Murder at Meaux

by Cassandra Clark

  ‘The one in the boat? He’s long gone. I’m not getting my sodding clothes wet on his account.’

  ‘Not him, the vagrant what led us here. Breaking the Statute. Are we letting him go as well?’

  ‘He needs a good cuffing. Dumb ox. Leave him be for now. Let lawmen discuss statutes and bring a charge if that’s what they want.’

  There was the sound of several pairs of boots crunching away up the beach. The violent scarlet of physical pain swooped down over her before she dropped into a deep well of unconsciousness.

  And so Hildegard returned to Meaux, not as she had left, in the high desperation to save a life, but in the drugged sleep engendered by one of Brother Gregory’s Jerusalem cures.

  2

  It was the scent of lavender that drifted first into her conscious thoughts. She felt languidly at ease, as if lying on a scented bank of summer flowers. Her eyes opened of their own volition and she found she was staring up at the decorated rib of a stone vault.

  Closer, a human face floated into view.

  ‘Hubert?’ she murmured before her eyes closed by themselves. She was adrift again, floating down a stream with banks of flowers on both sides.

  Sometimes when she awoke it was because of a searing pain in her shoulder the ferocity of it like nothing she had ever experienced before, not even in childbirth.

  Sometimes a familiar face, Agnetha, her old ally from Deepdale when they had begun the great project of founding their own house in the wilds, would float into view, busy and concerned and kind, offering some liquid concoction or merely words of comfort.

  Sometimes it would be Brother Gregory or Brother Egbert, bringing comfort and reassurance, and she felt her spirits lighten to see all three, and sometimes it was a novice, someone she had never seen before, and once it was the sound of a lute playing quietly close at hand, accompanied by a sweet and almost familiar voice.

  Through all this was an unidentified longing the source of which she could not locate.

  Voices whispering at a distance woke her and this time the pain in her shoulder had lessened and she glanced with sudden clarity round the chamber for the first time since they had brought her here.

  She remembered now how they had carried her away from the beach, from the incessant sound of the waves breaking close by, the men’s voices, Ulf, barefoot, with a rope round his neck, and then the excruciating moment when she had been lifted onto a litter tied between two old farm horses and the invitation to curse aloud had almost wrenched imprecations from between her lips.

  After that, nothing much, until again she felt herself being moved and a beaker was pressed against her lips, and then a welcome oblivion.

  Now she tried to lift her head so she could look round. Agnetha, broad in the beam, her white habit tucked up, was mixing something in a cup and turned at that moment. Her look of delight and astonishment turned her lips into a perfect ‘o’ as she bustled over to the bedside.

  ‘You’ve taken your time, domina, we thought you were going to sleep September and October away and wake only for Martinmas.’ Despite her brusque words her happiness and relief at seeing Hildegard looking round almost like her old self was apparent.

  ‘Have I been like this for long?’ She had no idea how much time had passed since she had been brought here. ‘This is Meaux, isn’t it?’ She looked for reassurance.

  ‘Indeed it is. Back in your own chamber, among your own sisters, in our own small house. Although it might as well be counted as part of the abbey proper, the number of times those brothers have been over here. I almost suggested putting them up in their own quarters to save them the trouble of crossing that bridge.’

  ‘Hubert, do you mean?’ She was puzzled as to why Agnetha referred to him as a mere brother.

  But the sister shook her head and dropped her glance for a split second that to Hildegard, in her sudden heightened state of awareness, was like a thunderbolt. ‘I mean Brothers Gregory and Egbert,’ Agnetha confirmed gently. ‘Staunch they are. Very knowledgeable. And so patient, for men. They’ve taught me a lot without begrudging their knowledge. It’s a miracle what you can learn if you travel over-seas as they have.’ She stopped. ‘How is your shoulder feeling now?’

  ‘Enormous. With a sort of buzzing feeling of heat. I don’t feel like moving it much at present.’

  ‘Then don’t. You have no need to do anything. We are here at your beck and call, my lady.’

  Hildegard smiled. Her face felt stiff as if unused to smiling. ‘Same old Agnetha. I am glad you decided to join us.’ She indicated the white habit of unbleached stamyn Agnetha had adopted.

  ‘I had misgivings, you know that better than anyone, but I don’t regret it. It was weak of me to say I only wanted to be a lay-sister. What’s the use of that? May as well do the job properly.’ Her smile was radiant. ‘I find my faith has come to mean much more to me since I took the veil. It’s a living thing to me now where before it was something that came out of fear and a kind of misunderstanding -‘

  ‘Fear?’

  ‘Of not knowing where we come from, why we’re here, and and what happens to us when we die. Especially the latter. I still have no answers but somehow I believe it will turn out all right.’ She gave a self-conscious laugh. ‘I suppose that sounds like the gabbling of an innocent, uneducated girl, but I don’t know how else to put it.’

  ‘It sounds enough to me, Agnetha. I wish I had your conviction. I’m –’ she searched for a word. ‘I’m troubled. I have no –’ she paused again, ‘I have no belief in heaven or hell. We only have what is here and now.’

  Agnetha looked so shocked she said hurriedly, ‘But what about Ulf? Has he been freed?’

  ‘Not him. He’s over the bridge there in the abbey prison.’

  ‘What? Still?’

  ‘Some canon law nonsense. You’ll have to ask Brother Gregory when he shows up.’

  ‘But how can they keep him locked up? Whose decision was that?’

  ‘Whose do you think?’ Agnetha became suddenly busy, sweeping up a few things that were lying around, straightening the cover on Hildegard’s bed, and showing clearly that she felt she had said enough. In a moment she went out.

  Hildegard lay back, frowning, not only with a resurgence of the pain in her heavily bandaged shoulder, but with the astonishing thought that it was Hubert who was keeping Ulf a prisoner, when anyone with any sense, which the abbot had in abundance, surely knew he was innocent of the charge of murder?

  What are the justices doing? she asked herself. What about the Sheriff? Who was insisting on the initial charge? Was it still the York Coroner with the vested interest in seeing Ulf erased from the picture? Even a fool could see what game he was up to. He had been the first official on the scene. He had been the one to bring the charge, and was he not being challenged? What was Roger doing about all this?

  She fretted when no-one came for a while and swung her legs over the side of the bed and was almost on her feet before a great dizzying sensation sent her crumpling back into the straw-bag of her mattress where she lay for a moment, gasping for breath and almost swooning with pain until the angelus bell brought her back. When it stopped it was followed by voices.

  Struggling to cover herself she was half-propped on the pillow when Agnetha poked her head round the door and mouthed, ‘Up to seeing anyone?’

  She nodded. Maybe this time it would be Hubert. Both dreading and longing to see him she lifted her head.

  3

  It was someone quite different to Abbot de Courcy who entered. It was a tall young man, so grown after four years he was scarcely recognisable when he strode into the chamber. He was carrying a lute.

  He beamed when he saw she was awake. ‘I’ve come to play for you, domina, if you so wish?’

  ‘Pierrekyn! What a delight to see you! I didn’t realise it was you at first when we met the cortege after leaving Ravenspur. Heavens! It seems so long ago! Then one of the brothers pointed out the lute you were carrying and I guessed.’
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br />   ‘It was a hellish night, that one. Poor Brother Anselm.’ He came to sit on a stool beside the bed. ‘You’re looking much better than when they brought you in.’ He gave her a sharp glance. ‘I thought you were finished, to be honest. I should have known better! Your face was whiter than that pillow.’

  ‘Did I lose a lot of blood, do you know?’

  ‘Buckets of it, according to Egbert.’ He looked away and back. ‘And now you’re almost mended.’

  ‘I’m so happy to see you,’ she replied wondering about the expression on his face. ‘We have a lot to talk about. It’s been four years! And first I want to know why you’re still here and not minstrel at the court of King Richard?’

  ‘I chose not to take up the offer of a certain corrodion at St Mary’s Abbey,’ he explained with a guarded expression. ‘He found me a place in the retinue of John of Gaunt. I felt it would bring me too close to the king’s enemies to make for a long and peaceful life. I aim to live out a span enough to allow me to perfect my craft. I told our mutual friend that I want to study abroad – at the court of the Catalan king for preference. They’re inventing interesting variations on musical form over there and you know I write my own songs. He said he could get me a position there if I was patient.’

  ‘So he’s going to keep his word? That’s good.’ She lay back. ‘Oh, Pierreyn, I remember your songs, I hope you’ll play for me. Do you still sing the one about the Three Ravens?’

  ‘Of course.’ He played a chord. ‘While I’m waiting for my request to be granted –’ he grinned, sharing a smile at the corrodian’s expense which he knew Hildegard would appreciate, ‘I’ve been made master of the town minstrels in Beverley and they generously allow me to supplement my grants by providing music for Meaux. Before the abbot went away he gave instructions to copy the music played here so it would not be lost. You should hear some of the monks’ drinking songs! They’re a convivial lot when Abbot de Courcy is absent,’ he added.

  ‘That won’t go down well with him. Slack, he’ll call them.’ She felt in control now, talking casually about Hubert as if he was only a peripheral figure in her life. ‘I haven’t seen him since we got back to Meaux. I expect he’s busy bringing down the fires of hell on his jolly monks.’

  ‘He’s busy, certainly. There’s this problem of Brother Anselm’s death to deal with.’

  ‘Is it a problem?’

  Pierrekyn frowned. ‘Our lord abbot thinks so. Suicide?He will not accept it. He seems obsessed by it.’

  ‘And Ulf?’ she asked, hurrying on. ‘I’m told he’s still a prisoner in the abbey jail?’

  ‘The hope is that a period of solitude will make him talk.’

  ‘He’s got nothing to talk about.’

  ‘Abbot de Courcy believes otherwise.’

  ‘He can’t believe Ulf’s guilty! He was set up, Pierrekyn. You know what that’s like.’

  ‘I know better than anyone, having been set up myself when Reynard was murdered.’ His eyes glistened and he blinked. ‘I still miss the old sod.’

  When Pierrekyn, involving himself too closely with the rebels during the Great Revolt, had been the victim of a malicious accusation of knifing someone down in Kent, Reynard, master musician in the household of Roger de Hutton on a sojourn there, recognising the boy’s talent, had taken him under his tutelage and smuggled him back to the Riding in Roger’s retinue. When Reynard himself had been murdered, during the ongoing months of retribution following the Revolt, some claimed that the obvious suspect was Pierrekyn himself. It had taken a royal turn shoe and a journey over the Alps in winter to reveal the truth.

  ‘No,’ he said returning to their earlier topic, ‘Ulf won’t say anything to anyone. He refuses to talk. He’s not helping himself.’

  Wondering if she understood what it was Ulf would not talk about she said cautiously, ’There’s nothing much he can say. How can he be expected to defend himself when it’s his word against the Coroner’s?’

  ‘Is that the Coroner in York?’

  She nodded, trying not to wince at the shooting pain in her shoulder that any movement set off.

  ‘I know that fellow of old,’ Pierrekyn said. ‘He’s a merchant, a big noise in the Adventurers Guild. Your corrodian has a connection of some kind with him. Both Gaunt’s men, I guess.’

  ‘He’s not my corrodian, heaven forfend!’ She had met the retired minstrel to the old king once only and felt it was enough to know him from top to bottom. A dangerous man. But she had solicited his aid, with a hinted threat, on behalf of Pierrekyn when things had been dangerous for him.

  ‘I’m in awe of his skill,’ Pierrekyn surprised her by admitting. ‘His playing makes me weep.’

  ‘I can understand that. When he took down a lute and played the rebel song to see which side I was on, testing me, I saw how the instrument seemed to become part of him.’

  ‘I’m free to go and play some of his precious instruments at St Mary’s whenever I like. He’s teaching me the aulos, that double pipe. It’s got a drone a bit like Northumberland pipes. Whenever I’m in York I go to see him at the abbey. I think our brotherhood as musicians might over-ride any other allegiance he has.’

  ‘Tread carefully.’

  ‘Like a mouse on sugar.’

  Agnetha banged on the door again. ‘It’s Brother Egbert,’ she announced. To Hildegard she said, ‘I told you. In and out of here.’ She turned to the monk waiting out in the passage. ‘She’s sitting up now, brother. You may enter.’

  4

  ‘About time too.’ Egbert swarmed in, smiling, showing his delight at seeing Hildegard so much improved. ‘Brother Gregory is coming along with a gift for you.’

  There is only one gift I want, came the unbidden thought, quickly repressed. She managed a wan smile and felt a flicker of hope uncurl.

  Egbert gave Pierrekyn a glance. ‘I hope you’re not tiring her?’

  ‘Not me. Am I, domina?’

  ‘Never. I hope you’ll play for us soon.’

  ‘Well then, young Pierrekyn, sung any good songs lately?’ Egbert asked.

  ‘All my songs are good.’

  ‘I for one shall never say otherwise. Though what were those words you were singing last eve? They didn’t sound right to me.’

  ‘Best not to ask!’ Unaccountably Pierrekyn looked away. ‘If you really want to know, brother, the tune’s an old folk ballad. I believe the survivors of Otterburn have already changed the words to glorify their own valour in that particular skirmish.’

  ‘I bet they have. I only know it as a ballad being sung shortly before I left England before the Revolt. Words by John Balle, I believe. So?’ he turned to Hildegard and she admired his tact in not pursuing the topic.

  After the killings during the Merciless Parliament earlier in the year when eight of the young king’s closest advisors had been beheaded and three others had been forced to flee into exile, it was diplomatic to hold your tongue until you could tell which way the wind was blowing.

  Egbert peered into Hildegard’s face. ‘Still in pain?’

  ‘It’s nothing...Just a little now and then.’

  ‘It’ll be more than a little, I’ll warrant. I had the devil of a job to extract the bolt. You’re always going to have a scar. Lucky it wasn’t barbed. Ah, here’s Gregory now,’ he turned as the door opened to let in his brother monk.

  Gregory glided across the chamber and placed a basket on Hildegard’s lap.

  ‘Any other pain?’ Egbert continued.

  ‘Nothing to speak of.’ She winced. ’Only the shoulder when I move.’

  ‘Then don’t move. Sister Agnetha has been given instructions to prevent you from moving.’

  ‘I know. She’s being wonderful. I’m almost frightened of her now she’s taken her vows.’

  ‘So are we!’ Gregory chuckled.

  She fingered the basket. It would be from Hubert, after all. She would look at it properly when everyone left.

  ‘May I?’ Gregory lifted one of her eyelids. �
�Hm,’ he murmured. ‘Reduce the dose?’ He turned to Egbert.

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘What are you giving me that works so well?’ asked Hildegard.

  ‘Hemlock.’

  ‘Most beneficial in careful doses. Lethal if not.’

  ‘Trust us,’ Gregory assured her when he saw her eyes widen in alarm. ‘We became masters of poisons in Outremer. Those Saracens know a thing or two.’

  ‘Do you get it from round here?’ asked Pierrekyn, leaning forward with interest.

  ‘Plenty of it if you know where to look.’

  ‘Is hemlock what the lord abbot is worried about in connection with Brother Anselm?’ he asked.

  ‘What do you know about that business?’

  ‘It’s all over the cloister. Hemlock or henbane. One or two are laying bets. Also, everyone’s forbidden to enter the scriptorium until he gives permission. It means I can’t get on with my copying. The abbot and Prior Benedict are going over the place with a fine-tooth comb.’

  ‘What is all this?’ asked Hildegard with as much nonchalance as she could muster at the mention of Hubert.

  ‘It’s the abbot’s obsession with Anselm’s sudden death – he will not release the body for proper burial until he knows how he died and the poor old fellow is still lying in the morgue. Despite the locked door to the scriptorium, Hubert will not accept that Anselm drank poison of his own free will.’

  ‘It’s against holy writ. No doubt on that score.’

  ‘Hubert seems to be causing quite a stir now he’s back,’ Hildegard observed weakly. ‘I hear he still has a prisoner in his jail too.’

  ‘You should have been in Chapter this morning. It’s not only Ulf he wants in prison. He was railing against everybody. He sounded as if he’d like to put all of us behind bars for our sins. Most of our brothers are on their knees from prime till compline. The novices are in constant tears.’

  Hildegard remembered when Hubert had acted like this once before. Afterwards he had gone on pilgrimage to Jerusalem and she was afraid she had been the cause of his extreme behaviour that time. She mentioned his pilgrimage, salve to his self-recriminations.