The Law of Angels (26 page)

“I believe Hugo of St. Victor does so, and Walter Hilton, and one or two others of that kind.”

“But not you?” He looked genuinely interested at her reference to some of those who assumed that only the priesthood could understand the Bible. Hugo was a theologian popular in Paris for many years and he was often quoted by those who wanted to seem fashionable as well as orthodox.

“I believe most things should be explained as straightforwardly as possible,” she said after a pause. “Nobody should be prevented from finding the truth. Expert knowledge is often used to keep the people in their place. If a person can read then they can read the truth and should be allowed to do so.”

“She could fit in well here,” he observed, his dark eyes turning to the red-haired fellow.

“Let’s get to the point. This cross—if we have it and I’m not saying we have—is being offered to the highest bidder.”

“My bid is my right to it. There can be none higher. I was the one who brought it back across the Alps.”

“A fair right. But it’s not for us to make decisions without consulting every man. We don’t organise ourselves in the old way, with a leader dictating to the rest. I’ll put your request to my brothers. We’ll see what they have to say. You may leave.” He nodded to one of the men standing by who stepped forward with alacrity and attempted to grip her by the arm.

“Just a moment.” She brushed his hand aside. “I’ve come a long way. Is that all you’re going to say? I wonder if you realise the importance this relic has for certain factions?”

The chief spokesman lifted his head. “For your faction, sister?” He raised his eyebrows in an invitation to admit who had sent her. When she failed to reply he asked, “Maybe you can match its importance with gold?”

“I doubt whether anyone could raise enough to equal its imagined value.”

“In that case I offer my gratitude for taking the trouble to speak to us.”

Before she could protest further she was being escorted away whether she liked it or not. The firm grip of the man delegated to show her towards the horses did not slacken, but before they reached them the man she took to be Will Thorpe walked up. He was followed by a lad carrying the same heavy bag she had noticed before.

“I was on the point of leaving when you arrived,” he explained. “Let’s ride together.”

With a grunt of indifference the saddler unroped two horses, then looked along the line until he found a small pony for the boy. When they were on the move the bookish fellow said, “I’m heading up to Durham. I can guide you through the woods as far as the highway where you’ll find a clear road back to York.”

They rode out of the camp. She felt uneasy. There was something going on beyond what the leader had told her. The situation made no sense. When they were away from the camp and riding through woodland she turned to her companion. “They treat you with respect, magister.”

“Respect for learning isn’t quite extinguished,” he said, adding, “despite Archbishop Courtney and Pope Urban’s efforts.” She saw him turn to her in the pale moonlight that filtered through the trees and there was a flash of a smile out of the darkness “I trust you find my words neither treasonable nor heretical?”

“I’m not a justiciar nor a pope. You’re only saying what many people think. At least we can still think freely.”

“Though plain and forthright speaking is becoming somewhat restricted by our lawmakers? We live in sad times.” He rode on beside her, the boy taking up the rear on a little prancing pony with white socks.

It was difficult to carry on a conversation while trying to find a way through such dense woodland. The stranger pointed out the occasional blaze cut into the bark of a tree, which, if she had not been looking for it, she would have taken as natural, but they were way-marks, he explained, and made the path easier to follow.

Soon they reached the king’s highway. They rode from under the trees and came to a halt on the wide verge where the brushwood had been cut back by order of the king to assist travellers against surprise attack by outlaws.

“I go north now.” The magister pointed up the road with his riding whip. When he turned he was looking serious. “There are differences of opinion in the brotherhood as you might have noticed, but I trust I’ve been able to shepherd the flock back to its true purpose.”

He hesitated then told her, “They have the cross, of course. And there are those who wish to sell it to the King of Scotland in return for arms.”

“That was the rumour,” she admitted.

He leaned forward. “Do not despair. There are others who want to trade it for gold in order to pay the scriveners to write their pamphlets.”

“That’s no help to me.”

“There’s a trader.” He peered at her through the darkness. “You may have heard of him. He’s called Robert Acclom and sails out of Scarborough?”

“Trader, you call him? He’s one of the most notorious pirates sailing the northern ocean.”

“I believe it. Whatever the case, he’s bringing arms up the coast in the next few days to sell to the Scots. I don’t need to tell you with what desire some rebels regard the weapons of war. It leads them to madness. They hope to do a deal with Acclom and cut out the Scots as well as their own brothers of the White Hart, but I fear Acclom will not give up one iota of his trade with King Robert. It’s steady trade and far too lucrative for a man like him to relinquish.”

“But you’re saying they hope to sell the cross to him?”

He gazed sadly into her eyes. “Sister, unlike us, they are ignorant of the power of ideas. They do not see that ideas last when iron has turned to rust.”

He lifted his whip in farewell and with the words “God assist you in the true way,” urged his horse on. She watched them both, the man she assumed was the outlawed theologian and the silent boy carrying his bag of books. After they vanished into the night she turned her horse’s head in the opposite direction and set off towards York.

*   *   *

After less than a mile she slowed and eventually pulled to a complete halt. Magister Thorpe and his boy were long gone. Bright moonlight shed its reflected rays all around. It was like daylight but for its ghostly hue. Every stick and stone was visible, as was the highway curving away to York … and the road leading back to the rebel camp.

With a sense of the inevitable, she turned her horse’s head north. She made sure she kept within the fringe of trees where the cleared ground stopped. Now that she knew how to decipher the path, she could find her way through the woods to the camp. The cross was there. She could not allow it to be bartered for arms.

With no clear idea how she was going to get it back she continued towards the junction where she had turned onto the highway with the magister. Apart from the sound of her horse moving through the dry grass nothing stirred. The woods were cloaked in silence. She reached the turn-off. Where the grass had been flattened by their horses’ hooves as they stopped to talk it shone like silver, a clear sign of their presence.

She set off into the trees. The moonlight cast leaf patterns over the scene. Something flickered and caught her eye. When she looked more squarely there was nothing to see but the trunks of the silver birches gleaming out of the darkness.

Chapter Twenty

She left her horse among the bushes and crawled out onto the chalk cliff overlooking the encampment. The fire where the hind had been roasting was by now a heap of embers. In its glow she could see the men directly beneath her vantage point. Sprawled at their ease they were tearing chunks off the remains of the carcass of venison while a flagon of liquor was passed from hand to hand.

Someone began to sing. One by one the others joined in

Firelight shone on the men’s faces, gilding them with its glow, beautifying the harshness of individual features, softening mouths, the curve of a nose, furrows on a forehead, emphasising the individuality of men brought together by a common belief.

The song they sang was a lament for a land of lost content. One that had probably never existed in the entire history of the world. Somehow it expressed the heartfelt longing for something beyond the careworn existence that was their lot.

Hildegard’s thoughts strayed to a particular pilgrim in Outremer and her yearning to see him return to his own far country, the Abbot of Meaux, brought tears to her eyes. Other songs followed and the words floated into the night, clear then faint, with a sound like the heartbeat of humanity. One she recognised as a rebel anthem of great fame. The men’s voices rang out with the strength of their common aim:

“… And on that purpose yet we stand—

whoever does us wrong—

in whate’er place it fall—

he does against us all!”

And then came a rousing chorus. Despite its final triumphal shout she heard something defeated and grieving in its cadences. The desire for freedom moved her. But it seemed so hopeless. The dark forces ranged against these landless, masterless men were too strong, too brutal, too cunning for such innocent hopes.

She must have drifted off to sleep, the pangs of hunger briefly forgotten under the lull of their voices, because something brought her swimming back into the present with a jolt. It was the rustle of a creature going about its nocturnal chores. Nothing more than the sound of a twig breaking. She wriggled forward to peer over the edge of the cliff.

The men were still sitting round the dying embers of the fire, but they were mostly silent now. Some rested their heads on their saddlebags and slept.

The red-haired spokesman she had met earlier was discussing something in a low voice, elbows on knees, head thrust forward, talking to someone she was sure had not been present before. Red-beard might imagine he’s not their chief, she thought watching him now, but his natural authority would make him the man others would look to for leadership whether he wanted them to or not. The other fellow was a blusterer, trying to hold his own.

A disturbance over by the row of horses occurred. New arrivals, she saw, as several figures dismounted. Then her eyes widened.

Escorted by a posse of armed men was Brother Thomas and Master Danby.

She wanted to cry out, but instead held her breath and watched as they were urged forward. An argument was going on. A couple of guards searched the two men for weapons. She saw Thomas protest when his knife was taken from him.

“It’s got something written on it!” exclaimed the man who had wrenched it from Thomas’s belt. His voice floated up clearly to her hiding place. “Is it Latin?” He showed it to the man next to him.

“That’s Latin all right,” came the reply.

Thomas held out his hand. “My father gave it to me shortly before he died. May I have it back?”

The first man laughed. “Cheek! You think we want this in our gizzards?”

“I’m a monk. I don’t kill people.”

“Not on a crusade then?”

“Why worry, unless you consider yourself Saracen?”

For that he got a punch in the stomach, but it went no further as the leader said something in a harsh voice and the man who had hit Thomas made a mumbled remark and turned away. Red-beard addressed the man sitting beside him.

“Keep a better control over your men, brother. We like to treat our guests with courtesy. Tell him to hand the knife back, unless he aspires to be a common thief.”

The knife was returned to Thomas who slipped it into his belt with a nod of thanks.

“Where’s the nun?” asked Danby, stepping forward and brushing his captor aside. “We were told she was here.”

“She must be nearly back at York by now. She left in the company of the magister some time ago.”

“
We
didn’t see her.”

“She must have hitched herself to the magister and gone on to Durham with him then. You know what these celibates are like.”

A few guffaws followed from those round the fire until one of the rebels objected to having the magister’s name brought into disrepute.

At that moment Hildegard heard a whisper in her ear. “Time to go down and join them, eh?” When she turned there was a blade brushing her cheek. “Come on.” The man moved back with the knife held flat in front of him, its edge towards her. “Get up nice and slowly.”

Wanting nothing more, in the circumstance, than to be standing alongside Thomas and Danby, she obeyed without demur.

*   *   *

“So you couldn’t bear to be parted from us, lady?” Red-beard sounded genial enough but the man sitting next to him rose to his feet.

“What the hell is this?” he demanded. “Who are all these people? First a monk, then a stinking burgess, now a bloody nun!”

“Calm yourself, brother. The burgess is an associate of Mayor de Quixlay and therefore our good friend.”

“De Quixlay?” Despite his tone the man sat down again. He glared balefully round the group.

Hildegard noticed now that he was accompanied by a number of men, ruffians with a particular blazon, difficult to decipher, something greenish on a white ground. He wiped the back of his hand under his nose and asked, “Are they going to sit in on what we’re discussing, because if that’s the case you can forget it.”

“No,” replied Red-beard. “Unless brother Danby has some message to convey and is here because of more than curiosity about the nun, he and his companions are going to turn right round and go straight back to York. As for the sister—”

“Slit her throat and have done with it,” the other grunted.

“No! That wasn’t the agreement!” Danby stepped forward and was hurriedly restrained.

“Indeed it wasn’t,” Red-beard replied calmly. “We’ll take her with us as nothing to the contrary was discussed.”

“What?” Hildegard herself moved forward but this time no one attempted to stop her. “Where are you going? Why should I come with you?”

“Why? Because you’ll be persuaded. Otherwise a little force may have to be used. You’re our hostage now, having returned of your own free will.”

Hildegard looked into the man’s eyes. Despite his genial tones their expression was implacable. He had left the question of their destination unanswered.

Rising to his feet he ordered the fire to be put out. “And see these two safely to the highway. Make sure they leave. Everybody else to horse. We have some night-riding to do.”