TEN WEEKS THAT CHANGED ENGLAND FOREVER: Prequel - why Hildegard of Meaux became a nun (HIldegard of Meaux medieval mystery sereies Book 10)

by Cassandra Clark

  No need for that, my lass. The stranger extracts a penny from his pouch. Feed yourself, the better to be strong for your babe.

  Hildegard watches this small scene and guesses that it is being repeated many times over in the streets and alleyways of this over-flowing city. Coming from the West and on this, her first day in the capital, she and her esquire have so far only penetrated the suburb of Westminster, and even though it is a place with many grand houses where members of the court make their living and accrue their wealth, a place where the Church is the great centre of life,here as in heaven the mirror of government and the place where parliament is about to be opened by the King, she fears to imagine what the commercial centre will be like, the City of London behind its massive stone walls, with its teeming populace struggling to make a living and the merchants restive against the barons and traders from the vast world across the seas homing in on its honey pot like a swarm of bees seeking the hive, and she fears to imagine it further than this, with its heap of unkindness pile on pile, like bones, like death.

  Even in her castle in the Welsh Marches near Penarlag she has heard of Newgate, the debtors’ prison and the whole hot weight of need and poverty and despair presses down on her spirits now, with the girl flinging herself on Gaunt’s mercy, with the young woman and the baby, with the stench of poverty everywhere she looks and she thinks of the mild green of the Welsh hills of her adopted home, of the sheep on the hillside, the wool yields, the great hall with its singing and good cheer and its tables of plenty, the rise of the sun and the falling of soft rain and the harmony of a people well-fed and safe so long as King Edward does not rear up from his sick bed and start another brutal war with the princes, the descendants of Madog ap Gruffudd and the sons of Llewllyn the Last.

  She turns to her brother-in-law. Did you really look carefully at those three children, Guy? They are beggars. They are in rags. They are nothing but skin and bone. Without shoes. Without anything. The smallest child, the silent one, could have been no more than four. And the one who ran into the road, she said they’d been forced to sleep under the wharfs ever since their mother died from the plague months since and their father gone they know not where. The child said, I make a little nest for my brother and sister and we curl up together quite snug and much warmer than at first now winter’s over. No more than babies, Guy. It breaks my heart. What is to become of them?

  The nuns will care for them. You heard what the Sister said. Why did they not seek help before?

  They’re children. How could they know what to do?

  He sighs. The palanquin in its luxury of stolen wealth passes by leaving only the echo of drum-beats and a shrill whining final blast of the horn.

  Be it so, she tells him when the sound dies, I shall go back and see what else I might do for them.

  We have other business first. That’s why we’re here.

  I am not likely to forget. She looks him directly in the eyes. Do you think I’m likely to forget?

  After the dignitaries have entered the hall where the barons are to hold their deliberations as soon as the king arrives to open the proceedings the people, locked out, begin to disperse and plan when to return. There is much ribald singing in the streets. Gangs of youths set up chants against the court and are scattered, shouting and bellicose, by bailiffs with ready cudgels. The neighbour who accompanied the lady Hildegard from her Welsh redoubt rejoins her in the abbey yard. He bends his head. Kisses the back of her hand. Straightens. A smile on his lips but not in his eyes.

  My gracious lady, are you intent on staying with the nuns as Guy informs me?

  My lord John, she replies with matched formality, you well know I cannot accept your hospitality without compromising my widowhood.

  You will remarry. I trust your choice will fall on me. Heaven forfend I should pre-empt your decision by an accusation of abduction?

  I would be horrified if you imagined I would suspect you of such base intentions, my lord.

  She casts a sidelong glance at her brother-in-law.

  Guy, you will accompany me to the guest house in the abbey and then send word to Sir John when I am safely lodged.

  And we meet on the morrow to lodge your plea with the clerk-at-law, he concludes tendentiously. Sir John kisses her hand once more before leaving.

  Today is the twenty-eighth day of April in the year of our lord thirteen hundred and seventy-six. Hildegard has been escorted over the long miles to London by this neighbour, a minor knight from the Welsh borders who has an eye on her land now she is about to declare herself a widow. She is twenty-two. Her children, Bertrand who is five and two-year old Ysabella are at home in the castle near Penarlag with their nurse maids and the damozels of the chamber. She misses the children already but is preparing herself for an even greater loss when they are placed in other households at the usual age and she will be forced to give them into the care of others. Her thoughts stop here in fright. She does not wish to lose them but she wishes to do her best for them. She is told it is best for a child to be brought up by others so that it quickly learns self-reliance and how to behave to its greater advantage in the adult world and, besides, they are wards of the king now her husband is dead. She has no choice.

  My poor babies, she says, over and over, poor babies, poor little ones, my poor nestlings. But the time is not yet. There is the immediate future to settle first, the reason she is here in Westminster, the reason for her meeting with a clerk-at-law who will present her case for judgement and - her thoughts coil back to the problems that lie ahead and she sits down beside Guy and says, tomorrow, when I make application to the court for control of Hugh’s lands until Bertrand comes of age, I may be refused. They may not accept the evidence of his death. They may say it is premature, that his disappearance is temporary, that the evidence for death is poor. Or, accepting it, I may be allotted my third from the estate and sent packing, landless yet prey to men set on marrying a dowered widow. My life will change completely. I can think no further than tomorrow.

  If she is denied the property near Penarlag she considers returning to her own people in Yorkshire. This is a dream and indistinct. It is, to be honest, a dream of childhood. Of running around Castle Hutton being chased by the head woodsman’s teasing son, Ulf, and being taught how to shoot a straight arrow by him, and how to fight to defend herself, for we live in turbulent times, he tells her, a serious youth of fourteen at this time of her dreaming, and I will not always be by to protect you, but this is a dream she dare not stare at too long in case its emptiness overwhelms her. Ulf has grown up to become Lord Roger’s steward since she was sent away to be married and she last saw him standing bare-headed in the rain outside the walls of Castle Hutton as, with the gap widening between them, she rode her little grey horse beside her betrothed towards her privileged and uncertain future.

  She is aware that if her status as widow of Sir Hugh de Ravenscroft is entered as a plea and accepted, pray that it is, her life might go on as it did when Hugh was sent to France to fight in Arundel’s army, when she became used to her husband’s comings and goings, his brief returns, bloodied, looking for succour, or triumphant and loaded with the spoils of war, leaving her as chatelaine when, during all those years, she made the day to day decisions on the running of the estate with the help of old Gwylim ap Gwylim, steward borne where he now lives in the castle on the hill and from the first her trusted go-between with the shepherds who tended the sheep and brought in the staple.

  She confesses all this to her young brother-in-law, adding, my wish is for Gwylim so to continue until Bertrand comes into his patrimony and I retire with my dower into comfortable old age. You know this, Guy. I know what you fear. You are not disinherited. I wish you to stay, to help as you have always done. It is your home. Nothing has changed. Nothing will change whatever happens to me.

  He goes off later to talk to some Welsh bowmen he spotted in the crowd earlier that day and returns later after Compline to tell her that Sir John, red as a turkey cock, wa
s unable to conceal his rage at her reluctance to accept his hospitality. Why has she chosen to be a guest of strangers? he demanded of me. You know he prides himself on his looks and his attractiveness to women, Guy mocked. And you are aware of that too, Hildegard, he added slyly, because I’ve seen you looking at him when you think no-one is watching.

  Again she repeats to Guy what they all very well know. If she is discovered to have spent a night under Sir John’s roof her status would be compromised and a marriage contract assumed. Should that happen she would lose everything to her so-called husband. That is the law. That is how it is done in these days when men make the law. Many women fall foul of being abducted. It is called raptus. It is written in the law books. The lesser the heiress, the less her danger. Even so. The fact is their lands adjoin, together they would be a force to complement the Mortimer and Talbot lords in the south on behalf of the king. She is aware of that. She is not a fool. Even so, she repeats, I will not be forced into a decision. We must look at it from all sides, for the good of every one of us.

  Guy is a strange, moody youth, given to sudden flashes of great kindness and appearing to follow her rather faithfully, and yet there is always the dark power of his elder brother brooding over everything he does. Now he says, it is typical of Hugh to give no thought to me. To make no provision. How am I to live?

  I shall give thought to you. Trust me. I was like a lamb to the shearsman when I married your brother. I was fifteen. I knew nothing although I thought I did. I was besotted for a short while, a very short while, by Hugh’s chivalry. He seemed so manly, so brave, in his armour a perfect knight, his need for me so overpowering, it tinged our future with the magic of romance as the troubadours sing of it until one day I saw him as he was and was in despair, alone as I felt, in a sometimes hostile country, but you were a lad of such restoring joy with your piping and singing and your learning Welsh and making everyone love to see you appear, like a sprite, turning from English to Welsh before our very eyes, and so easy about it, and how can you imagine now I will not make provision for you?

  Guy is quiet but is he consoled by her words?

  I am twenty-two, she reminds. I am a widow. I have rights. They say I will remarry. They say I am already an object of desire to ambitious men. But do I want to be beholden to any man again? Hugh was not the best of husbands. You know that as well as I do.

  Guy knows more than he should but now he gives one of his quick smiles. Hugh never did learn Welsh, the sot-wit. I doubt whether he was able to. All he knew was fighting. It’s ironic that he should die in some unrecorded chevauchee in a godforsaken vill nobody has ever heard of. Typical of him. Unheroic to the last.

  He echoes Hildegard’s feelings but she gives him a reproving glance. We should not speak ill of the dead.

  Guy bends his head but she catches the gleam of derision in his eyes. His brother had been a bully and baited his younger brother without mercy. She can see he is honestly glad he is gone and his sky empty of at least one lowering thunder cloud to darken his future.

  With an expression that suggests agreement he says: he had no idea he would inherit anywhere in the Marches. His life was in the North, in England. He was shocked by what happened. The devious genealogy that brought him something so unlooked for as lands and a castle, he saw as a miracle from God. It meant he was chosen. It made him worse in his arrogance. That’s why he went away, not because of you. He told me once, if he could split himself in two he would do so, but the lure of acquiring wealth from the French proved too strong and drove him off. He thought God would bless his greed because He had shown it was his right because he was the chosen one and whatever else he acquired was his by right also. He gives that easy smile. And now, of course, you’re a subject of ambitious speculation. A widow possessing a third of her husband’s estates is a prize to any shire knight. It is foregone, they say. You will remarry. That is what you will do. Our neighbour, the good Sir John, will find his lands conveniently augmented. He said if you choose him you will both prosper.

  So he has said this to you too? The words follow closely what John has already said to her in private before setting out. We will both prosper, my lady. We will be a force in Wales on behalf of King Edward. From that will follow other prizes. We will both prosper.

  Meanwhile, Westminster is awash with political discussions of the most violent kind. Swords are ordered to be left outside the doors of the Church where a prolonged debate is taking place. Guards are posted. Aware of danger, everyone looks about with narrowed eyes. Arrivals from the shires are still riding into town to take their places in the Chapter House where the Commons are gathering. These men come from every corner of the realm at King Edward’s behest, from Berkshire, Shropshire, Essex and Kent, from the northern shires and from the south and west, Sussex is represented and the midlands, from all loyal shires come the sheriffs, the knights, the commoners, from the major towns come the burgesses, two from each, all those who may supply either from their own coffers or from taxation the gold the king needs to further his ambitions of conquest.

  Grooms, pages, body servants and anyone who needs to earn a penny run in and out among the travel-stained from far-flung places, others come spry and rested, direct from comfortable city lodgings, carrying messages, greetings, reaffirming alliances and all from page to knight wearing the colours and blazon of some shire or other, some knight, some landholder, making the steps of the chapter house fill with a rainbow of colour, a gaudy shower of pigments, dyes, bleachings, gildings sufficient to dazzle the eye.

  The London merchants are as lavish in appearance as their noble masters, adorned in fabrics of specialist weave straight from the Flemish looms, or in the silks of Lucca, in the brocades and organzas from Outremer, though some, deliberately tawny and dull of hue, draw attention to their sobriety to warn the money bags of the cautious to be opened only with proper cause, today offering probity, common sense and firmness of purpose against the dazzling corruptions of the royal court. These are the men to say no, this must stop. No, we will not finance any future follies. This must stop and we are the men to stop it. Our coffers are closed to you. And even more strongly, as it is later spoken aloud by the Commons in full agreement: King Edward must live off his own feudal rents, his own revenues, his own legitimate resources and not come begging to us to finance his dream of being crowned King of the French.

  People of all levels, invited and uninvited, throng the doorway into the Chapter House to see them arrive, the first meeting convened to elect a leader, a man to speak on their behalf, to put their case to the lords, and to debate the matter in full in some other place where the council of the Commons may speak most privily before laying their demands for reform before the Lords. These matters are decided with speed and full agreement. Peter de la Mare, trusted and well-liked steward to the earl of March, is elected to speak for them all as prolocutor, as vaut-parler, chosen to address the nobility but content to keep them waiting until the Commons have come to agreement and thus they withdraw from the Chapter House to a more private nearby church where they can discuss their rebellion against the lackeys of the king and decide what they themselves, the Commons, the Shiremen and the burgesses and city merchants will accept and what they will not, without fear of death.

  The crowds outside shout their suggestions for justice and an end to corruption through the open doors and when the doors are hauled shut they continue to shout advice to those within and chants are set up to drive the point home, tabors beating time, horns screaming to remind those privileged to sit inside that, if they fail, those outside are numerous enough to take matters into their own stout custody.

  That they should threaten to fight in the streets! The shame of it!

  Oh, heaven forfend!

  Not in London!

  Never here!

  Don't be too sure. The soothsayers predict blood.

  The confusion of opinion adds to Hildegard’s personal quandary.

  She returns to the hospitium and detains
one of the lay brothers to ask after the child. Without speaking he points towards an inner chamber. Inside she sees several alcoves containing beds, some occupied, others not, and is met by non-committal faces when she enquiries after the girl. The Sister who rescued her from the street sits with bowed head beside a little cot on which a still form lies.

  Hildegard approaches on soft feet. Is this Bet?

  The nun halts in mid-prayer. Only look in, my lady. She is not to be disturbed.

  The two smaller children are sitting in a huddle on the floor at the nun’s feet, hiding in the black skirts of her habit. They do not move and only the boy glances up. He says nothing but his eyes, larger than ever, speak for him. His baby sister hides her face in his sleeve as if he can protect her from what is to come.

  Have you had something to eat, my chicks? she whispers in a tone overcome by the stillness within the alcove where the cot is set.

  The boy nods.

  Both of you?

  He nods again and tries to persuade his sister to raise her head, her hair a ball of fuzz like a dandelion clock, and two wide eyes looking out of a little face flushed with tears, a mute, sad, uncomprehending oval making Hildegard kneel down and take both children into her arms. They lean into her like little hounds.

  A lay-sister appears and whispers in Hildegard’s ear, they are well, both washed and fed and wearing garments newly laundered, though the boy’s jerkin fell apart and we had to find a new one for him, too big but he’ll grow into it. I can tell you nothing about Bet. She is not conscious though now she seems in little pain. We sat up all night, praying, doing what we could.

  Has she spoken since I left you?

  The lay-sister shakes her head. We thought she was sleeping but she will not wake. The infirmarer says it is best to allow her to rest undisturbed.