I went quickly over to the cellarer’s range in search of Brother Peter to try to grapple with him. But he simply shrugged impotently. It appeared that during the night Hugh Northwold had finally arrived back from France bringing with him the news that King John himself was coming to the abbey in three days time.
‘Three days, Walter,’ tutted the beleaguered cellarer. ‘That’s all the notice they’ve given me. I don’t know how it’s all to be done in the time. But that’s how it is now with the king keeping his movements a secret until the last possible moment.’ He shook his head despondently. ‘It’s a sad day when the King of England cannot trust even his own household for fear of being betrayed.’ He went off still shaking his head.
I too was reeling from the news. The king’s timing could not have been worse. For the family it was a disaster. No-one had set foot in the palace since Abbot Samson’s death and in the fifteen years of his reign King John had stayed there only twice. And now half the abbey was trying to get inside. What mischievous sprite had prompted him to choose this of all moments? And it’s not just the king, of course. Wherever he goes he takes with him the Government of England, which means all his officers of state, their stewards, secretaries, clerks, scribes, chaplains, ushers, huntsmen, men-at-arms, bodyguards, archers, chamberlains, servants and attendants all needing food and accommodation. No wonder Peter was looking despondent. And in the middle of it all was my little family.
I stood in the courtyard biting my lip and watching with mounting anxiety as boards were ripped off, doors flung open and an army of servants marched in with brushes, cloths, buckets all intent upon cleaning the place from top to bottom. At any moment I was expecting a cry to go up and the family to be discovered. A cry did indeed go up and I spun round to see one of the servants being boxed about the ears for dropping a wine urn on the cobbles and losing a gallon of the precious liquid.
With my nerve close to snapping, I rushed round to the rear of the building to see if I could catch a glimpse of the window behind which I imagined the family to be cowering in terror. God be thanked, it remained closed. But even as I watched one of the shutters opened and I waited with baited breath for the shouts of discovery. But then an anonymous hand appeared through the window and vigorously flapped a cloth sending a cloud of dust into the weak morning sunshine before disappearing back inside again. Then another shutter opened - and another. Still no alarm. I couldn’t understand it. Why had they not been detected? Surely catastrophe was but moments away.
I hurried back to the front of the building again and made my way up the stairs past the noise and bustle to peer through the open door of the bedchamber. I saw the brazier from the previous night and the beds stripped and upturned on their sides. But of the family there was no sign. The room was completely empty – except for yet another party of servants being supervised by a fastidious little fat monk called, I think, Maurice.
‘Can I help you, master?’ he said wiping the perspiration from his brow.
‘No no,’ I smiled. ‘I was just checking.’
His eyes widened to saucers. ‘Checking?’
‘Yes checking, of course checking,’ I bluffed. ‘I am abbey physician and this is the king we are preparing for. His health is our prime concern, is it not? We cannot be too thorough.’ I squinted up at the rafters and ran a critical finger along a ledge. ‘Hm-hm, aha. All seems very clean, very…erm…hygienic. Good. Carry on.’
Maurice muttered something inaudible under his breath and bent ever more vigorously to his task.
Where had they gone? Vanished with the dust and the cobwebs. Raoul was adept at disappearing but this was little short of miraculous. My one faltering hope was that Onethumb might somehow have got wind of the king’s arrival and spirited them away in the night. He was the only person apart from me who knew they had been there. I prayed with all my strength that it was so for the alternative was unthinkable: That they had been discovered already and were even now languishing in one of Geoffrey de Saye’s dungeons.
*
I found Onethumb at his workplace behind Joseph’s shop in Heathenman’s Street. As soon as I saw him my hopes were dashed for I could tell he knew nothing. Indeed, the look of expectation on his face evaporated the instant he saw the concern on mine.
What’s happened? he signed.
‘I’m not sure.’
Rosabel?
All I could do was shrug. Thankfully Joseph appeared just then having closed up the shop to join us and both now listened while I recounted everything that had happened since the discovery of Effie’s body in the marketplace, through Raoul’s escape from the gaol, the farcical meeting in the chapterhouse and ending with the latest news of the king’s impending visit to the abbey in three days time.
As I spoke Joseph’s scowl grew blacker and blacker. ‘I wish you had come to me earlier,’ he said when I’d finished.
‘Why? What would you have had me do? Abandon the boy?’
‘Yes,’ he said forcefully. ‘That is exactly what I would have done. He is dangerous.’
Inevitably, my jaw dropped open. ‘You of all people say that? You who suffered so much from prejudice and injustice yourself? My conscience would baulk at it – and so should yours being an outsider yourself.’
‘It is because I am an outsider that I make it my business to understand these things. It is the only way my kind can survive. And you, my brother, who knows these things are not thinking clearly. You allow your prejudices to govern you.’
I stopped myself saying more. He looked hurt. No, not hurt – righteous. Damn his eyes, he’d provoked me deliberately. I dare not look at Onethumb. How could I explain to him that this is how Joseph and I were with each other, how we had been since childhood? Our vitriol meant nothing. It was just our way.
Joseph sat down heavily on one of his infuriatingly uncomfortable cushions and sighed. It was the signal that we were about to receive one of his lectures though no doubt imbued with much insightful wisdom and high moral rectitude. I growled under my breath but I had no option but to hear him out.
‘Let us look at the facts,’ he began. ‘Since you already know that Bishop John is one of the king’s most trusted and devoted servants you must also know he was King John’s choice as Archbishop of Canterbury. Indeed, he was so appointed until the pope annulled the appointment and replaced him with Cardinal Langton. It is said to have been the spark that ignited all the king’s present woes.’
I snorted petulantly. ‘What present woes? The king has settled his argument with the pope.’
‘With the pope, yes, but not with his barons.’ He looked askance at us. ‘No doubt you’ve heard about their recent meeting in Stamford?’
My jaw dropped open in astonishment and I looked accusingly at Onethumb. ‘How did you…?’ I began but stopped for Joseph was smiling in that infuriating way he has of letting you know he knows something you don’t.
‘It is at the heart of all that has passed since,’ he intoned grandly. ‘You have to remember who King John is. He is an Angevin, like his father before him. And Anjou is a little county. Their counts did not inherit their titles, they married them. King John’s grandfather married the Empress Maud while his own father married that other great lady, Eleanor of Aquitaine. Those two alliances gave them all of England and half of France and made them the most powerful family in Europe. Many of John’s barons, on the other hand, trace their titles back to the Conqueror. They regard the Angevins as upstarts. That was all right while England held great territories, but now John has lost them and the King of England is a mere count once more. Many of the barons don’t like that – among them your friend Geoffrey de Saye.’
‘So the barons are unhappy,’ I shrugged. ‘What has that to do with my little family?’
He put up his hand for patience. ‘Throughout the king’s quarrel with the pope Bishop John de Gray remained his staunchest ally - so much so that despite the pope’s reconciliation with King John His Holiness has so far refused to forg
ive the good bishop who remains excommunicate. That is where he is now, in Rome seeking absolution. But that only solves half the king’s problems. His barons are still not happy - hence their meeting in Stamford. That’s as much as I have been able to ascertain. I haven’t yet found out what they discussed at their meeting. But somewhere in the middle all this is your “little family”, as you call them. Find out where and you will be able to answer all your questions – including, no doubt, the reason for the maid’s murder.’
Onethumb had been listening to all this without interruption. To be truthful I’d forgotten he was there so engrossed had I been with Joseph. But now he decided to make his presence felt and began to sign aggressively. He was clearly angry. He didn’t want to hear about kings and popes; he wanted to know what we going to do about Rosabel who, he reminded us, had disappeared and may be in grave danger. If he’d known beforehand what she was getting into, he signed, he would never have permitted her to go with the de Grays. We should be concentrating on finding her not worrying about barons.
Joseph and I both looked stupidly at him neither of us able to offer him any comfort. He nodded as though to say “I thought as much”. More angry and frustrated than I had ever seen before, he stormed out of the shop. I called after him but Joseph put his hand on my shoulder.
‘No, let him go.’
‘But he might do something stupid.’
Joseph shook his head. ‘What can he do? He doesn’t know where the family is any more than we do. But wherever they are I am sure they are safe – for the present.’
‘How can you be so sure?’
‘Because nothing is going to happen while the king is in Bury. De Saye or anybody else will want to let matters rest for now.’ He stroked his beard thoughtfully. ‘Yes, John’s presence here may well be your best card. Play it wisely, my brother.’
He drew me into an embrace and I hugged him for the fifty years of our friendship.
‘The king,’ I said releasing him. ‘Why is he coming – do you know?’
‘He wants to know who is to be the next Abbot of Saint Edmunds.’
‘He’s already had his answer to that.’
‘He wants another. He’s already had his choice of archbishop quashed by the pope, and now you monks are trying to do the same with this new abbot. Kings don’t like to be told “no” too often. It makes them look weak - and that is the last thing John needs at the moment.’
I snorted. ‘King John isn’t weak. He’s just unlucky.’
‘Kings make their own luck,’ sighed Joseph. ‘And I’m very much afraid John’s is beginning to run out.’
Chapter 17
THE LETTER
I wish now that I had paid closer attention to what Joseph was trying to tell me but then hindsight is always perfect, isn’t it? Much more difficult is to anticipate events before they happen, for only God has the all-seeing eye for all that diviners and soothsayers may claim. But my very dear and cherished half-brother did offer one ray of hope: If the purpose of the king’s visit was indeed to resolve the impasse over the choice of new abbot then it was indeed good news. If nothing else it would mean an end to Prior Herbert’s stultifying dominion over us. Similarly, Joseph’s comment about de Saye not wishing to cause a stir while the king was here was also encouraging. It might mean I’d retain my liberty for long enough to trace the whereabouts of my little family - though what I would do with them when I found them I really had no idea.
One thing I thought I might do in the meantime was try to see Hugh Northwold now that he was back in the abbey for a while. If I could convince him of Raoul’s innocence then his support might be just the counterbalance to Prior Herbert and Geoffrey De Saye I needed. I gathered from Peter the Cellarer that both Hugh and the king had arrived from France a fortnight earlier though on different vessels, Hugh landing at Dover and John at Dartmouth. Hugh had come straight on to Bury to prepare the way while John had gone off to Corfe Castle for a few days’ respite. Before the king arrived, therefore, I thought I’d try to ingratiate myself with our erstwhile subcellarer, and by happy chance my mother may just have given me the vehicle with which to do it: Her letter. I still had it secreted in my laboratorium. Hugh and the Lady Isabel were old friends and I proposed to use that fact and her letter in order to speak to him during the course of which I would bring up the case of the murdered girl and tell him of all that had been going on here in his absence. A glimmer of hope at last, perhaps? I should have realised it was a false dawn.
Hugh was a busy and important man these days. Since he allowed his name to be put forward for abbot he seemed to be in virtual permanent conference with his supporters and advisors. But I finally managed to beard him in the cellarer’s range where he was holding unofficial court. He was courteous enough to ask after my mother’s health before accepting the letter of whose contents I still had no notion. He glanced at the seal but unlike me was undaunted by its grand embossment. Smiling graciously, he handed it to a subordinate to open.
Remembering my mother’s exhortations to me, I put my hand out to stop him. ‘Erm, I believe, Brother Subcellarer, the contents are intended for your eyes only,’ I smiled obsequiously.
Hugh shrugged and took back the letter slipping a practiced finger under the wax seal and separated the two halves in one movement. He unfolded the document and having glanced briefly at its contents, his eyebrows shot up to the top of his head. Aha! I thought. The note must indeed contain something of some import to elicit such a reaction and I was at last about to discover what it was.
But then Hugh’s face changed. First his eyebrows came back down and knitted hard together. Then he looked confused. Then he chortled to himself. I was becoming increasingly uncomfortable sensing that things were not quite right. Hugh held the note out for his colleagues to read. They too seemed baffled by what they saw. By now the back of my neck had begun to prickle. What was written on that sheet that so amused them all? Finally Hugh held the document out to me and there I saw that it contained…nothing. The page was completely blank.
‘This is a joke, Brother Physician?’ he asked. ‘If so, I am not laughing. I have important matters to occupy my time and precious little to waste on jests.’
He dropped the document on the floor and I scooped it up and stared disconsolately at it. My head was swimming. I felt sick but I had just enough presence of mind to reply:
‘Brother, I-I am merely my mother’s messenger,’ I stammered.
‘Then you will require an answer to take back to her from me. Tell your mother my answer is…’
He leaned towards me and very carefully, very precisely - stuck out his tongue. He looked exactly like one of the gargoyles on the outside of the abbey parapet. It was funny. Everybody laughed. Even I laughed. But if my mother had been in the room at that moment I would happily have rammed the letter down her gullet.
*
Back in my laboratorium I tried everything I could think of to tease a message from the letter, but nothing seemed to be written on it that naked flame or acid could expose. There was no secret writing. No writing of any kind. It was indeed a completely blank sheet of parchment.
I threw the thing away from me in disgust. What was my mother playing at? If she was trying to make a fool of me she’d succeeded admirably. I had expected the note to bear a message of profound significance to do with the abbot’s election or the king’s visit or some other great matter. But it was just a cruel joke and one that wrecked any chance I might have had of gaining credibility with Hugh who must now think me a complete buffoon. What possible reason could my mother have for playing such a cruel trick on me? I was baffled.
It was while I was still fuming over this that a knock came on my door.
I felt a sharp intake of breath. Was this the knock I had been waiting for? The one that signified my being carted off to God-knows what hell-hole with no-one left to befriend me? And if it was, how cruel to have come now just as I had lost my last hope of any help from Hugh. Tentatively,
I opened the door a crack and peeped out into the gloom.
But instead of a group of soldiers in hauberks and chain-mail, I saw standing before me a young man dressed in the white robes of a novice.
I recognized him immediately as Timothy, a gentle youth who I had been ministering to on and off for the past year. His mother had died young and his father, broken-hearted, drowned soon after probably by his own hand and leaving ten-year-old Timothy to look after his four younger brothers and three sisters. To his eternal credit and as practically as his final act on earth, Abbot Samson had of charity taken Timothy into the cloister and made provision out of his own will for the care of his siblings. It was a kind thing to do and one typical of Abbot Samson who for all his faults was never anything less than generous to those who he thought deserved it. As it was I who nursed his mother during her final illness, Timothy has always regarded me as a sort of second father figure and frequently asks my advice even though I am not his chaplain or his novice master. From the worried expression on his face I imagined that was his purpose this night. I must have startled him as much as he startled me for he took a step back.
‘Master. I am sorry. I can see you are busy. I will come back some other time.’ He turned to go.
‘No, it’s all right, Timothy,’ I said with relief. ‘Come in.’ I quickly cleared away the remnants of the destroyed letter. ‘What can I do for you?’
Once I’d recovered my presence of mind I could see that he was distracted and unhappy. It pained me to see one of such a normally sunny disposition looking so despondent and I wondered if perhaps he was ill again – he was frequently depressed and worried about his siblings who were in the care of a distant aunt. Timothy was not naturally drawn to the cloister but was here by force of circumstance. As I said before, many find it difficult to adjust to the life. It takes time and perseverance. The younger men in particular very often bear suffering with fortitude seeing it as a weakness to complain. Often it is something as simple as belly ache or some equally minor disorder that is easily remedied. It is surprising what a little oil of peppermint can do to ease the constitution and lift the spirit.
Blood Moon Page 13
