The Law of Angels

by Cassandra Clark

  She set off into the trees. The moonlight cast leaf patterns over the scene. Something flickered and caught her eye. When she looked more squarely there was nothing to see but the trunks of the silver birches gleaming out of the darkness.

  Chapter Twenty

  She left her horse among the bushes and crawled out onto the chalk cliff overlooking the encampment. The fire where the hind had been roasting was by now a heap of embers. In its glow she could see the men directly beneath her vantage point. Sprawled at their ease they were tearing chunks off the remains of the carcass of venison while a flagon of liquor was passed from hand to hand.

  Someone began to sing. One by one the others joined in

  Firelight shone on the men’s faces, gilding them with its glow, beautifying the harshness of individual features, softening mouths, the curve of a nose, furrows on a forehead, emphasising the individuality of men brought together by a common belief.

  The song they sang was a lament for a land of lost content. One that had probably never existed in the entire history of the world. Somehow it expressed the heartfelt longing for something beyond the careworn existence that was their lot.

  Hildegard’s thoughts strayed to a particular pilgrim in Outremer and her yearning to see him return to his own far country, the Abbot of Meaux, brought tears to her eyes. Other songs followed and the words floated into the night, clear then faint, with a sound like the heartbeat of humanity. One she recognised as a rebel anthem of great fame. The men’s voices rang out with the strength of their common aim:

  “… And on that purpose yet we stand—

  whoever does us wrong—

  in whate’er place it fall—

  he does against us all!”

  And then came a rousing chorus. Despite its final triumphal shout she heard something defeated and grieving in its cadences. The desire for freedom moved her. But it seemed so hopeless. The dark forces ranged against these landless, masterless men were too strong, too brutal, too cunning for such innocent hopes.

  She must have drifted off to sleep, the pangs of hunger briefly forgotten under the lull of their voices, because something brought her swimming back into the present with a jolt. It was the rustle of a creature going about its nocturnal chores. Nothing more than the sound of a twig breaking. She wriggled forward to peer over the edge of the cliff.

  The men were still sitting round the dying embers of the fire, but they were mostly silent now. Some rested their heads on their saddlebags and slept.

  The red-haired spokesman she had met earlier was discussing something in a low voice, elbows on knees, head thrust forward, talking to someone she was sure had not been present before. Red-beard might imagine he’s not their chief, she thought watching him now, but his natural authority would make him the man others would look to for leadership whether he wanted them to or not. The other fellow was a blusterer, trying to hold his own.

  A disturbance over by the row of horses occurred. New arrivals, she saw, as several figures dismounted. Then her eyes widened.

  Escorted by a posse of armed men was Brother Thomas and Master Danby.

  She wanted to cry out, but instead held her breath and watched as they were urged forward. An argument was going on. A couple of guards searched the two men for weapons. She saw Thomas protest when his knife was taken from him.

  “It’s got something written on it!” exclaimed the man who had wrenched it from Thomas’s belt. His voice floated up clearly to her hiding place. “Is it Latin?” He showed it to the man next to him.

  “That’s Latin all right,” came the reply.

  Thomas held out his hand. “My father gave it to me shortly before he died. May I have it back?”

  The first man laughed. “Cheek! You think we want this in our gizzards?”

  “I’m a monk. I don’t kill people.”

  “Not on a crusade then?”

  “Why worry, unless you consider yourself Saracen?”

  For that he got a punch in the stomach, but it went no further as the leader said something in a harsh voice and the man who had hit Thomas made a mumbled remark and turned away. Red-beard addressed the man sitting beside him.

  “Keep a better control over your men, brother. We like to treat our guests with courtesy. Tell him to hand the knife back, unless he aspires to be a common thief.”

  The knife was returned to Thomas who slipped it into his belt with a nod of thanks.

  “Where’s the nun?” asked Danby, stepping forward and brushing his captor aside. “We were told she was here.”

  “She must be nearly back at York by now. She left in the company of the magister some time ago.”

  “We didn’t see her.”

  “She must have hitched herself to the magister and gone on to Durham with him then. You know what these celibates are like.”

  A few guffaws followed from those round the fire until one of the rebels objected to having the magister’s name brought into disrepute.

  At that moment Hildegard heard a whisper in her ear. “Time to go down and join them, eh?” When she turned there was a blade brushing her cheek. “Come on.” The man moved back with the knife held flat in front of him, its edge towards her. “Get up nice and slowly.”

  Wanting nothing more, in the circumstance, than to be standing alongside Thomas and Danby, she obeyed without demur.

  * * *

  “So you couldn’t bear to be parted from us, lady?” Red-beard sounded genial enough but the man sitting next to him rose to his feet.

  “What the hell is this?” he demanded. “Who are all these people? First a monk, then a stinking burgess, now a bloody nun!”

  “Calm yourself, brother. The burgess is an associate of Mayor de Quixlay and therefore our good friend.”

  “De Quixlay?” Despite his tone the man sat down again. He glared balefully round the group.

  Hildegard noticed now that he was accompanied by a number of men, ruffians with a particular blazon, difficult to decipher, something greenish on a white ground. He wiped the back of his hand under his nose and asked, “Are they going to sit in on what we’re discussing, because if that’s the case you can forget it.”

  “No,” replied Red-beard. “Unless brother Danby has some message to convey and is here because of more than curiosity about the nun, he and his companions are going to turn right round and go straight back to York. As for the sister—”

  “Slit her throat and have done with it,” the other grunted.

  “No! That wasn’t the agreement!” Danby stepped forward and was hurriedly restrained.

  “Indeed it wasn’t,” Red-beard replied calmly. “We’ll take her with us as nothing to the contrary was discussed.”

  “What?” Hildegard herself moved forward but this time no one attempted to stop her. “Where are you going? Why should I come with you?”

  “Why? Because you’ll be persuaded. Otherwise a little force may have to be used. You’re our hostage now, having returned of your own free will.”

  Hildegard looked into the man’s eyes. Despite his genial tones their expression was implacable. He had left the question of their destination unanswered.

  Rising to his feet he ordered the fire to be put out. “And see these two safely to the highway. Make sure they leave. Everybody else to horse. We have some night-riding to do.”

  Two men took Hildegard by the arms. “Shall we rope her, master?”

  Briefly glancing over his shoulder, Red-beard gave a laugh. “I don’t think we need show such discourtesy, do you?” He moved off in a group of his closest confederates and Hildegard saw Thomas and Danby hustled away.

  As they went Danby shouted to her. “I didn’t plan this, sister. He promised you’d come to no harm.”

  “Nor shall I,” she reassured him. “I trust him.”

  With swords coercing them there was little either Danby or Thomas could do but leave as they were ordered.

  Soon the sound of hooves could be heard drumming away up the track out of t
he camp.

  * * *

  Dawn. A sense of the sea. Not the smell of salt in the nostrils, impossible when salt has no odour, but that crystalline sense of windswept ocean, the sound of surf, the mew of seabirds in an expanse of sky.

  For what had remained of the previous night Hildegard and the rebels had ridden with forced speed and only now the cavalcade began to slow with an awareness of a new sense of place.

  They had crossed moorland, desolate in all directions, the rise and fall of heather-covered hills lacking any sign of habitation.

  The last summit brought this shock of the sea and a vision of pink-edged clouds with the sun rising from the deep. Its light was reflected in a bloody path across the waves. Everything became drenched in colour as the sun rose higher. It was evanescent. Apocalyptic. Rays of light struck rainbows through the damp manes of the horses.

  Moving towards and against the transplendent light, the riders milled about on the cliff top. They looked now crimson, now black in silhouette.

  The master of the rebels, still nameless, turned in the glowing shine like a red flame, his face like fire, his wild hair blazing from beneath his leather casque.

  A few quiet orders caused a camp to be organised. The horses were hobbled. The men settled to pottage and hunks of bread, cross-legged on the promontory, unexhausted, destination attained.

  Hildegard sat away from them and watched.

  A lieutenant had carried a sack across his saddle all the way through the night. She saw him lift it down and carry it under his arm when he went to join the others at the fire.

  The leader came to her where she was sitting apart. “I trust that was not too arduous for you, sister?”

  “I’m used to riding,” she replied shortly.

  “No doubt you’re wondering about your purpose here?”

  She looked up at him.

  “I can tell you now.” He sat beside her on the ground. “We have an assignation with a representative of the Earl of Douglas who in turn, of course, represents King Robert of Scotland. In exchange for this lump of wood which he, like you, values so highly, he is willing to give us gold. You know what that means? We can go on publishing our notices, maintaining a life outside the law, disseminating the truth, furthering the cause of freedom. We’ll wait here until we see the Scottish ship coming into the port below.”

  Rising to his feet he beckoned and she followed him to a ledge of iron stone lower down the cliff.

  Several hundred feet below was a hamlet on a curve between the headlands. A swift-flowing beck carved a channel from off the moors and drained into a natural harbour. On both sides of the bay houses clung to the strata of red rock. They seemed hewn from rock themselves. The sea licked at the foreshore and broke in fangs of surf against the cliffs at the entrance to this haven.

  “How long do we wait?” she asked.

  “For as long as necessary.”

  “And then I can go?”

  “After you’ve witnessed the exchange. Your presence legitimises our transaction.”

  “You trust me not to object?”

  “Objection would be foolish. As you already know there’s a faction here who would slit your throat from sheer pleasure and a hatred of religion.”

  She gazed down at the small fishing village in its hollow. No help could be expected from that quarter.

  She nodded and climbed back to the top of the cliff.

  * * *

  The day passed uneasily. The two sides of the same cause eyed each other with suspicion and kept to themselves. One group listened to readings from a well-thumbed missal, the other played dice and drank.

  The tide had been at its height when they arrived, the surface of the water covered with small sailing boats, but it began to recede soon afterwards, sending the boats and their full nets to shore. A cog appeared and stood off in the bay for a while and then sailed on. The ebb revealed a shelf of level rock, like the floor of a palace, but lethal enough to rip the bottom out of the strongest ship.

  Unseen by day, the moon pulled the tide to extremes, making it run foaming up the side of the red cliffs, high above the green mark of weed, and then forcing it back far out over the scaur to lay bare its deceptive fissures and lethal outcrops of iron-stone.

  Hildegard sat in a hollow on a shelf of rock lower down the cliff, out of sight of the men. Most of them seemed to have forgotten she was present and she was unmolested. This was where Red-beard found her again. He sat down. They looked out over the sea in silence.

  Eventually she asked, “So you consider it better to work outside the law to further your aims?”

  “When the laws are bad there’s no choice. Besides, the law itself sets me outside its limits now it’s used me.”

  “Used?”

  “I was in France,” he said shortly, as if that was explanation enough.

  “My husband was in the French wars as well,” she said. “He didn’t return.”

  “Many didn’t. Our militia were luckier, though, than the poor devils slaughtered at Roosebeke by the Duke of Burgundy.”

  “I was in Flanders shortly after that battle. Bruges was filled with beggars, war-wounded, men who would never work again, those on the brink of death.”

  “It was that made me decide to do my best with what was left of my days.”

  “And this is it?”

  He looked her full in the face. “The best I can do.”

  Eventually he got up to go. “Tide’s on the turn.”

  * * *

  Shortly after midday a delegation from the village climbed by a cliff path to the camp. Evidently they knew what was afoot.

  “Go-betweens,” the lieutenant said, nodding. “They control the water front.”

  Red-beard welcomed them, accepted their offerings of fish with goodwill. Commenting in an aside on their ragged clothing and bare feet, he offered what bread and ale they had to spare.

  The two groups sat down together.

  Three groups, thought Hildegard, with a glance at the men in the obscure livery who, she had been told, would slit her throat for pleasure.

  A disagreement became apparent, although not pursued very far. It was a variation on what the magister had told her: whether to cut out the Earl of Douglas and offer the cross to the fishermen in return for armaments they claimed to possess. No mention was made of offering it to Douglas for arms instead of gold.

  There was some scepticism about the reality of the fishermen’s arms until a shipwreck was mentioned. Several weeks ago, a cargo destined for Scotland owned by the pirate Robert Acclom had come aground on the scaur below. The fishermen let it be known they wanted to make the most of their good fortune.

  They were willing to hand over the arms to their countrymen instead of risking slaughter by selling them on to their original customers, the Scots. In return, they would be happy to accept something of similar value they had heard about which they could use for barter at a future date. With whom they envisaged this barter taking place they did not specify.

  “I see no wreck,” someone commented after a brief examination of the coast from the height of the cliff top.

  “That’s because we need firewood as much as you do,” came the reply. A few knowing glances followed. “Do you want to come down and see what we’ve got? It’s mostly this sort of stuff.”

  With a flourish that made everybody step back, the spokesman produced a sword from under his rags. It was the best Rhineland steel. Any professional man-at-arms could see that. Hildegard observed the fishermen from a position on the fringe of the group. They had a shrewd, hard look and, despite their ragged appearance, bore themselves with arrogance towards the landsmen. She would not want to cross any of them.

  Red-beard took the sword and weighted it in his hands like a man who knew what he was doing. “We travel in peace, brothers, otherwise we might be tempted. It’s gold we need so we can publish our beliefs, not steel. The Earl of Douglas has promised gold.” He handed the sword back. “You’ll easily find a
purchaser in these times. Be sure of it.”

  “The Duke of Northumberland will offer for arms at any time,” somebody suggested.

  “God knows, he needs them,” somebody else added.

  “Let’s hope he has enough gold for your needs,” said the lieutenant. He still had the sack close beside him.

  * * *

  The day passed. Again the tide rose. Red-beard came to sit beside Hildegard in her niche out of sight of the others beneath the rim of the cliff.

  “After seeing what happened after Tyler was murdered and the king reneged on his promise to set the bonds men free, I realised we would always be defeated by the trickery of our rulers,” he began. “They’ll never give anything up. Sharing power is something they don’t understand. Our only chance is to make ourselves strong. I asked myself: What’s stronger than the sword? There’s only one answer: the word.”

  Hildegard nodded. It’s what the magister had said.

  “One day,” he continued, “I’ll have a little cottage and a plot of land where I can grow cabbages and beans. One day maybe there’ll be a wife, a son, a little daughter.” He gave a bitter smile. “Yes, all that—on the day the world grows honest and justice prevails.”

  * * *

  The sea was changing from dark blue to the colour of wine. The land itself was gradually being drained of light. A shape, too big and constant to be a wave, was spotted near the headland. Flares from the village suddenly appeared. They streamed along the dark edge of the shore, lighting the way across the scaur. An answering blink of light came from the vessel.

  It was at that moment that hell broke loose.

  Everyone on the cliff top was engulfed in a chaos of glinting steel. The men in the obscure livery set about slicing the throats of as many men as they could lay hands on. The true brothers of the White Hart retaliated. From out of the hillside swarmed a further band of cut-throats, ragged, many barefoot, narrow gutting knives working as lethally as the broadswords carried by the rebels.