The Law of Angels

by Cassandra Clark

“Very wise. Now, your prioress—” Neville paused heavily for a moment, his pouched red face turned to her, “wishes you to return the cross after it has been verified?”

  “I have promised to do that.”

  “I know better than to thwart her.” He smiled in a way that did not reach his eyes, which were blue and calculating.

  He called to one of several servants standing by unseen in the shadows. “You can all go to your beds.” The servants filed out. There was a further movement and a man stepped into the pool of light. Hildegard’s eyes widened.

  About twenty or maybe even younger, he was a sturdy, muscular, swaggering sort of fellow. But for his bejewelled and gold-embroidered surcoat and the expensive-looking sword dangling from the studded belt on his hips, she might have taken him for a man-at-arms. He was shorter than she was but made up for it in confidence.

  Now he looked the two monastics up and down and, she noticed, checked Thomas with a practised glance for any concealed weaponry. The archbishop did not introduce him. Hildegard surmised that he was a military commander from the south—it was certainly not one of the northern magnates, the Duke of Northumberland, whom she had seen many times, nor his firebrand son, Lord Harry, and yet there was something about the way he spoke to Neville … as if the archbishop was his vassal and he the overlord.

  Thomas seemed stunned into immobility.

  “Let’s see it then,” said the stranger. He flicked his fingers to bring her closer and indicated the table.

  She unslung the leather bag from her shoulder and placed it on the table in the pool of light. When the simple oak box was withdrawn from its cloth cover the stranger frowned. No doubt he had been expecting a jewelled reliquary as costly as his own encrusted garments.

  “I was forced to bring it back from Tuscany without its usual container,” she explained.

  “I’ve told him that,” said Neville somewhat testily. He reached forward and lifted the lid.

  Both men crowded round and Hildegard withdrew a little to give them a chance to have a proper look.

  The expression on the stranger’s face was hard to decipher. Finally he turned away, scratching his neck. “It doesn’t look much.”

  “I warned you not to expect the heavens to open and let forth the sound of trumpets,” murmured the archbishop.

  The stranger’s eyes flashed. “So you did, Neville, so you did.”

  The archbishop lifted the cross out of its scarlet bed and held it up. There was a strange reverence in his gesture. He seemed moved by knowledge of its history. “The Donation of Constantine,” he breathed. Then he gave a sharp glance at his guest. “If you doubt what it is there’s an inscription on the back.”

  As if satisfied with his brief communion with what was for him a most holy relic, he handed it over. The young man’s stubby fingers, scarred, Hildegard noticed, as if in the joust or in some swordplay, probed along the underside of the cross, turning it over and peering at the inscription. He translated with a smile. “In this you will conquer.” He lifted his head. “Or might we prefer to say: With this I am victorious?”

  The archbishop cleared his throat and glanced at the two Cistercians. Thomas had made himself almost invisible.

  Slouching, the stranger pushed it back to Neville and then gave Hildegard a narrow look. “So how much will she accept?”

  Neville gave an exclamation. “My lord—”

  “I haven’t time, Neville. Let’s get to the point.”

  The archbishop turned away to conceal his exasperation.

  Hildegard said, “It’s not for sale.”

  The small eyes blistered into her own and became even smaller. “I asked how much.” He put his head on one side.

  Hildegard tried to explain why it could not be sold. “When it was agreed to allow me to bring it back to England, it was done on the understanding that it would be given into our temporary stewardship, to be returned when the canons of Santi Apostoli requested.”

  The stranger gave a curse. “Don’t play with me, sister.”

  Hildegard turned to Archbishop Neville. “Your Grace, I understand you are on good terms with my prioress. I myself cannot enter into negotiations but perhaps you could approach her directly?” She knew the answer would be no whatever this conceited, battle-scarred young devil thought.

  Neville met her eye and she noticed a brief expression of gratitude. Turning to his guest he said, “That sounds acceptable. I have promised to return it but I’m sure, if we keep our word, we shall more easily attain our desire.”

  The man looked uncertain. It seemed he was about to force the issue but then he gave a sudden sound of capitulation. “I haven’t long,” he growled. “Start negotiations and be quick about it.”

  Neville inclined his head. The cross was rewrapped and Hildegard walked from the chamber in astonishment that they had got their way.

  As they left the building she whispered to Thomas, “She will never agree.”

  “Let’s get out of here,” he replied. “I can’t believe my eyes.”

  He took the bag with the cross inside and they walked briskly through the gatehouse where the game of dice was progressing and out onto the avenue. When they were out of earshot he asked, “You know who that was don’t you?”

  He stopped and looked down at her. In the pale starlight she could see his expression. It was dazed. “That was Lord Derby,” he whispered. “Henry Bolingbroke.” And just in case she still didn’t understand he added, “John of Gaunt’s eldest son. King Richard’s cousin.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  They continued between the trees and were soon out of range of the light from the flares. Their eyes were dazzled, both by the sumptuousness of the glittering palace of the archbishop and by the inner dazzle and confusion aroused by the presence of King Richard’s rival, Bolingbroke.

  “I saw him down in Westminster,” Thomas explained in a hushed voice, “and again in Lincoln not so long ago. It was him all right.”

  “What on earth’s Neville up to, brokering the sale of a cross he knows he has no right to?” The prioress, although sceptical of human intention, seemed to have a practical regard for the archbishop. She would be speechless.

  “I can’t imagine what he’s up to. Your guess is as good as mine.” Thomas hefted the bag awkwardly under his arm.

  Everything was quiet. The river lay ahead of them, shining like a sheet of black silk beyond the trees. As they approached the bank the water could be heard gurgling under the wooden struts of the landing stage. It was dark now. There was no moon.

  Thomas went on ahead, probably with the intention of handing Hildegard down into the boat, when he turned as if to say something then gave a sudden shout. To Hildegard’s astonishment he pitched forward and vanished into the darkness. She heard a thump as he hit the ground. Then hell seemed to break loose as several hooded figures burst from behind the trees and she found herself grasped roughly with a knife at her throat while both arms were trussed behind her.

  She kicked out at her attacker but there was nothing she could do. Expecting a blade in her ribs she was surprised to find herself being dragged down the bank towards the water. Fearing that they were going to try and drown her she began to struggle even more wildly but she was pushed into the boat and heard her assailants scrambling back up the bank side.

  There was the further sound of scuffling and Thomas, she assumed it was he, landed in the boat nearly capsizing it. He made no movement and she feared he was dead.

  Managing to shake the hood from her face she was just in time to see a shadow fumbling with the boat. The next moment it was given a good push, sending it floating out into midstream. The current caught it and they began to drift downriver away from the palace.

  “Thomas?” she whispered. “Is that you?”

  To her relief a groan came from somewhere out of the darkness.

  “Are you hurt?”

  “My head,” he groaned. “I saw stars. Where are we?”

  She could he
ar him struggle to sit up. His hands appeared to be free because she saw them grasp the gunnels beside her.

  “Untie me, can you?”

  “Did they hurt you?” he asked as he pulled at the rope binding her wrists.

  “Mostly my feelings,” she replied. Her hands were released and she began to rub her wrists. Suddenly she looked at him in horror. “Have you still got the cross?”

  The boat lurched as he felt feverishly around in the bottom of the boat. Then, in a dead voice, he said, “They’ve stolen it.”

  There was no point in bewailing their loss. Looking back at the river bank they could see and hear no sign of their assailants. They had melted away as smoothly as they had emerged, at one with the black night.

  “We have several choices,” said Hildegard rapidly, pulling herself together. “Either we get back to shore and try to follow them with the help of the guards. Or we return to York and rouse the constables. Or…” She hesitated.

  “Or?” he prompted.

  “Or we go on downstream to Naburn Manor.”

  He gave a start. “Lord Roger de Hutton? Do you think he might help? What can he do?”

  “I don’t know. I just feel it’s the wisest course. I’m not sure I trust the palace guards.”

  “There’s only one problem with any of that,” Thomas commented.

  “What’s that?”

  “They’ve taken the oars as well.”

  * * *

  The fire was banked high until it was roaring up the chimney in a sheet of flame and everybody had to keep standing up to move the benches back in case their clothes caught light. Hildegard and Thomas sat swathed in woollen blankets on stools right in front of it. They were still shivering, more from shock than from the fact that they had had to swim from halfway across the river when the boat drifted past Naburn Manor. Someone now thought to place jugs of mulled wine beside them.

  “So just run through this again,” said Roger, sweating in the heat despite the ties of his nightshirt being undone to the waist revealing a mat of glistening ginger hair. There was no standing on ceremony since the two wet and shaking monastics had emerged from the river and come dripping up from the gatehouse with a guard of half a dozen armed men. Even Melisen was wearing just a long blue silk over-gown and probably nothing underneath. The entire household had been roused from its slumbers. A crowd of servants still hung about the doorway in their nightshirts.

  “There were six or seven of them. They just burst out of the woods,” Thomas repeated. “We had no warning whatsoever. It’s all my fault. I was carrying the box with the cross in it. The Donation of Constantine, he said! You know what that means.”

  “What does it mean?” asked Roger irritably.

  “Oh sweeting—” Melisen interjected. “It’s the pope’s right to hold power over kings. The King of England is the pope’s vassal just as you’re the vassal of the king. Obviously most of the kings of Europe object. Especially with two popes claiming precedence.”

  “Oh, that,” scoffed Roger. “What’s Neville worried about? Neither pope’s intending to show his face here, are they?”

  Melisen ignored Roger and assessed the newcomers. “Aren’t you both warm enough yet? This fire’s likely to set the whole manor alight.”

  “Damp it down,” ordered Ulf, nodding to one of the servants crammed in the doorway. “And then get out of it. The show’s over.”

  “Why don’t we ask our guest to look at poor Brother Thomas’s head wound?” suggested Melisen, giving the monk a sympathetic glance as he made a slight groan. “This strange fellow turned up at our gates yesterday and so charmed us with his wit he earned bed and board for himself. He claims to be an expert in the healing arts.”

  “Yes. Bring him forth!” ordered Roger, regardless of the hour. “But I still don’t understand.” He turned to Hildegard. “How couldn’t you get any sort of glimpse of these ruffians? Didn’t they wear livery?”

  She shook her head. “It was too dark to see anything.”

  “Any ideas who they were?”

  “Doesn’t it seem obvious?” She felt bitter. She had already told them about the mysterious stranger who wanted to buy the cross. Thomas had repeated that he knew who it was and would lay down his life if he was wrong. Now she gave Roger a bleak glance. “I should have known he wouldn’t be thwarted. The son of Gaunt? Hah!”

  “If Bolingbroke’s got his hands on it you’ll never get it back,” Roger told her.

  “We have to,” she exclaimed. “He’ll use it to usurp the throne. It’ll be a sign to everybody that he has the divine recommendation of Constantine. You don’t realise how seriously people take these signs and symbols.”

  “Only when it suits them,” he interrupted irritably.

  “He’s probably the so-called eminent personage who’s to share our stand at the pageant,” Melisen commented.

  “I won’t be able to look him in the eye.” Roger glowered and shifted his chair farther back from the fire. He seemed to have taken it for granted they would not be accusing a royal prince of theft. “Damp it down,” he growled, with a gesture towards the fire. “Do as my steward tells you.” A boy crouching among the ashes threw some more sods on it. The heat gradually abated.

  “It’s the middle of the night,” somebody remarked as if they had only just realised.

  “You’re right. We’ll think more clearly after a good sleep.” Roger got up and gave a professional examination of Thomas’s head. As a veteran of the French wars he was used to wounds and bloodshed. “He’ll live,” he commented. “But you might as well get that fellow to have a look. Hildegard’s in no fit state to tend the wounds of others.”

  She had an emerging bruise over her right eye from being thrown into the bottom of the boat.

  * * *

  “He didn’t have much to say that was any use,” Thomas remarked when Roger and Melisen retired.

  Ulf quirked one eyebrow. “Never underestimate my lord. He’ll cook something up in that devious brain of his. He’ll have riders scouring the country on the other side of the river in a trice.”

  “I thought I heard a boat put out.” Hildegard went to the window that was patched with hundreds of small mullions. It was half open and let in the night air.

  The river was visible between the trees more as an absence than anything else. She and Thomas were lodged in the guest wing where there were several vacant and spacious chambers for them to choose from. The guests at Naburn, Roger and his large retinue, had taken over the master suite and the lord of Naburn himself, one of Roger’s tenants, had been relegated to the chambers over the gatehouse. Other guests were yet to arrive.

  She turned. “Whose land is that on the other side of the river?”

  Ulf was tight-lipped. “It belongs to Lord Malbas.” He didn’t need to say more. The name had come up often enough in the past. He and Roger were often in dispute over boundaries as Malbas claimed land adjacent to Roger’s de Hutton territory in the north.

  “Would he be likely to shelter the thieves?” she asked.

  “Not if he knew they came from Bolingbroke. He might be a litigious devil but he and Roger share some affinity. He’ll have his men out of their beds as soon as he knows what’s happened, don’t you worry.”

  “Then all we can do is wait for morning,” she said.

  But just then the door opened. Someone entered. He looked surprisingly familiar. Hildegard watched as he came into the room and, spying Thomas, went straight over to him. “So you’re the fellow they say has a wound?” He ran sensitive fingers over Thomas’s head. “It’s just the one blow,” he murmured. “Looks clean. What did they use? A piece of wood?”

  “Felt like half of Filey Brigg,” muttered Thomas.

  “You’re from that way on, are you?” asked the newcomer. His accent slipped from that of the southern counties into a hint of Yorkshire. Hildegard knew where she had last seen him. He had looked somewhat different then. The spangled cloak and give-away boots had been exchanged
for a more sober houpelande and night boots.

  When he had recommended a pain-killing unguent she would probably have recommended herself if she’d been asked, he turned, about to leave the chamber, and it was then she spoke up. “I see you managed to escape Master Baldwin’s attentions at the booths the other morning, sir?”

  The stranger came to a swift halt. He turned. “Sister?”

  “I saw you on York Pavement selling a love potion. Your magic was sufficient to make you vanish into thin air, much to the chagrin of certain men whom I suspect you already knew.”

  He came over to her. “You witnessed all that, did you?”

  She nodded.

  “I’d never seen them before in my life. It was most unexpected. Luckily I can think on my feet otherwise I guess I wouldn’t be standing here now.”

  “They seemed to know you well enough.”

  “And it was a Master Baldwin, you say?”

  “He’s a glazier,” she told him.

  “Baldwin.” He looked thoughtful. “If it’s not too late, sister, I’d appreciate further conversation?”

  “I feel refreshed from my swim in the river,” she told him. “What is it you want to know?”

  “I want to know about this fellow, this glazier. Is he working here in York?”

  “His brother is Edric Danby, master glazier and guildmaster of York.”

  “Means nothing to me. Anyone else in the household?”

  “Mistress Julitta, Baldwin’s wife—”

  He shook his head.

  “And his brother-in-law’s wife, Dorelia, and a couple of—”

  “Dorelia?” He looked stunned. He went over to the window seat and dropped down onto it like a puppet with cut strings. After a pause he said, “I thought I saw her in the crowd when I was assembling my equipment for the show, and yes, she was accompanied by a fellow in an orange turban and one other fellow. I took no notice of them but looked only at her, remembering how I had once known her in Wakefield and yet not quite able to believe my eyes. She didn’t notice me, of course, and was too soon swallowed up in the crowd, and I thought that was the end of the matter, that I had been mistaken…” His face had turned dark. “But married? To a guildsman? And here … in York?”