The Dragon of Handale A Mystery Page 5

  It was raining. Ice-laden. Nasty. Gusts hurled the hail horizontally across the garth on a biting northeasterly wind. Hildegard was used to it. Even so, she was aware that she would need more protection than her winter cloak. She took out the waxed cape she had carried on her pilgrimage to Compostela and shook it out. It had stood her in good stead then and it would do so now.

  Putting it on and making sure the hood was fastened on tightly, she went out into the hall and opened the outer door. The freezing blast swept into the entrance, wetting the tiles.

  Peering out, she saw, as hoped, that the cloister garth was empty.

  Nobody, she told herself as she hurried along in the shelter of the guest house, tells me where I may or may not go.

  She reached the mortuary building again but did not go inside. Instead, she followed the faint footprints left by the man who had burst in on her earlier. They disappeared into the undergrowth. She pushed on through the stinging wetness of nettles and long grass until she came out next to what the little cowherd in the tree had mentioned: a door in the wall. Since it was concealed by the bushes behind the mortuary, she would never have guessed it was there. Smiling with satisfaction, she was even more pleased when she found it unbarred. She stepped through to the other side.

  CHAPTER 6

  An unexpected scene met her gaze. It struck her as domestic. Sheltered by the rising bulk of the abbey buildings on the other side of the wall was a single-storey thatched house.

  When she looked more closely, she realised that it was a workshop first and foremost. The masons’ place. Piles of cut stone slabs were stacked in some sort of order on the side nearest the wall. Farther off, on the edge of the woods, were heaps of small uncut stones. A stack of timbers were ready for the axe.

  In the middle, under a thatch with deep overhanging eaves, was a spacious lodge of wattle and daub. A brazier was burning under the shelter, and four men in working clothes stood round it, warming their hands. A woman, singing a dirge to match the weather, could be heard from inside the lodge.

  Hildegard, hood up, approached through the pelting rain.

  One of the men exclaimed in surprise on catching sight of her. They all turned to stare. She pushed back her hood when she reached the shelter.

  “Mistress York, I do declare!” exclaimed one of them in ironic tones. “So what brings you out from the comfort of Handale Priory?”

  “As comfortable as an animal’s cave,” she replied. “I believe those nuns have ice in their veins.”

  A stoup of ale was offered.

  “You must be the masons working on the prioress’s new house?”

  “We are indeed, more’s the pity.”

  “Why so?”

  “Fetched us far from home, it has. Except for our master with his nice little wife to keep him warm, we poor devils have to make do with this purgatory until the job’s done.”

  There was an outbreak of chaffing laughter from his two companions.

  “It’s true!” protested the first speaker. “Why else is our master still safe and sound in Durham? Because his little wife is there, that’s why.”

  “You ain’t even wed, Dakin,” objected one of the fellows round the brazier. “You ain’t got nothing to complain about.”

  “Oh, haven’t I? For what you know, I might have a nice little doxy in Durham city and be pining mightily for her right now.”

  “Aye, might’s the word. Might not’s a better’n.’

  “Let me explain who these rough fellows are,” said the first man, Dakin, leaning towards Hildegard and giving her a close look. “Then you can entertain us with a story about who you are and what you were doing trespassing in the mortuary. This here”—he cuffed his neighbour on the shoulder—“is Matt. Apprentice stonemason.”

  “Aye and general dogsbody.” He was a tough-looking lad of sixteen or so with rumpled mouse-coloured hair kept back from his brow by a band of coloured leather. He gave Hildegard a wide grin.

  “This here’n is our strong man—”

  “Chief stone carrier,” explained an older man, red-whiskered and offering a toothy smile. “Will of Durham at your service.”

  “And if you’ve noticed the legs on this one, mistress, you’ll guess he’s our windlass man, Hamo of Easington.” He nodded a silent greeting, then turned back to the brazier.

  Replied Hildegard, “And you already seem to know who I am.”

  ‘They’re telling us you be Prioress Basilda’s guest?” Will eyed her with undisguised speculation.

  “I am.”

  “Strange place to come guesting?”

  She nodded. “As I’m beginning to discover.”

  “So you know her history, do you?” asked the windlass man.

  “Does she have one?”

  Glances were exchanged.

  Dakin spoke up. “That’s something we would all like to know. Blows in here, throws a few nuns out, or so we’re told, brings in Master Fulke, hires us. We’re not complaining. Just curious. We don’t come cheap.”

  “The Benedictines are not an impoverished Order,” Hildegard replied with caution. “They’re well able to afford new buildings.”

  Dakin threw back his head with a jeering laugh. “Our master is one of the highest-paid masons in the north. We are, likewise, as his chosen men. We’re not used to working in a back-of-beyond place like this. Cathedrals are more our line.”

  “You sound sorry you’ve been hired?” She was interested.

  “We don’t complain about the job. It’s the strange obligations she puts us to that makes us curious.”

  “Such as?”

  “No going off-site until we’re finished? Working through the winter? Well, we can’t do much in this weather and we told her, didn’t we, fellas? We can’t put the roof up until the weather improves. Still she wants us here. No visitors. No women. Maybe she thinks she can turn us into monks?”

  There were raucous laughs. “We won’t be out of here till Bartholomew’s Day. Might as well be monks,” added Will.

  “And then there’s Giles.”

  The men sobered at the name and crossed themselves with differing degrees of piety.

  “Giles?” asked Hildegard, already guessing what they would say. “Was that his body in the mortuary? I saw him—his terrible wounds—”

  “Aye, you saw him. I know that,” said Dakin. “Having a good look like any old leech woman. I went to make sure the candle was still alight. I guessed who you were when you spoke. They’d warned us there would be an outsider living in for a while. And they warned us not to entice you from your meditations or speak with you.”

  “That’s a strange rule to put on you. I see you’re obedient types.”

  “It’s one rule among many we’re happy to flout.” Dakin gave a grim smile.

  “I heard a strange story from the priest back there about a dragon. Indeed, the whole priory seems to be in thrall to such nonsense, so may I ask how your workmate met such a gruesome death?”

  “Whose story do you want, the official one or the one we believe?”

  “Both, if you choose.”

  “Official—it was the dragon of Handale did for him. Unofficial—somebody attacked him with a grappling iron.” He nodded over towards the half-finished building, where the scaffolding was hung with ropes and pulleys. It was festooned with hooks. For that matter, the masons’ tools were lying around where they had evidently been using them shortly before she arrived.

  “Do you have any idea who would attack him?”

  “Your guess, mistress.” Dakin shrugged. He had blue eyes of a particularly icy hue. They were like a blizzard now. “Giles never harmed a soul in his life. Good worker. No reason for getting killed. Ain’t that right?”

  The others nodded. “Never got on the wrong side of anybody, Giles didn’t.”

  “But don’t you have any suspicions?” Hildegard asked in astonishment. “In such a remote place, who is likely to have done such a thing?”

  “Ah, so yo
u believe the unofficial version of events?”

  “It’s certainly more plausible than a wild beast roaming the woods and attacking people. Or a blood-drinking nun,” she added, remembering what the priest had told her.

  “That’s all cock,” agreed Hamo.

  “Where did you find him?” She glanced round.

  “In the woods,” Dakin told her.

  She was surprised. “So you did go in there?”

  “Aye. Into dragon territory.”

  “All this fancy about dragons came up after that.” Dakin explained.

  “It’s thick woodland out there. So how was it possible to find him?”

  “It was the little novice Alys from the priory had the misfortune to stumble across him. Nearly sent her out of her wits. She came screaming back in here, white as a sheet.”

  “A novice? What on earth was she doing outside the precinct?”

  “Trying to escape, if she’d any sense.”

  “When we first settled in here, the nuns used to walk about the woods for a while before vespers. Taking the air. It was forbidden for the novices, but Alys still used to sneak out, collecting leaves and that.”

  “And found the body.”

  Silent Will spoke up. “In a rare state of terror she was poor pet.”

  Hamo took up the story. “We went to have a look ourselves and she led us to where he was lying. Already dead. In a mess. Nothing we could do for him. Stiff. Been there all night. We thought maybe he’d decided to make a run for it, to hell with his obligations to the guild. We couldn’t make it out. He’d said nowt to us. Dakin took the little novice in to tell the prioress.” Hamo turned to Dakin, who related what happened next.

  “All she said was, ‘I’ve warned my sisters of putting pleasure before duty. Why do they walk in the woods? For mere pleasure and frivolity. And this is what happens. But will they listen? This is always the result when disobedience is the rule.’ The novice would get it in the neck, no doubt. They know how to punish, by all accounts.”

  Hildegard stifled her feelings. “I suppose the coroner has been summoned?”

  “Eventually, aye. The bailiff from Kilton Castle was here not two days since. Had his clerk make a few notes. Muttered something about the bishop’s having to throw his weight about. Then buggered off without another word. Meanwhile, we need to inform our master over in Durham. We sent for a courier, but he’s not allowed to set foot in the enclosure. We have to send a message through the prioress herself.”

  “And whether it’s reached its destination or not is anybody’s guess.” Hamo said.

  “We daily wait on the appearance of our master to rescue us from limbo—”

  “Fearing we’ll have a long wait,” will muttered.

  “But no blame to him. He’ll have to tie things up in Durham and only after that set out for this godforsaken spot. It’ll take days in this weather, roads like loam in the rains.”

  “No guessing when he’ll get through.” Hamo scowled. “And we’re stuck here like lost souls until he arrives.”

  “Three days there and back, plus time dealing with the bishop?”

  “Likely that, to look on the bright side, more likely longer,” agreed Hamo. “And likely they’ll turn up together.”

  The men spoke in turn, as if long used to thinking each other’s thoughts. Their grief for their dead workmate was obvious.

  Hildegard was confused. “Surely,’ she began, “there must be some clue as to how he was killed?”

  “It was murder,” replied Dakin, “Obviously. But not by any murdering dragon.”

  “But why?” she asked. “Who would want him dead?”

  They shook their heads.

  “We go out in pairs now.”

  “You weren’t with anyone when you entered the mortuary,” she pointed out. addressing Dakin.

  “I reckon I’m safe enough in the enclosure, and if I’m not capable of seeing off a nun or two, I’m not worth saving anyway.” He grinned for a moment, but then his expression turned bleak. “We want to get to the bottom of it, mistress, but we don’t know where to start.”

  “You could begin by telling me something more about Giles himself. Where was he from? How long had he worked with you? Were there any circumstances in his life that brought him enemies?”

  A few glances were covertly exchanged. So there was something, then.

  Settling down round the freshly stoked charcoal brazier, the stonemasons told her what they wanted her to know about Giles.

  It amounted to very little. He was second to Dakin. A journeyman mason. Employed, like Dakin, by their master for a year or more. They travelled from site to site. Never a cross word. What else to say? Dakin shrugged. “That’s it, mistress. He was my right hand. A regular and blameless life. Now snuffed out like a candle.”

  Hearing the bell for the next office, Hildegard apologised for having to leave. She thanked them for their ale and promised she would do what she could to help from within the priory. Somebody must know the something that would lead to the killer. The priest, for a start. He seemed to have a good idea of what was going on within the precinct. She mentioned the warning he had issued, and they again mocked the idea of a dragon running loose.

  She was about to leave, when a sound came from inside the lodge. She glanced across. A young woman was standing in the entrance, looking out. Dark-haired, with large hands and with a workman’s leather apron over a russet kirtle, she wore a thick shawl pinned at the front by a pewter brooch. She surveyed the group round the brazier with a sour smile.

  “And this is our imaginator,” announced Dakin. “Mistress Carola cawer of stone devils.”

  She nodded briefly in Hildegard’s direction, then turned to the men. “When you boys have finished yarning, you might decide to do some work today.” She went back inside the lodge.

  Hamo chuckled. “Come on, lads. Orders is orders.”

  “Back to the grindstone!” Will chuckled without rancour and began to head towards the shell of the new structure.

  Dakin turned to Hildegard. “Come and visit us again. The prioress doesn’t rule you. We’ll show you the house we’re building. You’ll find she’s doing well for herself. And maybe by then we’ll have discovered something that will put Giles’s killer in chains.”

  By the time Hildegard had crossed to the door of the enclosure, the men had returned to their work. One of them began to chip at a piece of stone. A chisel chimed regularly on a chisel, echoing the regular and deeper tolling of the priory bell.

  Master Fulke had honoured the priory by purchasing a trental from them—that is, he was paying in gold for thirty masses to be sung to ease his soul to heaven when the time came for him to depart to what he must assume would be an even better life.

  Hildegard understood now where the money for the new building was coming from, but she couldn’t help wondering what Fulke’s sins were that he believed he needed so much help from the Great Measurer. Or was it something more to do with the earl of Northumberland? The priory had been his own family’s endowment more than two hundred years ago, when one of his Percy ancestors had founded it for the greater glory of the Virgin Mary.

  Was there something in it for Fulke in these days of shifting allegiances? Did it somehow help his dealings with the earl to be seen to support the Handale Benedictines?

  Putting these matters aside for the moment, she made her way out of the church in the wake of the ever-silent nuns and trudged across the wet grass to her chamber.

  The rain had stopped and the pale northern sun had made a fainthearted appearance. It was a blur of watery crimson behind the black skeletons of the branches hanging over the enclosure wall. Chilled, she let herself into the silent house.

  A candle in a sconce was fixed just inside the doorway, and she lit it at once, using the tinder that always stood beside it in a niche in the wall. The entrance to the guest quarters was windowless, but the candlelight flared into the corners and dispersed the shadows. She was about to cr
oss to her chamber, but then she thought she heard a sound like an aumbry door closing inside.

  She froze. No other sound followed except for the drip-drip of a leak in a room above.

  Her knife was still inside her bag on the floor by her bed. She looked round for something to defend herself with. Nothing was at hand. The words of the mason came back: “If I’m not capable of seeing off a nun or two…”

  Emboldened, she doused the candle and stepping silently towards the door, gripped the metal ring, and, so it did not squeak on its hinge, turned it gently round until she felt the latch rise. Whoever was inside was in darkness, too, the shutters being closed, and with luck would not notice the movement.

  Her shoulder against it, she inched the door ajar.

  Silence within.

  She pushed the door wider and stepped inside.

  CHAPTER 7

  Without warning, something came flying out of the darkness and hit her in the face. A brutal commotion of blows and flailing limbs followed and then the sense of a black cloak muffling her face, fingers clawing; then she grasped flesh, soft pouches of her assailants’s face as she groped for the eyes in a reflex to defend herself.

  As suddenly as it had occurred, the attack ended. All that remained was a black shape flying out of the door and, between Hildegard’s fingers, a piece of torn fabric.

  Her attacker hurled itself across the garth, with Hildegard speeding after, but the shape was immediately swallowed up among the shadows in the cloister. Sprinting over, she was in time to glimpse the hem of a cloak disappearing behind a pillar.

  By the time she reached it, a line of nuns were processing towards the refectory. Two by two they came, cowls pulled half over their faces, crosses and beads swinging. Innocent as lambs.

  But one of them was her attacker.

  Enraged by her own stupidity, Hildegard poked her head inside the church. It was the nearest place for anyone to seek refuge. She was forced to peer through a fog of smoke and incense to make anything out. One or two nuns were pacing down the nave in front of her, one of them swinging a censer as if to block her progress.