The Law of Angels
Authors: Cassandra Clark
Contents
Prologue
The heat in the small attic under the thatched roof of the guildmaster’s house was stifling. It reinforced a feeling of intimacy. The distant sounds of the market added to the sense that the two of them inhabited a private world.
“Compare the price of swans,” suggested the girl lightly as she sprawled across the bed wearing nothing but her cotton shift.
The young man grinned. “Swans! Compared with what?”
“Books, you sot wit! Haven’t you been listening?” Sitting up to tug the hem of the shift over her head she gave him a challenging look then flung her head back to allow her long hair to trail radiantly over the pillows. She was in all the pride of her youth and beauty. Smiling indulgently she said, “I’ve just been telling you, dunderhead. They’re saying King Richard has bought two books for twenty-eight nobles!” She couldn’t keep the awe out of her voice.
“What’s that got to do with swans?” he demanded.
“Think about it! You can get two dozen swans for only three nobles. Which is the better bargain?”
“Depends what the books were,” he teased. “Me, I wouldn’t give a farthing for a hundred books, but I’d give a pouch full of groats for a swan with all its feathers on. Anyway,” he continued, “what would you be doing with another swan? Surely one’s enough?” As he spoke he raised both arms.
Attached to them was a pair of wings. They were of such length they trailed round his ankles as if he was crossing the floor on a cloud. With his bright hair and dancing eyes he looked less like a swan than an angel.
Smiling softly the girl reached out. “Are you keeping them pageant britches on forever?”
They were stitched all over with white goose feathers and he pushed them roughly aside as he climbed onto the bed.
“At least take your wings off,” she advised.
He began to tickle her. “It’s not a sin to wear wings, is it?”
“No, but this is!” she teased, sliding more comfortably beneath him. “Are you married?” she whispered. “No? Then sin!”
“Is this your wife?” he murmured.
“No. Then sin!”
He cloaked the wings over them both by stretching her arms above her head so that they were lying inside a feathered cave with sunlight filtering through the quills. Splinters of gold leaf seemed to gild their skin.
“Is it a fasting day?” he whispered.
“Sin!”
“Is it daylight?” he continued.
“Sin—” She tugged hurriedly at his britches. “Sin … sin … a thousand times sin … Take them off!”
As he struggled out of the offending garment he began to recite from the forthcoming mystery plays in a large, false voice. “Doom nighs near and—”
“Shush!” she murmured, pressing her fingers to his lips. “You’re all talk and no action today. Whatever’s the matter? Are you still worried about your lines?” She pulled him closer.
At that moment the door of the attic flew open.
Three men entered.
They had hoods pulled well down over their faces and carried drawn swords. One came straight over to the bed. A thrust of his blade into the white feathers brought a gasp from the youth and he stared at the steel tip protruding from between his ribs in astonishment. A gout of blood appeared. The girl’s eyes widened in horror as gore dripped onto her breasts, and as she was dragged out into the flash of daylight she gave a shriek of fear. Behind their masks the men said nothing. She began to plead for her life.
* * *
Meanwhile, in another part of the county, two men are sitting on the battlements of a castle commanding a view over the royal forest. A blizzard of gulls, driven inland by a glittering easterly, swirls above their heads. Out of this avian storm one bird detaches itself, alights on the parapet and struts confidently towards them.
Fixing it with an interested glance, the elder of the two men asks, “Do you think they can be trained to hunt like falcons?”
His companion assesses the bird—its weight, heavier than a barnyard cock; its white breast, grey wings; its raptor’s beak marked at the tip with a red spot like a drop of blood—and observes that the creature clearly regards the men as nought. Both watch as it turns its head to display first one yellow eye and then the other. “Everything living can be trained to kill,” he concludes. “Whether they’d return the prey to you is another matter.”
A second bird detaches itself from the flock and alights with a struggling herring in its grasp. The first gull makes a grab to claim the fish. At once a squabble breaks out. Yellow claws draw blood until the attacker flies off clutching its stolen prize. With a shriek of rage the second launches itself in pursuit.
“How like men,” observes the elder of the two.
“Only the prize is different,” replies his companion, narrow lips twisting with amusement. He watches the fight continue in mid-air.
“An omen?” His companion follows his glance. “Young Richard and brave cousin Harry?”
The fight continues. Blood is drawn. The white feathers are streaked with red.
“No doubt it’s treason to compare the crown to a herring,” the younger man remarks.
His companion spits over the parapet. “No doubt.”
Chapter One
Some days before this, in the deep peace of a summer morning, Hildegard was lifting skeps in the lower meadow at Deepdale. She wore a white mesh veil and padded gauntlets and worked to the sound of contented bees murmuring within the hives.
Three years had passed since King Richard and Mayor Walworth had outfaced Wat Tyler’s shocked and betrayed countrymen at Smithfield. In fact the third anniversay of Tyler’s murder fell on the Feast of Corpus Christi in scarcely a fortnight’s time.
And it was two years since Archbishop Courtenay had received the pallium from Pope Urban VI in Rome and had emerged from Canterbury with new powers, stamping hard on the Oxford dissidents and scattering them like ants about the realm.
But it was only one year since Hildegard had been given leave to move into the grange at Deepdale in the north of the county and turn it into a minor cell of her mother house at Swyne.
It had been a hard year but now the fruits of their endeavours were beginning to show.
As she worked in the drowsy heat she was sharply aware that it was also a year since the Abbot of Meaux, Hubert de Courcy, had abruptly left on pilgrimage, putting the running of the abbey in the hands of his cellarer, Brother Alcuin.
The honeybees flew serenely in and out of the hives, their king royally at ease inside his straw-stitched palace. Their skeps were upended baskets of woven blackberry briars placed on wooden stands as protection against predators. Conical reed tents called hackles kept them from rain and the heat of the sun. During the previous week several frames of wax had been taken out for delivery to a chandler in York, leaving some skeps empty, but the rest, today, were buzzing with life.
Hildegard was busy hefting the remainder of the skeps so that she could judge how much honey was in them. She worked alone while the two other sisters who had joined her at Deepdale busied themselves around the house and kitchen garden.
It was a sad thing, she thought with a glance at the empty skeps, that the bees had to be destroyed in order to remove the honeycomb. She pondered the possibility of trying a method she had observed in the abbey hives at Meaux. There a straw cap was put on top of the skep and the bees were encouraged to take up residence in this new place. It allowed the honeycomb to be removed from below without killing the bees themselves. That would be worth trying, she decided, as she finished her task and began to walk slowly back up the meadow.
The sisters at Deepdale were lucky to have received a request for beeswax from a chandler in York. He had been tearing his hair because an expected consignment from the Baltic was delayed in the Humber estuary by a dispute over port taxes. It was his privilege to supply the guilds with their Corpus Christi candles and his reputation would be in tatters, as well as his hair, if he couldn’t deliver. A call had gone out to all the local beekeepers to spare what they could. Deepdale made an offer at once. They could use the income.
At a safe distance she took off her protective veil and removed her gauntlets. A year ago the grange had been nothing but a wilderness of nettles and ground elder. It had taken six nuns seconded from the priory at Swyne together with Hildegard, a lay sister called Agnetha and a couple of strong Dalesmen, to bring some order to the place. Now they were almost self-sufficient.
As she made her way through the long grass she gazed up towards the scar at the dale head where the sheep were being rounded up.
The high-pitched whistle of Dunstan, the shepherd, and the bleating protests of the sheep themselves floated down in the hot silence of mid-morning. The shearmen must have finished their work. Soon the shorn flock would be brought down to start the long journey to summer pasture on the banks of the Humber. The wool clip meant more vital income. There might even be a profit by the end of the summer if the crops didn’t fail in the present drought. It was hard work, trying to survive in the wilds, but it would be worth every blistered palm and cricked back for the harvest that must surely follow.
Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a man’s voice hailing her from the orchard. Assuming it was the shepherd’s lad, she lifted her head. But it was a monk in the familiar white robes of a Cistercian who had called out, and now he came striding energetically through the grass towards her.