The Law of Angels (35 page)

It was just as busy when they eventually arrived at the river bank outside the postern on the other side of St. Mary’s.

The camps on the common seemed to have doubled in number. Fires sent lazy curls of smoke into the stillness as the visitors cooked pottage and fed themselves and their hordes of children.

There were more people than ever in the water. Gangs of boys had been jumping off Ouse Bridge as they passed and Hildegard had to restrain Kit’s desire to do likewise. Here swarms of people were swimming and splashing each other with raucous shouts or lying prone on the bank in the trampled grass. It was only as they proceeded along the river path that the crowds eventually thinned, and by the time they reached the woods there was hardly anyone about.

Duchess and Bermonda ranged ahead, fanning out on both sides and looping back again and again. She called them to heel as they entered the cool space under the trees. A path wound its way along, roughly following a line with the river. They caught a glimpse of water now and then like a ribbon of light behind the boles. When the path dipped down into a dell they continued until it brought them out into a wide, sunlit clearing with Low Mill on the other side.

The geese were still strutting about the yard and gave an excited gabble when they saw strangers. Hildegard told Kit to slip the leash onto the hounds’ collars. There were still seven geese, she observed. So much for her supposition about the miller’s Corpus Christi feast. The small child with the thatch of hair came bursting out through the back door then skidded to a halt when he saw them. A woman appeared behind him in the doorway.

After a few pleasantries which Hildegard opened with the hope that she could buy a few goose eggs, the miller’s wife offered them drinks of water and invited them into the kitchen. The wooden wheel was turning with a regular, soporific beat. She laughed when Hildegard remarked on it.

“No time for sleeping here,” she said, “what with corn having to be ground and young master to attend over there.” She indicated a baby in a cot under the window. “I don’t get a spare minute.”

Hildegard went over to have a look at the baby. He was no more than three weeks old. The miller’s wife confirmed this. Hildegard said, “I expect you get plenty of visitors from the town, being so close?”

The woman shook her head. “They come when they want their corn ground and that’s it. Millers are never popular. They think we make a profit over and above what we should, but I can tell you, we don’t.”

They sat down in the cool, tidy kitchen. “Is this your lad?” asked the woman, indicating Kit.

Hildegard nodded.

“He’s a fine boy.”

She realised that her head scarf had given the wrong impression. It was needless to correct it. “I thought I saw somebody from our lane coming out this way yesterday evening,” she remarked. “It’s not the first time he’s been out in this direction. Friend of your husband, I expect?”

“He’s a loner, Jack is, millers have to be. No visitors for us. We turn in early, we do. Rise with the lark. Keep the hours of the sun. I’m looking forward to the mystery plays though. It’s going to be a pleasant break, especially if this weather keeps up.”

They finished their transaction over the goose eggs. Hildegard and her boy took their leave.

So where had Baldwin been going to in the evenings? It certainly wasn’t here.

As they reached the path back she looked off to where it continued to High Mill. It wasn’t much farther on. She gave a glance at Kit. “Feel like walking on, young sir?”

“I do, sister. It’s like paradise to be out of that stinking town, though it’s not so bad just now,” he added, “with them players and all.”

*   *   *

There was a man sitting on the ground outside High Mill. Although the place was derelict, the door, she noticed, was in place and had a bar across it which she had failed to notice when they passed this way before. The roof too, although caved in on one side, still had its wooden shingles on the other. The wheel had been dislodged and must have been removed for its timber since they were last here.

He wore a leather casque despite the heat and had a broadsword in his belt. That was legal. He was outside the city walls. He must have been posted to guard the solid timber of the mill by its current owner, aware, no doubt, of the need for wood by the strangers camped on the common land. He was whiling away the time by throwing stones into a clay pot.

One. Two. Three.

The fourth one bounced off the rim and he cursed, emptied the pot and started again.

Kit had come to a stop in the undergrowth just as she had and seemed to understand the need to keep out of sight.

When her eyes got used to the dancing light filtering through the canopy of leaves overhead she noticed again the single causeway to where the man sat and on one side the lush marsh meadow, rife with king cups and bulrushes. On the other the bright green, weed-covered mill pond. The river gushed and flowed dark and deep farther off. Birdsong filled the glade just now but the mill itself was silent with a brooding aspect as if past defeats had tainted the timbers with poison.

Kit tugged at her sleeve. “I don’t like it here. This is where that miller hanged himself in the olden days,” he whispered.

“He did?”

“Nobody comes up here because of his ghost.”

“Hm,” she replied, “I’m not sure I believe in the ghost part of your story but it’s a sad thing if the miller ended his life like that.”

“Can we go, sister?”

She put her hand on his shoulder to turn him back the way they had come when something made her stop. In the mosaic of leaves farther off a human face had taken shape. It was in profile, motionless, turned towards the mill. Bright hair was splashed with sunlight making it brighter still.

Gilbert.

He had not seen them. While Kit, unaware of another’s presence, melted slowly back along the path with the hounds, Hildegard hesitated. She rubbed her eyes as if not believing what she saw. It was definitely Gilbert. He had gained some courage from somewhere then. Jealousy was a powerful motivator.

He was watching intently, waiting for something to happen.

She watched too.

Nothing did happen.

She waited for a few minutes but everything remained the same.

The guard continued to throw pebbles into the cup.

The birds sang.

The river rattled over the broken mill-beams.

Chapter Twenty-six

There was a discussion going on outside the passage on Stonegate when they arrived back. It had attracted a large crowd of onlookers. They formed a circle round the disputants as if readying to watch a fight. More crowds were backed up along the street, unable to get past and people craned their necks to see what the obstruction was. Caught in the press Hildegard and her small retinue could only do likewise.

To her consternation she saw that Danby was involved.

Three men in mail shirts under scruffy tunics were opposing him. Danby, however, was not outnumbered. The dispute had attracted a posse of burly-looking angels. They stood shoulder to shoulder with the glazier, their arms folded in a manner that could only be described as truculent.

The spokesman for the three in mail had taken note of them. He was a handsome, rakish sort of knight with an easy manner and shoulder-length dark hair. “We’re visitors, here for the Corpus Christi feast,” he was now heard explaining. “I apologise most profoundly for the ill-mannered nature of these brutes.” He indicated two muzzled hounds with the kick of a boot. “I brought them with me for the purpose of sport and for some reason they were excited by the passage into your yard.”

He was clean-shaven except for the hair on his upper lip, which was plucked to a thin line and he gave it a swift caress as he finished speaking. When he smiled as he did now he revealed a broken tooth.

Hildegard stared.

“Call the brutes to heel!” he ordered his men.

Plainly in awe of their lord’s authority, the men whipped the hounds in at once. Without swords, empty scabbards swinging uselessly at their sides, they fidgeted awkwardly with their hands while they waited for further orders. He nodded to them and they began to carve a path for him through the crowd.

The knight touched his fingers to his forehead and said to Danby, “My sincere regrets, master.” He moved off after them.

For some reason one of his men peeled off from the others and in a casual fashion began to finger the goods displayed at a nearby stall. When he remained there Hildegard assessed him as a lookout. Meanwhile Danby was saying something to his supporters and a few black looks were sent after the knight. The crowd, disappointed in this mild outcome, dispersed.

Kit pulled on Hildegard’s arm. “Sister! That’s them fellas did the hiring yesterday, the ones I told you about,” he whispered excitedly. “Brought them hounds with him? What a lie! He hired ’em for a six pence each.”

Taking Kit by the hand Hildegard followed Danby into the yard and when they caught up with him he turned to Hildegard and demanded, “Did you see that?”

“I saw the last little bit. What happened?”

“Caught them sauntering around my yard!” he told her, sounding scandalised. “Bloody cheek! I said, ‘This is private property!’ Smarmy knave. They were casing the place to see what they could knock off! They’d be after the lead we use for calmes and them tablets of Rhinish glass. It’s costly stuff. The bloody thieves. You get all sorts at this time of year.”

Still grumbling, he went inside and before Hildegard had settled the hounds he was out again. “Lucky I left my pageant sheets behind!” He waved a sheaf of vellum pieces. “My mind’s on that window for Lord Roger!”

His spirits seemed revived after the shock of Dorelia’s disappearance but watching him go out into the street again, Hildegard wondered whether he was merely putting a brave face on things. Grief can break a man, he had said. He was, it seemed, refusing to give up the final sliver of his self-respect.

Kit took her by the hand, excitement in his voice. “Gilbert showed me the glass he’s painting. Do you want to come and see? It’s brilliant!”

Before she could excuse herself, not wishing to be caught prying again, she found herself being pulled into the workshop and through into the inner chamber.

The work had come on a lot since she had last taken a good look at it. The pieces of coloured glass had been cut to shape and laid in place on the drawing underneath and work had started on the details of hair, the texture of the angels’ wings, the folds and shading to suggest the drape of fabric, stippling to denote patterned velvet or the diaphanous quality of a silk sleeve. Melisen would complain that the faces were not yet drawn in.

“That white glass is what Gilbert’s going to paint the faces on,” Kit told her when she remarked on this. “Then it has to go in the kiln to be fired at tremendous heat!”

He was obviously delighted with the whole thing. “See this little bird here? That’s a cuckoo. And this’n? An owl. Gilbert told me a story about owls. He said, ‘The lady owl is put in a cage and her hooting draws other little birds into the bird-catcher’s trap.’ And look at these red feathers here. That’s the archangel’s wing coming all the way down one side of the picture to frame it. It brings everybody into its power.”

“Is that what Gilbert told you?”

“Yes. It’s good, isn’t it?”

“Very good,” agreed Hildegard.

Kit poked at a collection of drawings on a bench along the wall where the instruments of the craft were kept. “And this is ’is pattern book. I’m surprised he’s left it behind. He even takes it to bed with him, he said.”

Hildegard recognised it as the one Gilbert had shown her down by the river the evening they had seen Baldwin heading towards the woods. On a shelf under the bench was another book. Almost before she knew it she had reached for it and flicked it open. She stopped after a page or two.

She was stunned.

Baldwin was right.

Sheet after sheet was covered with drawings of Dorelia. Some were of her face, from every conceivable angle. In others, she was drawn full length, standing at a door, sitting at a table and, in many, many more, she was lying on a bed, as Roger would have said, “babe-naked.”

Startled, and about to snap the book shut, she heard a voice exclaim, “What the bloody hell’s going on now?”

Danby came blustering in. He stopped on the threshold. “Forgive me, sister. For a minute I thought it was that knight back again, seeing the door wide open. Have I left a page of my—” Then his glance fell to the pattern book and as she closed it he stepped forward. “What have you got there?” He peered into her face. “You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”

“Just something I shouldn’t have seen.” She tried to put the book back on the shelf but Danby reached for it. She said, “I’m sorry. I should never have opened it. I did it without thinking.”

Danby was turning the pages with a puzzled frown. When he came to the drawings of his wife in the nude his frown deepened. He looked at every page all the way through to the end without speaking, then carefully pressed the pages together and held it between his hands for a moment.

“I had no idea,” he said in a roughened tone. For one startling moment his eyes filled then he turned briskly away. “Thank you, sister. It’s a timely reminder of one of Gilbert’s sayings: Truth will out. Now I know what he means by it.”

He left the workshop. His footsteps could be heard going upstairs into his private chamber.

Hildegard took Kit across the yard into Tabitha’s where the widow made a great fuss of him. She kept commenting on his skinny arms and eventually Kit said, “I’m not a goose to be fattened up for a feast, widow.”

She laughed and said something about him not wanting another of her scones then, to which he replied he’d rather be a plump goose than a skellington.

Hildegard saw Danby come down and disappear into his back kitchen and a moment later the little scullion emerged looking important and sped off down the passage.

Danby appeared in the doorway and stood gazing across the yard.

She went out to him.

“I’ve sent the lad with a note to say I’m copping off rehearsals.” He still had the book in his hands. “I don’t know what to think,” he told her. “I’m pole-axed.”