Grave Goods Read Free Page A

captivating, and, isolated from his comrades, with the yells of his mother audible outside the tent and the ax’s blade practically touching his nose, he used it to answer questions.
    No, no, he hadn’t fought with the rebels, not actually fought. They’d taken him along to put their prowess to song. Very content he was, personally, with King Henry Plantagenet to reign, and there was a fine name for a eulogy that he’d be happy to provide anytime.
    Yes, yes, he’d spent a year as an oblate in England, in Glastonbury. His uncle Caradoc ap Griffudd had been a monk there, see, but he, Rhys ap Griffudd ap Owein ap Gwilym …
    Fulk hit him.
    … had decided his vocation lay in the bardic world, and he’d wandered away back to Wales to learn the harp. A fine bard he’d become as it turned out, oh, yes, his “Marwnat Pwyll”—well, “Death Song for Pwyll” it was in English—was considered the finest composition since Taliesin had …
    Fulk hit him again.
    “Oh, well then, the vision. It was of Arthur in his coffin being buried and lamented. My uncle Caradoc saw it. Just after the earthquake it was, see, and terrible that was, the ground heaving like a ship …”
    Slapping him was useless; the man wasn’t being obstructive, he was physically incapable of keeping to the point. It was a matter of waiting it out.
    Eventually, wearily, the king said, “So your uncle saw a vision of Arthur’s burial. In the monks’ graveyard at Glastonbury, between the two pyramids.”
    “Yes, yes, very old those pyramids, very exotic …”
    “Take him away, Fulk. Better keep him separate from the rest; they’re not going to be happy with him.” Henry turned to his bishop. “What’s your opinion, Rowley?”
    The bishop of Saint Albans’s attention was being dominated by the tweezers that were picking shreds of chain mail from his leg.
    He tried to consider the matter. “There are true visions, I don’t say there aren’t, but a dying old man …”
    “Worth telling Glastonbury about it, though?” While his friend havered, the king said, “I need Arthur dead, my son. If there’s something down in that fissure, I want it dug up and shown to every bloody Celt from here to Brittany. No more revolts because a warrior from the Dark Ages is going to lead them to freedom. I want Arthur’s bones, and I want them on display.”
    “If they’re there, Henry,
If
they’re there, they’d require some sort of verification.”
    The poker end in the brazier had become a molten white, and the doctor was lifting it out.
    Henry II showed his vicious little teeth in a grin as he held out his arm; he was going to get some reward from the situation. “Andyou know who can provide that verification—
saints’ bollocks.”
The smell of scorched flesh pervaded the tent.
    “Not her, my lord,” the bishop pleaded, watching the poker approach his leg. “She’s—
goddamn
—she’s—
oof
—earned the right to be left in peace. So have I.”
    “She’s my investigator of the dead, Rowley. That’s what I pay her for.”
    “You don’t pay her, my lord.”
    “Are you sure?” The king puzzled over it, then: “If she gives me a dead Arthur, my son, she can name her price.”

 
     
     
T WO
     
     
     
    M Y DEAR CHILD , you must leave
now,”
Prior Geoffrey said.
“Please
understand. If you and Mansur are summoned to the consistory court, I cannot save you. I doubt if even the bishop could. The summoner will be here today. He’ll have men to take you both by force.”
    “This baby was drowned alive,” Adelia said. “Dear God, somebody threw her into the river alive—there’s weed in the bronchus. Look.” She held out a tiny tube that had been slit by her dissecting knife. “Three infants in three years found floating, and Lord knows how many others that haven’t been discovered.”
    The prior of Cambridge’s great canonry looked around for help, avoiding the poor little mess lying on the tarpaulined table. At one time, he’d