King Arthur's Bones

Prologue

Glastonbury, 1191

The first he knew of it was the noise, like the sound of leaves rustling across dry ground. The abbot looked up from the parchment he was studying. It was a list of estimates, the costs of rebuilding. Listening more carefully, he heard not the sound of leaves but of voices. He wasn’t sorry to be distracted from his task. He got up and opened the window of the parlour. It was an overcast afternoon in mid-autumn. The air was still.

Monks and lay brothers as well as ordinary workers were converging on an area of grass a few dozen yards from the abbot’s first-floor window. They were crowding around a tent-like structure of drapery curtains, crowding with such force that the whole construction quivered as if about to topple down. What surprised the abbot was not the fact that the workers or even the lay brothers should be running to reach the spot – obviously something had been discovered behind the dirty white curtains, and word had spread fast – but that his fellow Benedictines in their black garb were also moving at such an undignified rate. Whatever the something was, it must be significant. Almost despite himself, the abbot felt a tremor of excitement.

Henry de Sully fastened the window. He moved towards his chamber door at a deliberate pace. There was no one to see, but it would not do to betray any sign of agitation, even to himself. Before he could reach it, there was a clatter and the door banged open. In the entrance stood Brother Geoffrey, his chaplain and secretary.

The man was out of breath. He was not so old that a few stairs should have exhausted him. He clung to the door frame, with an expression on his face that was close to confusion. Henry de Sully smiled and made a calming gesture. He waited while Geoffrey regained control of himself, but the other was too impatient. His secretary-chaplain got as far as ‘They have found… have found…’ before being overcome by a bout of gulping and swallowing.

‘It’s all right, Geoffrey. Calm yourself. Whatever they have found I will discover for myself,’ said de Sully.

The chaplain shifted to let his superior through the doorway and followed him down the stone steps to the lobby. The abbot moved without hurry although it cost him an effort to do so. Over his shoulder he heard the monk stuttering, ‘It’s… it… it is…’

‘Yes?’ said de Sully, halting at the foot of the stairs. ‘It is… what?’

‘Extraordinary,’ Geoffrey managed to get out.

‘We’ll see.’

The abbot and his chaplain emerged into the open. The crowd around the tent was growing all the time, with monks and labourers still arriving from every quarter. They moved at a run or a brisk walk. There could not have been such a stir in the place, thought Henry de Sully, since the great fire of a few years ago, the fire which destroyed the old church and much of the abbey before his own arrival in Glastonbury. At the thought, he glanced towards the Lady Chapel, which stood, fresh and fine, near the site of the original church. He’d never seen the church but had been told frequently of that simple wattle-and-daub edifice, many centuries old and transformed to ash in minutes.

Abbot de Sully and Brother Geoffrey drew nearer to the tent-like construction. Located halfway between a pair of stone pillars, it consisted of discoloured white drapes slung over crosspieces supported on wooden uprights. It enclosed an area of a few square yards. The tent might have been primitive, but it was sufficient to give some protection from the weather and a measure of privacy to whatever was going on inside.

No one noticed the approach of the abbot or his chaplain. Instead, the monks and lay brothers jostled each other to get closer to where the drapes had been pulled back to allow the workers to come and go past piles of earth and rubble. The buzz of questions and exclamations was like the sound of bees.

Henry de Sully halted. Geoffrey clapped his hands several times and silence slowly fell as the crowd realized the abbot had arrived. They moved aside and left a passage to the entrance of the ‘tent’. At first sight it was hard to imagine what the exitement was about. Four men were kneeling or crouching by the entrance. On the ground between them lay a couple of stone fragments. Two of the men were labourers, identifiable by their caps and coarse clothing. Their faces were streaked with mud and sweat. The other two men were monks, Brother Frederick, who was the sacristan of the abbey, and Brother Owen, the cellarer.

Brother Frederick looked up at de Sully and clambered creakily to his feet. There was the same mixture of confusion and excitement on his face which the abbot had seen on his chaplain’s. The sacristan brushed away the dirt from the knees of his cassock and came towards Henry.

‘I knew this must be the place!’ he said.

‘You have made a discovery?’

‘About six or seven feet down, we found… well, they found… come and see.’

Forgetting himself, Brother Frederick tugged like a child at the abbot’s sleeve. Henry de Sully moved forward and looked down at the pieces of stones. Owen the cellarer stood up. Like Frederick, he raised himself with an effort, though more on account of his size than ageing joints. There was a strange, vacant look in his eyes. The two workmen remained on their knees but shifted so that Henry could have a better view.

What the Glastonbury abbot saw first was a slab of stone. It was like a large piece of paving, apart from an indented section in the shape of an irregular cross. On the edges of the indentation were some rusting bands of iron. The other item was not stone at all but made of lead. It was the cross itself, not large, perhaps a foot in length. Lettering was inscribed in a straggling fashion on the side facing him. He stooped down. The light was poor from the overcast afternoon and the shadow of the tent, but Henry de Sully was able to pick out some of the Latin words despite the mud and grit embedded in the capital letters. One word in particular he could read, a name inscribed in Latinate style. Henry felt his heart thumping hard.

His chaplain had been right. It was extraordinary. He looked around at the circle of monks who were standing at a respectful distance. He smiled at no one in particular. There was something disconcerting about the abbot’s smile, which was humourless and even threatening because of his rather pointed teeth. He was startled by a sudden grunt near him. It was Owen the cellarer. Lost in a world of his own, the man had said nothing so far.

‘Are you well, Brother Owen?’ said the abbot.

Owen seemed to shake himself before saying, ‘The cross was attached to the underside of the stone by those brackets, isn’t that right, Michael?’

One of the workmen raised his muddy face and pointed to the rusting iron bands.

‘The cross fell away, sir,’ he said, addressing the abbot. ‘When we lifted up the stone, the cross fell away.’

‘Is there anything else down there?’

‘Don’t know, sir. We stopped digging. We thought it best to report what we found.’

The other labourer nodded in vigorous agreement.

‘Very well. Do no more digging today. You have done enough. Get a couple of your fellows to stay here and keep watch. Carry both the stone and the cross to the Hall.’

‘They’re dirty, sir. Should we clean them up?’

‘That doesn’t matter. Bring them straight away.’

Henry de Sully turned away from the makeshift tent. He moved at his usual deliberate pace, his face composed. He indicated to the sacristan and the cellarer as well as to Geoffrey that they should accompany him. He needed time to consider the implications of this find.

But if he’d hoped to keep the principal part of the discovery secret, it was too late. For, as the Abbot of Glastonbury moved towards his quarters, the hush that had fallen while he examined the cross was broken by a fresh outbreak of questions and whispers among the monks and the lay workers.

One word stood out from the buzz. It was a name. Not in the Latin form that was etched into the cross but in its English version.

‘Whose is it? Who is it?’

‘Arthur,’ said the buzz. ‘King Arthur.’

An hour later Henry de Sully, Owen, Geoffrey and Frederick were peering down at the cross. It had been laid on a table in the abbot’s parlour, with a cloth to protect the surface of the table. But, of course, the cross was infinitely more valuable than a mere tabletop.

It was shaped like a great key, with a slope-sided head, stubby arms and a squared-off section at the end. The letters were quite crudely formed, almost crammed to fill all the available space. Frederick the sacristan had transcribed them – his veiny hand shaking with excitement – but each monk had the legend already fixed in his mind as if the cross-maker had inscribed it there himself: HIC IACET SEPULTUS INCLITUS REX ARTURIUS IN INSULA AVALONIA.

‘Here lies buried the renowned King Arthur in the Isle of Avalon.’

This was Owen the cellarer. There was reverence in his lilting voice as he repeated, for the sixth time at least, the English meaning of the words. For all their seniority and air of wisdom, the four men had been reduced to little more than head-shaking and mute examination of the cross for several minutes now. They traced out the letters with disbelieving fingers. They stood back to marvel at the item.

One peculiarity was that the face of the cross had been placed inwards against the stone.

‘Why should that be?’ mused the abbot.

‘Perhaps those who buried Arthur needed to keep his grave secret,’ said his chaplain-secretary Geoffrey. ‘His enemies would have despoiled his resting place if they found it, so the slab of stone was used to hide the face of the cross. That would also account for the small size of the cross. A great leader should have a fine grave, but Arthur was buried almost in secret.’

‘Remind me, Brother Frederick,’ said the abbot, ‘why you ordered the men to dig in that spot.’

He knew perfectly well but felt it important to recapitulate events, to get a sense of order into the story. The sacristan, who had charge of the abbey library, was the obvious person to ask. He was an elderly, spare man but, apart from some stiffness in his joints, he had the stamina and memory of a man twenty years his junior.

‘As you know, Father, it was the late King Henry himself who passed on to your predecessor a story concerning the burial at Glastonbury of Arthur and his queen, Guinevere.’

‘And yet Robert of Winchester did not attempt to find the burial place, despite having a king’s directions?’

‘They were not directions, Father, so much as… as a fable told to Henry years ago by a bard from Brittany.’

‘A bard from Wales,’ said Owen.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ said de Sully, smiling in his humourless way. ‘Go on, Frederick.’

‘According to Abbot Robert, King Henry could not recall much except that the body was reputed to be buried between two pyramids near the Old Church. The last abbot was not inclined to investigate any further. A “fable” was how Robert referred to it.’

‘But this is no fable,’ said Owen, brushing his hand over the surface of the cross.

‘We did not look for the tomb in earlier days because the hints from the late king were vague. It was not until you came to Glastonbury, Father, and told us to begin the search…’

‘The king has an interest here,’ said de Sully. ‘Our present king, I mean. He feels that the remains of his famous forebear should be more fittingly disposed of… if they can be found. I took my cue from him.’

The others were silent for a moment, no doubt contemplating the fact that de Sully came from a noble family, a very well-connected one. King Richard himself had recently elevated de Sully to Abbot of Glastonbury.

‘It was Brother Frederick who thought that the “pyramids” in the old story might be the obelisks, the remains of ancient memorial crosses on the grass outside,’ said Geoffrey. ‘It was he who directed that the digging should start exactly midway between them.’

‘That is so,’ said Frederick, unable to hide his pleasure.

‘If this is truly Arthur’s cross, then why is it buried so deep?’ said the abbot.

‘In St Dunstan’s time, we were running short of burial space,’ said Frederick. ‘Dunstan ordered that layers of fresh earth be heaped over the old cemetery. It is possible that the stone and the cross were themselves buried then.’

The sacristan talked as if he had witnessed Dunstan give his command a few years ago, yet the sainted abbot of Glastonbury had been dead for more than two centuries.

‘So Arthur or his remains, and perhaps those of his queen, should be further still below the same patch of ground?’

‘I do not believe so,’ said Brother Owen. ‘I do not think he will be found.’

The other three looked in surprise at the cellarer. Owen, an easy-going, gregarious individual – as cellarers tended to be – rarely expressed himself so directly. The abbot waited for him to explain. Owen seemed uneasy. He glanced out of the window at the gathering darkness.

‘There is a story that Arthur is not dead but merely sleeping…’ he said at last.

‘All of the dead are merely sleeping… until they rise on the day of judgement,’ said Henry de Sully.

‘… and that he will return in the hour of his country’s need,’ said Owen, ignoring the interruption. He added quickly: ‘I am only saying what I heard at my mother’s knee.’

The abbot and the others had often heard such tales of King Arthur, the past and future king. They dismissed them as credulous talk, popular on the western fringes of England and over the border in Wales, the parts of the country which had held out longest against the waves of invaders since the days when Arthur was supposed to have flourished. The surprise was that an educated man like Owen should even give voice to the belief. But then he was from Wales and would have swallowed the legend of Arthur’s return with his mother’s milk.

‘So, in your opinion we will not find the remains of the king or his queen, Brother Owen?’ said the sacristan.

‘Even if we did unearth some bones,’ said Owen, ‘how would we know that they are Arthur’s or Guinevere’s? As you reminded us, Brother Frederick, the place we are excavating is the site of an old cemetery. It must be littered with human bones. We should explore no further; it is a sacrilege to all who lie at rest out there. We must be content with this cross.’

Once again he grazed his fingers over the leaden object.

‘Our community in Glastonbury might be content with the cross,’ said the abbot after a pause. ‘It is a fine relic and will doubtless draw pilgrims and visitors to our abbey. But I have a living king to account to, a fact which may be more important than our scruples about a dead one. King Richard has personally urged me to dispose of King Arthur’s remains more fittingly if they can be found. And we are nearer to finding them now than we were this morning. Surely, Brother Owen, you would wish to see the mortal remains of this great monarch and warrior bestowed with all due ceremony, not lost for ever in a common graveyard?’

‘The fame of Glastonbury would sound across the land,’ said Geoffrey.

Henry de Sully said nothing. Geoffrey was right, but it was not for the abbot to make such an expedient remark.

For his part Owen said nothing either. It was obvious that he did not wish the bones to be uncovered but he would not contradict his superior outright or disagree with Geoffrey.

Further discussion was not possible since they were interrupted by the early-evening call to vespers. Wrapping the leaden cross in the blanket, Henry ushered the others from his parlour. He made a show of locking the door. They left the Hall and walked out into the darkness, now suddenly sharp and cold. As Henry passed the tent, he was reassured to see a couple of the abbey labourers keeping watch over the entrance, their faces illuminated by flaring torches. He must order an all-night vigil to be maintained at the place.

In the Lady Chapel, the abbot was aware of a subdued excitement that seemed to make the air shimmer with more than the heat and smoke from the candles. This was no ordinary evening; these were no ordinary prayers and chants. He had to struggle to keep his own mind and heart on his devotions.

To an extent, and no doubt like the other senior Benedictines, Henry de Sully felt there was some justice in the Welsh cellarer’s remark about the sacrilege of disturbing long-buried bones. But he was aware of other considerations. It was noble of King Richard to want Arthur’s bones uncovered and then buried more reverentially; it was a desire befitting a monarch. But Henry de Sully, who was well versed in the ways of power, knew that another of Richard’s motives wasn’t so high-minded. By proving Arthur dead and gone, once and for all, King Richard would be able to stamp on those troublesome legends which asserted that the legendary leader was going to return. It might help to calm an occasionally rebellious spirit in the far-western fringes and corners of the country.

The abbot had his own reasons for uncovering the remains of Arthur and Guinevere. De Sully had been elevated from the grand but dour Thames-side abbey at Bermondsey to this great foundation in the west country. The origins of Glastonbury were lost in time, but one story held that Jesus himself had walked through this watery landscape. Another tradition was that the Old Church, the very one destroyed in the fire that also laid waste to other monastic buildings, had been the handiwork of the apostles of Jesus.

The abbot did not know whether this was true. He hoped it was true. In any case it had proved a useful tradition, drawing pilgrims and worshippers as well as the merely curious to Glastonbury. De Sully glanced around the interior of the Lady Chapel, with its bright patterning of reds and blues and yellows, the dyes and paints so recent that they seemed to glisten in the candlelight. For sure, this church was far removed from the simple wattle-and-daub construction of the disciples. It had cost money to build. To restore the abbey to its former glories would cost a great deal more. At the very moment when he had been disturbed by the buzz of voices beyond his window, he had been studying estimates for repairs and rebuilding. The unearthing of King Arthur’s remains would be… convenient… in ensuring the continued flow of money into the abbey’s coffers. To say nothing of keeping King Richard’s benevolent attention fixed on Glastonbury.

So there was no question of halting the excavation just as they seemed to be on the verge of a discovery. He would order the workmen to continue their labours the next day.

These were the worldly and practical thoughts of Henry de Sully as he listened to evensong.

As he slipped quickly out of the abbey precincts after vespers, Owen the cellarer was gripped by rather less worldly considerations. He was not joining the other monks in the fraterhouse for supper. Instead he wondered how many of them would allow their thoughts to drift away from the scriptural passage that was read aloud during the meal. He wondered how many of his fellows would instead be as preoccupied as he was with this day’s discovery.

Owen paused by the main gate to catch his breath. He wasn’t used to moving at such a pace. Or perhaps it was the strain and excitement of the day’s discovery which were leaving him breathless. Owen nodded towards the lay brother who acted as porter. He didn’t have to explain his movements. With the exception of de Sully, the cellarer had more licence to come and go than anyone else in the abbey. Among other affairs, he was responsible for buying in provisions and so he had the most contact with the world beyond the monastic walls.

Owen gazed out and down from the slight slope beyond the gatehouse. Directly overhead, the night was clear with a waxing moon even though cloud was gathering in the west. The moon glinted off the lakes and rhines which dotted the land as it fell away from Glastonbury towards the great channel dividing England and Wales. As often, the Welsh cellarer had the impression that he was gazing out at a sea, broken by tiny islands scarcely more than reedy marshes and peat bogs. Glastonbury tor, on the lowest slopes of which perched the abbey and its small town, was the biggest of these islands.

Like his fellow monks, he was familiar with the story that Jesus had walked this watery region and that his disciples had constructed the first church with their bare hands. But Owen was thinking now of a quite different tradition, one which said that King Arthur had not only visited Glastonbury but had been brought here to die. That he had been buried in the Isle of Avalon.

The leaden cross excavated this afternoon was surely proof of the story. Gazing on it for the first time, seeing something which he had never dreamed of seeing in his lifetime, kneeling by the cross in the shadow of the makeshift tent, reading the Latin inscription, putting out tentative fingers to touch what had been so carelessly handled by the workmen, all this had affected Owen almost as much as if he were handling a piece of the True Cross on which the Saviour hung in his agony.

The letters HIC IACET SEPULTUS INCLITUS REX ARTURIUS IN INSULA AVALONIA swam before Owen’s eyes. The cellarer had been unable to utter a word while Frederick the sacristan was exclaiming in wonder and Geoffrey was rushing off to give the news to Henry de Sully. It was only when Abbot Henry arrived and asked Owen whether he was well that he came back to himself.

Had anyone noticed? He didn’t think so. Everyone was distracted by the discovery of the cross. He feared, however, that he might have drawn attention to himself in the abbot’s parlour by announcing they should not dig down any further in the graveyard, that it would be sacrilegious to disturb the last resting place of Arthur – or of anybody else. He did not say so aloud but, as far as Owen was concerned, the king’s bones must not be found. If they were, it would demonstrate that Arthur, the once and future king, could never return to reclaim his kingdom.

Better to find an empty grave. Better still not to dig any deeper and to be content with the cross, to treat it with the reverence which it deserved and to install it in a privileged place on display in the abbey. Where it would doubtless draw those pilgrims and visitors so desired by the abbot. Owen didn’t despise the idea of visitors. He was almost as conscious as de Sully that such guests frequently made offerings and, as cellarer, he had a clearer idea than most of the abbey’s finances and the costs of restoring the place after the ruinous fire of six years before.

It was surely right too, as Brother Geoffrey claimed, that the uncovering of Arthur’s bones and perhaps of Guinevere’s would not only guarantee the wealth of the abbey but cause its name to go down in history.

Yet none of these things weighed very heavily with Brother Owen as, guided more by instinct than the moonlight, he drew nearer the cluster of low dwellings, shops and taverns composing the town of Glastonbury. Like the now-vanished Old Church, they were mostly constructed of wattle and daub. There was the smell of woodsmoke in the crisp air. Doors were shut tight against the night. In the distance sounded the howl of a melancholy dog.

Owen reached the entrance to a building slightly larger and more solid than the others. Above the door hung a withered bush, the sign of a tavern. From within came male voices and bursts of laughter from a woman. He recognized the laughter.

Brother Owen put his hand to the latch and then hesitated. He could go back now and retreat to the abbey precincts. He could return and attend to his proper business before compline, the final summons of the day to prayer. Yet, he told himself, he was going about his proper business now. King Arthur must not be found. And he would be found if the men continued digging, for after evensong Owen had asked the abbot what his intentions were, whether he intended to order the hole filled in and the ground made level once more out of respect for the dead. Henry de Sully, slightly impatient with the cellarer’s scruples, put his hand on Owen’s arm, employed his pointed teeth in a kind of smile and said: ‘Of course not. We cannot afford to leave things as they are. We must dig down and find whatever God permits us to find. If there is nothing there, so be it.’

Owen made no reply and inclined his head slightly in deference to the abbot, but at the same time the resolution hardened inside him. This was a moment he had long awaited. A moment of discovery that had been predicted in some quarters. But the bones of the king should never be claimed by the English.

So Owen grasped the latch and opened the door of the tavern.

When he entered, a few faces turned towards him through the gloom. The light provided by the handful of tallow candles was almost cancelled out by the smoky stench which they emitted. A couple of the drinkers nodded in recognition of Owen. As cellarer, he was a familiar enough figure in the little town whose suppliers and artisans depended on the abbey’s patronage. Nevertheless, his appearance in the tavern was hardly usual. The monks could drink better wines and ales within the abbey, in the company of their own kind and in greater comfort too. Even the beeswax candles that Owen burned in his workroom gave off a more pleasant odour than the tallow ones in here.

But Owen had not come to drink or to compare the cost of candles. He had come to speak to the tavern-keeper, an individual called Glyn. Like the monk, Glyn was from Wales and he too had been brought up on stories of Arthur and that king’s inevitable return. The tavern-keeper was serving a customer, pouring ale from a jug. His wife Margaret was in an opposite corner, getting familiar with a couple more customers, laughing with them. She was English. She caught Owen’s eye. He nodded almost imperceptibly at her. Margaret’s fair hair gleamed in the smoky candlelight. The Glastonbury cellarer had memories of that hair, of lifting the inn-keeper’s wife’s heavy tresses and allowing them to trickle through his fingers. He recalled the weight of her breasts against his cassock, he remembered their snatched hours together. Owen had been breathless often enough in the company of Margaret. She too in the monk’s company.

Owen indicated to Glyn that he wished to see him, alone, and the taverner showed him into a curtained-off cubicle at the back of the room. There was almost no light, only what leaked through the thin fabric. It was a fusty sleeping area for all the family, Glyn and Margaret and four or five smallish children, Owen couldn’t remember how many children, except that he rather thought one of them was his. So Margaret had informed him, and since she’d never asked for anything in return he had never had cause to doubt her word.

A bed big enough to hold the entire family occupied most of the space. There were snuffling, whimpering sounds as if the two men were standing amid a litter of baby animals. It occurred to Owen that it might have been better to have talked to Glyn in the tavern itself rather than draw attention by seeking privacy. Too late now.

‘You’ve heard?’ he said to the tavern-keeper.

‘Everybody’s heard. We had that Michael in here earlier, getting himself plastered on account of how he’d dug up the cross. Is it true, Father Owen?’

‘Yes.’

‘The cross of Arthur?’

‘It seems so,’ said Owen with a caution that the abbot would have approved of. ‘It seems that the moment has arrived.’

‘If the cross is found, what else is down there?’ said the tavern-keeper. ‘The king?’

The two men had been conversing in whispers, but Glyn’s voice dropped even further when he referred to the king. From beyond the curtain came voices, Margaret’s renewed laughter.

‘The king’s bones may be there,’ said Owen.

‘How can they be? Arthur is not dead,’ said Glyn.

‘One part of us, my friend, believes that he is dead, as all men must be in the end. The other part of us knows that Arthur can never die, can never be allowed to die.’

‘That’s a bit deep for me, Father.’

‘No, it is not, Glyn. You and I come from the same land; we are not like the English around here.’

‘You’re right there. Margaret’s told me that often enough.’

‘We understand why Arthur must live; we understand why he can have no grave,’ said Owen. ‘Or if he does have a grave, then it must be empty. Or it must be found empty.’

‘How will that happen?’

‘We need a little time. We cannot employ anybody around here. How long will it take to get help from-’ Owen gestured vaguely over his shoulder. He might have been indicating somewhere a few yards away – or many miles to the west. In any case, the gesture went unseen in the darkness of the curtained room.

‘Three days at least, maybe four days at this time of year.’

Owen sighed. It wasn’t long enough. Excavation of the supposed burial place of King Arthur would be resumed tomorrow; the abbot had as good as said that. It might take the labourers another day, possibly longer, to dig down to the right depth and discover the remains. But they’d certainly do it within three days.

‘Send nonetheless,’ said Owen. ‘Send for help.’

‘They will not reach here in time.’

‘Then pray for a miracle.’

‘Who should I pray to, Father?’

‘The spirit of King Arthur, of course.’

A miracle was what happened on the next day, or that very night to be precise. The westerly clouds which had been gathering in the evening rushed in later, bringing autumnal gales and unceasing rain. The ponds and rhines filled up, the abbey stews rose higher, the monastic gutters and gargoyles gurgled and spouted. And work on King Arthur’s burial place had to stop. The flimsy tent was blown down by the wind, and the sides of the excavation fell in, covering up the previous day’s work.

Henry de Sully watched impatiently from his parlour in the Hall, although there was nothing to see apart from mounds of glistening black earth and a hole that was turning into a pond. The leaden cross remained up here in his personal care, locked in a chest. It was an extraordinary discovery, but now he was expecting something yet more extraordinary, and even an hour’s delay frustrated him. He had already written to King Richard, telling him of Arthur’s cross and hinting strongly that this was only the first of several discoveries, all of them destined to reflect glory on the abbey and on the reigning monarch.

Meanwhile, Frederick the sacristan had been researching in the library with a vigour that belied his age. He assembled a quiverful of references showing that Arthur had close ties to Glastonbury. In his enthusiasm, he was inclined to lecture the abbot on these – to babble about Caradoc and The Life of Gildas, to tease out riddling verses by obscure Celtic bards, to talk knowingly of William of Malmesbury and his Deeds of the Kings of the English – until the abbot had trouble concealing his weariness with history.

While this was happening, Owen the cellarer attended to his duties. But he was always conscious that, by ordering Glyn to summon ‘help’, he had set in motion a process whose outcome was uncertain and possibly dangerous. It wasn’t that he did not trust the tavern-keeper. Not only was Glyn from Wales but he was well aware – so Owen believed – of the cellarer’s relationship with his wife Margaret. He had never said a word, however, never dropped a hint.

Two days passed from the first unearthing of the cross until the skies cleared and the water in the excavation began to drain away. By the time the hollowed-out space was dry enough for work to start again it was decided to erect a more substantial shelter to protect the area, and so a further twenty-four hours had elapsed. And by that stage a small band of men was arriving on the waterlogged fringes of Glastonbury from across the wide channel that separated England from Wales. They did not stay in the town, fearing to draw attention to themselves, but found lodging in villages and settlements outside. They waited for word from Glyn. And he was waiting for word from Owen.

The abbot detailed extra men to dig in the burial ground, although it was hard to increase the work-rate much because of the cramped space. They did turn up more than a few bones, showing that the spot had indeed been a graveyard, itself buried under fresh earth. These bones were carefully removed and stored in a temporary coffin in the Lady Chapel. But the workmen reached a depth of fourteen feet or more without finding anything that might clearly signify the remains of a dead king. No sign of a ceremonial interment, no elaborate sarcophagus, no finely wrought coffin.

Henry started to regret the letter to King Richard. Was it possible that the cross denoting the presence of Arthur was a fake relic or that the fabled king was buried somewhere else altogether or that – as the legends of the Celts had it – the king would never be found because he had never died in the first place. The abbot remembered his cellarer expressing some such belief.

Then, almost as he’d begun to lose hope, the labourers toiling in the old graveyard seemed to reach their goal. This time there was no buzz of excitement, no crowd of monks and lay brothers hastening towards the enclosed space on the grass. Henry de Sully had instructed Michael, the most reliable of the workmen, to tell no one else but to inform him personally of any discovery. This Michael had done, his seamed, mud-streaked countenance alight with excitement and privilege as he stood on the threshold of de Sully’s quarters. The abbot, acting with his customary calm, summoned only Frederick, Owen and Geoffrey. So it was the same quartet of Benedictines – the sacristan, the cellarer, the abbot and his secretary-chaplain – who gathered about the excavation, now completely shielded from prying eyes not only by the curtained sides of the tent but by the piles of soil surrounding it.

The hole was both wider and deeper, so much deeper that three men standing on each other’s shoulders would scarcely have reached the rim. A long ladder was required to clamber down to the bottom where, amid a slurry of mud and bones and wood fragments, stood a couple of artisans. Their faces pale and sweaty, they looked up expectantly at the monks.

‘There is a log down there, sir,’ said Michael, ‘a tree trunk which has been hollowed out. There are bones in the hollow. They have the form of a body.’

‘That is an old method of interment,’ said Frederick. ‘It is all of a piece with the hidden cross. We are not looking for a grand mausoleum; we are looking for a hidden burial site.’

‘Some of the bones in the tree hollow are very large,’ said Michael. ‘Look.’

With a conjurer’s flourish he produced what appeared to be a shin-bone. He placed it beside his own lower leg for comparison. It was true: the bone was visibly longer – and Michael was not slight.

‘Careful, man! Do not handle it so carelessly.’

This was Owen. He took the bone as reverently as if he were handling the host.

‘There was this too, sir, down among the bones.’

Michael produced a leather pouch, shrunken and dirty, and handed it to the abbot. Henry unwrapped its stiff folds. Inside lay coiled a golden tress of hair, human hair. It was fresh and bright as if it had just been cut off. As when he had first seen the cross, the abbot felt the hammering of his heart. Beside him, Owen stumbled in excitement and would have fallen into the hole had not the wiry sacristan held him back with a restraining hand.

‘A woman’s, I’d say,’ said Michael, who was starting to feel himself on an equal footing with the monks.

‘A queen’s, you mean,’ said Owen breathlessly.

‘Do not be so hasty,’ said the abbot.

Then Frederick said: ‘That is from a royal head. Whose else can it be except…?’

‘Except Queen Guinevere’s,’ said Henry de Sully.

The monks and the workmen conveyed the bones and the precious fragment of hair to the abbot’s Hall. The golden tress was tightly secured again within the pouch lest exposure to the air should cause it to perish. Yet even this find had been outmatched by another discovery in the hollowed-out log: a man’s skull with a great dint to one side. It indicated a sudden, violent death.

The great bones were not sufficient to make a complete man but rather to suggest the possibility of such a giant. Each of the individuals who stared at these remains in the abbot’s parlour was lost for a time in his imagination, seeing a great and final battle in which a warrior-king had been fatally struck down. They put out their hands – even Michael and the other labourers – to touch the skullcap, the jaw-bone, the mighty shin-bone, the fragments of a ribcage, as if some trace of Arthur’s spirit might be transmitted to their own blood and sinew.

Then, in a humble mood, the monks went to the Lady Chapel to pay their devotions. All of them, in addition to their public prayers, sent up silent thanks to God for having blessed Glastonbury with such legendary relics.

When they returned to the abbot’s parlour, the bones and the pouch containing the golden tress had gone.

There was a council of war late that night in the same chamber from which the relics had disappeared. At first it seemed as though the bones and the pouch containing the Guinevere tress had been spirited away by some supernatural means. The door to the abbot’s parlour was locked; he had made sure of that, the last man out of the room as they proceeded to vespers. There was no sign of forced entry and no other access except the windows, which were glazed and fastened from the inside. Besides, the parlour was on the first floor of the Hall.

Fortunately the cross was still secure in the locked chest, but its presence seemed merely to mock the monks with what they had so recently found and lost again.

Theft was rare in the abbey, despite the number of pilgrims and outsiders who frequented the place. It was unheard of in the abbot’s own quarters. So Frederick assured Henry de Sully. In fact the shock of the vanishing of the bones and hair was so dreadful that it caused one of their number – Brother Owen the cellarer – to collapse on the floor as if he was about to have a fit. He was now being cared for in the infirmary.

So it was just the three, the abbot, chaplain and sacristan, who sat by the fire, musing over what had occurred and wondering what to do next.

‘Did we dream this?’ said Geoffrey. ‘Did we dream that we had found those bones?’

‘Of course not,’ said Henry. ‘Nor have they been taken by magic.’

‘Brother Owen seemed to think so,’ said Frederick. ‘He has been more affected than any of us.’

‘It is the Celt in him,’ said Henry. ‘But we shall all be affected if we do not act to remedy this situation. I mean, the good name of Glastonbury will suffer if it ever becomes known that we had Arthur’s bones in our care… and then mislaid them. Or allowed them to be taken from under our noses.’

‘No one knows yet that we have found the relics,’ said the sacristan.

‘No one apart from we four,’ said Geoffrey, pedantically counting on his fingers, ‘and Michael and the others who were present when they were exhumed. How long do you think they will keep it a secret?’

‘There is only one thing to do,’ said Henry de Sully.

He stood up so that his back was to the fire. He smiled without humour at the other two. He outlined his plan. There were, he said, other pieces of bone which had been disinterred during the excavations. It should not be too hard to find some larger-than-usual items that might be substituted for the missing ones belonging to the king. Even a skull which, by dint of artful bashing, might be given a blow simulating a fatal wound. They would pick among the bones in the coffin in the Lady Chapel and select those that might be fit for a monarch. ‘And after all,’ added the abbot, ‘we still have the cross signifying that Arthur was buried here.’

‘With respect, Abbot, it is an imposture,’ said Frederick the sacristan.

‘Good Brother, how is anyone to say with absolute certainty that the bones we choose are not a king’s?’

‘What about the lock of hair?’ said Geoffrey.

Henry de Sully turned and gazed into the depths of the peat fire. When he turned back again, his face was flushed from heat or inspiration.

‘There is a woman in the town, Margaret the wife of the tavern-keeper, I mean. She has a fine head of hair, fair hair. Brother Owen… talks to her from time to time, doesn’t he?’

The other two exchanged glances.

‘Our brother hears her confessions, yes,’ said Geoffrey.

‘He shrives her,’ said Frederick.

‘Well, then,’ said the abbot, ‘nothing could be simpler. When he has recovered, get Brother Owen to see what he can do to get a tress from this Margaret. Remember, meanwhile, that we do this not for personal profit or glory but for the sake of the abbey; we do it to protect our future.’

So it was that under the brightly coloured vaulting of the Lady Chapel and in the secrecy of night, the abbot, the sacristan and the chaplain rummaged among the human remains that had already been disturbed in the graveyard. They found what they were looking for: large bones for a man, even a skull that might be taken for the king’s, especially after it was given a great tap with a hammer.

Meanwhile, in the infirmary, Owen sighed and sweated with guilt. He turned on his side on his hard, narrow bed and remembered how he had copied the key to the abbot’s parlour, how he had slipped it to the tavern-keeper as he walked across the green on the way to evensong. He had already alerted Glyn, knowing from the abbot’s earlier summons that something of signifi cance had been found.

Lying on his sickbed, eyes staring into blackness, he had visions of men stealing into the abbey precincts while the monks were occupied at vespers, of dark shapes scurrying on the edge of the cloisters and the back of the kitchen quarters. It would not have taken the group long to get into the abbot’s parlour and scoop up Arthur’s relics.

Where were the bones now, he wondered?

But if he did not know exactly where they were, he knew in which direction they were going. They were being ferried across the marshes and peat bogs to the great channel separating England from Wales, they were being carried to the west under the protection of the guardians.

Once Arthur’s bones were safe from discovery by the English, Owen the cellarer did not much care if his own role in this affair was discovered. He had played his part, he had done his duty. Even so, once he was out of the infirmary the next day, he took the precaution of disposing of the duplicate key by throwing it in a stew in the abbey grounds. A large fish swam towards the surface to inspect Owen. Its mouth gaped. Owen was reminded of the abbot’s teeth.

There was no sequel to the disappearance of the bones. No one mentioned it. In fact, to his amazement he was invited to feast his eyes on those very items once again in the abbot’s quarters. Nods and hints gave him a good idea of what had occurred. As did Henry de Sully who, drawing him aside, explained that he should use whatever influence he had with the tavern-keeper’s wife to get her to surrender a lock of her golden hair.

‘Do you think you can manage that?’

‘Yes,’ said Owen cautiously.

‘Suggest she give it up as an act of penitence,’ said the abbot, smiling. ‘Her hair is a snare in which the hearts of men are caught. I refer to secular men, Brother Owen, who must be protected from the perils of golden hair. Penitence, I say.’

‘Yes, Abbot.’

‘She has much to be penitential about, I dare say.’

‘We all have,’ said Owen the cellarer. ‘We all have.’

Many miles across the water and among the hills to the west, at the time when Brother Owen was gazing open-mouthed on the substitute bones, a similar scene was taking place in an isolated, long-abandoned church. A second group of men was assembled in a circle around the genuine relics which had been taken from the abbot’s Hall in Glastonbury. They spoke little but their words were solemn. The men were dressed in the garb of artisans, which some of them were.

The church was a shell rather than a building, with ragged walls and a roof which was more holes than thatch. Tucked away in a fold among the hills, it had fallen into disuse when the village it served had withered away through sickness and migration. All that remained inside was a stone altar, as rough and fissured as a boulder newly tumbled from a hillside. The bones of Arthur and the leathern pouch containing the tress of hair were spread across the altar, illuminated by nothing more than the light of the moon and the stars which soared above the gaping roof. Yet to each man in that place the relics of the king seemed to shine with their own light.

They had paid their homage to the bones and now their leader – a slight man whose name was Meurig ap Rhys, a man with a widow’s peak as sharp as a flint dagger – gave his instructions on the safeguarding of the remains of the great king. When their duties ended, which they surely must at the conclusion of their own mortal existences, the task would pass to their offspring, he said. They were the Guardians. They held in trust the future lives of their race. He predicted that the day would come – not in their lifetime, nor that of their sons or even their sons’ sons, perhaps, but come it would – when the bones of the great warrior-king would be required once more. The crisis when the descendants of the present company would be called on to throw off the invader’s yoke. He swore them to silence on pain of those same lives.

Ap Rhys may have been slight of stature but his word was law. Two of his own sons were among the group. He nodded at them with particular emphasis as he bound the group to silence.

None of those standing in a ring about the bones doubted him. When the ceremony was finished, ap Rhys dismissed everyone save for his sons. He waited until the sounds of footsteps and horses’ hooves had died away on the still, frosty night. Then the three men retrieved the bones and leather pouch from the top of the altar-stone and reverently folded them in silken wrappings and deposited them in a small chest which had been brought to the dilapidated chapel for this very purpose. The chest was not large, certainly not large enough to draw attention, being no more than the length of a man’s arm and about two-thirds as wide. Placing the chest in a cart to which was tethered a small but sturdy pony, the men bowed their heads under a moon which was nearly at the full. After a moment’s silence, with the father leading the horse and the sons on either side of the cart, they paced off down the track towards the lowlands.