The Law of Angels Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Map

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Epilogue

  Timeline

  Also by Cassandra Clark

  Copyright

  Prologue

  The heat in the small attic under the thatched roof of the guildmaster’s house was stifling. It reinforced a feeling of intimacy. The distant sounds of the market added to the sense that the two of them inhabited a private world.

  “Compare the price of swans,” suggested the girl lightly as she sprawled across the bed wearing nothing but her cotton shift.

  The young man grinned. “Swans! Compared with what?”

  “Books, you sot wit! Haven’t you been listening?” Sitting up to tug the hem of the shift over her head she gave him a challenging look then flung her head back to allow her long hair to trail radiantly over the pillows. She was in all the pride of her youth and beauty. Smiling indulgently she said, “I’ve just been telling you, dunderhead. They’re saying King Richard has bought two books for twenty-eight nobles!” She couldn’t keep the awe out of her voice.

  “What’s that got to do with swans?” he demanded.

  “Think about it! You can get two dozen swans for only three nobles. Which is the better bargain?”

  “Depends what the books were,” he teased. “Me, I wouldn’t give a farthing for a hundred books, but I’d give a pouch full of groats for a swan with all its feathers on. Anyway,” he continued, “what would you be doing with another swan? Surely one’s enough?” As he spoke he raised both arms.

  Attached to them was a pair of wings. They were of such length they trailed round his ankles as if he was crossing the floor on a cloud. With his bright hair and dancing eyes he looked less like a swan than an angel.

  Smiling softly the girl reached out. “Are you keeping them pageant britches on forever?”

  They were stitched all over with white goose feathers and he pushed them roughly aside as he climbed onto the bed.

  “At least take your wings off,” she advised.

  He began to tickle her. “It’s not a sin to wear wings, is it?”

  “No, but this is!” she teased, sliding more comfortably beneath him. “Are you married?” she whispered. “No? Then sin!”

  “Is this your wife?” he murmured.

  “No. Then sin!”

  He cloaked the wings over them both by stretching her arms above her head so that they were lying inside a feathered cave with sunlight filtering through the quills. Splinters of gold leaf seemed to gild their skin.

  “Is it a fasting day?” he whispered.

  “Sin!”

  “Is it daylight?” he continued.

  “Sin—” She tugged hurriedly at his britches. “Sin … sin … a thousand times sin … Take them off!”

  As he struggled out of the offending garment he began to recite from the forthcoming mystery plays in a large, false voice. “Doom nighs near and—”

  “Shush!” she murmured, pressing her fingers to his lips. “You’re all talk and no action today. Whatever’s the matter? Are you still worried about your lines?” She pulled him closer.

  At that moment the door of the attic flew open.

  Three men entered.

  They had hoods pulled well down over their faces and carried drawn swords. One came straight over to the bed. A thrust of his blade into the white feathers brought a gasp from the youth and he stared at the steel tip protruding from between his ribs in astonishment. A gout of blood appeared. The girl’s eyes widened in horror as gore dripped onto her breasts, and as she was dragged out into the flash of daylight she gave a shriek of fear. Behind their masks the men said nothing. She began to plead for her life.

  * * *

  Meanwhile, in another part of the county, two men are sitting on the battlements of a castle commanding a view over the royal forest. A blizzard of gulls, driven inland by a glittering easterly, swirls above their heads. Out of this avian storm one bird detaches itself, alights on the parapet and struts confidently towards them.

  Fixing it with an interested glance, the elder of the two men asks, “Do you think they can be trained to hunt like falcons?”

  His companion assesses the bird—its weight, heavier than a barnyard cock; its white breast, grey wings; its raptor’s beak marked at the tip with a red spot like a drop of blood—and observes that the creature clearly regards the men as nought. Both watch as it turns its head to display first one yellow eye and then the other. “Everything living can be trained to kill,” he concludes. “Whether they’d return the prey to you is another matter.”

  A second bird detaches itself from the flock and alights with a struggling herring in its grasp. The first gull makes a grab to claim the fish. At once a squabble breaks out. Yellow claws draw blood until the attacker flies off clutching its stolen prize. With a shriek of rage the second launches itself in pursuit.

  “How like men,” observes the elder of the two.

  “Only the prize is different,” replies his companion, narrow lips twisting with amusement. He watches the fight continue in mid-air.

  “An omen?” His companion follows his glance. “Young Richard and brave cousin Harry?”

  The fight continues. Blood is drawn. The white feathers are streaked with red.

  “No doubt it’s treason to compare the crown to a herring,” the younger man remarks.

  His companion spits over the parapet. “No doubt.”

  Chapter One

  Some days before this, in the deep peace of a summer morning, Hildegard was lifting skeps in the lower meadow at Deepdale. She wore a white mesh veil and padded gauntlets and worked to the sound of contented bees murmuring within the hives.

  Three years had passed since King Richard and Mayor Walworth had outfaced Wat Tyler’s shocked and betrayed countrymen at Smithfield. In fact the third anniversay of Tyler’s murder fell on the Feast of Corpus Christi in scarcely a fortnight’s time.

  And it was two years since Archbishop Courtenay had received the pallium from Pope Urban VI in Rome and had emerged from Canterbury with new powers, stamping hard on the Oxford dissidents and scattering them like ants about the realm.

  But it was only one year since Hildegard had been given leave to move into the grange at Deepdale in the north of the county and turn it into a minor cell of her mother house at Swyne.

  It had been a hard year but now the fruits of their endeavours were beginning to show.

  As she worked in the drowsy heat she was sharply aware that it was also a year since the Abbot of Meaux, Hubert
de Courcy, had abruptly left on pilgrimage, putting the running of the abbey in the hands of his cellarer, Brother Alcuin.

  The honeybees flew serenely in and out of the hives, their king royally at ease inside his straw-stitched palace. Their skeps were upended baskets of woven blackberry briars placed on wooden stands as protection against predators. Conical reed tents called hackles kept them from rain and the heat of the sun. During the previous week several frames of wax had been taken out for delivery to a chandler in York, leaving some skeps empty, but the rest, today, were buzzing with life.

  Hildegard was busy hefting the remainder of the skeps so that she could judge how much honey was in them. She worked alone while the two other sisters who had joined her at Deepdale busied themselves around the house and kitchen garden.

  It was a sad thing, she thought with a glance at the empty skeps, that the bees had to be destroyed in order to remove the honeycomb. She pondered the possibility of trying a method she had observed in the abbey hives at Meaux. There a straw cap was put on top of the skep and the bees were encouraged to take up residence in this new place. It allowed the honeycomb to be removed from below without killing the bees themselves. That would be worth trying, she decided, as she finished her task and began to walk slowly back up the meadow.

  The sisters at Deepdale were lucky to have received a request for beeswax from a chandler in York. He had been tearing his hair because an expected consignment from the Baltic was delayed in the Humber estuary by a dispute over port taxes. It was his privilege to supply the guilds with their Corpus Christi candles and his reputation would be in tatters, as well as his hair, if he couldn’t deliver. A call had gone out to all the local beekeepers to spare what they could. Deepdale made an offer at once. They could use the income.

  At a safe distance she took off her protective veil and removed her gauntlets. A year ago the grange had been nothing but a wilderness of nettles and ground elder. It had taken six nuns seconded from the priory at Swyne together with Hildegard, a lay sister called Agnetha and a couple of strong Dalesmen, to bring some order to the place. Now they were almost self-sufficient.

  As she made her way through the long grass she gazed up towards the scar at the dale head where the sheep were being rounded up.

  The high-pitched whistle of Dunstan, the shepherd, and the bleating protests of the sheep themselves floated down in the hot silence of mid-morning. The shearmen must have finished their work. Soon the shorn flock would be brought down to start the long journey to summer pasture on the banks of the Humber. The wool clip meant more vital income. There might even be a profit by the end of the summer if the crops didn’t fail in the present drought. It was hard work, trying to survive in the wilds, but it would be worth every blistered palm and cricked back for the harvest that must surely follow.

  Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a man’s voice hailing her from the orchard. Assuming it was the shepherd’s lad, she lifted her head. But it was a monk in the familiar white robes of a Cistercian who had called out, and now he came striding energetically through the grass towards her.

  “Brother Thomas!” she exclaimed with pleasure. “How good to see you. But what brings you over to Deepdale so soon? Surely it’s not time to hear our confessions again?”

  Based at the Abbey of Meaux, he was the newly ordained monk given the light task of attending to the community’s spiritual needs. Tall and broad-shouldered and no more than twenty-five, he now removed a wide-brimmed straw hat to reveal a bony, intelligent face, lightly tanned by the weeks of unending sunshine.

  He greeted her with a somewhat apologetic expression. To her surprise she saw two young women standing at the gate. In fact, on closer inspection, she realised they were little more than children. One of them wore a battered straw hat with a stylish tilt to the brim and a chain of daisies round the crown, while the smaller of the two had a hood pulled over, almost concealing her face. Both looked dusty and dishevelled from their journey.

  “Come into the kitchen and have a beaker of ale,” she invited, leading the way through the trees towards the house. Two ponies and an old ambler were already being installed in the cool of the barn by the stable lad.

  “This heat seems endless,” Thomas said as he fell into step beside her. “The wells are dry as far as Beverley.”

  “How about Swyne? Are they coping?”

  “Doesn’t your prioress always cope? I think she’s conjuring water out of the sun itself.” He chuckled. “But I have something to tell you.” He glanced back at the two girls who were trailing at their heels and lowered his voice. “You have your first guests.”

  Hildegard gave him a startled glance. “Guests?”

  “Your prioress sends them with her kind regards.”

  “For how long?”

  “She didn’t say. There was some haste in her decision.”

  “Whatever possessed her to send them here?”

  Thomas shook his head.

  “What else did she say to you?”

  “Nothing … other than to make sure they arrived safely.”

  She gave him a sharp glance. “So what’s their story?”

  “Can we talk somewhere in private?”

  By now Agnetha, the lay sister, had appeared from the dairy. After greeting the girls, Hildegard turned to her. “I wonder if you’d give our guests something to eat and drink, Agnetha? I’m going to whisk Brother Thomas away so I can catch up on news from Swyne.” She led the way into the house.

  * * *

  The young monk sat down on the bench opposite Hildegard. They were in the small chamber off the main hall where she did the accounts. It was scarcely big enough to swing a cat in, but it gave some privacy during the daily comings and goings in the rest of the house, and now too it was a refuge from the blazing sun. She offered Thomas a mazer of ale from their brew-house.

  “This is good stuff,” he observed after taking a long drink. “Almost as good as ours at Meaux!” he teased as she refilled the vessel.

  “It’s Agnetha’s latest project.” She smiled. “If she ever leaves here she’d make a good ale-wife. In fact, there’s nothing practical she can’t turn her hand to. I don’t know what we’d do without her.”

  “And the two nuns?”

  “Marianne, solid and sensible, and Cecilia thankfully given to poetic flights that transform the mundane into something beautiful, with a voice that makes us feel we’re in heaven already!”

  “And all three the perfect helpers to establish a grange like this. You’ve worked hard this last year. The brothers at Meaux are impressed. Every time I visit I see changes for the better.”

  “We’re so fortunate. Soon we’ll be able to take in our first orphans.” Hildegard gave him a straight look. “Or are these they? From what you’ve hinted there’s obviously more to them.”

  “It’s as I told you. I really know nothing else. The prioress came to me as soon as I’d said mass and instructed me to escort them here at once. She was in a hurry. She said, ‘See what Hildegard can make of ’em.’” He lowered his voice. “I believe her haste came from the need for one of them to be hustled out of the clutches of some horsemen who had just ridden onto the garth. The talkative girl, Petronilla, tells me she’s an heiress and was about to be married off to an old man she hates. In fact, she wants to become a nun, or so she says.” He gave a small jerk of his head as if to show his scepticism. “Maybe the prioress fears her guardian will try to snatch her back before the child has had time to decide matters for herself?”

  “She’s a pretty child.” When the straw hat had been swept off, Hildegard had caught a glimpse of a pert face under a cloud of dark hair. She looked about sixteen or a little younger. There had been a delicate silver pin nestling in the curls. If she wanted to be a nun, she thought, that would have to go. She gave a smile to indicate she shared Thomas’s scepticism and asked, “So she’s an heiress, is she? And the one in the hood?”

  “Not a word could we get out of her.”
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  “Is she dumb?”

  “No. She made an ill remark about her pony before we set off, but that was it all the way here, mile after silent mile. Of course,” he added with a long-suffering shrug, “it would have been hard to get a word in edgeways with Petronilla present, as you’ll shortly discover.”

  The conversation moved briefly onto other issues. Thomas asked if she had heard anything of the Scots since the truce ended at Candlemas, but she shook her head. “Just that assault on Annandale, taking back what was taken from them, to be taken and retaken for generations to come no doubt, unless everybody changes their attitude.”

  “I hear Lord Percy has introduced the death penalty for breaking the truce—a turnabout in his thinking that’s had us all open-mouthed at Meaux. He must be worried about this renewed alliance with the French. He could lose everything if the Scots and French make a concerted attack.”

  “That’s what we feared last year, but luckily it came to nothing. But it’s not only the Duke of Northumberland who could lose everything. If the north’s taken, those in the south are going to suffer as well. The Londoners would do well to remember that.”

  Thomas nodded in agreement. “It’s high time we got some action from those in Westminster. They’re too busy feathering their own nests to rule the country properly. The barons should be defending the realm, not bickering over who gets the biggest slice of its wealth. We need proper leadership. Gaunt should step aside and let King Richard get on with the job. He’s seventeen now. Of age. But Gaunt must rule the roost, mustn’t he?”

  Hildegard had never heard Thomas so incensed.

  He was frowning. “All that aside,” he went on, “we brothers at Meaux are worried about the safety of our outlying granges should the Scots reappear. We worry about you nuns, Hildegard. This is such an isolated part of the county.”

  “We’re safe enough as long as the Scots don’t call Northumberland’s bluff and start raiding right down into Yorkshire again. Besides, nobody knows we’re here, it’s so remote!” She leaned forward, “But tell me, any news from Meaux, Thomas?”

  He understood instantly what she meant. “He’s absent still.”

  There was silence.

  Eventually Hildegard said, “Safe, one trusts?”