Free King Arthur's Bones by The Medieval Murderers Page A

weapon?’
    His face was pale, and she understood this was not a very desirable solution – the Church was powerful and would object to a secular official accusing one of its members of heinous crimes.
    ‘Not necessarily, although we should bear it in mind. But crosses are not the only cruciform objects in existence. Look at your sword, for example. Were you to strike someone with its hilt, it would produce a wound shaped exactly like this one.’
    He glanced at it. ‘I am not the killer – I was tucked up in bed with you when Daniel died.’
    She said nothing, but his claim was not entirely true. She had heard Daniel leave, but it had been some time before Cole had joined her upstairs. She had asked him where he had been, and he had mumbled something about a raid on the kitchens for food. It was something he did not infrequently, and she had thought no more about it.
    ‘If Daniel was killed with a sword, then none of your soldiers is responsible,’ she went on. ‘Their hilts are too thick to have made this mark. In other words, the murder weapon would be a knight’s blade, not one owned by a common man.’
    ‘Then Daniel was killed with something else,’ said Cole firmly, ‘because the only knights in Carmarthen at the moment are Boleton and me. What else might it have been?’
    Gwenllian was not surprised to hear him dismiss the possibility that Boleton might be responsible, given their close friendship. Personally she disliked the man, and had still not forgiven him for what she saw as his abandonment of Cole during Lord Rhys’s raid – not to mention his unattractive habit of running up debts and persuading Cole to settle them. Fortunately, though, a recent inheritance had made him comfortably wealthy, so he was currently paying for his own wine, whores and fine clothes.
    ‘Some pots have bases that are cruciform,’ she suggested. ‘Spilmon showed me one only last week, which he had bought in Bristol. It was very heavy, and might well kill a man.’
    ‘Spilmon,’ mused Cole. He did not add anything else, but his expression was troubled. ‘Can the body tell you anything more?’
    She wished he had not washed it, feeling all manner of clues might have been lost in his misguided attempt to be sensitive. She inspected the rest of Daniel, noting that his habit bore two muddy patches where he would have fallen to his knees, and dust on the chest and stomach – from pitching forward into the dirt.
    Then she picked up his purse, and emptied the contents into her hand. As Cole had said, it contained six pennies and a small phial. And there was something else too, caught in some loose stitching at the bottom. It was a finger-bone – one that suggested its owner would have been enormous.
    Gwenllian’s mind reeled as she stared at what lay in her hand. Then she flung it away, frightened by it. Cole regarded her in astonishment, but it was a moment before she could speak.
    ‘Do you remember me telling you how my brother hid King Arthur’s bones under Merlin’s oak?’ she asked unsteadily. ‘And how someone overheard, and got them before I could do as he asked, and move them somewhere safe?’
    Cole grimaced. ‘Yes – you were delayed, because you were nursing me. You had several suspects, although I cannot recall them all now.’
    She began to list them for him. ‘I virtually told Gilbert the Thief that the oak held something worth stealing, while your clerk John has a nasty habit of eavesdropping. Did you know he was listening to you and Daniel two nights ago, by the way? I saw him in the shadows when I went to fetch a cup of water from the kitchen.’
    Cole blinked. ‘Why would he do that? All we talked about was horses and the recent spate of thefts that have been plaguing the town.’
    ‘Have you asked Gilbert about those?’ asked Gwenllian dryly.
    ‘Of course. But Boleton and I searched the caches he usually uses for his stolen property, and they are empty. Besides, Boleton has been watching him,