The Dragon of Handale (10 page)

“Them! The sheep! The prioress’s favourites—” Her eyes were full of bitterness. “They glory in the power they’re given. They love pain. They inflict it with as much malice as they can. They see it as a holy rite. Punishing sinners for the glory of God. How they relish it!”

“Not all, surely?”

“The inner circle, the subprioress, the cellaress, one or two cronies of theirs. They say they’re only doing God’s will. The rest of them enjoy having pain inflicted on them. They rejoice in it. The worse, the better! It’s their ecstasy. They imagine they’re divinely blessed by it. Look closely at the studded collars under their robes, the private pain they enjoy. Is that not the sin of vanity?”

“What about you?”

“Me?” She looked at Hildegard in amazement. “Can’t you see how much I long to get away? And how deeply I fear it? I hate being here! I hate it all! As do those who understand what is happening to them.” Her face was suffused with blood, eyes glittering, the wound above her eye standing out. “But what can I do, mistress? Tell me!” Her voice fell to an impassioned whisper. “I have been alone ever since I came here. I am alone now. That is unless—” She gave a desperate glance at Hildegard, then bowed her head and began to sob again. “I am truly near my end, mistress. I shall never escape. But if others can get away, then something good will come of my own agony. Help them!”

Hildegard felt remorse for inflicting pain on such a sad creature. Her cheek was quite swollen where Hildegard had fought her off. “I believe this place is under the jurisdiction of the deaconry of the archbishop of York,” she said slowly. “I’m sure he has no idea how harshly the Rule is administered here. It looks to me as if he should be told. I don’t wish to make things worse for you. How we proceed needs careful thought so that you don’t suffer retribution later.”

“Fulke returns tomorrow. He’s coming for one of the novices. I fear for her, for the fate that awaits her.”

“What do you mean?”

Mariana gave her a wild, staring look. Her mouth worked. When she could speak, she blurted, “I mean he brings girls here who have been abducted. He sells them on.”

She turned hastily towards the door. “If they know I’ve been talking to you, I’ll be sent to the punishment cell again. I can’t stand much more of that. Look.” She opened both palms. They were covered in scars. Then she pushed up her sleeves to reveal what looked like recent burn marks. “I told you they know how to inflict punishment on those they hate.”

“Is there an apothecary to tend your wounds?”

“Yes, down by the herb garden near the enclosure wall. She helps when she’s allowed to. The rest of my body is much the same. You see, I’m no use to them. I’m too impoverished to be married off and too old for the stews. I’m kept here to be tortured for their pleasure, having no other use and refusing to be one of their sheep. I fear they will break my limbs next time they fault me. Then I’m finished.”

She reached the door. “I must go before they find my cell empty.”

Hildegard put out a hand. “Don’t go yet. I need to make sure Basilda won’t see you leave. I also need to know names and dates of these others, the ones you say have gone missing. Once I have them, I vow you shall have justice.”

C
HAPTER
9

So Fulke was coming back. Hildegard recalled that complicit look she had witnessed on her first day here, between Basilda and the man in her chamber, before she knew his name.

Was Sister Mariana telling the truth about him, or was it the raving of someone cooped up for too long in a desolate and desperate place? The atmosphere was enough to crush the spirit of anyone with a spark of life in her—and if not crush her, send her mad.

Her wounds were real enough, however, even though it was a possibility that they were self-inflicted. Hildegard, feeling a pang of guilt at not believing entirely in what she had been told—it was far removed from her own experience at Swyne—knew that here was yet another reason to keep her at Handale for longer than she would like.

She went down into the garth and headed slowly towards the buildings that housed the kitchen, the bakery, and the brewery. The door leading into these offices had a lay sister in attendance. She was a short, thickset, blunt-faced woman with her sleeves rolled up.

“Yes?” she demanded when Hildegard put in an appearance.

“Our lady prioress has requested a cure. I have but little knowledge beyond the ordinary but intend to avail myself of your facilities.” She swept past before the woman had taken in what she had said. Evidently, the name of the prioress was enough to make her give way, but she was eyeing Hildegard with misgivings as she walked through the kitchen and out into the bakehouse on the other side.

A swift glance showed that the little novice, Alys, was not present. Nor was she in the malthouse. A couple of lay sisters were idly stirring the barley mash with long wooden paddles.

“I seek a novice, as I bear a message from our lady prioress,” Hildegard said, surprising herself at how easy it was to lie when the cause was sufficient.

“You mean Alys.” One of the women nodded. “Out back, slicing turnips. Next to the dairy.”

Hildegard sauntered through the far door, as if her appearance was of no consequence. There in a wooden lean-to sat the girl, surrounded by a mound of turnips fresh from the field and holding a bowl of amber-skinned slices on her lap.

She looks, thought Hildegard, for a moment recalling her own daughter at this age, just like a child bespelled by a wicked witch. “Alys,” she called quietly, casting a glance back into the brewhouse, “when is that man arriving?”

“He usually comes in the middle of the day, just as we’re starting to eat. Then he stays for his own mass and leaves before nightfall.”

That suggests he lives no more than a comfortable ride away, Hildegard decided. “Have you been told where they’re taking you?”

Alys shook her head. “To another house, they said.”

“A religious house?”

“They didn’t exactly say that. Why? What other sort of house would it be?” A look of alarm suddenly ran across her face. She put a hand to her mouth in horror at the alternative. Plainly a worse place had never occurred to her till now.

“I shall ask the prioress to allow you to help me with a few tasks. If you’re sure about wanting to avoid being taken away, then you must trust me.”

“I do. I will,” Alys said, half-rising.

“Get ready, just as if you’re leaving with him.” Swiftly, fearing someone was approaching, she picked up one of the turnips. Bending close, she whispered, “Come to me secretly after matins tonight. We’ll leave then, when everybody has gone back to bed.”

She returned through the brewhouse, holding the turnip aloft so the brewers could see it, not that they took much notice. When she reached the kitchen, she asked for one or two herbs and proceeded to make a decoction, as if, she had indeed, been set such a task by Prioress Basilda. No one spoke to her. For that matter, they did not speak to one another, either.

In midafternoon, when the place was quiet, she went to her chamber to fetch her thick cloak, then took the now-familiar path to the door in the wall behind the mortuary. Before she was halfway across the rough grass that separated the building from the rest, she heard voices.

Ahead appeared the cellaress and four or five nuns carrying lighted candles. They were walking round the outside of the mortuary, singing a hymn for the dead.

When they reached the door, two of them went inside, leaving the door open, while the others continued to go in procession round the outside. It was plain there was no way past them without being seen.

For the rest of the day, the nuns attended the dead man, praying, singing, keeping the candles alight for Giles in the belief they could help his soul wing its way to heaven. Whenever two of them began to make their way back to the priory, two more appeared.

It seemed to Hildegard. waiting impatiently in the lee of one of the buildings, that a deliberate watch over the door to the outside had been set. She gave up after a while and, hoping to put the time to better use, visited the kitchen gardens, pretending to look round for a few suitable herbs.

There had to be another way to get in and out of the enclosure. If not, she was as much a prisoner as Sister Mariana, Alys, and the rest of them.

She walked slowly past the main gate, where she had entered on her first day. It was in full view of anyone in the cloister garth. After that, she strolled down to the orchard, as if to have a look at the fruit trees, sauntering between the clipped branches until she reached the bottom of an avenue of pears.

When she turned to look back, the orchard appeared to be empty, until she noticed a distant figure shamble behind a tree. Or was it just a shadow? she asked herself. A trick of the light?

At any rate, there was no way out of the enclosure down here, either. She began to wander slowly round the enclosure wall.

On the way, she came across several wooden barns standing in plots of their own in what was the outer garth. One of them was evidently a grain store. A lay brother, one of the conversi, was methodically shovelling winter wheat into a sack.

A small stone-built tower with a window loop high up stood nearby. It had a lock with a key sticking out of it. In the opening at the top, a fluttering of wings drew her attention. A couple of birds flew out. The dovecote.

When the conversi had his back turned, she went over to the door and turned the key. The door swung open with a groan. A blast of foul-smelling bird droppings nearly knocked her back. There was nothing else of note. The inside walls stretched up to the window loop she had seen from outside. Some doves were crowded on a perch, softly cooing in the gloom.

She closed the door and turned the key.

Farther on, she came to a lopsided cottage. Its thatch needed replacing and its window openings were roughly made, but it had a pretty symmetry, with honeysuckle growing raggedly round the door. Dead now, it would give off a heavenly perfume in summer.

No one appeared even when she went right up to the door and stood gazing at the upper window for a few moments. When she turned, the main buildings were hidden behind a row of hawthorns. It gave the whole place a secluded atmosphere, separate from the priory and yet a part of it.

By the time she found herself back where she had started, she knew she must have covered every inch of the enclosure. She felt she had seen every building and both entrances. There was no other way through the high walls, and they looked impossible to breach. It must be as Dakin had told her. Anything from outside that had to be brought in must come by boat along the beck or be carried in over the tortuous woodland path.

Her only recourse was to get the girl out past the nuns in vigil at the mortuary. If they were to seek safety at the masons’ lodge, there was no other way.

Fulke arrived. One minute, only women’s voices could be heard from the choir; the next minute, a male voice was booming along the cloister. Where had he come from? And why a day earlier than expected?

Alarmed, Hildegard went to sit in a niche with her beads in her hands and her hood up. No doubt of it, here he was, as large as life.

It was a superficially innocent scene. Suspicion could not be derived from it: the lady prioress, Basilda, sailing in front of the merchant benefactor through the wide-open doors of the priory church; obedient nuns following two by two; barefoot penitents trailing after them. And the priory guest getting up from her niche, the last to enter. The doors closing, the service beginning.

Hildegard observed the scene with increasing anxiety: the nuns, with Sister Mariana among them, almost indistinguishable in the black garments designed to erase any quirk of individuality; the penitents in rough woollen shifts, heads bowed, one snuffling, perhaps with cold; a group of lay sisters in grey; the cooks and gardeners and other labouring members of the community, and even the boy, no more than six or seven, whom she recognised as the keeper of the cow.

And Master Fulke.

Strutting, more vibrantly coloured than any one of them except perhaps Basilda in her gleaming gold-thread cope, he established his preeminent place nearest the altar—this, a gaudy, glittering edifice, was vibrant itself, and seemed to mirror Fulke’s power and glory. Today, it was ablaze with beeswax candles, mirrors reflecting their light back to themselves in a myriad winking images; only the tortured body, agonising on the cross, was black with the threat of the end days.

Strange how candle flame means one thing and hell flame another, mused Hildegard, looking sideways at the scene before bringing her attention back to Fulke.

He made her feel uneasy. A provincial merchant. A nobody in the scale of things. But a man with that overweening pride in his own righteous actions. Was this true, or just her imagination? She watched him and tried to gauge the truth of him.

A man of mature years but not yet old. A man of whom it might be said, “He is in the prime of life.” A man seemingly given to many pleasures, full-lipped, high-coloured, dapper in his deep red capuchon, vibrant blue cloak, ermine-trimmed to flout the sumptuary laws, and not averse to a good gold ring or two. Was that a balas ruby? That one a sapphire? Unlikely, Hildegard corrected herself. More likely cornelian. Large, though. Well set. As indeed was everything about Master Fulke. Well set. Well set up.

As the service proceeded, she wondered where his wealth came from, living here, near the sea—a trader perhaps? An importer of goods from the northern countries, from the Baltic? Furs, maybe, timber, hawks, to be sold on, north and south, to Scotland maybe. Arms?

Why not. Big money.

For some reason, she remembered the garrison at Kilton Castle. It would be one of Northumberland’s southernmost strongholds, a protection for the coast road and the traffic on it. Tolls, maybe. Intelligence: who was travelling, where they were going, why.