The Dragon of Handale A Mystery Page 14

  Two and two, watching each other. Four spies. She turned her attention to the other groups.

  One nun was talking about the weather, a look of dismay on her face as the sleet slashed across the garth. She stepped hurriedly back as it billowed into the cloisters. Her companion gazed bleakly at this scene without a word. The other two were standing talking together in voices so quiet, it was impossible to hear what they were saying. Nothing much to mark them out from the others. One tall, one short. Faces obscured.

  Hildegard went to sit in a niche where she had a view of them all. Mariana’s group was the most animated. They were still discussing the existence of animal souls. The fair-haired nun had raised her voice. “Once and for all, Tiffany, an animal is a mere beast. Of course they don’t have souls. It’s nonsense to make such a claim. I doubt whether some people have souls. And we cannot tell, because we have no test available.”

  “Except for common sense,” the sallow-faced one retorted, identifying herself as Tiffany.

  “Common sense? That’s hardly a test for anything. What you call common sense might seem the most arrant nonsense to someone else.”

  “Are you accusing me of spouting nonsense?” demanded Tiffany in an aggrieved tone.

  “I’m sure she didn’t mean that,” interjected the fourth member of the group, roused from her silence. “We are all enjoined to see the other person’s point of view, are we not?”

  “Enjoined to see it but not necessarily to accept it,” Tiffany retorted.

  “Certainly not to accept heresy,” the rosy-faced nun pointed out. “Remember what the Cistercians say.”

  Hildegard pricked up her ears.

  “What do they say?” demanded Mariana.

  “That the heretic must be hunted down and killed like a fox among chickens.” She crossed herself. “Bernard of Clairvaux was rightly made a saint for saying that. Don’t you agree, Mariana?”

  Before Mariana could reply, the sallow nun jeered. “Desiderata, I despair.” She put her hands to her face and walked away.

  So it was the talkative fair-haired nun who had entered the church and spoken to the sacristan while her companion stood by the altar, within reach of the chalice. So who had been her companion?

  At that moment, the subprioress appeared from the far end of the cloister and rapped on the ground with a stick. “Enough of all this racket! Back to your cells!”

  Sentences were left hanging in midair as everyone instantly obeyed. Mariana’s lips tightened and she glared round, but if she considered rebelling, she quickly rejected the idea. Hildegard watched as she walked back beside Desiderata towards the dortoir. Mariana with Desiderata.

  She waited until they had all dispersed. When she was sure she was unobserved, she made her way to the corner stair and followed them up to the floor above the low hall. She would find Desiderata and have a quiet word with her.

  Two bleak lines of cell doors faced onto a straight corridor, with a further stair at the far end. It was an easy matter to glance into each cell through the small aperture in the door as she made her way along the corridor.

  The occupants knelt on the bare flint floor, some on wooden prie-dieux that cut into the flesh. A mutter of prayer rose on both sides—regular, monotonous, hypnotic. In their identical robes and with hoods pulled over to veil their features in shadow, it was impossible to tell one from another. By the time Hildegard reached the end of the corridor, she was none the wiser. Wondering if it would be reasonable to knock on one of the doors and ask where she might find Desiderata, she hesitated. It would be best to keep her interest to herself. They were a close bunch. Nothing was more likely than that they would protect one another if need be.

  On impulse, she ascended the nearby tower stairs.

  The same arrangement of cells as below existed here. The occupants of the cells were less fortunate, their doors barred from the outside by means of wooden beams that dropped into slots on each side. She realised that these must be the cells of the penitents, then. The worst of sinners. The ones Basilda claimed could commit murder—and perhaps had already done so.

  Hildegard glanced inside each cell as she paced the corridor to the far end. Astonished at what she saw, she was unable to tear her glance away.

  In the first cell, a black cowled figure knelt on the bare boards. She was doubled over, rocking backwards and forwards with sobs and muttered curses interspersed with Latin phrases. Unaware of Hildegard at the spy hole, she did not look up or pause. Next, the occupant paced rapidly back and forth in the confined space. Her robe gaped as she beat her uncovered breasts with a strap. The spikes on it drew forth prickles of blood. From another cell issued an unearthly and intermittent wail, like someone in physical pain, as indeed may well have been the case.

  Shouts came from elsewhere, the banging of fists against a wall. Screams to be let free, promises to do the devil’s will.

  Hildegard met the furious glance of another one of the inmates as the woman sprawled on the floor with robes rucked up, legs apart, blood from a spiked cuff round her thigh staining her flesh as she pressed the spikes deeper and fingered the oozing blood. Another stood naked, the folds of her habit at her feet, and lashed herself with a leather whip until her back was streaming with blood. Her eyes were fixed on the wooden cross on the wall as she cried out in convulsions of pain.

  The noise was tumultuous, sobs and cries and breathless, desperate pleadings mingling with prayers beseeching help or begging for release from the constant agony of hellfire.

  Hildegard felt her heart begin to race. Religious ecstasy on this scale had always puzzled her. It was as unlike the calm reasonableness of the priory at Swyne as could be imagined. A mixture of anger and compassion vied with contempt as she saw more horrors: spiked implements inserted into the tender flesh, blood and bruising, torn-out hair, pale limbs turning blue after self-inflicted punishment.

  Witnessing the half-healed wounds on the women’s limbs, she did not doubt that some of them were taken out for beatings under the eye of the prioress. It prompted an unpleasant memory of Abbot Hubert de Courcy undergoing ritual flagellation because of his confession of thoughts of venery. She remembered with a shudder how he had ordered his brother monks not to stop their punishment, and it was only when his prior called a halt that his penance was ended. By then, his back was a mass of bloody weals caused by the studded whips they used.

  These women were guilty of greater sin than forbidden feelings. As the prioress would have her believe, they had acted out their sins to the deepest extent and thus deserved to suffer the penalty.

  Only wishing she had not witnessed such desperate scenes, she hurried back down the stairs to the lower corridor, where the cries became fainter. Soon they were no louder than the wind in the eaves.

  At the end of the corridor, a still figure was watching her. The face tightly bound in a wimple and the black head covering was familiar. It was Sister Mariana.

  She drew level, but Mariana went on staring at her without moving. “Are you going to let me pass?” Hildegard demanded.

  The woman seemed to come out of a dream. “Certainly.” She began to step to one side, then changed her mind. “Wait. You should not have gone up there. What are you doing here?”

  “I was looking for one of the nuns. My private business.”

  “I hope you found satisfaction in looking in on the agony of our penitents?”

  “Satisfaction is not the word I would use, no.”

  “Do you think they should go unpunished?”

  “And put their souls at risk?”

  Mariana’s lips tightened. “Precisely so.”

  “I wonder at the sins they might have committed and who decrees them to be sins, after all.”

  “Our father Pope, of course,” replied Mariana with a bitter smile. “Our convocations of abbots and other important men set the rules. Our Saint Bernard of Clairvaux.” Her tone, though harsh, gave no sign of approval or criticism of this arrangement.

  “Su
ch young women being punished,” Hildegard remarked, watching her carefully, “I hardly dare believe they’re so wicked.”

  “More wicked than you can imagine.” She lowered her head and moved to one side.

  “Did worse happen to you?” asked Hildegard with sudden understanding.

  Mariana nodded. “But it was in another time.”

  “What was your alleged sin?”

  The form of her words seemed to open some spirit of confession in her because she turned and looking straight at Hildegard and said, “I lay with a man.”

  “By your own desire or despite it?”

  “Despite it. But I got with child. And paid the penalty.”

  “And the man?”

  “No doubt he still sits in his abbot’s chair sipping wine, as was always his pleasure.” She stepped aside to allow Hildegard to pass.

  Outside in the garth, Hildegard breathed in the fresh clear air with a gulp of relief. Her intention to question Desiderata had failed. Instead, she had lifted a stone and found something horrible under it.

  With time to spare, until the next office brought everyone crawling forth again, Hildegard walked away from the claustrophobic atmosphere of the cloister garth. Finding herself near the mortuary, she peered inside. A nun sat between the corpses.

  She did not look up from her vigil when the door opened. Her hood was partly pulled down over her face. She could have been sleeping. She could have been praying. Whichever it was, her identity was concealed. Evidently, she was someone Prioress Basilda trusted enough to leave unchaperoned.

  While Hildegard had been in the dortoir, the rain had turned to hail. Now it had stopped and was lying in freezing drifts at the foot of the enclosure wall. Glancing over her shoulder to make sure she was not being followed, she went to the outer door and gave it a push. Then she stepped once more into the rain-drenched menace of Handale Woods.

  CHAPTER 16

  She was confronted by one of the guards from Kilton Castle.

  “No visiting the prisoner,” he barked as she approached.

  “I do not wish to.”

  “No visiting anybody.”

  “I’m sure I’m within my rights to speak to Mistress Carola. She’s not under arrest, is she?”

  He begrudged allowing her to stand at the eaves even to call inside and, to her chagrin, remained stolidly at her shoulder. Dakin was sitting in the doorway, wrists still chained, an expression of bleak resignation on his face. A stoup of ale and a hunk of bread were by his side, untouched.

  The other masons seemed to be having their midday break. When she called to them, Carola appeared with a lump of black bread in one hand.

  “Have the messages to your master and to the bishop of Durham been despatched?” Hildegard asked after a brief greeting.

  “They have. We’re waiting now for a reply. Assuming this time, despite the weather, the message gets through. But as you see”—she waved an arm—“we’re beginning to pack our things, ready to leave. Nothing will induce us to stay here a moment longer than necessary under these conditions. We’re counting every minute until the master arrives.”

  The guard was still hanging at Hildegard’s shoulder, listening in, and it was obvious he was not going to allow her out of his sight.

  She tried spin out her visit, in the hope he would get bored and move off.

  “This dragon,” she said to Carola, “I haven’t heard it, but I’m told it keeps everybody in the priory awake some nights. What trick is it, do you think?”

  “One real enough to claw poor Giles to death.”

  After a pause Hildegard said, “I suppose you know the old story about the dragon of Handale?”

  “What’s that?”

  The guard was still standing by, ears flapping, when Hildegard began. “It was long ago, when the Northmen ruled. Kilton Castle was a bustling place owned by a good family called de Thweng. Over the years, though, stories about a rapacious dragon began to spread, and soon people became too scared to hunt in the woods even with hound and hawk. The castle fell into disuse. Eventually, it was inherited by a young maiden, who lived here alone. One day, a passing knight heard about the dragon and resolved to slay it.”

  “Much like Giles. He used the excuse of getting wood for Matt, as it seemed less foolish than to admit to a belief in a dragon, but it was his curiosity about it that led him into the woods.” Carola frowned.

  “The old story has a different outcome. The beast was slain. The knight married the maiden. When he eventually died, he was buried in the woods in a stone coffin with the sword he had killed it with. On the lid of his coffin somebody had carved the words snake killer.” She had Ulf to thank for filling in the details on their ride from Langbrough.

  Carola had a melancholy look on her face by the time Hildegard had finished. “Poor Giles. I’ve never seen a stone coffin in the woods.”

  “Have you explored far?”

  Abruptly, Carola turned away. “I haven’t time for this. I have to get ready to leave.” She went back inside.

  The captain was still hanging over Hildegard’s shoulder. It was obvious she would not be able to escape his watchful eye. To put him to the test, she told him she intended to walk a while in the woods, where it was sheltered from the falling sleet.

  “Oh no you’re not. I’ve got my orders. Nobody goes in there without Master Fulke’s permission.”

  “I fail to see what power your master has over the prioress’s domain.”

  “She’ll say the same.”

  Hildegard peered at the blazon on the man’s hauberk under his cloak. “You’re one of the men-at-arms from the castle.”

  “I may be.”

  “You are.”

  “So what if I am?”

  “And yet you’re taking orders from a merchant?”

  “It was Fulke informed the steward at Kilton that there were poachers in the woods. Hunting game where they shouldn’t. String ’em up when we catch ’em, he said. That’s what.”

  “You’re not likely to catch them while guarding the mason, are you?”

  “He might be the poacher we’re looking for.”

  “Have you found venison in his makeshift kitchen here?”

  The captain turned away in disgust. “I’m not bandying words with you, mistress. Be off with you.”

  “Or?”

  His hand came to rest on the hilt of his sword. “Try me.”

  Hildegard gave him a stony look. She went to the entrance to the lodge and called inside. “Will you send someone to the priory to let me know when Master Schockwynde arrives?”

  Carola reappeared. “If you so desire.”

  “I know him of old,” Hildegard explained.

  Carola gave her a sharp glance.

  “When he was mason at Earl Roger’s castle near York,” she explained.

  Carola nodded.

  Hildegard knew Sueno de Schockwynde would have mentioned a stepdaughter if he had had one. He was very much a confirmed bachelor in those days, driven by ambition and status, conscious of his Roman blood, a claim most people took with a pinch of salt, mocking his airs and graces behind his back.

  Aware of all this, Hildegard could not resist asking, “The master must have taken a wife?”

  “My mother. He married her a year ago.” Carola seemed reluctant to add more, but then, apparently seeing no harm in the admission, she muttered, “My father was a master mason, but he was killed. He and my stepfather were great rivals. Sueno has taken over my father’s greatest project, the work on Durham Cathedral. He boasts that his name will go down in history.”

  “And because of your father, you’re a member of the guild. You have great talent yourself. I’ve already seen that.”

  Carola made some noncommittal remark and, turning back into the lodge, said, “I’ll let you know when he arrives. It can’t be too soon for us.”

  Seeing how anxious she looked, Hildegard called after her, “I’m sure Dakin will not be convicted when it comes to it. No o
ne can prove that the emblem or the belt belonged to Alys. They’re commonplace things. All the nuns wear similar ones.”

  As indeed do I, she said to herself, running her fingers over the little silver emblem of the shell of Saint James she wore as a memento of her recent pilgrimage.

  Frustrated in her attempt to inspect the tower, she slipped back inside the enclave and decided she would have to return later. She would get back into the woods unobserved. She was determined to discover the secret of the tower, and no man-at-arms or anyone else was going to stop her.

  During mixtum, while gnawing on a piece of hard cheese, Hildegard considered the options. There was, in fact, only one. She would have to return to the tower by night. The guard, presumably, would sleep sometime, and even if he was the wakeful type, it would be easier to slip past under cover of darkness than in broad daylight. With this intention, she made certain preparations throughout the rest of the day. By evening, there was just one thing more she needed.

  “Yes, I’m back again, Captain, as you see.” With her head swathed under a scarf and her waterproof cloak over her shoulders, he would have been forgiven for not recognising her straight away.

  He gave a grunt when he realised who it was. “Go in, then.”

  Hildegard edged in under the shelter of the eaves. The sleet had turned to rain. No sign of Schockwynde. The state of the road across the moor from Durham could be imagined.

  The masons had stacked their equipment against one wall, along with some personal bags and carriers. From inside the lodge came the sounds of a game, cheers alternating with a chorus of groans. Dice, she guessed.

  The guard went over to a keg under the shelter to fill his mug with ale. His back was turned while he fiddled with the spigot. Unable to believe her luck, she edged over to the pile of equipment and, concealed by her cloak, closed her fingers round the implement she judged best for her purpose. Then she presented herself in the doorway to the inner chamber, where the game was in progress.