To my daughters
Contents
I
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
II
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
III
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
IV
Chapter Twenty-three
Epilogue
V
Acknowledgements
I
From the gates of the papal palace in Avignon issued a rider at a pace to make the sparks fly. With a leather bag strapped across his chest under the billowing folds of a cloak, he rode furiously northwards. Unencumbered by page or squire, he reached the court of the Duke of Burgundy in his castle at Dijon in less than a fortnight. When he arrived, the duke, uncle of the young king and controller of France, was preparing for war. Several meetings in the privacy of the ducal chambers took place before the rider set out again. This time he travelled in the company of the duke’s own army, augmented by those of Berry and Bourbon and all the foremost lords of France with their seigneurs and squires. So great was the cavalcade that woodcutters had to be sent on ahead to fell trees in order to widen the line of march. Impervious to the sullen populace, who kept their shutters closed and refused supplies, the messenger accompanied the army as far as the River Lys at the border with Flanders. There, in the guise of a Flemish merchant, he left them en route to their bloody victory at Roosebeeke, and, taking a detour around the battlefront, made for the port of Damme.
Prologue
THE NOVICE SLIPPED ahead like a shadow in the darkness, melting away only when Hildegard reached the great studded door and pushed it open. There she found the prioress in her private chapel, kneeling before a simple whitewashed altar lit by one tall tallow.
She turned at the sound of Hildegard’s robes trailing the floor and rose to her feet. Voice low, she said, ‘Thank you for coming so promptly, sister.’ Her instructions were clear. ‘Go to York at once. The time has come. God knows, we have waited long enough. Give this to His Grace.’ She reached inside one of her sleeves and pulled out a parchment. Hildegard shivered as she glimpsed the papal seal by the light of the candle before thrusting the document into the secret folds of her own sleeve. She bowed her head. So she was right: it was horsemen she had heard riding on to the garth as night fell.
She listened carefully to the rest of her instructions which were detailed and succinct until the prioress said, ‘And after York go to the abbey at Meaux but do not tell Hubert de Courcy you come from the archbishop.’
‘To Meaux, mother?’ She was startled.
She saw a brief light cross the old woman’s powerful features. ‘Yes, my dear. There you will have time to further your own personal wishes if you choose.’
‘You mean—?’
‘You may ask the abbot for permission to travel forth in search of a suitable grange for yourself and your chosen sisters. Tell him about your vision. He’ll be persuaded by that. Before I die,’ she went on, ‘I want to see a daughter house issue from our conjunction with Meaux.’ She chuckled softly in the shadows. ‘With a priory to the south and one to the north this new abbot foisted on us by Avignon will be checked in a most satisfying manner.’
The prioress put out a hand and Hildegard felt the papery skin brush her own. ‘Keep your eyes open, sister. I want to know what this new abbot is plotting. We know who sent him. Now we need to know why. Remember where the truth lies and who is best able to protect it. All blessings with you.’ She added with a compassionate glance, ‘We live in violent times. Go well armed.’
So it was, shortly before dawn, that Hildegard, dressed in the white habit of her order, with a cloak of burnet thrown over it, rode out from the safety of the priory at Swyne armed with a stave and two trained hounds, to set her horse towards York and the palace of the archbishop.
Chapter One
NOVEMBER. The month of the dead. The dry death of field and thicket had given way to unending rains. Close to the Feast of St Martin in the fifth year of King Richard’s reign, the ditches were overflowing, the rivers in spate, the fields like vast lakes under a sullen sky.
Hildegard rode in darkness through lanes she knew well, picking her way across the marshes of Holderness, skirting gurgling dykes and the overflowing channels that divided the field strips until eventually she reached the quag that passed for the road to York and the limits of familiarity. Dawn came and a pale light drizzled over the landscape. Travellers hoping to enter the city as soon as the gates were opened were more frequent now and she joined the sombre flow.
It was mid-morning when she rode under the Monk Gate and encountered the tumult of the town, late afternoon by the time she left her horse and two hounds with the ostler and hired a boat, and it was evening, prematurely dark in the foul weather, by the time she shipped the dripping oars and lay unnoticed under some overhanging willows a little way upstream from the archbishop’s palace. With the document from Rome hidden in the folds of her robe it was common sense to seek admittance via the watergate only under cover of darkness.
Night fell, with its swirling fogs and noxious airs. As soon as it was safe Hildegard entered secretly by the watergate and was admitted without delay into the presence of the archbishop. In his splendid robes he received her cordially, though with few words. When he held out his hand for the parchment, its seal dangling, she tried to gauge his allegiance by the glance he bestowed but he gave nothing away. Trembling a little at her own part in these weighty affairs, she was relieved to be shown to a guest chamber high up in the honeycomb of gilded luxury in which the prelate lived. A restless night on a pallet of soft wool followed. It was too unusual in its cloying ease to afford much sleep and next morning she was brought, pale and exhausted, to the second part of her errand.
It was shortly after prime and still dark by the time she slipped out through the watergate and sculled back downstream. The shock of the town when she returned to pick up her horse and hounds was overwhelming. Bellowing traders were advertising their wares from every corner of the marketplace, artisans displayed their stock in dozens of shops ranged cheek by jowl along the crowded streets, and the whole warren of the town was filled with musicians and conjurors, merchants and mountebanks, pardoners and herbalists, saddlers and friars mendicant, cloth merchants, wine and water carriers, sellers of meat, of bread, of cheese, and servants and pedlars of every conceivable kind. A hundred faces or more were grabbed by the light of flaring cressets then let slip back into the darkness. Animals added their own clamour, hens clucking, horses hobbled for purchase, beef bellowing on the hoof, goats, ducks, dogs and a dancing bear rattling its chain. And suddenly, as dawn broke, the rain began to fall. It sent awnings rattling over stalls and shopfronts as everyone rushed to avoid a drenching.
Such a mingling of sight and sound was almost too much to take in after seven years in a hermitage. Everybody, Hildegard realised, was here to buy and sell, including the girls hanging round the lighted ale-house in their low-cut gowns.
As she began to push her way through the crowd towards the stables she heard the beating of a kettledrum start up on the other side of the marketplace. The drummer banged out the brisk rhythm of a marching band but instead of the expected accompa
niment of pipes and horns a cacophony of crashes and rattles took up the beat. It was a parody of music, rapid and violent, and as the players approached through the rain in the glimmering dawn Hildegard craned her neck like everyone else to see who they were.
Between the heads she saw four or five musicians carving an avenue through the crowd. They were beating pots and pans, the spasmodic jerks of their clubs accompanied by smiles of glee at the racket they were making. The bailiff and his men paraded straightfaced beside them with their staves at the ready. As the crowd opened to let them through she saw that the vanguard of this noisy procession was taken up by three young girls tied together round the waists by a length of stout rope. On their heads they wore striped bonnets, enough to announce their profession even if their ragged attempts at sexual allure had not done so. Some of the onlookers applauded as the girls passed by and shouted in support, others yelled insults and one stallholder, face contorted in disgust, hurled a small yellowing cabbage. It hit one of the girls in the middle of the back and she flashed round at once.
‘Oh, it’s you, is it, lover? See you at your usual time tonight, shall I?’ The crowd near by roared with laughter and the stallholder, red faced, gave a snarl and turned away.
An old ale-woman had come out from a nearby inn to see what had brought her customers into the street. She stood with folded, beefy arms, and Hildegard heard her suck in her breath. ‘Just listen to that!’ she said to anyone who cared to pay heed. ‘He’ll be getting a walloping from his wife next and serve him right.’
‘They’re such very young girls,’ Hildegard commented. ‘But I suppose if men pay girls will play.’
The ale-wife turned to her. ‘That mouthy one’s seventeen. Been plying her trade some two years now. It’s the little one I feel sorry for.’
The procession had drawn level and Hildegard could see the third girl dragging a little behind the two more brazen ones in front. She looked no more than thirteen. With a terrified expression she walked with her head down, allowing the two older ones to pull her along by the rope. ‘You feel sorry for her because of her youth, I suppose? asked Hildegard’
‘And because of how she got into this predicament in the first place,’ answered the ale-wife.
‘And how was that?’
‘Brought here from foreign parts by her so-called uncle. Big brute of a fellow. Set her to work straight away so he could sit on his backside and count her earnings.’
‘Can’t she get away from him?’
‘He’d track her down. She’s his little gold mine. He’d not let her get far.’ The ale-wife shook her head in despair. ‘Makes you think, though. She can’t be any older than young King Richard. Not a day more than fifteen. But a very different destiny allotted by God Almighty in his wisdom.’
‘I doubt whether even King Richard is content at present.’
‘Aye, stuck with his uncles and their cunning. He’s as bound by riches as that poor lass by poverty, and that’s the truth. Those unless of his certainly see themselves fitted to rule more than a mere lad. Lucky for him he got the London mob on his side with his recklessness at Smithfield, don’t you think?’
‘I suspect it’s made the council of dukes even more certain he’s not the fabric a king should be patched from,’ Hildegard replied somewhat guardedly.
‘Ah, there’s the stench of conspiracy everywhere you look.’ The ale-wife cast a gloomy eye over the busy marketplace. ‘We live in sad times. Where will it end?’ She turned to attend to her customers, swarming back now the procession had moved off, and Hildegard, too, turned to go. It was true what the ale-wife said about the king. Although Richard had been perched on the throne of England for five years, ever since the death of his grandfather Edward III, his uncles, the royal guardians, were roused to a conspiracy of ambition, especially now, after the way he had supported Wat Tyler and his followers during their confrontation at Smithfeld. The boy’s sympathies had not endeared him either to his uncles, the dukes, or to the barons, who saw their vast estates threatened by the mob. The burgesses, too, were sent into a panic of fear at the prospect of losing their grasp on the monopoly of trade in the towns with further civil unrest. King Richard’s apparent change of heart when he revoked his promises to Tyler and his followers, was said by some to have been forced on him by John of Gaunt under threat of losing his crown. Others saw it as an instance the boy-king’s duplicity.
Making her way between the stalls towards the stables where her horse and hounds were waiting, Hildegard was frowning. It was not only the State which was in turmoil. The Church was fractured by dissent as well. Wyclif was stirring justifiable debate but had been silenced by the council at Blackfriars the previous year. Authority everywhere was being challenged. The rival popes, Urban in Rome and Clement in Avignon, had divided Europe and managed to bring the English and the French into opposition yet again. As the ale-wife said, these were sad times and there was no knowing where it would end.
The sound of the procession had almost faded and after a brief lull the marketeers started shouting their wares with renewed vigour. By now the girls would be approaching the stocks on the far side where they would endure further humiliations. Hildegard sighed. There was little justice to be had when the purchasers of such girls ran free and as often as not wore the chains of law and order on their chests.
Disturbed and saddened, her thoughts in disarray as she wondered what, if anything, she could do, she took charge of her palfrey, checked that the two dogs had been fed, then paid off the ostler and headed out towards the town gate.
Despite the dangers of travelling alone Hildegard felt only eagerness as she left the clamour and conflicts of York behind and rode out towards open country. She was prepared as well as she could be to face the bands of masterless men who roamed the forests nowadays. The many mercenaries on the loose since the apparent end to the French wars had developed an acquired taste for robbery with violence. They attacked whomsoever they pleased. She set her mouth in a firm line. The small cross she wore, hand carved out of hazelwood, was little protection in such dark days, but her stave was as thick as a bowman’s wrist and her hunting knife had a long blade, recently honed. For extra assurance, she was accompanied by two hounds, a lymer for attack and a little kennet for the sharpness of its claws.
Two alert guardian spirits, they ran through the waving grasses beside the track within a whistle call.
The lymer went ahead. Answering to the dignified name of Duchess, she was a long-legged, rakish beast, with a heavy jowled head, floppy ears and an intelligent, melancholy expression. By contrast the kennet, Bermonda, was like a domestic table dog, shaggy, brindled and apparently docile. On closer scrutiny you could see a mouth full of sharp, close-set teeth and a complement of villainous-looking claws to match. Like Duchess, she had a good nose and could follow a track through anything, woodland or thick cover, and could mark a scent from any branch the quarry had brushed past, and, in fact, seemed able to pluck a scent from the very air itself.
The little animal would express her excitement as soon she found a scent to let everybody know. The lymer was different. Her purpose was to locate the secret hiding place of the quarry so that the huntsmen could bring up the hounds to flush it out, so she was trained to hunt in silence. Neither Duchess nor Bermonda would ever give up. Fear was something they might instil but was something they never seemed to feel. Although confident they would protect her, Hildegard decided to keep to the woods and avoid the highway.
She left the city under Walmgate Bar and took the road that led east over the Fosse river beside arable strips of manor land. After this the way to Meaux wended through the great forest of Galtres with its league upon league of oak and beech and then rose little by little to the chalk uplands of the wolds. The road was narrower there though still a well-worn track, and it would eventually lead to the distant town of Beverley with its great lantern tower lifted like a beacon over the flat fields. After that it was only a few leagues further to Meaux.
After weeks of endless rains the field strips had been turned to mud. They were now nothing but stagnant corrugations, stretching into the grey distance, impossible to drive the oxen through. Even the strips on the higher ground were water-logged; the heavy clay stuck to everything it touched. A girl, clearly pregnant, emerged from one of the hovels that clustered along the side of the road. She was carrying a mattock. Working such land must be a back-breaking task, Hildegard thought with compassion as she rode by. From behind the curtain of rain came the keening of a dog to give voice to the general wretchedness.
A better time will come, she thought. It must. It was imminent. Surely the signs were beginning to appear?
She left the fields and entered the wasteland. Here the sky seemed vast. Black clouds raced across it from the east, big bellied with more rain. Tucking the flapping edges of her cloak tightly into her belt she rode on, deeper still into the wilderness. She began to consider the task that lay ahead.
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