The Tintern Treasure

EIGHTEEN

Once again, I slept badly; a sleep crowded with dreams which verged at times on the point of nightmares. Nor was it entirely the fault of the bed I occupied in the abbey guest-house, although to compare the thin mattress to a bed of nails is not such an exaggeration as it might at first seem. I could not help contrasting it with the luxury of the accommodation in the Tintern infirmary, but I reflected that the Benedictines had always paid more than lip service to the rigid rules of their Order, whereas the Cistercians had a more relaxed attitude to the needs of the flesh. At least, that’s my opinion. But perhaps others might think me wrong.

But it was not only bad dreams that disturbed my rest. Ideas and theories jostled around in my head until it positively ached with thinking. I lay on my back staring up at the low-pitched, black-shadowed ceiling trying to work out a course of events which fitted the facts and made some sort of sense.

Had members of the Gurney family ever had any inkling that there might be treasure hidden somewhere in Tintern Abbey? Treasure connected to Edward II? Somehow I doubted it, or someone at sometime in the past would have tried to locate it. So, how could I be sure they hadn’t? I couldn’t, but neither the present abbot nor any of his flock had suggested that such an enquiry had ever been made. Not a valid reason you might argue, and you would be right as far as the argument goes. But those sort of incidents — a stranger arriving and nosing around for buried treasure — have a profound impact on the monotony of cloistered lives, fostering endless discussion and repetition and finally growing into a tradition that is passed on from one generation of monks to the next.

I therefore, rightly or wrongly, dismissed this notion. But the Gurneys had known something, that was obvious; something that Walter Gurney had repeated to Sir Lionel Despenser more, perhaps, as a joke than as any serious suggestion. Listening to the faint drumming of the rain on the guest-house roof — a ghostly tattoo beating to awaken Gwyn ap Nud, the Lord of the Wild Hunt, and his followers from their enchanted sleep beneath the Tor — I made a guess that maybe Edward, during his captivity in Berkeley Castle had tried to bribe his gaolers to let him escape. ‘I have money (jewels?) hidden in Tintern Abbey,’ he might have told them. ‘It is yours if you let me go.’ But no one had taken him seriously, treating his claim with derision. The story, however, had persisted down the generations of the Gurney family and was always good for a chuckle.

When a travelling barber had brought the news that Sir Lionel Despenser of Keynsham, in Somerset, was looking for a new head groom, Walter Gurney had seen not merely a chance to escape Jane Spicer and her unwelcome expectations of him, but also an opportunity to serve a man with whom his family shared a distant, if disreputable, past. Despensers and Gurneys both had a connection to the unhappy second Edward, and what would have been more natural than that Walter should have shared the joke of there being something of value which the king had left concealed at Tintern with his new master?

And that is what it might well have remained, a joke, if Sir Lionel had not told it to Gilbert Foliot who, by the sheerest chance, had been at Tintern Abbey for the funeral of his late wife’s kinsman when the secret hiding place in the former abbot’s lodgings had been uncovered. At the time, the hole in the floor had been only cursorily examined and its contents deemed, although of historical interest, valueless. But Sir Lionel’s information aroused the goldsmith’s interest, making him wonder if the hiding place had, fourteen years earlier, been sufficiently well examined. Perhaps they had all been too easily satisfied that there was nothing else to be found. Maybe, after all, there was some substance in the Gurney family story. Maybe Thomas of Berkeley, Sir William Maltravers and Sir Thomas Gurney should have taken their royal prisoner more seriously.

These thoughts Gilbert Foliot had imparted to his friend in the St Peter’s Street house on the evening that Peter Noakes was concealed behind the curtain shutting off the dais from the rest of the parlour, and the young man had immediately determined to make the journey to Tintern Abbey to discover for himself if there was any truth in the speculation. He and Ursula needed money desperately in order to run away together. He must have set off for Tintern the very next day, beating Gilbert’s own departure by a narrow margin.

As for the other pair, what did they want the treasure for? Not to line their own pockets, of that I felt certain. And although, I suppose, they might be allotted some credit for their lack of greed, the truth was that they needed it, if Timothy Plummer were to be believed, for a much more treacherous reason: to bolster the depleted coffers of Henry Tudor. .

And here, I suppose, I must have fallen into the first of the night’s uneasy dozes, for at this point I seemed to be back home, standing in the kitchen with the contents of my pack strewn all about the floor. It was a dream I had had before, except that this time, the woman demanding that I pick everything up and put it away tidily was not Adela but the goodwife of the farm where I had taken my Sunday dinner. I could also hear Adam’s voice somewhere in the background although I could not see him, and I was trying vainly to hush both the goodwife and Adela, who had now mysteriously joined her, in order to make out the words. Unfortunately, they only increased their importuning until the noise grew so deafening that I was suddenly awake, sitting up in bed and listening to the autumnal storm which was howling around the abbey.

I shivered and lay down again, all my sympathy going out to the Brothers and novices who even at that minute were probably pattering down the night stairs to the cold and darkness of the abbey to celebrate Vigils, the pool of blackness that was the choir studded with the flickering flames of their candles. I supposed Brother Hilarion thought I should have joined them — a polite gesture from a guest who had once been an inmate himself — but I just pulled the rough grey blanket up to my chin and again reassured myself that twelve years previously I had made the right decision.

I expected to drop off almost immediately, but sleep eluded me for quite a while. To begin with, I spent some time trying to interpret my dream. I remembered Adam making some remark which had stirred my memory, but failed completely to recall what it was that he had said. And what significance the emptying of my pack and the farmer’s wife held for me I was still unable to fathom. That they did hold significance I had no doubt, nor that God was trying to speak to me, as he had so often done in the past, through my dreams. The fault was mine. I was growing old and stupid.

I let the dream go. I knew from past experience that I could not force understanding. That would come when it would come in a flash of inspiration. Instead, I examined once more my earlier thoughts, my interpretation of events after my meeting with Master Foliot and the other two at Monmouth and later at Tintern. I was seized suddenly by the conviction that Peter Noakes’s death had been no accident, but deliberate murder. I recalled the goldsmith’s determination to follow the boy in spite of the teeming rain and tearing wind. But he hadn’t lost him in the darkness as he had claimed. He had caught up with him somewhere out in the open, near the river and had dealt him a swingeing blow to the back of the head with. . With what? A hefty branch most likely, torn from one of the trees by the raging gale. There had been plenty of those strewn around the following morning. (I recollected Ursula telling me that Anthony Roper had noticed a contusion on the back of his nephew’s head.) The goldsmith must then have rummaged through his victim’s pockets and his baggage, but all to no avail. If Peter Noakes had found something, it was not upon his person. It would then have been the work of moments to push the body into the river and leave it to be found the following morning.

Gilbert Foliot’s chagrin and disappointment must have been great and I tried to recollect his demeanour when he had finally returned to the abbot’s lodgings, but for the life of me I could remember nothing definite. That was hardly surprising, however: there had been so much general confusion. I wondered how long it had taken him to work out that young Noakes might have hidden his findings in one of our saddle-bags, intending to retrieve his booty at a later date. Less time, certainly, than it had taken me. .

And it was about then, lulled by the storm chasing its tail around the abbey buildings, that I finally fell asleep.

It was still early when I awoke to a cold, dark, cheerless autumn morning and the bell ringing for Prime. I dragged myself out of bed and scrambled into such clothes as I had taken off the night before and made my way into the abbey church for the service. I remembered guiltily that I had promised Adela that I would go to Mass on Sunday and had failed in that intention. At least, now, I could assure her that I had done a little towards the salvation of my soul. (For she worried about me, I knew, and especially about some of what she stigmatized as my heretical theories.)

I ate breakfast — if you could call it that: stale oatcakes and only water to drink — in the refectory with a few of the lay brothers. (The monks themselves still adhered to the rule of one main meal a day. However had I borne it as long as I did?) I was just finishing this grisly repast when someone swung his leg over the bench and sat down beside me.

‘What happened to you then?’ demanded the carter, Joseph Sibley.

I turned my head. ‘You made good time.’

He grinned. ‘Better than you think. I arrived late last night after you were tucked up in bed.’

I snorted. ‘You make it sound comfortable.’

He laughed at that, but then repeated his question. ‘So what did happen to you? I was told you’d legged it in the middle of the night. The cobbler and his wife were very upset. Couldn’t think what they’d done to offend you.’

I hesitated, then told him a version of the truth without saying who I thought was my attacker.

The carter roared at that and slapped me on the knee.‘Reckon that were young Christopher Wiley,’ he gasped, adding in explanation, ‘Betsy’s swain. Crept in to have a bit of a lark with the girl, found you and jumped to the wrong conclusion. Got a hasty temper has young Chris, by all accounts. Don’t know him personal like, but from what Goodwife Shoesmith’ve told me he’s not one to cross.’ He was shaken by another paroxysm of laughter from which he eventually emerged with streaming eyes. ‘I’ll tell the dame next time I see her,’ he offered. ‘Put all right with her and Jacob.’ He gave me a salacious grin. ‘’Course, I can guess why you didn’t bolt the door. So could young Master Wiley, I reckon.’

I said nothing. It was as good an explanation as another and one that would serve my purpose. But I didn’t believe it, not for an instant, particularly when the carter described Christopher Wiley as a slender youth whose figure as well as his face made him a favourite amongst the womenfolk of Keynsham. There had been nothing willowy about the man who had assaulted me.

‘So,’ Joseph Sibley continued, ‘you’re returning to Bristol with me today as we arranged? I could do with the company. Finished your business here, have you?’

I admitted that I had and thankfully accepted his offer. I had no desire to walk the twenty and more miles to Bristol over again, so as soon as I had finished eating I sought out Brother Hilarion and thanked him for his time and patience.

‘And was my history lesson of any use to you?’ he asked, reaching up and bringing my head down to his level so that he could kiss me on the forehead and give me his blessing.

‘Of inestimable value,’ I assured him.

He nodded. ‘And don’t let it be so long before I see you again,’ he chided. ‘I’m an old man now.’

With a sudden rush of affection, and because I myself was growing ever more aware of the passing years, I put my arms around his slight body and gave him a hug.

‘I won’t,’ I promised.

He smiled ironically. ‘You’re a good man, Roger. I know you mean what you say.’ He patted my shoulder. ‘God be with you, my child.’

We reached Bristol in just over two days, passing through the Redcliffe Gate early on Friday morning having spent the night — at my expense, naturally — at an ale-house in the village of Whitchurch.

The night before, Wednesday (or Woden’s Day as many Somerset people still insist on calling it, in memory of the old gods who preceded the coming of Christianity) had, by chance, been passed at the same farmhouse where I had eaten on Sunday. The good-hearted couple had been genuinely pleased to see me again, the husband taking the opportunity to pour into Joseph Sibley’s ear the difficulties of raising his ‘hruther’ or ‘rudder’ beasts — I could see the carter nodding off from sheer boredom as he was told the tale — while the goodwife, in an excess of pride, showed me a new gown she had but just finished making and which was adorned down the front with the carved bone buttons she had purchased from my pack.

As she spoke, recollections of my recent dreams gave me an unpleasant jolt, but try as I would I could still make no sense of them. I stared at the buttons. I fingered them. That they held some significance for me, I was certain, but what that significance was continued to elude me. .

Joseph Sibley lived in Redcliffe, so unloaded me along with my pack and cudgel close to St Thomas’s Church. I thanked him, paid him and then set out with a feeling of relief in the direction of Bristol Bridge. My way took me close to Margaret Walker’s cottage, but I had no intention of breaking my journey to pay her a visit. Home beckoned. I just wanted to get there as soon as possible.

Fate, however, decreed otherwise. As I started to cross the bridge, I realized that my former mother-in-law was just ahead of me and no doubt bound for Small Street. I had no option but to overtake her with as cordial a greeting as I could manage.

The pleasantry was not returned. ‘Oh, it’s you, is it?’ she said grimly. ‘And not before time. It seems to me you’re never around when you’re most needed.’

‘Why?’ I asked uneasily. ‘What’s happened?’

‘You mean apart from your house being broken into?’

‘Broken into again?’ I was aghast. ‘When. . When did this happen?’

‘The day before yesterday, in the morning while Adela was at market with the children. She’d foolishly taken that dog of yours along with her because she had a notion in her head that someone had been trying to poison him.’

‘Poison Hercules?’ I stopped dead in the middle of a crowded High Sreet, staring at Margaret Walker in horror. At the same time, I recalled a conversation with Sir Lionel Despenser in which he had expressed surprise — and, now I came to think of it, concern — that I owned a dog. I remembered telling him how Hercules had been acquired. ‘Is. . Is he all right?’

‘Quite unharmed, thanks to Adela, who kept him indoors after he’d been sick on two occasions. Although considering what that animal scavenges from the drains, why she thought — ’ Here Margaret broke off and seized my arm, urging me forward. ‘For the sweet Lord’s sake shift yourself, Roger! You’re getting in everyone’s way standing there like a great booby with your mouth half-open! Besides, you’ve a bigger worry than that awaiting you.’

‘Was anything stolen from the house?’ I asked as we began to move, her last words not sinking in for the moment.

‘Adela says not, but of course it hasn’t stopped Dick Manifold from being round there every five minutes. If you’ll take my advice my lad, you want to keep your eye on him.’

‘I do, believe me. . What did you mean, a bigger worry?’

My quondam mother-in-law snorted. ‘That child’s turned up again. He’s bigger now, about ten or eleven months I should say, and he’s not with the woman who brought him here first, before you came home in April.’

‘What child?’ I demanded. But I knew perfectly well what child. I was simply playing for time.

We had by now reached the High Cross and I came to a halt in its shadow. Margaret Walker stood still perforce and turned to face me. ‘The child that woman claimed was yours. Only now it seems the story’s changed. It appears that after all the boy is not yours, only has some sort of claim on you.’ She gave another snort. ‘I’ve never heard such nonsense. I told Adela that if this present woman shows up again to send her away with a flea in her ear. I don’t know what your connection is with that creature in Gloucester, and I don’t want to know, but it’s obvious she’s trying to force this child on you by one means or another. She’s afraid to come here herself for fear of coming face-to-face with you, so she’s persuaded her friend to do the deed for her.’

If that were only the case, I thought with a sinking heart, how much simpler things would be. It was apparent to me that Juliette Gerrish had died and that Jane Spicer, according to her promise, had brought Luke to Bristol in an effort to persuade me to take my half-nephew into my family and raise him as my own. I groaned inwardly. I could foresee storm clouds ahead.

We walked down Small Street, in silence on my part but with Margaret giving me a great deal of advice to which I paid not the slightest attention. Indeed, most of it I didn’t even listen to, one half of my mind being preoccupied with the break-in and what it meant, and the other with my responsibility to my half-brother’s child and how I was going to persuade Adela that we had no choice but to shelter the poor little mite.

I had been half afraid, after Margaret’s warning, of finding myself confronted by Richard Manifold, but my fears proved groundless. In fact, I had rarely known the house so calm and peaceful and we walked through the hall into the kitchen where all three children were seated round the table calmly doing their lessons. Adela glanced up as we entered with a finger to her lips and indicating the old cradle on the floor beside her and which she was gently rocking with her foot.

‘Hush,’ she said to Margaret, ‘he’s sleeping.’ Then she saw me and was immediately on her feet to give me a kiss of greeting.

‘Roger! You’re home!’

Immediately all was pandemonium. Elizabeth, Nicholas and Adam left their horn books with shouts of, ‘What have you brought us?’ Hercules nipped my ankles as a punishment for going away and leaving him behind, while Luke, just as I remembered him, all copper curls and huge brown eyes, sat up and beamed at all and sundry.

Adela stooped, picked Luke up and tucked him under one arm. ‘He’s so active,’ she explained. ‘You have to watch him every minute.

Margaret Walker and I stared at her.

‘Where’s. . Where’s Jane Spicer?’ I asked.

My wife smiled. ‘Gone home to Gloucester.’ The smile vanished. ‘Mistress Gerrish died two weeks ago.’

‘Adela!’ Margaret exclaimed, outraged. ‘You’ve not agreed. . You’ve not been so foolish as to keep that child, have you?’

Her cousin looked surprised. ‘What else can I do? And once I’d seen him. . He’s such a sweet-natured child.’

She turned her head to smile at Luke who grinned in return, revealing two teeth. He patted her cheek.

I sank down on the nearest stool, my head in a whirl. I had been prepared for squalls, but unbelievably all seemed set for fine weather. All the same. .

‘Sweetheart,’ I said weakly, ‘are you sure about this? Another woman’s child! And another boy! What. . What do the children think about it?’ I glanced nervously at the three of them as they rummaged eagerly through my pouch and pockets, extracting the small gifts I had had the forethought to buy them in Wells. I recalled a time when Adam was young and the other two had tried to give him away.

Adela shrugged. ‘They don’t seem to mind. If anything, Adam is rather pleased, I think, to have a member of the family younger than himself. It means he’s no longer the baby. .’

‘I’m a man now,’ my son interrupted. ‘I have a knife.’

‘. . while Bess and Nick,’ my wife resumed, ‘as you well know, have always been wrapped up in one another.’

‘You’re a fool, my girl!’ Margaret Walker declared loudly, making me jump. I had forgotten she was there. ‘Another mouth to feed! Another child to cook and clean and sew for! And not even yours or Roger’s!’ She prodded me hard on the shoulder. ‘You’d better go and see King Richard — if king he really is — and tell him you need to be paid more.’

I slammed my fist down on the table. ‘I tell you, mother-in-law — ’ she still liked me to call her that — ‘I don’t work for the king! And what do you mean, if he really is that?’

‘You’ve no cause to take that aggressive tone with me, Roger. There are plenty of people, I can tell you, who think he has no right to the title, who believe that his claim was a trumped-up one concocted with the help of Robert Stillington. And what has happened to those poor boys, the little king and his brother? Tell me that! Rumour has it — ’

‘I know how rumour has it,’ I snapped, ‘and rumour lies! I know King Richard! I know he would never harm his nephews.’

I was shouting, Margaret Walker was looking affronted and all four children were regarding me round-eyed, uncertain as to the cause of my displeasure.

‘I shall be going,’ Margaret announced. She kissed her granddaughter and nodded at her cousin. ‘You know where to find me, Adela, should you need me. I still think you’re the biggest fool in Christendom.’

And with that parting shot she was gone, the street door banging behind her.

‘Oh, Roger!’ Adela said reproachfully, but I could see the smile glimmering at the back of her eyes. She handed Luke to me and fetched me a beaker of ale. ‘Have you had any breakfast?’

‘Of a sort, in an ale-house at Whitchurch.’ I shifted Luke’s weight to my left arm and took a long swallow of Adela’s homemade beer. ‘But never mind that. We’ve things to talk about. First and foremost, are you sure about raising Luke?’

She smiled, a little wryly, I thought. ‘Tell me what else we can do? Mistress Spicer was adamant in her refusal to keep him. And if you’re satisfied that he is indeed your half-brother’s son. .’

I hesitated, then nodded. ‘I feel sure he must be.’

‘Then there’s no more to be said, is there? Talking is simply a waste of breath. Besides, he’s a very lovable child.’

And as if to confirm this, Luke gave me a beaming smile and put up a hand to tweak my nose, an action which caused his foster siblings a great deal of amusement.

This argument having been settled with far less aggravation than I could possibly have imagined, even in my most sanguine dreams, I turned to the second and far more serious matter. ‘Margaret says the house has been robbed again.’

Adela gathered up the horn books and put them away. ‘Not “robbed”,’ she demurred, ‘and not “again”. On the first occasion, if you recall, whoever it was didn’t manage to get in, thanks to Hercules, and this time nothing was taken. Oh, everything had been turned upside down, the contents of every drawer and cupboard strewn about the floor, but neither the children nor I could discover a single thing that was missing.’

Elizabeth, Nicholas and Adam vociferously confirmed this statement.

‘When did this happen?’

‘The day before yesterday, Wednesday, while we were all at market.’

‘Margaret said you’d taken Hercules with you. She had some story that you thought he was being poisoned.’

Adela suspended a pot of stew from the hook over the fire, to heat. ‘I thought he might have been. He was sick twice, each time after Bess had reported seeing a man giving him meat.’

I turned to my daughter. ‘What was he like, this man?’

Elizabeth wrinkled her forehead. ‘A big man. Not anyone that I knew.’

‘Did he have a scar or scratch marks on his face?’

Again she furrowed her brow, but to no avail. ‘I can’t remember.’

‘Did either Nicholas or Adam see him?’

But my stepson and son denied all knowledge of the stranger.

‘If I’d seen him,’ Adam declared stoutly, ‘I’d have run him through with my knife. Right through the belly button.’

There it was again, that jolt of recognition that told me he had, as once before, said something of importance, something of significance. And if I remembered rightly, he had used almost exactly the same words. But try as I would, the memory refused to resolve itself. I could only sit there, fuming with frustration.