Murder at Whitby Abbey Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Previous titles by Cassandra Clark

  Title Page

  Copyright

  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

  Previous titles by Cassandra Clark

  The Abbess of Meaux mysteries

  HANGMAN BLIND

  THE RED VELVET TURNSHOE

  THE LAW OF ANGELS

  A PARLIAMENT OF SPIES

  THE DRAGON OF HANDALE

  THE BUTCHER OF AVIGNON

  THE SCANDAL OF THE SKULLS

  THE ALCHEMIST OF NETLEY ABBEY

  MURDER AT MEAUX

  MURDER AT WHITBY ABBEY *

  * available from Severn House

  MURDER AT WHITBY ABBEY

  Cassandra Clark

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  First published in Great Britain and the USA 2019 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  Eardley House, 4 Uxbridge Street, London W8 7SY.

  This eBook edition first published in 2019 by Severn House Digital

  an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

  Trade paperback edition first published

  in Great Britain and the USA 2020 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD.

  Copyright © 2019 by Cassandra Clark.

  The right of Cassandra Clark to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8953-9 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78029-621-0 (trade paper)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4483-0236-9 (e-book)

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  This ebook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

  Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland

  PROLOGUE

  The fire pit in the middle of the small chamber glowed inside its metal basket. It was the only light. The man by the door was looking into the chamber with his hand on the latch as if preparing to leave. The woman sat on a box bed on the other side of the fire. A gold light softened the lines of anger on her face but left her eyes in shadow. Her hair was unbraided and fell in soft waves to her waist. Smoke coiled upwards and lingered under the beams. Rain battered angry fists against the door.

  The man took a step forward and at the same time pulled his black cloak further round his shoulders as he prepared to leave. The fire sputtered.

  Into the silence he said, ‘So that’s it then. I’ll be back tomorrow. I’ll bring you some apples.’

  The woman gave a bark of laughter. ‘Thank you, brother, thank you, thank you,’ she mocked. ‘Apples? Lord help me!’ She dashed a hand towards him in a gesture of dismissal.

  He hesitated. ‘What else can I do?’

  ‘Come to bed.’

  ‘I can’t … You know I can’t.’

  ‘Please?’ In the middle of the pause that followed she rose and ran across the space that separated them to fling herself at his feet. She looked up into his face with her hands clasped. ‘I’m abasing myself! I’m on my knees to you! I’m pleading with you! Look at me!’

  A groan escaped his lips. ‘Don’t tempt me … I beg of you, don’t … You know I love you with all my heart.’

  ‘Do I?’

  ‘You must do. I risk so much.’

  ‘I feel I’d rather never see you again than go on like this. I may as well be a widow.’

  ‘Don’t say that.’

  ‘It’s true. If you were dead I’d have a memory of your body that would never show me coldness, instead of now – what? What do I have? This ache and longing for you? You’d be better for me dead! Have mercy on me. Don’t put me through this hell.’

  ‘I love you. I always will.’ He looked helpless and took his hand off the door latch.

  ‘Hollow words! You taunt me with them. You’re dragging me down into the flames. I can’t do this! Go away!’

  A pause followed.

  He made up his mind. His hand went to the latch. Rain blustered against the door, forcing it open. He pulled up his hood. ‘I’ll come back tomorrow.’

  ‘Why risk it? So you can kill me with your cruelty?’ She rose to her feet. ‘I wish you dead!’

  He opened the door and rain scudded inside. ‘I’ll bring you some apples when I come down again.’

  ONE

  The Twelve Days of 1389.

  In the north of the country beyond the Humber, in the small Cistercian priory of Swyne by Beverley in the East Riding of Yorkshire, the prioress, a gaunt, ageless woman with a face criss-crossed as if with threads of gold filigree, was standing as usual in front of her personal altar within the chilly stone-built chamber she reserved for her private use.

  Hildegard, her nun, entered.

  ‘You know what this is about?’ the prioress demanded as soon as the white-robed nun appeared. ‘You are to go to Whitby Abbey! No’ – she put up a hand – ‘don’t object! It is Abbot de Courcy’s wish that you continue your penance until he is satisfied that you have repented and repined.’ She softened her tone. ‘You committed a grievous sin against him and against the Rule last autumn, Hildegard. It is only reasonable that you make amends. He could have had you whipped in front of everyone, or excommunicated as he threatened, or walled up the way they do in France! You’re fortunate to be in England and to have escaped such an extreme punishment.’

  Hildegard tightened her lips. It was true. Hubert de Courcy could do what he liked as abbot. He could make her do anything. It was his right. He was lord at Meaux. She had nothing to say in her own defence. She had wronged him and broken the Rule and that was that.

  A memory of the turbulent night alone with Ulf in the deep sea cave returned – the tide had ripped into the cleft between the rocks, cutting them both off from the outside world so that its disciplines and laws came to mean nothing. With a sudden and passionate force an image of her lover rose before her in momentary joy and shame, contrary flames of desire and regret obliterating all fear of hellfire in the hereafter.

  In a barely audible voice she managed to say, ‘Mea culpa, my lady. I submit to the abbot’s will.’

  ‘He sees it as punishment to send you abroad at this time of year … which it is, of course. Who would want to be on the road in this dead month, with Christmas scarcely over and the Twelve Days turning the world upside-down in riot and feasting? And the weather, of course, even worse in the far north of the county to be sure.’ She gave a mock shudder like one never able to feel the cold but aware that others did.

  Hildegard felt chastened and, because it was a rhetorical question, did not answer.

  ‘In my opinion,’ the prioress continued, ‘you are also the best woman to send up there.’ She gave Hildegard an assessing glance. ‘You won’t be swayed by the Benedictines when they start to barter over the sale of their relic – unless you find a monk with excessive good looks and charm – most unlikely – but, if you do, that will be part of your penance too and I trust you to keep a cool head on your shoulders in that case. There will certainly be no Sir Ulf of Langbar to lead you astray – or for you to lead astray either if it comes to that.’ She rearranged the folds of her garments. ‘It’s a dour place, right for penance. From what I’ve heard those brothers eat, sleep and pray and not much else. You’ll have a suitably hard time, as I reminded our lord abbot. And of course you’ll have to take a priest with you for confession – Brother Luke will accompany you.’

  ‘Brother Luke?’

  ‘The same. He’ll keep you on track. You wouldn’t want to shock him, would you?’

  Hildegard smiled wanly in response to the prioress’s sudden chuckle of amusement. ‘It takes little to shock dear Luke,’ she replied. ‘He’s such a …’ She searched for the right word and settled on the innocuous ‘youngster’ before continuing: ‘He’s had so little experience of the secular world that most things shock him. I’m sure my confession about my night with Ulf has already caused him his own sleepless nights.’

  ‘Quite. It should also do him good to see how the Benedictines live, as I pointed out to Hubert.’ A glint in the depths of the prioress’s grey eyes offered a suggestion of complici
ty when she added, ‘You may be wondering why our lord abbot smiles so on our desire for a relic of our own? I’ll tell you why. He deems it useful to himself and the Abbey of Meaux to have a nearby priory with its own holy relic to complement the one he has on display. To complement it, mark you, not to compete with it. His Talking Crucifix is a great draw for pilgrims, but another relic with a different appeal would make the long journey to this remote part of the Riding a further incentive to pilgrimage. He hopes,’ she added, ‘that it will draw on the swarms of folk visiting St John’s shrine at Beverley and thereby augment the number of pilgrims consulting the Crucifix. I understand his thinking without condoning it.’

  ‘So I am definitely to set out for Whitby Abbey in order to obtain this relic?’

  ‘At once.’

  Hildegard opened her mouth to protest, then closed it and gave an audible sigh.

  ‘Bear with him,’ the prioress advised. ‘You wounded our beloved abbot most grievously. He did not expect you to capitulate to any man, let alone Lord Roger’s steward, a man famed as much for his martial skill as for his affable and attractive presence. Everyone loves Ulf and to believe he was condemned to death and that you would never see him again in this life was understandably too much for any compassionate woman to bear. Your surrender is no mystery to me. Hubert, however, is naturally bewildered. He’s hurt and confused. Now you must complete your penance until he can reinstate you in his personal pantheon of saints again. If he has his way you will pay the price in humility and be better for it. It is not ended yet. Remember, he is not vindictive. I imagine the light punishment he is demanding has been discussed ad nauseam in Chapter. There are those who would encourage a far crueler penalty. A journey to Whitby at this time of year is nothing when you think about it. It’s a charming place. You will suffer the weather. And you will return as pure as driven snow.’

  ‘I stand in humility, my lady, and in gratitude, too, for the lightness of my punishment.’ She guessed the prioress had spoken on her behalf – ever, as always, keen to defend her nuns against the encroachments, as she saw it, of the monks of Meaux. She lifted her head. ‘And the holy relic I’m to barter for …? What exactly is it?’

  A derisive aspect appeared in the prioress’s demeanour, although she did not laugh out loud but merely allowed a twitch of her lips. ‘It is no less than a lock of hair of our most holy sister Abbess Hild of Whitby.’

  She held Hildegard’s glance for one long, meaningful moment.

  ‘Imagine it, if you will. It will be seven hundred years old by now. We might ask ourselves whether such a thing could survive from the time of the great Anglian foundation when Hild was abbess, to the present day. Holy though she undoubtedly was, without a miracle – which of course, we are told, may be possible – we might question whether something as fragile as a lock of hair can be preserved.’ She raised her eyebrows.

  ‘It might seem doubtful,’ Hildegard ventured.

  The prioress nodded. ‘Given the violent assaults of the Northmen on the abbey, its burning to the ground, its rebuilding in stone by William the Bastard after the Harrowing of the North, and the turmoil that accompanies such events, is it likely such an object could survive? If so, may we ask how? Does it mean someone with exceptional forethought hid it in a secret place which has only now come to light? How is it no-one has heard of such a miraculous find until now, in the days of the abbey’s need? You can count on it, Hildegard, we would have heard of it, even down here in Swyne.’

  ‘And if it is genuine, as is being claimed, why do the monks not keep it for their own benefit?’ Hildegard ventured.

  ‘Indeed.’ The prioress shrugged her shoulders under the rough stamyn fabric of her habit. ‘We must assume that their suddenly erupting need for gold can only to be assuaged by the sale of such a miraculous discovery. Maybe you will find answers, Hildegard. Perhaps you’ll find a way of authenticating it – otherwise we have nothing to go on but the word of the lord abbot of Whitby.’

  ‘A word I’m sure we can trust,’ murmured Hildegard in a voice that showed she was not convinced.

  ‘I’m sure we can,’ agreed the prioress in a brisk tone that revealed she regarded the abbot’s trustworthiness as of little consequence. ‘The main thing is to get our hands on it. At any price.’

  When Hildegard left the precinct and strode out into the crisp December morning with the blessings of her superior ringing in her ears, she was still feeling shocked. What had she commanded? Get it ‘at any price’?

  There had been no time to question such an injunction. That Hubert was behind the whole thing was not in doubt. And if this was the task he set, his price for her great sin against him, she would obey to the letter. She would wipe the slate clean. Her standing at Meaux, if not at Swyne, forced her to it. She would demonstrate her obedience to Abbot Hubert de Courcy’s wishes, no matter how it irked.

  But to bring back as a prize a possibly fraudulent artefact at any price? Would the lord abbot thank her for that?

  St Stephen’s Day, late afternoon. The cliff path south of Whitby.

  Four riders appeared on the horizon. Swathed in flowing cloaks, hoods tied tight with linen strips, they urged their eager mounts northwards, up one rolling chalk hillside and down another, ever onwards, as light drained from the sky, and to the east, the cliff edge, the sea below, crashing on to the scaur, to the west the hills and dales of the North Riding, and further on, soon into disputed country and the beginnings of the raided lands of Northumberland.

  The riders turned up a green lane that ran, it seemed, forever upwards in a steep gradient. Without pause, they continued their ascent.

  Hildegard had been instructed to take with her not only the recently ordained Luke but, to her surprise, two monks as well. On Abbot de Courcy’s orders they were assigned to the journey, whether as bodyguards for the long and treacherous ride through wildwood bristling with masterless men, or whether as warders, to show that she was still under a cloud for breaking the Rule and to prevent her from further straying, she did not know, nor had she asked them yet. They were old friends and allies, a cause for gratitude whether the abbot knew it or not.

  Now she called to the rider in the lead. ‘Halloo, Gregory! How much further? Can you see it yet?’

  He reined in his great black horse as she rode alongside. ‘Further yet, Hildegard. I see no sign of any abbey.’

  ‘My palfrey is blowing somewhat, that’s all. I think I may walk a little to save her.’

  ‘We may as well take it at a slower pace. We can’t be far away. We’ll surely arrive by nightfall. The poor brutes have shown great willing since we left Meaux.’ He hauled on the reins and soon enough slid down out of the saddle and stretched his long, taut body made muscular by years of physical endurance in the service of his Order in Outremer. Slapping his mount fondly on the neck, he said, ‘They must be wondering what’s happened to the flat earth of Holderness. I expect they’re longing to be back there among the marshes. Are you going to walk for a while, Egbert?’ he called out to the muffled rider following Hildegard.

  A burly monk drew level. ‘It surely can’t be far?’

  He peered up the steep slope where the lane ran between thick, leafless hedges of hawthorn and disappeared round a bend higher up. ‘But for the moaning of the sea I’d believe we’d lost our way,’ he remarked, slipping smoothly from the saddle. ‘What say you, Luke?’ He turned his head.

  The fourth figure coming up slowly behind the others pulled his scarf from his face to reveal young, intelligent features, a wide, boyish mouth whose lips were now drawn back in a stoic grin as he caught up with them. ‘My admiration for you two fellows increases by the day,’ he replied, wincing in the saddle. ‘How in the name of St Benet you rode all the way to Jerusalem, putting up a show against the Saracen as you went, amazes me. I’m lost in admiration. I bow down before you! I kiss your feet! At least I would if I could get down off this poor brute.’ He chuckled. ‘Since leaving Meaux we’ve ridden a fraction of the distance you fellows covered with such apparent ease but after this I doubt whether I’ll be capable of even crawling across the garth. I’ll have to be carried into church.’

  ‘You’ve had life too easy, tucked up at Meaux, Luke,’ observed Egbert with a teasing smile. ‘Doubtless it’s why your abbot has prised you out of your cell for a jaunt up-country to prove what you’re made of.’