The Brothers of Glastonbury (10 page)

Within five minutes we were once again entering the shop in High Street to be met by Dame Joan, who, I was relieved to notice, although plainly worried, was far less agitated than her niece. A glimpse into the workroom from the passage was also reassuring, showing me Rob Under-shaft and John Longbones, the latter now returned from the vats, proceeding unconcernedly with their craft. I mounted with the two women to the solar above, feeling Cicely was making much out of little.

‘Very well,’ I said as we sat down, ‘tell me what has happened. When did you last see Mark, and where was he going?’

Aunt and niece immediately broke forth in concert, so that nothing made sense and I was forced to beg for quiet. ‘Stop!’ I protested. ‘Stop!’ I turned to the older woman, who seemed the calmer of the pair. ‘Dame Joan, let me hear you first, if you please.’

She looked a trifle bemused. ‘There’s not a lot to tell, I suppose,’ she eventually admitted. ‘After dinner, after you’d gone, Mark said that he was going to go to Beckery Island, to see the priest there.’ She gestured towards Cicely. ‘We both asked him why, but all my son would say was that he wanted a word with Father Boniface. I asked was it to do with Peter’s … well, his disappearance, but Mark didn’t answer. He just instructed me to keep an eye on the apprentices while he was gone, and said he would be back some time after noon.’

‘And it’s now past three o’clock,’ Cicely interrupted, ‘and there’s still no sign of him!’

‘My dear child,’ I objected, ‘half a dozen things might have delayed your cousin, but the most likely, surely, is that he has met a friend and gone with him to an ale-house for a cup of wine or beer. Or he has got into conversation with one of the pilgrims – if memory serves me aright, there are always pilgrims lodging at the priest’s house in Beckery at this time of year. Or perhaps some business has demanded his attention. You are letting your imagination run away with you. Mark will be home soon, safe and sound. You’ll see.’

I had succeeded in reassuring Dame Joan, who smiled and nodded before hurrying downstairs again to the kitchen to oversee Lydia’s preparations for supper. Cicely, however, was clearly still worried.

‘Why did my cousin suddenly take it into his head to visit Beckery?’ she demanded, chewing her bottom lip.

‘To deliver some merchandise?’ I suggested. ‘The priest there must have need of parchment in the course of his work.’

She brightened slightly, but asked, ‘Then why didn’t he say so? What need could there be for secrecy?’

I sighed. ‘People don’t always act in a predictable fashion. How dull life would be if they did! Maybe Mark was irritated by his mother’s questioning. He’s a grown man; he doesn’t have to account to her for his every movement.’

Cicely thought this over before agreeing, albeit grudgingly, that I could be right.

‘All the same,’ she coaxed, ‘I’d like to go to Beckery Island and make sure he really went there. It would put my mind at ease. It won’t take long. We’ll be back before supper.’

‘We?’ I groaned resignedly.

She got resolutely to her feet. ‘Come along,’ she insisted, ‘and you can tell me what happened at the Pennards’ as we go. I haven’t asked you about your visit there yet.’

‘I’ve already told you that there’s nothing much to say. I’ve no solution to offer. I’m as mystified as the rest of you in regard to your cousin’s whereabouts.’ I heaved a second, more heartfelt sigh. ‘Oh, very well! I’ll come with you. But I’ve no doubt that we shall either meet Mark returning, or, in any event, that he’ll be home before us.’

*   *   *

I was proved wrong on the first count. We did not encounter Mark on our way to Beckery Island.

It is not really an island, of course. It may have been once, centuries ago, when all the low-lying land in these parts was under water and only the hills stood clear. The great Tor itself, rising above the abbey, and which can now be reached dryshod, is still known as the Isle of Avalon – Ynys Afalon in the old Celtic tongue, the ‘Island of Apples’. Beckery, which lies about a mile south-west of the town, was originally called Becc-Eriu, meaning ‘Little Ireland’. Saint Bridget is said to have visited it over a thousand years before to work and pray, while Saint Dunstan was instructed there by Irish teachers.

The other story connected with Beckery is that King Arthur, while resting at Glastonbury, was told by an angel in a dream to go to the hermitage on the island, and when he did so, he was favoured with a remarkable vision of the Virgin and Child.

In that late summer of 1476, however – already nearly half a century in the past as I recount this story; how the years spin by us as old age takes its toll! – Beckery was what it had been for many years: a halt for pilgrims approaching Glastonbury from the west, either by land or along the waterway of the river Brue. A small, compact chapel, a simple oblong in shape, catered for their spiritual needs, while the priest’s house itself, together with another long, low, single-storey building, provided them with accommodation for rest and refreshment. Ditches and a substantial fence protected the whole compound and separated the chapel from the secular buildings. A lavatorium had been added to the north-east corner of the house, a more than welcome sight, no doubt, to dusty and footsore travellers.

Upon enquiry, Cicely and I were told by one of the pilgrims that the priest was within the chapel, getting all ready for Vespers, which was only a half-hour distant. Our journey had taken us longer than we’d expected, the heat having slowed our progress and made several rests necessary for comfort and well-being. We were directed to the building’s only entrance, a door which opened into the nave, where the tiled floor added to the general coolness induced by thick stone walls and a roof of Cornish slates.

The priest, a slender young man wearing the black Benedictine habit, was in the chancel, lighting the altar candles and making certain that all was swept and garnished for the evening service. Cicely and I paused for a moment, silently regarding him while we recovered our breath, before advancing. Our shoes made very little noise, but something – a sudden draught of air, perhaps, or the faint creaking of a door hinge – alerted him immediately to our presence. He turned and came towards us with a friendly smile, wiping his hands on the skirt of a linen apron.

‘Have you come far, my children? Do you require accommodation? We have a space or two. All our overnight visitors have moved on to the abbey, and we have had less than a dozen replacements.’

Cicely forestalled me. ‘No, no, Father! We’re not pilgrims. We’ve come to ask after my cousin, Mark Gildersleeve, who set out to pay you a visit this morning and has not yet returned home. Did he arrive here? And if so, did he stay long?’

The priest frowned for a moment, then his brow cleared and his narrow features lifted into a smile.

‘Yes, yes! Mark was with me today, round about noon. He came to bring me a present of a new sheet of vellum.’

‘A present?’ I repeated. ‘It was not something you had ordered from him then?’

‘Oh no! It is extremely fine vellum. A very generous gift indeed by Master Gildersleeve, but far too good for my mundane needs. I shall, however, pass it on to the abbey scriptorium, where it will doubtless be used to the best advantage.’

Puzzled, I said, ‘But Master Gildersleeve must have known that the vellum was too valuable for your household accounts and suchlike. Why did he bring it?’

Father Boniface’s smile grew rueful. ‘I think it was in the nature of a small
douceur.
He hoped I could give him some information.’

‘What information?’ Cicely and I demanded in the same breath.

The priest looked somewhat taken aback by our eagerness. ‘He asked me about a paper which I had given to his brother some two or three months ago, knowing of Peter’s interest in all things antiquarian. Mark wanted me to explain its contents to him. Alas, I was unable to do so.’

‘Why was that? Had you not read it?’

‘Yes. Well, I’d seen it.’ The priest shivered suddenly. ‘It’s cold in here,’ he said, laying a hand on my arm. ‘Let’s go outside and sit for a while in the sun.’

Cicely and I, who were both still feeling the effect of our long, hot walk, reluctantly followed him out of doors and sat beside him on the top of the knoll. Daisies and buttercups starred the grass, and here and there I could see the bright sapphire-blue of a speedwell. Beyond the inner fence hens pecked in the dust for grit and the scattered remains of their morning’s feed, while a fat black cat lay curled contentedly in the doorway of the house, sleepily oblivious to the pilgrims forced to step over it as they left or re-entered the building. A cow lowed plaintively from a neighbouring field.

After a long-drawn silence I prompted, ‘Why then, Father, were you unable to explain this paper?’

The priest turned his mild blue eyes upon me with a look of vague astonishment, as though he had, for a moment, forgotten my presence. ‘Ah, yes. The paper. I couldn’t explain its contents, my son, for the simple reason that I couldn’t understand them.’

‘They were written in a foreign language?’

‘You might say that. The message, if it was one, consisted of a number of horizontal and vertical lines. The latter, some upright, some sloping, were arranged in groups, varying in number between one and five, either above, below or aslant the former. And that, as I also told Master Gildersleeve this morning, is the reason I gave it to his brother. I hoped Master Peter might discover how to decipher it.’

‘How did you come by this paper, Father?’

‘It was given into my hands for safekeeping over a year ago by an Irishman, who had travelled to Beckery in the steps of Saint Bridget. From Glastonbury he was going to the shrine of Saint Thomas at Canterbury, and he asked me to look after it until his return, in case it was either lost or stolen from him on the journey.’

Cicely shifted restlessly beside me. All she wanted now was to go home to discover if Mark had reached there before us. Her arms were clasped about her raised knees, her hair, unconfined by net or ribbon, tumbling about her shoulders in an untidy profusion of pale golden-brown curls. Those huge violet eyes were veiled by blue-veined lids, and her sullen expression only served to emphasize the thin lips and heavy lower jaw, making her look almost plain. A ladybird was crawling slowly down her arm, like a drop of blood oozing from a wound.

I ignored her obvious impatience and turned once more to the priest. ‘But did this Irishman tell you nothing about the paper? Didn’t he explain the meaning of these symbols you describe?’

‘The paper was folded and sealed with wax. Naturally, at that time, I did not suggest opening it.’ Father Boniface sounded offended. ‘What it contained was not then my business. I merely put it away to give him again when he came back.’

‘But he has not come back?’

‘No.’ The priest removed his apron as he began at last to feel the heat. He raised the skirts of his habit above his ankles, stretching out his scrawny white shins and sandalled feet to the caressing rays of the sun. ‘He did however tell me his name, Gerald Clonmel, and that he came from the parts about Waterford which, he said, is in the very south of Ireland. But I have no means of knowing whether this is true or not, having no knowledge of the world beyond this island.’

I nodded. ‘Indeed it is. The people of that region have long trafficked with the merchants of southern Wales and with Bristol.’

‘Ah!’ The priest smiled in satisfaction. ‘Then that would add weight to his story. It is the tradition in his family, he told me, that this paper was taken to Ireland by one of his remote forebears who came from hereabouts.’

‘And did
he
understand its message?’

Father Boniface spoke slowly, as one dealing with a simpleton or a child. ‘I have already explained that when it was given into my keeping I had no notion what the paper contained. When Gerald returned from Canterbury he could share the secret of its contents with me or not, just as he pleased. But as you have surmised he did not return, and a little over three months ago I learned that he had died shortly after he had fulfilled his lifelong vow to worship at the Holy Martyr’s tomb. A fellow pilgrim who had been with him at the end, and who was on his way home to Wales, told me that Gerald had been buried in Canterbury.’

‘So you opened the paper?’ I was not condemning Father Boniface, which he seemed to understand; I should have done the same in his place, as, I think, would anyone.

‘I did, and have told you what I found. Of course I could make no sense of its message, and so, a little while afterwards, when Peter Gildersleeve brought me a fresh supply of parchments, I gave it to him to see if he could puzzle out its meaning.’

‘And you have no idea whether he did so or not?’

‘When I last saw him, four or five weeks since, he said he thought he might have some news for me very soon.’ The priest’s face grew deeply troubled. ‘And now I understand that the poor young man has disappeared in mysterious circumstances.’ He shivered again, more violently than before, and his hand, when he laid it on mine, was icy cold in spite of the heat. ‘I fear I might unwittingly have enmeshed him in some terrible evil. I did not know until this morning, when Mark Gildersleeve came to visit me, what had happened. We are isolated here. News takes a day or two to reach us.’

I scratched my chin, where tomorrow’s growth of beard was already making its presence felt. When, I wondered, had Mark discovered this paper? He had not known of it last night, or he would not have asked me to carry out my search this morning. So, sometime between then and now he must have chanced upon it.

‘Do you suppose,’ I enquired of Father Boniface, ‘that Mark also associated this strange message, whatever it may be, with his brother’s disappearance?’

‘It is possible, my son.’

‘Did he have the paper with him?’

‘I asked him that. I thought that perhaps we might have studied it together in the vain hope of finding some clue to its meaning, but Mark said no, he had left it at home.’

‘Did he know its history?’

‘No, for his brother had never spoken to him about it. I gathered from his discourse that he does not share Master Peter’s interest in antiquities.’