Extract: Hill of Bones

Old Joan found the first corpse just before dawn or, to be more accurate, she fell over it and banged her knee hard on a sharp rock jutting out of the sand. She cursed loudly as she massaged the bruise, but she could not afford to indulge her pain for long. Distant voices, carried towards her on the salt breeze, compelled her to focus her attention on the man lying on the beach.

There was no question that he was dead. His bulging eyes were open and glassy, staring sightless up at the ghost of the moon. Strands of wet grey hair clung to his forehead and a crust of salt was already beginning to frost the stubble on his grizzled chin. Wincing, Joan crouched down on the damp sand. She slid her hand over the stranger’s fish-cold face and closed his eyes.

She crossed herself, muttering a swift prayer to St Nicholas, patron saint of sailors, and Our Lady of the Sea, for them to have mercy on this stranger’s soul. Then, in less time than it takes to say a ‘Paternoster’, Joan ran her callused fingers over the body of the corpse and stripped it of what few items of value she could find – an enamel amulet in the form of a blue eye, a small leather bag containing a
couple of silver coins and a belt with a broad brass buckle.

Painfully, the old woman struggled to her feet and moved on, searching for another corpse or, if she was lucky, a barrel or chest she could prise open. She knew there would be other bodies. Last night there had been a storm. Seeing the purple clouds massing, all the
local boatmen had beached their little fishing boats high up on the shore long before nightfall. But when the villagers left the church of St Bridget, after the vigil for the Eve of Good Friday, they spotted the lanterns of a ship rising and falling in the darkness far out in the bay.

They stood silently huddled against the wind, watching the ship being driven relentlessly towards the cliffs of Brean Down at the far end
of the sands. They saw the wind rip her sails into rags and her back break on the rocks. Then, as one, the villagers crossed themselves as the foaming waves surged over her decks, dragging men and masts alike down into the thundering depths.

The sailors and fishermen among the villagers – and there were many – shook their heads. The storm was a bad one, to be sure, but it was not so violent as to drive a well-manned ship onto the rocks, not if the sails had been furled in time and the captain had been doing his job. They muttered darkly that the ship was on a doomed voyage, cursed from the outset. Maybe an enemy had hidden a hare’s foot on board, or else a sailor’s daughter had neglected to crush the shell of her boiled egg, but whatever the cause, once the ship was on the rocks there was no saving her, nor any man who sailed on her...

Extract from Act Three by Karen Maitland in Hill of Bones: The Medieval Murderers published by Simon & Schuster.