The Law of Angels (34 page)

“All I’ve heard is she comes from Wakefield. That’s where you met her, isn’t it?”

“Who told you that?”

She shrugged. “I can’t remember. Maybe she herself did. It wasn’t Gilbert. I assumed it was common knowledge.”

“It is true I met her over there. So what?”

“When you were working?”

“Did she tell you this?”

“I’ve told you I don’t remember.”

“More likely that little rat’s been talking!” He brought his face close to her own. “You know he’s obsessed, don’t you? He’d say anything against anybody out of spite if he thought she had a glance for them instead of him. He’s pathetic. Have you seen his drawings? Hundreds of the things. The little toad’s mad in the head.”

She stepped back and he gave her a sharp glance. “It is him, isn’t it? He’s been shouting his mouth off, spreading lies. It wouldn’t surprise me if—” He broke off.

She watched him fiddle with the large jewel. It was now pinned to his capuchon. Always on display.

“If what?” she pursued.

Head down he mumbled, “If he did something to her one day—”

“Like what?”

“Shut her up for good.”

She made a movement and his head shot up. “And you, sister, just what are you trying to make of all this?” He took a step forward, so close she was swimming in the sickly scent of attar of roses. “This is a family matter,” he ground out. “What’s Dorelia got to do with you?”

For a moment she thought he was about to strike her but his glance fell to the small wooden cross she wore and he stepped to one side.

“This is my brother’s house. You come in here, into his private chambers, as if you have a right. He’s too easy-going, Edric, always has been.” He pulled the door wide. “You can find your own way out.” He made an elaborate and mocking bow.

She walked swiftly past him and as she set her foot on the first rung of the stepladder she heard him mutter, “And don’t come back.”

Fuming at her inept handling of the situation she made her way across the yard into Tabitha’s house. The others had not yet returned from mass. It gave her time to decide what to do next.

Baldwin came out of Edric’s workshop and stood, arms folded, in the doorway. It was plain he was going to make sure she knew who was master.

The annoying thing was she had got nothing from him that she didn’t already know, except for that slanted view of Gilbert. It shifted suspicion onto him. And yet it might be a hint that Baldwin had something to hide. It was as good a move as any to implicate the journeyman.

Another thing that rankled was his question: What do you get out of life? His unspoken assumption was so wrong that she didn’t know where to begin.

*   *   *

Brother Thomas sent a note. It was delivered by one of the boys kept by the friars. It told her he had been instructed by Brother Alcuin to return to Meaux at once, now the business connected to the prioress of Swyne had been concluded. Hildegard regretted that she would now have no chance to talk things over with him and maybe get a different perspective on Dorelia’s disappearance.

She sent the boy back with a penny for his trouble, the information that she was waiting to find out what the prioress wanted her to do with the cross and her best wishes to the monk himself.

After the boy ran off—another barefoot child, she noticed—she went up to her sleeping chamber and rummaged in her bag for her knife.

It was kept in a leather sheath and used mainly for eating. Now she took it out and inspected the blade. It looked wicked enough to scare off anybody if used in an appropriate manner. She replaced it in the sheath and strapped it to her belt underneath the light cotton mantle she had on over her shift.

Then she removed her black veil and the conspicuous white gorget and found a piece of cloth she had been using to wrap things in. She held it up. It was an ochre linen square. Worn as a head scarf it would be commonplace enough to allow her to pass unnoticed in the street.

After rinsing it out in the pail downstairs she hung it on the line inside the kitchen. It would dry quickly. Today was already another scorcher. Even though it was early, when she threw the dirty water outside it dried at once on the hot flagstones.

She went to the well to refill the pail.

Baldwin was still lounging around his brother’s doorway. He had a drink in his hand now and gave her a baleful glance as she came out. She had to let the rope down an ell or more before she heard the wooden bucket hit the water. She hauled it up and carried it back indoors.

Baldwin watched without comment.

Bareheaded, she felt the heat of the sun on the back of her neck in just those few minutes. She would have to replace her straw hat with a new one from the market, she decided. She went back upstairs, changed her boots for a pair of cork-soled scarpollini and went back down. The head scarf was dry already. She put it on, winding the two ends round the back and knotting them at the front.

When she popped her head outside Baldwin had disappeared.

The widow returned from mass with the boys and the deaf cook and made no comment about Hildegard’s nonappearance at church. She began to busy herself with a few chores.

Hildegard went to Edric’s door and called inside for Kit. He came bounding out from the back kitchen with eyes agleam.

“Have you fed and watered my hounds for me?” she asked.

“Yes, sister,” he answered smartly, giving a little flourish like a regular page.

“Then you may have the rest of the morning off. But don’t get into mischief. I have to go into the town.”

“I’d be honoured to come with you, sister.”

“You would?”

He nodded.

She weighed him up. “All right then. Let’s go.”

She whistled for the hounds and they bounded out of the shade with as much alacrity as Kit had done and she marvelled at the energy of her escorts in this vile heat. Her head scarf was no protection against it.

“We’re going to the market so keep a tight hold of them both,” she told the boy, handing him the leash. When she glanced back into the yard as they turned the corner there was no sign of Baldwin. His house had its shutters closed again.

*   *   *

Kit was in a ferment of excitement. He squawked with glee every time a band of pageant players went past. “Look at them little devils!” he shouted, tugging on Hildegard’s sleeve when a band of children of his own age wearing red suits went past brandishing miniature pitchforks made out of boiled paper and glue. Their parents would be guild members, she guessed, with prospects far beyond Kit’s meagre little dreams.

Some shepherds sauntered by carrying painted sheep under their arms and Kit chortled again and, making little bleating sounds, pretended to stroke them.

“I’ll never keep these bloody wings in place,” a fat man was grumbling as he trudged along with a couple of companions in long nightshirts. They all stopped and tried to hoist the wings back over his shoulders. “You’ll have to unfasten the strap to tighten it up a bit,” one of them advised.

The one in the lead roared back down the line, “Come on, lads, no dallying! Rehearsal on the dot! Or are you aiming to land yourse’ns with a fine?”

“Pageant master’s still at his prayers,” somebody retorted.

“Just because he’s slacking there’s no need for you to follow suit!”

“He’s wettin’ isself over your lines, brother, begging Our Lady to help you out,” one of them quipped. The bevy of winged men broke into guffaws.

They were accompanied by a friar wearing a brown habit. A woman tried to press some coins into his hand as he went by but he gave them back. “No, mistress, I’m only a player.”

She insisted, confused, perhaps, by the heat and the crowds and the authenticity of his costume, so with a smile he accepted. “Oh all right then.” He made the sign of the cross. “Bless you, my child.” Catching up with his companions they had another laugh over his earnings and one of them slapped him on the back with the words, “You’ve got yourself a new job, lad, for when you’re booted out o’t guild!”

The booths were almost impossible to see over the heads of the crowd. Now and then a few coloured balls rose up, glittered briefly in the blue sky then fell again as an unseen juggler went through his paces. A horn band started to play a jig and soon a hurdy-gurdy struck up in competition on the next corner. Hildegard managed to find a capper in among the fray and forced her way to where he was selling his wares. When she emerged she was wearing a wide brimmed straw hat and carrying a smaller one for the boy.

“Now for a pair of pattens for your poor feet and then to the first station outside Holy Trinity,” she told him.

*   *   *

The stand was finished but for its decoration. The open spaces underneath the scaffolding where the servant from the nunnery had dragged her was blocked in now with canvas painted to look like the walls of a castle. Roughly daubed flowers crawled up the sides and merged with trails of real flowers set along the edge of the platform where everyone would sit. In front was a rail for the armed guards.

Ulf was bareheaded. The hot sun had transformed him over the summer months, bleaching his hair, gilding his features, emphasising the blue of his eyes so that they looked like the cobalt glass in one of Danby’s windows.

When Hildegard and little Kit, now making a clatter in his new pattens, strolled up the street he was striding about in the company of a couple of clerks and a master carpenter. They appeared to be carrying out final checks on the structure and Ulf took hold of one of the struts to give it a good shake. It remained firm.

“Excellent work, master,” they heard him say to the carpenter at his elbow. As he turned he caught sight of Hildegard. Or rather, he seemed to recognise her two hounds and, peering at Kit, shifted his glance to the person beside him. He looked twice.

“It is me,” she called, going over and sweeping off her hat for a moment to prove it.

“Well garbed for this hot weather, Hildegard. It’s driving me inside for a cool stoup of ale right now. Are you going to join me?”

He led the way to an imposing house a little way down the street from the pageant station. “Roger’s requisitioned the house of Robert of Harpham,” he told her. “There was no way he’d get Melisen to come out in this heat without somewhere to refresh herself and do some entertaining. They’re coming in shortly with a host of guests.”

“Where’s her baby?”

“Back with his wet nurse at Hutton where he can bawl his little head off to his heart’s content.”

“Is Melisen bringing the girls with her?” she asked.

He nodded. “That Petronilla!” he exclaimed. “She’s made herself at home. Melisen swears she can’t do without her. I didn’t think it would work out, with them being so alike,” he exchanged a knowing smile, “but they get on like a house on fire.”

“What about Maud?” she asked.

He frowned. “Still goes around with her little hood up and that bundle she carries everywhere. Looks as if she’s about to abscond all the time but I don’t think she will. She spends a lot of time sitting on the river bank with a line in the water.” He smiled. “There’s nothing like a spot of fishing to soothe away your troubles.”

“The river?” exclaimed Hildegard, imagining the danger.

“She’s safe there. They’re looking after her. The cook’s daughter sneaks fresh bread out as a treat, thinking we don’t notice. Lord knows, she’s had enough opportunity to run away with the place in such chaos. I’m never off my horse, riding back and forth to Naburn,” he added with satisfaction.

“So long as somebody’s keeping an eye on her.”

“Don’t worry. They’ve taken her to their hearts. I assume nothing else has happened since I last saw you?” he added on a different note.

She shook her head.

“So how are you feeling?” He peered into her face.

She told him she was all right after a good night’s sleep but that Thomas had been called back to Meaux. Then, making sure they could not be overheard by the many servants passing back and forth, and having sent Kit off to the kitchens for a morsel to eat, she told him about Gilbert’s suspicion of Baldwin and how Baldwin just now had called Gilbert a lying little rat.

“No love lost there then.”

“What’s more important is we saw Baldwin disappear into the woods near Two Mills dale. According to Gilbert he’s been out that way for several consecutive evenings.”

“Probably got a woman out there,” Ulf said.

“Who? The miller’s wife?”

Ulf shrugged.

“I couldn’t see any reason for Gilbert’s unease,” she continued, “but now, having spoken to Baldwin, I thought I’d take a stroll out there this morning. Have a word with the miller. Just to see how the land lies. It may simply be that the miller’s a friend of Baldwin and Gilbert’s trying to stir trouble.”

Ulf looked thoughtful. “Did Baldwin say anything definite to make you doubt Gilbert?”

“He said he was mad, obsessed by Dorelia, and that he feared he would do something to her one day, out of jealousy as he hinted, and, I suppose, frustration at not being eligible enough for her.”

“It’s a curse, looking the way she does. Both of ’em are jealous I’d guess. Baldwin could scarcely take his eyes off her when we were talking about the glass. He and Gilbert probably hate each other’s guts. Rivalry in love’s a terrible thing. Especially when neither side can win.” The bright blue of his eyes kindled with some deep thought and he touched her on the back of the wrist. Pulling himself together he said, “Hildegard, promise me you won’t go out there until I can come with you? I can’t get away from here till later on.”

“I only thought I’d go to Low Mill. I’m not going anywhere else. Besides, it’s broad daylight—and I have my three escorts.”

“Come back here straight afterwards then and tell me what happens. Even if it’s nothing at all.”

She smiled. “I will.”

*   *   *

Hildegard and the boy made their way back down Micklegate towards Ouse Bridge on their way to Low Mill. It was here on Micklegate that she had been carried to safety in the company of the college of cardinals.

Now the entire width of the street from shop front to shop front was full of popes, shepherds, prophets, cherubim, devils, monks who were not monks at all but cordwainers and pewterers and limonours and, processing towards their pageant house, three resplendent orient kings, goldsmiths in real life, glittering and sparkling in their paper crowns and coloured glass jewels, parting the waves of sightseers with gold-painted staves.