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

by Cassandra Clark

  It seemed no cooler inside the church when Hildegard entered than it did outside. Even the incense seemed to burn like raging coals sending yet more heat into the air as the sacristan swung the censer back and forth. Sweat ran down the faces of those few who could make it as far as the church doors.

  Near the altar in the nave a handful of monks, in their snow coloured robes, looked no cooler than anyone else. Egbert, hood thrown back, wiped his hand across his shining forehead and the frizz of hair round his tonsure stood up like very flames themselves. The prior was flush faced. The sacristan’s burning candles seemed like a further small assault on the swooning monks. One of the more elderly corrodians dropped to his knees and gripped the side of the misericord as if to draw cold from inside the wood itself.

  The prior looked round at his wilting brothers and took pity on them. ‘This will be short. Let us pray.’

  The Welshman with the magical voice did not appear as Hildegard regretfully noticed. Hywel and his boy, however, were down near the front, slipping in late and appearing least overcome by the heat than anyone. When the time came to sing Hywel’s voice rang out and the boy joined him. After she had seen how they contested the valour of each other it looked to Hildegard now as if they were in contention again, the boy’s broken treble still high enough to skirt the top notes like a sky lark while Hywel smiled, accepted defeat, and filled in with a few bass note flourishes.

  She thought of the blackbird, rendered earth-bound, and wondered why Delith had wanted the friar to perform a mutilation that would thwart its nature – and why the friar had agreed.

  Above all, she wanted to know why Hywel had avoided her question about the rider in the night, the one who spoke Welsh as well as he did.

  ‘My lord, you are in the best place possible today. Outside it’s like a baker’s oven. Even Gregory is moving slowly if you can believe it.’ The joke was that Gregory was never still long enough to catch cold.

  Hubert gave a lazy smile. He looked rumpled. His black hair was longer than it should be, the angles of his face boyishly softened by his enforced rest. Even so, he looked exhausted.

  ‘Are you tired?’ She peered down at him in concern.

  ‘Somewhat.’ He gave a deep sigh and moved his dark head on the pillow.‘It’s that concoction of Hywel’s. Not the knit-bone, the other stuff. He says sleep will encourage the healing – it certainly making me feel sleepy enough to – ’

  He even failed to finish what he was saying and instead gave a long yawn.Hildegard shook her head. ‘If this is how you respond to visitors I’d better leave you in peace.’

  Raising a hand he gestured towards the end of the chamber. The screens that had been across earlier had been taken down and the bed was occupied by a figure that scarcely made a mound under the one thin cover. ‘Mistress Beata would welcome you. I gather she feels bereft by her current lack of company.’ Hubert closed his eyes. ‘Forgive me, Hildegard. I cannot keep my eyes open. Try as I might...I don’t know what he puts in that elixir of his.’

  Smiling to herself at the sight of Hubert, usually so vigorous, now showing no more strength than a kitten, she went along to see this other patient.

  The woman was more alert than Hubert and watched her as she approached and when she was close enough to hear she croaked, ‘He said you would come.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Your Abbot de Courcy. He said, “My Hildegard will come to amuse you.”’ Her pale-eyed glance was swift and all-seeing. ‘He’s a handsome man. His abbey must be teeming with women come to visit him under the pretext of piety.’

  Hildegard laughed. ‘Very shrewd, mistress. That’s exactly it. I’m afraid he’s rather short on female admiration at present.’

  ‘He’ll survive – which is more than I will. Come, sit on the edge of my bed and tell me what’s happening outside. This is my lovely saviour, by the way.’ She nodded to a soft-footed lay-brother who had silently appeared. ‘They’re complaining of the heat or so I hear, Alaric?’

  He gave a gentle nod, his whole demeanour one of tenderness and forbearance. His soft brown eyes lingered on Mistress Beata’s face. ‘Are you up to talking, mistress?’

  ‘Don’t be dull. She’s only just come in. You know I’m dying, not only with my lungs but of boredom too. I’ve complained often enough. Now come and sit down where I can enjoy looking at you.’

  ‘Just so, mistress.’ With an indulgent smile, he sat down on a stool at the foot of the bed.

  Hildegard settled beside the patient too and they began to talk.

  ‘I’m Beata, wife to Master John of – ’ a spasm of coughing shook through her emaciated body and she pointed with a shaking finger towards a beaker on the ledge next to her but Alaric was already on his feet and reaching for it. When the storm had passed she said, ‘This will be the death of me. I haven’t long now. Worry not, my dears, I am at peace.’

  Alaric held the beaker to her lips.

  ‘Is that something made up by Friar Hywel?’ Hildegard asked.

  ‘Tincture of white horehound. They grow it in abundance at the next vill, hence its name,’ Alaric told her in his gentle voice.

  ‘The place they call Hound?’

  ‘Do you know it?’

  Hildegard shook her head.

  ‘Noted for its Monday market,’ Beata cut in. ‘Busy place. Before I took to my bed I went there several times with my man. He’s managed to poke a finger into most pies round here since we – ’ she broke off than added, ‘as I’m sure you’ve realized if you’re as perspicacious as your abbot claims.’

  They chatted for a while, Beata asking Hildegard many personal questions which for some reason seemed reasonable and not at all intrusive. She was insatiable, the poor woman, for news of everything happening out in the living world.

  Her recurrent spasms of coughing, however, weakened her, and after a short while she touched Hildegard on the arm. ‘Come back again, my dear. I like you. We can talk scandal about the monks next time – and then confess our wickedness to one of them – so that it gets back to them and sends them all aflux.’

  Her skin had a silken sheen but when she smiled it was covered in the creases caused by age and good-humour and she made a maze of it now at the thought of teasing the monks out of their complacency. Both cheeks were flushed, with two round red circles the size of pennies, a sign, Hildegard knew, of her illness. Her wasted body was no more substantial than a child’s.

  ‘I will come again, Beata, and you can tempt me to wickedness if you will.I shall take pleasure in that. I hope we will not shock you, Alaric?’

  ‘I will be my pleasure, too, domina.’ He got to his feet as she left and bowed with a gentle smile.

  When she passed Hubert’s cubicle a few moments later he was sound asleep.

  He will regard it as the plotting of women against the world of men, she thought as she went out into the furnace of Cloister Garth. To tease the monks. Hubert wasn’t above doing that himself when he thought they were becoming too serious.She imagined the plotting Mistress Beata might have had to do to keep hold of her husband. He was a man who would require those about him to run to keep up.

  Before she could go further she heard a flurry of voices and a man’s jovial laughter from over by the gatehouse.

  Glancing across she saw the two sisters and the day porter in conversation. He seemed to be wearing a strange, wide-brimmed straw hat that came down over his eyes and the girls were laughing and encouraging him as he spread his arms like a blind man and blundered into them, an excuse, Hildegard assumed, to make free with them as if helpless to do otherwise.

  The girls had a dozen or so hats on strings over their shoulders.

  ‘Come on, master, try this one instead. This is the one to make your girl swoon,’ called Mistress Sweet persuading him to don a smaller one. She clapped. ‘That’s perfect! I could swoon over you myself if you were not already spoken for.’

  ‘It was made for you,’ agreed Mistress Sour. ‘A very nice fit.’ She so
unded not at all sour but light-hearted and well-pleased with something.

  It could surely not be the weather? thought Hildegard, unless it was the extra trade the sun happened to bring them.

  The rest of the guests were still lying in the shade of the nearby cloister. Now Mistress Lissa called over. ‘What have you got there, my dears?’

  Mistress Sour went over, content to leave her sister to finish the deal with the porter, and unhooking the hats from her shoulder as she went.

  ‘See, Lissa, we went to the market in Hound to sell our cheese and instead we bartered it for these straw hats. We took all the vendor had and he has promised us more for next week if we wish. But I demurred because the weather will probably break and we’ll be left with sun hats when what we’ll probably need are waterproofs against the rain.’

  ‘These would do nicely as either,’ suggested Lissa, taking one of the hats and putting it on over her coif and her abundant hair. ‘I love these broad brims. How do I look, Simon?’ She nudged her husband awake. ‘Shall I have it?’

  ‘What’s that, my dear?’ He blinked up at his wife.

  ‘You silly old owl, look at me! What do I have on my head?’

  ‘Charming, my sweet. You look beautiful in everything you put on.’He began at once to delve into his pouch. ‘I am so taken, I shall buy it for you as a memento of our stay at Netley Abbey.’

  ‘My pet, what would I do without you? But I had no intention of allowing you to buy it for me – ’

  ‘I know. But it is my delight.’ He addressed Mistress Sour. ‘And do you have one of these for men folk or did that porter get the last one? You should know we feel the sun’s hammer blows as much as women, if not more so, because of our thinner thatch.’

  Mistress Sour selected one for him and he put it on. ‘Double sale,’ he said to her. ‘Try the rest of these folk. I doubt there’s not one who won’t buy.’

  Mistress Sweet came up. She had a secret smile. ‘And we’ve scarcely set foot in the abbey.I am so happy. We’ve had a lovely day, Genista.’

  Simon was right. Everybody bought one and even Hildegard, reluctant at first, allowed herself to be cajoled into being fitted out.

  ‘There is really nothing more perfect in this weather,’ she excused her vanity. ‘How clever you both are to think of getting hold of so many.’

  Still half-drugged by the heat and thankful for her sunhat as she stepped out into the glare, she headed towards the guest house with the idea of lying down for a while in the cool of her chamber. Taking a wrong turn, however, she found herself not at the foot of the stairs leading to the upper floor but in a small corridor off the ground-floor entrance.

  With the idea that the stairs might be concealed behind one of the doors that faced her she pushed at the first one she came to.

  When it swung open she was astonished to see a small chamber with a high window through which sunlight shone in a gleaming shaft onto a man sitting at a table. A goblet and a jug of ale were to hand. His shirt was unstrung and his naked feet were resting comfortably on a foot-stool.

  Very much at ease, he glanced up as startled as she was when the door flew open. She mumbled an apology and began to back out.

  His hand, she noticed, had darted at once to the knife on the table in front of him. What was more unexpected was that she recognized him at once.

  It was the mysterious visitor with the tenor voice, the stranger she feared was Glyn Dwr himself.

  He took a step towards her with the knife in his hand and she gasped and began to back out into the corridor. Then he reached forward and slammed the door in her face. She heard the key turn in the lock.

  ‘So that’s how it is,’ she told Gregory and Egbert when they met later in the guest refectory. ‘But you said you would ask the porter at the gatehouse when he came back on duty, Egbert. Surely he can confirm who he is and to whom he owes his allegiance? Have you spoken to him yet?’

  ‘He hasn’t come back on duty. We’ll have to wait until Vespers unless you fancy lining up the conversi and giving them an inquisition. They’ll know who he is if anybody does.’ He gestured towards the building where the laymen and women had separate living quarters. ‘They’ll be less tight-lipped than that day-porter. He wouldn’t even look me in the eye when I asked him. Clearly something was bothering him.’

  ‘Friar Hywel knows something too but refused to answer when I asked.’

  ‘Something’s up. Arundel’s man planted here? For what reason?’

  ‘At least he’s not bothering us. If he’d wanted us he’d have shown his hand by now.’ Egbert, as usual, looked on the positive side.

  ‘Any man of Arundel’s is a threat to us,’ Gregory countered. ‘I’ll be glad when we’re out of his domain and into territory in the north more friendly to King Richard.’

  Chapter Six

  The two sisters had made sure they kept a straw hat aside for Master John because when he came into the precinct looking hot and harassed they were lying in wait for him in the cloisters nearest the gate house. Evidently they did a deal with him of some sort because he at once put a hat on his head at a rakish angle and swept Mistress Sweet into a quick hug. The three of them got into conversation at once and established themselves a little way away from the other guests as if to talk business.

  Delith noticed this and took it as an excuse to stroll past with her blackbird and her little, faithful maid, as if she had not even noticed them. Master John scarcely looked up either.

  ‘The example of Ser Datini must be ever uppermost in our merchant’s mind,’ Gregory observed after Hildegard had explained what Friar Hywel had told her.‘I’m still wondering where he hails from, this Master John. He seems to be a rather large fish for this particular sea.’

  ‘Maybe he’s extending his business down from Southampton,’ Egbert suggested.

  ‘There hardly seems any point when there’s good such harbourage up at the town quay.’

  ‘It seems to me his accent is rather further north than Hampshire,’ Hildegard added. ‘He sounds like a Midlander and if he is it might account for him trading outside the jurisdiction of the Southampton merchants. They won’t be likely to accept him in the Guild if he’s an outsider.’

  ‘And, to his advantage, they can’t dictate to him here and he doesn’t have to account to them either,’ added Egbert.

  ‘Ah,’ Gregory murmured, and left it at that.

  The guests were in their usual place in the shade of the cloister when Friar Hywel was seen striding from the infirmary and heading toward his workshop. Simon turned to his wife. ‘He’s a good-looking fellow, that Friar Hywel. No wonder you women are all aflutter, eh, Lissa?’

  ‘Not me, you old owl. I prefer a mature man, as you well know.’

  Delith glanced across. ‘Handsome is as handsome does. Looks are no use, Simon, without money,’

  ‘So I’ve been getting you women wrong all these years, have I?’

  He earned a slap across the wrist from Lissa.

  Mistress Sour glanced across to where Hywel was striding past. ‘Pity he’s one of the brothers. But at least he’s a joy to look at.’

  Master John chuckled. ‘Let me do you ladies a service, then.’ He was taking a rest with his customers in the heat of the day and when Hywel was close enough he called over to him, ‘Friar, tell me if you can, when will this weather break, as break it must?’

  John was dabbing at his face with a linen cloth as he spoke. The two sisters, about to retreat indoors, delayed for a moment. Mistress Delith, sitting with her little entourage, watched Master John with a pious lowering of her lids as he glanced at her.

  ‘My impatience,’ the merchant continued to Hywel, drawing him in under the shade, ‘is because I need to get my goods unloaded from my ship as soon as we can bring her into the near channel. Better to bring a cargo off in good weather than bad, don’t you think?’

  ‘I beg your indulgence, master, but I’m no weather prophet.’

  ‘But you are a prophe
t, or so I’ve heard?’

  ‘I’m little more than an apothecary, master, although I happen to dabble in astronomy which some fools mistake for astrology. A profound difference exists as I’m sure I don’t need to tell you. The one is a proper study of the stars and planets and the other is a fanciful idea that we can see into the future by staring witlessly at the night sky.’

  ‘Ha!’ John threw his head back. ‘So you see astrology as the work of the devil, maybe?’

  ‘Aye, along with numerology, necromancy, palmistry, cards of all kinds and every other kind of divination.’

  ‘No summoning of devils then?” Master John guffawed at the idea. ‘But surely, magister, by looking at the stars, measuring their courses, you can tell when war and famine are written there? It must be so.’

  ‘Must?’

  ‘Of course! Just look at the moon and its effect on the great waters of the world. No-one these days disputes that the one causes the other, do they?’

  Hywel shook his head. ‘That’s true and I suppose from that you deduce that the other planets affect us in ways too subtle for us to measure?’

  ‘It seems reasonable to think so. The problem is that your spy-glasses are not powerful enough. But the time will come. I’m convinced of it.’

  ‘Should it be my purpose to interfere with God’s design?’ The friar gave an uncertain smile. ‘What I can predict with my astrolabe...’ he paused for effect.

  John leaned forward, ‘Yes?’

  ‘...are the tides.’

  John snapped his head back in a laugh. ‘You caught me there, you rogue. But it’s not to denigrate your skill to ask for more. We merchants need to know where to send our goods and when. Imagine how even more useful it would be to know when markets are going to rise and fall so that we could send goods to catch the tide of buying and selling? So far we have to rely on our native wit as these two young sisters have demonstrated with their straw hats today. How much more reliable a chart of some sort would be if it could tell us when to sell our most costly items and when to keep them in the knowledge that a better price will come.’