Murder at Meaux

by Cassandra Clark

  MURDER

  AT MEAUX

  A HILDEGARD OF MEAUX

  MEDIEVAL MYSTERY – BOOK 9

  Cassandra Clark

  WYKEHAM EDITIONS

  Published by Wykeham Editions

  Copyright © 2018 Cassandra Clark

  All rights reserved

  ISBN 978-1-84396-515-2

  Cassandra Clark has asserted her right

  under the Copyright, Designs and Patents

  Act 1988 to be identified as the author

  of this work

  Author’s website

  www.cassandraclark.co.uk

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  Also in the

  Hildegard of Meaux series

  Hangman Blind

  The Velvet Turnshoe

  The Law of Angels

  The Parliament of Spies

  The Dragon of Handale

  The Butcher of Avignon

  The Scandal of the Skulls

  The Alchemist of Netley Abbey

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright & Credits

  Also in the

  Hildegard of Meaux Series

  Lacrimae

  Tenebrae

  Dies Irae

  Haec Die

  Kyrie

  Gloria in Excelsis

  Amen, Amen

  Lacrimae

  It was a night of endless confusions and alarms. Their ship was forced to stand off the coast for several hours, with the fast-flowing tidal stream scouring down the Holderness coast from the North and the massive ebb of the great river grasping them within tantalising sight of the port of Ravenser. The small two-masted cog was constantly in danger of foundering on the sand banks at the mouth of the estuary and all the while the threat of being picked off by pirates was present.

  The ship-master, a bulky, silent, reassuring figure on first stepping aboard, had acquired darting eyes as the voyage progressed. His habit of gazing off to the horizon when questioned also hinted at anxiety. But the four monastics from the Abbey of Meaux remained true to their calling: though scarcely able to trust that the heavy wooden cog, laden to the gunnels with dinanderie from Flanders, would ever reach its destination, they uttered unobtrusive prayers that they might set foot on the solid earth of England once more.

  It was close on the night Office of Matins when the tide changed and the ship-master at last gave the order. The bows swung towards the shore and, in a tumult of surf and shouting, with the wind screaming through the rigging and the sudden clatter of collapsing sails onto a deck running with sea-water, the ship was scooped up by the returning tide and cast inside the haven onto the shingle bank beneath the flickering port light of Ravenser.

  The three monks and the nun gazed in awe at the black shore looming above them. The ship rose and fell, caught between land and sea, and then in an agitation of wind-torn action the port-siders came pelting down the beach into the waves with shouts to secure the lines. The ship master gave an audible sigh. Orders were barked. The crew hastened to complete their tasks and the ship was dragged further up the beach with the surf lifting and falling under her keel.

  ‘So,’ breathed Abbot de Courcy,‘Home at last! All angels be praised!’

  His nun, Hildegard, felt her eyes sting with tears of relief. They mingled unseen with salt water from the spray of surf as she murmured, ‘Amen to that, my lord.’

  Home. After so long, indeed.

  And now – a shiver ran through her – with everything that lay ahead to be considered – his question answered – the future would be changed forever.

  Shrugging her fears aside she turned to the abbot. ‘I beg you, Hubert, my lord, make no attempt to step ashore until the crew can help you.’

  His broken leg – the reason for their return from Netley Abbey by ship instead of horse-back – was well on the mend even though it remained encased in clay to the knee. He scowled. Already both of his monks were clambering over the side and dropping with gasps into the thigh-deep surf before wading up the shelving sands to higher ground. He wiped the longing to join them from his face and glanced round for a possibility of help. ‘You go on, Hildegard. I’ll follow when I can. Take care. The currents here are treacherous.’

  Kilting the skirts of her habit she climbed over the side and when she dropped into the roiling waves she timed it so that they were receding and her boots were scarcely wet by the time Brother Gregory reached out a helping hand to haul her up to the top of the bank. They turned to look back.

  The crew were already bringing off the cargo, among it, to be hoped, their own small bags. The white robe of the abbot stood out under the swinging lantern-light and he could be seen hesitating over whether to follow.

  ‘I hope he doesn’t try it,’ muttered Brother Gregory. ‘I don’t fancy plunging into the sea to rescue him.’

  ‘He’ll have more sense – to be hoped.’

  It looked a primitive place, Ravenser, stuck at the end of a mile-long finger of banked shingle, a bleak settlement serving the needs of Humber shipping since Roman times.

  Destroyed by frequent inundations and rebuilt over and over again it was vitally important for overseas trade in and out of the north and was licensed by King Richard as a staple port for the thriving wool trade. Ashore it seemed like little more than a huddle of storm-lashed buildings.

  A sleepless tax official crunched over the sand to greet them as the crew tumbled ashore. He morosely scanned the ship-man’s papers. ‘Four passengers?’ he looked the two monks and the nun up and down. ‘Where’s the other one?’

  ‘Just coming ashore.’ Brother Egbert was equally terse. ‘We’ll need horses.’

  ‘You’ll have to make do with what we have.’

  ‘And we’ll need a cart of some sort. Our lord abbot is suffering an indisposition.’ He indicated the ship where the abbot was at this moment being handed over the side by a couple of brawny sea-men.

  The tax official was joined by a militiaman and both turned to watch as the sailors made a sling with their hands and encouraged the abbott to sit in it. Hildegard could see his expression by the light of the flares and was glad she was not directly involved in this manoeuvre.

  ‘We can let you have a dog cart, a mule and two horses,’ the official announced and, avoiding a discussion about the quality of the horse-flesh on offer, roused a couple of lads to bring them from the stable.

  Brother Gregory was decisive. ’You ride with me, Hildegard. We’ll take that big one. It’ll bear two of us.’

  When the horses were ready one of the stable lads turned to Hildegard and cupped his hands. With a glance back to where Hubert was being carried up the beach she climbed onto the back of what might once have been a war horse, now much knocked about. Gregory took his place behind her. Brother Egbert fished in his pouch for payment then checked the dog cart as Hubert, protesting that he could manage, was hoisted inside.

  ‘Well, my lord?’

  ‘It’ll do, Egbert. Let me lead the way.’

  In the black of night, with the constant rumble of the tide in her ears, Hildegard took one final glance at the ship that had carried them all the way from the south up the long east coast of England in safety. Despite her misgivings about what lay ahead, she felt only relief that they had made land fall at last.

  2


  Battered and exhausted the procession made its way along the spit and eventually reached the more sheltered marshland of Holderness. To the east the sounding wildness of the sea could be heard as a faint, regular and savage boom as waves pounded against the shore while inland there was a black silence scarcely broken by the continuo of countless rivulets pouring between the dykes and ditches. Only now and then the random shrieks of owls on the hunt, the bark of dog foxes, the scuttling of prey punctuated the night.

  As they rode deeper into the land flocks of sheep, the source of Meaux’s wealth, cropped continually beside the track or lay like pale stones in the lush grass. A dark hovel or two, farm-buildings, cow biers, sheep pens, all lay humped under the veil of night.

  The travellers seemed too exhausted to say much after their voyage and when Abbot de Courcy raised his hand to bring them to a halt in the middle of nowhere not even Brother Egbert had the strength to protest.

  ‘I want to show you this lane to our left, leading to a place called Withernsea,’ explained the abbot. ‘How long it might continue to exist is something for the soothsayers to argue over. The sea has not only destroyed Ravenser several times over, forcing it to be rebuilt, but all along this coastline it has swept countless villages under the waves. Every year we lose a little more of our grazing land. It’s one of our major problems. Landowners in more secure locations are reluctant to sell off their own land and we are reluctant to claim back more from the Saxons than we already have. If either of you,’ he indicated Gregory and Egbert, ‘can come up with a way of solving the problem I shall be eternally grateful. And you likewise, Hildegard, if you can persuade your prioress to release a little more priory land to us I shall be ever in your debt.’ He clicked the mule on and the procession continued.

  3

  Hildegard noticed that Egbert was already slumping in the saddle as if half asleep.

  As militant monks escorting pilgrims to Jerusalem he and Gregory had served several years overseas. They must have travelled like this many times into the unknown, half asleep from exhaustion, much as Gregory’s great uncle, a Knight Templar, had done before his Order was so brutally repressed by the French king. They were not cloistered cell monks but men in their prime, out in the world, hardened by it but dedicated to God. Her own eyes began to close.

  She was in her prime too, a little over thirty, well-travelled since her prioress at nearby Swyne had decided to make use of her in the cause of the young and beleaguered King Richard. Hardened, now, maybe? Certainly she felt she had become wary by all she had undergone since setting out to Avignon over a year ago.

  Distantly she heard the battering of the sea fading like the passing of a steel-shod army into nothing as they began to enter deep farming country. Mist was forming in the hollows of the undulating track that wound ahead and she was lulled by the sigh of the wind through the sea-grass and the distant bleating of sheep in the meadows. Gregory’s hands on the reins scarcely moved as the horse ambled along behind Hubert’s cart.

  Suddenly she felt him jerk upright to resist the sleep that began to claim him but forcing her eyes open she saw Hubert, as alert as ever, in the cart in front.

  ‘Not far now, Gregory,’ she murmured in an effort to keep him awake.

  ‘Mm, good.’ He half-heartedly urged the destrier to pace alongside the abbot’s mule.

  After a moment or two she felt his attention quicken and, still half-asleep, he murmured, ‘What is that, Hildegard?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Up ahead. Behind that dark shape – is it a building where the track turns inland?’

  Hildegard peered into the darkness. ‘I see it. Behind it is a light of some sort.’

  Whatever it was it disappeared like a will o’the wisp but then as suddenly it reappeared from behind a copse.

  Hubert had noticed it too.

  She felt Gregory reach for his sword, muttering, ‘It’s coming this way.’

  ’It’s a group of men carrying flares!’ she exclaimed as they came out onto the track in front of them. She counted six hooded figures.

  ‘Is that what gangs do in this part of the world – march in line with cressets flaring to make their capture easier?’ She could tell he was now wide awake and itching for a fight.

  ‘Let’s find out who they are first. Hubert!’ she called in a low voice.

  ‘I see them.’ He brought the mule to a halt.

  Egbert jerked awake. ‘Are we there?’

  ‘Fellow travellers,’ observed Hubert. ‘What are they doing on the road in the middle of the night?’

  ‘Smuggling goods out of the country,’ suggested Egbert, now fully awake. He too reached for his sword.

  Hubert put up a hand, ‘Stay, let them account for themselves. They’re on Abbey land.’

  They could see through the swirling mist the six figures shrouded in hoods and cloaks, each one carrying a flickering cresset, approaching in purposeful procession. One held the bridle of a mule hauling a dray. Others went two by two on each side and as they emerged from a dip in the track they must have seen at once that their path was blocked by a cart accompanied by riders.

  They came to a disorderly halt.

  Their flickering torches revealed a boy, little more than ten or twelve, walking at the head of the procession and holding aloft a wooden cross. Behind him was a group of stout looking fellows in cloaks.

  ‘Who goes?’ one of them demanded in a peremptory tone.

  ‘I might ask the same question,’ replied Hubert coolly. ‘Where do you hail from?’

  The leader pushed his hood from off his face and peered through the swirling mist. ‘We come from the Abbey of Meaux if it’s any concern of yours.’

  Hildegard felt Gregory move slightly at the belligerence in his tone.

  To her astonishment Hubert leaned forward and said gently, ‘Forgive me, brother. It’s Prior Benedict is it not?’

  ‘It is. Who are –?’ He broke off in astonishment and dropped hastily to his knees, exclaiming, ‘My lord Abbot!’

  ‘Come, get up. But for my blessed broken leg I would be down off this cart at once. What are you doing out in the middle of the night in this desolation?’

  ‘My lord! Forgive me! A thousand pardons! Praise God and all his angels! To have you given back safe to us in our misery! Praise the lord!’ He knelt again.

  On recognition of their abbot his companions did the same, even one with an obvious hump on his back.

  Hubert gestured impatiently. ‘No, up! Get up! Bless you, brothers. Explain, Benedict, my dear fellow, if you will, what brings you from out of the abbey at such a time?’

  ‘We’re bringing this sad cargo for burial at the chapel by the sea, my lord.’ He indicated the burden being pulled along by the one small mule to reveal something covered by a black cloth lying on the dray.

  Two monks stepped closer to where Hubert was trying to descend. ‘This is no welcome home-coming, my lord,’ said one. ‘Pray forgive us for being the unwilling instruments of such dolour.’

  ‘Is it a coffin on the dray?’

  ‘It is, my lord.’

  ‘Who is it?’ Hubert asked with tight control. ‘And why has it fallen to you to take him to his rest by night?’

  ‘He is one of our brothers, my lord abbot.’

  Hubert gave a start. ‘Then I must know him.’

  ‘You do, my lord. It is Brother Anselm.’

  Hubert crossed himself and muttered a prayer for the monk’s soul.

  ‘Dear old fellow.’ He turned to Gregory and Egbert to explain. ‘For many years he’s worked in our scriptorium and brought it to order and beauty.’ Turning back to Prior Benedict he said, ‘I suppose eventually the years caught up with him......although he was hale enough when I last saw him.’

  The Prior did not answer.

  Hubert resumed his struggle to descend from the dog cart. ‘Help me, someone. I must look on him.’

  ‘My lord, do not trouble yourself. There is nothing to be done. He died this Fri
day sennight, working as usual at what he loved. Our Circator found him.’ He indicated the hooded figure standing beside him. ‘He was already stone cold, isn’t that so, brother?’

  ‘I regret to say it is.’

  ‘Not even our herberer could have revived him.’

  ‘I will look on him. I owe him my respect. Help me!... Egbert!’ he called, ‘Your arm!’

  The monk slid from his horse and took the weight of the abbot against one shoulder. ‘Steady, my lord.’

  Hubert swayed for a moment then indicated that he wanted to be assisted until he could lean against the dray. The mule tossed its head and took a pace but the boy pulled it to a halt.

  ‘Take off the cloth and lift the lid.’ Hubert’s voice was gruff.

  The monk with the affliction moved swiftly forward, slipping the cloth off the coffin and lifting the lid a few inches. Someone else lowered one of the flaming cressets so that the abbot could peer inside. After a few moments when Hubert crossed himself and murmured a blessing, he straightened.

  ‘Poor Anselm. A most godly and compassionate man. The world is a lesser place without him. God rest his soul.’

  He looked thoughtful and asked, ‘Why is he being taken away from Meaux? Why at dead of night?’

  When no-one answered his tone sharpened and he said again, ‘Why at dead of night? Why not bury him in the consecrated grounds of the abbey? Prior?’

  The Prior bowed his head so that his face was in shadow. Eventually he muttered. ‘He is unable to be –’ he broke off then started again. ‘We could not – in the circumstances...’

  ‘Explain!’

  ‘We fear he died in sin, my lord. He deliberately took his own life.’

  ‘Anselm? You say this about Anselm? Never! He is well aware that he would be committing a mortal sin. A brother of courage and fortitude? He would never – ’