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Authors: Cassandra Clark

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BOOK: The Red Velvet Turnshoe
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They were due to leave in the pitch dark of early morning, but Ulf came banging on her door with an urgent request as soon as the household started to wake up.
‘Reynard’s still missing. It looks as if I’m going to have to leave without him. Before I go will you come along to surprise Pierrekyn from his slumbers? You’re good at getting things out of folk and we might be able to startle the truth from him.’
‘Surely.’ Hildegard took her bag with her. There was nothing to come back here for. She took a last bleak look round the cell.
As they made their way out into the bitter cold she said, ‘What’s this Reynard like? Is he the type to go off without a word to anybody?’
‘I wouldn’t have thought so. He’s a gregarious fellow. Always spouting off about something or other. Must be around thirty and old enough not to throw it all in for no good reason. He helped the notary draw up this contract I’ve mentioned, then he went down to Kent to get the earl to sign it. Roger was about to give him a handsome reward for his services.’
‘And why should the minstrel know anything?’
Ulf did not answer but he was grim-faced as their feet crunched over the ice-filmed puddles in the garth.
There was no moon. Across the great court the monks were already filing into prime, cressets set along the passage revealing their hooded shapes as they moved between the stone pillars.
The steward led her to a part of the abbey she had never visited before – living quarters for the servants and lay brothers built on two storeys, located between the kitchens, the food stores and the packing sheds.
Puzzled, she asked, ‘Won’t the minstrel be staying in the guest house with the rest of the retinue from Castle Hutton?’
‘Reynard keeps a chamber over here as his work often brings him to Meaux.’ Again Ulf said little but merely set his lips in a tight line and Hildegard took it as a sign not to ask him to explain further.
Making little sound, they hurried up the narrow steps to the first floor. Ulf reached one of the doors and without bothering to knock hurled it open. A candle was burning in a niche and by its light they saw a figure stumble back from a high desk. Something fell to the floor and in the dim light they saw the minstrel back away against the wall, one hand reaching for his dagger.
‘Take one step closer and you’re dead!’ he announced in a shaking voice.
‘Shut up, you sot-wit. It’s me, Lord Roger’s steward. We’re still looking for Reynard. Where is he?’
The youth slowly put the dagger back in his belt. ‘Forgive me, my lord steward. You entered like an assassin.’
Ulf ignored the undercurrent in the youth’s tone. ‘Explain what you’re doing.’
The abruptness of the command confused him. His glance flew to Hildegard for help. When she said nothing he shrugged and dropped his glance.
‘So where is he?’ Ulf demanded again
The boy’s fear was replaced by anger. ‘How in hell should I know where he is, steward? He’s gone! Vanished! He dragged me all the way up here from Kent, with promises and fine words, and now what? I’m left with no master, nothing.’ He gave a bitter laugh.
Ulf ignored it. ‘Get your cloak and lute. You’re coming with us to Bruges. Lord Roger’s orders.’
The minstrel went very still and his anger seemed to vanish as
quickly as it had arisen. In the flickering candlelight his eyes glinted but their expression was ambiguous. ‘You mean I’m to be one of de Hutton’s men and not just a follower?’ he whispered.
‘That’s what I’m told,’ said Ulf. He clearly had an opinion contrary to his lord’s on the decision.
‘Is this another lie?’
‘Are you with us or not?’
Pierrekyn went over to the desk, he picked up one or two things from it and stowed them inside his bag. Then he fell to his knees and groped around on the floor to find what had fallen when they came in. He palmed it into a pouch on his belt and straightened up.
‘Ready, my lord – when you are.’
Ulf gestured for him to go out, then followed closely at his heels as if half expecting him to make his escape.
 
‘Are we really taking young Pierrekyn with us?’ Hildegard whispered when the group assembled for departure. They were standing in the guest hall and wassail was being brought out.
‘Why not? Don’t you like music?’
‘It depends what sort,’ she replied. It was strange to be setting out with a secular party with all the vanities that would ensue. She touched her beaver hat with her fingertips.
By no means was she the only one dressed for the cold.
Lady Philippa, Roger’s seventeen-year-old daughter, was garbed in a fetching set of mixed furs. Although she was not travelling with them, her betrothed was, and she had come down from her chamber to wish Ser Ludovico Godspeed. He had to return to the branch in Bruges to oversee the smooth exchange of goods and the onward passage of the wool purchase to the cloth-makers in Tuscany. He and Philippa held hands with eyes for no one else.
Next to them stood Lord Roger, a massive bearskin thrown over his nightshirt, one arm round his wife’s girlish shoulders, his eyes quick and observant as he checked everything off on some mental list in his head. He looked pleased, thought Hildegard, like a card-player with a winning hand.
Lady Melisen too wore furs. They must have been snow marten or something else light and silvery, for the flares carried by the linksmen
passing in and out of the hall made them glitter and turned her into a figure of shimmering light.
Roger and the abbot were sharing the carriers’ costs. The staple from Meaux was placed at the beginning and end of the convoy with the de Hutton staple well protected in the middle.
‘Not that he’s afraid of brigands this side of the water,’ said Ulf in an undertone when Hildegard remarked on this. They exchanged smiles. Then he cast a lugubrious glance at the two couples. ‘It’s like living in a
chanson,
what with Roger so besotted and Philippa and Ludovico acting like a pair of turtle-doves. I’ll be glad to get out on the road with my men.’
‘They surely have good cause to feel themselves in love, being so young and foolish,’ replied Hildegard, gazing over at the younger pair. ‘They’ll soon learn that
amour
and love are two different things.’
‘Maybe I’m just jealous.’ Ulf looked into her face. She dropped her glance! ‘Hildegard,’ he said, lowering his voice, ‘take care for your safety when I leave you in Bruges. I’m told there’s going to be a knight engaged to escort you after we leave you there.’
‘There’s really no need for that. I can—’
He interrupted. ‘It’s already arranged.’
‘By Roger?’ she asked, surprised.
Ulf shook his head. ‘I don’t know who’s footing the bill.’
Was it the prioress using her influence? she wondered. Both she and the archbishop had a vested interest in her safety.
A mass was said for the convoy by one of the abbot’s priests and soon the wagons began to move off as the restless string of packhorses came to life.
With scores of cressets flickering against a mottled, pre-dawn sky, the convoy stretched ahead like a winding ribbon of light between the standing pools of the marshes. The entire retinue from Castle Hutton came to see them off. With the abbey brethren and the conversi, it was a large crowd. Hildegard’s glance swept the faces of the well-wishers. There was one absentee: the abbot himself.
Ahead lay the sea port of Ravenser and the crossing to Flanders. In a little time the abbey at Meaux and all its inhabitants would be no more substantial than a shroud of turrets rising from the marsh.
L
ORD ROGER HAD chosen Ravenser in preference to any of the other ports on the Humber for the good reason that his brother-in-law, Sir William of Holderness, had been responsible on behalf of the exchequer for collecting import and export taxes there. To have someone in the family in charge sometimes made life easier. Lately banished, however, William would by now be well on the road to Jerusalem as penance for his crimes. Meanwhile, Roger himself had taken over the lucrative role of tax collector. This trade was what kept the folk of Ravenser alive.
But it was a wild place.
Continually inundated by the sea on one side and the mighty tides of the Humber estuary on the other, the port lay at the end of a long, narrow spit of shingle that was slowly being squeezed out of existence. Some claimed this was a punishment from God for the many crimes of incest and piracy that prevailed in the small town. Others knew it was the combined forces of tide and storm that were pressing it to the point of annihilation.
Nowadays it could be approached only by a mile-long track, clamorous with sea birds and the constant rustle of the salt-water grasses that fringed the remains of a Roman road. They said a beacon had been built on the point as part of the great chain of communication that kept marauders from this far edge of the Roman Empire, but if so, it too, like many buildings in recent years, had disappeared beneath the waves. Despite its harshness it was a beautiful if remote part of the county.
When Hildegard saw it she became aware of the elemental power of its desolation. The sky seemed huge, the land small. She could die here, she felt, surrendering to its presiding spirits. She mentally
shook herself. This was no way to approach the adventure of voyaging abroad.
The town itself, grim and vigorous, and rife with the stench of herring, clearly hung between heaven and hell. When the cavalcade drew near, the sea was petrel blue in the waning light. It appeared in stabs of colour between the sagging, dun-coloured rooves of the wattle-and-daub dwellings. Despite the imminence of the curfew, folk bustled in the few narrow streets around the quay, reluctant to miss the grand spectacle of the carts laden with staple passing by. The men-at-arms observed the spectators with a mixture of disdain and wariness. They were massively outnumbered by the denizens of the town but the latter were a weak, half-starved bunch, armed with no more than cudgels and gutting knives. Even so, there was dignity in their stares, blank looks concealing what might be the defiance of their thoughts.
The dock was fully protected against entry by any but the officers of the customs. Those with documents of passage to Flanders were held at the checkpoint. The toll-master and his bailiffs were slow and methodical. Even though they had already been informed of the embarkation of the contingent, they still took their time, conscious that they had the power to prevent anybody from leaving the country should they so wish and they were not ashamed to display their importance. The first wagons had already gone through, however, nothing at fault with the documents produced by the abbey scribes.
Then the de Hutton wagons began to pass one by one between the line of guards. Hildegard was sitting beside Ulf with a group of his men, the minstrel, and an abbey clerk, all of them crammed together in the third cart. The Florentines were delayed in the port office to drill home to them the fact that they were foreigners. The five henchmen stood in an impassive group while Ludovico argued their case.
Pierrekyn began to fret about the stowing of his lute. During the pitching of the wagon over the churned mud on the track, he had had to relinquish his hold on it, agreeing to being parted from it only when Ulf found a niche where, he said, it wouldn’t be rattled into a heap of sawdust and broken strings. Now Pierrekyn began to
rummage around for it, making a great fuss, much to the amusement of the serjeant-at-arms who had stopped their wagon with one foot planted on the running board.
Briefly glancing down the list of passengers, he began to smile when he heard what the commotion was about. Addressing Ulf, whom he knew well, he said, ‘Tell your singing lad, my lord steward, he’s not the first minstrel we’ve had taking ship down here. We’re not barbarians, you know.’ He handed back the dockets with a genial flourish. ‘As long as it’s not made of wool he’s free to take it anywhere he likes. Does he think we’re mad enough to put a tax on music?’
He and Ulf exchanged glances. ‘These musicians!’ he replied affably. The bailiff removed his foot. They were through.
‘We go on board now and leave the men to load the cargo,’ Ulf told Hildegard. ‘I’ll find you a place to sleep on deck under the awning. Your hounds should have been sent on from Swyne by now and will be loaded on in their wicker cage. It’s probably best to let them stay in that if they will, so they don’t get under everybody’s feet – or swept overboard,’ he added with a teasing grin. He paused and asked awkwardly, ‘I hope you don’t mind travelling with my men?’
‘Their humour is more ribald than that usually heard around the priory,’ she said, unable to keep a twinkle out of her eyes, ‘but I expect I’ll survive.’
Smiling, Ulf went away to attend to his duties and Hildegard climbed the ladder onto the deck to find her hounds.
 
It was dawn again by the time everything was stowed to the ship-master’s satisfaction. Hildegard had just stepped ashore to stretch her legs when she felt a tug on her sleeve and, looking down, she saw a small boy holding something out to her.
Recognising him as one of the oblates from Meaux who had come along to fetch and carry, and who would be going back in the wagons with the imported merchandise, she bent down to see what he wanted. He was holding out a small bundle of cloth. As soon as she took it he scampered off into the crowd.
‘Wait! What is it?’ she called but he was already lost to sight.
Cautiously, she opened the bundle. There was nothing in it. All
she held in her hand was a piece of cloth. It felt like silk. When she looked closer she saw it was yellowed with age. She held it up. It was a neckerchief like the sort of thing a knight might wear under his mail, or fasten to his lance. It had the softness of long use and was clearly no ordinary piece of fabric. There was a motif in one corner. Looking closer she saw it was an embroidered pattern of leaves dotted with several small blue flowers. Borage, she realised at once.
What did they say?
Borage for courage.
It was the emblem knights carried into battle or, in earlier times, wore close to their hearts when they went on crusade. Templars had carried such talismans. Puzzled, she put it safely into her scrip and climbed back on board.
Everyone was leaning against the rail to get a last look at England.
Three ships were due to leave but the third was still being loaded and would probably miss the tide. Its passengers, pilgrims and their servants, as well as several delayed members of their own party, were milling around on the quay. One traveller, his hood up against the wind, was standing apart from the commotion, watching their ship as its lines were cast off. His stillness amid all the activity attracted Hildegard’s attention and thinking about the surprise gift of the silk neckerchief, she wondered for a moment whether it was he who had sent it. But she could think of no reason why he should do so.
Above their heads a cloud of gulls shrieked like drowning sailors. The pennants on the masthead snapped in the wind.
When she looked back towards the quickly receding shore the hooded man was a still point in all the activity on the quay. He was turned to watch them as the laden cog slipped faster into the stream. The shouts from the shore were folded away.
Hildegard glanced back.
The stranger was still watching. Even as the ship slid at last into the rushing flood mid-river he was watching it, and it was only when the sails bellied up, and the ship ran close-hauled past the fort at the river mouth, that he became too small to make out.
 
‘Are you sorry to leave?’ Hildegard glanced along the rail to where the minstrel was staring back at the shore with tight lips.
He gave a start. ‘Glad to shake the dust of the treacherous place from my boots,’ he muttered, turning as if to go.
She put out a hand. ‘A moment. I understand you met Master Reynard in Kent when he went down there with Lord Roger’s mission from Yorkshire.’
‘What if I did?’
She ignored his scowl and said, ‘I was wondering what sort of fellow he was.’
‘The usual.’ His lower lip jutted.
She waited to see whether he would add anything but when he appeared to have nothing more to say she was about to leave when he suddenly muttered, ‘He was an artist, I’ll give him that. His saving grace was his skill with pen and ink.’ He threw her a challenging glance. ‘What he couldn’t depict couldn’t be drawn by any man on earth.’
‘I understood he was a clerk, assisting the notary in the drawing up of contracts.’
‘A man has to eat. You don’t see Lord Roger having any use for an illuminator, do you?’ He gave a harsh laugh. ‘If you can’t kill it, eat it or buy it, de Hutton has no use for it. Unless it’s a woman, of course.
His disrespectful reference to Roger prompted her to say, ‘If you feel like that I’m surprised you’ve decided to don his livery.’
‘As I said, a man has to eat.’
Man, she thought, with an unexpected feeling of compassion. He could be no more than seventeen. Only his pride and his look of having seen the world ten times over and been unimpressed by it made him seem older.
‘I hope your lute came to no harm on that rough journey.’
‘It’s well enough.’ As always he had it beside him in its leather bag. He drew it forth and ran his hands over the walnut case. It was a beautiful instrument, worn to a patina with use and age.
‘Where did you learn to play?’
‘Kent.’
‘Canterbury?’
‘Did I say so?’ He turned to her. His green eyes were like chips of ice.
As if irritated by the conversation he plucked at the strings but before he could coax them into a tune she said, ‘That was the lament to Bel Veger you played yesterday in Lady Melisen’s chamber, wasn’t it?’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘Indeed, Sister. Surely not heard in your cloister?’
It was her turn to ignore the question.
He gave her a considering glance. ‘Well, well,’ he said, coming to some conclusion. He began to play then, very fast, with great skill and dexterity, but it was not the lament for the adulterous wife of a duke but a different tune, a jig, something he punctuated with ironic chords that offered a ribald double meaning.
Soon a group of people formed round him and, half suspecting that this had been his intention so he could put an end to her questions, she edged away. There was something dangerous about Pierrekyn, she felt. Rage or some other powerful emotion seemed to simmer beneath the surface of everything he said.
There had been little opportunity to talk to Ser Ludovico on the way over, with the pitching of the wagon and the tumult of the horsemen in their armour. Now she made her way along the canted deck in search of him. She found him playing dice with his men in the stern.
From here they could see the entire length of the deck if they wanted: the merchandise that would not fit in the hold lashed to the stanchions fitted for the purpose, the group of admirers round the minstrel, the wicker cage with her two hounds sleeping in safety, Ulf amidships in conversation with the master, the sailors spidering about in the rigging.
Ludovico rose to his feet at her approach. ‘After thirty hours of this, Sister, how do you feel?’ His English had become fluent after nearly a year of Philippa’s tuition.
‘I feel good,’ she replied. She swayed with the tilt and lift of the deck. ‘I believe my ancestors were seafarers.’
‘I’m better on dry land,’ he told her, and indeed his olive skin was already beginning to acquire a greenish tinge.
‘I have a concoction in my scrip that’s supposed to help if you need it,’ she told him.
‘I’ll brazen it out for the while. Why don’t you join us?’ He set aside the dice and made a space in the nest of ropes where they were sitting. ‘They tell me you’re off on pilgrimage to Rome.’
‘That’s so. But I’m also charged with making a few purchases for Lady Melisen on the way. I was wondering whether I could ask your advice.’
When she explained what she wanted to buy, he was helpful. ‘I can take you to a goldsmith in Bruges who’ll make these brooches she wants and as for the pearl-embroidered sleeves I know just the man. You must let me come with you and make sure you get a good price.’
She mentioned the silk the nuns produced at Swyne. ‘Do you think there’d be a market for it in Flanders?’ The prioress would be delighted if she could manage to find a way of bringing in more revenue.
Ludovico smiled. ‘There’s a market for everything in the world if you know where to look but I’m afraid your sisters would find themselves in competition with the silk-spinners of Lucca. Still, as I say, there’s a market for everything. I’ll ask my contacts if you like. It’s English wool everybody wants at present.’
BOOK: The Red Velvet Turnshoe
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