Authors: Cassandra Clark
Fighting her way through those thickest round the edge of the stage she managed to attract the attention of a group of apprentices leaning against the shafts of the wagon. Jesus and a couple of the others were playing dice in the pause before the performance started and she called up to them.
“Gilbert wants to get down!” she shouted above the chanting crowd. They had clearly forgotten he was there.
John the Baptist heard her first. He stood up and bellowed up to Gilbert, “Want a piss, lad?” Shrugging his skins over one shoulder he began to slacken the ropes that kept the throne of clouds in place.
“Hurry, I must speak to him!” urged Hildegard above the commotion.
With a sudden pull the final knot unloosed itself, the throne slipped and Gilbert half fell, half jumped to land on the wooden boards. The audience cheered. The whole wagon rocked, making the actors yell in protest at having their dice disturbed. Somebody reached out to catch a toppling flagon and the apprentice boys jeered lustily.
When he stumbled towards her she demanded, “Did you post that notice on the minster door?”
“Of course I did! I thought it was a clear warning. But look at de Quixlay. He hasn’t understood, the sot wit! He thinks he’s safe!”
He reached out and gripped her by the edge of her veil so he could be heard. “Jankin hinted about their plans before they shut him up. He knew about the whole thing. I tried to get in to see de Quixlay but their security was too tight. They thought I was just another madman predicting the Last Days.”
“Is it to do with those players in the masks?”
“Who?”
“Over there!” She gestured towards the house opposite.
“They won’t be players, they’ll be the duke’s men.”
“I know one of them.”
He stared.
“You wrote ‘He comes armed with a bow of burning flame.’ What did you mean?”
“That’s the phrase Jankin heard them use. But it makes no sense to me.”
“It does to me.”
They were almost in front of the stand. It was surrounded by singing supporters. Hereabout the
te deum
went unheard.
“We’ve got to warn de Quixlay,” she told Gilbert.
It was all so obvious now. The guards standing along the front railing could be picked off one at a time by anybody with a crossbow—so long as they were suitably hidden above the crowd. The mayor himself and every one of his council could be shot by as few as half a dozen men aiming together.
If the attackers used fire to prime their bolts the entire stand and the Common Hall could go up in flames.
She glanced back at the line of players with their burning torches. In the present crush no one would be able to get away. People would be killed in the stampede to escape. The buildings all about would be set alight. The entire town could burn. Even if, by some miracle, de Quixlay was saved from the flames, it would be a sign to the superstitious that he was the herald of the Last Days, to others that he had no backing for his reforms.
Hurriedly peering over the heads of the crowd she saw one of the masked men who had been left behind in the crowd fighting to join his fellows. He wore some kind of animal mask like the ones she had seen earlier. When he reached them they began to push towards the house opposite the stand. Its upper floors hung out over the heads of the crowd on both sides of the main door.
“Whose house is that?” she demanded, tugging at Gilbert’s shoulder to alert him.
“The mayor’s.”
They saw the porter disappear from his station and the men went inside. Hildegard shouted that she was going over there but whether Gilbert heard her or not she did not wait to find out.
By the time she had forced her way through the crowd the men could be heard inside the building as they pounded up the wooden stairs. The porter was lying just in the entrance, clutching his ribs. “Stop them!” he gasped when she bent down beside him.
“Are you badly hurt?”
“Stop them devils! They’ll be ransacking the place. I’m just winded.”
“Call de Quixlay’s guards at once!” Hildegard helped him to his feet then ran two at a time to the next floor. She could hear the sound of boots in the solar above.
Without thinking she grabbed a cresset from the wall-bracket on the landing and ran up the next flight of stairs and along the passage towards an open door.
It was the main reception chamber with several windows overlooking the street. There was a clear view of the mayor’s stand opposite, the wooden roof beams of the Common Hall behind it, and below the window the swaying pageant wagon surrounded by a sea of faces.
Three masked men were in the process of opening the casements. They were dragging wound crossbows from under their cloaks. She could see at once that the bolts were primed with cloth and the smell of naptha was stronger here than ever.
As soon as Hildegard appeared in the doorway they froze in astonishment. One of them strode at once towards her. He pulled his mask down. It was in the shape of a bear, the snout jutting forward. Behind it his eyes were small and darting. “What the fuck do you want?” he snarled.
He bunched one fist but before he could raise it she said, “I wouldn’t touch me if I were you or the whole place will go up in flames!”
She lifted the cresset so they could see her clearly. “Good disguise, isn’t it? So is yours. But do I really look like a nun?” She turned to the man she thought she knew. “You certainly fell for that one, didn’t you?”
He stepped forward in astonishment but the leader pushed him aside. “What’s all this about, nun, or whatever the hell you are?”
“This is the day when you’ll discover whether you have a judge in heaven or one in hell,” she said forcing a laugh from between her lips.
The sound stopped the bear in his tracks for a moment. “What the bloody hell is this?”
“I know her! She’s the whore who stole our martyr! Whore of Babylon! Out, whore!” The figure she had addressed earlier now pushed his way forward again. He ripped off his mask, confirming her suspicions.
“And you, Matthias,” she said. “You escaped from custody then.”
“No prison can hold the righteous!” he began.
But just then music from outside announced the beginning of the play. It was the Harrowing of Hell. Any minute now the actors would begin to speak their lines. The hell-gates would open up and the unsaved would be cast into the eternal flames.
Hildegard took a deep breath. If she didn’t play it right hell would indeed open up, but it would be the innocent to suffer.
“It’s like this, my friends,” she began, thinking quickly, “strapped to my body … I have explosives brought to me from the East. The friend who brought them is a close ally of the pope in Rome. It’s not only Pope Clement who arms himself with poisons and other secret defences against his enemies. Urban does so as well. In fact,” she paused, the men had fallen silent, “this friend of mine has a contract with both popes to purchase explosives on their behalf. And he was good enough to give some to me.”
She moved a step closer. They were listening intently. “I now wear this explosive underneath my gown. No doubt you’ve heard of Greek Fire?”
There was an alert shifting and the bear poked his head forward. “What?”
“One spark!” she declaimed. “Just one spark will set this mysterious substance alight and send a ball of flame bigger than anything you’ve ever seen exploding through this house and destroying us all in an instant. I warn you.” She glared at one of the men who, pushing up a black and white badger mask, made a disbelieving step towards her. “I will not hesitate to use it. I have nothing to lose. My sins have been confessed. I shall go straight to heaven to sit in glory at the feet of Our Lady. Now,” she gave each one of them a slow glance, “who’s going to be the one to do me the favour of sending me there?”
The men milled about as if behind an invisible barrier and glanced from one to the other.
“Matthias?” she asked. “Will it be you?”
He grunted but remained where he was.
“If any one of you tries to raise his crossbow I shall take it as a challenge. In fact,” she lowered her voice, wondering frantically why help did not come, “I shall deem it a pleasure to blow you all to hell. And let the devil deal with you as he will.”
“Are you for King Richard?” muttered the man in the badger mask uncertainly.
“And the true Commons!” she replied.
“If this is revenge for that massacre near the coast, it wasn’t our doing,” the bear butted in. “It was Gaunt’s contingent from the castle at Pickering, acting on their own behalf out of a lust for gain—”
“They got wind of a barter for gold—” added the badger.
“Them thievin’ pirates living down in that vill looted a cargo of arms from Acclom’s ship and were due to hand it to the King of Scotland…” His words trailed off as if he had admitted too much.
There was silence.
“I’m not interested in your greed,” she told them. “This is revenge for all the dead after Smithfield and Mile End. It is a just execution of the king’s enemies!”
What on earth am I saying, she thought, as the words tumbled out. I’ve become a player. None of this is real. Why does no one bring help?
The men were looking emboldened now that a dialogue of sorts had been established. One of them made as if to reach for his crossbow. Ostentatiously she put a hand to the neck of her habit to pull something from inside and noticed that they all froze as if expecting immediate immolation. The bowman’s hand dropped to his side after only one turn on the windlass.
“I see you understand me,” she remarked, wondering how long she could keep going. “Perhaps you want to tell me who sent you to assassinate the mayor?” And when they refused to answer she said, “You must be maintained by somebody even though you’re not brave enough to wear his badge.”
“Everybody’s maintained these days. Nobody can exist without protection. What of it?”
“And it was Gaunt instructed you to set fire to the Common Hall?”
“Did he?”
“One of our sources said as much.…”
“We’ve got a spy,” one of them cut in. He turned away as if that was the end of the matter and they could do nothing now but return to barracks.
“Who was it?” the leader demanded through his mask.
She couldn’t tell him it was the slimmest of slim chances that had led her here. Trying not to look into the malign little eyes that peered out from behind his mask she ignored his question and continued. “As I understand, Gaunt instructed you to rid York of its elected council and mayor so he could put Gisburne in the mayor’s office?”
“What is this about Gaunt?”
“Everybody knows he instructs his son,” she added quickly.
This seemed to make sense to them. Even so the bear said, “You can’t stop us with your lies about explosives. Why should we believe you?”
“You don’t have to believe me if you don’t want to. I don’t represent the Church with its demand for belief in the impossible. Believe what you want. You can even believe in the honesty of the duke and his son if you’re so minded. Believe they’re working for the good of everybody and not just for the House of Lancaster! Why not!”
She gave a crazed laugh to add weight to what they knew was true. Gaunt ruled by fear. They were well aware of that.
She said, “This is making me tired. I thought only to destroy the Host as it came round. Now I find I can destroy a handful of our enemies as well! Fortune smiles on me and on the justice of our cause!”
She started to untie the neck-strings of her undershift beneath her habit, thinking that perhaps she could fool them into backing off into the adjoining chamber where she might bang the door on them and as she pulled at the ribbon she said, “Let’s see what my friend in Outremer has brought me and whether it can fulfil his claim that it burns hotter than a thousand suns!”
To her astonishment there was a bang and a flash of light. The room filled with thick smoke. When it cleared a black-hooded figure stood in the doorway.
“Drop your weapons and get back against the wall!” he rapped.
Striding into the chamber with another burst of flame from between his hands he herded the startled men against the wall and kicked their weapons to one side. Matthias fell to his knees and began to pray, breaking off to curse the mother superior at his convent.
“She put a spell on me,” he jabbered. “She said only I could save us from the Antichrist! Help me, Mary, mother of God. All I did was obey orders. I am innocent! No fires, I beg your mercy. No hell fire for Matthias!”
From the stairs came the pounding of boots. At last a storm of armed men in the mayor’s livery burst into the chamber.
“Over there!” The man in black gestured towards the outnumbered bowmen then pushed back his hood.
Hildegard’s mouth opened. It was the mage Theophilus, otherwise John of Berwick.
He came over to her. “I caught sight of you in the crowd with Gilbert. You looked panic-stricken, it was clear something was up. Then I saw you rush in here but couldn’t get through the crowd in time to find out what was going on. I stumbled over the porter, poor fellow, and got up here just as you were threatening some evil from Outremer. I only just managed to come in on time for my cue.” He beamed. “What a performance, sister. I’m inclined to offer you a job as my partner. Together we could make our fortunes.”
Hildegard let out a long, slow breath. “I have to thank you for leading me to that ploy. I had no idea what I was going to do when I burst in here with nothing but a cresset as defence. And I’d just reached the end of my script.”
He offered her his hand. “From one player to another.” He bowed.
Chapter Thirty-seven
While the men were being disarmed and unmasked, Simon de Quixlay and a group of aldermen made their way over from the pageant stand. The mayor gave the bowmen a disappointed glance.
“I know a couple of you fellows. I thought I could trust you to obey the will of the people without further trouble. Now I see I was wrong.” He turned to the captain of militia. “Take them away. This time they shall have no mercy!”
Shackled hand and foot they were dragged roughly out and could be heard clattering all the way down the stairs accompanied by a dozen or so snarling guards.