‘You may have done. How is he? Pleading to go back to Castle Hutton?’
‘I gather he’s settled in and looking after the sheep.’
Hildegard had other things on her mind and did not pursue the topic but later, when Pierrekyn had finished drilling the nuns in their hymns and came to visit her he himself mentioned the lad.
‘The strangest thing,’ he began.
‘Stranger than how he led those Sheriff’s men to where Ulf was hiding out?’ Her shoulder was making her bad-tempered. A vervain poultice, one of her namesake’s cures for wounds, was not yet taking effect.
Before Pierrekyn could interrupt she added, ’I cannot forgive him. How wicked of him. Why did he do that? What difference would it make to him if those fellows were searching for an outlaw? It had nothing to do with him. Did he expect payment?’ She sighed. ‘I cannot forgive him although I suppose I should.’
‘You probably should, if what he told me is true.’
She lay back and took a deep drink from the beaker of wine and herbs that, like the vervain, had so far failed to live up to its alleged curative effect. ‘Go on, Pierrekyn.’
‘I asked him about what happened at the beach and he told me that when he went to buy bread and cheese at the farmhouse as you requested, the sheriff’s men were already there. They demanded his papers. Of course, he didn’t have any.’
‘That bit’s true. We left in a hurry. Roger would assume any liveried servant of his would have privileges wherever they went.’
‘His mistake then because these fellows tried to take him back to York to fling him into prison but before they did so they wanted to know what he was doing wandering about the cliffs. Apparently he refused to answer any questions so, assuming he was dumb, they pretended to let him go and next morning followed him. Poor lad, he’s as guileless as a new-born. He led them straight to where he found your horse. They took him into custody and were milling about on the cliff-top wondering what it was all about when the boat appeared in the bay, soon followed by Ulf, running down to the water’s edge. And then you,’ he added.
‘That clears up a few questions,’ she replied. ‘I was feeling harsh towards him. Mea culpa.’ She crossed herself. ‘Is he being cared for now?’
‘He’s making himself useful among the flocks at Grangemarsh.’
‘Roger will demand him back and talk his way out of why he has no papers. Is there more? What’s so strange?’ she asked. ‘You said it was strange.’
‘Yes, it’s this.’ He lowered his voice a little. ‘He turned up here yesterday when provisions were being brought in for this expected influx of guests and by chance I was playing my bagpipes for my own amusement in the garden, far from the abbey as some of the monks say the sound disturbs their meditations.’
‘And?’
‘I heard an odd sound – not from my bagpipes, I hasten to add – but from under some bushes. When I went over to investigate I found this young fellow lying there blubbing his eyes out. “What’s up with you?” I asked. “Nowt,” he muttered in his usual monosyllabic manner. “Come on, I’m not a monk, you can tell me,” said I. Eventually I coaxed out of him the fact that my pipes were making him homesick. “With an anguish I cannot bear,” were his exact words. You can imagine my horror. “You mean you’re from Northumberland?” I asked, grabbing at the only straw. But he shook his head. “Them ain’t Northumberland pipes. I’m from further north than that.” “From the Border country? From the disputed lands?” He shook his head. “Further.” ”For heaven’s sake!” I exploded. “Do you realise the danger you’re in? Don’t you know the Duke of Gloucester has brought in a law to forbid Scots from coming down here? If you’re found you’ll be in real trouble.” “Tell everybody. I don’t care. I’ve nothing to live for.” I sat down beside him. “I’m not going to tell anyone,” I told him. “I’ve been in worse predicaments than yours. You haven’t had the hue and cry after you, have you?” I told him a little bit about that time in Bruges.’ Pierrekyn shuddered. ‘And I told him how you helped me escape. I must say I was satisfied to see he looked impressed – I told you he was a mere babe in arms.’
‘So how did he come to be down here?’ she asked.
‘His father was killed in some skirmish in the debated lands a while back – a Scot himself, by the way – so his mother being English took him to live in Berwick with her where she soon found an Englishman to look after her. Young Donal as he’s called ran away and soon got caught up in that business at Otterburn in August. He managed to escape with his life but somehow found himself further south than anticipated. Luckily for him he was taken up by one of Roger’s foresters and the rest you can guess.’
‘So he’s only been in England for a few weeks?’
‘And the reason he won’t speak to anybody is because he fears they’ll guess at once that he’s Scottish.’
‘Poor lad. That is a strange story. Does the master of the Conversi know?’
‘He’s sharp enough, I’m sure he does.’
‘When Roger gets here he’ll no doubt say: we’re Northerners. They’re not our laws. We didn’t agree them. It’s our right to flout them.’
‘My feelings exactly.’ Pierrekyn got up. ‘Nearly time for the next Office.’
21
Although Abbot de Courcy had only sent out notices less than a week ago one interested party turned up within a few days. It was a friar.
When questioned he claimed to be uncle to the dead woman. An Austin Friar, he had been in Bridlington when he heard about his brother’s death and six month’s later was in Beverley when the dread news of his niece reached him.
He was a rotund little fellow despite the miles he walked to do his preaching but he had a ready smile and a charming ability to listen with a show of amazed attention to whatever anybody wanted to tell him. His appearances at the door of the kitchens were received with pleasure.
‘Comical he is,’ the kitchen servants agreed and were even more careful about their natural propensity to blaspheme after listening to one or two impromptu sermons that offered strong accounts of the pains of hell-fire.
Pierrekyn, naturally, went to seek him out and decide for himself the nature of the man.
‘I’m not against all friars,’ he told Hildegard after meeting him, ‘I suppose there are good and bad in every walk of life. He seems sound enough. Kindly, I would say. But I’ve yet to find him, if you know what I mean? He’s like a piece of armour-plate, reflecting whatever happens to be in front of him.’
Hildegard listened but was in too much pain just then to really take it in. Only later, musing over everything Pierrekyn had told her, did she begin to wonder what this might mean for the inheritance that seemed to be at the bottom of the whole business of Eunice’s death and Ulf’s incarceration.
It had been rumoured when the question of who inherited had first been broached that the friar – mentioned as coming from Leeds – wanted nothing for himself.
If Ulf eventually paid the penalty for murder the friar would stand to inherit. Would his view change then?
Avis and her husband, Sir Bernard, as next in line after Ulf, might have a reason to be worried.
22
There was no word from Sir Bernard’s household until the end of the first week. Then a message came through begging for more time in which to gather the interested parties together. Sir Bernard had his brother-in-law’s household at the ready, including the three witnesses, housekeeper, journeyman and apprentice, but his own household steward was visiting a sick relative in the north of the county and would take a few days to deal with matters there before setting out on his return to York.
‘Tell his steward to come straight here to Meaux,’ instructed the abbot’s chamberlain. ‘We can’t wait the year out for these people to attend us.’
More messengers, back and forth, riding through the muddy autumn lanes, plied their trade.
The sea fog swept in again. For a period it was difficult to see your hand in front of y
our face. Hooded shapes blundered about the abbey. The warming room was often full.
On the nuns’ side of the bridge the sisters spun silk with frost-bitten fingers and occasionally glanced out of the window at the fog-bound gardens, glad to have an excuse to be indoors.
Hildegard welcomed this reprieve from her duties. She was instructed to stay in bed, feeling sore, ill-tempered and impatient at the slowness to heal of her still painful wound. Her visitors were her only respite from the sorrow that seemed to grow daily at Hubert’s continuing condemnation. When would he make the next move in having her excommunicated? Was he reconsidering his outburst? Was he thinking up even worse punishment? What could be worse? Would he really throw her out? He wouldn’t do that if it would put her outside his power to punish. It certainly seemed deliberate, the cruelty of keeping her hanging on in a spiritual limbo, denied all the solace of the liturgy. She concluded that it must be his deliberate intention then changed her mind and thought it must be because he was too busy with more important matters than her to consider.
‘Egbert, tell me, has Gregory returned from Faxfleet yet?’ Anything to take her mind off her problems.
He shook his head. ‘He could have been there and back twice over by this time. I can’t imagine what’s keeping him.’ He looked worried. ‘Too many masterless men on the roads these days, despite the new Cambridge law.’
‘I’m sure he can look after himself.’
‘You would imagine so but a man has to sleep. What if he was discovered by felons and attacked in the night? Any man can be overcome when he’s taken by surprise. Is it a lawless place further inland?’ he asked. ‘What’s it like?’
‘Very flat! He would find it easy riding along the river bank. First he’d go down to Marfleet, probably by boat. Did he say?’
‘Aye, he said something like that. He intended to hire a horse from there. What’s at Marfleet?’
‘It’s a little quay where our produce is taken on the way down to the estuary before being sent on to Flanders.’
‘Busy place, no doubt.’
‘Small, not much there but wharves. And the chapel.’
When he caught her smiling she explained, ‘Years ago the then prioress of Swyne had a battle with the monks of Meaux down at Marfleet.’ She continued to smile, despite herself. ‘The monks were refusing to pay their rent on the chapel there, built on land belonging to Swyne, so eventually the prioress took them to court. After a lot of expensive work by the lawmen with the King’s Bench giving judgement against her and the then Archbishop doing likewise in his court, she took her case to the Pope in Rome. When his judgement went against her in what she was convinced was a just cause, she and a few nuns barricaded themselves into the chapel and refused to come out.’
‘How long did they stick it out?’
‘For as long as it took the monks to decide to dismantle the place, brick by brick.’
‘She lost her case in the end, then?’
‘Not a bit of it. She managed to wrest such good terms from the abbot that, decades later, Swyne is still paying only a pittance to Meaux to settle the fine imposed on them!’
Egbert’s anxiety about Gregory was lightened for a moment. ‘She must have been quite a woman.’
‘The towns-people of Hedon must have thought so too because when the monks had finished stacking their bricks, they discovered that their horses had been taken into the animal pound by the Hedon folk. Rather than pay to get them released they trudged on foot all the way back to Meaux.’
‘They must have been a tight-fisted bunch. She got the moral victory, right enough.’
‘Her successor is a formidable woman too.’ Hildegard had received no word from her prioress and frowned. It wasn’t like her not to offer advice when asked, whether it was welcome or not.
‘And after this place, Marfleet, where would he go next?’ Egbert prompted.
‘He’d keep to the river bank I would imagine and eventually, after passing Wyke and the big church built by Edward I, he’d pass by the place where the ferry across the Humber docks and eventually come out at the site of the preceptory he wants to see.’
‘It sounds straightforward, so why is it taking hi so long?’
She glanced at him. ‘Are you thinking of following in his steps to see if you can find out what’s happened?’
‘It has crossed my mind.’
She knew she wouldn’t persuade him otherwise. ’Come back in time for the hearing against Ulf, won’t you?’
He nodded. ‘To be sure.’
A little later Hildegard heard him giving Agnetha instructions about how to care for her patient and next morning, having presumably cleared the matter with Hubert, he put his head round her chamber door and told her he was off.
‘Blessings, Egbert. May angels guard you both.’
23
Pierrekyn came in to play his lute. ‘Is it subversive to play you something by an Italian music master called Landini?’ he asked.
‘Should it be?’
‘Only if you’re aware that he argued in Latin for a school of thought espoused by William of Ockham and dear old Wyclif of blessed memory.’
‘About the Eucharist?’
He smiled and nodded. ‘“Out Nomen!” as Gaunt said when he couldn’t get the better of Wyclif at St Paul’s.’
‘Sing some of this Landini then, if you will. I already like the sound of him.’
‘I haven’t got the notes perfectly yet but something our new Augustinian friend said reminded me of it. Here it goes.’
Bending over his lute Pierrekyn started to sing in his sweet, clear voice. He continued for a few lines then stopped abruptly. ‘I’m not sure those are the right words.’
‘That’s very tactful of you, dear Pierrekyn.’ She turned her face away.
The words he sang so sweetly had struck home with piercing accuracy.
“To have less grief, I do not know which I prefer, to live or die. I would like to die, since life is a burden to me, seeing that I am forsaken. On the other hand, I would not die since, being dead, I would never see you more...”
Her feelings about Hubert could not have been expressed more clearly.
‘And you say the words aren’t the right ones, Pierrekyn?’
‘I know other ones but the tune doesn’t fit them so well and it’s the words that are the important thing.’
Hildegard gave a start and struggled up onto her pillows. ‘What?’
He looked at her in confusion.
‘What did you just say?’ she demanded.
‘I said the tune doesn’t fit them so well.’
‘What was it Brother Anselm used to say?’
‘About what?’
‘Words and music. Didn’t you tell me he said, “the words rule the music?”’
‘Yes. He believed it had to be so.’
‘Then don’t you see?’ What she wanted to say filled her with such excitement she leaned forward, wrenched her shoulder, gave a yelp, and sank back. ‘Listen, if Anselm did leave a clue about certain notes, could they possibly have specific words attached to them?’
Pierrekyn put his lute aside. He sang the four notes that had been incised into the desk top in the scriptorium. ‘In that case the names of the notes don’t matter. It’s the tune and the words associated with them that count...’
‘Do you recognise them?’
As there was no indication of the relative lengths of the notes he tried them again and after one or two experiments his face broke into a smile.
‘I am a sot wit! Of course I know them. They’re the beginning to this, listen!’ He sang a phrase with the Latin words he knew from singing them so many times before. Several phrases fitted into the length of the first note, something they could not have known because there was no way of indicating the length of the notes. Pierrekyyn did not need to translate them as he sang.
‘Brothers and sisters! Now is the hour for us to arise from sleep!’
He stared at her. �
�Now is the hour? Does that remind you of anything?’
‘It certainly does. That’s John Balle’s phrase, the one used by the rebels seven years ago. “England, arise!...Now is the hour!” They were used as a sign in different forms all over the realm. Even those who could not read knew when the day came to rise against their rulers because they knew the words attached to the music. It was Corpus Christi, the day of salvation. Arise, brothers and sisters!’ She held his glance. ‘Anselm?’
Pierrekyn looked stunned. ‘Is that what he was doing there? We have the evidence of his leanings in those secret pages he was copying from Latin to make an English Bible. Was he expecting something more? Another uprising?’
‘The scribes can easily pass pages round from one scriptorium to another, wherever one of them is ready to translate and copy them. There are rumours that it’s a network of dissent.’
‘And from there it spreads to include the people.’ He lowered his voice. ‘So did Anselm intend to spread a new call to arms?’
She shivered. ‘Hundreds of rebels fled north and had to take to the wildwood to escape the punishment of the King’s Council -’
‘As I know myself.’
She put a protective hand on his sleeve. ‘As you well know.’
‘And they have not given up hope of achieving their ideals. If Gloucester suspects that another rebellion is about to take place it’s easy to see why he and the Council have brought in a law against vagrants. Anyone caught travelling outside their town or vill or manor – ’
‘Will be scooped up into his killing embrace.’
They looked at each other in horror.
Hildegard said in a muffled voice, ‘By the word vagrant I think we might begin to understand what Gloucester means.’
‘He means one thing: rebels.’ He turned pale and his fingers strayed over the four notes that held the secret call to arms.
‘Oh Pierrekyn, will it never end, this treachery against the people and those who love the king?’
Murder at Meaux Page 13
