“No, no, don’t think so. What would they have done with the corpses? No corpses at Wolvercote, see. Maggie would’ve known.”
“But something happened. What was it?”
Rhys shifted; he was beginning to wilt. “Well, see, Maggie and me, we were interrupted then.”
In fact, at that point, Wolvercote’s hayward had been seen crossing the field in which the haystack stood and, since the hayward was affianced to young Maggie, the girl had advised Rhys to make a swift withdrawal-in more senses than one. Which he had, going back, fortunately unseen, to the hall’s kitchen, where he’d again entertained the dowager Lady Wolvercote’s servants, this time with some of his bawdier songs, his appreciative audience lubricating his voice with pints of the dowager’s ale until he’d been turfed out into the night by the dowager’s steward, a man lacking any appreciation of music, especially when it reached his bedroom window and woke him up.
How Rhys had managed the six miles back, he couldn’t remember, partly because the loving and redoubtable Maggie had given him another blackjack of ale to help him on his way.
“And you learned nothing more?”
Rhys shook his head.
“I see.” Then she said, “What about the baker? The man I saw in the kitchen? Did you manage to talk to him?”
“Wasn’t there. Itinerant, he is. Only got called in last time because the kitchen baker was sick, see. Goes round the markets with his bread usually. Due at Wells market tomorrow, Maggie said.”
“Today,” Adelia said, firmly. “He’ll be there today. It’s gone midnight.”
The bard’s large eyes fixed on her and then begged for mercy. “Oh, take pity, mistress, you wouldn’t…?”
“Yes, I would. You’ll be singing at Wells market nice and early this morning and talking to itinerant bakers.” She patted his shoulder. “I’m truly grateful to you, Master Rhys. The king shall hear of your efforts.”
If the praise was meant to invigorate the Welshman, it failed.
WHEN MANSUR AND ADELIA set off for the abbey the next day with Gyltha and Allie in tow-Polycarp’s poultice needed changing-they found themselves perspiring before they’d walked a yard.
From being pleasantly warm, the sun was sending out an aggressive heat that, with no cloud in the sky, threatened to become prolonged, wakening the fear of parched crops and thirsty, dying cattle, and sending Adelia back to the inn to fetch the widebrimmed rush hats she’d bought for herself, Gyltha, and Allie on the journey from Wales.
It was obvious that the only way left now to give an age to the skeletons was by attempting to date the coffin they’d been buried in, and, somewhat late, she’d remembered that she should have asked Rhys a question. It had come to her in the otherwise blessedly dreamless sleep into which she’d relapsed on regaining her bed and which, thinking of other matters, she had forgotten on waking.
The bard had already left for Wells market, moaning and protesting, but it might be that either Godwyn or Hilda could give her an answer.
Adelia poked her head round the Pilgrim’s kitchen door, apologizing for her intrusion. “I think Master Rhys once mentioned that there was an earthquake here many years ago and it opened up a fissure in the abbey graveyard. Would either of you remember that?”
It was not a good time. The kitchen had retained the previous day’s heat and, though its shutters were closed against the sun, flies had found their way in to settle on the surfaces of boards and hanging meat.
Godwyn didn’t bother to turn round. Even in the gloom, Hilda’s face could be seen to be red as she put down her flyswatter to glare at Adelia. “How’d we know? We wasn’t here then.”
“Of course you weren’t, of course you weren’t. Silly of me. Er, don’t bother to light a fire. It’s too hot. We’ll be happy to have cold cuts tonight.”
“That’s what you was going to get,” Hilda said. And considering the temperature, she couldn’t be blamed for saying it nastily.
Rejoining the others and handing out hats, Adelia suggested to Gyltha that her question about the fissure was one that could be put to Brother Peter if he was still around.
“Who’d be fishing in a graveyard?” Gyltha wanted to know.
“It’s a hole, Gyltha. The earthquake moves the ground so that it slits open. I’m sure Rhys mentioned a fissure when he was telling us and King Henry about his uncle Caradoc’s vision, at least I think I’m sure.”
When they reached the abbey grounds, they found the monks, their hands folded under their scapulars, emerging from the Abbot’s kitchen on their way to sing terce.
Mansur and Adelia joined them, and Adelia put her question to the abbot.
“In the name of God,” Brother Aelwyn said furiously, appealing to his superior, “are we to be pestered even on our way to holy offices?”
“Answer her, Aelwyn,” his abbot told him.
The monk turned to Adelia. “Yes, a fissure was opened by the earthquake, what of it?”
“Twenty years ago?”
“That was when the earthquake occurred, the day after Saint Stephen’s Day, to be exact, if it’s any business of yours, mistress.”
“Between the pyramids, was it?”
“Yes.”
“And how deep was it?”
“Deep, deep, woman. We didn’t bother to measure it, we had other things on our mind. Deep. It closed itself the next day, in any case.”
“Were you here, then?” Adelia persisted.
She had exhausted Brother Aelwyn’s small store of patience, and it was Brother James who answered excitedly, “We were all here then, were we not, my brothers? Oh, no, Abbot, you weren’t, were you? You came to us later. I thought the Last Hour was on us, God have mercy.” Tears came to his eyes as he looked round the blackened hill. “And now it has.”
Abbot Sigward put his arm round James’s shoulders. “With the Lord’s grace, Glastonbury will rise again, my son. Let us go to our prayers.” He nodded at Adelia, and led his flock toward the ruined church.
Gyltha and Allie headed up the hill.
“What is this about a fissure?” Mansur asked.
“We’ll have to see,” Adelia said.
She ushered him into the hut and pointed at the coffin lying between the two covered catafalques. “Look at that. It’s in fairly good condition still, but they had to dig sixteen feet down to find it, in which case it must be very old, as old as anything in the pit. Yet it hasn’t crumbled. You said there were other coffins down there, and I want to compare this one with those. I think we might be able to get a rough, very rough, dating from the state of the wood.”
“And if this one turns out to be newer than the others?”
Adelia grinned at him. “Then it could only have been put sixteen feet down when the fissure opened, twenty years ago.”
“And is therefore not Arthur’s.”
“No.”
Mansur sucked his teeth. “That will not please the monks-nor the king.”
And all at once, Adelia didn’t want to find out how old this coffin was, nor to deny the title of Arthur and Guinevere to those poor bones.
This was not merely a matter of forensics; it had become massive; it crushed her. A great abbey’s future, those faithful men singing out there, the rebuilding of an entire town, the welfare of an inn, the dream of so many-these expectations rested with her decision.
Oh, God, don’t put this on me. I don’t want to be hope’s executioner.
But she was Vesuvia Adelia Rachel Ortese Aguilar, medica of the Salerno School, and if she was not a seeker after truth, she was nothing.
She gritted her teeth and said, “Let’s get to it.”
There was no point in sawing a piece off the coffin until she had wood to compare it with. The two of them left the hut and dodged between the tumbled stone of the church as they crossed the once-great nave where, in what had been the choir, the monks were chanting Psalm 119.
“My soul melteth for heaviness; strengthen thou me according to thy word.Remove from me the way of lying and grant me thy law in graciousness.”
Adelia couldn’t look at them.
The huge section of wall that still stood between the church and its graveyard lessened the sound of the monks’ voices, replacing it with the hum of bees. Perhaps because she was expecting them now, the two pyramids and the mountain of earth between them looked less monstrous than they had.
Mansur began unwinding a rope that had been round his waist, concealed by his robe. “I asked the man Godwyn for it,” he said. “I suspect those steps into the pit, they are beginning to crumble.”
Adelia smiled at him. He’d brought it because he knew that this time she would insist on going down the hole with him.
Gyltha and Allie were returning from the hill. “Too hot, bor,” Gyltha said. “I’m taking madam home afore she frizzles.”
“How’s Polycarp?” Adelia asked Allie.
Her daughter was red-cheeked with heat and pleasure. “Better. Even Brother Peter said he thought he was better, though he didn’t like saying it, did he, Gyltha? Rude man, but he likes Polycarp.”
“And I asked the miserable bugg…” Gyltha said, then, remembering Allie’s presence, started again; “I asked un about the fissure. He were only a lad then, but he reckons the hole was sixteen, seventeen foot deep afore it closed up.”
She looked suspiciously at Mansur, who was tying his rope around one of the pyramids, and then at the mound of earth that was casting a shadow over the pit beside it. “You two ain’t thinking of going down that damn great hole, I hope. Nasty places, holes. Them’s where demons come from.”
“Oh, get on home. Mansur’s made sure we’ll be safe.” Lovingly, Adelia watched them go, one tall, one short, like two ill-assorted walking mushrooms in their wide hats.
Mansur threw the free end of the rope down the pit, but even now he wanted her to stay at the top. “It is not enjoyable down there.”
“You managed, so I can.” She wanted to see for herself and, once he had climbed down, she followed him.
The steps down the side of the pit were beginning to crumble, but they had been well cut and, as long as she went down backward, holding on to the rope, feeling for the next with first one foot and then the other, they bore her weight well enough.
The great mound of displaced earth above took away most of the light. The smell of soil was overlaid by a less pleasurable reek. Bits of bone showed white-gray against the pit’s sides; wood was smudges of brown.
She was descending into the past, through centuries, passing the level in which lay the remains of Glastonbury ’s great abbots. Down, down, past the bones of men who’d served the formidable Saint Dunstan. Another stratum and she had reached the resting place of monks who’d defied invasions by the Vikings and saved the literacy of Christianity from their raids.
“There, God leading them, they found an old church built, as ’twas said, by the hands of Christ’s disciples, and prepared by God Himself for the salvation of souls, which church the Heavenly Builder Himself showed to be consecrated by many miraculous deeds, and many mysteries of healing.”
So William of Malmesbury, the historian, had written.
And now, as Adelia’s feet touched the bottom of the pit, who knew whether she was now standing in the entombment of those early disciples themselves, one of them Joseph of Arimathea, whose
