The Scandal of the Skulls

by Cassandra Clark

  ‘How goes it, lads?’ asked the foreman. ‘I’ve brought a couple of new apprentices for you.’ He indicated Hildegard and Gregory.

  The guild-men took one look at the monastic robes of the Cistercians and gave a good-humoured jeer.

  One of them wiped a hand across his brow. ‘Come on then, who’s first?’ He offered his gouge and mallet.

  After a brief glance, the second mason kept his head down, chipping away with short, sharp mallet taps onto a flat-headed gouge. He was frowning to match the face he was sculpting. Eventually, realising he was being watched, he looked up and grunted, ‘You can give us a hand with shifting them stone blocks over yon. That’d be useful work.’

  Hildegard lingered beside him. She recognised him. And now she knew what he thought of monastics. A common view these days. ‘This is full of character,’ she remarked. ‘Is it of anyone in particular?’

  ‘Nope.’ He didn’t lift his head.

  ‘Do you invent the features on the heads?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  He continued to chip away and, aware of several reasons for his ill humour, she sauntered back towards the others.

  Not much later, when she and Gregory were strolling back across Cathedral Close, she said, ‘You know who the silent stone-carver was, don’t you?’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘He’s the brother of Idonea. The man she slapped across the face when the body of her betrothed was brought down from the steeple.’

  ‘So that’s Frank.’

  ‘Somewhat taciturn.’

  ‘Still in shock, is he?’

  ‘Is that your view?’

  ‘Do you have another?’ He surveyed her carefully.

  ‘I don’t know yet.’

  ‘It seems to me nothing much is being done to find out who strung Robin up like that.’

  ‘Maybe the constables are working quietly behind the scenes?’

  ‘Do you think so?’

  ‘I don’t know what to think.’ She turned to him. ‘Shall we try to find out what the guild is doing? Robin was one of their members, even though he was only an apprentice.’

  ‘Apart from poking our noses into the affairs of de Lincoln we’ve nothing much else to do than poke them into this matter too. It might be a week before Hubert de Courcy shows his face to urge us on to Meaux.’

  ‘I fear the whole thing with de Lincoln is spiralling into something bigger and more dangerous than a case of stolen venison but until he shows his face again or we run him to ground there’s not much we can do about him. This murder of Robin is clearly foul play and it behoves us to find out who hated him so much they wanted him dead.’

  Hildegard offered Friar Jonathan a seat beside her. They were at a tavern near the market cross where he begged for alms.

  ‘So you’re a Salisbury man, are you?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ve scarcely left the place since the day I was born. It seemed to me I could have an excuse to travel the county with the Franciscans but one thing and another has kept me here within my limits.’

  ‘It must have its advantages?’

  ‘At least I know these local fellows. We used to play in the mead together. The trouble is that’s why they treat me with so little respect. They bait me for taking the cloth but,’ he grinned disarmingly, ‘I’m too smart to fall into their traps by rising to it.’

  He was still looking pleased with himself when the pleasantries were over and Gregory asked, ‘Have you chanced a sighting of de Lincoln yet?’

  ‘More than that. I spoke to him.’

  ‘Heavens, what did you say?’ Hildegard exclaimed in alarm.

  ‘I asked him if he was a stranger in town and if he would care to come along to hear me speak.’

  ‘What was his reply?’

  ‘He was most courteous and said he would probably do so if matters permitted and I told the truth about Wyclif’s followers.’

  Hildegard and Gregory exchanged glances.

  ‘I suppose you didn’t ask him what ‘matters’ would prevent him attending?’ Gregory inquired with a more acerbic edge to his voice.

  ‘Failed there, but I did find out where he’s staying. He’s just moved into the Cat. His horse is stabled in their stalls at the back, he told me.’

  ‘Why on earth stay at a tavern when there’s the George?’ Hildegard puzzled.

  The George was where wealthy visitors stayed and where the courier service was based. They would be eating there now if only Jonathan could leave his post.

  ‘It might be useful for our purposes to find him at the Cat,’ observed Gregory mildly.

  ‘Useful for his purposes too. He’ll need somewhere where his contact can find him without arousing notice,’ Hildegard suggested.

  ‘You’re probably right and they’re selling on venison poached from the Royal Forest. We shouldn’t read anything else into it.’

  ‘It remains a capital offence.’

  ‘So it is, domina.’ He sank his chin into the folds of his cowl and looked inscrutable.

  ‘I hope I’ve done well?’ asked Jonathan with an uncertain glance from one to the other. ‘I must say it’s whetted my appetite for this sort of thing. If there’s anything more you need to find out, don’t forget me.’

  ‘Isn’t there enough to amuse you with your duties at the friary?’ asked Gregory sharply, lifting his head. ‘Praying, for instance?’

  ‘I like to be useful.’

  ‘I’m sure you are useful,’ The monk relented and gave him a warm smile.

  ‘If you are interested in clarifying a little puzzle for us,’ Hildegard butted in with a warning glance at Gregory, ‘I’ve been thinking about the murder of poor Robin. His betrothed seems to feel nobody is trying to get to the bottom of it. ’

  ‘Ah, you’ve spoken to the fair Idonea - ’

  She raised her eyebrows.

  ‘Isn’t she a beauty? Like a rose. A perfect Queen of the May or - ’ he stopped abruptly and looked down at his hands.

  ‘Quite so,’ replied Hildegard helpfully as Gregory smiled kindly as if he knew exactly what the young friar meant. ‘And,’ she continued, ‘I feel something might be done to help. I was wondering, therefore, if, as you say, you know these local lads, you can suggest who might have seen Robin as an enemy?’

  ‘And you doubt the ability of our constables to sort things out in a just and honest manner, given their friendliness towards the Guild of Masons?’ he finished unexpectedly.

  ‘Why do you say that? Do you go along with the story that they’re dragging their feet?’

  ‘They will if they can. Their view is that the apprentices bring violence upon themselves and deserve no sympathy when there are more important matters to fill the time of their elders and betters.’

  ‘So much for the rule of law,’ Gregory observed. He tapped Jonathan on the shoulder. ‘So what are you waiting for? I release you from my gauntlet. Fly, brother hawk, and bring back the juiciest morsel you can find.’

  Smiling from ear to ear, Jonathan rose to his feet. ‘As soon as the last amen is sung I shall swoop into the etherium to spy what I can spy, but first I have my work to do. Poor Robin,’ he added, ‘of course we must find out who did him in if nobody else will bother.’ He walked off down the street to the stone Cheese Cross and took his place on the highest step to begin his next oration.

  ‘Are we expecting too much of him? We seem to sit here as if he’s our creature. Pulling his strings.’ Hildegard watched as a crowd began to gather at sight of him.

  ‘He needs to feel useful. He’s wasted here, with all the serious faces and the endless talk of Wyclif and no progress in sight on that score. He’s a local boy and it’s only his brains that have led him on a different path to that of his childhood companions. It must be quite a lonely life for him.’ Gregory shrugged. ‘Anyway, all he has to do is say no.’

  ‘Maybe he’ll do that if we encroach too far on his old loyalties? There will be conflict there.’ She turned to Gregory with a serious glance.
‘Wyclif? That is what he said, isn’t it?’

  De Lincoln appeared as if from nowhere as Hildegard was sauntering back to her lodgings through the market place. With the background blare of traders shouting their wares she did not hear him call out to her until he was standing in front of her.

  ‘Didn’t you hear me or are you ignoring me?’ He spoke roughly and gestured to a space between two stalls sheltered from the hubbub where she allowed him to usher her out of the stream of shoppers.

  His manner changed. ‘We got off on the wrong foot, my lady. I beg your indulgence.’ He made a small, neat flourish as if at court.

  She came directly to the point. ‘How do you know so much about me?’

  ‘I told you - ’

  ‘No-one there knew who I was and they cared even less. It was only what I had in my possession that interested them. So I ask you again, how do you know so much?’

  He stroked his beard for a moment then seemed to come to a decision. ‘Very well. It’s like this. I saw you arrive at Lepe with your abbot and his brothers. Your group was sufficiently unusual to arouse my interest.’

  ‘What were you doing in Lepe?’

  ‘My duty.’ He eyed her in silence after he spoke.

  So he was a spy. He must have been set by Arundel to watch the ports as she had feared.

  ‘You were on the quay in that storm?’ she persisted, wanting to hear it from his own lips.

  He smiled and nodded. ‘I followed you to Beaulieu. Four monastics arriving from France. Where else should they go on from Lepe? But I confess, I lost you there.’

  ‘So how did you find me in Salisbury?’

  ‘I had to come up here and by chance we took the same road. Well, there is really only one safe route through the forest and that goes through Lyndhurst. You two strangers were noticed there. Later I arrived at the verderer’s refuge to find that you had arrived ahead of me. You left so early next morning I lost you again. I thought you might have gone on to Winchester but hoped you could only be travelling to Salisbury as I had to come here myself.’ He sighed. ‘It seemed unlikely that I would see you again but when I arrived I set about trawling one or two taverns where a woman such as a Mistress York might lodge. I risked a guess that if you were staying in town for a few days you might find it more convenient to do so as a merchant’s widow - as you had done before.’

  ‘That was a mistake. Although your informants are to be commended they failed to learn that I have returned to my Order.’

  ‘So it would seem.’ He gave a private smile again and smoothed his beard.

  Her suspicion that someone had been following them through the Forest was proved then. It hadn’t been a fantasy. The knowledge made a particle of ice slither down her spine. ‘It must have been tedious for you,’ she remarked. ‘All that effort for nothing.’

  ‘Not for nothing. I have found you.’ He looked into her eyes. ‘Or you have found me.’

  He gave that secret smile again and she suddenly saw how clever he had been. Like a skilled hunter he had brought his prey to where he himself was waiting.

  She faced him without betraying a tremor and asked point blank, ‘How did you know about my alias?’

  He looked self-consciously vague. ‘I scarcely remember.’

  Could it have been through Gloucester’s spies, via Fitzjohn in France? They would pass on any information they received to Arundel who was in charge of the south coast ports and he would pass it down the line to his men.

  She wanted to hear from his own lips the name Thomas Woodstock, duke of Gloucester, so she asked him again. ‘How could you know a thing like that?’

  To her astonishment he said, ‘I’ll tell you, since you’re so insistent. We both had dealings with the same man at one time.’

  ‘And did this man tell you everything you seem to know?’

  ‘Not all but afterwards I made it my business to find out more as he held you in such high regard and - ’ he watched her carefully, ‘I was sickened by his death.’

  His reply surprised her. Gloucester was very much alive and he would hold her in no regard at all, being personally unaware of her existence.

  Thinking then he must mean the nameless rebel in Yorkshire who had died for his ideals she said, ‘So what you told me before was untrue. You must have been one of the mercenaries who wanted to sell the Cross of Constantine to the King of Scotland in return for arms?’

  He looked confused. His eyes were the same lightless blank she had noticed before but even now no light kindled in them.

  After a pause he said, ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘At that blood-bath in Yorkshire? You were there to buy arms from Scotland?’ But the rebel had not known her name, neither of them, York nor Hildegard of Meaux. So the question remained.

  He was shaking his head. ‘Not then, no. I spoke to no-one there about you.’ He paused before reaching out and skimming the edge of her veil with the back of one hand, as light as a caress. Then he said something that shocked her to her soul. ‘I,’ he said, ‘was one of Sir Thomas Swynford’s body-guards on Ludgate Hill.’

  Hildegard stared at him in horror. She stepped back. Away. The blood drained from her face.

  ‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘I see I’ve made things worse.’ He put out a hand but she recoiled and with a desperate glance she began to back away from him. She would not run, she told herself. She would not. Her legs were trembling in her desire to fly from him.

  Ludgate Hill.

  Swynford’s armed body-guards.

  What they did.

  They beheaded Rivera, a man whose life had become hopelessly entangled with her own. The man on whose behalf she had undertaken a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela and adopted the garments of a widowed townswoman and the name Mistress York.

  His name was pounding in her head.

  She turned from de Lincoln and found she was running through the crowd despite herself, oblivious to the shouts as she barged into people and upset a stall selling cabbages, De Lincoln was shouldering aside the marketeers as he pursued her, bringing a chorus of shouts in his wake, and when he pounced to drag her to a standstill he said hoarsely, ‘Think why I would want to seek you out!’

  She froze to the spot. Her lips would scarcely move. ‘I have no idea,’ she managed.

  ‘It was too much of a coincidence when I saw you disembark from that little hock boat at Lepe.’ He spoke rapidly like a man under strain. ‘It seemed like destiny - that our paths should cross yet again! It has to mean something. It must be written in the stars.’

  His words made no sense. She could only give him a cold stare and draw away from him.

  ‘The thing is,’ he went on, ‘I had already met him.’ He crossed himself as he spoke the name Rivera. ‘I met Rivera, before I met you. He was Gaunt’s master spy, and when Gaunt left for Castile Rivera worked for his son as well, for Bolingbroke, as his spy.’

  Hildegard tried to say something but her mouth was dry.

  His voice went on, remorseless, chilling. She was transfixed.

  ‘When I discovered that his Order - some strange foreign cult - demanded that he exchange his life for yours and Swynford was happy to accept the bargain, despite the fact that Rivera was playing a double game, I knew I had reached the end of my own allegiance to the House of Lancaster.’

  He was staring at her. ‘Are you listening?’

  ‘I am, yes,’ she nodded. How can I not listen when it concerns Rivera?

  ‘Events in Westminster have convinced me even more that I cannot go along with a man who allies himself with that other brute, Woodstock, our famed duke of Gloucester. Let them fight it out between themselves. Why should I care who wins the crown?’ He looked into her eyes with great intensity and murmured, ‘There, you know it now. It is written. Our fate is sealed.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean. What fate?’

  ‘Our destinies are entwined. The stars have brought us together again.’

  ‘You believe so
?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘And on the basis of this - this - ’

  ‘Epiphany,’ he supplied. ‘It is my epiphany.’

  She could not utter such blasphemy. ‘On the basis of - this - you need my help?’

  She felt as if she was about to faint and her hand slid against the canvas side of the market tent as she stumbled back with nothing solid to anchor her and de Lincoln, perceiving this, reached out to steady her.

  The touch of his hand on her arm was warm and alive, as Rivera was not, and it remained there as if he imagined she might fall to the ground and he had the right and the power to prevent it.

  THIRTEEN

  Somehow or other she found he had escorted her back to the house of the Benedictines. At the door he asked if there was anything he could fetch her. ‘Madeira?’ he suggested. ‘A herbal of some kind?’

  And after the door closed and he walked away she leaned her forehead against the grainy wood and felt its hardness, its presence. It was like an affront to one who was dead. And then she wept.

  All through this terrible spring as news of the executions in Westminster had filtered through she had forced herself not to think of Rivera suffering the same brutal fate.

  Now the tortured remembrance of his last hours was forced back into her being in an overwhelming flood of grief. The baying crowd. The lurid flares that were lit as the sun sank behind the houses on Ludgate Hill. The relish with which Thomas Swynford, Bolingbroke’s man, gave the order for his militia to take Rivera’s life instead of her own.

  The crowd, at first howling for the blood of a nun who might be a witch, now turned their blood lust on the foreign friar who must be in league with their enemy, the French.

  Fickle and monstrous and with no compassion, they screamed in ecstasy as Rivera was brought before them. He had not struggled. He accepted his fate in a kind of rapture of giving.

  The crowd bayed like animals as the axeman lifted his blade, they sighed with satisfaction as he brought it down on Rivera’s neck, and sheepishly, after the monstrous deed when the law lay in shatters, they melted away to their hovels and their dens and their daily reapings. Job done. Justice, as they saw it in their twisted minds, had been served.