Grave Goods by Ariana Franklin

go down the hill that Adelia fully realized the extent of the catastrophe that had overwhelmed the place. On the left, they were following what had been the monastery’s great boundary wall, now a blackened, tumbled collection of stones with silence beyond it.
    As pitiable—and nobody had mentioned this—flames had alsoleaped the wall to consume the little town that lay outside it. For on the right as they rode, torchlight fell on naked spars that had been the thatched shops and cottages belonging to laypeople serving both the abbey and the pilgrims who had come to worship at its shrines.
    Here had once been a busy high street; now the smitch of ash hung acrid on its air; apart from the moon, there was no light anywhere, no activity, only silence. Adelia heard Captain Bolt say incredulously, making a sign of the cross, “God have mercy, it’s dead. Glastonbury’s dead.”
    Toward the bottom of the hill, where it met the river to flatten into a wide, paved market square and quay, the abbey wall remained intact and so, opposite, did a three-story building—proximity to water and the fact that it was built of stone had preserved it to be all that was left of a thriving town. Again, there was no sign of occupation; the frontage, with its stout door leading out onto the street, was dark, but Captain Bolt’s lamp shone on a wide, high entrance arch to the right and, above it, carved into the lintel, was the unmistakable figure of a man in a brimmed hat carrying a scrip.
    They had found the Pilgrim Inn.
    Wheeling to go under the arch, the cavalcade entered a large, deserted courtyard formed by outbuildings and, on the left, the inn itself—from which the light of a single candle shone through the boards of one of the windows’ shutters.
    “God be thanked,” Captain Bolt said. He dismounted and began hammering on the Pilgrim’s side door.
    Inside, a dog began barking. The candle above was snuffed out. There was a creak, as if somebody had opened the shutter the tiniest crack—other than that, nothing happened.
    Adelia and Gyltha were lifted from the saddles, and theirhorses were led to drink along with the others at a trough standing by the head of a well. Two soldiers began investigating the stables and a barn.
    “Open up there. Open in the name of the king.” Captain Bolt was losing his temper.
    A quavering voice came from the window, just audible over the barking. “I’ll set the dogs on you. I warn ye, we’m armed in here.”
    “So are we out here,” the captain yelled. “Open this door before I take a bloody ram to it.”
    Somewhat late in the day, Michael the trumpeter remembered his office and blew a call that sent stately notes echoing around the walls, though their only effect was to set the dog barking again and startle a barn owl into clattering flight from its perch in the stables.
    “All right, then,” Captain Bolt said, looking around. “Find something to break this bloody door down.”
    At that the door opened an inch and the same voice asked, “Who are you?”
    “Who are
you
?”
    “Godwyn, sir. Landlord of this inn.”
    “We’re king’s men,” the captain told him. He snapped his fingers at Adelia, who began searching through her saddlebag for the royal warrant. “You’ve received an order from King Henry saying as he was billeting guests on you, and don’t say as you didn’t, acause the messenger came back to say he’d delivered it.”
    The door opened wider, allowing Bolt’s lamp to illuminate a short, rotund, barefoot man in his nightshirt, holding back a single slavering dog by its collar. “That was a month ago,” he said. “No guests has come. No guests.” He was trembling.
    “They have now.” The captain took the warrant from Adelia’s hand and waved it under the man’s nose. “The lord Mansur—he’sthat Saracen gentleman over there, like it says on this scroll. Come to”—Bolt shifted his lantern so that he could read the writing on the warrant—“‘make