Gilbert Foliot and I reached them first, unceremoniously pushing our way between them to stare down at the ashen-faced body at their feet. The lad had been young, not more than about eighteen, I reckoned, with a snub nose in a roundish, freckled face and hair, now plastered tightly to his scalp, that was probably sandy-coloured when dry. Caught among the reeds, standing sentinel along the bank, was his travelling satchel and cloak. In his headlong flight to escape last night, he had fallen into the river and drowned.
I stared at the smooth, beardless young face, the eyes now closed in death. The features were vaguely familiar, and I realized that I had seen them at some time or another around the Bristol streets.
I turned to Gilbert Foliot, who was looking as pale as the corpse. ‘Do you know him?’ I asked.
‘I should do,’ he answered in a shaking voice. ‘It’s Peter Noakes, the young ne’er-do-well who’s been courting my daughter.’
SIX
The abbot arrived, breathless from unaccustomed exertion. ‘Has anyone searched the body?’ he gasped, then recollected himself and made the sign of the Cross. He turned to Gilbert Foliot. ‘Did I hear you say, sir, that you recognized this unfortunate young man?’
The goldsmith nodded. He now had himself well in hand. ‘He is a Bristol youth who, much against my wishes, has recently been courting my daughter. There can be no doubt that it is from her that he learned of the secret hiding place here at Tintern, just as Ursula learned of it from me.’
This explanation gave the answer to one question that had been troubling me, but begged others. Why, for instance, after almost a decade and a half, would the hiding place have been resurrected as a subject of discussion in the Foliot household? And what had caused speculation that it might, in fact, be larger than had been previously thought? Or that it could contain something other than the papers originally found? But there was no time at the moment to look for solutions.
Two of the more elderly monks were by now hurriedly searching the body, while a third had rescued the satchel from among the reeds. The latter, however, contained only some spare clothing and a hammer and chisel, tools obviously deemed necessary by young Noakes to accomplish the job he had in mind. Of stolen treasure, there was no sign. Nor was there anything to be found on the body, although it was stripped nearly naked before the abbot, or indeed the rest of us, could be satisfied that a few coins for the lad’s travelling expenses were all that was concealed about his skinny person.
‘Nothing!’ exclaimed the abbot disgustedly.
‘Probably because there was nothing to find in the first place,’ said the lawyer’s dry voice. He and Henry Callowhill had just arrived, having proceeded to the scene of the accident at a more dignified pace than the goldsmith and myself. Master Heathersett went on, ‘Our friend, the chapman here, must have been mistaken last night when he thought he saw something in young Peter’s left hand.’
There was a general, if reluctant, nodding of heads in which I joined. It was the only explanation. A suggestion by one of the Brothers that the thief might have accidentally dropped his booty whilst in flight was considered, but eventually dismissed. It was felt by everyone that had he discovered anything of value, Peter Noakes’s first priority would have been to secure it safely, either about his person or in his satchel. All the same, a half-hearted search was organized to scour the river bank and the ground between the abbey and the spot where his body had been found, but nothing came to light. I think, by this time, no one expected it to. Everyone seemed to be fast coming to the conclusion that the whole idea of undiscovered treasure was nothing more than a mare’s nest; a bit of wishful thinking.
And yet, as the sad little procession made its way back to the abbey, two of the monks bearing Peter Noakes’s body on an improvised stretcher, I couldn’t avoid the thought that the young man must have come to Tintern under the impression that there was something — and something worthwhile — to be found. And where could he have formed that impression except in the Foliot household? Moreover, taken in conjunction with that fact, was Gilbert Foliot’s raising of the matter with the abbot: did his lordship remember the discovery of the hiding place fourteen years before, and was it possible that it might not have been thoroughly explored at that time? It could, it was true, be my old enemy, coincidence. And then again, perhaps not.
For the time being, however, there were other things to think about, the most pressing of which was the need to get to Gloucester before there was again any worsening of the weather. Oliver Tockney and I had planned to be well on the way by this hour. The town was all of twenty-five miles distant, if not more, and we had no idea of what conditions were still to be met with on the roads. It could take us three or even four days travelling if we were unlucky, and I knew that my companion was itching to get away. Fortunately, there was nothing to delay us further. Master Foliot had undertaken to acquaint Anthony Roper of the death of his nephew as soon as he reached Bristol, and made arrangements with the monks that they would house the body decently until such time as Master Roper sent to collect it. So there was nothing further that either Oliver or I could do.
We therefore tendered thanks for the abbot’s hospitality and set out.
The old English meaning of the name Gloucester is the Shining Place, but there was nothing remotely shining about the town as we crossed the bridge over the Severn that miserable late October morning and made our way into the heart of the town. Cobbles, slippery with dead leaves and mud made for uncomfortable walking, while the relentlessly grey skies shrouded the houses and shops in a pall of drizzle.
Oliver wanted to go immediately to the docks and market to replenish the goods in his pack, but I said I had other business to attend to and would meet him later at the New Inn, close to the abbey.
‘We may get a bed there for the night, if we’re lucky,’ I said. ‘Although it’s usually full of pilgrims coming to pay homage at King Edward’s tomb.’
‘Is that the king who was murdered by having his bowels burnt out with a red hot spit?’ Oliver enquired with a ghoulish leer.
‘In Berkeley Castle, yes.’ I turned away, repeating over my shoulder, ‘The New Inn,’ and adding, ‘about the hour of Vespers.’
I didn’t wait for his reply, striding away through the narrow streets, glad of the chance to be on my own for a while. The truth was that, after nearly two weeks, Oliver and I were growing tired of one another’s company. Our companionable exchanges of the past three days had grown fewer and fewer and, on two occasions, had turned into downright squabbles. I use the word ‘squabbles’ deliberately for there had been nothing dignified about our disagreements, and the second time we very nearly came to blows. Only a mutual sense of the ridiculous, the picture of two grown men fighting like schoolboys, prevented it. I wondered how we were to cover the remaining distance between Gloucester and Bristol and stay friends. That, however, was tomorrow’s problem. Meanwhile, as I had said, I had business of my own.
Consequently, I directed my footsteps towards the north side of the abbey, where there was a small enclave of houses known as Cloister Yard, and knocked on the first door I came to. This was the entrance to a pleasant two-storey building with a walled enclosure behind it, but showing, at that season of the year, nothing more than a network of bare hawthorn branches rising above the grey stones.
My knock went unanswered. I waited a minute or so, then knocked again. And once again, there was no reply. I stepped back and looked up at the windows, but they were all shuttered, and there was a silence about the place that convinced me no one was at home. The cloister itself was so quiet that it might have been uninhabited, and I was just preparing to leave, swearing under my breath in frustration, when an elderly woman turned into the close. She stood staring at me, saying nothing but raising her strongly marked eyebrows.