The Tintern Treasure (29 page)

Whoever the man was, he had a knife. I saw the flash of the blade as he raised his right hand, while his left forced up my chin as he sought to expose my throat. But my assassin had not counted on my being awake and therefore alert. I imagine the intention had been to kill me quickly while I slept or, had he had the misfortune to rouse me, before I had time to gather my wits. My vigorous resistance took him by surprise. Moreover, the rain had made his hands slippery, and the blade, thrusting downwards, missed the base of my neck and skidded across my right collarbone, leaving a nasty scratch but nothing worse.

I heard him curse. His breath was foul in my face, but no lasting damage had been incurred. With a great heave, I managed to throw him off and wriggle free from beneath his weight. But big man though he was, he was agile and came at me again almost at once, certainly before I had time to find my feet. This time he forced me, half on, half off the bed, back against the wall at its head. His anger at being thwarted was palpable, and I could see the whites of his eyes glinting in the darkness. He was at me again, stabbing wildly now at any part of my body within reach, and I was having to fend him off with every ounce of strength that I could muster. My heart was hammering so hard it was beginning to make me feel sick. Surely I wasn't meant to die here in this fetid little room! I had been in worse situations than this, I told myself, and survived. I felt the knife nick my left cheek . . .

Suddenly I remembered the jug of water on top of the chest. With an enormous effort I pushed my assailant off me just long enough to reach out with my left hand and grab the jug's handle. Then I poured the contents over him and broke the empty vessel over his head. Temporarily blinded and slightly dazed, he dropped the knife and staggered to his feet, lurching towards the door. In an instant I was after him and had propelled him through the opening. Another shove and he crashed down the short flight of steps, landing with a sickening thud on the rain-sodden ground below. I didn't wait to see if he were seriously hurt or not, but went back inside the room, closing and bolting the door.

It was a long time before I fell asleep. There were too many questions that needed answering.

I had had a lucky escape. Apart from the scratch on my collarbone, which throbbed a little, there was practically nothing to show for my recent murderous encounter. I was winded, frightened but otherwise unharmed. But who had my attacker been? I thought I knew. He had been either Fulk or Robin, but it had been too dark to be sure, but that it was one or the other of them I would have staked my life on. Which meant, of course, that Sir Lionel Despenser was behind the outrage. He still regarded me as a threat to whatever plot he was mixed up in, and on discovering that I was to spend the night in the village had seized this opportunity to get rid of me. Had he succeeded, I wondered who would have taken the blame for my death. My guess was that Jacob Shoesmith and his wife would have found the finger of suspicion pointing at them.

But how had my assailant known that I was sleeping in the room normally occupied by Betsy? This was something I had not mentioned that afternoon when talking to the knight. The fact that I had left the door unbolted might simply have been fortuitous. On the other hand, it might not. It could be that someone from the manor had paid a visit to the cobbler's shop that afternoon while I was plying my trade elsewhere in the village, and who knew what Jacob Shoesmith might have let slip? He could well have noticed how the girl had looked at me and guessed her intention. A salacious jest, a nudge, a wink and Fulk – or Robin – would have returned home with the information that the coming night presented an opportunity worth the taking. If it turned out that I had, after all, bolted the door against Betsy's advances, there was still all day Sunday and the following night to make a second attempt.

I jerked into a sitting position, sweat prickling across my skin and my heart pounding against my ribs. I knew suddenly that I had to get away from Keynsham as soon as I could and not wait for a lift in Joseph Sibley's cart on Monday morning. Danger threatened me in this isolated village; the same fate as had most probably overtaken Walter Gurney. I slid out of bed, unbolted the door and peered cautiously outside. No black shape still lay at the foot of the steps: whoever had attacked me had gone, nursing his injuries. But I felt certain that, sometime during the next twenty-four hours or so, he would be back. Him or another.

The moon, a pale sickle of apricot, rode high amid the rushing clouds, then vanished, but the rain had stopped. I dressed quickly, wrapped myself in my cloak with the hood pulled well forward over my head, took my pack and cudgel and let myself out into the all-enveloping darkness. What the Shoesmiths would make of my abrupt and ungracious departure I did not give myself time to consider. My instinct for danger warned me to get away while the going was good. Apologies and explanations could wait for some future date, if and when I saw them again. For now, my safety was all that mattered.

A
s the crow flies, my home city of Wells lies seventeen or so miles to the south of Keynsham and Glastonbury some five miles beyond that. There was no hope, therefore, of my reaching the abbey for several days, but if I kept to the main tracks, there was a slight possibility that Joseph Sibley and his cart-load of candles might overtake me before my journey's end. It was not much of a chance – most cart-horses went only a little faster than walking pace – but it was a chance nevertheless, and would save my aching legs when they needed it the most. And I kept to the main tracks for another reason: it was easier to see if I was being followed.

I slept for what remained of the first night in an empty barn standing adjacent to the road, wrapped in my cloak on the damp, beaten-earth floor, my cudgel by my hand. I didn't sleep well, but this was not entirely due to general discomfort. I couldn't help wondering if my response to the attack on me had not been somewhat too precipitous, too cowardly and too unfair to the Shoesmiths. But the sense of danger had been strong, begging to be heeded.

The next day being Sunday, the tracks were sparse of traffic, especially when I started off in the chill mist of a November dawn. A broad stream ran alongside the path for a mile or two, the rising sun reflected like a drowned golden orb in the stillness of its water, the mirrored images of trees quivering stealthily across its glassy surface. I forced myself to stop and wash my hands and face, but it was like bathing in snow-broth, and when I drank some of the water from my cupped hands my very innards seemed to freeze.

It being the Sabbath, I was unable to peddle my wares, but in the various cottages where, throughout the day, I found food and shelter, the goodwives were more than willing to accept payment in kind rather than money. The one who gave me breakfast – hot oatcakes and honey and several cups of mulled ale – chose a pretty leather girdle with pewter tags. (They weren't fools, these women. They knew a good bargain when they saw one.) I took my dinner at a farmhouse where I was given a share of a dish of pig's trotters stewed in butter followed by a baked apple dumpling and home-brewed cider. As a reward for this splendid repast, the goodwife chose the set of carved bone buttons that I had purchased at Gloucester, some needles and thread that she was in crying need of and two lengths of white silk ribbon, while her goodman claimed my company over another cup of cider in order to hear news of the wider world.

‘What's with all these here rumours,' he demanded, ‘that this new king of ours – and whether or no he ought t' be king is a matter o' debate, I gather – has killed off his little nevvies? If that be the case, he should never –'

I cut him short with more haste than good manners and propounded my theory on the subject with such vehemence that my poor host was left floundering and almost apologizing to me for having raised the matter in the first place. After which, it was hardly surprising that he steered the topic of conversation into less controversial channels and described to me the pleasures and difficulties of farming what he called ‘hruther' or ‘rudder' beasts; the old Anglo-Saxon term, which I as a country boy was well acquainted with, for horned cattle.

Supper was a much more modest affair – bread and cheese and onions – taken at a small, wayside ale-house where I was also able to pay for a bed for the night and avail myself of the use of a pump in the backyard; a great relief to me as I had not washed properly for the past two days. I was also relieved to notice that the door of my room, a tiny attic under the eaves, sported a bolt, and I was able to strip and tumble into bed with a quiet mind.

But not quiet enough, it seemed. My dreams were troubled and appeared to centre on the farmhouse where I had eaten my dinner, although without any clarity to them. They were also mixed up with a jumble of nonsense where I kept on telling Adam to speak up and repeat what he had just said, while Adela lectured me about throwing the contents of my pack all over the kitchen floor. Something was bothering me, that was obvious enough, but when I awoke in the morning and tried to assemble the dreams into some sort of order, I was unable to do so.

‘Lord,' I prayed, hastily going down on my knees beside the bed, ‘I know I'm being stupid and dense, but please, please show me the way more clearly. I realize you are trying to tell me something, but you know that sometimes I don't have the sense of a louse. Less, probably. So if you could just see your way to putting things more plainly . . .'

I stood upright again and listened. The silence was deafening.

Monday was much like Sunday except that there were more people on the roads and I was able to sell my goods wherever possible without straying too far from the main Glastonbury track. In fact, I was more interested in making progress than in making money, and I knew that it would take another steady day and a half's walking before I was within sight of my destination. The November weather was worsening again, the ground soggy, patches of mist hanging in the air like damp rags and the trees rapidly shedding their autumnal glory of yellow and purple, crimson and yellow, the remaining leaves turning a dull, burnt-out brown.

I was right in my calculations and it was nearing noon on Tuesday – judging by the height of a watery sun appearing and disappearing between lowering grey clouds – when I found myself walking down the long slope of the Mendips into Wells, nestling at their foot. The town hadn't changed much since my boyhood, the cathedral, that mighty church dedicated to St Andrew, still dominating the huddle of insignificant dwellings crowding around it as if for warmth and protection. I didn't linger. I knew no one there nowadays and even if I had, by chance, encountered some long lost acquaintance of my youth, I shouldn't have known what to say to him. So I pressed on along the raised causeway across the flat Somerset levels with the Tor, crowned by its church, rising out of the plain and beckoning me on like a beacon.

Legend says that this is Avalon, and indeed the tomb of Arthur and Guinevere is to be seen in the abbey choir, attracting hundreds of pilgrims every year who come to worship where the Christ child is reputed to have founded the earliest church in Britain; a boy accompanying his uncle, Joseph of Arimathea, who had come to buy tin and lead from the Romans. But there were very few pilgrims at this time of the year and I had met practically no one on my walk. Nor were there many inhabitants abroad on this dank late afternoon as I approached the abbey gates and rang for the porter.

Brother Hilarion, my old Novice Master, was taking exercise in the cloisters, getting a little fresh air between Vespers and the evening service of Compline. As I watched him coming towards me, my first thought was that he had aged considerably since I had last seen him seven years ago, when the disappearance of two brothers from the town had kept me here against my will and strained my deductive powers to the uttermost. My second thought was that he was probably thinking the same about me. A second marriage and the responsibility of three children had without doubt added years to my boyish good looks. I certainly felt as though they had. I felt old and careworn. It would have been no surprise if Brother Hilarion had failed to recognize me.

‘My child! My child!' He beamed upon me, stretching up to kiss my cheek. ‘You look exactly the same. You haven't changed one iota.' He patted my shoulder and regarded my pack and cudgel. ‘Now what brings you here at this unseasonable time of year when you should be tucked up safe within four walls? Don't tell me that peddling is such a hard task-master that you have to be out in all weathers. No, no! You look too prosperous, too well fed. Besides,' he took my arm, leaning heavily on it, and began to walk back with me along the cloister, ‘we hear things, you know, even in here.'

‘What sort of things?' I asked resignedly.

‘Oh, this and that.' He smiled up at me proudly. ‘I always deplored your decision to follow the calling of a pedlar. You were one of my brighter scholars. You learned to read and write faster than anyone else I'd ever taught and could add up numbers in your head. I knew you to be capable of greater things than just hawking a pedlar's pack around the countryside.'

‘But that's what I do.'

My old preceptor chuckled. ‘Yes, yes! Have it your own way. I understand. Your lips are sealed. Your loyalty is to the duke. I mean, the king.' A frown appeared, creasing his brow. ‘That was a strange business. And His Grace the Bishop of Bath and Wells mixed up in it, too. One doesn't know what to think. And now these rumours about the two young boys.' Once again, he glanced up at me, this time curiously. ‘I suppose . . . But, no! I mustn't ask. You're sworn to secrecy, no doubt. So tell me, what brings you here?'

I sighed. I felt extremely uneasy. My reputation of having the king's confidence, of being some kind of secret agent for him, was growing and expanding well beyond the walls of Bristol. I could deny it as I had done in the past, but common sense told me that the more I refuted the suggestion, the more people believed the opposite. Denial on my part only strengthened their conviction that I was lying.