Authors: Cassandra Clark
The third pageant station was at John Gisburne’s mansion near North Street. It was on the way to St. Leonard’s, so Hildegard made her way towards it in the wake of the followers.
Robert Harpham, in whose house Roger’s party was staying, had had a simple balcony erected, on a level with his first-floor windows. It was wide enough for the old merchant to sit there in comfort above the street with a couple of body-servants and a few members of his family beside him.
Gisburne’s viewing place, on the other hand, was an elaborate three-storey erection, hung with enough gaudy tapestries to make sure everyone knew he was a man of wealth.
Not that it was doing him any good now, in prison.
Undaunted by his fate, his wife, accompanied by a handsome young man in lieu of her husband, was surrounded by servants and visitors. There was a charge to sit on the upper level and a household clerk was doing brisk business from a queue of people who had tired of the growing rowdiness of the streets and wished for a little privacy. As Ulf had said, now was the right time to make a killing. It was frightening to think that was what the fire-raisers might think too, in a different sense.
Hildegard continued down the hill. It was difficult to know what to look for, but she was alert for anything that seemed suspicious. The firebombings were seen as the work of the White Hart, designed to spoil the religious festival and put a question mark around the whole idea of the body of Christ being turned to bread and wine.
The last notice, however, the one pinned to the minster doors, had been different. It was a direct threat against the mayor and his men. It was common knowledge that the council was loyal to King Richard and openly stood against John of Gaunt and his allies. It made no sense for the freethinkers to threaten the council. The suspicion that Gilbert had written it only led to confusion.
Praying that their suspicions were groundless, she crossed the bridge. The route was being kept open by the constables, but it was thick with spectators on both sides. After watching the wagons go past they would gather to watch the procession of the Host after it emerged from the minster.
People were gathered at every station she passed, although they were at different levels of expectation. Those at the end of Conyngsgate were already cheering the arrival of the armourers’ wagon, while at the sixth station on Castlegate the fullers were just bringing their play to an end.
Farther on the performing space was taken up by entertainers—jugglers, acrobats, minstrels, sword-dancers, fortune-tellers, a chained and muzzled bear, conjurors, card-sharps and a ventriloquist or two—all making the most of a captive audience with money to throw at their feet in the time before the wagons appeared.
It was steamy down here in the heart of the town. The crowd was rougher, less well dressed, less polite and, inevitably, already drunk. Hildegard made her way to the end of Jubbergate and on to the next station, then wended back towards Conyngsgate towards the Common Hall.
There was no sign of the mage.
Regretting that she had made a detour away from St. Leonard’s she headed back towards the river. In doing so she had to cross the square outside the Common Hall.
Here things were a little more decorous. The mayor, Simon de Quixlay, had just arrived and was about to climb the steps to take his place alongside his aldermen on the official stand. Banners in the colours of the city livery adorned the platform and flags were strung from one side of the square to the other.
De Quixlay gave a genial wave to a crowd of supporters as he took his seat. He had guards, she noted, posted all the way along the front. Clearly his genial nature did not extend to welcoming possible fire-raisers.
She watched for a moment or two. The stand was similar to the one Roger had had built. The kitchens, however, were in the adjoining Hall and there were guards posted on the doors doing an efficient job in preventing entry to anyone they did not recognise. Just to test them she made her way over and tried to get inside. She was stopped at once.
“Despite your Cistercian habit, sister, I beg leave to ask for your avouchment.” The guard’s manner showed that he didn’t know whether she was genuine or had merely adopted the white habit as a form of motley.
“I have no proof of my identity,” she told him, “other than my word.”
“In that case, with the utmost regret, I am forced to bar entry. Go and ask for permission from the aldermen if you know any of ’em.” He turned his attention to other matters.
The next station was somewhere along Stonegate. It was not too far out of the way to St. Leonard’s. With her linen undershift sticking to her in the heat she made her way slowly in that direction and had just reached the corner when a man she took to be a beggar stepped into her path. He wore a travel-stained robe of rough fustian and had leather sandals on his feet. Reaching for her pouch she extracted a few coins then, as she tried to drop them into his palm, she glanced into his face.
Her lips opened.
It was a second or two before she managed to recover. Dropping to her knees at once and with head bent she crossed herself. “My lord.”
“Arise, sister.”
Trembling, she straightened. Eye to eye, she saw she was not mistaken.
It was Abbot Hubert de Courcy.
Chapter Thirty-three
His face was deeply tanned. He looked what he was, a man who had been honed by long hard months under the blaze of a desert sun. She lowered her glance. If the ground had opened up and swallowed her she could not have been more confused.
“So?” he prompted when she failed to speak.
She tried to gather her wits. When at last she raised her head she was surprised at how calm she sounded. “I understood you were still on pilgrimage, my lord abbot.”
“As you see: I have returned.”
His eyes flickered over her face as if searching for something.
In a secret confusion of astonishment and joy she said, “It gives me chance to thank you for the gift you sent—” and, unable to leave matters like that, she heard herself add, “from Avignon.”
The expression in the remote depths of his eyes was unfathomable. “It reached you safely then.”
“I admit I was surprised,” she continued, with the feeling that she was suddenly unable to hold back the words, “I understood your destination was Jerusalem?”
“And so it was. I returned by ship to Aigues Mortes and it seemed sensible to pay a visit to the papal palace—”
“To the palace of Pope Clement,” she added, to establish the fact beyond doubt.
“Indeed.” He gave a faint smile at her emphasis, but at the same time seemed to draw back.
To compound her folly even further, she remarked, “I trust your career has been enhanced by your visit to Avignon?”
It was cheap and she was immediately dismayed at allowing the words to fall from her lips, but they were out and, indeed, they expressed her confusion when the messenger told her where Hubert had purchased the missal he had sent.
His expression did not alter. The ambivalent manner with which he had greeted her was more confusing still. For a moment they stood without speaking as the crowd pushed them on all sides. It seemed as if the silence would go on forever. Hildegard felt bereft of every word she had ever learned. There was nothing. Just a gaping silence like the void in the beginning, before the first word was uttered.
Someone barged between them. She took a step back. More people followed, a long line of jigging fools with a hurdy-gurdy man egging them on. Hubert’s face seemed to burn in the very air, like a ghost cast out from his nocturnal realm. The strangeness of seeing him again without warning and in this place, on this day, was beyond reason.
They were at the top of Stonegate and suddenly from the far end came a sound like many hundreds of birds taking flight.
The soft flapping of wings was multiplied until it was a drowning wave, washing over them. The hurdy-gurdy fell silent in mid-phrase. Stillness prevailed all the length of the narrow street. She saw the abbot sink to his knees and those around him were dropping to their knees in that soft sound of fabric brushing on stone, of hats being removed. And then she understood that the Host was approaching.
Turning, she saw the glitter of the canopy first, and, because she could see unimpeded down the length of the street over the heads of all the kneeling people, where only one or two men stood with arms folded in defiance, she could see the Host itself, borne aloft by two acolytes in its glittering gold pyx amid the shimmer of beryl and pearls and rubies and countless other precious stones adorning the chased silver and gold monstrance. The whole thing seemed to burn with an unearthly fire as the scarlet silk canopy embroidered in gold thread swayed and fluttered its tassels as it approached.
Slowly she sank down at Hubert’s side.
The hems of their robes lay folded together, touching.
They stayed until the procession had gone past and then, as everyone around them rose to their feet and brushed themselves down and re-covered their heads, the abbot stretched out his hand to her.
Feeling his touch for the first time in over a year, she froze in shock. Then she allowed him to raise her to her feet. They stood face-to-face, his lips, his mouth on a level with her own. She could feel the heat radiating from him. It carried the exotic scent of the east, suggesting distant places, the regions he had visited, the foreign lives that had touched his in the long year of his absence.
Her tears the previous night in the tub of rose-scented water had been for this moment—for the sense of loss she knew it would bring. It had been a forewarning of finding and losing in the same moment.
With an effort, to retain a shred of common sense—he could not know the impact of his sudden appearance—she forced herself to speak. “Brother Thomas was wounded yesterday. He’s in St. Leonard’s hospital.”
“Are you on your way to see him?”
She nodded.
Hubert looked grim. “I heard about the attack. It’s all over the archbishop’s palace.”
“Are you staying there?” she asked. It was amazing how matter-of-fact she sounded.
“Last night and tonight only. Then it’s back to Meaux to see what havoc they’ve created while I’ve been away.” For a moment there was something dancing in his expression. She put it down to his pleasure at taking up his duties again, well purged of all the sins of the past by his pilgrimage.
“I’m sure things have gone smoothly—though not,” she hastened to add, “as smoothly as if you’d been there yourself.”
It was with a kind of private joy, fragile, not quite formed, with which she accompanied him through the crowds towards the river. He said nothing more to her. When they reached St. Leonard’s she felt regret that this silent communion was about to be curtailed with no further indication of how things stood between them.
* * *
When they went inside and walked down the aisle between the cubicles they found Thomas lying on a bed. He was going through his beads. When he realised that his abbot had taken the time and trouble to visit him he was overwhelmed with gratitude.
He kept saying, “I’m fine, my lord. I really am. It was nothing. It was scarcely a scratch. A wonderful old leech-woman stepped out of the crowd and put me to rights. And best of all, Sister Hildegard took little Maud to safety.”
In the expectation that his Order would be footing the bill for his treatment, the monks had given Thomas the sole use of one of the double cubicles in the main ward of the hospital. It was private enough for him to explain to the abbot the circumstances that had brought him here. The story had to be told in all its detail.
“So,” Hubert summed up when Thomas finished, “all’s well that ends well?”
Hildegard reserved any comment and merely made a fuss of Thomas and insisted on inspecting the bandages they had applied. “I see they know their job, brother. Thank heavens for that. I hated leaving you.”
“If you’d lingered that knight—one of de Bohun’s men, you say?—would have snatched Maud again. He had guards posted close by. You would never have got away if you hadn’t left so quickly.” He looked serious. “I hope I’ve made up for that other time when I behaved so cravenly?”
“Dear Thomas,” she said softly, “your behaviour is never craven.”
Afterwards he insisted he was well enough to get up, gathered his few belongings and went to inform the almoner that he was leaving.
When he was out of earshot Hubert turned to Hildegard. “I may as well tell you and get it over with. I saw you last night. I’d just arrived after the last day’s long walk. You were crossing the street near a merchant’s house. Is that where you’re staying?”
“Only until I return to Swyne. There was some difficulty in getting Maud back to safety.”
“I didn’t see her with you.”
“I had to send her back across the river by boat. Her pursuer had a guard posted on the bridge.”
Thomas had said nothing about what had happened to Hildegard afterwards, of course, as he knew nothing about it. Now she made no mention of it. Hubert would never drag that part of the story from her.
His tone was abrupt. “No doubt it’s pleasant to stay in a town house with your old friends.”
Thomas was still at the far end of the ward and Hubert went on. “As abbot I will have to make a representation to your prioress on a question of discipline. It will be a matter for the Chapter at Meaux. Your conduct is scandalous. It goes beyond any bounds of decency. Frankly, you horrify me.”
Before she could ask what on earth he meant he turned with a sweep of his robes and headed towards the door. She stared after him in anger and astonishment. Thomas reappeared. He looked surprised at the haste of his abbot’s departure but Hubert was already outside, striding along the path towards nearby St. Mary’s Abbey, and he hurried after him with a delighted glance at Hildegard, exclaiming, “So our abbot is back! Praise the saints!”
“He’s back all right.” She turned away, blinking at a sudden smarting sensation in her eyes.
When she looked again Thomas had caught up with Hubert and she watched them continue along the path, apparently chatting amiably, until they were out of sight within the precincts of St. Mary’s.