‘I’ll hold it — you climb.’
Joan looked fearfully at the dock — so far away in the wild semidarkness. Anne nudged her friend firmly in the back. ‘Go. Now!’ Finally Joan nodded and began to haul herself up the narrow ladder, sodden skirts and wet cloak impeding every step.
Anne watched as Joan, hand over hand, rung after rung, got closer, closer to the lip of the dock — a looming shape above in the howling dark. Her own arms ached: it was hard anchoring the ladder to compensate for Joan’s weight as the wind tried to swing the nun against the stone sea wall whilst she climbed.
‘Concentrate. Hold on. Concentrate. Hold on.’ It became a prayer and just when it seemed her arms must give out as the pain burned and her muscles shook, a red veil blocked sound and sight.
‘Anne, Anne.’ Was the storm speaking to her? ‘You are not the sacrifice.’ It was the Sword Mother’s voice, harsh and direct, as she heard very distantly the sound of steel meeting steel. Swords, swordplay, Anne had heard it often enough at tournaments — and in her dreams.
She heard there was screaming on the wind and, the veil suddenly gone, Anne looked up to see a red-cloaked woman, wild hair flying in the storm, standing behind Bernard and David as they finally hauled Joan up from the ladder to the dock.
‘Lash the ladder, lash it. There’s rope by the mast.’
Bernard waved his lantern to catch Anne’s attention, and his great voice cut through the wind that drove Anne’s wet cloak out behind her like a sail.
‘Lash the ladder and climb towards my light!’
But Anne did not hear him; she was looking at the lines, the black lines, tattoos, drawn all over the Sword Mother’s cheeks, her throat and shoulders — curving, writhing, looped and spiralled patterns. Under her red cloak, she was naked to the waist — Anne saw that when the Sword Mother held one arm high in salute — one great ring of gold clamped around a muscled upperarm. Then she was gone, into the dark.
‘Sister Anne?’ Bernard was calling down to her, increasingly anxious. The storm was gathering force again.
‘I hear you!’ Anne screamed back, nodding, agreeing.
Lash the ladder down, lash the ladder now; this was her task if she was ever to leave the lurching, straining Porpoise.
Fumbling her way amongst the wicker creels of fish fastened to the sides of the deck, Anne searched for rope — and was rewarded. Near the mast there was a spare coil neatly stowed in case the sail needed extra staying. Stumbling as the boat bucked beneath her, groaning as it rubbed against the stone wall that was close, so close, Anne found her way back to the rope ladder somehow as it slapped and swung against the harbour wall.
Catching the ladder as she would a restive horse, Anne shucked the sodden nun’s cloak as she would a spare skin. Better be as wet as a seal than blinded by flapping cloth. And, finally too, she ripped off her novice’s veiling, leaving only the wimple covering her head.
Somewhere, deep in her mind, burned the image of the Sword Mother. It had force, that last salute: it was a message. Anne was not to be a victim — not anyone’s victim.
Quickly, deftly, Anne lashed the ladder to the deck and then she began to climb, slick rung by slick rung up, up towards the light, towards the men’s faces looming down as the lantern swayed and swayed: shadow and light, shadow and light.
She was in Whitby. She had come this far. When she’d had the vision in Brugge, the Sword Mother had said, ‘I guard, I guard.’ Anne was not alone.
Chapter Forty-Nine
Edward, like his brother, mostly enjoyed being in York. So many family associations — and the good memories outweighed the bad, just.
Now he was comfortably sprawled inside an enormous butt of good oak, previously used to hold wine, filled with scalding water as he tried to soak some of the pain out of his arms and back after the long ride north.
Richard’s men had carried the open-topped tunn to the duke’s sleeping quarters, placing it in front of the raging fire as relays of servants carried pail after pail of water into the room. Such was their haste that more than one or two slopped the contents of their buckets on the slate floor and were roundly cursed by the duke. An unusual occurrence.
Perhaps the brothers were just over-worried, and God knew they had cause; so thought Warrington as he chivvied the last relay of kitchen hands with empty buckets out of his master’s sleeping quarters.
‘Your Grace, shall we return with more?’ He didn’t even get the last words out as the duke closed the door in his valet’s face with an abrupt snap. From the other side of three inches of good, solid oak, he heard his master’s muffled ‘No. You will be called.’
‘Shortly, Warrington. We’ll call you shortly!’ Edward called out loudly also, less abrupt than his brother. If he was going to all the trouble of having a bath, he wanted hot water and lots of it.
Richard didn’t understand why, himself. All this washing could not be healthful could it? ‘You’ll smell of malmsey out of this, Edward.’
That made the king smile. He liked malmsey. ‘I can think of worse things, brother. You should try this, you know. It relaxes the muscles; much less pain after a hard ride.’
Richard was pacing restlessly and he interrupted his brother. ‘Pain! It’s more than stiff backs will pain us soon.’
Edward smiled mirthlessly. ‘No, brother, it is not we who will suffer, believe me.’
Richard looked at the king as he sat back in what was, effectively, a great wooden bucket. His magnificent, muscled torso was picked out by the light from the fire; mighty arms draped casually over the edge of the butt. He looked relaxed, quite certain of what he was about.
Richard sighed and Edward smiled. ‘There’s no point you know, getting so worried. You’ve done well; planned well, now all we have to do is frighten them for five, maybe seven days. That’s all. Then William will join us. We’ll crush them if they go too far, I promise you.’
Richard kicked at the fire moodily. ‘I wish I had your confidence, I really do.’
‘Come, brother, we’ve been here before.’ But Richard looked uncertain still. Edward sighed and a moment later began, regretfully, to clamber out of the water. ‘I’ve changed my mind. Let’s eat, and you can tell me about my son. That will be more cheerful.’
Richard twitched the bath sheet, which had been warming before the fire, in the king’s direction. ‘A likeable boy, that one. Who’s his mother, did you say?’
Edward, lazily drying himself before the fire, stretching newly supple muscles, one by one, smiled craftily. ‘I did not. And I will not.’ As he dried himself, a different, bleaker look crept over his face as he stared deep into the fire.
‘For all he’s a bastard, he’s well descended, very well descended, on his mother’s side. Better than you or I. And England needs a boy, an heir.’
Richard said nothing, though he was intrigued. He heard the purpose in his brother’s voice. Elisabeth had not given Edward a son, but someone else, another woman, had. Who was she? Who could she be? Well enough descended to be the mother of a potential king? He mentally reviewed the very few likely court women as Edward turned with sudden purpose towards Richard’s bed on which was arrayed a new suit of clothes. Pulling a soft muslin shirt over his head — he liked soft clothes, his little brother must have remembered — he shot a penetrating glance at Richard.
‘And so, did you find the girl, this French spy?’
The duke shook his head as he strode to the door and flung it open. ‘Bring food. And wine.’ The guardsman hurried away as Richard turned back into the room again. ‘Not yet but we will.’
‘Dressed as a novice, you say? A good disguise, if you needed one.’ Edward was nearly dressed again, in the quick way that a soldier has before battle.
‘Yes. I have a man on her trail, however. A man with an interest.’
Edward observed the slight grimace as his brother said the words. ‘A good man?’
Richard shrugged. ‘You could say that. Relentless rather. He’s been made a fool of.’
A faint smile lingered in his eyes. It piqued the king’s interest ‘Really? By whom?’
‘His father. It seems the old man fell in love — or lust — with the girl. I’ve heard word that the father now pursues the son and I wait to see who will find her first. Two men on a mission for us, brother — we cannot fail.’
The king laughed. ‘All this fuss about one silly little girl! Is there any proof that she actually is a spy, by the way?’
Richard shrugged, slightly sulky. ‘She ran from her hiding place, which seems suspicious; and she caused me, personally, a mighty lot of trouble in so doing.’
The king grinned. ‘Ah yes, the archbishop. I heard.’
Annoyed, Richard flung himself into a Venetian chair drawn up to the fire. ‘That man is impossible, Edward. Impossible! He thwarts me at every turn.’
A discreet knock at the door signalled Warrington’s entrance accompanied by two boys, all loaded with platters of food and an enormous jug of wine.
‘On the table, Warrington.’ The king nodded to Richard’s work table and pensively held his peace until the servants had deposited their burdens and left once more.
‘Seems to me there’s been a great deal of needless bother about this girl, Richard. She’s hardly important enough to fight with George Neville about, is she?’
Richard flared in sudden defence. ‘You were not here, brother! I did what I considered best, for us all. You would not have ignored a rumoured spy, Edward, not if information came from a trusted man.’
Edward smiled slightly; he liked Richard’s spirit, but there was a lesson in this, a valuable one in ‘réal-politique’ for his passionate younger brother.
‘But, Richard, your “spy” caused you to waste much time and energy, it seems to me, when the main game is clearly elsewhere.’
Richard refused to look at Edward, moodily kicking at the fire with one boot-clad foot as the king went on. ‘Oh, I know the archbishop’s a difficult man, stubborn, but we need him, and you, to at least pretend amity in this city; don’t want to scare your people here more than we need. We’ve got much more than Warwick’s brother to think about — we’ve got Warwick himself.’
Edward sauntered over to the fire and offered his brother a beaker of wine. ‘Here, let’s drink to your reconciliation with the archbishop — and to someone, anyone, catching that silly girl so we can make an end of this overblown nonsense!’
Chapter Fifty
Stephen Hardwell was consumed by an unexpected emotion: a sense of loss.
How could it be that someone he’d only seen once, to whom he’d only ever addressed so few words, could have come to obsess his every waking thought?
He pondered the mystery of the missing girl as he paused, surrounded by his small party, to view the way forward.
Things had come to a pretty pass indeed when a man had to track his son as if the boy were a thief and he the thief-taker! But that was the way of it, he’d committed himself and he would see this through. Things had gone too far now between Henry and himself for him to even consider backing away, for his son would kill that girl even though she was no spy — just to earn favour with his duke.
Stephen shook his head sorrowfully as he thought on it; he was deeply ashamed that his son, knighted on the field of battle — as he had been — should so seek to dishonour his vows to protect all women to reap political advantage.
‘Ale, Sir Stephen?’ The baron grunted distractedly as Liam Fellowes handed his master a leather flask of good ale brewed in the manor kitchens of Bishop Hardwell; the baron was very particular about his ale — no muddy alehouse slop for him on this journey!
‘How far d’you make Whitby, Liam?’
Liam, a Whitby man by birth, cheered up considerably. ‘We’ll be there in the late fore-noon, Baron.’
‘Looking forward to it are you, Liam, after this cold journey of ours?’ Liam was astonished. Normally his self-obsessed old master thought of nothing and no one but himself and his own comfort. Something odd was going on, and not just this mad pursuit of a girl, and his son.
The steward nodded. ‘Aye, sir. I am. My old ma’s still alive, or she was last I heard.’
The old baron nodded and then sighed as he waved the steward away. Filial piety, family bonds: nothing was more important, nothing. His own son now, when had he last felt for him, his own father, as Liam did for his mother? Stephen Hardwell sighed gustily. He’d failed, failed as a father, with that boy. Now all that linked them was mutual suspicion — and blood, though blood was not to be slighted, ever.
Perhaps he felt so touched by the plight of the castaway girl because she too was bereft and alone in the world, as he felt he truly was. And, when he came to think of it, she’d also come to symbolise the hope of a new start; a new start so that he, Sir Stephen, might yet have children again, proper, grateful children this time — children who loved him as they should rather than plotting and scheming to take what was still, rightfully, his own patrimony. As Henry had, and did ...
Wat Brewster was holding Liam’s horse and he nudged the steward from long acquaintance as he clambered back onto his sturdy cob.
‘His brain’s gone soft; what d’you reckon?’
Liam gathered up the reins, hauling Polly’s head up just as she found a particularly nice, and unexpected, clump of grass hiding near some gorse. The horse objected and in the moment of scuffle when Liam, taking no nonsense, dug his heels into Polly’s flanks — which caused her to snort and dance — he avoided an answer.
If he was honest, he thought Wat was right. This was a fool’s errand they were all on, but if he, Liam Fellowes, was to best that slimy reeve, Simon — and protect his master’s interests and his own from Henry — he had to find a way to make it work.
Spies! Since when did dangerous spies end up in poxy little convents in the very midst of nowhere?
It was a measure of the times, this nonsense they were about — and the uneasy family politics of the Hardwells, of course. Not many a man liked to yield place to his son in his lifetime, when it came right down to it, and if Henry were his son, well, he could understand how double-hard that might be.
The baron was waving to him again, and Liam raised a hand in acknowledgment. ‘Right, men, lively now, follow the baron.’
Follow the baron; Liam wondered if they would, if the time came to stick in a dirty fight. He shook his head; things got bad when family fell out.
The baron, riding at the head of the party, called back over his shoulder, ‘Liam! Ride with me.’
Liam sighed and kicked the reluctant Polly up into a canter; he liked Polly but she was far too fond of food.
‘That horse blown, is she?’ The baron looked with disfavour on Liam’s mount.
‘No, Sir Stephen, she’s enjoying it, aren’t you, Polly? Good long ride, just what you like, eh girl?’ The horse responded with a loud, luxuriant fart and a torrent of manure which, unexpectedly made the baron laugh. That was surprising — the baron never laughed.
‘Ah Liam, Liam, what I would not give for my son to see sense?’
Liam said nothing — there was little point.
‘He cannot understand, to my lasting shame, what our duty, the duty of knights, is in this matter. God’s will is ever stronger than that of man.’
Oh yes, and what would the king think of that, thought Liam cynically.
‘Yes, man is driven by vice and sin yet, if we will only listen, God is always there to guide us, protect us; to set out feet back on the straight and narrow path. And bring us the peace we deserve.’ The baron felt happy tears well in his eyes, so certain was he that God approved of the nobility of his actions in seeking to protect this girl from his son. And too, it must please him that in this, in his honourable intentions towards this girl, he could make reparation for all the less-than-gallant relations he’d had with women at other times in his life.
‘There, Baron, do you see it?’ Liam’s abrupt shout brought Stephen Hardwell back to the present as the little party cr
ested a rise. There was the sea, and with it, the stone-grey town of Whitby huddled around its harbour under the abbey. The wind off the restless sea hit them in the face and for the first time they could smell salt in the air.
‘We’ll be there in time for tierce, Baron, what did I tell you?’ There was a lift in Liam’s voice as he said it — if he looked very hard, from this height, he could almost make out the house he’d been born in, his mother’s house in a lane behind the market square ...
Whitby was calm at last, having endured three days of battering storm, three nights of fearsome, howling wind.
After that first night spent in a noisome harbourside tavern, ‘The Two Tunns’, in a tiny, freezing space up under the tiles, Joan and Anne had struggled up the steep road from the harbour which led to the abbey on the cliff. Anything, anything at all had been preferable to a day spent huddled around the sulking fire in the common-room of the tavern where strangers, men who came for the sailor’s women who frequented the ‘Two Tunns’, eyed the two nuns and their companions, and were tempted to ask questions.
Now, as the day dawned with a dying wind, Anne and Joan whispered together in the women-strangers’ dorter of the monastery.
‘... but I cannot leave you here. It’s not safe,’ Joan was going over old ground, old arguments, but Anne was clear.
‘Dearest Joan, I am so grateful for your kindness, for your companionship. But this is more than enough. You must go back with Bernard. You will be missed at the convent — I’m sure that he will be happy to take you home, or find someone to accompany you there.’
‘But what will happen to you?’ Joan shivered; a woman alone in the world was never safe.
‘You forget, dear friend, I have resources. I will purchase an escort, an armed escort.’
Somewhere, from deep within the abbey, the sound of a bell could be heard, coming and going on the wind.
‘Come, or we shall be missed.’ Hurriedly both women swaddled cloaks around their bodies — their winter cloaks rescued from The Porpoise and dried in the abbey’s hot room, its caldarium — over darned but clean nuns’ habits. The nuns who ran the stranger-women’s dorter for the abbey monks had taken pity on Anne and Joan when the women arrived at the abbey — particularly Anne, since her habit was in such a state. Out of charity, she’d been supplied with a postulant’s white veil and a decent black habit as a temporary substitute until, it was presumed, she returned to her mother-house and proper clothing.
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