New Blood From Old Bones (11 page)

Almost caught off-balance, with his full weight on his weaker leg, Will clung with one hand to a flintstone while his other foot scrabbled in vain to find a toe-hold. Glancing down, he saw that there was a long steep way to fall. Glancing up, he saw that he was near the top of the mound where the massive figure of Gilbert waited, a stone gripped in either hand.

Were he still a boy Will would have acted without thought, swinging up lightly to the top of the mound and using his greater speed to dodge past Gib. But that was no longer feasible. For a man of impaired agility, who had come to pacify his brother rather than to challenge him, prudence was the only course.

Shielding himself as best he could from the debris that still came down, Will spat out a mouthful of chalk dust and sued for peace.

‘
Pax
, Gib!' he shouted, hoping that his brother would remember that much at least of their schoolday Latin. ‘Have done, I say …'

The kicking stopped. He looked up again. Gilbert had moved forward to the edge of the mound and stood towering above him, his great hands still gripping the missiles, his hair and beard wild. ‘
Pax
?' he said venomously. ‘I'll pledge no peace to a brother who spies on me!'

Will cursed himself for a fool. Had he a groat's worth of the prudence he had just prided himself on, he would not have made this climb. His perch was precarious, his leg ached abominably, and their brother was as violent as Meg had warned. He could neither retreat nor stay where he was. The only way to advance was by talking, and that as reassuringly as he knew how.

‘I am not here to
spy
on you, Gib. Nor yet to do battle with you, for I have no cause. I've come merely to see the old keep, and to recall the merry times we had here.'

‘Pah!' growled Gilbert. There was dark suspicion in his voice, but he turned away and flung his missiles elsewhere.

Will seized the opportunity to hoist himself up to solid ground. The old defensive walls that had risen straight from the top of the mound had been quarried away completely at this point, making a gaping entrance to what remained of the keep. Gilbert had disappeared, growling, among the ruins, and Will limped about for a few moments until the cramp in his leg had eased. His head was sore, and his left eye was nearly blinded by the blood that was trickling into it. Silently cursing Gib, he wiped away the blood with his sleeve and remembered, with a fleeting satisfaction, that the shirt was not his own but one of his brother's.

Gilbert had removed himself to the far side of the upper ward, and was now hurling stones at the jackdaws that made their habitation in the ruins. Will thought it politic to reassure him that it was indeed the old keep he had come to see, and so he made a point of wandering through what little was left of the hall and passageways. Many of the walls were no more than shoulder-high, and since his last visit, years ago, plants had sprouted thickly from crevices between the mossy stones. Pushing past them he sought and found another gap in the wall, opening on to a pathway that led down to the foot of the mound. He was glad to know of it, for he had no intention of returning by way of the precipitous chalk face – nor yet of climbing it again, with or without Gib's menacing presence.

His brother was still trying to stone the jackdaws. They circled high, just out of his reach, calling their noisy
kyow kyow
, and Gilbert shouted curses at them as he missed.

Before approaching him, Will went to the western side of the keep and looked out over the huddled, smoke-wreathed roofs and gables of the town. Firelight and the sounds of voice and horn and drum rose from the market place, which heaved with evening merry-makers, and the air was larded with the smell from a hundred feast-day cooking pots.

In the valley beyond the town stood the great grey bulk of the priory, secure in its precinct within its own high walls. It was only from up here, on the old upper ward of the castle, that the massiveness of the priory church and the extent and grandeur of the buildings that surrounded it could be seen as a whole.

From here, the contrast between priory and castle, the one so powerful in size and wealth, the other reduced to the farmstead that lay below this ruined keep, was only too clear. If Gilbert often came up here, as Meg had said, and brooded over the change in the Ackland family fortunes, small wonder he felt bitter.

But how far, Will wondered, had that bitterness led his brother? Certainly to a sullen, vicious temper. Worse, to madness? Worst of all, to the Devil's work of murder?

Shading his eyes against the crimson set of the sun, Will looked further west to where the road to Lynn went past the prior's tithe barn. He could glimpse the great roof of the distant barn, but the bailiff's house was hidden by trees. Was Walter Bostock indeed at Bromholm, as his wife Sibbel had supposed? Or was he the murdered man whose mortal remains, now corrupting within his shroud, awaited burial in the parish churchyard?

Will turned his gaze south to the rim of the shallow valley. He could see the line of the Peddars'Way, Roman-straight between tall hedgerows, rising over the downland sheep pasture of Bartholomew's Hills. The hills were too far distant for him to see the gibbet that stood at the crossroads, but he knew well enough that it was there. And so did Gilbert, for all that he rarely travelled to Swaffham and never beyond it.

The gibbet, and its purpose, was engraved deep in Will's memory. As soon as he was old enough to ride so far, their father had taken him and Gib to see a hanging.

Most of the townsfolk had had the same intention, and the press of onlookers was so great that by the time they arrived the miscreant was already hanging by his own weight. His arms were bound, but his legs still kicked feebly as his body revolved in the air, his tongue bursting from his mouth and his eyes bulging in his purple face. That, their father had told them sternly, was what happened to wrong-doers; and when the last breath left their bodies, their souls went straight to an even more dreadful punishment – the eternal torments of hell that awaited every unshriven sinner.

It was a fearful lesson, and one that Will himself had never forgotten. Young as they were then, he and Gib were well aware of hell. Not only did the priest speak of it constantly but they saw it for themselves, every saint's day and Sunday, in a painting above the chancel arch on the wall of the parish church. What was depicted there was the day of Doom, when good men would be separated from the wicked, and the mouth of hell with its fearsome teeth and furnace-red throat would gape open to receive unshriven sinners.

But had Gib, in a few moments of murderous madness, quite forgotten those lessons? Was it his own fate he came up here to brood on? For if he had indeed killed the bailiff, it was not only the possibility of discovery and being hanged that he would fear, but the certainty of being pitchforked by waiting devils into the everlasting flames.

Feeling a rare compassion for his brother, Will went in search of him. He found him still in the same place, throwing flints with aimless savagery at a tall fang of masonry, for the birds had made themselves scarce.

‘How now, Gib?' he asked pleasantly. ‘Is it to be jackdaw pie for supper tonight?'

Gilbert scowled at him, determined to take offence at whatever his brother said. ‘I'd marvel to see
you
hit more of them than I did.'

Will laughed. ‘And I'd marvel with you, for your aim with a stone was always better than mine. What of archery, though? I'm sadly out of practice. Shall we go together to the butts tomorrow, as we used to do?'

Gib flung another flint, this time taking aim and sending it whistling accurately through an arrow-slit in the wall. ‘Archery is a pastime for idle gentlemen who have nothing to do but travel and read books,' he said sourly. ‘As for me, I am head of this family and its sole support, and I must work. Do not mock me with your pastimes, for I have leisure for none!'

Will shook his head. ‘I come not to mock, but in friendship,' he insisted. ‘And also to bring a message from Master Justice Throssell. He wants to know if any man of middle years is missing from the town, and asks me to ask you if all your servants are accounted for.'

Gilbert gave him a piercing look from under his shaggy brows. ‘Why so?'

‘A man was found dead in the river yesterday. Didn't you hear the news? It seems he was murdered.'

His brother bent to pick up some loose flintstones. ‘Aye, so I heard,' he said indifferently. ‘A stranger – a vagabond, by all accounts.'

‘That may be so,' said Will. ‘He's nameless, true, for his face was beaten beyond recognition. But the justice will not have him buried unknown, without ensuring that he's not from Castleacre. He has sent the constable to enquire throughout the parish for missing men.'

Gib made no comment. He had resumed his throwing and was preoccupied by it, taking aim at the arrow-slit with another flint. He missed, and cursed with greater vexation than such a failure warranted.

‘Are all your serving men accounted for?' persisted Will. ‘Those in your household, and on the fields?'

‘How should I know?' snapped Gilbert, aggrieved. ‘The men take every saint's day as a holiday, and will do no work.'

‘They do so everywhere. But today's the holiday. Was any man absent yesterday, when the body was found?'

Gib shrugged for answer, and threw at a passing crow.

It was time, thought Will, to come to the point. ‘The justice has had reports of missing men,' he said, ‘but most have proved false. One man who's certainly absent from his home, though, is the prior's bailiff.'

About to throw again – massive weight on his back foot, right hand holding the missile poised behind his head, left arm forward for balance – Gilbert paused.

‘How do you know that?' he growled, without changing his stance.

‘I made some enquiries to aid Justice Throssell. I went along Priorygate, and so to the bailiff's house, but did not find him.'

Gilbert straightened, taking his time. ‘You wouldn't expect to find the bailiff at this season, were you a tenant of the priory and tormented by him as I am!' he glowered. ‘He's over at Bromholm for the reckoning.'

‘So I heard,' said Will. ‘His wife told me that he's accounted for.'

He spoke lightly, and his brother's response took him by surprise. Gilbert's face – so much of it as was visible between hair and beard – darkened. He became bull-like, hunching his great shoulders and lowering his head in anger.

‘
You went to the bailiff's house and spoke with his wife?
God's death, is there no end to your prying! I know full well where Walter Bostock is – he's about his proper business. And you can go about yours, brother, for you've outstayed your welcome here. Take your servant and your horses, and go!'

Will stood his ground. Blood from his cut head was trickling into his eye again, but he would not acknowledge the hurt by wiping his face.

‘As you wish, Gib,' he said, humouring him. ‘I came only for a week, but I won't stay where I'm not welcome. I'll leave tomorrow, and my child shall leave too. But first, I must ask Meg what's to be done with Betsy. No doubt our sister will have an opinion on this matter.'

Gib shifted at once. ‘Aye, well …' he conceded gruffly. ‘A week, did you say? Well, stay so long if you must – but I allow it only for Meg's sake. Listen to me, brother –'

He drew a great breath. His anger refuelled, his eyes glittering, he stabbed a thick finger in Will's face. ‘Spy on me no more! And pry no more into Castleacre affairs, for you're as unwelcome in the town as you are in this castle.'

‘That's not what I was told when I walked the streets this morning.'

‘It's what I tell you now.' Gib gave Will's cheek a sudden. stinging, upwards slap, then brought away his hand and showed his brother the blood on it.

‘You bleed already, Master William!' he jeered. He thrust his face closer, and Will felt the tainted heat of his breath. ‘Spy or pry again, and by the Mass you will bleed more!'

Will clenched his jaw and his fists, but forced himself to turn silently away. He would not show his own anger, for his brother's eyes were those of a man who had caught a glimpse of hell.

Late that night, unable to sleep, Will rose from his bed, dressed, and slipped quietly out of the house. A full moon rode high over the castle walls. He walked by its light through the orchard, kicking at fallen apples and releasing their heady, fermenting smell. As he walked, thinking uneasily about Gilbert, he willed Ned Pye to make all possible speed to Bromholm and back with news of the prior's bailiff.

He had concealed his cut head from the rest of the family that evening by attending to it himself and changing his blood-smeared shirt. Meg had thrown him several anxious, questioning looks, but poor Alice had been with her in the parlour both before and after supper, and he had had no opportunity to speak to her.

As for supper itself, Gilbert had made it a thoroughly disagreeable occasion. The meal was a cold one, for most of the servants were either merry-making in the town or sleeping off a day's drinking. Gib, who hated to eat his meat cold, had attacked it savagely, railing throughout the meal at the solitary, clumsy old serving woman. Will had done his best to entertain Meg and Alice by telling them of outlandish foreign customs and manners, but his heartiness had been as forced as their amusement. It was a relief, now, to be out of the house and alone in the dewdrenched night.

All was quiet, apart from the distant bark of a dog fox and the hooting of an owl. After the long day of celebration, the whole populace of Castleacre – townsfolk, pilgrims and wayfarers alike – had fallen into an exhausted sleep. Ordinarily, Will would not have been able to leave the house at night without tripping over and waking some of the servants, for they slept on straw pallets that they put down wherever they chose. But tonight, though some of the men were sprawled, snoring, across the screens passage, they were so far gone in drink that Will could step over and even on them without making them stir.