Thomas was quick to reply. “Be assured, we would hear if there was anything to hear, and so would you. He is our abbot. The name Hubert de Courcy is constantly in our prayers.” He gave her a soft look. He was her confessor and guessed whose name lay deep in her heart.
She poured them both another beaker of ale. “Are you having anything to eat before you leave?”
“I’d like to get back before vespers if I can.”
“Take a pack of bread and cheese with you then. I’ll get Agnetha to make one up.”
He leaned forward. “I know you haven’t been out of Deepdale since moving in here last summer. That’s almost a year. I said as much when I was over at Swyne.”
“And?”
“Your prioress mentioned Archbishop Neville and the possibility that you might have to seek an audience with him in York.”
She gave him a hurried glance. “Is that all she said?”
He nodded.
“I expect she’ll be more explicit when it suits her.”
Thomas knew about the quest to fetch back the cross of Constantine, which had sent Hildegard to Tuscany over a year ago. Perhaps, he suspected, the prioress had yet another mission for her along the same lines, but if he did he was tactful enough not to probe any further.
He could not help adding one thing, however: “If you feel you need an escort at any time, Brother Alcuin will give me permission. I’d be glad to accompany you.” A disarming smile lit up his features. “Alcuin is less troubled by the strictures of the Rule than Abbot de Courcy. He lacks the abbot’s ruthless sense of purpose. We’re enjoying his easygoing rule while we can, expecting to pay for it a hundredfold when the abbot returns from Jerusalem. Meanwhile,” he looked hopeful, “if I can be of any assistance, I am yours to command.”
“You missed your vocation, Thomas. You’d make an admirable knight. I may yet call on you. If the prioress really does have some errand for me, I shall be glad of your presence.” They exchanged warm smiles, but just then Hildegard happened to glance out the window to where the newcomers had appeared.
They had gone to sit on a bench in the yard and were turned slightly away from each other, the silent one staring at the ground from under her hood while kicking at a stone with the toe of her boot. Her companion, hair shaken free to catch the sunlight, had broken off one of the briar roses and was holding it to her nostrils with evident pleasure at the scent.
Hildegard stood up. “No doubt I shall discover in good time why the prioress has seen fit to send me a couple of guests without warning! I’d best attend them.”
* * *
When Thomas left he was carrying a bundle wrapped in cheesecloth for his brothers and something for himself to eat on the ride back and had strung the two ponies together the better to lead them. Hildegard, accompanied by her hounds, Duchess and Bermonda, walked with him as far as the domain gate. A few yards after starting down the lane he turned in the saddle to raise a hand in farewell and was soon out of sight.
By now the sun hung like a bloodied orange behind the topmost branches of the trees. When Hildegard turned back she could see the grange at the head of the dale. The jumbled buildings shimmered as the sun’s rays sparkled on the shards of feldspar within the stones. From the kitchen chimney a thread of smoke crawled into the luminous sky. She paused with one hand on the gate as a figure clothed in white drifted outside and knelt among the herbs. The frail and yearning cries of the sheep floated from the upper pasture.
Unexpectedly she was moved by a feeling of happiness.
After everything that had happened since her knight-at-arms husband had gone missing in the French wars nearly ten years ago, she suddenly realised she had managed to find a haven and a purpose at last.
This is home, she thought with a start of joy. Peace, beauty, order. A refuge in a world gone mad with violence, with schism and with blood feud.
She made her way back at a leisurely pace towards the house with her hounds ghosting through the arching stems of barley grass beside her. Languidly content she followed them along the bank of the stream where glistening buds of anemones and wild garlic grew. She would go back to the house now and see what more she could do for her guests.
Chapter Two
Agnetha was busy in the kitchen when she entered. The remains of two boiled eggs and some crumbs of bread were on the table. Petronilla was standing beside her regaling her with some story or other, but she stopped when Hildegard appeared and turned, as if caught doing something wrong.
Her cloak was thrown carelessly over the bench and she hurried to retrieve it. She was wearing a linen shift in a pretty shade of blue over a white undergarment with fashionably long sleeves that she had looped up, bunching them over her elbows as if she was about to set to work. It was a most stylish effect, as she probably realised.
Agnetha gave Hildegard a wide smile. “Just in time, sister. Petronilla is going to show me how they make pastry at her father’s great house over the other side of Galtres Forest.”
“Really? Well, I won’t interfere then,” said Hildegard, keeping the smile off her face. The prospect of anybody teaching Agnetha anything about pastry was amusing, as it was yet another of her practical skills, but before she could turn to address the silent girl, Petronilla interrupted.
“Well, of course they don’t make pastry now,” she said. “They don’t make anything. The whole place is gone to wrack and ruin. It’s probably crawling in weeds with rats in every chamber, now that Father has died and my ridiculous guardian has stepped in. But that’s what it used to be like. It was very grand before that foolish man ran it into the ground. I wonder—”
“I should like to hear more about that,” Hildegard broke in. “Perhaps when you’ve finished helping Agnetha she’ll spare you for a few minutes and you can come to my little chamber across the hall to tell me about it?”
She bent to the more silent of the two. “Meanwhile, let me show you where you’re going to sleep, my pet. Did you bring any belongings with you?”
The girl nodded and produced a small bundle from inside her cloak. Hildegard recognised the cloth as a spare from Swyne. It seemed that the child had arrived with nothing of her own except what was inside the bundle.
Without speaking she followed Hildegard obediently into the hall.
“Your name, my little one?” she asked when they were alone.
The girl mumbled something, then cleared her throat, which had become gruff, and mumbled it again.
Hildegard bent closer. “Maud, did you say?”
The girl nodded under her hood with her glance fixed to the floor.
“Then come with me, Maud, and we’ll find you a comfortable corner of your own. That must have been a long, hard ride from Swyne, especially in this hot weather.”
Again the girl made no reply but, head bent, followed in Hildegard’s footsteps up the wooden stairs.
* * *
“A perfect summer’s day!” exclaimed Cecilia as she came outside to join the others after finishing her morning chores. The nuns had been working hard since prime and had stopped now in the heat of the day to sit under the trellis to eat some bread and cheese.
“No promise of rain tomorrow,” agreed Sister Marianne, passing a platter to her. “It’s getting serious.”
They were all well aware that in many parts of the county cattle were dying, people were succumbing to a strange falling sickness and the wandering preachers were predicting the end of the world as usual. Even here in the dale, despite the lush grass on the banks of the stream, the meadow was beginning to look parched and they were starting to worry about the crops. Most evenings now they were forced to fetch water from the stream to feed the plants in the kitchen garden.
“It’ll be a good thing when Dunstan gets the sheep away to summer pasture,” remarked Hildegard.
They sat in silence for a while. A shrike was heard in the woods. A fox barked.
The two girls were visible over the picket fence bordering the garden. Petro
nilla’s lips were moving but she was too far off for her words to be audible.
When it was clear no one else was going to bring the subject up Agnetha flung out her arms and exclaimed, “So? What are we to make of them?” She turned to Hildegard. “What do you think, sister?”
Hildegard shook her head. She had had a word with Petronilla but had only learned all over again about the guardian from whom she had absconded.
“And the heiress is serious about joining us?” asked Marianne sceptically. She was the eldest of the four, sold into the nunnery when she was nine but, it seemed, with no regrets.
“She’s a puzzle, isn’t she?” Agnetha commented.
Hildegard was quiet while the three others speculated on the nature of the guardian who had presumably tried to marry her off in order to increase his own fortune. It would be the old story, they agreed. A headstrong young girl coming into a sudden inheritance and resenting being told what to do with it. No doubt such wealth represented ribbons and fine clothes. Not the sober prospect of marriage to a probably older man, a widower even, followed by the task of running his household and bearing his children.
“Maybe she imagines we’re like the Gilbertines at Watton,” mused Marianne. “She’ll expect to be able to take a little lapdog into mass and play the lady. If she thinks that she’ll have another think coming if she stays at Swyne.”
“Or with us,” murmured Agnetha. “We’re not living out here in Deepdale for that.”
Hildegard let them talk without contributing anything. It was little Maud who worried her.
* * *
Neither girl, it transpired, had ever been to York, the great capital of the north.
Both of them had emerged a few minutes later from the kitchen garden with full baskets to join everyone else under the vine trellis. The bread and cheese was passed around and beakers refilled with small ale.
At first the conversation dwelt on matters to do with the grange, but when somebody mentioned York and the forthcoming Corpus Christi pageant to be held there, Petronilla announced that her father’s lands had been miles from any interesting town, let alone York, the greatest city in the world.
“Excepting possibly Jerusalem,” she added. “I have, in fact, ventured as far as London, a very fine place too, in its way. It was when I was ten. Father took me to see the coronation of King Richard.”
She described how she had been held up above the heads of the crowd so she could have a better view. “So close,” she said, “I could almost touch the king’s robes as he went by. He was such a beautiful boy, all dressed in white silk and jewels and riding a little white horse caparisoned in gold and silver. He was dazzling! And, in fact,” she lowered her voice as if to impart a secret, “we were so close to the king that a man standing next to us caught one of the gold leaves that the four maidens in the towers threw down as he passed underneath the arch. And he gave it to me! I have it still. Or had,” she corrected, “but sadly I had to leave it behind when I fled.”
She turned to Maud. “Have you ever been to London, Maud?”
Maud shook her head.
In a tone clearly showing she judged herself more interesting than anyone else, Petronilla continued. “Of course, at that time I was a mere child and I—”
“Seven years ago,” Hildegard interrupted, “so that makes you seventeen, the same age as the king himself?” Her expression was enigmatic.
“Not quite. His birthday’s at Epiphany and mine isn’t until midsummer’s day.”
“Soon, then.”
Petronilla looked thoughtful, but before Hildegard could say anything else she started up again. “To have witnessed such a magnificent spectacle as the coronation,” she continued in awed tones, “fountains running with wine, the beautiful boy-king, the rapturous cheering of the crowds, that’s something that has impressed itself on my mind forever!”
She paused for breath, but before her audience could contribute anything she was off again. “I tormented myself over how I could ever become Queen of England. It seemed hopeless. I was in complete despair! What chance did I have, hidden in my moated grange! It was a living death! To die unknown and unseen! That’s when I determined to make my escape as soon as I was old enough and—”
“So that’s why you ran away!” Agnetha broke in with a kind smile. “Not to escape your guardian but to become Queen of England? It’s a pity then about Anne of Bohemia!”
Petronilla’s eyes flashed for a moment but then she burst into peals of laughter, along with everyone else. “It does sound ridiculous now, I grant you! But I was only…” she hesitated, “I was only … I was only ten, don’t forget. I knew nothing. I was far too young to know it would be impossible.”
“And now I suppose you know everything, you scamp.” Agnetha had the air of rescuing her. She seemed to have taken a liking to her, despite her vanity.
Hildegard studied her carefully. The girl was never seventeen.
Maud, as usual, admitted to very little.
They returned to the original question.
No, she had never been to York.
An animal suddenly shrieked from the undergrowth. Maud gave a little jump and a cry of alarm escaped her. Hildegard patted the back of her hand. “It’s nothing,” she reassured her. “A fox finding its midday repast. Aren’t you used to the countryside?”
She didn’t reply.
“I thought perhaps you might have always lived in a town where sounds are more human and familiar?” Hildegard persisted.
Maud shook her head. With an effort she muttered something about being used to the country.
Petronilla interrupted again. “We’re miles from anywhere. That’s why we were sent here. But I still expect my guardian to come crashing after me with his men-at-arms. He’s bound to track me down. But if he does I shall tell him I won’t go with him. I want to stay and be a nun. You’ll support me in this, sister, I trust?”
“I will indeed if that’s your honest desire,” replied Hildegard.
It was going to take time to get Maud’s trust. The poor child was a bag of nerves. Somehow she had brought a sense of unease with her. It was like a dark cloud over Deepdale.
It was true the grange was well hidden.
A path led back down the valley alongside a beck, although the sound of water bubbling over the rocks was inaudible from where they sat. A few miles downstream was a vill surrounded by arable strips belonging to another manor. Then came woodland and after that open countryside and the Vale of York. At the back of the house they had stables, at present without horses, and there were a couple of store-sheds and beyond those the sheep pens. The path crossed the bottom of the meadow and snaked all the way to the cliff at dale head and only petered out in the vast desolation of the moors.
Several shepherds lived up there, their own man Dunstan included. They seemed inured to the privations of such inhospitable terrain. Winter and summer alike, the men tended the flocks belonging to different owners, some to the Abbey at Meaux, some to Roger de Hutton, yet others to more distant lords. Dunstan, a tall, vigorous fellow with straggly fair hair and far-seeing blue eyes like the rest of the Dalesmen, kept himself to himself. On the rare occasions when he had anything to say to the nuns he stood a few paces off with arms folded across his chest, offering no sign of deference. Two sheep dogs shadowed him wherever he went.
When Hildegard took the tenancy she had been told that Dunstan had tended sheep in Deepdale all his life, like his father and his grandfather, and even when the buildings had been left derelict for many years he had continued to tend the sheep. By law, of course, the flock belonged to Lord Roger de Hutton, who granted rights in the wool crop to Hildegard and her sisters. In essence, however, it was owned by Dunstan. They were well aware of that and let him get on with the job without interference.
Now the shearmen had finished it was time to bring the sheep down to start on the long journey to their summer pasture at Frismersk on the banks of the Humber. They would reach their destin
ation on the first day of July, shortly after the Feast of Corpus Christi.
Hildegard rose to her feet. “If you girls have finished your bread and cheese, maybe you’d like to come and help me catch some fish for supper?”
* * *
The upper waters of the stream lay across a meadow filled with buttercups. When they reached the far side they had to scramble down a grassy bank to the water’s edge. Although shallow, the stream ran fast over many-coloured stones. It was so pure they could see right into it. A waterfall cascaded in a noisy slash of white down the limestone crag above. Both girls gave a gasp as they caught sight of it through the trees. Over the centuries the force had worn a smooth basin where fish liked to gather. It was secluded enough for the nuns to use as a bathing pool.
Here, just where the stream narrowed, they set a net from one bank to the other. With trees growing self-coppiced on both sides the grove was filled with the constant murmuring of wood pigeons.
Petronilla pulled off her boots and slipped her feet into the cold water as soon as the net was set. For once she had stopped talking as if in awe of the serenity of the place. As silent as ever even Maud undid her laces and tugged off her boots, cautiously dangling her toes over the edge of the rock where she was sitting. Her hood was still up. Hildegard waded into the shallows to adjust the net, then went back to sit on the bank beside her.
They sat for some time in silence. The echoing grove enwrapped them in a drowsy cocoon.
* * *
Hildegard opened her eyes. The grove was filling with shadows. She realised she must have fallen asleep.
Maud was trailing a stick in the water and Petronilla was standing knee-deep in the pool trying to catch fish in her cupped palms. The choirs of birds had fallen silent. A flock of starlings rose abruptly with a beating of wings and flew off.
Hildegard gave a quick glance round. There was something amiss. It made her skin prickle. Torn between the desire to stay where she was and a sense of unease she got up to investigate. Now that the birds had flown the silence of the grove seemed strangely ominous.
The Law of Angels Page 2