Hill of Bones (36 page)

That explained the scrawled pages of poetry, the tapestries depicting knights jousting and hunting in Uncle Christopher’s bedchamber.

William said, ‘There is a tale that Arthur himself fought a final battle close to Bath, a battle in which he slew many of the Saxon foe single-handed.’

‘It was on a hill outside the town,’ said Katherine. ‘Solsbury Hill, it is called now, but then it was known as Badon.’

‘There are other stories about the place,’ pursued William. ‘I suppose there are bound to be stories in a very old region like this. They say that treasures are buried on Solsbury Hill. There is talk of a magical mirror, for instance. Even of items that date from Arthur’s time. My father went searching on the hill, although I do not know whether it was for inspiration or for relics.’

‘And found them?’ I said.

William shrugged.

Katherine said, ‘He carried this book with him wherever he went. He made notes, he took down sayings that he approved of. He had ideas about how the manufacture of cloth might be improved and tried to design better looms.’

She flicked through the book and held it open at one of the mechanical sketches. I nodded, then noticed something different on the opposite page. It wasn’t a weaver’s loom but a drawing of a hillside, dotted with trees. There was an arrow indicating north. There were a couple of crosses and other arrows and question marks. There was even an image of a bear a couple of inches tall, delicately drawn. I indicated the page.

Katherine examined it and said: ‘This is most likely Solsbury Hill. The bear was the emblem of King Arthur. My uncle believed he had found the place where Arthur slew more than nine hundred of the enemy.’

‘Nine hundred!’

‘It was an age of heroes,’ said William Hawkins with a straight face.

‘He did sometimes talk of treasure on Solsbury Hill and of spirits who still linger about the place but I think this is what he meant,’ continued Katherine, thumbing through more pages until she came to some of old Christopher’s verses. She recited:

‘He used to read his verses to me when I was young,’ said Cousin William. ‘I am afraid that I did not always show a proper reverence for his words, and he struck me more than once when I yawned.’

We were interrupted by the potboy returning with our drinks. I took a draught of mine.

‘The gold and silver aren’t real,’ I said after a moment, feeling on familiar ground since we talked of gold and silver all the time on stage and it was nothing more than words. ‘This is the language of poetry. Your uncle merely means the fallen bodies of Arthur’s knights, and so on. Just as the bear stands for Arthur, the knights’ bodies represent the treasure that is buried there.’

‘I know that,’ said Katherine. ‘But I do not think that Mr Maltravers or Mr Downey or Dr Price know it. They believe my uncle left some . . . some guide . . . to finding hidden treasures on Solsbury Hill or elsewhere. Mr Maltravers asked me before he left the house today whether there were any other papers, anything hidden away.’

‘What did you say?’

‘I said the only papers my uncle valued were his poetry. Said they were welcome to look at Uncle Christopher’s work if they wished. He would be pleased to have readers. What is in this book is only scribbled bits and pieces. Uncle paid to have his Arthur poem copied out properly in the new italic style.’

‘And what did they say to that?’

‘They aren’t interested in his poetry, Nicholas. Mr Maltravers laughed when I mentioned it. He did enquire about his black book, though, and I remembered you said that someone had asked you for it at the baths.’

‘“Asked” is one way of putting it.’

Now William Hawkins spoke up: ‘Then I stepped in to protect my dear cousin from these intrusive questions so soon after my father’s death. I said that they could direct their questions to me.’

‘They must have been surprised to see you again after so many years.’

‘They were, but their real concern was whether I’d get in the way of their search through my father’s effects.’

‘Are you sure there is nothing in that book?’ I said. ‘Other people certainly seem to think so.’

‘See for yourself,’ said Katherine, passing the volume back across the table. The very casualness of the gesture told me she thought the book held no secrets and I did not even bother to pick it up again. I was glad to see the back of it, to be honest. Let others attend to the tangled affairs of the Hawkins family.

From outside the Raven tavern I heard the bellman pass, ringing his bell, telling us all that it was ten o’clock. Time for honest citizens and players to be in bed. I drained the last of my drink.

‘I wish you well,’ I said. ‘I am returning to Mother Treadwell’s.’

We said goodbye rather formally. Perhaps Katherine would have embraced me had it not been for the presence of William as well as of a dozen other individuals in the tavern. Before leaving the Raven I stopped to relieve myself – being a modern place it had its own house of office in the back yard – and then I went out into the street via an alley. The moon was up and near the full, as last night, but it was veiled by thin clouds and cast only a faint light.

Perhaps a couple of minutes had elapsed since I’d parted from the Hawkinses. I could just about make out two individuals walking close together ahead of me. The cousins, presumably. Were they arm in arm? Hard to tell in the gloom. Anyway, what business was it of mine?

Even as I looked the two figures increased to three. For a moment I thought they had been joined by a friend, but no friend would be moving so fast or raising his arms in such a threatening way. The sounds that came from up the street, grunts and cries, then a woman’s scream, sent me running towards them. But the cobbles were slippery with muck and I slid in something and fell with a thump. By the time I’d got to my feet again, the noise had stopped and I could see no one at all up the street.

Although moving less rapidly now, I almost stumbled over the figure of William Hawkins. He was crouching above Katherine, who lay stretched on the ground. Hawkins stood up, panting hard, expecting a fresh attack and ready to lash out.

I said, ‘It’s all right, it’s me, Nick Revill. What happened?’

‘I don’t know. Some man . . . Kate . . . oh, Kate . . .’

He sank to his knees next to her. For an instant, I feared the worst, but she groaned and tried to sit up. William sighed in relief and supported her as she rose shakily to her feet. I stepped back. In the distance I saw a dancing speck of light, a firefly, then two of them. I thought the attacker was returning with reinforcements before realising that they would hardly be carrying lanterns. The fireflies converged, then drew nearer. There were footsteps on the cobbles, the bark of a dog, the ting of a bell.

Too late, of course. This was typical of the bellman and the watch in any town. Where were they when you really needed them?

William Hawkins and I were sitting in the dining room of the Vicarage Lane house. It was nearing midnight. The cousins had returned home after giving what little information they had to the watch – an unidentified man springing out of the dark from the porch where he’d been lying in wait, followed by a quick theft. The theft of the black book, which Katherine had been still holding as she walked along. Naturally, I recalled the rogue who’d accosted me in the King’s Bath. The same man? It seemed likely.

Since the real malefactor had escaped, the bellman and his watch did their duty and detained me instead, imagining that I had a hand in the attack. This, despite the assurances of the Hawkinses as they limped off to dress their wounds that the opposite was true: I had actually come to their rescue.

It took me a quarter of an hour before my protestations of innocence were accepted. In the end, I was allowed to go only after stressing my elevated position in the company of the
King
’s Men and insinuating that
King
James himself would be displeased if he heard that one of his principal players had been thrown into the local lock-up. Quite casually I said that I had an appointment in Whitehall to see him –
King
James, that is – when I returned to London, and that I would assure His Majesty of the loyal and intelligent servants he possessed among the Bath watch. If they detained me for a moment longer, however, I would have a very different tale to tell.

They believed me. I might have said they were men of limited understanding but I nearly believed myself by the time I was done speaking. In fact, we parted on such good terms that I urged them to attend our performance on the next evening. They could easily do this before they went on duty at ten o’clock.

I could have returned to Mother Treadwell’s but my blood was up after all this activity and I decided to call on the Hawkins household and see how things stood there. I would almost have welcomed an attacker in the few hundred yards it took to reach the house, so ready was I for a fight, but I arrived unassailed.

William Hawkins welcomed me in and now we sat in the dining room. The house was hushed. It was late. The body of his father was laid out upstairs. The funeral would take place in a couple of days. We were recovering with a dose of his father’s aqua vitae. I did not find the fiery liquid soothing.

Cousin Kate was in bed recovering from her ordeal in the street. She was not badly hurt but she was bruised and shaken. William was angry, not so much for himself but on her behalf. He was angry too with Hannah, the old servant, who had been – unwittingly, perhaps – the indirect cause of what had happened. I had described to William my morning encounter with the rogue in the King’s Bath, and how he tried to take the black notebook from me. I said the only person who could have deduced it was in my possession was Hannah. She must have spoken to one of the men in the house that morning. Hawkins strode from the room and went upstairs to where the old retainer was attending on Katherine. He was back within minutes, looking a whit less angry, and confirming what I’d thought. Hannah had referred to my presence in the house the previous night as well as to my position in the King’s Men. She said I’d been taken to see the dying man. She couldn’t remember whether she’d said all this to John Maltravers or to the lawyer Downey. Or was it Dr Price? She was very distressed at the state of her mistress. She hoped she had not done any wrong.

Anyway, one or more of the trio must have deduced I had the book and set the rogue on my trail – this was the conclusion William and I came to. The same rogue must have been watching us in the smoky, dim interior of the Raven tavern or else he had an accomplice there; had seen the book being passed back to Kate Hawkins; had lurked to waylay her and William on the way home.

‘He shall not get away with this,’ said William. ‘Whoever’s responsible will not get away with it either.’

‘Who is behind it?’

‘I do not know. One of the three men here this morning, surely. The doctor, the lawyer or the merchant. They are all respectable citizens but one of them is evidently prepared to resort to force . . . to attack my cousin . . .’

‘So there is something valuable in your father’s personal book after all?’

‘My father was an odd mixture of businessman and dreamer, Nick. What he wrote down in his little volume showed both sides. His plans for better machinery were the practical part, while the dreams were the verses about King Arthur.’

‘And drawings of Solsbury Hill with signs and markings . . .’

‘Yes, with markings that could cause someone to believe there was buried treasure there,’ conceded William.

‘But there is no treasure?’

‘I am not about to go off and dig up a hillside in pursuit of my father’s dreams.’

‘Others may be.’

‘Yes,’ said William.

‘If they’re going to search on this Solsbury Hill of yours they’re going to do it soon. To strike while the iron is hot.’

‘Yes, they are,’ said William.

‘I have an idea,’ I said.

IV

‘Are you sure this is such a good idea?’ said Laurence Savage.

‘Nick knows what he’s doing,’ said Abel Glaze, ‘even if the rest of us haven’t the faintest notion.’

I looked towards William Hawkins for support but he stayed silent. The scheme that the two of us contrived the previous night in the Vicarage Lane house, while fortified with generous doses of his father’s aqua vitae, did not seem so plausible in the cold light of day. The literal cold light, since we were sheltering behind some low bushes near the top of Solsbury Hill. Away from the fuggy air of the city, the breeze blew sharp and clear, and the morning sun was scarcely beginning to warm the slope we sat on. Bath is ringed with hills – they say there are seven of them, just as in Rome – and this Solsbury one is located to the north-east of the city. It is a hill much like any other, distinguished only by an unnatural flatness on top and the even slant of its sides. William Hawkins said that it might have been used in the old times as some kind of fort.

We had struck out from the town that morning, the four of us, Laurence having established that we weren’t required at the Bear Inn to prepare for our final night’s performance. I’d explained to my friends that we were set to catch some villains who had attacked my new friend, William, and his cousin, Kate. Laurence and Abel might have taken this as a tall story but they’d seen with their own eyes the young woman in the inn yard, together with a male companion. Furthermore they knew I’d been engaged on nocturnal adventures, since I returned to Mother Treadwell’s very late the previous night, or rather in the small hours of the morning. They thought I’d been up to you-know-what again and I didn’t bother to disabuse them of the notion.

I outlined the situation: the attack in the street, the reason for it; the fact that the villains had stolen a map – or plan, or guide – call it what you will – which they hoped would reveal the whereabouts of some hidden items; relics buried not far from the city of Bath. Hawkins said that he thought his father’s sketch, the one we’d looked at in the Raven tavern, showed the south-western flank of the hill, the one facing the city. Like his cousin, he was of the opinion that Christopher’s crosses and arrows most likely indicated the place where King Arthur had personally vanquished his Saxon enemies, all nine hundred of them. But to a more greedy eye the markings might appear to show the burial places of treasure. We were assuming that whoever was in quest of treasure would waste no time. After stealing Christopher’s book, they would want to make use of it straight away.