New Blood From Old Bones Read online

  Bello:

  hidden talent rediscovered

  Bello is a digital only imprint of Pan Macmillan, established to breathe life into previously published classic books.

  At Bello we believe in the timeless power of the imagination, of good story, narrative and entertainment and we want to use digital technology to ensure that many more readers can enjoy these books into the future.

  We publish in ebook and Print on Demand formats to bring these wonderful books to new audiences.

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  Contents

  Sheila Radley

  Dedication

  Author’s note

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Ninteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty One

  Chapter Twenty Two

  Chapter Twenty Three

  Chapter Twenty Four

  Chapter Twenty Five

  Chapter Twenty Six

  Sheila Radley

  New Blood from Old Bones

  Sheila Radley

  Sheila Radley was born and brought up in rural Northamptonshire, one of the fortunate means-tested generation whose further education was free. She went from her village school via high school to London University, where she read history.

  She served for nine years as an education officer in the Women’s Royal Air Force, then worked variously as a teacher, a clerk in a shoe factory, a civil servant and in advertising. In the 1960s she opted out of conventional work and joined her partner in running a Norfolk village store and post office, where she began writing fiction in her spare time. Her first books, written as Hester Rowan, were three romantic novels; she then took to crime, and wrote ten crime novels as Sheila Radley.

  Dedication

  To our friends Kay, Alan and Kim, with special thanks to Kim, who drew the map

  Author’s note

  Castle Acre, a Norfolk village with the ruins of a Norman castle on one side and a Cluniac priory on the other, has provided the setting for this book. But I have taken liberties with its history and topography, and the resulting Castleacre is a place of fiction.

  Chapter One

  On a yellow day in September in the year 1530, when fields were in stubble after harvest and crab-apples hung deceitfully ripe from hedgerows along the dusty way, Will Ackland came riding home from the foreign wars.

  It had taken him a long time to make this homecoming. The high-spirited young man who had left his law books and his new wife to volunteer for the sport of war had been changed by the experience. Pain and fear of death had matured him, and so had grief. Now, at the age of thirty-one, he was lean and quietly spoken, with a dry wit and watchful grey-green eyes under thick dark brows.

  Like other folk on the road – pilgrims and pedlars, vagabonds, messengers, carters, rent-collectors, packhorse carriers, drovers with their cattle, wayfarers of every rank, and those who went silently about the King’s business – he was stained by the sweat and dust of travel. His sturdy young servant, who rode laggardly behind him, had more than his share of the grime but none of Will’s patience.

  ‘Shall we never be at Castleacre?’ complained Ned Pye. ‘I’ve seen more than enough of your dull Norfolk already,’ he added, knowing he was safely out of reach of a box on the ear.

  His master paid no heed. Ned had been in his service from the age of eighteen, in the King’s army and out of it, and Will allowed him an occasional sauciness. He had good reason to be thankful for Ned’s loyalty and strength.

  Will Ackland had lain wounded in a Normandy priory, likely to die from loss of blood, when King Henry VIII’s second French war ended in dishonour. Instead of enforcing his claim to the French throne, the King had been obliged by lack of funds to sue for peace without having gained one yard of land beyond Calais. But the deep arrow wounds in Will’s thigh took so long to heal that it was many weeks before he and Ned could return to England.

  There, in Dover, he had found letters from Castleacre awaiting him with tragic news. While he was away, his wife Anne had died giving birth to their child. Believing in his anguish that there was nothing for him in England, Will had immediately taken ship again for France.

  At Calais he had fallen in with an esquire he had known in London, where they were students of the law at Gray’s Inn. The esquire was now on his way to Paris in the service of a royal envoy, an English nobleman. With one of his attendants sick of a fever, and finding that Will spoke fluent French after his stay in the priory, the nobleman had offered him a place in his service.

  In the following years Will Ackland and his servant had travelled between the English court and those of France, the Emperor and the Pope. It was those years of being in silent attendance when great men conferred, serving his noble master by assessing what lay concealed behind the smooth words of foreign ministers of state, that had taught Will patience and watchfulness. But after four years he had had enough of it.

  Though he had kept his distance from Castleacre, letters from his sister who had charge of the child told him how Anne’s daughter grew. And now that his grief for his wife had lessened to a permanent ache, sharpening whenever something recalled her to his mind – just as the pain of his wounds, though far less grievous than bereavement, still flared up every now and then – he no longer thought ill of the child for having taken her mother’s life.

  Elizabeth, that was his daughter’s name. Betsy, they called her. Suddenly anxious to see her, he had given up the salary and perquisites of service, taken sail for England, bought horses at Dover and set out for home. Even so, he had spent two weeks over the ride to Norfolk, lingering in London and in Cambridge while he accustomed himself to being his own man again.

  Behind him, as they rode the last few miles, Ned Pye was still grumbling.

  A bold young man, with plump cheeks and thatch the colour of new straw, Ned had been sorry to relinquish their former way of life. He had enjoyed travelling to foreign cities, boasting to foreign women, riding sound horses and eating and drinking well at his master’s master’s expense. On the other hand, being London-born, he would have settled happily enough in that city. But the countryside appealed to him not at all, and he had spent much of the journey singing a tuneless lament for everything he was leaving behind.

  ‘What is it now?’ demanded Will, out of patience at last, turning in his saddle as he heard Ned trying to stir his unwilling horse to a canter.

  ‘Even in Norfolk they know a nag when they see one!’ complained his servant as he came near. ‘That woman selling fruit at the wayside –’ He tried to bite a pear he had snatched from her basket, found it rock-hard and hurled it away indignantly. ‘She mocked me for riding such a poor mount.’

  ‘She mocked you for not knowing a keeping pear from an eater, more like,’ said Will. They were about to overtake a husbandman and his wife, both tottering under the weight of the laden panniers that hung from their shoulder yokes. ‘If the horse isn’t good enough for you, you must journey on foot. And if it’s London you hanker for, you have my leave to turn round and trudge
back.’

  Ned’s eyes rounded at the affront. ‘There’s small thanks for the man who carried you off the battlefield on his shoulders!’

  ‘You’ve had my thanks these four years. If you’d sought a rich man’s gratitude you should have saved a knight, not a poor student.’

  ‘If only I had,’ mourned Ned with a gusty sigh. ‘But my tender heart always gets the better of my head … Promise me, though, Master Will, that I shall have a good horse when we reach the castle?’

  ‘Ah, the castle,’ said Will dryly. ‘There’ll be a choice of horses for you there – and fountains flowing with wine, and dancing girls, and roasted swan for your dinner too. Have done, you knave, and ride with reverence, for we’re now in Norfolk’s holy land.’

  They were riding north on an ancient road, the Peddars’Way, that was said to have been made by the old Romans. Straight as a rule for the most part, it ran direct through the town of Castleacre on its way to the sea coast at the Wash. And hereabouts, near the valley of the river Nar, there were so many religious houses – abbeys, priories, nunneries, friaries, as well as chantries and parish churches – that the volume of prayer, so it was said, was enough to keep the saints in permanent attendance upon Norfolk. The strongest sound of the countryside was the call of their bells, echoing and re-echoing far and near.

  Hereabouts too, there was a converging of the roads that led pilgrims from all parts of the kingdom towards the great shrine of Our Lady at Walsingham. The Cluniac priory of Castleacre, one of the largest and finest and best-endowed in the entire eastern part of England, provided both a rest for pilgrims before the last day’s journey to Walsingham, and a place of pilgrimage on its own account.

  On that September day the great bells of the priory were drawing pilgrims to the shrine of St Matthew at Castleacre. At the forthcoming feast of St Matthew, those crowding into the priory church to repent of their sins and ask for the prayers of the monks could obtain a special indulgence, a remission of the suffering they feared to endure as souls in purgatory after they died.

  The priory church, with its richly glazed windows and intricately sculpted stone, had long been a place of great splendour. Gifts of money or valuables had been made not only by penitents, but by those who came to invoke the aid of the saints, or to return thanks for favours received. The wealthy had also made bequests, often of land or property, in return for the saying of masses for the salvation of their souls. In the light of countless votive candles, the many carved and painted images of the saints shone all over with jewels and gold and silver.

  The church possessed many saintly relics, but none was more venerated than the relic of St Matthew. Resting within a magnificent shrine, in a glass-sided reliquary adorned with rubies and sapphires, lay two of the bones of the apostle’s hand.

  This relic had miraculous powers of healing. For two hundred years and more, as chronicled in the reign of King Henry VI by one of the monks of Castleacre, many of the pilgrims who flocked to pray at the shrine had been cured of grievous ailments. But it was on the feast day of St Matthew that pilgrims could hope to witness an even greater miracle.

  Then, on the twenty-first day of September each year, at the ringing of the great bell, the reliquary would be lifted down from its glittering shrine. It would be held high by the monks and borne in solemn procession behind the cross, with plainchant, censers, banners and candles, and with the prior and sub-prior wearing their most magnificent priestly copes.

  The procession would pass first through every part of the church except the nave, and then out round the cloister, before returning through the great west door. Having passed slowly through the nave, they would halt before the rood screen before re-entering the choir to begin High Mass. And the pilgrims who had squeezed into the crowded nave would press forward, open-mouthed with awe, craning through candlelight and clouds of incense to see for themselves whether the miracle had indeed recurred, and the dry bones of the saint were once again bedewed with blood.

  Will Ackland reined in his horse. They had crested Bartholomew’s Hills, a downland sheep pasture a mile to the south of Castleacre, and the shallow valley of the Nar was spread before them.

  He pointed out to Ned Pye the great stone tower, clamouring with the sound of bells, that rose from the valley floor. The top of the tower, rearing high above the trees that marked the course of the river, was shaped to a massive red-tiled point in the style of France, where the Cluniac order had originated.

  ‘There’s the priory church of Castleacre. The town lies above and to the east of it, beyond the trees, and the castle to the east of that.’

  ‘I see no castle,’ said Ned, disappointed.

  ‘You will when we reach the river. You’ll find it much smaller than the priory,’ Will warned, but his servant seemed disinclined to believe it.

  They rode on, to the place where pilgrims from other parts of England joined the Peddars’Way before continuing to Castleacre or Walsingham. At the crossroads stood a gibbet as a warning to thieves and would-be murderers. Its upright post leaned forward, habituated to a dangling weight on the extended arm, though the thing that swayed there now was light enough, nothing but rags and bones abandoned even by carrion crows. All the travellers skirted it, and crossed themselves as they did so.

  Those who were going to Castleacre for St Matthew’s feast now filled the road. Some solitary pilgrims strode along in seasoned walking boots, with staves in their hands and scallop shell badges in their hats to signify that they had made the great pilgrimage to the Spanish shrine of St James at Compostella. Of the others, some went penitently barefoot for at least the last mile. Those who sought healing leaned for support on their friends, or were carried on litters. But most of the pilgrims rode in cheerful company, including a group of nuns perched on muleback with their priest and their steward in attendance.

  Some distance behind the nuns, but gaining on them, an archdeacon came cantering on a fine horse, accompanied by his chaplain and clerks. Servants rode before him to clear the way, but people were glad enough to move when they recognised his stern face, and the black gown, silver cross and close-fitting black cap that marked his office.

  None wanted to offend him, for the archdeacon travelled the diocese to enquire into the state of each parish church, and the conduct of both clergy and people. Those who offended against church law would be summoned to attend the archdeacon’s court, which had power to excommunicate them for heresy, and to fine or imprison for other offences. The church’s law touched every part of life, and those who kept well within the common law might still fear being reported to the archdeacon. As a Castleacre blacksmith had once complained to Will, with so many ways to offend – speaking ill of the priest, absence from the church, disturbance within it, failure to pay tithe, bastardy, adultery, fornication – any red-blooded parishioner was hard put to keep out of trouble.

  But many travellers were coming to Castleacre with little but profit on their minds. Mingling with the pilgrims were country people laden with extra supplies of vegetables and fruit, butter and cheese. Pedlars and chapmen came from afar with trinkets and pins and bobbins and ribbons, bringing a wealth of news both true and false. Strolling bands of players came to provide entertainment, as did minstrel troupes, and a man with a performing ape, and another leading a dancing bear. And mingling with the crowds, heedless of the stocks in the market place and the gibbet on Bartholomew’s Hills, there were sure to be vagabonds, beggars and thieves.

  Progress was slow as the crowds moved down the long slope towards the ford, where the Peddars’Way crossed the river to the south of the town. Just before the ford, the road rose over a bank topped by an oak tree. From this bank, as Will remembered from his boyhood, there was a good view of the town and the castle, held in the shallow embrace of the river as it flowed below them and on past the priory to the port of Bishop’s Lynn.

  Will drew his horse to one side, under the branches of the oak from which he and his schoolfellows had used to spy on tra
vellers coming to the town. Then, as now, those on horseback splashed through the water and those on foot crossed by the upstream stepping stones. The scene was entirely familiar – and yet different, as all homecoming travellers discover when they notice an empty skyline where trees once stood, or find a view blocked by a growing thicket, or see a new roof where there was none before.

  The river, though, was just as he remembered it. He breathed pleasurably deep as he watched the weed waving in the clear, fast-flowing chalk stream and smelled the peppery freshness of watercress. He and his friends had often spied on the servant girls who came down from the town to wash linen, and sometimes themselves, at the stepping stones. It was in the deep pool above the stones that he had learned to swim. And further downriver, near the priory, he had once spent an idle afternoon in competition with some of the monks, seeing who would be first to tickle a trout.

  Will turned his head as Ned Pye rode up the bank to join him. ‘There is the whole of Castleacre,’ he announced, with a grand gesture that swept from the riverside priory, itself the size of a small town, up across rising fields to the town proper, overtopped by the tower of the parish church, and so to the walls of his ancestral home. But he spoke with a twitch of amusement, for his servant had always been over-impressed by the knowledge that the Acklands lived in a castle.

  Ned’s face lengthened with dismay.

  ‘That is your castle? But it’s ruined!’

  ‘Destroyed two hundred and fifty years ago,’ said Will. He laughed at his servant’s gloom. ‘Why do we need a fortress? We have no enemies to fight, nor noble friends to impress.’

  He looked with some affection at the remaining stone walls that had once surrounded a castle keep, built on the far side of the valley in the time of the Norman kings to control the crossing of the Nar. The outer walls had been breached in the barons’wars, and had crumbled thereafter from age and disuse. In the reign of King Henry VII the old keep had been used by the Acklands as a quarry, when they had built themselves a dwelling house within the outer walls.