by Prue Batten
‘I do, but I have a much safer plan. We shall keep the horse here and tell Sir Guy you left it with us and departed with a small group of pilgrims who travel to Compostella. That you plan to leave England and travel as far as Aquitaine with them.’
Aquitaine!
I looked up from studying my clenched hands. If anything might convince Guy…
‘But he will know if a group of pilgrims have left here recently.’
‘Then it is as well they do. As well that a young woman travels with them.’
‘But I do not.’
‘Ah,’ she tapped the side of her nose. ‘But another does. It is all that matters.’
‘And how shall I escape west?’
‘Tomorrow one of our Sisters travels to Blithbury Priory near Stafford to deliver our rarer herbs and medicaments to the Infirmarian. She is travelling with merchants and a priest. But instead of one nun there shall be two, as there should be. You shall be our accompanying Sister: Sister Claire. From Blithbury it is not so many leagues as the crow flies to the Welsh border. By the end of the week, you shall be in Wales.’
I jumped up and hugged her and then stepped away, my cheeks flaming with the impropriety.
‘Oh Reverend Mother, I apologise. How remiss…’
‘Nonsense. I welcome a good hug and miss it here where there is such a godly code of conduct. Tuh! I shall have to confess to covetousness. Ah well, let she who is without sin cast the first stone. Now! We have all night, you shall tell me the rest of yours and Guy’s story.’
Tell her the story I did, every minute of it. I cried and laughed. I walked back and forth with anger. I told her of my time at Saint Eadgyth’s and she nodded.
‘I know the prioress. She is a redoubtable woman. And Sister Thea, ah, I should like to have her here. She would do well I think.’
The Moncrieff chapter of my life, the baron, the pain, the birth of my son … all told. And she cast no aspersions, listened, nodded, leaned forward and rubbed my hands when I needed succour.
‘Ah Ysabel, for I will call you that – I think we can leave Linette behind now. My poor dear child, you are so close to Wales.’ She rubbed my hands again. ‘So let us just concentrate on getting you away from here. Firstly your wound … I shall have Sister Catherine look at it for I think the stitches could be removed.’
She reached for a handbell and when a nun opened the chamber door, she asked that the Infirmarian come immediately with wound dressings. It seemed sleeping was something the nuns paid little attention to, whereas my eyes ached with tiredness.
Beatrice reached forward and ran her fingers lightly across Brother John’s stitching and I shivered as I remembered another’s fingers but the door flew open and Sister Catherine dashed in, robes flying, a leather sack held close to her chest.
As the Infirmarian picked away at my stitches, all I could think of was fast-approaching freedom and the chance to hold my son – to see him grow. The fact I had no idea of his location was something I refused to countenance.
‘It is a big scar you have, madame, and it drags at your brow and eye. Livid red with it too but it may settle. Rub it with this … it’s coltsfoot and comfrey mixed to a paste. It will aid in the healing.’
Her fingers were infinitely gentle as she eased the stitching away. After, she dabbed the area with a piece of linen and smoothed some of the paste into it.
‘At the very least you can be glad it has healed clean.’
Ay, I can be glad of that if nothing else, I thought, touching this altered face that was now mine and thanking her. Beatrice bustled in with an armload of clothing as the Infirmarian stowed the tools of her trade in a linen strip and then placed them in the sack. She backed out of the room, a small smile of greeting to her superior.
‘Well now,’ Beatrice bent to look at the scar. ‘Tuh. It looks angry, if clean. Ah well, I see you have Catherine’s miracle cure there. Be sure and use it. She has a reputation for mixing helpful creams and potions. Now, here is your habit and there are some men’s clothes as well. You must hurry and change. Your companions have almost finished their repast.’
I hastened to assume my new identity, just another one, wondering how these women could wear such rough clothing as I lay Guy’s blue gown aside. No time for pointless reflection though, I needed to keep my wits sharp and my eyes wide. As I picked up the roll of men’s clothes, I felt something hard and unyielding in the middle, pushed deep into the fabric. My eyes shot up to the abbess’s face and I caught her watching me.
‘Better to be safe than sorry,’ she said with no expression, taking me by the arm out to the entrance where the portress unlocked the door and pulled it back, her keys clinking in the uncommon quiet of the moment.
A cart stood behind two men-at-arms, a group of horses waiting. The carthorse occasionally stretched his neck, stamping his feet and jingling his harness as one of the men-at-arms held the reins. I climbed aboard, quickly thanking Beatrice. She merely inclined her head before slipping her hands inside her sleeves and moving through the gate, a picture of Divine innocence.
The travellers appeared one by one to mount their horses … the merchant with a cloaked woman riding pillion, the priest in his dark habit, his bald head gleaming in the early morning light and finally with a lot of sighs and puffs, Sister Helewys who was to deliver the herbs and ointments to Blithbury. She nodded at me and smiled at the priest … a little mild-mannered zephyr blowing into our midst.
‘Where is our other merchant friend?’ she asked.
The mounted merchant called over, ‘He had to have a quick word with the abbess, Sister. He’ll be but a moment.’
The portress pulled open the gate again and our merchant-driver rushed through, clambering up next to me, taking the reins from the men-at-arms. My head drained of everything, a wind whistling through and I almost slipped sideways in a faint.
His hand grabbed me.
‘Sister, take care, the wagon is high above the road.’
He looked at me, wimpled and veiled and dressed in the course brown habit of a nun. I kept myself in profile so that all he would see was the dragged down eyebrow and the vicious cut snaking underneath the wimple. But even so…
‘Lady Ysabel,’ Ulric whispered. ‘Thank God I have found you.’
I sat mute with horror.
Ulric! How close is your employer?
Sister Helewys sat by her bundles as the cart lurched off in the cavalcade and began to chat to Ulric, quizzing him on his station and occupation. It appeared he was a wool merchant seeking fleeces near Stafford. No, he wasn’t married and yes, he found travelling tiresome but he had seen much of England and had been to Bruges and when’s all said and done, he was luckier than some. When he said he was a wool-merchant, my eyes slid to his hands and all I could see were the tell-tale ink stains of De Courcey’s skilled secretary.
No more a wool merchant than I am a nun.
Sister Helewys seemed to tire of her inquisition and slipped down amongst the bundles, the cart rocking her to sleep like a baby, the snores that emerged the antithesis of an infant. The horse flicked his ears at the sound as I focused ahead, the merchant-wife’s cloak flowing over the rump of her husband’s horse. The men-at-arms led the way and I felt there was sufficient distance between us all and that Sister Helewys was in a deep enough sleep for me to quiz my once-trusted friend.
‘What are you doing here?’ I hissed.
He turned that young-old face toward me and he still looked the same, so kind, not at all a De Courcey man.
‘Looking for you.’
‘De Courcey sent you out?’
‘De Courcey is scouring between Moncrieff and London for you, Lady Ysabel. But word has it that you headed northwest toward Nottingham and so he sends men that way as well. Led of course by the redoubtable Halsham…’
‘Ulric, Halsham is only a few miles away with Gisborne and Prince John at Locksley.’
‘I know. I saw him.’
‘You saw him… did D
e Courcey send you to Locksley? Mary Mother,’ I looked behind me. ‘This is such a mess.’
‘No, he did not. I was there at another’s behest. The place was in uproar on your account, especially when one of Halshams’s men came with the news that a youth with a bad head wound was seen entering Nottingham and a woman with a similar wound was seen leaving.’
‘God!’
My voice lifted and Ulric’s hand held my arm.
‘Shush, Ysabel. Let me go back a step.’ He remained calm and the snores still huffled from the back of the cart. ‘De Courcey did not send me. I have not been in his employ since Sicily, when I was seconded to Sir Guy’s service because of my skill with codes. I have spent much of my time travelling everywhere, conveying and gathering intelligence as required.’
‘You?’
I looked at my mild-mannered friend who would have been happier in cloisters than with codes and ciphers.
‘I can see you think me an unlikely agent but it is because I am so ordinary that I can be a dozen different people and no one is any the wiser.’
‘I am stunned. Is this why you did not write to me again after that last message.’
He nodded.
‘I am sorry. Sir Guy’s work fills every minute of my days and nights and in truth I would have found it difficult to get notes to you from where I have been. Besides, what would you have thought when you discovered I worked for another you despise?’
What indeed?
Ulric sat quietly allowing me to digest all that he had said and the air around about was filled with the creak of harness and the rattle of the wooden cart.
‘Then tell me, Ulric,’ I finally asked. ‘What price is there on your own head, now that you make off with the very person the King and Prince John wish to see brought to trial? Surely you play with fire.’
We had crested a rise in the road, emerging from a thickly wooded passage to gaze down over a valley, the trail upon which we journeyed rolling in higgledy fashion down the decline.
Within our sight and less than ten minutes away, a troupe of horses approached.
‘Quickly,’ said the priest. ‘Away you two into the woods and hide.’ He leaped from his horse, unsaddled the beast and stowed the saddle beneath Helewys’s bundles, swiping at the warm girth marks on the horse and tying it to the back of our cart.
Ulric slid down and helped me jump in my awkward robes. Sister Helewys, woken by the priest’s agitation and immediately focusing on danger, took my place by the priest’s side, making shooing motions with her hands, Ulric dragging me to a leafy cover as we heard the three-part rhythm of horses cantering uphill.
‘There,’ whispered Ulric. ‘Get down in there.’ He pulled me toward a pile of old fallen timber overgrown with ferns. He pushed me in amongst branches to a space between the tumble and followed behind until we were tightly wedged.
We were far enough away from the road not to hear the detail, close enough to observe the troupe halt and the priest’s arm lift in greeting.
‘He lies for us,’ said Ulric. ‘They all do.’
‘Is this subterfuge then?’ I asked as I willed the troupe to move on.
‘Yes. Helewys and Brother Dominic were warned there might be trouble and of what type. They are good people and the soldiers are more ingenuous and tractable in the face of devout religion.’
Are they? And yet they work for people like Halsham and my husband. My husband … alive and full of vengeance!
And then Ulric’s words sank in.
‘What do you mean they were warned of trouble? Who warned them? If it was Beatrice, she is a saint!’
‘Beatrice? Oh I daresay she was in on it. For sure she has told Sister Helewys and Brother Dominic you were not a nun nor I a wool merchant.’
So Sister Helewys just played a game in the back of the cart, enjoying the subterfuge.
‘Ulric,’ I grabbed his arm, ‘Tell me!’
‘Ssh. Later.’
He nodded towards the road. Brother Dominic was pointing back toward Locksley. A question was asked and Brother Dominic shrugged his shoulders, but then put his finger in the air as if he remembered something.
Within seconds the men set off at a gallop. We stayed where we were until the sound disappeared into forest silence whereupon the priest whistled us back.
We clambered out of our hideout, hurrying back to our companions, the habit catching on twigs as I grabbed at Ulric’s arm, ‘Tell me who warned them.’
He gave me a look as we rushed back to the cart and I knew.
It wasn’t Beatrice.
It was his employer, spy for the royal household and a knight of the realm, master of the estate of Locksley.
It was Sir Guy of Gisborne.
‘You were lucky,’ the merchant said. ‘They believed us.’
‘What did you say?’ asked Ulric.
‘What Sir Guy told us to say. The Lord and Saints protect you from the likes of De Courcey. His reputation from London and Old Jewry has spread.’
The merchant spat on the ground and his wife chided him.
Old Jewry. They know?
I tried to butt in but the merchant continued.
‘They asked if we’d seen a woman with a wound to her face. And Brother Dominic shrugged and said no, and that it is surely a shame as a woman who tried to kill her husband deserves the wrath of God.’ He looked at me and grinned. ‘Forgive me, Lady Ysabel, we were told to lie.’
Sister Helewys spoke up, excitement rampant.
‘And Brother Dominic did lie. So well! Reverend Mother said it was a lie blessed by God and that we must do what we must for you. So we said we hadn’t seen anyone since Locksley, saving themselves.’
‘But then I remembered,’ Brother Dominic’s eyes glinted with irreligious craftiness, ‘ that there was group of pilgrims who left when we did, heading for Compostella. There was a young woman with a savage cut upon her face travelling with them.’
‘And they left,’ the merchant added. ‘But I tell you, Lady, you must leave us now. Get away while you and our young friend here have a lead.’
I looked at Ulric, my mind jumping everywhere, but mostly that Gisborne had helped me.
Sister Helewys said, ‘Lady, Reverend Mother said you have men’s clothes. I think you must change and jump up on the horse behind our wool merchant friend and make haste. This has all happened rather too early.’
My heart clanged.
Too early? This is what it has been like for a year, dear Helewys. If only you knew.
I reached for the clothes bundle in the back of the cart.
Change again? Why not? It was fast becoming a fleet skill I swear I could sell as market entertainment.
The habit rolled into a rough ball and I threw it into the back of the cart as Ulric fastened the girth of Brother Dominic’s mount. He leaped up and I climbed onto the back of the cart and slipped over the horse’s rump behind him, aware Reverend Mother’s little misericorde lay at a handy angle at my belt.
The horse circled, sensing our anxiety.
‘Thank you,’ I called as Ulric straightened the animal. ‘Thank you all!’
But the words fled behind me as Ulric’s heels closed on the gelding’s sides. Vaguely I heard Helewys’s ‘God bless!’ as we galloped down a track away from the road, heading into a forest that seemed to stretch on and on.
Once again I thanked my father for teaching me to ride a horse in whichever way was needed – astride, pillion, even fashionably sideways. But this ride was fraught, with no saddle and only a bouncing rump to cushion me. I held my legs away from the horse’s flanks, unwilling to interfere, wrapping my arms tight about Ulric, my body trying to relax into the horse’s stride. Downhill we fled, and I prayed the animal was sure-footed, dreading what might happen to my insecure seat if we must turn hard at a corner. Trees concealed us and as we moved deeper into the forest along that willing track, Ulric slowed until we trotted and then walked, with the horse blowing down its nose. Reaching a fork, the trac
k changed to nothing more than a defile but I had lost all sense of direction in this leafy maze.
‘Where do we go, Ulric?’
‘Chester, and thence to Mont Hault.’
‘Mont Hault?’
‘Ay. The Welsh call it Yr Wyddgrug and even though it is in English hands, I can secret you at the priory. There are a small group of Benedictine nuns…’
‘Of course there are. I owe my life to nuns,’ I muttered. And then louder, ‘I appear to owe my life to God.’
‘You owe your life to God and Sir Guy right now, Lady Ysabel.’
‘Sir Guy … so you say, and yet I find it the oddest thing. Tell me how it is that I seem to owe him so much.’
‘It is not for me to reveal, Madame. It is something between you and he and if not Sir Guy, then with God. Leastways you are alive, you will be free, and little William of Gisborne will reap the benefits.’
William!
‘William? You know where he is?
‘Ay. He is in Mont Hault, with Gwen and Brigid.’
‘My God, Ulric! How have you done this?’
My hands had flown to my cheeks, unlatching from my escort’s middle.
‘It is my job. Intelligence.’
‘Does G…’
As I spoke, the horse shied at a bird flying from a coppice directly in front of us and I slid sideways off the animal, landing in a soft bed of moss and fern.
‘My lady!’
Ulric hauled the horse to a halt, jumping down by my side, but I grinned. Then I burst out laughing.
‘Ulric, I swear when I saw you this day I thought I was marked, that I would be a pile of ash by the King’s command. Now I find you give me hope.’
I wanted to pursue the question of whether Guy knew he had a son and that son in Yr Wyddgrug, but it was enough now to know I would see my child anon and I thanked the Heavens and all in it for that chance.
‘Lady Ysabel, we have much ground to cover yet and it mayn’t be safe, so do not hope for too much. We shall have to creep around Chester, change horses. It won’t be easy. Even less so since the Welsh lost Mont Hault back to the English. It means De Courcey and Halsham will have ears and eyes.’