‘New buildings don’t come cheap,’ the woman said rudely. She eyed his garments minutely, from the feather in his favourite and well-worn broad-brimmed hat to his comfy old riding boots.
Refusing to be drawn, Josse merely said, ‘So I imagine.’
She took hold of a fold of her skirt, swishing the gorgeous silk to and fro so that it made a soft, rustling sound. He caught a glimpse of an underskirt in a deeper shade of silver grey and saw a flash of exquisite, pure white lace, stiff and costly. She tapped her slim foot in its soft leather slipper. ‘Of course,’ she said languidly when she had evidently reassured herself that Josse had noticed every item of the display, ‘my husband is a very wealthy man.’
‘Indeed,’ Josse said mildly.
‘Oh, yes.’
‘That must be quite delightful for you, my lady.’ He wondered if she would detect the irony.
‘Naturally, it is.’ Apparently not. ‘My husband claims that it is his privilege to give me pleasure by buying me whatever I desire.’ She gave an artificial little sigh, as if she could not quite believe her generosity in allowing her husband the huge favour of allowing him to spend his money on her.
‘Perhaps he is fresh to marriage?’ Josse asked. ‘It is well known that a new bridegroom often indulges his bride.’
‘We are two years wed,’ she said sharply. Then, forcing a smile that went no further than her lips: ‘Florian likes to ensure my favour, sir knight. I had many suitors and he does well not to forget that he had to face much competition for my hand.’
Watching her, Josse thought but did not point out that her former popularity was hardly relevant now that she had made her choice and was married to Florian. It seemed highly likely that she used the reminder of it as a stick with which to beat the unfortunate Florian whenever his attention slipped from his decorative, spoiled wife and his purse-strings began to draw closed.
Josse was beginning to feel very sorry for Florian of Southfrith.
It was hot in the courtyard. The sun was beating off the flagstones and the walls of the house and the air was dry and full of dust. The woman on her mounting block, predictably, had taken the only patch of shade. A better-mannered person would, Josse thought, by now have invited him inside the house and offered him something cool to drink. Florian’s wife contented herself with staring at him impatiently and making it perfectly apparent that she wished he would go away.
‘I am grateful for your kindness and your time, lady,’ he said, increasing the irony. Bowing, he added, ‘I will leave you to your overseer’s duties.’ And that, he decided as he straightened up, was verging on plain rude; to suggest to a rich man’s wife that she was forced to labour like a workman was an insult.
Colour flew swiftly into her face. She seemed about to make some vitriolic reply but, with an effort, she controlled herself. Then she turned her back.
Josse walked back across the courtyard and out through the gate, freeing Horace’s reins from the hitching ring and swinging up into the saddle. Looking back, he saw the door to the house suddenly open from within. A woman dressed in black emerged on to the steps; she wore a long veil whose edge came down low over her eyes so that Josse could not see her face clearly. However, her figure, her posture and the harsh voice which called out in French suggested strongly that she was the young woman’s mother.
‘Primevere, que fais-tu la au plein soleil?’ demanded the older woman. Primevere, Josse thought. Primrose. A singularly unfitting name for Florian’s haughty wife, whose looks and nature were far removed from the simple prettiness of a primrose. ‘Tu seras bronzee comme une rustre!’ The older woman spat out the pejorative word like an oath.
‘I am not in the sun, Maman,’ the younger woman called back. ‘There is no danger whatsoever that I shall start to look like some rustic lout, so there is no need to make such a fuss.’
The older woman had just noticed Josse.
‘C’est qui, lui?’ she demanded of her daughter, jerking her chin in Josse’s direction.
Primevere turned to stare at Josse. ‘His identity is not important,’ she said dismissively. ‘He is just leaving.’ Then she climbed down gracefully from her mounting block, took her mother’s outstretched hand and went with her back into the house, slamming the door behind her with a loud and eloquent bang.
The second part of Josse’s mission was less straightforward: there did not seem to be any obvious way of discovering where Florian had found the bones that he had transported to the clearing in the forest. Where, Josse wondered as he rode along in the sun, trying to distract himself from his growing thirst, would a man go to find bones? A burial ground? Some grave sunk beneath the aisle of a church? A wealthy family’s private vault? He had no idea which suggestion, if any, might be the right one.
He caught sight of a small church ahead, set beneath trees to one side of the track. He saw as he drew nearer that someone was sitting on the step of the open door; the priest was taking his ease in the cool shade with a mug of beer and a thick hunk of dark and dryish-looking bread.
‘Greetings!’ the priest called out as Josse rode up. He waved the mug. ‘Will you take a drop? It’s as cold as my subterranean cellar can make it! There’s water in the trough for your handsome horse, too.’
Deciding that this was probably not the happy priest’s first mugful, Josse willingly dismounted, tethered Horace in the shade beside the trough and went to seat himself on the doorstep.
‘A-a-ah!’ he said with deep pleasure as his buttocks encountered the cool stone.
‘Good, eh?’ the priest said with a smile. ‘Here.’ He handed over a second mug and Josse drank gratefully.
‘That’s worth a long, hot ride,’ Josse said when he had taken the edge off his thirst.
‘You’ve come far?’ asked the priest.
‘From Hawkenlye Abbey.’
‘I see.’ The priest eyed him shrewdly. ‘Come to have a look at the rival attraction?’
‘Aye.’ There seemed no point in denying it.
‘Do you believe what is being claimed for those particularly large bones?’
Josse paused. ‘I do not want to believe,’ he said, ‘but I am forced to admit that there is a power to the place — to the bones, perhaps — that I cannot explain.’
The priest sighed deeply; all happiness had abruptly left his cheerful face. ‘That’s what they all say,’ he muttered glumly.
‘Father,’ Josse began tentatively, ‘let’s say for argument’s sake that those are not the bones of Merlin but that Florian of Southfrith found them elsewhere and took them into the forest, then claimed to have unearthed them there and to have discovered that they are miraculous.’
‘That would amount to fraud, which is a very serious allegation,’ the priest said warningly.
‘Oh, I make no allegation’ — Josse spoke swiftly — ‘I merely outline a hypothesis.’
‘Go on.’ The priest sounded guarded.
‘Well, if it happened that way, I’m asking myself where on earth such bones might have been found? Are there any such within your church and its immediate surroundings, for example?’
Now the priest was studying him closely. ‘There are, but no grave has been disturbed.’ The smile breaking out again, he said, ‘I checked.’
Josse laughed briefly. ‘You have entertained the same thought, then, Father?’
And the priest said very quietly, ‘Yes.’
After a thoughtful pause, the priest spoke again. ‘You ask where a man might find a skeleton. Sir knight, such a task is difficult but not impossible. The chalk downs to the south of us were long inhabited by our forebears and, like all men, in their due time they died. Now it is an interesting thing, but it is my observation that sometimes our ancestors burned the bodies of the dead, for I have seen for myself how some graves contain burned bones bundled up in small spaces, accompanied by offerings to the pagan gods that the people worshipped.’