Blood Moon (15 page)

 
But I digress. With a bundle of food and some warm clothing together with a pannikin of warm cow’s milk, I hastened back to the abbey where I stayed just long enough to deposit my cargo and then rushed back to take my place in the abbey church in time for vespers praying that no-one watching had guessed what I was up to. The cow’s milk, I knew, was only a temporary solution to the problem. What the baby needed was not my ministrations but Rosabel’s unique
feminine
attributes – and soon. And with this in mind I arranged to meet up with Rosabel later that evening by the south gate of the abbey, the least guarded of the abbey’s five gates, and smuggle her into the abbey grounds.

She came wearing a disguise of a pair of her husband’s breeches and hood to cover her long red hair. Heaven knows what sport Prior Herbert would have made of this had he ever found out. Bringing a woman inside the abbey walls after sunset violated a whole array of his precious rules.
One dressed as a man would have condemned us all for sure. But it was far too late to worry about such trifling matters. And I think we managed to get away with it smuggling Rosabel over to the abbot’s lodgings without drawing curious attention. I barely had time to deposit her with the family before having to rush back again to sing compline.

With a
ll this rushing from here to there, when at last it was time to retire I collapsed, exhausted, onto my cot. Subterfuge is a young man’s sport not for someone of my mature years. But at least I could rest easy in the knowledge that the de Grays were no longer in danger of discovery. The abbot’s palace had been virtually abandoned since Abbot Samson’s death with only the rats and mice and bats now in residence, and until the new abbot was appointed it would remain so. I felt I was able to relax at last.  It was Friday 31
st
October – All Saints Eve. In pagan times this was the night when the souls of the dead return to earth to inhabit the bodies of the living. Heathen nonsense, of course, for what could possibly happen to disturb the peace and tranquillity of the abbey on this of all blessed nights?

Chapter
16

THE FAMILY
VANISHES

I
awoke next morning with a start. The bell for prime was sounding but that’s not what stirred me. Muffled voices were coming in through my cell window that I couldn’t quite hear properly but something about them worried me even in my half-wakefulness. I opened the shutter and peered bleary-eyed across the Great Court towards the abbot’s palace where in horror I could just make out three men with axes and hammers standing outside the entrance exactly where the de Grays and Rosabel were holed up.

Barely stopping to heave on my boots, I rushed over just as one of the men was raising his axe
to the barricading. ‘Stop! Stop!’ I cried. ‘What are you doing? The palace is sealed, no-one may enter except the new abbot!’

‘Aye,’ the man agreed, lowering his tool. ‘The new abbot – or the king.’

‘The king? He’s not coming. He’s in France!’

‘Well I don’t know about that, brother,’ said the man. ‘I just been told to get on and free these doors because the king commands it. Whether
it’s France or Indi-land that’s what he wants and that’s what I do. Now, stand aside brother if you please lest you get hit by flying splinters.’ He nodded to his companions and again raised his axe above his head.

‘No! Wait! ’ I said putting my hand on his arm. ‘You can’t – you mustn’t!’

The man faltered nearly dropping his axe. He looked at me sternly. ‘Brother please, don’t do that. You’ll hurt yourself. If you have a complaint, see Brother Peter. I have my instructions. Now I’m asking you politely - step away.’

There was nothing more I could do. I stood back as the three man spat in the palms of their hands, raised their axes above their heads and brought them crashing down into the boarding. I flinched. The sound of splitting wood and tearing nails
sounded to me like an animal’s death throes. I looked up at the building. Heaven alone knew what the family inside was going through. They must be terrified. What worried me most was that Raoul must be thinking I had somehow betrayed him. In that frame of mind there’s no saying what he might do.

I went quickly over to the cellarer’s range in search of Brother Peter to try to
grapple with him. But he simply shrugged impotently. It appeared that during the night Hugh Northwold had finally arrived back from France bringing with him the news that King John himself was coming to the abbey in three days time.

‘
Three days
, Walter,’ tutted the beleaguered cellarer. ‘That’s all the notice they’ve given me. I don’t know how it’s all to be done in the time. But that’s how it is now with the king keeping his movements a secret until the last possible moment.’ He shook his head despondently. ‘It’s a sad day when the King of England cannot trust even his own household for fear of being betrayed.’ He went off still shaking his head.

I too was reeling from the news. The king’s timing could not have been worse. For the family it was a disaster. No-one had set foot in the palace since Abbot Samson’s death and in the fifteen years of his reign King John had stayed there only twice.
And now half the abbey was trying to get inside. What mischievous sprite had prompted him to choose this of all moments? And it’s not just the king, of course. Wherever he goes he takes with him the Government of England, which means all his officers of state, their stewards, secretaries, clerks, scribes, chaplains, ushers, huntsmen, men-at-arms, body-guards, archers, chamberlains, servants and attendants all needing food and accommodation. No wonder Peter was looking despondent. And in the middle of it all was my little family.

I stood in the courtyard
biting my lip and watching with mounting anxiety as boards were ripped off, doors flung open and an army of servants marched in with brushes, cloths, buckets all intent upon cleaning the place from top to bottom. At any moment I was expecting a cry to go up and the family to be discovered. A cry did indeed go up and I spun round to see one of the servants being boxed about the ears for dropping a wine urn on the cobbles and losing a gallon of the precious liquid.

With my nerve close to snapping, I rushed round to the rear of the building to see if I could catch a glimpse of the window behind which I imagined the family to be cowering in terror. God be thanked, it remained closed. But even as I watched one of the shutters opened and I waited with baited breath for the shouts of discovery. But then an anonymous hand appeared through the window and vigorously flapped a cloth sending a cloud of dust into the weak morning sunshine before disappearing back inside again. Then another shutter opened - and another. Still no alarm. I couldn’t understand it. Why had they not been detected? Surely
catastrophe was but moments away.

I hurried back to the front of the building again and made my way up the stairs past the noise and bustle to peer through the open door of the bedchamber. I saw the brazier from the previous night and the beds stripped and upturned on their sides. But of the family there was no sign. The room was completely empty – except for yet another party of servants being supervised by a fastidious little fat monk called, I think, Maurice.

‘Can I help you, master?’ he said wiping the perspiration from his brow.

‘No no,’ I smiled.
‘I was just checking.’

His eyes widened to saucers. ‘Checking?’

‘Yes checking, of course
checking
,’ I bluffed. ‘I am abbey physician and this is the king we are preparing for. His health is our prime concern, is it not? We cannot be too thorough.’ I squinted up at the rafters and ran a critical finger along a ledge. ‘Hm-hm, aha. All seems very clean, very…erm…hygienic. Good. Carry on.’

Maurice muttered something inaudible under his breath and bent ever more vigorously to his task.

Where had they gone? Vanished with the dust and the cobwebs. Raoul was adept at disappearing but this was little short of miraculous. My one faltering hope was that Onethumb might somehow have got wind of the king’s arrival and spirited them away in the night. He was the only person apart from me who knew they had been there. I prayed with all my strength that it was so for the alternative was unthinkable: That they had been discovered already and were even now languishing in one of Geoffrey de Saye’s dungeons.

*

I found Onethumb at his workplace behind Joseph’s shop in Heathenman’s Street. As soon as I saw him my hopes were dashed for I could tell he knew nothing. Indeed, the look of expectation on his face evaporated the instant he saw the concern on mine.

What’s happened?
he signed.

‘I’m not sure.’

Rosabel?

All I could do was shrug. Thankfully Joseph appeared just then having closed up the shop to join us and both now
listened while I recounted everything that had happened since the discovery of Effie’s body in the marketplace, through Raoul’s escape from the gaol, the farcical meeting in the chapterhouse and ending with the latest news of the king’s impending visit to the abbey in three days time.

As I spoke Joseph’s scowl grew blacker and blacker. ‘I wish you had come to me earlier,’ he said when I’d finished.

‘Why? What would you have had me do? Abandon the boy?’

‘Yes,’ he said forcefully. ‘That is exactly what I would have done.
He is dangerous.’

Inevitably, my jaw dropped open. ‘You of all people say that? You who suffered so much from
prejudice and injustice yourself? My conscience would baulk at it – and so should yours being an outsider yourself.’

‘It is because I am
an outsider that I make it my business to understand these things. It is the only way my kind can survive. And you, my brother, who knows these things are not thinking clearly. You allow your prejudices to govern you.’

I stopped myself saying more. He looked hurt. No, not hurt –
righteous.
Damn his eyes, he’d provoked me deliberately
.
I dare not look at Onethumb. How could I explain to him that this is how Joseph and I were with each other, how we had been since childhood? Our vitriol meant nothing. It was just our way.

Joseph sat down heavily on one of his infuriatingly uncomfortable cushions and sighed.  It was the signal that we were about to receive one of his lectures though no doubt imbued with much insightful wisdom and high moral rectitude. I growled under my breath but I had no option but to hear him out.

‘Let us look at the facts,’ he began. ‘Since you already know that Bishop John is one of the king’s most trusted and devoted servants you must also know he was King John’s choice as Archbishop of Canterbury. Indeed, he was so appointed until the pope annulled the appointment and replaced him with Cardinal Langton. It is said to have been the spark that ignited all the king’s present woes.’

I snorted petulantly. ‘What present woes? The king has settled his argument with the pope.’

‘With the pope, yes, but not with his barons.’ He looked askance at us. ‘No doubt you’ve heard about their recent meeting in Stamford?’

My jaw dropped open in astonishment and I looked accusingly at Onethumb. ‘How did you…?’ I began but stopped for Joseph was smiling in that infuriating way he has of letting you know he knows something you don’t.

‘It is at the heart of all that has passed since,’ he intoned grandly. ‘You have to remember who King John is. He is an Angevin, like his father before him. And Anjou is a little county. Their counts did not inherit their titles, they married them. King John’s grandfather married the Empress Maud while his own father married that other great lady, Eleanor of Aquitaine. Those two alliances gave them all of England and half of France and made them the most powerful family in Europe. Many of John’s barons, on the other hand, trace their titles back to the Conqueror. They regard the Angevins as upstarts. That was all right while England held great territories, but now John has lost them and the King of England is a mere count once more. Many of the barons don’t like that – among them your friend Geoffrey de Saye.’

‘So the barons are unhappy,’ I shrugged. ‘What has that to do with my little family?’

He put up his hand for patience. ‘Throughout the king’s quarrel with the pope Bishop John de Gray remained his staunchest ally - so much so that despite the pope’s reconciliation with King John His Holiness has so far refused to forgive the good bishop who remains excommunicate. That is where he is now, in Rome seeking absolution. But that only solves half the king’s problems. His barons are still not happy - hence their meeting in Stamford. That’s as much as I have been able to ascertain. I haven’t yet found out what they discussed at their meeting. But somewhere in the middle all this is your “little family”, as you call them. Find out where and you will be able to answer all your questions – including, no doubt, the reason for the maid’s murder.’

Onethumb had been listening to all this without interruption. To be truthful I’d forgotten he was there
so engrossed had I been with Joseph. But now he decided to make his presence felt and began to sign aggressively. He was clearly angry. He didn’t want to hear about kings and popes; he wanted to know what we going to do about Rosabel who, he reminded us, had disappeared and may be in grave danger. If he’d known beforehand what she was getting into, he signed, he would never have permitted her to go with the de Grays. We should be concentrating on finding her not worrying about barons.

Joseph and I both looked
stupidly at him neither of us able to offer him any comfort. He nodded as though to say “I thought as much”. More angry and frustrated than I had ever seen before, he stormed out of the shop. I called after him but Joseph put his hand on my shoulder.

‘No, let him go.’

‘But he might do something stupid.’

Joseph shook his head. ‘What can he do? He doesn’t know where the
family is any more than we do. But wherever they are I am sure they are safe – for the present.’

‘How can you be so sure?’

‘Because nothing is going to happen while the king is in Bury. De Saye or anybody else will want to let matters rest for now.’ He stroked his beard thoughtfully. ‘Yes, John’s presence here may well be your best card. Play it wisely, my brother.’

He drew me into an embrace and I hugged him for the fifty years of our friendship.

‘The king,’ I said releasing him. ‘Why is he coming – do you know?’