The Dragon of Handale (5 page)

My prioress at Swyne has seen fit to send me to a prison, she realised. The question was, Why? Was it to show her that Swyne was a place to be desired?

Aware that the prioress of Swyne never did anything without forethought, Hildegard found her mind wandering from the priest’s droning to the purpose in sending her to this particular place. Perambulating round the possibilities that opened up, she was unable to make sense of it.

Add to the brew the distant presence of the earl of Northumberland, the rumour of a mysterious beast in the woods, the recent death of a man, and it was an even deeper mystery. From the desire to get out of the place at all costs, she found herself speculating on how, or if, any of these things were linked—and how long she would have to stay before she found the answer.

Novices, two of them, heads down, stood like shadows behind the nuns. Their wispy voices singing the responses to the priest’s whinnying tones were swamped by the bellowing alto of Prioress Basilda.

The ritual was stumbling towards its conclusion when there was a sudden enraged shout from the cloisters. A man’s bass tones echoed along the arcades, followed by the sound of a scuffle. A female voice cried out. And was abruptly cut short.

C
HAPTER
5

Hildegard was first to cover the length of the nave and run outside. At the far end of the cloister, the townsman she had glimpsed earlier through the open door of Basilda’s chamber grasped the arm of one of the novices, the one who had been standing at the door of the church.

No more than fifteen or sixteen, she was slight of build, and now she shrieked as the man slapped her across the face with the flat of his hand. She tried to evade his grasp, but he would not let go, so she tried kicking out at him with her bare feet. It made no impression. As he raised his hand again, Hildegard grabbed his arm.

“Stop!” she shouted.

The man froze in astonishment. The girl was trying to say something, her words muffled, when her assailant wrested his arm from Hildegard’s restraint and clamped it over the girl’s mouth.

“She’s mad!” he exclaimed. “Off her head. Lies! It’s all lies!”

Hildegard tried to free the girl from his grip, but he shouldered her aside. “Keep out of this, mistress. It is no concern of yours!”

“Take your hands off her, you brute!”

Before he could reply, Prioress Basilda puffed up. Assisted by the cellarer and one or two others, she was close enough to call out, “Alys, what on earth are you doing out here! You have duties to attend to!”

Hildegard turned in astonishment. “My lady, you fail to understand. This fellow here is behaving in a most brutal manner to—”

“Pray do not meddle in what does not concern you, Mistress York. She is a known sinner. That’s why she’s here. And this ‘fellow,’ as you are pleased to call him, is Master Fulke, our great benefactor. He is within his rights to chastise her.” She gripped the girl by the scruff of the neck and pulled her away. “Get to your duties, chit!”

With the girl snivelling and making good her escape, the prioress turned smoothly to the benefactor of Handale. “My deepest apologies, master. You know how she is already.”

“Indeed, my lady, to my cost.”

A look was exchanged between them and as one they turned, smiling, to Hildegard, the man, Fulke, smoothing a hand over his beard and adjusting his capuchon.

Basilda’s tone was placating. “I can understand your concern, mistress. It must be a shock to come across something like this. But believe me, your concern is quite misplaced.”

“Is it?”

“Indeed. The unfortunate child was sent to us as the final straw in a long history of uncontrollable behaviour. Her poor mother was beside herself with grief. The girl was running wild, lured by the devil into many sinful and indecent acts. We took her in at her mother’s request. She begged on her knees for us to take pity on her and rescue the poor child from the devil’s clutches. And, of course, that is our purpose at all times, praise God.” She crossed herself, then turned grandly to Master Fulke. “No doubt she was importuning you again, master?”

A look of surprise flashed across his face before he recovered enough to match the smooth manner of the prioress. One eye on Hildegard, he gave an apologetic shrug. “Begged me to commit a most foul sin, my lady. But”—he pulled at his neatly clipped beard—“no harm done, as you see. I chastised her for it and no harm came of it.”

The prioress turned to Hildegard, silky and self-confident. “All over now, mistress. My deepest apologies for such a distressing scene. Believe me, it will not happen again.”

Hildegard could well believe it. She glanced across at the small prison, half underground on the other side of the garth, and wondered if the girl, Alys, would finish up in there.

Aware that she should not expect an honest answer from any of the questions that seemed most urgent, she nodded. “It was an unfortunate incident, my lady. My apologies for misunderstanding the master’s purpose.” She flashed him a glance and met his black stare full on. He turned away, still brushing himself down, as if the girl had in fact contaminated him.

The group broke up, the nuns back inside the church, the prioress and her benefactor towards the refectory in the wake of the novice.

Hildegard watched them go. This will not be the end of it, she vowed.

She paced the cloister for some time, but the prioress and Master Fulke did not reappear.

For the next few days, life within the precinct passed without incident. The Holy Offices succeeded one after the other in predictable succession.

In the time set aside for relaxation, the nuns gathered in the cloister under the beady eye of whichever of the prioress’s inner circle was assigned to the task. There they were allowed some time to talk, or pray, or do whatever they fancied within the Rule. Except for the most innocuous of exchanges, mainly to do with the weather, they ignored Hildegard and kept to themselves. It was almost as if they were afraid to speak to her.

She did not come across the novice who had been struck by Master Fulke during this time. Nor was there any other penitent standing at the church door. No doubt Alys had learned to toe the line and was now going about her duties with sufficient obedience to satisfy the novice mistress and the prioress.

Master Fulke had disappeared as well after that first encounter. There was no one to answer any of the questions Hildegard wanted to ask. The nuns, in an aura of sanctity, were seen flitting from one office of the day to the next and attended their silent meal at midday. A few lay sisters went unobtrusively about the work of keeping the precinct clean and tending to the domestic duties demanded by their betters. The lay brothers kept in seemly fashion to the farm garth, and from the window in the scriptorium, Hildegard saw the cow taken from its stall and later, looking contented, with wisps of winter grass hanging from its mouth, returned by a ragged boy.

At least one creature is happy here, she told herself.

The hush that hung over the precinct whenever the tolling bell was stilled was not one of contentment, but of heaviness, as if the individuals living here had lost all hope. In fact, only the prioress and her inner circle seemed content with such an iron rule.

It was after watching the cow brought back to her stall several times that Hildegard decided to escape the seemingly endless task allotted to her and go in search of the meadow where the cow was taken to graze.

Pulling on her cloak, she tidied up her work, then descended the stairs to the outside. A pall of mist hung over the crucked roots round the garth, and the top of the bell tower disappeared into the filmy air. There was no one around. The place seemed dead. And for once, she felt unwatched by the sidelong glances of the nuns.

With a lightening of her spirits, she went round the side of the guest quarters to the yard at the back, where the cow was kept. It had already been taken out to the meadow. Glad of her boots, she followed the river of mud churned up on its daily comings and goings and found it led to a wooden gate set in the wall of the enclosure. Stepping through, she came to a path that wound through a thicket and in a short time found the cow munching grass in a small meadow.

Her hope that she had discovered a way to the outside was dashed. The area was enclosed on all sides. Above the top of the high brick wall, the trees grew as closely together as elsewhere. Handale is nothing but an open prison, she thought, but there must be a way out other than by that narrow track from Kilton Castle.

The boy who tended the cow was nowhere to be seen. She leaned against a tree and watched the animal’s peaceful munching for some time.

It was just as she was about to wend her way back towards the cloister garth that she saw something in one of the trees overhanging the wall. She went over to have a look.

“Good morning, little bird. How are you?”

The cowherd looked down. “I’m well, mistress, and yourself?”

“I would be more well if I knew how to get out into the woods.”

“This’n here is one way.” He grinned, indicating the tree in which he was sitting.

“My tree-climbing days are over, more’s the pity. Is there a more regular way out into the woods?”

“You’ll have to find the little door in the wall,” he said with a mysterious smile. “But they say you can’t go out there these days, for fear of the dragon.”

“Have you seen it?”

“No, I ain’t, praise God, but I’ve heard it all right.”

“What does it sound like?”

“The devil in his death throes.”

“To the good, then?”

He grinned and began to scramble out onto one of the branches to show her his tricks. When she tired of seeing him hang upside down, she bade him good day and followed the river of mud back to the gate.

The priory was set in a deceptively large enclosure. The outer court, where the conversi laboured, was made up of a muddy yard, with the swinecote at one end and a henhouse next to it, the latter surrounded by a scattering of hens, five plain white geese, and one gaudy cockerel lording it over all on a dung heap.

Moving on past this farmyard scene, she came to the fish ponds—two silent lakes of black water. In their placid depths, speckled fish innocently waited to be netted.

She reached the back of the main abbey buildings and the prioress’s current living quarters. They adjoined the church, with its square Saxon tower and newer nave and apse, the domed roof of the latter gleaming through the mist, with new slate tiles on its roof.

Beyond that, across a scrubby stretch of grass, was another stone building, small, oblong, with a thatched roof. The enclosure wall rose behind it as high and solid as elsewhere. Hildegard made her way in that direction.

Here the ground sloped away and the main buildings had their backs towards this part of the grounds. Although it was open, no windows overlooked it and the sense of privacy allowed her to feel free of the sly, staring eyes of the priory inmates.

She reached the thatched building standing in an isolated position from all the rest and tried the door. It swung open at a single push. Dark inside. A strong scent of incense. Roof rafters yawned above her head and disappeared into the shadows. Many candles burned deep inside the building, shedding little light in the cavernous interior. It took a minute to adjust to the sudden gloom.

She saw a trestle with something white lying on it at the far end of the building. There were thin candles at each end. As her sight slowly adjusted to the fitful light, she realised she had entered the mortuary.

What she had noticed on the trestle, she realised, was a body in a winding-sheet. Reverentially, she made her way over to it. The light flickered over the folds of linen. It must be the mason lying here, the one allegedly killed by the dragon, she thought. There was no sound. Even the birds outside seemed stilled by the horror and solemnity of death. Cautiously, in order to witness for herself the nature of the man’s wounds, she slowly pulled back the rough cloth.

The body of a young man was revealed, limbs so bloodless, they seemed to glow like opal through the dusky half-light. He was lying on his back, his chest horribly ripped and dark with gore, displaying the wounds that must have killed him.

She stared in horror. Many deep gashes ran from neck to groin; much blood, now black and hard, was not entirely washed away when the body had been laid out.

She felt sick.

His wounds were like the ravages inflicked by a deerhound. But she had never seen a hound with such huge claws. Horror slowly stole over her as the young priest’s frightened words drifted back to her. Could it be true? Was there a monster of some kind haunting the woods?

She stepped back and automatically crossed herself.

Taking a moment or two to recover, she forced her revulsion to one side long enough to take a closer look. The dead man’s face was unmarked. Silver pennies rested on his eyelids. She looked closely at his hands. They were rough and calloused. Scratches like ones sustained in a struggle covered the palms.

He must in life have had a pleasant, open face, given to laughter, judging by the lines around his mouth. Fair Saxon features, still ruddy from last summer’s sun. Broad-shouldered, in keeping with his trade. He seemed altogether like a man who could have looked after himself in the ordinary way. But was his death ordinary? That was the question.

She remembered her prioress at Swyne and her humorous remark about the serpent, by which she meant dragon. The peasants called such creatures serpents or even worms or, if with two legs, wyverns. The creature was the same whatever its name. A figment of the imagination. There were many known by hearsay throughout the land. But who had ever seen one? No one she had ever met. They were stories for children to frighten them into good behaviour. Maybe now, here, a story for the nuns, and with the same purpose?

What they said about dragons was that they possessed teeth and talons and great enmity towards humans. Nonsense, of course. They were beasts imagined by old monks in their monasteries hundreds of years ago. The drawings they made in their illuminated bestiaries came entirely from their imaginations.