‘W
HERE’S THE ENGLISH minstrel?’ The steward’s tone was abrupt and it cut through the hubbub like a knife. The drinkers in the alehouse, de Hutton men-at-arms, some travellers, merchants, a few burghers and body servants, stopped talking and looked up.
Ulf bulked in the doorway. Two of his men rose to their feet, swords swinging at their hips, and went to stand at his side. A voice asked, ‘Is it that lad Pierrekyn he’s after?’
‘What’s he done?’ Somebody translated into Flemish. It became obvious when Ulf didn’t budge that something serious was afoot. The ale-master pushed his way forward and in broken English asked, ‘Am I at fault, messire?’
Ulf shook his head. ‘Not that I know of, master. I seek a compatriot on a matter not your concern.’ He swept the crowd with a look of menace.
‘He was playing in here earlier,’ somebody admitted.
There was a rumble of agreement.
‘And then?’ Ulf raised his brow.
There was a general shifting as glances were exchanged.
In a friendlier tone, he asked, ‘Did he leave with anyone?’ His eyes checked for absentees among his own men and, satisfied, he subjected those present to a hard look.
‘Didn’t he leave with that pardoner?’ somebody muttered. Another remark followed in Flemish, its coarseness guessed by the kind of laughter it aroused.
‘You might try round the back of the market,’ the ale-master suggested. ‘It’s nothing to do with me.’
Ulf spoke to his men-at-arms. ‘Let’s bring him in.’
They left.
Hildegard slipped unobtrusively into a space on one of the benches set up between the trestles. She was wearing the blue cloak with the hood up and nobody gave her a second glance. Her grasp of Flemish was not sufficient to allow her to follow the conversations that broke out after Ulf left but a French speaker at the next table began translating for his companion. She blushed at the obscenities. She was starting to feel sorry for Pierrekyn.
He would surely be top of Ulf’s list of suspects in the murder of the clerk, and now these folk had condemned him out of hand. She wondered whether their own sins were so negligible they had room to judge a fellow soul so harshly. The boy has no chance, she thought. The Church decreed that sodomites should burn. If he was ever brought to court he would be condemned to the pyre whether he was guilty of murder or not.
And if Ulf is wrong? She didn’t know whether Pierrekyn was capable of killing a man nor why he would kill his benefactor. He had seemed genuinely angry at Reynard’s disappearance when they burst in on him in Reynard’s chamber at Meaux. Angry, not guilty.
There was nothing she could do at present. Meanwhile, news of the murder had reached the alehouse and was soon out of control. One or two were calling to raise the hue and cry. Swords were being drawn, the blades of daggers examined, cudgels found for those lacking weapons. The alehouse rapidly emptied once the idea caught hold that it was a hunt for a murderer – and a sodomite at that.
The ale-master watched his customers leave with a look of exasperation. ‘Profit down the hole,’ he growled, slapping a cloth over his shoulder and hobbling back into his kitchens.
Hildegard went out into the street. The pursuers were coursing back and forth across the square like an undisciplined pack of hounds. When they saw Ulf and his men returning from the back of the market without their quarry, they started a thorough search for Pierrekyn themselves, upending carts, creating mayhem. Every shadow was attacked, every doorway searched. Soon they started knocking on people’s shutters, forcing their way into their houses. The whole town was in uproar. The word murder linked with sexual depravity had roused every faction against him.
Hildegard decided to retire to her chamber and watch from the window where she would have a view of what was happening. The lust for blood shocked her. But there was nothing she could do yet. Ulf and his men could be out half the night. She prayed that if Pierrekyn was found it was by the de Hutton men and not by the shrieking rabble.
She went up the narrow stairs to the top floor. Fortunately the wife of the ale-master had a warren of small rooms to let out to travellers such as herself. ‘We get many single women pilgrims with the wealth to pay for privacy,’ she had explained in French when she grasped that Hildegard could speak it well enough.
Now Hildegard made her way to a door at the far end of a corridor above the kitchens. It was warm though it reeked of garlic and fried onions.
Pushing open the door she was surprised to find a candle burning in the room. Then she gasped as a hand clamped itself firmly over her mouth and she was propelled inside. She heard the door kicked shut. She was released. When she jerked round she found herself standing face to face with Pierrekyn. He held a knife.
‘Don’t scream!’ he warned.
Hildegard threw him a look of contempt. ‘If you put that ridiculous knife away I might do as you ask.’
The knife slid warily back inside its sheath but the boy remained firmly with his broad shoulders against the door, preventing escape.
She turned her back and went to sit on the bed. ‘I hardly think it wise to add a second murder to the first,’ she said.
‘Murder? What murder? I thought they were after me for something else.’
He genuinely doesn’t know why he’s being pursued, she realised.
‘What murder?’ he demanded impatiently. ‘I’m always the first to be blamed for anything. I thought it might be different here.’
‘It’ll only be different when you’re different,’ she said. ‘But you must have heard what they were shouting in the square just now?’ The continuing search was faintly audible below the window despite its height above the square.
‘I don’t understand their barbarous dialect. What are they baying about?’ he asked dismissively.
‘Sit down, Pierrekyn. I’ve something to tell you.’ She indicated a wooden chair by the wall.
Reluctantly, he left his position against the door and sat down.
‘It’s about Reynard,’ she said. ‘His body has been found.’
‘His body?’ The confusion on the boy’s face looked genuine. ‘How can his body have been found? It doesn’t make sense. How can—?’
‘His body was discovered at the docks. The suspicion is he was murdered in England.’
Pierrekyn rose to his feet. ‘It doesn’t make sense,’ he said again. ‘Why would anybody murder him? Why would they bring him here?’
Swaying, he put out one hand as if to steady himself then rushed abruptly to the clay pot in the corner and began to retch. He emptied the entire contents of his stomach, resting one hand against the wall afterwards, his face ashen.
‘Forgive me,’ he muttered, wiping his mouth on the back of his sleeve. Sweat glistened on his forehead. He came to sit on a chair beside the bed. He was breathing heavily as if there was not enough air in the room. His eyes were blank until he managed to say, ‘So this is why those dogs are hallooing the fox. Let’s have done with it then. Hand me over. I’m ready.’
‘Am I to hand you over?’
His head jerked. ‘Why wouldn’t you?’
‘Did you murder him?’
‘I did not.’
‘Then a little breathing space might be of benefit to everybody,’ she told him, thinking quickly. ‘No decisions should ever be made in the heat of the moment. It’s late now. I suggest you prop the chair against the door to prevent anyone coming in unexpectedly. I shall take the bed and you’ll sleep on the floor. It would be a bad idea to try to leave tonight. You’d get no further than the alehouse door,’ she warned. ‘We’ll decide what to do tomorrow when our minds are clear.’
She knew she was taking a great leap of faith. He could murder her in the night as she slept.
He was staring at her with a blank expression and it was difficult to tell what he was thinking. He dashed the back of one hand over his eyes and asked gruffly, ‘How did they do it?’
‘They cut his throat.’
He turned away and, with a small, strained laugh, said, ‘Tonight will be a first for Pierrekyn Haverel, sharing a sleeping chamber with a nun.
Then he bedded down on the blanket she threw to him. As soon as she saw him burrow down she blew out the stub of candle the guest-mistress had allowed, stretched out on the pallet and pulled her cloak over her head.
When Hildegard woke up around four to the sounds of the kitchener and his staff three floors below, she poked her head from under her cloak and was relieved to see Pierrekyn, one arm outflung, lying in the tangled heap of blanket. His eyes were wide open. It was clear he had not slept. The rustle as she stretched her limbs on the straw mattress made him sit up. There were prints of dark shadow under his eyes.
‘So that was no nightmare. He really is dead?’
‘You’d better lie low. I’m going to find out what’s happening. When I come back we’ll determine what’s best.’
‘I don’t know what you want from this,’ he said when she had retied her coif and pulled on her cloak. He was sitting cross-legged on the folded blanket.
‘Why should I want anything?’
‘Everybody wants something.’
‘There is another view.’
‘I’ve never observed it.’
She pulled up her hood and opened the door. ‘Put the chair back. Don’t answer if anyone knocks to come in.’
She knew Ulf was lodged in the general quarters with his men. As she approached there was a deal of activity going on, his men, fully armed, milling back and forth with an air of busyness.
‘No sign of him,’ Ulf announced in greeting. ‘He’s vanished into thin air. Nothing could be a surer sign of guilt. But why the devil did he kill the clerk?’
Hildegard took him by the arm. ‘Ulf, come with me. You need to break your fast. You look like—’ She had been about to say ‘death’ but thought better of it.
‘I really haven’t time—’ he began but when he saw the expression on her face he checked himself. Snarling some order over his shoulder to the men, he allowed her to propel him towards the stairs.
‘What the devil’s going on?’ he demanded as they rushed down them, two at a time, and marched along the passage to the refectory.
‘Eat,’ she said. They were sitting in a quiet corner, with hardly anybody else about just yet, and no chance of being overheard. Even so she spoke in a low voice.
‘I know where Pierrekyn is but before you send your men to fetch him in, let me explain.’
She told him exactly what had happened during the night, detailing the minstrel’s reaction to news of Reynard’s murder. ‘To my mind that’s not the response of a guilty man,’ she concluded.
He looked unconvinced. ‘Is this just you seeing the best in the lad?’
‘At least let’s give him the benefit of the doubt before the town gets hold of him. The mob was terrifying last night. If they’d found him they’d have torn him apart.’
‘That’s what it’s like these days. Folk are hardened to cruelty after what they’ve suffered at the hands of the Count of Male and the Duke of bloody Burgundy. Their own blood has been drawn. Innocent blood. Now they want to make the guilty shed theirs.’
‘But we don’t know that Pierrekyn is guilty, do we? And an armed mob isn’t going to listen to the evidence. In fact, we don’t have any evidence against Pierrekyn.’
She gave him a searching glance and he reluctantly admitted that they had nothing beyond the known connection between the two of them and Pierrekyn’s presence near the wool-sheds along with everybody else.
‘What I want to know is, Ulf, do you agree to give him a breathing space until the real murderer is found?’
He glanced up as a serving woman entered from the kitchens with a couple of bowls of pottage and two steins of the pale, strawcoloured ale made locally. When she left Ulf took a deep drink and replaced his stein with a frown.
‘What if he absconds?’ he objected. ‘I could walk upstairs into your chamber right now, clap him in irons and have him whisked back home to await due process of law. What’s to stop me doing that?’
‘Nothing at all,’ she agreed. ‘But wouldn’t it be on your conscience if he was innocent? Once back in England he’d be judged guilty by the mob at once due to the simple fact that you’d taken him back as a prisoner. But look at the facts, Ulf, why would he murder his benefactor? It doesn’t make sense.’
‘I can think of a multitude of reasons. A lovers’ tiff for one,’ he growled. ‘A hope to make away back to Kent with Reynard’s possessions for another.’
‘But if neither of those is true?’
‘Some other reason then. Consider, Hildegard. Who else could want the clerk out of the way?’
‘Maybe it was a simple argument with somebody down in the packing sheds,’ she suggested. ‘A drunken brawl?’
‘In the abbey precincts?’
‘Someone at the abbey with a grudge?’