The Alchemist of Netley Abbey: Eighth in the Hildegard of Meaux medieval mystery series

by Cassandra Clark

  ‘I shall not,’ Hildegard managed. ‘This is a chamber to suit my requirements. I shall be content here insofar as I can feel content, given the reason for our sojourn at Netley.’

  ‘Ah, that’s most unfortunate. God willing, your lord abbot will soon be well enough to travel on. But let me show you, here,’ she pointed to the top of a narrow staircase beside the door, ‘you can go down straight into Cloister Garth where you may quickly reach your invalid. I understand that our own apothecary will attend him but you may wish to see to some of his needs yourself.’

  Gregory and Egbert must have smoothed the path for her. ‘I do so wish,’ she agreed.

  ‘Then you may come and go as you please by means of this little back stair.’

  Such was the sister’s eagerness to display the facilities offered to the abbey’s many guests that it was some time before Hildegard managed to escape and make her way across the yard towards the infirmary. When she was shown in, Hubert was lying on a bed in a single cubicle surrounded by a waist-high partition sufficient to serve the dignity and privacy of an abbot.

  She saw that he was being adequately attended already by a monk and a couple of practical looking laymen as well as by a friar wearing the grey habit of a Franciscan. The latter was offering medicine from a glass vial when Hildegard arrived and did not look up.

  ‘We have cleaned and re-splinted his leg and this white poppy made up by our apothecary, Friar Hywel, will give him much needed sleep,’ the monk in charge told her when introductions had been made. Gregory and Egbert had apparently been and gone already.

  Hubert’s broken leg was encased in a wooden frame, open along the top and held in position by leather straps. Water had been sluiced into it and a bandage soaked in honey as antiseptic had been wrapped loosely over the break in the skin. It was the wooden case that kept the broken bones firmly in position.

  ‘Interesting,’ Hildegard observed. Hubert would not be walking anywhere with his leg in that contraption.

  ‘An old Roman system,’ explained the monk. ‘It keeps the leg immobile until the bone has had time to knit and we can keep the wound clean at the same time by dousing it with well water without disturbing it. Friar Hywel here will attend to the lord abbot’s needs.’

  The friar, a young Franciscan, nodded. Tall, gaunt and pale-faced, with a shock of thick, black hair and eyes too dark and luminous to ignore, he placed the vial on a ledge and melted without a word into the shadows.

  ‘He will sleep now, domina,’ said the monk. ‘I suggest you join your brothers in the refectory. There’s food for you and your companions. Our cooks are always ready for the arrival of hungry travellers.’

  As she left, the friar followed her out but when she turned to ask him directions to the refectory he was already striding away down the cloister.

  ‘So do we have a plan of action?’ asked Egbert while they were polishing off bowls of fish stew and great hunks of new bread.

  ‘One thing’s for sure, Hubert will not be going anywhere for some time. Not astride a horse, at any rate.’

  ‘I shall stay with him,’ Hildegard said. ‘But what about you two?’

  ‘We have no pressing business.’ Gregory glanced at Egbert. ‘Unless Hubert has some instructions for us?’

  ‘He’s on tenterhooks about how his abbey is faring in his absence. He expects it to have gone to rack and ruin while he’s been away.’

  ‘It’s his own fault if he’s left incompetents in charge.’ He chuckled. ‘I can’t imagine that. I’m sure things are well at Meaux.’

  ‘No, but.....’ Egbert grinned. ‘You know Hubert. He doesn’t trust anybody’s competence but his own.’

  ‘I’m sure he trusts you, Egbert, and you too, Gregory, on every level. And maybe that’s why he might want you to stay close at hand.’

  ‘I’m sure that’s the best arrangement, all round.’

  ‘By the way, who is this new abbot they have here?’ She meant, as both monks understood, what side had he taken in the recent mass executions in London. The young king’s main allies had been purged from government leaving him vulnerable to the machinations of his uncles, the dukes of Warwick and Gloucester and their ally the earl of Arundel whose domain was no further than a horse-ride away. ‘The lay-sister told me that Abbot Philip has been in place for only a year and has yet to be tested by anything more taxing than providing hospitality for pilgrims.’

  ‘Philip of – ? Where was it?’

  ‘De Cornforth? Cornhampton? Something like that. He’s unknown to me. I heard his name when we were at Beaulieu but only in passing. Who appointed him, do we know?’

  ‘It would be through the usual channels at Citeaux on advice from St Mary Graces. At least Gloucester and Arundel haven’t stolen the right to make appointments within our Order so far.’

  ‘So far,’ added Egbert heavily.

  Wine was brought but it was not this that made everyone fall silent. Their thoughts, inevitably, turned towards King Richard and how he was faring in the face of his recent catastrophic defeat in parliament. Power was now definitely in the grip of the five barons calling themselves the Appellants.

  Gregory’s bleak, astonished, skeptical opinion was expressed when he said, ‘Those self-styled Appellants imagine they can do a better job of running the country than King Richard but I can’t help feeling they’re deluding themselves. We shall have to wait and see. One thing’s certain. They will not be suing for peace with the French. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if Arundel isn’t already arming his militia for a new invasion.’

  ‘Rich pickings even now,’ Egbert averred. ‘You’d imagine the French peasantry over there had been stripped of everything of value. Certainly much of it is said to’ve finished up adorning Arundel’s castle.’

  ‘We should be careful,’ Gregory lowered his voice. ‘We’re too close to his domain to risk being picked up by his spies. I suggest we all hold our counsel while we’re here, not out of fear but out of prudence.’

  ‘Nothing new in having to watch our tongues.’ Hildegard put down her beaker of wine. ‘Can one imagine a country where one would be free to speak one’s mind?’

  ‘Wyclif certainly dreamed of it, poor old fellow.’

  ‘And his followers have such dreams but it’s Arundel’s brother who’s making life intolerable for free-thinkers and scholars.’ The brother, Richard, had been made Archbishop, now that King Richard’s supporter, Alexander Neville, had fled the realm.

  ‘I’m to my bed.’ Egbert yawned. ‘We’ll keep silent. Watch and wait. Offer succour to the needy, as does the abbot here, and pray that we shall soon be back at Meaux.’

  Hildegard did not sleep for an age. The air was stifling and her small chamber was like an oven even with the shutters thrown wide. It would be good for everybody if they had a decent harvest, and it would be so if the hot weather kept up but the sun had been like a brazen shield at high noon and now, at night, even the stones of the abbey itself seemed to be heated by a lingering inner fire.

  She threw off her sheet and lay in her shift staring wide-eyed at the ceiling. Outside came the usual night sounds: an owl on the hunt, a breeze rustling through the trees surrounding the abbey enclosure. In the lane leading up to the gatehouse no sound came of anyone passing.

  It was so quiet the click of counters from the porters’ lodge could now and then be heard. Soon the bell for Matins would begin to toll. She thought of going down to join the others and began to haul herself from off the bed to prepare when the frail drumming of hoofs stayed her hand. The sound came closer. She heard it change as the riders started up the lane towards the abbey. Midnight was late for travelers to be seeking hospitality.

  People from all levels, high to low, were still fleeing London after the Merciless Parliament, fleeing for their lives whether in guilt or fear. In Salisbury they had even come across the king’s personal secretary, the Head of the Signet office, after he sought anonymity as a mere canon in the cathedral. But he was only one of hu
ndreds to flee the threat of summary execution by getting out of London as fast as possible.

  The merchants who had supported King Richard with loans and practical means, had been forced to accept the execution of their mayor, Sir Nick Brembre. It had taken only two days from impeachment and trial to execution for the dukes to rid themselves of this major financier of the king. His execution had sent a quake of fear throughout the City. Even now, others would be living in terror and praying that their support for the young king, offered out of loyalty, might be overlooked by those who were redefining their largesse as the capital crime of treason.

  The purpose of starving the king of money was obvious. Without resources, he would not be able to finance an army to match the ones of the Appellants and thus would be forever in their power.

  The riders came to a halt beneath her window. A short command brought the porter to the gate. A mumbled conversation followed and evidently he was satisfied because she heard him open the double gates into the outer garth.

  The horses – she thought there were two – were stilled to a random snort, a tinkling of bridle ornaments and then, clearly, a voice emerged from out of the night. It was a full, rich sound but the words were unfamiliar. A reply in the same language echoed from underneath the archway. The porter must have had someone with him but now the door to his lodge slammed shut.

  The two voices were less guarded now they were alone, but the language, she thought, as she went to stand beside her window, was not English. What was it? And who was arriving secretly in the dead of night? Was it something to do with Arundel?

  She could not forget how she and the abbot with his two monks militant had been pursued all the way from Avignon back to England by Arundel’s men only weeks before. As Admiral of the Southern Seas he had posted spies at all the ports along the coast to halt anyone either coming into the realm or trying to leave it without his writ. Fortune decreed that they themselves had been able to get back in without being stopped.

  Doubtful that four Cistercians were important enough to have drawn the earl’s own militia all the way to Netley after their lost meanderings in the woods she strained to hear what was being said.

  To her astonishment she managed to pick out a few words of Welsh. It was a while since she’d lived in the Welsh Marches. Not since she had been widowed had she set foot in the small castle near Penarlag, her home through the short, unhappy years of her marriage to Marcher lord Hugh de Ravenscroft. Frequent efforts to grasp the intricacies of the language had given her enough understanding to be able to pick a few words now – then the name Sycharth sharpened her attention.

  She knew that place.

  It was the fortified manor house of a man named Owain Glyn Dwr. Worse, he was in the service of Arundel.

  A Welshman descended from two royal dynasties, he was famous throughout Wales and the borderlands. As a landowner and a prince he was respected by both sides, being a peacemaker in the endless disputes between the Marcher lords. After she left the border country and took the veil his name had cropped up now and then – he distinguished himself in the French wars under the command of Arundel, and again, as Arundel’s captain, against the Scots when they invaded the north of England. But for the fact that the invaders had been turned back, York itself and certainly the Abbey of Meaux would have been swallowed up by the Scots. Most recently this captain, Glyn Dwr, had been made personal body-guard to Arundel.

  Now someone discussing his manor in the Berwyn Mountains was outside.

  She leaned as close to the window loop as she could, her face pressed against the warm stones. The first voice, distinguished by its richness and sonority, was saying something rapidly to the man who had emerged from the gatehouse after the porter went back inside. The man replied, courteously, deferentially, indeed. Was it one of the monks or one of the lay servants?

  Straining forward, she tried to peer down into the lane but the angle was wrong and all she could make out was the empty path. As well as that the voices were speaking too rapidly for her to catch their meaning but she heard a chuckle and a slap like two palms meeting that brought things to a conclusion. The night-door grated on its hinges as somebody pushed it wider, footsteps entered under the arch, then the door slammed behind them.

  Despite the heat, Hildegard reached for her cloak and pulled it on. When the bell sounded she would go in to Matins and see if she could find out who had arrived like an assassin in the night. It was undignified to have listened at her window but she was frighteningly aware of the danger should an ally of Arundel have gained admission to the abbey.

  He must have a reason for secrecy.

  Now she prayed that it was nothing to do with Abbot de Courcy and his two monks, and their activities in Avignon when they had foiled the earl’s plot against King Richard.

  Chapter Three

  The cloisters were lit at intervals by cressets set in wall-brackets fixed to the pillars. They shed just enough light to find one’s way without stumbling but not enough to be able to make out the identity of the hooded figures going in to Matins.

  The guests worshipped in a small chapel near the gatehouse but Hildegard did not follow them, assuming it was more likely for the mysterious rider to attend in the Church itself. The group heading for the chapel were pilgrims waiting at Netley for the ship to take them overseas, couples wishing to make sure of their after-life in heaven or widows and widowers fulfilling vows to a deceased partner, along with one or two on some private penance of their own. Among them were others with business interests connected to the busy river trade that connected Netley to the Isle of Wight, the ports of the Narrow Seas and the wider world.Whether those making their way towards the chapel now were men or women she was unable to discern in the darkness.

  She let them go then turned off into the church. Several conversi in rough brown habits and soft-soled night boots were already crowding at the back while the monks themselves were still filing in, emerging straight from their dortoir down the night stairs that brought them directly into the Choir.

  She thought she could make out Gregory’s tall broad-shouldered figure as they entered but all had their hoods up, faces in shadow, looking much the same in their white habits and she couldn’t be sure.

  A glance round revealed no-one who might be the rider in the night. The friar who had attended Hubert as he was brought in on his stretcher was standing somewhat apart but close enough to see his devout expression as, with his hood falling back, he raised his face towards the east. Eventually he looked round, pulled his hood down and joined the others in the flowing Latin of the Office.

  The discipline of having to come out in the middle of the night, take a few hours rest, and then come out again for Lauds was so familiar it no longer tired her so that when a man came in late, unabashed, forcing a space for himself with a view of the altar in the nave she gave him an alert glance from under her hood.

  He was fiftyish, above average hight, broad-chested, probably with a voice as rich as his stature would suggest. But he did not look Welsh. His hair colour revealed in the candle glow was fair and his fleshy face did not suggest a fighting man like Glyn Dwr either. His garments, from what she could make of them in the candle-light, were those of a merchant, a successful one with a showy capuchon on his head, an expensive deep-dyed blue cotte and a fur over one shoulder despite the summer heat. He was certainly no monastic and she wondered if he was a respected donor to the abbey’s upkeep to be privileged to worship here.

  His glance shifted over the bent heads and before he turned to include her in his scrutiny Hildegard quickly dropped her gaze.

  It was one of the shorter Offices and as soon as it was possible to join the other guests drifting out of the chapel into Cloister Garth she followed them in the direction of the guest quarters. Egbert caught up with her.

  ‘Domina,’ he whispered, as formal as if he expected someone to be listening, ‘I looked in on Hubert before coming here. Will you go and speak to him?’

  ‘
What? Now?’

  Anxiety must have shown in her expression because he reassured her. ‘Nothing alarming. You know where to find him?’

  ‘Unless he’s had a miraculous healing I suppose I do! Walk with me?’

  ‘I surely will. Then maybe you can tell me why you looked so alarmed when I tugged your sleeve just now.’

  Together they went into the cloisters but not before Hildegard had watched the late-comer in the vermilion capuchon cross the yard with the other guests in the direction of their sleeping quarters.

  In a low voice she said, ‘Someone arrived on horseback shortly before Matins. He had one retainer by the sound of it. A man from the abbey, whether one of the brothers or a conversi, spoke to him in Welsh.’

  Egbert showed immediate interest.

  ‘I couldn’t catch all they said but the name Sycharth was mentioned.’ She explained its significance.

  ‘So you think Arundel’s spy, this Glyn Dwr himself, may have been tipped off about us?’ He sounded shocked. ‘We’re nobodies.’

  ‘He’s a good revenger, is Arundel, he and his brother both. He won’t like the fact that we scotched his plan to get Pope Clement on his side against King Richard. But I agree. We’re not important. There’s too much else going on in Westminster to waste time on us. And anyway, I don’t see how they would know we were anywhere near here when we scarcely knew ourselves.’

  ‘No-one knew – apart from those lawless devils who waylaid us.’His glance held hers.

  ‘It seemed a random attack.’ She eyed him doubtfully.

  ‘I know it did.’ He took her by the arm. ‘Worry not. We’ll keep a careful watch and I’ll find out who this newcomer thinks he is.’