Hangman Blind (5 page)

‘Is it a boy?’ asked the maid who held the bundle, starting to loosen its cloth.

‘Leave that!’ said the midwife, sharply. ‘Of course it is.’

‘That’s a piece of luck!’ chipped the second servant.

‘You’ll be lucky as well if you keep your mouth laced,’ snapped the midwife.

‘Ooh, threats!’ replied the maid saucily, twirling a lock of hair. It was red and lustrous and fell over one shoulder in a long plait.

Just then Hildegard stepped forward into the pool of light shed by two wall cressets. At the sound the women turned.

‘Who in God’s name—?’ The midwife’s mouth dropped open.

‘I didn’t mean to startle you.’

‘I thought I told you to lock that door!’ She looked daggers at the red-haired maid then, recognising the authority of the nun, she beetled across the floor, crossing herself obsequiously, her gnarled face distorted in a dishonest smile. ‘An easy birth, sister, despite the usual cursing.’ Showing she could speak smoothly when she wanted to, she was oil on silk. ‘It was enough to split the eardrums,’ she went on. ‘I hope you didn’t find it offensive. High and low curse in the same tongue, I fear.’

‘No offence. Lord Roger asked me to offer my services but I see you have managed well without me.’

‘Managed? I’ve been delivering babies for forty years. These gentl’men, what do they know? Do they think I’m a wet girl without a thought in her head? You tell them everything is as it should be.’

‘And the baby?’ Hildegard moved over to where the girl with the red hair was leaning over it, making cooing noises.

‘A fine son and heir for Sir Ralph. You may tell him so without delay.’

Now the drama was over, Sibilla lay inert beneath a mound of covers, emitting small sighs of exhaustion, and showed scant interest in the son brought so noisily into the world. A ring, large and costly, gleamed on the finger of a somewhat roughened hand that lay outside the cover.

‘Let her be,’ said the midwife, following Hildegard’s glance. ‘She’ll sleep now after all that. Then she’ll not be parted from the little fellow. When she’s herself again she may receive visitors. Her lord, of course, may attend her when he will.’

After Sibilla’s delivery, Hildegard managed to find her way back towards the Great Hall with only a couple of wrong turns. The place was bursting with new arrivals, and she sent a servant into the thick of it to find Sir Ralph. While she waited she leaned against a pillar and watched the tumblers. Five of them had formed a human tower by standing on each other’s shoulders, the one on top, his head almost touching the rafters, juggling with some coloured balls. When he finished he came somersaulting down into the straw with all the others amid hoots and cheers. The acrobats were the only ones not drinking. Everybody else was already looking the worse for wear, and things had only just started.

On the far side of the hall Ralph was dancing with a few others in a circle and concentrating fiercely on his steps. She saw him push his hair from his brow with both hands and spin from the group when a servant tugged at his sleeve. Roger noticed this too and, accompanied by the visitor from Lombardy, managed to reach her side first.

He planted himself in front of her. ‘You have news. I can tell by your face.’

She beamed. ‘Lady Sibilla has a son.’

Roger’s expression was one of relief. ‘So, the succession is safe!’ He raised a triumphant fist. In the hubbub of cheers from those nearest, Hildegard stared at him in astonishment. ‘But what about your own son?’ she blurted under cover of the cheering voices. ‘Surely Edwin will succeed to your title and domains? In the distant future, of course. Or failing him,’ she hesitated, ‘you wouldn’t let the law obstruct Philippa’s claim?’

She noticed the Lombardy merchant, standing within earshot, narrow his eyes.

‘The law is the law,’ grunted Roger. ‘I’ve no reason to kick against it. Philippa can either make a marriage or choose a nunnery. As for Edwin…’ He scowled. ‘I have no son called Edwin.’

Hildegard suppressed a reply. Puzzled, she watched him force his way into the midst of the rabble and hold up both hands.

‘Cease your romping, friends!’ At once everybody fell silent except for a lone lutenist who stopped playing only when he got a cuff on the ear from his master. Roger smiled expansively at his audience. ‘We are, dear friends, blessed with an heir!’ There were cheers. ‘And,’ he held up a hand, ‘it’s all thanks to my dear brother Ralph.’

‘Sibilla had a part surely?’ reproved Philippa from the sidelines.

‘I thank her as well,’ he huffed. ‘It takes two. I know that.’ He strode over to his brother and clapped him on the shoulder. Ralph, blinking in confusion, found himself smothered in a fraternal embrace.

Coming up for air, he asked, ‘You did say a son?’

‘Yes, you dolt!’ Roger laughed.

‘Have you seen him? Who says it’s a son—?’

‘Hildegard has seen him. Just now! This very minute past!’ Roger was clearly elated at the news.

Ralph clasped his hands together and closed his eyes. ‘Thank the Lord, the Blessed Virgin and all the heavenly host!’

Everyone cheered again.

‘I must go to him.’ He turned to the company and stretched out his arms to include them all. ‘Kindred, dearest friends, honoured guests. Allow me a few moments alone with my wife and babe – if they allow a sinner such as me near so precious a being – and then you may come and admire!’ With a bow to acknowledge everyone, including the merchant-prince, Ralph fled the chamber.

William could not resist a jibe. ‘I doubt he’ll be so enamoured of the brat when it shits and pukes over his best cloak,’ he grunted. There was violence in his eyes. He might well rage for some time, thought Hildegard, now that in one fell swoop his own two sons were pushed back down the line of inheritance.

And what of Melisen all this while? she wondered, turning her head. She was standing to one side without uttering a word. As Roger received congratulations, as if it had been all his own doing, she stood twisting the brooch on her bodice. Only when her husband happened to catch her eye did she go over and slip into the shelter of his arms.

‘We are happy for Sir Ralph and Lady Sibilla,’ she announced to the company at large. ‘May the babe be a blessing to one and all.’ Standing close by, Hildegard could not help hearing her add in a quiet voice meant for Roger alone, ‘But we too shall soon have cause for celebration, husband dear, shall we not? How could it not be so?’

Roger cupped her chin and looked deep into her eyes. ‘Soon? You say soon?’ He kissed her possessively. ‘For your sake, my lady, I hope soon is the
mot juste
.’

Hildegard saw the girl’s colour fade.

‘I meant what I said about that wine,’ said Ulf in her ear a few minutes later.

The noise of the revellers had reached a deafening pitch now there was yet another cause for celebration. Toast after toast was made. The wine and ale flowed without cease. Melisen was dancing in a provocative fashion in the middle of a circle of admiring guests while Roger huffed and puffed, torn between pride in the youth and beauty of his fifth wife and jealousy at the lascivious looks she was arousing among his men. Pride won. Hildegard raised her eyebrows at Ulf as they watched Roger step into the circle to take his wife by the hand.

With the cheers and ribald comments of the guests ringing in her ears as Roger was put through his paces, she followed the steward into his little room off the Great Hall.

‘So this is where you do your plotting!’ she joked as she glanced round at the neatly ordered shelves containing what looked like documents relating to the many manorial holdings he administered on Roger’s behalf. When she shot Ulf a glance, though, he wasn’t smiling.

‘Is something the matter?’

‘Sit down, do.’ He pulled a bench forward and threw a fur over it. There was a fire blazing in the new grate. She put her feet up on a log of wood, wriggled her toes in her scarpollini, the cork-soled shoes covered in cloth that made no sound on the stone alleyway of the cloisters, and gave a sigh. It was quiet in here with the door closed, the only sound the spitting of the logs in the grate.

‘Peace at last,’ she sighed with a sudden heartfelt feeling of relief. ‘I had the most frightening journey over to Meaux. I’ll tell you about it in a moment when you sit down.’

With a goblet of what turned out to be as excellent a Guienne as one could wish, she asked Ulf again what was troubling him.

‘You can guess. It’s Edwin,’ he said, and stopped as if uncertain how to go on.

‘Where is he?’

Ulf frowned. ‘Dead for all I know.’ He chewed his beard then came to sit beside her. ‘Sorry. That’s not very funny. He took off after an almighty row with Roger a couple of months ago: Roger swearing he was disinherited, Edwin vowing never to return. Since then, nothing. I would have expected a word by now. A sighting at least. I have contacts all over. But no, not a bloody thing. I’m fond of the lad and I don’t know what to do.’

‘What about Philippa? Doesn’t she know anything?’

‘She’s worried sick. She thinks he’s gone to France.’

‘As a mercenary, you mean?’

‘What else?’ He gave her a sharp glance.

She ignored it. ‘And what do you think?’

‘She may be right. It’s the sort of damned stupid thing he would do, just to show everybody. He’ll probably come swanning back laden with booty.’

‘Roger seems very hard on his children.’ She thought of a ring she had seen. ‘I was wondering about Philippa and whether she’s betrothed?’

‘You noticed her ring?’

‘I saw
a
ring. She keeps it well hidden in the folds of her gown while that Lombardy fellow’s around.’

Ulf sucked in air through his teeth.

She said, ‘I didn’t expect Roger to cut Philippa out of the succession. What on earth’s that about?’

‘He’s Norman all right when it suits him,’ muttered Ulf. ‘Why he’s following Norman law now of all times beats me. Old King Edward refused allegiance to France and young Richard seems to show the same spirit. So why is Roger coming out on the wrong—?’ He broke off and, as if to conceal his indiscretion on the subject of Roger’s allegiance, made a show of wrestling one foot out of its boot, fiddling with the lining, then shoving his foot back inside with a scowl. He retied the drawstring. ‘It’s common knowledge folks on the coast down south are being overrun by French pirates but nobody does a blessed thing to protect them. Imagine, unable to sleep in your bed at night for fear of having your throat slit?’

‘The French aren’t everywhere,’ she reminded him in an attempt to cheer him up. ‘At least the courts are using English now.’

‘’Bout time too. But let’s talk about you.’

She explained how unhappy she had been, living at the hermitage with no more useful purpose in life than to ferry people across the river and pray and think of Hugh. And then had come that night when she had the vision, or the dream, call it what you want, and it had all become brilliantly clear, and she had the funds, and she had permission from the abbot and the support of her own prioress, and she was going to set up her own small house where she could cure the sick and teach the children of the villeins to read so they would have a proper start in life. And it was more than she had ever hoped for in the horrible dark days of her solitude.

‘But isn’t it a dangerous thing to do these days? Teaching reading? There’s plenty in power want to keep the labourers in the bliss of ignorance.’

‘I doubt whether the poor think it’s bliss not to be able to read the laws that bind them,’ said Hildegarde. ‘And if they learn to read Wyclif’s Bible for themselves that’s surely to the good too.’ She had gone farther than she had meant to in mentioning Wyclif, but Ulf was an old friend, even if there had been a gap of seven years.

He said nothing. She took his silence for agreement. As she hoped, when she went on to tell him about her need for a suitable place, he suggested a grange or two that might be available. Then she told him about the murdered youth she had found on her way to Meaux.

‘It was a horrible discovery. He was no more than a boy. He reminded me of my own son, he looked little older than Bertrand—’

‘I hear your young ’un’s trying to earn his spurs with the army of the Bishop of Norwich?’

Hildegard nodded. ‘He could so easily end up the same way as—’ She faltered.

‘As your gallant Hugh?’

‘I was going to say as that poor youth – stabbed and left to bleed alone in some forest clearing. His mother living in ignorance of his death.’ She gave Ulf a tremulous smile as fears crowded her mind. ‘At least I persuaded some of de Courcy’s men to carry his body back to Meaux. He lies in the chapel there, waiting for the coroner. My part in the whole sorry event is almost over.’

‘And yet?’

‘Am I so transparent?’

‘I’ve known you long enough to read your face. You haven’t changed all that much in seven years.’

She smiled at the recollection of a shared childhood, Ulf at five riding his woodsman father pick-a-back round the bailey, learning to handle his first bow, training his first hawk. The memories made her glance soften for a moment. Then, looking into the fire, she furrowed her brow. ‘I can’t help asking myself if I stumbled on something deeper than a random attack.’

‘What do you mean?’ Ulf leaned forward.

Instead of answering she asked, ‘Can you tell me where the Beverley gibbet lies?’

‘On the West Common, of course.’ His eyes didn’t leave hers.

‘I thought so too. But after turning off the north lane to go on to the abbey I saw five men hanging there on a gibbet.’

If Ulf already knew about them he gave no sign.

She went on, ‘I was surprised at how far from the town the gibbet was but took it as an official hanging place and assumed that the men there had been punished for some crime, tried and proven in the court.’ Ulf was still watching her with a look on his face she had never seen before. It was coldly assessing, as if what she said were being rapidly balanced against other information he had. ‘It was only afterwards,’ she continued, ‘when I was describing the place where I found the body, that I realised I was wrong. The abbot’s sacristan is a local man and knows the woods like the back of his hand. When I said it was near the gibbet I thought he was being particularly obtuse in not understanding me. It was only later that I realised the gibbet I saw was nothing to do with the town.’