After the death of her husband in France was finally confirmed, Hildegard had emerged from seclusion in her hermitage at the Derwent Crossing determined to get on with life. She still longed for Hugh and had found no respite from her grief in prayer and meditation. There seemed little point in anything without him, but she knew she had to find a purpose. There was no excuse now. When the lawyers had finished picking through his estate, she had received a handsome fortune in rents and gold. It made her seek some use for such unexpected wealth. Then she had discovered what quickly became her life’s purpose: she would set up her own house of nuns where she could teach the young and tend the sick. It seemed the best she could do in the confusion of the times when the poor were being ground underfoot by one faction after another. Her prioress had given her stout support. There was only one obstacle to her desire: the Abbot of Meaux.
In the short period of his abbacy Hubert de Courcy had established a reputation for austerity in keeping with the ideals of his order’s founder. Discipline had been restored, harshness towards the novices became ingrained. Those who didn’t like it left. The nuns at Swyne had soon discovered he was a man skilled in jurisprudence. He had several times represented the interests of his monks at the court of the King’s Bench in London to the priory’s detriment, had set up claims and counter-claims over land disputes all over the county. It was rumoured he was hoping to submit a plea to the French pope in Avignon as soon as he was summoned.
It was also true that he had revitalised the abbey’s fortunes to something like their former health after the pestilence had carried away half the conversi and most of the monks a generation ago. And it seemed he could draw bequests to his order by the glitter of his silver tongue as easily as bees are drawn to the flower.
Even Hildegard’s prioress had been moved to narrow her eyes and in acid tones let fall the observation that fiscal restraint was a phrase much heard at Meaux these days. ‘It seems,’ she said, ‘this new abbot they’ve pushed in over the head of the old one – Hubert de Courcy as he’s pleased to call himself – is something of a tough nut. But we shall see, no doubt of that.’
Pondering on the best way to approach him, Hildegard entered the dank and dripping woods.
She hadn’t gone far when her thoughts were diverted.
From far off came a sound that started as a distant shrill of birds but gradually it began to fill the woods with a raucous screeching. A flock of crows, she guessed. She wondered what had disturbed them. Looking to left and right, she soon saw a living cloud rising and falling above the trees to one side. Turning the head of her palfrey, she deviated from the path and rode on into the thicket until the source of the disturbance came into sight.
Five bodies hung from a gibbet set among the trees. Little was left to show that the bloodied shapes hanging there had once been human beings. The crows had picked and fought so thoroughly to finish the job started by men that their entrails spilled to the ground like ribbons the crows clinging to them as they bit and fought to get the biggest share. Their beaks ripped without remorse at the hunks of flesh they had dragged into the grass while their companions at the feast gnawed at eye sockets and sucked them clean of jelly. Others cracked through the tender bones of fingers or gorged with bloodied beaks on the yielding parts of breast and groin.
Hildegard wanted to avert her eyes but was transfixed by the sight. Her skin broke out in a sweat of horror. The men would have been alive when their guts slithered out after the thrust of the butcher’s knife. They would have been alive when they were swung into the air by their necks. But they would know nothing now of their life blood, leaking into the puddles on the scuffed earth beneath the gibbet where they must have struggled against their executioners.
Still unable to look away, she slid down off her horse out of respect and offered up a prayer. Her heart was thumping and her throat felt dry. There was nothing to be done for the victims now but pray. As she stepped forward she stumbled between two crows fighting over a piece of flesh. Their oiled wings lashed like weapons as they hooked their beaks over the same strip of human meat, until a blow from her stave broke up the fight. The reprieve lasted only moments, however. As soon as she remounted and began to push on through the undergrowth they started up again, as ferocious as before. She urged her horse onward, anxious to get away as quickly as possible from a scene of such bloody butchery.
But the horror was not yet ended. Riding on between the hawthorns that parted as her horse thrust forward, she emerged into a sudden clearing. It was like a secret room in the forest. Before she could get her bearings and return to the track she caught sight of something bright in the trampled grass. Her nostrils quivered with the stench of fox. Duchess came to attention by her side but remained silent. Bermonda whined.
A vixen, stunned by her abrupt appearance, quickly regained its senses and skidded back into the undergrowth. It too had been feasting and again the prey was human. On the ground was a man. That he was dead was obvious. His throat had been ripped out.
As she slid from her horse for a second time the clouds opened and the rain began to fall harder than ever. Suddenly the woods were bristling with the sound of falling water. Dragging her hood over her head, she waded through the wet grass.
He was young, she saw, no more than twenty, a squire for some local lord maybe, wearing no blazon nor any other sign to show to whom he belonged. He might be an apprentice from the town, she thought, seeing his leather jerkin and roughly woven shirt. He wore no spurs, nor did he carry arms, and he bore many wounds besides those of the fox, which must have discovered him only moments ago. Many attackers armed with steel, she realised, in order to overcome just one young man.
Looking off to the edge of the clearing she found it impossible to make out which way the gang had ridden off. The glade was deep in mud, the grasses ground up in the turmoil of the attack. Now the pelting rain was filling the deep grooves left by the horses’ hooves. A rank smell of decomposing earth was released by the downpour.
Some masterless men must have done this, and only a short time ago, she surmised with a shudder. She had heard nothing above the raucous shrieking of the carrion, nor seen anything. A lone rider, she imagined, maybe on an errand for his master, the brigands seizing their chance? Or was it something to do with the hanged men at the town gibbet?
She knelt down and rested a hand on the youth’s forehead. Already cold. And fair of face despite the bright neckerchief of blood at his throat. He was a youth with the ruddy cheeks of one used to the outdoors. No clerk, then, no journeyman working at his bench through all the hours of daylight. A wide mouth with full lips given to laughter. Blood bubbling and just beginning to clot at the corners of his mouth. The robbers had stolen their victim’s dagger from his belt, she observed, leaving the sheath empty.
The rain was rattling through the branches, setting up a roar in more distant parts of the woods like an army on the march. It reduced everything, even the lifeless body at her feet. She gave him a closer look before she left. There seemed nothing else to note. A prayer for his departed soul fell from her lips. Her eyes glistened. About to ride on to seek help in getting him taken to burial, she hesitated.
There was something she had nearly missed. It was held tightly in his right hand. Tentatively she reached down. His body was not yet fixed in the rigour of death and she was able to prise his fingers apart one by one. Giving up what had been grasped so fiercely at the moment of death, his fingers softly opened.
He had been gripping a glass phial of some sort, no more than four inches high, with a wooden stopper sealed with red wax. The light was too bad to enable her to see what was inside the little bottle so she put it into the leather scrip on her belt together with her cures. It might be a clue to the young man’s identity, or to his destination, or even to the thwarted purpose of his journey through the woods.
There was not much more she could do for him now. She dragged his body into the bushes and found a way of hiding it under some fallen
branches to save him from the immediate notice of crows, then she stationed her lymer as a guard against ravening foxes until she could procure help from the monks. The abbey could be no more than two leagues away. With everything ordered as best she could, she took to the trail at once.
Shivering with cold, soaked to the skin, and with a heart filled with the horror of what she had seen, she was eventually conveyed over the wooden bridge that spanned the canal and rode on under the limestone archway into the sombre gatehouse of Meaux.
There was an air of excitement within the abbey. Townsfolk, a good many of them women, were flocking around the open doors of the chapel. They held scarves over their heads and the rain seemed to make them skittish. Their frivolity struck a jarring note. Hildegard’s thoughts were with the dead youth lying in the grass. From inside the chapel she could hear the sound of an organ growling out a flourish of arpeggios. A bell tolled briskly from the tower as if to hurry the already hurrying congregation. Catching a passing novice by the sleeve, Hildegard asked what was going on.
‘The talking crucifix has been unveiled and the abbot is about to give a sermon. It’s not to be missed!’ He was full of enthusiasm. ‘Who knows, sister, we may be in luck and the crucifix will speak today! You’re fortunate to have arrived in the nick of time!’
Hildegard repressed any observation to the contrary. She watched the young man hurry away after pointing her in the direction of the office of the lay brothers, the conversi. By the time she had fulfilled her obligations to the murdered youth the sermon, together with any conversation involving crucifixes, would be over. But first she had to find the master of the conversi who ran the practical affairs of the abbey, and inform him about the body. Then she would have to guide his posse of men to the spot in the woods where she had hidden it, then, finally, in sorrow, bring it back to sanctuary.
She set about pushing a way through the crowd towards his office.
There were logs heaped on the fire, tapestries on the walls, and an obedient clerk in the corner taking notes. The heady scent of incense brought expensively from the east filled the air with a sense of luxury, as if to underline the fact that Abbot Hubert de Courcy had no need to make concessions to anyone. He had all the wealth and power of Avignon behind him.
Hildegard observed him without expression. In his late thirties, around her own age, in fact, and equally tall and vigorous in his manner, he was, of course, tonsured. No doubt if he had been a mere lay brother his hair would have been worn long, but it was clipped and dark and in its beauty matched his features. These were chiselled, even vulpine, helped by a Norman nose, cutting cheekbones and a sensual curl to the upper lip that women seemed to find irresistible, judging by the congregation earlier. None of this did him any good now. Hildegard merely watched him with a glance as cool as the rain that fell in the garth. I will not give in.
He was a subtle and disputatious thinker, endlessly finding objections to her request.
In fact, after informing him of the body in the woods and hearing him tell his clerk to send someone to fetch the coroner from York, they had been politely fencing since tierce. He seemed to find her request regarding the small priory she wished to establish quite unfeasible.
He simply refused to yield.
Now she fingered the small wooden cross she wore and reordered her thoughts. She was still shaken by her journey here. First the hanged men, the flock of carrion, then the youth and the fox. Nature itself seemed to be turning against man. The Church tried to explain it by saying it was because the Antichrist was approaching. Whatever the case, the murdered youth had been brought back to the abbey in the implacable rain and placed in a side chapel until the coroner arrived. Since then she had been forced to sit here countering endless objections from Hubert de Courcy. She was tired. She had scarcely had time to wash and change. There was mud in her nails and on her boots. The latter besmirched the abbot’s polished tiles, as she was sure he had already noticed.
As she listened to him picking through his objections yet again she began to realise he must have misunderstood, for he was saying, ‘This is a man’s world, Sister. Alas for you, we don’t have nuns throwing their weight around within the abbey precincts. Absit invidia.’ He bowed his head a fraction, as if to take the sting out of his words. ‘You can hardly expect me to flout the directives of St Bernard at your behest.’
‘I thought you did what you liked, my lord abbot, within the Rule?’
‘With two popes I suppose we could have a freer rein.’ He paused as if struck by the novelty of the idea before mentally placing a colon and adding: ‘Nevertheless, my dear sister, I administer the rules. If you want to be an abbess you’ll have to go elsewhere.’
Hildegard frowned. Surely he didn’t imagine she wanted to set up here? ‘I don’t seek to rival anyone, my lord. I simply want to establish my own small house in accordance with my vision.’
Hubert arched his fine, black brows.
‘But I need your permission if I’m to fulfil its command. Meaux is our mother house,’ she reminded him. ‘I need your permission if I’m to go out and look at suitable property, and if you object only on grounds of proximity, that to have half a dozen nuns on the other side of the canal would be unsettling to you and your brothers, maybe we could discuss the matter of location instead?’ She ignored the iciness of his glance. ‘I have one or two granges in mind, my lord, ones at a distance to satisfy your need for solitude. And ours too,’ she added. His brows rose again. ‘I feel sure that when you see how hard working and sensible we are you won’t regret giving us your support.’
His brow, she noticed, furrowed even more as it began to dawn on him she wasn’t going to give in. His first objection on the grounds of danger had been countered. It was, she had agreed, dangerous for anyone, especially a woman, to travel the roads at these unsettled times. But she was prepared and able to defend herself. He had raised his eyebrows at that too. His next objection concerned the proximity of the new house. But she had made it absolutely clear she was as unwilling to set up on his doorstep as he was to have her do so. Now, she thought, any further objections would show he was simply being obstinate. If he persisted, it would soon become known, the prioress would make sure of that.
‘The point is, my lord,’ she felt constrained to go on, ‘I don’t intend to lay myself or my sisters open to harassment from Scots mercenaries, like those poor nuns up at Rosedale Abbey, not only having to herd sheep and live on berries, poor things, but at risk from any marauders that happen along. My suggestion is: allow me a tour of houses in the Riding, then I can assess which one will be safest for me and my sisters and will benefit us all with a new regimen. I thought, perhaps, I could begin with that little nunnery out at Yedingham—’
‘Yedingham?’ He visibly relaxed. It was quite far away. She saw the thought flit across his face. But he was obdurate. ‘Unfortunately it’s Benedictine, as I’m sure you know – although a quite charming little place,’ he added cautiously.
‘Yes. We sisters at Swyne think so too. Luckily for us the lord who endowed it is favourably disposed towards Cistercians.’
His glance sharpened. To him that would mean Avignon, not Rome, Charles of France, not Richard, King of England. It would also raise the question of how she knew the preference of this generous magnate.
‘As well,’ she continued, as if unaware of all this, ‘it’s on the north bank of the Derwent—’
‘Ah,’ he said. ‘The Derwent.’
Regardless, she went on, ‘—and as the incumbents are getting on in years I gather they would welcome somebody with energy to run things for them – they even had a corrodian organising the dairy for them a few years ago, I understand – and of course we could take over the wharf there and see that it’s maintained in a manner you would appreciate.’
He looked startled. ‘That means taking charge of the wine imports?’
‘Why, yes, if you insist. And apparently there are many hives—’
‘Thriving ho
ney trade, true.’ He frowned.
‘And plenty of swine, sheep and milch cows.’ She thought she’d better get it all out straight away.
‘Milch cows,’ he repeated, his tone suddenly heavy with foreboding.
‘Oh, and all manner of interesting fish in the river as well as oysters and a good few orchards close at hand, so I believe, and—’
‘And the passing trade to the coast for which you might offer your services as guides—?’
Was that sarcasm? She ignored it. ‘And toll-keepers, yes. How clever of you to think of that!’ She sat back. What would he say? There was a pause while she held her breath.
‘And failing Yedingham?’ he managed on a sigh, as he seemed to realise how well she had prepared her defence.
She leaned forward and gave him her warmest smile. ‘If you really couldn’t bear a group of capable nuns on the other side of the canal at Meaux – why, I suppose we could always look at Wilberfoss.’
His eyes flashed. ‘The niece of the archbishop runs Wilberfoss.’
‘Oh dear, so that’s not possible. It will have to be some other place then. I’m sure we’ll find somewhere.’ Unable to resist a final thrust, she added, ‘Of course, I hope your mind isn’t entirely closed to the idea of a double house here at some time in the future? Recall the success of the one at Watton, my lord abbot.’
‘The Gilbertines are in there.’ His tone was dismissive. But his expression was of a man finding himself inexplicably hog tied.
‘Which demonstrates,’ she continued smoothly, ‘that we can all learn from each other. Divisiones vero gratiarum sunt—’
‘There are diversities of gifts,’ he agreed heavily, ‘idem autem Spiritus – but the same Spirit. Oh indeed, Sister, yes, how true.’ Another deep sigh issued from his lips, as from a man setting out upon a rocky path instead of the easier one anticipated. ‘And may I take this opportunity to tell you how delighted I am,’ but no smile flitted across the marble features, ‘that your husband, Sir Hugh, had the forethought,’ he bowed his head and crossed himself, ‘before his heroic demise in the wars with France, to make such ample provision for you. There can be nothing worse than being a woman lacking either a husband or a fortune. And now,’ he bowed his head again, ‘without the one, you have the other.’
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