothers Philip and Barnabas until breaking off mid-sentence and leaving the rest of the page blank. What had happened to make him stop writing so abruptly it was impossible to say with any certainty after a century and a half; but if I was forced to hazard a guess it would be that someone had snatched the paper from him to stuff into the abbot’s secret hiding place, along with pages torn from the account books. He had probably protested violently, but if his fellow monks suspected that he wrote about them in his diary, someone must have borne him a grudge and taken malicious pleasure in frustrating him.
But that was just idle speculation and not the riddle that was teasing me. I stared down at the black lettering thoughtfully. The longer I considered the problem, the more I felt convinced that whatever our thief had stolen tonight, whatever it was that had lain concealed in the hiding place for so long, had been brought by the strangers that night a hundred and fifty-odd years ago. It had been hidden for them by the abbot and walled in, the papers then being placed in the remaining space and the tiles of the hearth replaced. Had the strangers intended to return for what they had left? I thought it more than likely, but something had prevented them. Imprisonment? Death? The diarist had spoken of them and their crimes with revulsion, so either was probable if the law had eventually caught up with them and exacted reparation. Their treasure, whatever it was, had lain buried and forgotten as the long progression of years went by and those who had placed it there had died. Indeed, knowledge of the hiding place itself had been lost until its accidental discovery fourteen years earlier.
So far, so good. Exactly why the abbot of the time had agreed, not only to give sanctuary to four criminals for two nights but also to keep their treasure for them was beyond my comprehension, but indisputable. And it was impossible that I should discover the reason now, so there was little point in agonizing over it. What did exercise my mind was the fact that this treasure had suddenly been rediscovered and stolen at the very time that Gilbert Foliot had been talking to the abbot on the subject of its hiding place. Coincidence, one might say. But I have never liked coincidences. All right, so they do happen or, as I have remarked somewhere else in these chronicles, there wouldn’t be a word for them. I still don’t like them.
But if there was a connection between the two events, I had to admit that I had no inkling what it was.
My travelling companions must have found me rather taciturn for the rest of the day, but as I refused to say what was bothering me, they soon shrugged and left me alone with my thoughts. And I can’t say that those did me much good. In fact by evening, with an incipient pain nagging behind my eyes, I was thoroughly sick of the whole subject. So when, next morning, the weather was found to be greatly improved, with a watery sun struggling to show its face between the clouds, and when news was brought that rumours of rebels in the vicinity had yet again proved to be a false alarm, I was as happy as the others to set out for home.
It was my intention to walk back to Gloucester in order to cross the Severn there, and Oliver Tockney said he would accompany me. We both needed to refill our packs, which we could do either from the ships anchored in the town’s docks or from its market. I didn’t say so, but I had another, more cogent, reason for wishing to visit the place, having arrived quite suddenly at the decision to seek out Juliette Gerrish and demand an explanation for her unpardonable conduct earlier in the year.
Gilbert Foliot, Lawyer Heathersett and Master Callowhill would follow the same route, but on horseback and would no doubt be home in Bristol some days ahead of us.
‘The horse ferry won’t be running after all this rain,’ Gilbert Foliot wisely remarked, ‘so, my friends, we have no choice but to retrace our steps and cross the Severn higher up.’ He smiled graciously at me across the table in the lay brothers’ refectory, where we were having breakfast. ‘I’m sorry I can’t offer to take you up behind me, Master Chapman, but you and your pack together are too weighty, I’m afraid.’
I inclined my head with a graciousness equal to his own. ‘I thank you for the thought, Master Foliot, but I should prefer to walk. I’m used to it and, like Master Tockney, I’m not easy on horseback. He and I have kept one another company from Hereford. We shall do so still.’
He had the decency to look uncomfortable, knowing full well that he preferred to overlook Oliver’s presence as much as possible. (As, indeed, he would have overlooked mine had he not had this erroneous idea that I was some sort of spy for the king.)
We were just finishing our meal and preparing to return to the infirmary in order to gather our belongings together, when the abbot entered to wish us all a safe journey and give us his blessing.
‘You may travel safely,’ he announced. ‘I have it on good authority’ — people always have it on good authority but never tell you exactly how good that authority really is — ‘that the roads this side of Severn are clear of rebels. Presumably they have gone to join up with their fellow insurgents in the south and west. The last rumour concerning the royal forces is that the king is moving south and is probably at Coventry by now. So-’
He was interrupted by one of the lay brothers rushing in, obviously in a state of suppressed excitement. ‘Father!’ he gasped. ‘Come quickly!’
The abbot frowned, annoyed. ‘What is it?’ he snapped.
The man flapped an ineffective hand. ‘A — a body! Washed up on the river bank! A young man!’
The goldsmith and I exchanged startled glances, sharing the same thought. The same certainty. Then, in the wake of the lay brother and with the others following, we both made a dash for the refectory door.
‘This way!’ the layman panted, urging us on across the soggy, rain-soaked ground.
A few rays of sun were filtering through the clouds to glimmer palely on wet grass and gleam corpse-like on the surface of the river. A flock of birds rose suddenly in a ragged line, screaming and cawing against the darker shapes of the surrounding hills. Crouched around something lying at the water’s edge were several of the brothers, their white habits looking a dirty grey in the early morning light.