The Exiled (43 page)

The steward nodded. ‘Aye, sir. I am. My old ma’s still alive, or she was last I heard.’

The old baron nodded and then sighed as he waved the steward away. Filial piety, family bonds: nothing was more important, nothing. His own son now, when had
he
last felt for him, his own father, as Liam did for his mother? Stephen Hardwell sighed gustily. He’d failed, failed as a father, with that boy. Now all that linked them was mutual suspicion — and blood, though blood was not to be slighted, ever.

Perhaps he felt so touched by the plight of the castaway girl because she too was bereft and alone in the world, as he felt
he
truly was. And, when he came to think of it, she’d also come to symbolise the hope of a new start; a new start so that he, Sir Stephen, might yet have children again, proper, grateful children this time — children who loved him as they should rather than plotting and scheming to take what was still, rightfully, his own patrimony. As Henry had, and did ...

Wat Brewster was holding Liam’s horse and he nudged the steward from long acquaintance as he clambered back onto his sturdy cob.

‘His brain’s gone soft; what d’you reckon?’

Liam gathered up the reins, hauling Polly’s head up just as she found a particularly nice, and unexpected, clump of grass hiding near some gorse. The horse objected and in the moment of scuffle when Liam, taking no nonsense, dug his heels into Polly’s flanks — which caused her to snort and dance — he avoided an answer.

If he was honest, he thought Wat was right. This was a fool’s errand they were all on, but if he, Liam Fellowes, was to best that slimy reeve, Simon — and protect his master’s interests and his own from Henry — he had to find a way to make it work.

Spies! Since when did dangerous spies end up in poxy little convents in the very midst of nowhere?

It was a measure of the times, this nonsense they were about — and the uneasy family politics of the Hardwells, of course. Not many a man liked to yield place to his son in his lifetime, when it came right down to it, and if Henry were
his
son, well, he could understand how double-hard that might be.

The baron was waving to him again, and Liam raised a hand in acknowledgment. ‘Right, men, lively now, follow the baron.’

Follow the baron; Liam wondered if they would, if the time came to stick in a dirty fight. He shook his head; things got bad when family fell out.

The baron, riding at the head of the party, called back over his shoulder, ‘Liam! Ride with me.’

Liam sighed and kicked the reluctant Polly up into a canter; he liked Polly but she was far too fond of food.

‘That horse blown, is she?’ The baron looked with disfavour on Liam’s mount.

‘No, Sir Stephen, she’s enjoying it, aren’t you, Polly? Good long ride, just what you like, eh girl?’ The horse responded with a loud, luxuriant fart and a torrent of manure which, unexpectedly made the baron laugh. That was surprising — the baron never laughed.

‘Ah Liam, Liam, what I would not give for my son to see sense?’

Liam said nothing — there was little point.

‘He cannot understand, to my lasting shame, what our duty, the duty of knights, is in this matter. God’s will is ever stronger than that of man.’

Oh yes, and what would the king think of that, thought Liam cynically.

‘Yes, man is driven by vice and sin yet, if we will only listen, God is always there to guide us, protect us; to set out feet back on the straight and narrow path. And bring us the peace we deserve.’ The baron felt happy tears well in his eyes, so certain was he that God approved of the nobility of his actions in seeking to protect this girl from his son. And too, it must please him that in this, in his honourable intentions towards this girl, he could make reparation for all the less-than-gallant relations he’d had with women at other times in his life.

‘There, Baron, do you see it?’ Liam’s abrupt shout brought Stephen Hardwell back to the present as the little party crested a rise. There was the sea, and with it, the stone-grey town of Whitby huddled around its harbour under the abbey. The wind off the restless sea hit them in the face and for the first time they could smell salt in the air.

‘We’ll be there in time for tierce, Baron, what did I tell you?’ There was a lift in Liam’s voice as he said it — if he looked very hard, from this height, he could almost make out the house he’d been born in, his mother’s house in a lane behind the market square ...

Whitby was calm at last, having endured three days of battering storm, three nights of fearsome, howling wind.

After that first night spent in a noisome harbourside tavern, ‘The Two Tunns’, in a tiny, freezing space up under the tiles, Joan and Anne had struggled up the steep road from the harbour which led to the abbey on the cliff. Anything, anything at all had been preferable to a day spent huddled around the sulking fire in the common-room of the tavern where strangers, men who came for the sailor’s women who frequented the ‘Two Tunns’, eyed the two nuns and their companions, and were tempted to ask questions.

Now, as the day dawned with a dying wind, Anne and Joan whispered together in the women-strangers’ dorter of the monastery.

‘... but I cannot leave you here. It’s not safe,’ Joan was going over old ground, old arguments, but Anne was clear.

‘Dearest Joan, I am so grateful for your kindness, for your companionship. But this is more than enough. You must go back with Bernard. You will be missed at the convent — I’m sure that he will be happy to take you home, or find someone to accompany you there.’

‘But what will happen to you?’ Joan shivered; a woman alone in the world was never safe.

‘You forget, dear friend, I have resources. I will purchase an escort, an armed escort.’

Somewhere, from deep within the abbey, the sound of a bell could be heard, coming and going on the wind.

‘Come, or we shall be missed.’ Hurriedly both women swaddled cloaks around their bodies — their winter cloaks rescued from
The Porpoise
and dried in the abbey’s hot room, its caldarium — over darned but clean nuns’ habits. The nuns who ran the stranger-women’s dorter for the abbey monks had taken pity on Anne and Joan when the women arrived at the abbey — particularly Anne, since her habit was in such a state. Out of charity, she’d been supplied with a postulant’s white veil and a decent black habit as a temporary substitute until, it was presumed, she returned to her mother-house and proper clothing.

That had not been an end to the abbey’s kindness to them. As pilgrims, they would never have been expected to stay in the women’s dorter for three days, but the weather had shut the clifftop community in on itself and there were no other pilgrim-women currently staying.

With the exception of the one professed nun and two lay sisters whose service was specifically to wait on the women-strangers who came to pray at Saint Hilda’s great abbey, they had the women’s dormitory to themselves, and that was just as well. Anne lived in daily terror that she would be recognised for, as the two women hurried down the stairs and across the abbey garth, Anne could not help remembering how it had been the last time she stayed within this place. She’d been a fugitive then as well.

Nearly two years had passed since that time, but her transformation from a servant girl into a lady of wealth, of quality, had begun here in this place with her friend Jane Shore.

Rags to riches; and now, riches to rags. What was left to her that was important, truly important? She’d lost that proud independence she’d worked for, risked all for, but she did not miss it now. She missed Edward — and their son — with a dull ache that was nearly always there, unsleeping. Perhaps, once she found little Edward again, she should go to the king, as his mistress. Could she do it, would that be best, after all? She would have him, whenever he could give her time, and perhaps, they would have other children, children he would protect — especially from the queen — and most especially little Edward.

Tears filled Anne’s eyes as she saw the pink and rose Christ child, held by his beautiful mother as she and Joan hurried into the darkened church, and to the side aisle where pilgrims were permitted to worship whilst observing the brothers on the other side of the rood screen.

All the power of the king had not been enough to protect her from kidnap in Brugge — how, then, would Edward protect her in England if she came home?

Anne pondered her choices: there were really only two which were practical.

Find someone within the town who was rich enough to buy one of her two remaining gems, and thereafter try for ship’s place to a port on the continent, thence on to Brugge; or, more safely, wait out the winter storms in Whitby, taking lodging with some respectable family, if she could bear it.

But how to transform herself from nun to, say, widow? Would that do to explain her being alone, once Joan went on her way?

A most difficult choice, for each was fraught with risk. But if she wanted to see them again — Deborah, little Edward and his father, she must make up her mind. She must choose, and very soon.

E
dward and Richard were off on sortie with the members of the king’s riding-court plus one hundred well-armed men of the duke’s own affinity, archers and swordsmen, all decked bravely in the duke’s livery, ‘The White Boar’ badge prominent.

Since Edward had arrived at York, plans had been talked through extensively, and today, the first of them was carefully set in motion by the king and his brother.

Officially, the brothers were on a progress to visit and hunt at one of the Crown’s lodges within easy ride of York.

Unofficially, it was the intention that they should make a good show of military preparedness so that word would travel to the border-country that the king was in residence at his brother’s palace and backed by fighters.

Archbishop George Neville himself had been cajoled to bless the riding party before it set out at dawn on a cutting, frosty morning. He and Richard loftily ignored each other whilst Edward was a charming but implacable conduit between the two — listening patiently to the archbishop before the service as he bemoaned the lack of respect for the church within the barbarian north — no names were mentioned. Edward nodded wisely in agreement as George proffered advice on how to ward off the ills of this changeable season with boar’s fat and salt regularly rubbed into the skin of the chest and throat and smiled genially as he accepted the bishop’s prayers for the queen’s safe delivery of a prince ...

As ever, the king had the larger game of politics in mind. He knew that permitting George Neville to see him amongst his fighters would be the same as sending a personal letter to Earl Warwick. The king meant business, that was the message. And it was a true one.

Now Edward looked magnificent as he sat astride his formidable destrier Mallon, the horse shifting from hoof as the ‘riding party’ assembled in plain view of the townspeople who had gathered to see them off.

There was a great whoop from the crowd as this goodly mass of fighters, or hunters, though they looked more like the former than the latter, started up on their way.

The people of York were proud — and felt a little less uneasy. They too had heard the rumours of the She-wolf of Anjou massing troops in France and hoping to land them in the north before the worst of the winter gales. Many said she would join with her supporters in the border-country and sweep down from Scotland to harry them all.

A butcher, on his way to work in the shambles, summed up the common feeling as they watched Edward and Richard ride out: ‘Hope their hounds bring down a bit of game today; hope they hunt well for all our sakes ...’

It was still early when Bernard arrived at the Abbey to escort Joan down to the dock and thence south to Robin Hod’s bay once more.

Despite all the last-minute entreaties, all the prayers, Anne would not be swayed. Joan had been her kind friend and companion but now the time had come for the nun to return to her convent. Anne had made plans, daring plans, and the fewer who knew what she was about, the safer it would be for them all.

With great reluctance, Joan was persuaded to leave with Bernard, and Anne stood waving at the gate of the stranger-women’s dorter as the couple walked away from the abbey on the road down to the harbour.

Then she was alone. But not friendless.

During her three days at the abbey, Anne had been kind to the smallest, youngest and most harried of the two lay sisters responsible for the cleanliness of the stranger-women’s dorter. The monastery, whilst it provided lodging freely to all pilgrims who asked for it, looked for guest’s donations to contribute to the running of the abbey itself; a building that was ever hungry for repairs since the salt wind took such toll on the fabric.

Anne told her new friend that she’d been instructed by her mother house to leave a large donation for the abbey, but needed, first, to find a money-changer who could discreetly change some of the large coins she had been given by her ‘convent’ for smaller ones.

Little Sister Agatha knew of only one money-changer, or rather, a family of them. They were Jews who had grown wealthy brokering wool for local growers yet were quite liked by the townspeople of Whitby — an unusual thing for the outsiders they’d always been.

‘Would it not look odd if a nun were to visit the house of Jews, though, Sister? They were the enemies of Christ.’ Agatha was genuinely worried for Anne.

Anne pretended to think for a moment. ‘Well, perhaps it would, but I could not ask anyone else to complete this task.’

If Agatha had been older, a little more experienced in the world, perhaps she might have questioned why Anne was not given smaller money in the first place. However, though she was an honest girl, she was quite naïve; and she was pleased with herself when she came up with a solution to Anne’s problem.

‘I have something for you! Wait here!’

It only took the nun a few moments to whisk out of Anne’s cell and return carrying a dark blue dress and a long, forest-green winter cloak. Both were old, and the cloak was patched, but having been fashioned from good cloth that had been well treated over its long life, they were in respectable condition.