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

so he cannot be the culprit this time. Personally I suspect outsiders – outlaws from the forest, who sneak into the town after dark.’
    They were getting away from the subject. ‘Boleton was on my list of suspects too,’ she said.
    Cole scowled. ‘He was rounding up our men, to prevent trouble. He did not take your bones.’
    Gwenllian did not argue, but she had her doubts. She had given the events of that fateful night a lot of thought, and could not escape one obvious conclusion – that Symon had been knifed to create a diversion, to prevent her from retrieving Meurig’s chest. She had done everything in her power to make him talk about what he had seen, but he had resisted, doggedly maintaining that it had been too dark to be sure of anything. Why would he keep his silence, unless he suspected the culprit was someone dear to him – a friend he was determined to protect?
    ‘Spilmon and Kyng own the houses on either side of Meurig’s,’ she continued, prudently steering the discussion away from murky waters. ‘That in itself is no reason to suspect them, but they recouped their losses very quickly after the raid. Is it because they sold valuable relics?’
    ‘The invasion started at the opposite end of the town from Priory Street,’ Cole pointed out. ‘Perhaps that gave them enough time to bury their own treasure – in other words, they did not lose as much as they claimed.’
    ‘Perhaps,’ acknowledged Gwenllian. She hesitated, but then pressed on. ‘I hate to include a family member on such a list, but Hywel has always been an enigma to me. He does not work, but never lacks for bread, and will not explain how.’
    ‘He has changed since his father’s death.’
    It was an understatement of enormous proportion. Hywel had never been particularly amiable, but since the raid he had grown surly and withdrawn. It was entirely possible that he had delayed fetching Daniel in order to eavesdrop, and had then hurried off to attack Cole and steal the bones once his father was dead. Gwenllian recalled his curious insistence on acquiring a coffin – surely not a priority for most recently bereaved sons. And then what had he done? Sold the relics to the first religious house willing to buy them? Was that what kept him in ale when he did nothing to earn an honest day’s pay?
    She closed her mind to the awful possibility and turned to the last of her suspects – the one who suddenly loomed larger than the others because of what she had just found in his purse.
    ‘Daniel was in the vicinity too,’ she said quietly. ‘He came to pray over Meurig’s body.’
    Cole’s jaw dropped. ‘You suspected Daniel? But he was a monk!’
    ‘And monks cannot steal?’ Gwenllian pointed to where the bone had fallen. ‘I wager anything you please that this huge finger belonged to Arthur – Meurig said the bones in the chest were massive, and there cannot be that many enormous relics in existence. So how does it come to be in Daniel’s purse?’
    Cole bent to retrieve it. He was a large man, but the bone dwarfed his hand. He stared at it for a while, and she could almost hear his mind working.
    ‘Do you really believe King Arthur was so vast?’ he asked eventually. ‘I have listened to dozens of ballads about the man, but none says he was a giant. Surely, if he were, one account would have drawn attention to the fact?’
    It was a valid point. Could he be right, and the fact that Meurig said his chest contained a behemoth meant it was not Arthur? Gwenllian tried to recall what her brother had told her about the discovery at the abbey in the English marshes.
    ‘When Arthur’s leg was measured against that of a Glastonbury workman, it was almost twice as long. And the skull was so large that the distance between the eye sockets was more than the width of a hand. This was seen as proof that the skeleton belonged to a special man.’
    ‘Very special!’ remarked Cole caustically. ‘If you are right, then Arthur would have