The morning sun, low in the sky, was just beginning to cut a swathe through the banks of mist shrouding the close when the York retainers came stumbling out from the fetid stew of their bedstraw. It was quickly kicked into a corner of the stone passage where most of the servants had been sleeping, and one by one they staggered out into the cold damp air.
‘On the road again,’ somebody yawned, still half asleep.
‘Aye, it’s a dog’s life,’ another complained.
‘Even so, shift this water barrel and set it on that third wagon, Jack. Stop moaning and jump to it.’ The man who last spoke scratched his groin while he waited for his instructions to be carried out.
Hildegard had her leather bag over her shoulder inside her travelling cloak. She had slept uncomfortably with her head resting on the bag instead of a pillow. She too was yawning.
Thomas appeared. ‘This is a sudden change of plan. What’s made His Grace decide to leave all of a sudden?’
‘Urgency in getting down to London,’ she told him. ‘That’s all I know.’
‘Nothing to do with Swynford, then?’
She shrugged. Swynford. Bolingbroke. The cross.
Soon the wagons were reloaded and the dray horses were backed into the shafts. People stood around in little knots. Suspicion of each other made them more silent than usual.
During the night it had come to Hildegard why she had been compelled to stare so hard at young Swynford. He was the same build as the man who had the argument in the cathedral yesterday with Jarrold, the same way of walking, the same swagger and, above all, the same voice, with that unmistakable Lincolnshire accent. She had seen him again as well. The scene in the bishop’s herb garden came back. The unknown woman pulling up armloads of the mysterious herb was Lady Swynford, and now she knew that the young man who had taken her arm in that familiar fashion was her son.
She recalled the fact that the herberer hailed from
a place a little way south of Lincoln. Kyme. It could be one of the manors held by the Swynfords along with Kettlethorpe and some other holdings in the region. Jarrold still had kin down that way, so he claimed.
Eventually the archbishop appeared. After checking that Hildegard was carrying her bag he walked briskly to his char without greeting anyone, climbed in and had his grooms pull the hood forward to close the leather flap. Clearly he wanted to be alone. His was the first vehicle to rumble out over the cobblestones followed by his longbowmen in a brisk little cart beside which some of them preferred to run. The men-at-arms were in evidence too, one allotted to each wagon this time and all of them carrying arms. The vittling wagons followed, and the water wagon, the kitchen servants’ wagon, with the red-faced Master Fulford taking up more than his fair share of space as usual, and finally, after one or two more rumbled by, including the high-sided wagon bearing the falcons, came the wagon loaded with picks, shovels and a spare wheel or two, to take up the rear. Many servants chose to run and only jumped aboard the wagons when they felt they’d had enough exercise.
In this formation and at a steady pace equivalent to a horse’s trot, they made their way down the steep hillside to the flat country beyond, passing over heathland for many miles and wending their way eventually down onto the wetlands, skirting dykes and watercourses and passing many mills along the way, following the old Roman road that would lead them down to London.
Hildegard and Thomas decided to ride and Edwin joined them. He had news of a sort.
‘When I took in His Grace’s tisane this morning and happened to make some casual remark about the murder and how we seemed to be no further on, he really snapped at me. “I haven’t time for servants and their quarrels,” he said, practically snarling in my face. It’s my view he intends to wash his hands of the whole affair if we don’t get a lead soon.’
‘Poor Martin,’ remarked Hildegard. ‘I expect his wife, for one, would still like to know who killed him.’ She recalled the young woman standing outside the church the morning they left and the anxiety on her face as she peered inside.
‘We’ll get a statement from her when the Bishopthorpe messenger catches up with us. She should know if he had any enemies.’
The roadside. Day. Morning. Hildegard and Thomas.
‘It’s made ten times more difficult by being on the road. If we’d remained in Bishopthorpe we’d have solved the mystery by now.’
Thomas agreed. ‘There are too many laymen working at Bishopthorpe. Grooms, stable lads, the blacksmith, his apprentices, the saddler, the assistant falconers, the dairymen, and so on and so forth. Most of them living just outside the enclave or at home farm and none of them with any need to be up around the palace. But,’ he concluded, ‘you wouldn’t know if one of them hadn’t taken it into his head to stroll up to the palace to commit a murder.’
A day passed, a night, and then another day, and they had travelled a fragment of the journey that had
taken Harold, the great Saxon king, only five days to accomplish. But he had his victory at Stamford Bridge behind him and dreams of future glory against the Norman threat in the south to goad him forward. His men must have been half dead on their feet by the time they staggered to Hastings.
They themselves journeyed in comparative comfort but still had many more miles to go and were staggering with exhaustion too.
Every day the hawks were flown and they ate well. The rule against meat for the two Cistercians was relaxed. The falconer was running alongside the archbishop’s char now and called up to their driver. When the horses were pulled to a trot and Neville poked his head out he produced the latest kill with a smile. It was a young hind, no larger than a dog.
‘Well done, Willerby. Who brought her down?’
‘Pertelot, Your Grace.’
‘Ah, sweet creature. Make sure she gets her portion.’
‘I certainly will, Your Grace.’
Whistling to himself the falconer stood by the side of the track with the animal dripping blood until the butcher’s wagon rolled up.
They reached the vast woodlands in the shire of Nottingham.
It was a savage territory, rendered dark and gloomy by the storm-contorted trees. A dead trunk blasted by lightning now and then emerged like a ghost out of the darkness of the undergrowth. The track became more and more twisted, full of ruts and potholes and sudden drops. They were forced to wind their way round tree roots that lay like snakes across
their path. It was a perfect lair for outlaws.
Nobody mentioned the ambush at the beginning of their journey but it was remembered in every sidelong glance into the trees.
All this time Swynford had been riding with the convoy accompanied by his page. Sometimes they rode on ahead, sometimes they lagged behind. When the cavalcade stopped to enable cooking fires to be lit late in the afternoon, he remained aloof, as if afraid of catching some contagion. He had his own supplies, noted Hildegard, today augmented by a rabbit which his servant tried to roast on a spit over the small fire.
The burnt offering he produced was evidently not to Swynford’s liking because when it was put into his hands he inspected it disdainfully then hurled it into the grass.
A servant from the archbishop’s party loped over to retrieve it. ‘Chucking good food away,’ he scoffed as he rejoined his companions. The rabbit was hacked into pieces and added to the stew they were heating over their own fire.
Swynford made an ill-judged remark about shit being what they were used to, which the others piously ignored, and eventually they were back on the road again after no more than the exchange of a few black looks. Hildegard noticed, however, that one or two hands slid to knives and she wondered how long it would be before a fight broke out. Swynford would be idiotic to provoke it when he was so greatly outnumbered.
The weather took a turn for the worse, just as Bishop Buckingham’s weather prophet had predicted, and the
trees shut out what little light there was, so that they rattled down the narrow track into the heart of the woodland in an ever darkening gloom.
Earlier the leather canopy over the archbishop’s char had been rolled back to its first hoop to make the most of the fine weather, but now it was rolled forward again. Summer was fading to nothing.
Hildegard was sitting with Thomas, Edwin and the archbishop’s page on the running board next to the waggoner while Neville himself remained in the shelter at the back where he could sleep undisturbed beneath his furs, and it was now so quiet in this thickly wooded country that it began to cast a spell over the entire retinue. Gossip ceased. The only things audible were the sounds of the straining harness leathers, the squeak of the wooden wheels turning on their axles and the occasional clink of metal. Now and then a bird sang but mostly they fell silent as the convoy passed by.
They were bowling down the side of a shallow hill when a shout came from behind, and when Hildegard turned she saw that one of the drivers had hit an obstacle damaging one of the wheels. The passengers were climbing down with glum faces to have a look. The vehicle hung at an odd angle and could be driven neither forward nor backwards.
‘A wheel,’ she reported.
‘We’ve been lucky so far,’ observed Thomas, sleepily. ‘Last time I went by cart to Pickering Castle we had no less than three changes of wheel.’
‘The track is bad up there on the moors,’ agreed Hildegard.
Everybody else began to climb down to see what they could do and a servant was sent back to the end of the line to get hold of the wheelwright. Neville’s bodyguards got down one by one from the wagons where they had been separately posted and jogged back to lend a hand. Their own guard looked uncertain then decided to follow suit.
‘At least they’ve got plenty of beef,’ Thomas murmured as he watched the brawny fellows manhandle the great wagon onto a support so the wheel could be taken right off.
Neville gave a shout from his haven under the canopy, demanding to know why they’d stopped.
‘A wheel off, Your Grace,’ called Thomas over his shoulder.
‘Tell my man to drive on. They can catch up with us. Let that Swynford fellow scout ahead. May as well make himself useful.’ He pulled his furs round himself again and went back to sleep.
The driver clicked the horses on and they trundled forward.
By this time Swynford, after a quick look, had remounted and soon overtook them. His little page trotted quickly along behind him and they descended a dip in the track. A few minutes later they disappeared from view.
The trees clustered more thickly on both sides hereabouts and the scent of autumn was thick on the air. The hoof thump of Swynford’s horse dwindled then faded.
The char continued on down the dip to the bottom where it levelled out before the next corner and they
reached a point where the track dropped deeper into the trees round a slow curve. The rest of the carts were out of earshot by now.
Rain began to fall in big single drops making the few leaves that remained bounce and glisten on the branches. Hildegard pulled her hood up and wished she had a waxed cloak like Swynford’s. They were just turning the corner after coming out of the dip when their driver gave a shout.
He cracked the whip as one of the lead horses reared, and the char juddered to a halt, the four horses snorting and jostling in their traces.
As if by magic the woods were suddenly bristling with men. Bowmen rose from the undergrowth on both sides of the track. Hildegard gripped her bag in alarm. Edwin gave a curse.
Swynford’s riderless horse was cropping grass nearby. Its owner, his scabbard empty, was in the grip of two ruffians dressed as labourers in brown fustian.
One of them was gripping him by the hair while another held what looked like Swynford’s own sword within inches of his exposed throat.
Thomas scrambled down off the running-board, picking up his stave as he went, but a couple of men armed with hunting knives materialised on both sides and pinned him against the char, saying, ‘If you know what’s good for you, Brother, start praying.’
Hildegard jerked to her feet. She kicked a fold of her cloak over her bag and reached to her belt for her knife but a man’s voice addressed her from across the grove.
‘Stay where you are, Domina. You’re in no danger
if you do as you’re told. We’re here for this fellow.’ He indicated Swynford, whose face was deathly pale, his lips trembling.
‘Why the devil have we stopped again?’
The irritable voice of the archbishop broke the tension. The wagon tilted as he rose from his furs and lurched forward to see what was happening.
Clearly the men had not expected anyone else in the char and now the man holding Swynford called out, ‘Who the devil are you?’
Neville stood to his full and considerable height on the running-board then shrugged his great fur-lined cloak from off his shoulders to reveal his vestments and his gleaming pectoral cross.
‘I,’ came his reply, filling the grove with its sound, ‘am the Archbishop of York.’