The Law of Angels

by Cassandra Clark

  He wore a leather casque despite the heat and had a broadsword in his belt. That was legal. He was outside the city walls. He must have been posted to guard the solid timber of the mill by its current owner, aware, no doubt, of the need for wood by the strangers camped on the common land. He was whiling away the time by throwing stones into a clay pot.

  One. Two. Three.

  The fourth one bounced off the rim and he cursed, emptied the pot and started again.

  Kit had come to a stop in the undergrowth just as she had and seemed to understand the need to keep out of sight.

  When her eyes got used to the dancing light filtering through the canopy of leaves overhead she noticed again the single causeway to where the man sat and on one side the lush marsh meadow, rife with king cups and bulrushes. On the other the bright green, weed-covered mill pond. The river gushed and flowed dark and deep farther off. Birdsong filled the glade just now but the mill itself was silent with a brooding aspect as if past defeats had tainted the timbers with poison.

  Kit tugged at her sleeve. “I don’t like it here. This is where that miller hanged himself in the olden days,” he whispered.

  “He did?”

  “Nobody comes up here because of his ghost.”

  “Hm,” she replied, “I’m not sure I believe in the ghost part of your story but it’s a sad thing if the miller ended his life like that.”

  “Can we go, sister?”

  She put her hand on his shoulder to turn him back the way they had come when something made her stop. In the mosaic of leaves farther off a human face had taken shape. It was in profile, motionless, turned towards the mill. Bright hair was splashed with sunlight making it brighter still.

  Gilbert.

  He had not seen them. While Kit, unaware of another’s presence, melted slowly back along the path with the hounds, Hildegard hesitated. She rubbed her eyes as if not believing what she saw. It was definitely Gilbert. He had gained some courage from somewhere then. Jealousy was a powerful motivator.

  He was watching intently, waiting for something to happen.

  She watched too.

  Nothing did happen.

  She waited for a few minutes but everything remained the same.

  The guard continued to throw pebbles into the cup.

  The birds sang.

  The river rattled over the broken mill-beams.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  There was a discussion going on outside the passage on Stonegate when they arrived back. It had attracted a large crowd of onlookers. They formed a circle round the disputants as if readying to watch a fight. More crowds were backed up along the street, unable to get past and people craned their necks to see what the obstruction was. Caught in the press Hildegard and her small retinue could only do likewise.

  To her consternation she saw that Danby was involved.

  Three men in mail shirts under scruffy tunics were opposing him. Danby, however, was not outnumbered. The dispute had attracted a posse of burly-looking angels. They stood shoulder to shoulder with the glazier, their arms folded in a manner that could only be described as truculent.

  The spokesman for the three in mail had taken note of them. He was a handsome, rakish sort of knight with an easy manner and shoulder-length dark hair. “We’re visitors, here for the Corpus Christi feast,” he was now heard explaining. “I apologise most profoundly for the ill-mannered nature of these brutes.” He indicated two muzzled hounds with the kick of a boot. “I brought them with me for the purpose of sport and for some reason they were excited by the passage into your yard.”

  He was clean-shaven except for the hair on his upper lip, which was plucked to a thin line and he gave it a swift caress as he finished speaking. When he smiled as he did now he revealed a broken tooth.

  Hildegard stared.

  “Call the brutes to heel!” he ordered his men.

  Plainly in awe of their lord’s authority, the men whipped the hounds in at once. Without swords, empty scabbards swinging uselessly at their sides, they fidgeted awkwardly with their hands while they waited for further orders. He nodded to them and they began to carve a path for him through the crowd.

  The knight touched his fingers to his forehead and said to Danby, “My sincere regrets, master.” He moved off after them.

  For some reason one of his men peeled off from the others and in a casual fashion began to finger the goods displayed at a nearby stall. When he remained there Hildegard assessed him as a lookout. Meanwhile Danby was saying something to his supporters and a few black looks were sent after the knight. The crowd, disappointed in this mild outcome, dispersed.

  Kit pulled on Hildegard’s arm. “Sister! That’s them fellas did the hiring yesterday, the ones I told you about,” he whispered excitedly. “Brought them hounds with him? What a lie! He hired ’em for a six pence each.”

  Taking Kit by the hand Hildegard followed Danby into the yard and when they caught up with him he turned to Hildegard and demanded, “Did you see that?”

  “I saw the last little bit. What happened?”

  “Caught them sauntering around my yard!” he told her, sounding scandalised. “Bloody cheek! I said, ‘This is private property!’ Smarmy knave. They were casing the place to see what they could knock off! They’d be after the lead we use for calmes and them tablets of Rhinish glass. It’s costly stuff. The bloody thieves. You get all sorts at this time of year.”

  Still grumbling, he went inside and before Hildegard had settled the hounds he was out again. “Lucky I left my pageant sheets behind!” He waved a sheaf of vellum pieces. “My mind’s on that window for Lord Roger!”

  His spirits seemed revived after the shock of Dorelia’s disappearance but watching him go out into the street again, Hildegard wondered whether he was merely putting a brave face on things. Grief can break a man, he had said. He was, it seemed, refusing to give up the final sliver of his self-respect.

  Kit took her by the hand, excitement in his voice. “Gilbert showed me the glass he’s painting. Do you want to come and see? It’s brilliant!”

  Before she could excuse herself, not wishing to be caught prying again, she found herself being pulled into the workshop and through into the inner chamber.

  The work had come on a lot since she had last taken a good look at it. The pieces of coloured glass had been cut to shape and laid in place on the drawing underneath and work had started on the details of hair, the texture of the angels’ wings, the folds and shading to suggest the drape of fabric, stippling to denote patterned velvet or the diaphanous quality of a silk sleeve. Melisen would complain that the faces were not yet drawn in.

  “That white glass is what Gilbert’s going to paint the faces on,” Kit told her when she remarked on this. “Then it has to go in the kiln to be fired at tremendous heat!”

  He was obviously delighted with the whole thing. “See this little bird here? That’s a cuckoo. And this’n? An owl. Gilbert told me a story about owls. He said, ‘The lady owl is put in a cage and her hooting draws other little birds into the bird-catcher’s trap.’ And look at these red feathers here. That’s the archangel’s wing coming all the way down one side of the picture to frame it. It brings everybody into its power.”

  “Is that what Gilbert told you?”

  “Yes. It’s good, isn’t it?”

  “Very good,” agreed Hildegard.

  Kit poked at a collection of drawings on a bench along the wall where the instruments of the craft were kept. “And this is ’is pattern book. I’m surprised he’s left it behind. He even takes it to bed with him, he said.”

  Hildegard recognised it as the one Gilbert had shown her down by the river the evening they had seen Baldwin heading towards the woods. On a shelf under the bench was another book. Almost before she knew it she had reached for it and flicked it open. She stopped after a page or two.

  She was stunned.

  Baldwin was right.

  Sheet after sheet was covered with drawings of Dorelia. Some w
ere of her face, from every conceivable angle. In others, she was drawn full length, standing at a door, sitting at a table and, in many, many more, she was lying on a bed, as Roger would have said, “babe-naked.”

  Startled, and about to snap the book shut, she heard a voice exclaim, “What the bloody hell’s going on now?”

  Danby came blustering in. He stopped on the threshold. “Forgive me, sister. For a minute I thought it was that knight back again, seeing the door wide open. Have I left a page of my—” Then his glance fell to the pattern book and as she closed it he stepped forward. “What have you got there?” He peered into her face. “You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “Just something I shouldn’t have seen.” She tried to put the book back on the shelf but Danby reached for it. She said, “I’m sorry. I should never have opened it. I did it without thinking.”

  Danby was turning the pages with a puzzled frown. When he came to the drawings of his wife in the nude his frown deepened. He looked at every page all the way through to the end without speaking, then carefully pressed the pages together and held it between his hands for a moment.

  “I had no idea,” he said in a roughened tone. For one startling moment his eyes filled then he turned briskly away. “Thank you, sister. It’s a timely reminder of one of Gilbert’s sayings: Truth will out. Now I know what he means by it.”

  He left the workshop. His footsteps could be heard going upstairs into his private chamber.

  Hildegard took Kit across the yard into Tabitha’s where the widow made a great fuss of him. She kept commenting on his skinny arms and eventually Kit said, “I’m not a goose to be fattened up for a feast, widow.”

  She laughed and said something about him not wanting another of her scones then, to which he replied he’d rather be a plump goose than a skellington.

  Hildegard saw Danby come down and disappear into his back kitchen and a moment later the little scullion emerged looking important and sped off down the passage.

  Danby appeared in the doorway and stood gazing across the yard.

  She went out to him.

  “I’ve sent the lad with a note to say I’m copping off rehearsals.” He still had the book in his hands. “I don’t know what to think,” he told her. “I’m pole-axed.”

  He held the book as if he didn’t know whether to throw it across the yard or open it again and have another look at the drawings. His eyes watered. “It’s a rare skill. He draws like an angel. How can I blame him—she’s a beauty. Anybody with the art would want to capture that. I’ve got drawings myself, though not so skilled.” His eyes filled again. “When he comes back in will you come over?”

  “Are you sure you want me to?”

  He nodded.

  * * *

  While she was waiting she took out the feather she had found in Jankin’s sleeping chamber and looked closely at it.

  The talk of geese had reminded her of it. The mattress on the bed was made of straw. When she inspected it she saw it could be the breast-feather of a goose or a swan. It wasn’t a wing feather like the ones used for writing or drawing. There was a brown stain of some sort on several of the fibres. The pageant angels wore wings made of feathers. Some had feathers painted on them, others, the ones with more important roles or in the poulterers’ or the wealthier guilds, had wings sewn with hundreds of real feathers. The Glaziers’ Guild was going to perform the play called The Harrowing of Hell. Jankin was cast as the Archangel Michael.

  The feather must be off his costume, she decided. But why had he risked a fine and brought it from the pageant house?

  And, more important, where was it now?

  She would ask Danby when the opportunity arose.

  * * *

  Gilbert trailed back to the yard a couple of hours later. Apparently, after his secret vigil at the mill, he had gone straight to a rehearsal because he was wearing a haphazard garment of fustian and carrying a wooden stave like a crook. He came straight into the workshop and threw the crook into a corner then lifted his head, having suddenly noticed Danby standing like a statue by the far door.

  He raised his eyebrows as if about to ask his master what was wrong when his glance fell to the bench and on it, prominently displayed, his own open sketchbook with a picture of Dorelia, naked, lying on what was presumably the marital bed.

  He went over and looked at it.

  For a long moment he didn’t speak. When at last he did he simply said, “I see.” He looked across at Danby. “So…” It wasn’t a question. It was more like so there it is or that’s that then.

  “Where was I when all this was going on?” Danby asked in a hoarse voice. Hildegard was surprised at how calm he sounded.

  “You were off on guild business mostly. You’ve been busy with planning for the pageant these last few months.”

  “I thought I could trust you.” Danby gave him a look of profound disappointment and added, “I thought I could trust her.”

  Gilbert made no reply but turned and went through into the small workshop. Danby followed him and stood in the doorway while the journeyman took a brush from a pot, a few pieces of charcoal and some sheaves of used vellum and put them in a leather bag he unhooked from a peg on the back of the door. He limped over to where his cloak was flung on his mattress in a corner of the workshop and picked it up.

  “What are you doing?” Danby asked.

  Gilbert straightened. “You don’t need to put it into words.”

  “What?” Danby took a step forward.

  “It’s the end. I don’t blame you. Just let’s not say anything we’ll hear in our minds for the rest of our days.”

  “Stop a minute. Where are you going?”

  “I’ll find somewhere.” Gilbert’s head was down and his hair shone like a blazing veil, hiding his face. His fingers were shaking as he fumbled with the strap of his bag.

  “Gilbert, stop!”

  Danby could still show some authority even though he was a broken man and Gilbert jerked his head up in surprise. His face was stiff with misery but his eyes flickered over his master’s face with no sign of submission.

  “You think you’re just going to walk out?” asked Danby.

  “I won’t make you say what I don’t want to hear. What’s the point? I know what you’ll say. It’ll be what I’ve said to myself time after time. But it was too good a chance to miss. She’s perfect. Her beauty at its height. I had to record that. Soon time will make a mockery of her like it does with all of us. But until then…” He shrugged. “I had to record it. I can use her looks for the rest of my life.”

  Danby was silent. There was a mixture of emotion on his face, none of which Hildegard found easy to name. Rage, certainly. Grief, without any doubt. But there was something else, a kindness of sorts.

  When he spoke she knew it was also admiration, the respect of one craftsman for another.

  He went over and clamped both hands down hard on Gilbert’s shoulders and forced him to stop trying to stuff things into his bag. He banged him back hard against the wall and for a moment Hildegard thought he was going to strike him.

  “You’re going nowhere!” he growled instead. “I’m master here. I don’t give permission for you to go. You work for me. Nothing’s changed. If you walk out now you’ll be well outside the law. You know that. You won’t have a future. They’ll hang you. You came to me begging me to save you and you gave me a promise. A year and a day. Well, your time’s still to run. I’m not releasing you.”

  Gilbert’s lips parted in astonishment. “I betrayed you. There’s no two ways about that.”

  “I know it. I feel it. God, you don’t know how much I feel that. It’s a wound that will never heal, you little bastard. But she betrayed me as well. And,” he added, “she was also betrayed.”

  “How so?”

  “By her beauty, you fool. It led her along a path she would never willingly have chosen. She has more temptations than most women. I have to forgive her for straying. Isn’t that what Our
Lady tells us, sister?” He turned to Hildegard at last as to a witness.

  She came to herself with a start. It was like being spoken to by one of the players on one of the pageant wagons. “That’s what she tells us, yes,” she agreed.

  Danby put his arms round Gilbert in a brotherly hug and after standing stiffly for a moment the journeyman rested his forehead on Danby’s shoulder and muttered, “I didn’t mean anything against you. You know that, Edric. She broke no vows with me. She simply let me draw her.”

  Both men stepped back.

  Danby gave a strange sort of laugh, almost a sob. “I expected to be shouting you out of town, exulting in your pursuit by hand and horn, dragging you before the justices, cheering as they hanged you from the gibbet,” he said. “That was my first intention. To see you swing!”

  Gilbert looked frightened. “If you want I’ll—”

  “Go? Never. You stay. My dream is this: Dorelia will think better of her running off and she’ll come walking back in here as if nothing’s happened. Where else could she better be than in a workshop where her beauty is revered for its true value?”

  Hildegard spoke as if from the prompt box at a play. “We have to find her now. I think Gilbert may have some ideas on that score.”

  So Baldwin was wrong, she thought. Gilbert was not a man obsessed by love of a woman he could never have. In fact, it could be said he had her in a way that Baldwin, for all he was in the glazier’s trade, would never understand.

  * * *

  Danby decided they would go out to Two Mills Dale later that afternoon to give themselves time to get into position before Baldwin arrived. They could observe the situation and, if necessary, confront him. “If we surprise him he won’t be able to talk his way out of it.” It was evident he was used to his brother’s glib tongue.

  He was clearly unconvinced that there was anything in Gilbert’s suspicions, but to set his mind at rest he said he was willing to go along with things and put him to the test.