The Law of Angels (51 page)

Gilbert found a place at the back for them both, close to where Kit and Danby’s kitchen boy were sitting on a wall from where they could watch the final scene of judgement. As they arrived Agnetha slipped in beside them. “I knew you’d come. I’ve been watching out for you. There’s Roger’s steward with Maud,” she whispered. “Look, down near the front.”

Ulf, with Maud perched on his shoulders, her hood back, her face alight, was attended by a retinue of de Hutton retainers with Petronilla in their midst. Their faces were turned to the candle-lit stage.

It was Judgement Day.

With anguished howls the bad souls were pitch-forked into the mouth of hell. The good souls were lifted up by choirs of angels to a life of eternal bliss. And God intoned his final lines:

“Now is fulfilled all my forethought

For ended is all earthly thing—”

Gilbert caught Hildegard’s eye. She thought he might be thinking of Jankin. Of Dorelia. Of his own strange and powerful gift and what he might do with it for the good of all, and she rested her hand on his arm.

“They that would sin and cease not,

Of sorrows sere now shall they sing,

And they that mended them while they might,

Shall belde and bide in my blessing.”

The actor drew in a deep breath after his last line and there was a pause as if the audience too was holding its breath.

“So sad,” Hildegard whispered. She meant life. Everything.

And it ended with the melody of angels crossing from place to place.

Epilogue

Hildegard emerged out of the morning mist under a sky as sheeny pink and lavender as the inside of a mussel shell. First into view was the tower above the trees, then the crooked roofs of the buildings, and finally the grey arch of the gatehouse. Not as grand nor as forbidding as the Abbey of Meaux, the priory of Swyne was a pleasing arrangement of turrets and trees. It looked deserted.

With no one to greet her Hildegard took her hired ambler into the stables herself and saw to his needs. Then she fed and watered her hounds. Finally, she made her way over to the main building. The sound of singing came from the chapel, antiphon and response.

Soft-footed she let herself inside and slipped into a seat near the door. The voices rose sweetly all around and she gave a long sigh. Home at last.

*   *   *

The prioress was standing up as usual, her gaunt frame still erect, but her face more lined in the twelve months since Hildegard had last seen her. The private chapel in which they stood was as cold and austere as ever.

Everything was explained, all questions answered, remarks on the way things had turned out had been offered and reciprocated. Her account was nearing its end.

Maud would remain as Roger’s ward until fate maybe decreed a husband. Her persecutors had been brought to account.

Petronilla was to continue as Melisen’s damozel of the bedchamber. Her father and his retinue of little girls had found a sponsor in old Robert Harpham, who, astute in the needs of the market, had backed his attempt to export his handmade toys to the Rhineland with hard cash and some useful contacts.

Even the fate of Kit had been settled. Hildegard told the prioress how, when she went to speak to Danby about his keep, the boy had been busily helping Gilbert in the workshop. Observing his dexterity and Gilbert’s delight with his progress, she had not even mentioned her idea of bringing Kit to Swyne to assist their falconer. “I believe he has found his life’s work,” she said.

And Danby had invited his sister and her brood to come and live within the city walls in the now empty house at the top of the yard so that his daughter, his little Lucy, could live at home and still have the care and kindness of her aunt.

And finally, she told the prioress, Danby had made Gilbert his partner and they vowed to make their workshop the most famous glazier’s in England.

By the time Hildegard concluded her story the prioress was looking thoughtful. Now she said, “And the cross is safe. Despite the terrible events it brings in its wake you must be pleased it still survives after having gone to so much trouble to bring it back to York in the first place.”

She turned to look at the rough wooden relic on her private altar. “It was clever to hide it on full display in St. Helen’s Church,” she approved. “Of course, if we were merchants we would now be sniggering into our money-pouches.” She sighed. “It must be returned to its guardians in Florence. I imagine that journey across the Alps last year was something not to be endured more than once in a lifetime?”

“It wasn’t as bad as it sounds. The tragedy was that my escort was murdered there.” She referred to a tourney knight, Sir Talbot.

“So you would do it again?”

“I imagine it would be pleasant enough in summer when the snows have melted.”

“Indeed?” The prioress gave a brisk movement of her hand. “More of that another time. I have a matter of a different nature to bring to your notice.”

This is where she mentions the abbot’s threat of punishment. Hildegard braced herself.

The prioress gave her a hard look. “Yes. Abbot de Courcy.”

Hildegard’s heart missed a beat.

“A serious matter of discipline or so he claims.” The prioress sighed heavily. “What seems to have urged him to press for censure is the fact that he saw you, as he puts it, ‘in the arms of that steward of de Hutton’s,’ by whom I take it he means Sir Ulf. Is this true?”

“Of course not! Is the abbot mad? I’d just escaped from that brute employed by the Sisters of the Holy Wounds, barely escaping with my life I might add, when Ulf appeared outside Harpham’s house having been told by Maud about the brute’s attempt to abduct me.”

“And?” The prioress gave her a searching glance.

“Ulf was merely inspecting the bruises on my face under the light of the cresset outside the house. It was a professional examination of my wounds, who better to do it? De Courcy must have just arrived through the postern at Micklegate Bar and was presumably already deluded by his travels. I gather he had just arrived from Avignon.”

The prioress raised her eyebrows. “And you imagine that warped his judgement?”

“I would imagine it was already warped to make him choose to go there in the first place.”

“Ha!” Her eyes flashed with humour.

Hildegard knew she was stepping out of line but she had to speak honestly. The prioress continued to raise her eyebrows for a moment or two as Hildegard described in greater detail her ordeal just before coming across Ulf and his men in the street.

When she finished the prioress gave a grim chuckle. “That sounds far more plausible than de Courcy’s version. Leave it with me, sister. I assume you told the abbot nothing of what had preceded this incident?”

“Wild horses wouldn’t drag it from me.”

“In that case this misunderstanding might continue for some time, don’t you think? As will yours over his reason for sojourning with Pope Clement until you discover the truth.”

She flapped a hand and Hildegard was dismissed.

*   *   *

Not much later, three days at most, Hildegard was summoned to the Abbey of Meaux. Expecting a harsh penance for her alleged activities she was surprised by the abbot’s genial mood, if genial was a word that could ever be applied to so driven a man.

Nothing was said about Ulf. Indeed, the abbot invited her to sit beside him in his private garden after compline to watch the sun go down over the canal as if a harsh word had never come between them.

She was careful to make no comment about Avignon. If the prioress considered him trustworthy, it would have to be good enough.

Instead talk turned to Wycliffe, the sadness of these latter months when, forbidden to preach, he was rarely seen in public.

Then they turned to the border wars with Scotland and how it would be to everyone’s benefit if both sides could shake hands and settle down to an agreement.

After that they covered the topic of how young King Richard was losing his popularity and whether the rumours about his erratic behaviour could be trusted or whether they were stories spread far and wide by his enemies.

Hubert then told her a little about his pilgrimage and his ensuing concern for the Byzantine emperor with his ceaseless efforts to maintain a Christian region in a hostile territory and how no one in the west—“neither pope, in Rome nor Avignon,” he pointed out—seemed at all interested in going to his aid. “Despite all efforts to persuade them,” he added.

Then the abbot turned to matters closer to home, to the exceptionally dry weather and the effect it had on the crops but how the sheep appeared to be surprisingly unaffected, and how the recent storms, sad though it was that they had drowned out the pageant, had not doused the town’s enthusiasm.

“It was an evil thing for Mistress Julitta to put glass in her husband’s food,” he observed. “And how strange that the coroner took so long to arrive that she had already vanished.”

“If Petronilla’s view of angels is correct,” she told him, “she will not escape punishment.” She explained what the girl believed about the law of angels and they exchanged glances without comment.

And then, finally, Hubert mentioned the disappointment Hildegard must feel at having all the hard work at Deepdale come to nothing.

“I know how much effort you and that handful of nuns must have put in to establish the place while I was away. I’ve been given a most careful accounting of what you achieved over the last year. And then to have it destroyed like that.” He shook his head. “It must be a grave disappointment.”

“I hope to return soon to see what we can make of it,” she replied. “The bees were dispersed when the men put their swords through the hives. The geese will have flown. And no doubt the hens that survived will already be working hard for the inhabitants of the next vill. But there must be something we can restore.” She smiled ruefully.

“Of course, I will never give permission for you to return there,” he told her emphatically. “I remember clearly the first time we ever met…” he hesitated then added, “I remember how I expressed doubts then about your ability to defend yourselves against marauders. And how you assured me that you could take care of yourselves.”

“I doubt whether even you or your brothers could have defended yourselves against those armed men. Unless you had been willing to take up arms yourselves.”

She turned to him quite fiercely but to her surprise he was smiling.

“You’re probably right. It’s the nature of the times that men of violence can wreak havoc with impunity.” He held her glance for a moment but then he hesitated again.

Many things lay unspoken between them and he seemed to be on the brink of laying them bare. She had a vision of the soaring pillars of Beverley Minster and the abbot’s confession during their night of vigil at the sanctuary of St. John last year. Her lips parted. She both desired him to speak and feared where it would lead them. His dark eyes seemed to reach into her soul. She put up a hand as if to ward off some unseen force.

His voice was soft. “It must have been an ordeal to face those men in the mayor’s chamber with their crossbows primed with naptha,” he murmured. “How did you manage to remain so calm?”

“I felt neither calm nor sure,” she told him, leaping at the chance to talk of something that would lead them away from danger. “The idea of Greek Fire came to me out of nowhere—or rather, it reminded me of the mage at the booths and how he kept talking, saying the most outrageous things, even when he suspected he was being targeted by cut-throats.”

Hubert smiled at her, watching her lips. “And that gave you courage?”

“I thought that if I kept talking it would give the porter time to fetch help. It was strange, though. As I spoke about my willingness to die for the right of ordinary people to be free from feudal bonds I—” She paused. “The massacre at the coast has shaped my views. They have a stronger focus now.”

“But what made those men-at-arms take you seriously?”

“As luck would have it a ribbon had come loose at the neck of my undershift. They seemed to think it was attached to a device that would unleash the fire.”

“Was it this one?”

He reached out and held a thread of twisted silk between his fingers.

She could have lowered her lips then and brushed them across his fingertips.

Moving hurriedly back she tucked the ribbon out of sight.

Noticing her expression he said more briskly, “All that’s by the by. I have had an idea, one that I hope will please you as much as it pleases me.”

Saying nothing more the abbot reached inside the scrip that lay beside him and took from it a parcel of documents. He held them out. “These are yours. They come with my blessing.”

Curious to see what it was, she took hold of a winding of new vellum and began to unroll it. It turned out to be the deeds to a vacant grange on the other side of the canal opposite the Abbey of Meaux.

And so one way of life ended.

And another began.

*   *   *

Meanwhile, the castle at Pickering, in the royal forest less than thirty miles away as the crow flies, has a visitor. The great hall is royally adorned. Three men are sitting on the high dais eating venison from a great silver platter. A constant stream of servants attends them. Musicians play in the gallery and down in the mesh the retinues of three households laugh and joke in amity.

The guest of honour is telling a story, outrage in his voice but also a tone of mockery as at some scandalous behaviour he, as a man of reason, is at his wit’s end to explain.

“So there I was,” he is saying, “summoned to Sheen. And on no account would he let me leave. That’s the reason I’m late. And then a detour to York, of course, avoiding the players by many devious and cunning excuses which my lord archbishop was too tactful to reveal for the pack of lies they were. But Sheen!” Despite his levity he frowns now. “God and St. Benet preserve us! Same as ever. The court monkeys nimbly jumping through the hoops. The lovely Anne being lovely. And he in his little chamber with the one door in and out for fear of assassins.”