The Heretic’s Creed

by FIONA BUCKLEY

  Mistress Haxby told us that we would be sent for presently, and asked us to wait in the hall until we were fetched. Mistress Ames did the fetching, at about ten o’clock.

  ‘Your manservant is to attend you as well?’ she enquired, realizing that Brockley had risen to his feet with the rest of us and made it plain that he meant to be one of the party. Mistress Ames eyed him with disapproval. Brockley, who had dressed in a very decent dark-brown doublet and hose, finished with a neat ruff and polished footwear, looked blandly back at her.

  ‘It is my preference, whenever possible,’ I said. ‘Is it permitted?’

  It seemed that it was, though grudgingly. Mistress Ames shrugged bony shoulders but said, ‘As you wish,’ and led the way. Once out of the guest hall, we crossed the vestibule and went through the low door we had noticed the previous day, which led into the main part of the house.

  The chill hit us like a blow.

  The door led into a short passage, which was icily cold. There were a couple of doors on the right and some windows on the left. The windows were like the ones in the guest bedchambers, admitting little light, and as the world outside was thick with falling snow under a grey, heavy sky, the passage was very dim. It was also silent. It presently led out into another vestibule, a much bigger one than the guest entrance, with what was evidently the main front door to the left. This had windows on either side of it. They were mullioned, with bigger panes, but the glass was the same as in the other windows we had seen and snow was piled up on their outer sills, so that here, too, little light could get in.

  There was little light anywhere. Above us was a ceiling criss-crossed with heavy beams, but it was high up, and the shadows there hung like dark mist. Indeed, shadows seemed to cluster in every corner and just as in the guest quarters, all the walls were stone, all the floors flagstoned, and there were no hangings, rugs, or rushes and no furniture to soften the bleakness. From the floor, the cold struck upwards through the soles of our shoes. It was depressing. The guest quarters, where we did at least have furniture and fires and beds with fur coverlets, seemed like sybaritic luxury by comparison.

  Unlike the passage, however, the vestibule wasn’t silent. We could hear raised voices coming from behind a door to our right. Angelica Ames had turned towards it but stopped as the voices crescendoed and then took a step backwards as the door opened, spilling Bella Yates and another lady out into the vestibule. I say spilling because it really was like that; they seemed to topple out rather than step, close together and locked in argument. They saw us at once, and Bella tugged at the other’s sleeve, only to be shaken impatiently aside.

  ‘Yes, Bella, I can see them. Our visitors are here, and I repeat, you had no business to come intruding on me when you knew I was about to receive them. Now will you please …?’

  ‘If only you would listen! Mother Philippa, I implore you …’

  ‘Yes, you may well implore me!’ So the tall woman was presumably Philippa Gould, the Principal and the sister of Bella, though in Benedictine fashion, her subordinates called her Mother and that evidently went for Bella as well. If they really were sisters, they were not in the least alike. Then I remembered that Cecil had said Bella was actually Philippa’s half-sister, a natural daughter. So they had had the same father but different mothers and different upbringings. Very different, it now seemed to me, for Philippa Gould had a thoroughly educated accent and an unmistakeable air of command. Her head was tilted back and her chin haughtily raised. ‘I have had to put up with so much from you that I would be justified in casting you out of Stonemoor …’

  ‘Tha wouldna do that to me, me that’s your own sister!’ Bella was pawing at Mistress Gould like an importunate puppy.

  Mistress Gould, glancing towards us once more, pulled herself away and said fiercely: ‘Mortification of the flesh may well be good for the soul but hunger and cold aren’t good for the body and we shall all be ill if we are forced to endure too much of either. I insist …’

  ‘What’s the matter with thee? I’m telling thee we shouldna …!’

  ‘Be quiet, Bella! I don’t agree and the responsibility is mine. The supplies of salt, candles, and firewood that we need are to be ordered at once. Walter Cogge is to go into Thorby and see to it. Do as you are told. Now go about your daily tasks and let me attend to my guests.’

  ‘Salt and candles! I tell thee, thee’ll find out! Thee’ll find out I’m right!’

  ‘Bella! Go!’

  Muttering, heavy shoulders bent, Bella went, departing through a further door. As she thrust it open, a faint, homely smell of baking bread and savoury stew wafted out and then faded as she shut the door behind her. Philippa Gould stared exasperatedly after her for a moment and then straightened her wimple, pushing a strand of dark hair out of sight. She was dressed like all the others we had seen, in a dark-blue gown with a wimple and a very small ruff. She came towards us, her right hand outstretched.

  ‘Mistress Stannard, I believe? With Mistress Jester and your servants, the Brockleys. I trust I have your names correctly. Please come this way. Thank you for bringing them, Angelica.’

  ‘My pleasure,’ said Mistress Ames, though her voice didn’t suggest pleasure at all. She too departed, following Bella. We accompanied Philippa back into the room from which she and Bella had come. It turned out to be a study, blessedly warm because here there was a good fire. It was more normal than anywhere we had yet seen in Stonemoor, for there was a desk, strewn in businesslike fashion with papers and writing materials. There was a small silver bell too. There were also some padded stools with colourful embroidery, and a tapestry on one wall.

  ‘You have slept well, I trust,’ said Mistress Gould, indicating that we should sit down and taking a stool herself. ‘And eaten? Our fare is plain but filling. I am sorry you had to witness that scene just now. I fear that my sister has over-strict attitudes and believes that to have sufficient to eat, and to be warm enough to work and sleep adequately, is a kind of sin. She covers this up by constantly pretending that we can’t afford it. We can. Not that we are as well off as I would like, which is one reason why I am happy to sell John of Evesham’s book of strange lore. I understand that you have come to buy it. I … I am quite surprised. After such a long time … such a long wait …’

  She sounded almost confused, which surprised me, but then seemed to shake herself free. ‘I am very glad to see you. I – well, all of us – have been waiting for an emissary from Doctor Dee to arrive but you are the first to do so although we have been given to understand that two others had been sent, before you, but for some reason failed to reach us.’ She shook her head in puzzled fashion. ‘They hadn’t been here. We could make no sense of that.’

  ‘Who was it who gave you to understand?’ I asked.

  ‘Two officers from York, from the High Sheriff’s office,’ said Philippa Gould. ‘A new High Sheriff has just taken office, a Sir William Fairfax – very anxious, I fancy, to make his mark by finding the lost men. They came twice, the same two officers, once asking about … Master Hardwicke I think was the name. Then again, enquiring after a Master Spelton. But we could tell them nothing. I believe the sheriff’s officers also tried to question the shepherd who lives on his own about two miles from here, but all they got from him’ – she gave us an austere smile – ‘was rude answers. He’d never harm anyone, though. Walter Cogge has met him in York at wool-selling time. The man is just a natural solitary who prefers sheep to people. One of the sheriff’s officers did say something about the two missing men having some other errand, in Scotland, and that it might have brought them into danger. He was rather excited about it. He said it was an unusual case.’

  She sounded indulgent, as though the man concerned were a small boy who had been shown a popinjay or been offered some exotic treat, such as an orange. ‘He was quite young and I really think that being ordered to ask after men who had gone missing when on some kind of official errand for the queen was a thrill for him. The other man was a little older
and more serious and I think felt uncomfortable, questioning ladies. He kept apologizing for troubling us. Though, the second time, he did insist on searching the house.’

  Indulgence turned to indignation. ‘I was polite, and personally escorted them through the various rooms, even the row of little rooms where we all sleep! We have separate rooms, not a dormitory. There were already several bedchambers upstairs when we moved in, and when our numbers began to increase, I had further partitions and doors put in to give each of us some privacy. I couldn’t believe that the sheriff’s officers really imagined we might be hiding the lost men on the premises! Well, I don’t think they did imagine it – one of them at least was apologetic, as I said. However, you seem to have found your way to us and you are very welcome. You have the money with you?’

  ‘It is in my bedchamber,’ I said. ‘Can we see the book first?’

  ‘Yes, of course. It is in our library. We will go there in a moment.’ Mistress Gould scanned our faces thoughtfully. Her own was a patrician face, I thought, her nose thin and high-bridged, her arched eyebrows also thin, her mouth well cut and firm. Her eyes were dark, like Bella’s, though beautifully set, with a far more open expression.

  ‘I take it,’ she said, ‘that you realize that all the ladies here are of the Catholic persuasion and that in this house we live more or less as nuns. This is known to the authorities and is permitted. I say this so that you will not go scurrying home, full of an eager desire to report us. Such things have happened, when guests have come our way.’

  ‘Yes, we did know,’ I said. ‘I have said so, to Mistress Ames.’

  ‘Our way of life will not impinge on you,’ said Mistress Gould. ‘You will live separately, in the guest quarters, until such time as the snow melts and you can go on your way. You can’t go yet, of course. It is two or three feet deep outside and still coming down.’ She stood up. ‘I will take you to the library now.’

  We trooped after her across the shadowy vestibule and out through the door which Bella and Angelica had taken. Once more, a smell of cooking greeted us, bringing friendliness into a gloomy gallery. The windows to our left were as inadequate as all the rest. There were doors on the right-hand side, and Mistress Gould, producing a set of keys from her girdle, unlocked one of them. She led us into a room with bookshelves on one wall, laden with a considerable number of books, as well as piles of documents and a number of matching boxes in a brown, glossy wood, probably walnut, with brass clasps. There was a desk and some stools so that anyone wishing to consult a volume could do so at leisure, and a triple-branched candlestick was there to cast light on the print. Here again, the windows were not much use, least of all when snow was piled against them.

  Mistress Gould went straight to the shelves and lifted down one of the boxes, which she placed on the desk. ‘We have a number of valuable volumes here,’ she said, ‘and we take good care of them. I had a set of boxes made, in three different sizes. They protect their contents from damp, and insects – even from mice. Mice did once get at a book of some value and nibbled it badly.’

  She unlatched the box lid and put it back. Then, surprisingly, there was a hiatus, during which she stood quite still, looking down into the box, and I heard her draw in a sharp breath. But at length, very gently, she lifted a book out of the box and set it down on the table. She saw our expressions and smiled.

  ‘It is so beautiful,’ she said. ‘We do take great care of it, and I don’t open its box very often. So, every time I do look at it, I am startled anew and catch my breath. It is such a privilege to have such a book here. It makes me feel reverent. Always, I am wary of touching it, for fear of doing it harm. I suppose its purchaser will want to study it, so he will have to handle it! I hope he will take care. Now.’

  We crowded round to see the book properly. It was bound in pale leather, which had perhaps been white originally though age had evidently discoloured it, muting it into a dull cream. On the front, was a crescent moon and seven stylized stars in gold leaf, and a title, also in gold leaf, although I could recognize only a few letters of the archaic script.

  ‘We believe it was made in the twelfth century,’ said Mistress Gould. ‘Though it is not known where it was made. It was brought here by one of our ladies, Mistress Eleanor Overton, from Gloucester. Her family had owned it for centuries. Poor Eleanor, she has no family now. She is the only surviving child of her parents, neither of whom had any living relatives left by the time she was grown up. They never found a husband for her, and when they died, she was much alone. She had heard of us through a friend – Katherine Trayne, who joined us not so very long ago. Eleanor decided to come as well and bring this book as a kind of dowry.’

  She turned a few pages for us. As we expected, it was not a printed book but an illustrated manuscript, hand-written and painted. Capital letters were entangled with brightly coloured and minuscule pictures of birds and animals, sun, moon and stars. The birds and animals included some legendary creatures, such as a unicorn and a camelopard. They were a curious choice to illustrate a book that was essentially about astronomy, I thought. The Latin script stood out as clear and black as though it had been penned yesterday, though I still could not read it for although I knew a good deal of Latin, the lettering inside was as archaic as that on the cover. There were charts as well as text, which seemed to show the sun and the movements of planets, though in what seemed a very complex way. I could make little of any of this and nor, I knew, could my companions. The colours were all fresh and bright. Sybil, wide-eyed, cautiously fingered a square in which the capital letter A, in gold, was set in a cerise background, with two tiny birds, cerulean blue and shaped like swifts, one above and one below the crosspiece of the A.

  ‘It’s exquisite,’ I said sincerely. Sybil and Brockley murmured in agreement.

  ‘It pleases you? I am at heart unwilling to let it go,’ said Mistress Gould. She was staring at the book as fixedly as though she were trying to memorize it. ‘I can barely endure it to be touched and to think that it will actually be studied – may be handled carelessly – truly horrifies me. Only, the money would be welcome. There are improvements I would like to make to this house.’

  I could well understand that. I said, ‘We will be glad to buy this on behalf of Doctor Dee.’

  Philippa Gould closed the book and placed it reverently back in its box. ‘I will keep it here in its place until you are ready to leave. Then you can pay for it and take it away. It is so precious that I would rather it stayed on its usual shelf until the last moment, instead of being kept in a bedchamber, where things are being moved all the time and cleaning is done. As you saw, the door to the library is kept locked. Only I and Angelica Ames and Margaret Beale, who was the doorkeeper when you arrived, have keys. We three are all thoroughly literate and educated in Latin, and we were among the four who were the founding members of our little community. My sister Bella was the fourth, but although she is literate – my doing, since she could neither read nor write when first she came here – she does not often consult books. I have tried to instruct her in several branches of learning, in fact, but she is not responsive.’

  ‘This is clearly a valuable collection,’ Sybil observed. ‘Where did you come by so many volumes?’

  ‘I brought some of them with me from my father’s house,’ said Philippa. ‘Father is something of a scholar, as was his father before him. Between them, they assembled a considerable library. My grandfather came from Italy, as I believe John of Evesham himself did originally, and had studied there. He spoke several languages,’ she added proudly.

  Here was the likely reason why Philippa and Bella were both dark. An Italian grandfather would account for it.

  Philippa was saying: ‘My father picked out a number of books and let me bring them here. He is a man of business and doesn’t have as much time to read as he would like. Other volumes were brought by Angelica and Margaret. Except for Eleanor Overton’s donation, that is! We take good care of this room.’

&n
bsp; ‘Quite,’ I said.

  And suddenly, the audience with Philippa Gould was over. We left the library, to find Mistress Ames waiting for us in the gallery. Mistress Gould nodded to us and went away, while Angelica requested us to come with her, and led us back to the guest quarters. Left alone in the guest hall, we looked at each other.

  ‘Breathtaking,’ said Sybil. ‘Quite beautiful.’

  I nodded, but distractedly. Mistress Gould had puzzled me. She gave the impression of being highly educated and very dignified, and that she should be so very sensitive as to pause in wonder every time she set eyes on a book which must surely be familiar to her seemed surprising.

  Brockley said: ‘I wonder why she didn’t ask for payment at once, and hand the book over. She can’t really suppose it would come to harm in your room, madam. Why should it? I thought there was something strange in her manner. Did you?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I did. It was as though our presence here confused her, somehow. But why?’

  ELEVEN

  Light and Shadow

  For the next few days, the bitter weather continued, and there was no question of leaving Stonemoor. Each morning, we looked hopefully from our windows, but the world remained bound and hushed in deep snow, white and unfriendly under leaden skies. Some people managed to get about, though. In between the snowstorms, to our surprise, we saw a rider, well wrapped up in a heavy cloak but riding side saddle and therefore, presumably, one of the ladies, out on horseback in the snow. She was walking her steed – it was the striking strawberry roan that Brockley had mentioned – up the hill behind the house.

  Walter Cogge came to ask if he could have Brockley’s and Joseph’s help in clearing some of the track down to the village. I agreed, of course, and we saw them all toiling with spades, working their way down towards a couple of small figures who were struggling to get the track clear from the village end. The next morning, we watched a cartload of something, pulled by a couple of straining oxen, struggle up from the village and in at the gate, to be unloaded in the courtyard. We recognized Silas Butterworth and the goblin-like Will Grimes as the men in charge of the wagon.