A Finer End

sixty-three bodies found there? It was the position the pagans had used to bury criminals and evildoers, and the custom had most likely been adopted by the early Christian settlement. It certainly left no question as to who — or what — a man had been in life.
    Andrew looked back to the east, past the town with the Abbey at its heart, to the Tor rising into a grey bank of cloud. Could he face such exposure? Ruin? The loss of everything he valued? He had never wanted to do anything but teach, and that would no longer be possible.
    Worse, his sister would despise him, and that above all he could not bear.
     
    Since Jack’s visit the previous afternoon, Simon had combed minutely through copies of the Abbey accounts. A record of the produce from the Abbey’s many estates had been an important part of Abbey life, and information noted for a particular year included such notations as ‘7,000 eels from the fisheries at Martinsey’, ‘honey from the mead-maker at Northload’, or ‘30 salmon from the cellarer for the monks’ feast’.
    But the Abbey’s expenditures had been recorded, too, and it was in such an account that Simon discovered something in the tiny, faded script. He sat up, rubbed his eyes, and read it again.
    In the summer of the year 1082, Abbot Thurstan had paid a mason named Hamlyn for repairs done on St Dunstan’s Church.
    There was no mistake. He had probably read that particular entry a dozen times these past few months without paying it any attention — but he had not possessed the knowledge to make a connection.
    He was making a number of assumptions, of course: that Edmund would have still been in his teens when he succumbed to Alys’s charms, that only one mason was hired to do repair work during that period, that Hamlyn might have had a daughter called Alys.
    "frying to keep his excitement in check, Simon began to search his sources for any mention of her. It was almost noon when he found it, and it amazed him that he had not seen it before when he had looked for references to Jack’s family. Herluin, who succeeded Thurstan as abbot in 1100, had been determined to regain lands lost to the Abbey during the Conquest and to increase the Abbey’s wealth. The abbot had required an extensive accounting of the Abbey’s possessions, and in one such record it was noted that Alys Montfort, née Hamlyn, had given a gift of fine cloth to the church, with the stipulation that it be recorded in her name.
    So Alys had married, and it looked to have been a good marriage at that. But what had happened to the child? If it had lived, contrary to Edmund’s expectation, Jack might be a direct descendant of Alys Montfort. Her husband’s Christian name wasn’t given, but surely there couldn’t have been many men called Montfort in that time period, especially with professions that would have allowed his wife to make such a generous gift to the church.
    Edmund might provide the answers, but not only was Jack focused on Winifred’s recovery at the moment, Edmund’s information tended to be very capricious. And as it seemed Edmund was capable of intense emotions concerning past events, it was possible that the subject of his lover’s marriage might still be painful to him.
    Was it guilt that drove Edmund to communicate across the centuries? The monk seemed to feel that his dalliance with Alys Hamlyn, and his help in her attempt to abort her baby, had in some way been responsible for the loss of the chant, and that only the music’s return would expiate his sins.
    Simon perused the last communication from Edmund. What did he mean when he said he’d given Alys what ‘was most precious to him’? Suppose, just suppose, that when Alys left the Abbey, Edmund had given her a copy of the chant for safe keeping?
    Edmund had been both musical and literate — a scholar, by his own admission. Was it unreasonable to think that the monk might have written down a version of his beloved chant?
    And if that were the case, might Alys have given it to her child? For eight centuries, might it have been passed down through the family, unremarked?
     
    Gemma and Kincaid had decided to walk the short distance from the B & B to Hillhead Lane. But by the time they neared the address Jack had given them for Andrew Catesby, halfway up the eastern slope of Wearyall Hill, Gemma was breathing hard. She gazed at the Tor rising behind them. ‘It doesn’t look so daunting from here, does it?’
    ‘A trick of height and