The Serpents of Harbledown

by Edward Marston

  “What is the matter, my love?” he asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “You are unhappy.”

  “After that? Of course not.”

  “I know you too well, Golde.”

  “I am tired, that is all.”

  “Your mind is elsewhere. So is your heart. Is it my fault? Something that I did or said? What ails you?”

  “Nothing that cannot wait until morning,” she said, snuggling into him and placing an apologetic kiss on his chest. “I am sorry if I was not as welcoming as you have every right to expect.”

  “You were miles away, Golde.”

  “Was I?”

  “Or maybe only five yards or so.”

  “Five yards?”

  “In the next bedchamber. With Eadgyth.”

  Golde sighed. “She is much in my thoughts, Ralph.”

  “Can she not move over and leave some room for me?”

  “There is always room for you,” she said, rolling on top of him to kiss him on the lips. “Have I not proved that to you time and again?” He rubbed his nose against hers by way of reply. “But I fret about Eadgyth.”

  “She has a husband and doctor to look after her.”

  “After today, she will not trust them so implicitly. That is one of the sad consequences of Bertha's death. It has come between husband and wife. Osbern is a devoted husband yet she now views him with suspicion.”

  “That will change in time.”

  “I hope so. For both their sakes. When we stepped into this house, it was brimming with happiness. Where has it all gone, Ralph?”

  “Right here,” he said, hugging her close. “Have you so soon forgotten? Besides,” he continued, “Osbern's loss has been our gain. When his wife felt betrayed by him, she turned to you and confided things we would never otherwise have known. Bertha did have a lover, after all. We have no name and no occupation for him as yet but we know he exists. My own information supports that.”

  “What did you find out at Fordwich?”

  “That I could never be a sailor.”

  “Why?”

  “The very sight of water makes me feel seasick.”

  “Even this far inland?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I went to Fordwich and was astonished to chance upon Alwin himself, sitting on the quay. He told me little enough and his brothers were even less forthcoming. They had obviously been warned to say nothing.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I hung around the harbour and spoke to people who were not his kith and kin. My helm and hauberk made them reticent but I coaxed it out of them eventually.”

  “‘It’?”

  “There was a man in Bertha's life and Alwin has been hunting him. He was down at the harbour only yesterday, accosting all and sundry and demanding to know if anyone had seen him.”

  “Was a name given?”

  “No, Golde. Only a description. But it tallies with the one that Eadgyth gave you. A handsome Frenchman in his thirties, who might recently have arrived at Fordwich by boat. Alwin was most anxious to trace him.”

  “I can understand why.”

  “Nobody had seen him.”

  “But he was due to land here this week.”

  “He may well have done so,” said Ralph, “and one of those captains may well have ferried him across the Channel on his boat.”

  “Why did he not admit as much to Alwin?”

  “His passenger probably bribed him into silence. Bertha's lover— or killer, or whatever he is—likes to cover his tracks. I will take up the search again tomorrow.”

  “Where?”

  “In Faversham. With the girl's aunt.”

  “How will you find the way?” she asked.

  “Reinbald the Priest is my navigator,” said Ralph with a chuckle. “You see how desperate I have become, my love? I have to turn for help to the Church!”

  He picked his way through the undergrowth with the surefooted confidence of someone who was very familiar with the terrain. Moonlight gave him some assistance but he did not really need it. When he passed the leper hospital, he did so in a wide arc so that there was no possibility of his being seen by anyone spending a sleepless night outside one of the huts. Leprosy kept different hours from the rest of world.

  His route brought him back to a narrow track that meandered down the hill through thickening woodland. The sound of an approaching horse made him step quickly into the bushes nearby. Crouched in his hiding place, he waited until the rider had cantered past, wondering why anybody should be out so late and why he was going toward Harbledown. The question soon faded from his mind as more immediate and inspiring thoughts rushed to take its place. He allowed himself a smile.

  There was not far to go now. After half a mile at a steady jog, he came around the edge of a copse to catch his first glimpse of the light in the distance. He quickened his pace at once. An owl hooted, a wildcat screeched and some other animal darted across his path but he was neither distracted nor dismayed. Reinbald the Priest ran on toward Faversham.

  Osbern the Reeve lay on the straw pallet in extreme discomfort and wondered why the master of the house was occupying one of its meanest rooms. He had done so at the suggestion of Helto the Doctor, who felt that Eadgyth's condition would become less volatile if she were allowed to spend the night alone. Her husband offered to keep a vigil in a chair at her bedside but he was overruled. Eadgyth refused to take the sleeping draught prescribed for her, and Osbern's presence, it was felt, might incite rather than soothe. Helto believed that a combination of isolation and fatigue would ensure a restful night for his patient. That same combination had the opposite effect on her evicted husband.

  What had he done wrong? That was what he kept asking himself. Why did Eadgyth look at him in such accusatory silence? Would they ever recapture the joy which had brought them together and made their home such a haven of peace and love? He was still reflecting on his misfortunes when sleep stole up on him and, taking pity on him at last, claimed him for a couple of short hours.

  He came awake with a start. His body was still aching and his pride was still wounded by the fact that he had been relegated to a chamber normally used by the most menial of the servants. During the trials of childbirth, it was natural for him to vacate the marriage bed for a short duration but this was a very different situation. Eadgyth was unwell and in need of succour. His place was beside her.

  A distant bang made him sit up. As he tried to work out if the noise had come from inside or outside the house, a second bang was heard, louder and closer. It sounded like the front door. He swung his legs off the pallet and pulled himself upright, striking his head against the rafter as he did so and almost losing his balance. Groping his way out into the passage, he strained his eyes against the darkness. A board creaked beneath his foot but the rest of the house was in silence.

  He crept across to the bedchamber he shared with his wife and put his ear to the door. There was no sound from within. Helto's advice had been wise. Left alone, Eadgyth was enjoying a deep and untroubled sleep. Osbern could not resist the opportunity to look in upon her and he eased her door open as gently as he could. When the aperture was wide enough, he peered through it to take some comfort from the sight of his slumbering wife.

  His blood congealed. Eadgyth was not there. A finger of moonlight came in through the gap between the shutters to point down at an empty bed. Flinging the door open, he lunged into the room to see if she had fallen to the floor but there was no sign of her. Panic deprived him of all consideration for the guests in the household.

  “Eadgyth!” he yelled. “Where are you, Eadgyth!” He went stumbling out into the passage and felt his way down the oaken staircase, creating even more disturbance.

  “Eadgyth! Are you downstairs? Answer me, Eadgyth!” A servant was the first to react, trotting down from the attic room with a lighted candle and confirming Osbern's worst fear. The little flame illumined the front door and showed that its bolts had been drawn back. The reeve
pulled it open and stepped out into the street.

  “Eadgyth! Come back! Please, Eadgyth!”

  It was Ralph Delchard who brought him back into the house and rescued him from the protests of his neighbours. Another servant brought a second candle, then Golde came downstairs with a third. Gervase Bret was behind her.

  “What has happened?” he said.

  “My wife has disappeared,” gasped Osbern.

  “We do not know that for sure,” argued Ralph. “Let the house be searched from top to bottom before we raise any alarm.” He pointed to a servant. “Take the candle and scour every room with care. Bring a report at once.”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “I'll help,” said Golde, following him upstairs.

  “She is gone,” moaned the Reeve. “I know it.”

  “At this time of night?” said Gervase.

  “Eadgyth has run away.”

  “That is foolish talk,” said Ralph, trying to calm him. “She has no cause to run away. This is her home.”

  “My wife is sick. She does not know what she is doing.”

  “We must find her at once,” said Gervase, lighting another candle from the one held by the servant. “I'll try the kitchen and the solar.”

  “Do not forget the stables,” said Ralph.

  “Where is she?” demanded Osbern.

  Snatching the candle from his servant, he went off on his own wild inspection of the ground floor, running from room to room and even climbing down the cellar to search for his wife. The frenetic activity was in vain. Eadgyth was definitely not in the house. As her husband was trying to cope with the horror of one loss, another was forced upon him.

  Golde came hurrying down the stairs in consternation.

  “Dear God!” she said. “The baby has gone as well!”

  Still in her night attire, Eadgyth clutched her son to her breast and walked unsteadily along a rutted thoroughfare. Her hair hung loose and her feet were bare. Darkness took away the Canterbury she knew and replaced it with a bewildering maze of streets and lanes that led her in every direction but the one which she wanted. When she paused at a corner to take her bearings, the baby awoke and cried its disapproval of the cool breeze around its head. Hugging him tight, she hummed a lullaby and rocked the child to and fro until it dozed off.

  Night had its own collection of unexplained noises but she heard none of them. Even the occasional yelp of a dog did not penetrate her ears. Eadgyth blundered on, stopping from time to time to study the silhouette of a building which she thought she recognised, then choosing another wrong direction. Frustration only made her walk faster, impervious to the pain in her feet as they trampled indiscriminately over hard stones, discarded animal bones and the accumulated refuse of the city.

  The impulse which drove her on eventually became a more reliable compass and guided her toward her destination. Familiar houses loomed up, shops acknowledged her acquaintance and a horse trough was a reassuring landmark. She was back home.

  “We are coming!” she called. “We are here!”

  Her cry woke the baby again and its complaints were more boisterous this time. It took her several minutes to lull it back to sleep with gentle rocking and warm kisses. As she moved on, the boy still in her arms, her words came out in an urgent whisper.

  “Wait for us! We have not forgotten you!”

  She was back in the Canterbury of her youth now, lifted by its memories and reassured by its certainties. The baby was her future but she carried him back into the safety of the past. When she turned a corner, Eadgyth saw the solid mass of the parish church of St. Mildred's against the night sky. She paused to stare up at it with simple awe.

  Most of her life had been circumscribed by its stone walls. Baptised in its font and married before its altar, she had been an ardent member of its congregation for all the years in between and, although she now worshipped beside her husband in the daunting glory of the cathedral, it was the little church which still held her in thrall.

  “We are here,” she murmured. “Do you see? We have come.” It was almost dawn when they found her. Eadgyth was fast asleep in the middle of the churchyard, her back against a tombstone, her feet almost touching the fresh mound of earth beside it. The baby was fretful in her arms. Golde took it gently from her to wrap in a warm blanket. Osbern the Reeve knelt down to enfold his wife in the tenderest embrace.

  Her eyes opened and she gave a smile of explanation.

  “Bertha wanted me,” she said.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  NOTHING DISTURBED THE even tenor of Canterbury Cathedral. A murdered monk lay within its priory, a bitter dispute awaited it in the shire hall and an even more violent controversy threatened it from the abbey of St. Augustine but the cathedral went about its business at the same pace and with the same unassailable sense of purpose. It was the still centre at the heart of the city, a spiritual fortress that was proof against any upheaval from within and any siege from without. Archbishop Lanfranc was invincible.

  Nobody had managed to convince Prior Gregory of this fact.

  “The abbey will not be browbeaten. We will fight the archbishop with all our strength and resources. And we will win!”

  “Lower your voice. This is hallowed ground.”

  “He has done it again, Canon Hubert!”

  “Done what?”

  “Hauled me to the cathedral to keep me waiting.”

  “Have you been sent away unseen?”

  “Not this time,” said Prior Gregory. “When I had cooled my heels for an hour or two, Archbishop Lanfranc deigned to give me an audience. It lasted five minutes. I was hardly permitted to speak. Five minutes, Canon Hubert!”

  Hubert was about to remark that it was five minutes more than he had contrived to spend with the archbishop but his pride held him back from that damaging admission. In his present mood, the disenchanted canon would have settled for five seconds in the presence of the head of the English Church in order to feel that his journey to Canterbury had been worth the effort and that the most significant and influential friendship in his long career had, albeit briefly, flickered back into life.

  The aggressive religiosity of Prior Gregory was not to his taste. It was the second time they had met in the cloister garth and this encounter was no more pleasant than the first. Canon Hubert struck what he considered to be an apostolic pose but his response sounded more like that of a Pontius Pilate. “This is nothing to do with me, Prior Gregory.”

  “It is,” insisted the other. “Do not try to wash your hands of the matter. You and your fellow commissioners are involved to the hilt.”

  “The cloister is for meditation, not for acrimony.”

  “Tell that to Archbishop Lanfranc.”

  “Would that I had the opportunity!”

  “Do you know what he told me this morning?”

  “It is no concern of mine.”

  “During our meagre five minutes together, that is.”

  “You are violating my impartiality.”

  “Abbot Guy is on his way to Canterbury.”

  “Let me hear no more, Prior Gregory.”

  “Our express wishes are being ignored.”

  “Desist!”

  “Abbot Guy will be no father of St. Augustine's Abbey. He is a one-man army of occupation sent in by a tyrannical archbishop. He must be stopped at all cost.”

  “And so must you, Prior Gregory!”

  Canon Hubert's intemperate yell lifted the heads of every monk within earshot and raised their eyebrows in censure. The prior was undeterred but his portly companion was seething with embarrassment.

  “Let me impress upon you once more,” he said through gritted teeth. “We will not take sides and we will certainly not be swayed by arguments thrust at us in this bellicose fashion. The property dispute between cathedral and abbey will be settled in the shire hall when we reconvene. Any other disagreement between you is an irrelevance to us.”

  “Disagreement?” echoed the other. “An unw
orthy and wholly unacceptable abbot is to be forced upon us and you characterise this as a mere disagreement? Our spiritual lives are at stake here, Canon Hubert.”

  “Raise the matter with Archbishop Lanfranc.”

  “We have been doing so for weeks on end!”

  “His word has the force of law.”

  “Not at the abbey.”

  “You defy him at your peril,” said Hubert, lapsing into pedagogic mode to terminate the exchange. “Obedience is a precept of the Benedictine Order. That may sometimes mean an acceptance of unpalatable commands. Monastic institutions are ruled from above and not from below. Where would we be if every decision of an archbishop was flouted and every appointment of an abbot was contested? That is the high road to anarchy, Prior Gregory. Even you must realise that.”

  There was a hissing power in his rebuff which made his companion step back a pace and glower at him resentfully. Prior Gregory claimed the right to the last word.

  “So be it,” he said. “I see that we have to fight King as well as cathedral. An impartial judge? You are no more than a hired lackey of the archbishop.”

  Canon Hubert's cheeks turned to ripe plums and he throbbed with righteous indignation but he had no opportunity to defend himself against the insulting charge. The angry prior was already striding toward the main gate to carry yet more bad tidings to the abbey of St. Augustine.

  It had been a bruising confrontation and Hubert was left feeling both hurt and misunderstood. His discomfort was sharply increased when he saw the slim, erect figure of Prior Henry bearing down on him with a dignified tread. Christian fellowship and social niceties were swept aside by the impassive Italian. His question was a knife at Hubert's throat.

  “What exactly did Prior Gregory say to you?”

  “How did Eadgyth know where to find the grave in the dark?”

  “It was beside that of Bertha's mother, my lord.”

  “When did the mother die?”