Blood Moon

The
conspirators fell silent as they tried to tell from the sounds alone if the news was good or bad. They heard the clatter of the horse in the yard; heard its rider dismount; heard the crunch of his boots as he crossed the yard. Entering, he brought with him the cold of the night and the smells of the open road. He quickly searched among the anxious faces in the room until he found the one he was looking for and then dropped to one knee.

‘Well?’

‘My lord marshal, he has escaped.’

At this the room erupted, but the marshal put up his hand for calm. ‘Thank you John, you have done well. Go now to the kitchens and eat.’
He then turned to the man seated next to him. ‘So your grace, what now?’

The archbishop thought long and hard. Finally he shrugged. ‘We have no choice. We carry on.’

Now another man stepped out from the shadows and the archbishop reluctantly met his eye. ‘You know the people of Suffolk, my lord?’

‘Indeed I do, your grace. We are old friends.’

The archbishop nodded. ‘Then you know what must be done.’

Chapter 1

BEGINNINGS

On
a cold and blustery autumnal afternoon in the year of Our Lord 1214, while war raged and empires were being lost and made, there arrived in our little town of Edmundsbury a seemingly inconsequential party of travellers consisting of a young man, his heavily pregnant wife and a maid. The husband was of sufficient rank to be lodged in the abbey and they were duly allotted rooms adjacent to the abbot’s palace. The girl was close to term and a bumpy day in the saddle had its inevitable results with her waters breaking, inconveniently, in the middle of the night. Being the abbey’s physician I was summoned shortly before lauds to attend the delivery.

Now, as a monk used to ministering to the needs of seventy other monks my expertise in the science of midwifery is at best rudimentary. What the girl needed was a clutch of nuns fussing about her with pails of hot water and yards of linen
, but our nearest Benedictine sisters are twelve miles away at the convent of Saint George in Thetford, and even had they been summoned straight away by fast rider the earliest they could have got here would have been noon of the following day and that would have been far too late. So for better or worse what the lady got was me - with the doubtful aid of my young assistant, Dominic, whose bleary-eyed knowledge of the sacred mysteries of childbirth was even less than mine. Fortunately she did not have to suffer at our hands too much because by the time I managed to haul my protesting limbs out of my cot and get them to the lady’s bedside she had done most of the hard work herself and presented me with the product of her night’s efforts: To wit, a beautiful pink baby girl with a face like a wrinkled prune and a mouth big enough to swallow a cabbage.

The miracle of new life is always a source of wonder and joy and something that happens all too rarely in a house of irredeemably male servants of God – indeed, to my knowledge it has never happened before in all the twenty-seven years I have been here. More used as I am to lancing boils than severing umbilici, when it comes to babies I admit to a little nervousness. Short of making sure the cord was securely clamped there was little I could do other than wiggle a finger in that cavernous mouth as it protested noisily in my arms. In so doing I was perhaps a little neglectful of the mother who, after all, had had the worst of the night. One thing I do know about giving birth is that it can be a long and arduous affair. I well remember the arrival of my cousin’s firstborn. His poor wife had been utterly exhausted after many hours of exertion at the end of which she looked as though she had simultaneously scaled a mountain and swum a river drained as she was of energy and drenched in sweat. From what I could see of this young lady, however, she seemed quite serene and rested - astonishingly so after her efforts. I could only admire the fortitude which singles out a daughter of the higher ranks of our society.

‘How are you feeling, my child?’ I said carefully replacing the babe back in its cot. The proud father standing nervously to one side answered for her:

‘She is well, thank you brother, as you can see.’

I nodded. ‘Indeed, remarkably so. Please accept my congratulations, sir. May I ask, is this your first child?’

‘Yes,’ the young man answered curtly.

We stood about in awkward silence while the baby wailed.

‘Nothing wrong with her lungs at least,’ I chuckled.

‘I expect she’s hungry.’

I raised my hands in supplication. ‘Of course. My apologies. Whatever was I thinking of? We will withdraw and allow you some privacy to, erm…yes indeed. Dominic, what are you standing there gawping for? The door, boy, the door!’

And that was that. Mother and child seemed healthy enough, so I left the couple to their own manifestly adequate devices. In a couple of hours I was due to leave for my home at Ixworth Hall
, and with the sun already beginning to lighten the horizon above the abbey walls I promptly forgot all about the young family in the lodge and instead concentrated my mind on my impending expedition into the wilds of Suffolk. It was to be the start of a journey that would take me half way across East Anglia and into the pages of history.

Visiting my family home is a prospect I both relish and dread.
Relish
because who does not delight in revisiting the scenes of happy childhood memories? And
dread
because my mother still lives there. It is in answer to her summons that I have come. My mother is no longer a young woman. Exactly how old she is I have never had the impertinence - or the courage - to ask, but I am in the fiftieth year of my life and she was not in the first blush of hers when she bore me. That makes her very old indeed. She has always been a hearty woman but no-one can put off the imperatives of time for ever, and recently she has been sending word to the abbey that her health is failing and that she wishes to see me. This has been a matter of some embarrassment to me for along with everything else we monks give up when we enter the cloister we are supposed to sever our links with our earthly families joining as we do instead the Family of Christ. That being said, the Benedictine Rule is not unsympathetic. Occasional contact is still permitted with kinfolk but for this the protocol is quite clear: It is for the family member to visit the monk and not the other way around. But whoever wrote that rule never had to deal with the Lady Isabel. On the pretext of her great age and increasing immobility, she has been badgering the prior to allow me out to visit her and each time he has replied in the negative insisting instead that she should come to us. But that merely prompted further messages from her, each more urgent than the last, until it became a battle of wills and one which Prior Herbert was determined not to lose. In the end I think he gave in from sheer exhaustion. It seems I am to be allowed to leave the abbey after all - for one night only - and that on the strict condition I am back at the abbey in time for compline the following night. And so it was that I came to be saddling my mule in the abbey courtyard so early on this bleak October morning in readiness for the short ride to Ixworth Hall.

The hall is barely six miles from the abbey by road but a span as wide as the world apart in philosophy. The Lady Isabel does not approve of mon
asteries. That is an awkward state of affairs for a monk and the reason I say that while I am always pleased to see my mother, as any dutiful son must, I am not entirely regretful of the rule that places limits on the opportunity to do so. Still, I could not help wondering as I ambled my way along the leaf-strewn lanes of Suffolk if this time she might really be as ill as she was making out and if perhaps this visit was indeed to be the Final Reckoning. I should have realised it was nothing of the kind.

‘How is your arthritis, mother?’

‘Pah! There is nothing wrong with my joints. If faking illness is the only way a mother can get to see her only child then I will hobble on two sticks before that buffoon of a prior. Come, kiss your mother.’

I lightly pecked the proffered cheek and sat down to look at her. She
had once been a great beauty – I know, I’ve seen the portraits. But now she is wizened with a mouth drawn tight with pain and the weariness of living. Dressed these days from head to foot in black she resembled nothing so much as malevolent old crow.

Oswald, our ancient family retainer, hobbled in carrying two goblets of hot mulled wine on a silver salvo. ‘You shouldn’t be too angry with Prior Herbert,’ I said taking mine. ‘He has much on his mind at the moment.’

‘Ah yes,’ she grinned. ‘Who is to be the next abbot? Have you monks managed to come to a decision yet or are you still debating? After all, it has only been three years since the last one died.’

I shifted uneasily in my chair at her
mocking. ‘A name has been revealed to us,’ I replied cautiously, ‘by God’s grace.’

‘Cha!’ s
he snorted. ‘By the pope’s you mean - Hugh Northwold. But the king doesn’t approve.’

‘The king…’ I said eyeing Oswald hesitantly ‘…is in need of persuasion.’

‘The king is in need of a choice. What you monks gave him was a
fait accompli
.’

I frowned irritably. ‘You are remarkably well-informed of abbey business, mother. Do you
have spies in the abbey cloister now?’

‘I
like to keep abreast of events,’ she sniffed. ‘God knows I’ve little enough to engage me stuck out here in this wilderness.’

That at least I could appreciate, for despite appearances the Dowager Lady Isabel de Ixworth is no simple country widow. Indeed, there was a time when men of learning sought her out to discourse on every subject from religion to mathematics. In her youth she’d been determined to pursue an academic life and had even gone to study at the cathedral school of Notre-Dame in Paris for a while when it was still possible for a woman to do so, and there she attained something of a reputation as a scholar. It meant giving up any thoughts of marriage, naturally, since no-one can sully the sanctity of learning with the profanities of married life. It was meeting my father put an end to all that. Not because he disapproved of her intellectual aspirations - on the contrary, he found her propensity to question everything a stimulating challenge even though having a wife cleverer than he would have tried the patience of a lesser man. No, it was matters
domestique
that altered the direction of her life – the eternal female dichotomy. She wanted a family and my father was the first man she had met whom she considered worthy enough to furnish her with one – a decision for which I am understandably grateful. Even so, the mechanics of conception proved to be no simple task and it was not until their fifth year of marriage that I finally made my way into the world. And what a disappointment I turned out to be. She had hoped for another Peter Abelard. What she got was a barely adequate physician and monk. Of my first choice of career Lady Isabel approved, but not the second. She had, after all, rejected for herself the life of a religious contemplative, and now here was her son doing the self-same thing. I don’t think she ever quite forgave me for it.

‘It’s a pity you could not have got yourself nominated to the post.’

I guffawed at the suggestion. ‘Me? Abbot of Edmundsbury?’

‘Why not? You are as qualified as any.’ She frowned and tapped her stick irritably. ‘You’ve no ambition, Walter. That’s always been your trouble. You’ll always be stuck in this backwater physicking to a lot of smelly old bachelors.’

I would hardly call one of Europe’s richest abbeys a
backwater
, but she was being deliberately provocative and I wasn’t going to rise to the bait.

‘I’ve plenty of ambition,’ I said pushing my legs out in front of me. ‘And the welfare of my brother monks is a more than worthwhile calling – a calling
, I might add, from God. Besides, the post of abbot is too…political.’

‘Politics is the only calling worth having. The great affairs of state, the wars in France, the king…’

I pulled a face and looked pointedly at Oswald. These were dangerous times, and it is never wise to discuss such matters in front of servants, even lifelong retainers.

‘Oh, don’t mind him,’ she said flapping a hand at the man. ‘He’s as deaf as a post – aren’t you Oswald?’

‘Yes, my lady.’

Oswald finished banking up the fire and left the room.

‘So,’ I said when he’d shut the door and we were alone at last. ‘Since it isn’t my candidacy to be the next Abbot of Edmundsbury, and you are clearly not at death’s door, why am I here?’

She leaned toward me. ‘You’ve had some visitors: A young nobleman and his wife.’

My mouth dropped open – an unfortunate habit of mine that happens whenever I am taken by surprise and one I have never been able to conquer. ‘How on earth did you know that? They only arrived yesterday.’

She waved away my objection. ‘What do you know about them?’

‘Not much. The boy is called Raoul, his wife is Adelle and they are from Norfolk. That’s all I know.’

She nodded. ‘The boy is a de Gray
- you know the name, of course.’

‘Not unless you mean John de Gray, the Bishop of Norwich.’ I looked at her face. ‘Oh dear, you do mean Bishop de Gray.’

‘Bishop, sometime Justiciar of Ireland, sometime Archbishop of Canterbury - and one of King John’s most trusted servants.’

I shrugged.
‘So?’

She fixed me with a quizzical eye. ‘The girl is pregnant?’