The Brothers of Glastonbury (9 page)

‘I went back and forth round the hut a few times more and looked inside for a second time, but by then I was truly scared.’ His voice sank to a whisper. ‘I reckoned Peter Gildersleeve had been snatched by demons – they say he was a man who never had his nose out of a book and had forbidden learning – so I ran to the house as fast as I could. Mistress was angry at first because I’d left my flock, but in the end she sent one of the maids with me to see what she could discover. Susanna was as terrified as I was, but we did find Master Gildersleeve’s horse tied up among the trees. We went back and told Mistress, and she said I was to round up my sheep and bring ’em down to the home pasture without delay. Suppertime, Master and young Masters returned from Priddy and I was sent for to tell my tale again.

‘Old Master didn’t make much of it at first, but later, when he and Master Tom and Master Gil had walked to the copse and found the mare still tethered there, he began to think differently. He said Master Gildersleeve would never have abandoned the creature willingly, and that Gilbert must ride to Glastonbury straightaway, before it got dark, to see if Dame Joan or some other could throw light on the subject. He said the family would be getting worried on account of all the robberies there’ve been lately in the district. Though what that had to do with anything, I can’t for the life of me see. The robberies have all been at night. Houses and farmsteads broken into, goods and money taken. We’ve been sleeping with all the shutters closed in spite of the hot weather.’

This explained Mark’s reluctance to leave his chamber windows open. I asked what the Sheriff’s officers were doing about the robberies, but my informant didn’t appear to know the answer. In any case, I felt we were drifting into uncharted waters and made a bid to put us back on course. I got to my feet and reached down a hand to assist him to his.

‘I’d like to look inside the hut for myself,’ I said. ‘Will you come with me?’

*   *   *

Abel was right. Despite its paucity of light, the hut was so small that with the door wide open it was possible to see into every corner. Heaped in one of them was a pile of old sacking, but the remainder of the beaten-earth floor was bare and swept clean. There were a few scuff marks just inside the entrance – presumably made by Abel when he had peered around the door to ensure that Peter Gildersleeve was not behind it – but otherwise all lay undisturbed. No one had taken refuge there for quite some time.

I stepped back a few paces, the better to view the outside of the hut. Made of stone, with a roof of latticed branches overlaid with moss and twigs, it would be used in inclement weather as a shelter by both men and beasts. The apex of the roof was a foot or two higher than the top of the incline behind it, and although from the front it appeared to be built directly up against the bank, upon closer inspection I discovered that it was possible to walk all round it on level ground.

The dell, as I had recollected earlier, was devoid of either bush or tree. The nearest hiding place, apart from the interior of the hut, was the stand of trees where Peter Gildersleeve had left Dorabella, and it was extremely doubtful if he could have reached its cover without being glimpsed by Abel. Yet if the latter were to be believed, Peter had vanished without trace from this very spot. Still loath to abandon the idea of a rational explanation, I climbed once more to higher ground, Abel following at my heels, and surveyed my surroundings.

From where I now stood, I could see to my left the well-worn track, leading from the upper heights of Mendip, which Cicely and I had ridden on Barnabas yesterday afternoon. It was a rough and bumpy ride, but one which lopped quarter of an hour or more from the journey to the Glastonbury road. It went in a direct line, making no concession to the unevenness of the terrain – a reminder that, centuries ago, the Romans had been mining for lead in these parts.

I spun slowly on my heel in a full circle, and had begun to do so again when my eye was caught by a second track which I had not previously noticed. It curled around the bluff of rising ground to the right of me, leading deep into a ravine between the hills. I wended my way along its length, but at the end there was nothing more than a fall of matted foliage cascading down the cliff-face from a crevice high above to the valley floor beneath. I moved aside some of the greenery, but it concealed only a narrow fissure in the rocks, so I retraced my steps and returned to Abel and his sheep.

He cocked his head knowingly to one side.

‘There’s nothing to see, is there?’ he grinned cheekily. ‘I could have told you that if you’d taken the trouble to ask. Sometimes I have to go round there to rescue sheep.’

‘It must be a lonely life up here in the winter,’ I remarked, glancing about me.

‘I don’t mind.’ Abel shrugged and laughed. ‘These hills are full of surprises.’

‘What sort of surprises?’ I enquired.

One hand made a sweeping gesture. ‘Oh, just things,’ he answered vaguely. ‘I found a coin once with a man’s head on it. Gaffer said it was Roman. Another time I found some bits of an old pot. He said they were Roman too.’ His brow creased into a disapproving frown. ‘Whoever these Romans were, Master Stonecarver, they were very careless.’

I was about to repeat my request that he call me Roger when a man’s voice exclaimed, ‘Here you are, Abel! I’ve been … Hello! Who’s this?’

The young man who had so silently approached while we had been busy talking, was also serviceably dressed in homespun and carried a shepherd’s crook. He was about my own age, perhaps a little younger – it was difficult to tell, but there was no doubt whatsoever that he was Mistress Pennard’s son. He had the same cornflower-blue eyes and dimpled cheeks, the same plump and stocky body. In one respect only did he resemble his father, and that was in the way the elements had weathered and tanned his skin to a rich and leathery brown. It needed few powers of deduction to guess that this must be Thomas, who had been minding his flock higher up and as yet knew nothing of my presence on Pennard land.

Abel, somewhat confused, made us known to one another, and I explained again my reason for taking upon myself the investigation into the whereabouts of Peter Gildersleeve.

‘A strange business! A strange business!’ Thomas muttered, scratching his right ear. With a quick, deft movement, his other arm shot out to hook back a straying sheep from the brink of the little dell where the hut stood. ‘What conclusion have you come to, Master Stonecarver?’

‘None so far,’ I admitted ruefully. ‘For the present I’m as nonplussed as everyone else seems to be. However, I haven’t yet given up all hope of discovering some simple reason for Master Gildersleeve’s disappearance. And now I must return to your stable to fetch my horse before riding back to Glastonbury.’

‘I’ll come with you,’ Thomas said. ‘I want a word with my father. Abel, lad, keep an eye on my flock for me while I’m gone, particularly that old tup. He’s as crafty as Satan.’

‘Master Pennard may not be at the house,’ I remarked as we moved off in that direction. ‘He was going to the west pasture to look for your brother after he left me with Abel.’

But whatever business Anthony Pennard had had with Gilbert, it had been of short duration, for he was seated at the table in the kitchen as we entered, laboriously trying to add a column of figures written on the piece of parchment in front of him.

He looked up in relief. ‘By Our Lady, I’m pleased to see you, Thomas, my boy! You’ve a clearer eye and a quicker brain than your old father. See if you can find the answer to this sum. It’s plaguing me silly! Figures and letters – damn stupid, jiggling things! They never make sense when I look at them, but just go dancing around all over the paper. Well, Master Stonecarver, and was Abel of any use to you?’ I shook my head regretfully and he continued, ‘I can’t say I’m much surprised, for there doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason in the way Master Peter vanished. There’s no shaking the boy’s story, and as I said to you a while since, I can’t see why he should lie about Peter Gildersleeve’s disappearance. And he
has
disappeared, that much is for certain.’

I accepted a cup of ale from Mistress Pennard, who, instructing the two maids to continue with the baking, sat down beside her husband. I took a stool on the opposite side of the table. Thomas, meantime, had removed himself to some other part of the house in order to grapple with the addition which was giving his father so much trouble.

‘The track which crosses your land,’ I said, ‘does it date from Roman times?’

Anthony Pennard shrugged. ‘Who can say? It’s certain that it’s very old and has been a common right of way as long as anyone round here can remember. But the Mendips are covered with such tracks. Some lead somewhere, some don’t. Some lead to the great gorge. Have you ever seen it?’

I shook my head. ‘No. Oddly enough, I’ve never been that way, but they say the old Saxon kings used to have one of their dwellings on the heights above it.’

‘That’s as maybe. I never heard so, at any rate. So, Abel wasn’t of much use to you, eh? You’re none the wiser as to what’s happened to Peter Gildersleeve?’

‘Not one whit,’ I acknowledged. I drained my cup and stood up, refusing the goodwife’s offers of further refreshment. ‘I must be getting along now. My thanks to you both for bearing with me.’

Master Pennard rose and clapped me on the back. ‘I’m sorry there’s not more we can do to help. If only we’d had the foresight to keep Abel’s testimony quiet, then it might have been thought that Peter had ridden off on his own somewhere. We could have returned Dorabella to the Gildersleeves later, when they’d had time to think up a story.’ He sighed. ‘But there you are! We all took fright, Mark Gildersleeve included, and now the damage is done as they say. The gossip is spreading, and I daresay we’ll have the Bishop’s men poking and prying about the place once they get wind of the tale.’

‘You’re probably right,’ I agreed, ‘unless I can discover something first. But at the moment, I’m floundering around in the dark with nothing to go on. Only one thing is certain, and that’s that a man has disappeared in the twinkling of an eye in most mysterious circumstances.’

‘Aye, that’s for sure, Chapman,’ Master Pennard nodded. ‘Sure as Christ came to Priddy!’

*   *   *

As Barnabas and I plodded sedately back along the raised causeway between Wells and Glastonbury, I pondered on that strange expression: ‘Sure as Christ came to Priddy’. It was one with which I had been familiar all my life, and I knew its origins.

The story, handed down from father to son to grandson for hundreds of generations past, said that during the Roman occupation, when they were mining for lead in the Mendips, merchants had arrived from Palestine to do business, chief amongst whom was Joseph of Arimathea. On one visit Joseph had brought with him a young boy, who was our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. The two had lodged at Priddy, and during his stay the Christ Child used to roam the countryside, coming eventually upon the Tor. He was so struck by the sanctity of the place, that He decided to build a church at its foot in His Mother’s honour: thus it was Christ Himself who miraculously raised the earliest church at Glastonbury.

After the Crucifixion, Joseph had returned to Somerset to carry on the work of the Christian faith. Did we not have the Holy Thorn to prove it? Blossoming every year at the time of Our Lord’s nativity, it had first sprouted from Joseph’s staff where he had planted it in the ground. The stories had not always held the prominent position in the religious life of the abbey that they did today, but John Selwood was among those abbots under whose spiritual guidance the cult of Joseph had grown.

For my own part, credulity struggled with disbelief for dominance in my mind. On the one hand I desperately wanted the stories to be true, to believe that the Christ Child really had walked among the Mendip Hills and the pleasant green Somerset valleys; on the other, I knew that such tales, along with those of King Arthur, brought untold wealth and prestige to the abbey in the shape of a constant stream of pilgrims and the claim to be the oldest Christian foundation in the country, if not the world. Abbots of Glastonbury, following the example set them many centuries earlier by Saint Dunstan – until, that is, the saint became Primate of All England himself – tended to go their own way regardless of Canterbury.

With such thoughts jostling around in my head, the five miles between Wells and Glastonbury passed like one. I barely noticed the mid-afternoon heat or the crowded causeway, and was surprised to find myself descending through Bove Town almost before I knew it. As I passed the church of Saint John, Cicely came running up the street to meet me and catch at the horse’s reins.

‘Oh Roger, I’m so glad you’re back,’ she said in a high-pitched, breathless voice. ‘Come into the house at once!’

‘Let me settle Barnabas first,’ I protested, and proceeded towards the market place. Besides stabling the horse, I needed to retrieve my cudgel which I still had not collected from the livery stable.

I handed over the cob and the necessary payment to one of the grooms and followed Barnabas into his stall, where my stick was still propped against the manger. Emerging again into the courtyard, I was astonished to find Cicely waiting for me just inside the big double gates.

‘You’ve had a wasted journey, I’m afraid,’ I told her gently. ‘I know no more about what has happened to your cousin than before I went to the Pennards’.’

I saw the tears well up in her eyes and start to trickle down her cheeks. I put an arm around her shoulders. ‘Don’t cry. I don’t despair yet of finding Peter.’

‘It’s not just that,’ she said, and I felt her tremble. ‘Oh Roger! Now Mark has disappeared as well!’

Chapter Seven

My grip on her shoulders tightened. ‘What do you mean, “disappeared”?’ I demanded. A foolish question, perhaps, for what could the word mean but one thing? Nevertheless, I was not ready to accept as yet that Mark Gildersleeve might have suffered the fate of his brother. ‘No, no,’ I added, ‘don’t tell me here. Say nothing further until we reach your aunt’s house.’ I held up an admonitory finger. ‘Leave it for the moment.’