Another thought struck her and it made her widen her eyes in alarm. Scarcely able to bring herself to put it into words she whispered, ’Is this why Hubert has stopped looking for Anselm’s murderer? Do you think he suspected that he was part of a network of like-minded folk planning to stand against the kings’ enemies? Could it possibly be...he guessed why the poor old fellow was silenced...’ she took a shuddering breath, ‘and does he now seek to protect his murderer?’
‘He cannot support the king’s enemies!’ Pierrekyn exploded. ‘Does he support the prohibition on travel, on reading the Bible how we want, in English? He cannot support Gloucester and Lancaster against the king!’ He got to his feet and walked about in a sudden rage of incomprehension. ‘How in all conscience can he allow Brother Anselm’s murderer to go free? Can he really be a supporter of Gloucester? Has he no regard for the people of this realm? This must be the reason Prior Benedict hurried Anselm into his coffin. He knew. But the abbot in his haste brought him back to Meaux –’
‘He was moved by the death of someone he saw as his early guide and teacher,’ she excused. ‘Now he will see Anselm’s allegiance as a betrayal.’
‘He cannot justify the sight of thieves swinging from gibbets at every crossroad? Doesn’t he understand the desperation of ordinary folk suffering from the rapacious laws that keep them in poverty?’
This was no abstract criticism. The price of bread had risen beyond the reach of the poorest town-dwellers and those still in bonded service. Corn grown by the labourers themselves had to be sent to the flour mills owned by wealthy landowners and the great abbeys – at a cost that put a loaf of bread out of reach of many of them. To steal a rabbit from their lord’s warrens or fish from his waterways in order to feed their hungry children was punishable in a heinous manner – mutilation or hanging, which was worse?
Hildegard knew these problems might not be solved by King Richard but the people believed he was their protector in a way Gloucester and the Lancasters had proved they were not.
Now it looked as if Hubert’s go slow on bringing Anselm’s murderer to book was because he had decided to ally himself with the dukes and their governing council against the crying needs of the people.
Her own problems seemed insignificant now. What did the fate of one life, one soul, one worldly love count against the fight for justice and the fate of thousands?
24
Pierrekyn had been frightened into silence when he left. All the danger he had faced seven years ago as he fled north with other rebels might be about to crash down on him again. In these times nobody could count on remaining safe forever. And county boundaries were permeable. Kent was as close to the north as some hard riding militia man might make it.
Hildegard decided it was time she spoke to the Circator. He was the one who had found Anselm’s body and he must have some ideas about the whole sorry matter.
Taking off her head-covering and pulling up her hood, she waited until Compline when twilight might more surely conceal her identity. While the bell was still tolling she slipped across the bridge and hurried past the porter with the briefest nod.
The garth was busy as monks filed out of the refectory and headed for the south door of the church along the well worn path. Joining in at the tag end she made sure that when she found a place inside it was in the shadow of one of the stone columns where she could see but not easily be seen.
Despite everything she could not stifle a certain shaming thrill when, after everyone had filed to their places, Hubert made his entrance. The old feelings came flooding back. He had never seemed more handsome – more haunted, more deeply endowed with a spiritual presence than now. It emphasised the dangerous beauty of his features and the dark ambiguity in his eyes.
As if mesmerised she watched him from a secret corner in the shadow of a pillar, and despite herself, was hanging on every word as his mellifluous tones merged with the evening languor of the choir when they chanted the ancient prayer – Te lucis ante terminus ...Before the ending of the light, Creator of all things...we ask you to be our protector for our safe-keeping... et noctium phantasmata hostemque nostrum comprime ...may nightmares be removed from us...and our enemies held in check...through the Lord who reigns with you forever... cum Sancto Spiritu...Amen.
The last note dwindled into the heights of the stone vault, echoing and fading until it folded into nothing. After a languishing pause the monks began to drift out and by the time she managed to pull herself together and follow them Hubert had already set off towards his lodge.
With her hood well over her face she paced slowly away across the garth, deep in thought. He had placed her forever outside the certainties of the Order. Despite the beauty of the vision presented she doubted the reality of what it was about. And now this, the old suspicion that he was not all he seemed was tearing back to rend her heart and mind with doubt.
She recalled how in Avignon last year her first thought on seeing him there was that he was a partisan on behalf of the French anti-pope, Clement, set in enmity against the pope in Rome favoured by the English and the Holy Roman Empire. Clement’s spy network probed far into the alliance of the northern states.
Why else, she had asked herself at the time, would Hubert be here? She knew well why the prioress had sent her to the pope’s palace: to find out which allies from England Clement was fostering – and there, visibly and welcomed, was Abbot de Courcy himself.
Because of him, of what he seemed, she had pushed aside her doubts and begun to trust him again.
Circator, she reminded, pulling herself together. I must find out why he suspected something terrible had happened in the scriptorium and roused the lay-brothers to break down the door.
She turned into the entrance near the steps and began to climb.
She was only half way up when she was halted by a voice commanding, ‘Stay where you are, brother!’
She froze.
After the echo died she turned. Like an apparition Hubert himself had materialised at the bottom of the steps. He was staring up to where she was caught in the act of pushing open the scriptorium door. She noticed he was leaning heavily on his wooden crutch.
Remembering not to give herself away by speaking she gazed down in silence.
After a moment he began to climb the steps towards her with his long, loping stride, two at a time, hindered a little by his broken leg, but gaining rapidly until, when he was almost at the top, she could stand her ground no longer and with a gasp turned and fled, hurtling along the corridor and with no idea what she would do when she reached the door at the end. It led straight into the frater and there could be no escape.
He caught up with her before she was even half way along.
His fingers bit into her arm as he swivelled her to face him. Then with a grimace he ripped back her hood.
Breathing heavily, they stared face to face.
His eyes glinted in derision. ‘Did you really think I wouldn’t guess?’
She tried to outface him but could find nothing to say in defence.
He ground out, ‘Don’t you think I don’t know every monk in my abbey? I know them all, I know their foibles, their failings, the way they walk and pray, and I know their every thought.’
‘If that’s so...’ she managed to croak then tailed off. Then he would know the identity of Anselm’s murderer?
It followed.
It meant that by not revealing the murderer’s identity he condoned what had been done – which inevitably meant that he sided with the enemies of King Richard and the people. Which meant that the ambiguity that had attached to him in their early days was no ambiguity at all.
The feeling that the blindfold had been stripped from her eyes at last was so shattering she could only gape.
He was still gripping her hood and now he wound the end round his hand until she was dragged towards him, against him, against the cross he wore, and his mouth was close enough to her own so that all he need do to make himself plain was to whisper in a venomous tone, �
��You have defied me.’
When she did not answer he asked in a violent undertone, ‘Did you adopt this disguise so you could visit your lover?’
She flinched at the hatred in his voice.
‘Answer me!’ he commanded.
‘That was not my purpose,’ she managed.
‘Have you been to see him?’
‘No.’
‘So tell me, what was this purpose of yours of invading my abbey?’ He waited with a cynical smile ready to pounce on the lie that would come.
If I admit I wanted to speak to the Circator he will know why I’m here, she thought in fright.
‘I...I wanted to attend Compline and knew you would not allow it.’ It was partly true.
He looked surprised. For a moment he seemed unable to find a response. His grip tightened. He narrowed his eyes. ‘I don’t believe you.’
She waited to see what would happen next.
‘Did you know I was following you across the garth? Is that why you tried to hide in here?’
‘I did not know...’ she admitted before she could stop herself.
He frowned and the hand toying with her hood tightened. ‘So you have some business here, in the scriptorium perhaps?’
When she made no reply he released his grip and stepped back. He looked thoughtful. For a moment she hoped that was the end of it but he suddenly fixed her with a skewering glance. ’You have defied me. Your punishment is to wait on our guests when they arrive. You will be barefoot. You will wait on them until I say you may not. The rest of your punishment will follow. Be sure of that.’
With an abrupt stepping away as if to touch her was to touch fire, he said, ‘Go back to your nunnery until I send for you.’
It was an endless trudge back through the thickening fog to the house of nuns. Candle-light flickered through the hall casement with shapes of those within passing back and forth as preparations for the Long Silence were being made.
She stood with her hand on the latch of the outer gate for some time, staring inside, wishing she could be an innocent part of such a tranquil scene. Someone came to the window, noticed her, beckoned. With a sigh she lifted the latch and prepared to meet them all with as much equanimity as she could muster.
25
‘So that’s where I shall be, Agnetha. Do you think you can run things over here? I’m sure you can,‘ she added quickly, ‘as that is what you have been doing all the time I was away.’
Agnetha gave a comfortable shrug. ‘I do little. You chose your nuns well. They have a part to play and do it without the need for instruction.’
‘I am most fortunate.’
Wondering how her sisters might take the news of her further humiliation she went to her chamber, dressed her own wound with the salve Egbert had left and lay down.
An image of Hubert swam before her. His touch, his burning glance, everything – she could not deny it – everything about him made her limbs melt – and yet he was her enemy.
26
The Herberer who ran the abbey gardens had told Pierreyn that he was that night called to the scriptorium in lieu of a coroner and suspected what Hubert himself suspected as soon as he saw the corpse during its removal to the chapel.
In fact, the Herberer told Pierrekyn in confidence, as the minstrel later related it to Hildegard, he had himself voiced out loud the suspicion that Anselm had been drugged and then strangled,‘But the Prior, heaven help him, fearing scandal, was reluctant to delve too deeply into the matter. I was told to keep my imaginings to myself.’
Now it was an accepted fact around the abbey that he had been right.
On the basis of the minstrel’s ability to move freely about Meaux, Hildegard called him into her presence now. ’Pierrekyn, will you do me a favour?’
‘Certainly, domina.’
‘Will you get a clear account from the Circator about what happened the night Brother Anselm’s body was found?’
‘I will, indeed. I’ll go and search him out this minute.’ He put his lute into its bag. Aware of her recent experience outside the scriptorium he added, ‘You could have asked me before and saved yourself an encounter with the abbot.’
‘I did not want to involve you. Who knows where this might end? But, Pierrekyn, be careful! Make your questions seem casual. Don’t let Hubert have any reason to suspect you of being involved. We need to know who he is protecting.’
He raised his fist. ‘For King Richard and the true Commons!’
He was back in short order. ‘Fortune smiled. I bumped into him straightaway. He was just going off to get some sleep after his night’s work, poor fellow, but when I told him I was puzzled as to how he came to believe there was something wrong on the night of Anselm’s murder he took me to one side.’ Pierrekyn was a mimic as well as a singer and now did a passable imitation of the Circator’s general manner.
‘“I’ll tell you this, young fellow,”’ he began. ‘“It was the light shining out like a little beam of radiance as if to tell me Anselm’s soul was winging its way to heaven. Although at that point I didn’t know what it signified.”’
‘What on earth did he mean by that?’
‘My very question. He said, “I was doing my rounds, holding my one candle with its horn shield before me, making sure the brothers were sleeping sound until the next Office – “‘
‘Which was?’ Hildegard asked.
‘“Which was Matins,” he replies. Go on, if you will, say I. “And I always check the scriptorium to remind anyone still working there that they have to sleep. And that night I found the door locked. This is unusual. It is only locked when a scribe leaves – in order to protect our documents, you see? But now a light was on and the door was locked from inside. Of course, I knew someone was within because of the little shaft of light like a guiding light shining through the keyhole. It was like a little ray from the sun.” Forgive me, Hildegard, but I’m trying to replicate the Circator’s exact words and manner in case I’ve missed anything.’
‘That’s all right. I’m enjoying your performance. Should you ever tire of being a musician you could well find employment with a troupe of mummers, and you’re not the only one round here.’
‘The Circator again then. “Brother Anselm, I called. Time to hold off now and get some sleep while you can. I heard him reply. Very well, brother. Just a line or two more and then I’ve finished. I continued on my way. When I’d done a circuit of the entire abbey I saw from below in the garth the candle-light through the window that told me he was still there, working away. This is no good, thought I, his poor eyes will be ruined. So I went back inside and, guided by the beam of light, my candle by now having burned to a flicker, I went up to the door and gave it a push.”’
‘What happened? Hildegard asked.
‘I asked him that as well. “Nothing,” says he. “It would not budge. I put my shoulder to it but could not move it. Of course, by now we know why it wouldn’t open. I called out, Open the door, Anselm! Why have you dropped the wooden beam in place? But of course there was no reply. I gave the door another shove but it was useless. I rapped on it with my knuckles. Open up! Of course, nothing. I thought he must be sleeping. Oh well, I decided, he’s probably earned his rest.”’
‘What did he do next?’ Hildegard asked.
‘He says he joined the rest of the community at the next night office and afterwards spent a moment or two in the warming room before deciding to go back to the scriptorium. “The others will vouch for the fact that the light was on,” he said. “We could all see it from the garth even as the sky itself began to grow light. Working late, somebody observed. Most assiduous and commendable, said the Prior. Go and relieve him, someone. I kept quiet about him possibly being asleep and went up myself. The same. When I went back down I told the Prior and he called out a couple of conversi and told them to force the door. This is an outrage, he says. He must be asleep!”’
Pierrekyn looked to see how Hildegard was taking all this. ‘You know about the door,
don’t you? How they were all for getting axes until one of the sub priors suggested taking it off its hinges? That was no easy task either but a lot less damaging than smashing it to firewood. “Imagine our confusion, says the Circator, when it turned out to be as I’d expected, the big beam that bars the door from inside was down. Only Anselm could have dropped it into position.” Or a wraith,’ Pierrekyn added, ‘able to come and go through thick stone walls at will.’
‘Could the bar have fallen down accidentally?’ asked Hildegard.
‘Unlikely. It’s held by a bolt on a contrivance that has to be pushed in on a spring to release it.’
‘And what opinion does the Circator hold?’
‘Angels, or devils on his second thoughts once the body was discovered. He still believes the beam of light through the keyhole was a sign of Anselm’s soul seeking heaven.’
She sighed. ‘What do you think?’
‘Something made the bar drop. All I can imagine is that somebody went in, strangled Anselm, and after he fled Anselm struggled to bring the bar down as a rather belated protection against someone.’
‘I’m not sure you could do a thing like that after being strangled.’
27
No further on then. She began to wonder why she was so determined to discover the truth. This was a matter for the abbey and its Chapter. If their abbot wanted to keep it secret what was it to her?
Its only purpose would be to reveal with whom his allegiance lay.
There was, in addition, the question of the copied pages secreted inside the aumbry. Who else would know they were there? Had one of the monks suspected what business Anselm was engaged in and decided to end it? Was it Hubert himself?
The idea made her skin feel clammy with fear. But it was a ridiculous fancy. Hubert could have no direct hand in the matter as he had been on board a ship on the point of foundering on the Holderness coast about the time Anselm died. It could, however, involve someone he had appointed, couldn’t it? Someone who would carry out his wishes during his absence.
Murder at Meaux Page 14
