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 complicity 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.’
‘Doubtless. I hope I don’t disappoint him. But back me up in this, Hildegard. Do they set a cracking pace or not?’
‘They do. I’m hard pressed to keep up. But we must surely be close by now.’ She glanced at the sky. ‘It looks like rain. Let’s continue for a while on foot,’ she encouraged. ‘It would be best to arrive before dead of night if we can and not waste time resting when we must be close by.’
All afternoon clouds the colour of plate armour had been stacking in the east, shutting out what little light the December day had eked forth. Now as the light faded the day was uncannily still despite the restlessness of the unseen waves battering the shore. No wind penetrated the muffling tunnel of the lane. That, at least, was something to be thankful for, although the air still had a bite in it – an advantage, the ever optimistic Luke claimed, to prevent sweating, although their horses were steaming as if melting into the mist.
Dismounting, they began to walk on while Luke remained groaning in the saddle and came after.
The possibility that they might still have far to go brought a measure of uneasiness to Hildegard and she glanced warily into the thick hedges that closed them in. It was ideal ambush country, far from any visible habitation.
The leaves were gone from the branches at this late date in the year, leaving only blackened winter fruits, with a few rejected berries hanging motionless among the nest of twigs. Somewhere out of sight the piercing shrieks of sea birds sounded like cries for help.
Since leaving the last settlement they had passed no-one. Any traveller not driven by urgency would already be safely inside the walls of town, abbey or grange where the festivities would be continuing until Epiphany. It was a penance for all four to miss the one time in the year when feasting might take precedence over fasting and prayer.
The two Jerusalem monks did not seem bothered. Everything, in their eyes, was equal. Their experiences of bloody slaughter in the desert lands of Outremer had toughened them against horrors that would have had most people praying in terror for the deity’s intercession. They seemed impervious to the fears of ordinary folk and merely thankful for every day of peace to befall them. They walked on until their horses seemed rested then got back into the saddle. The lane wound on higher still.
‘I was at Handale priory to the north of here when I came back from Compostela,’ Hildegard remarked in as normal a voice as she could muster to hide her uneasiness, ‘but I’ve never been along these cliffs. It’s wilder here than in Holderness, bleak though the marshland is at this time of year.’
The dark tunnel of the track was made more menacing by the constant melancholy thrashing of the sea. Concealing shadows lay across the track ahead. Hildegard tried to imagine spring when the blossom would be out. The scent would be ravishing but it suddenly reminded her of Hubert and she kicked her horse into a canter.
‘Can any of you make sense of the country hidden beyond these hawthorn brakes?’ she called over her shoulder. Occasional glimpses revealed only wide open grassland disappearing into low cloud.
‘We’re burrowing uphill like moles, that’s for sure,’ Egbert remarked, riding alongside. His right hand rested on the pommel of the sword under his cloak.
‘It seems to be pasture hereabouts. It must be where they run their sheep.’ She matched his casual tone.
‘I suspect we’ve been on Benedictine land for some time. What do you think, Greg?’
‘I think that vill we passed – what was it called? Hawsker? – I believe it to be one of the abbey granges. We were told to look out for it.’ Gregory drew a little ahead of the rest, his hand, too, Hildegard noticed, resting on the hilt of the sword concealed under his cloak.
Last of all came Luke, no sign of unease on his face. He seemed to be in a gentle dream of imminent arrival, as if already enjoying a winter fire and a beaker of mulled wine even as he suffered the unaccustomed toil of a three-day ride.
‘We crossed a little stretch of John of Gaunt’s hunting country when we entered the outreach of the Forest of Pickering,’ Gregory announced, ‘but this must be Northumberland’s territory by now, so close to Whitby.’
‘I wonder how their foresters get on,’ Egbert wondered.
‘No doubt well enough. No point in quarrelling with neighbours or you’d never get anything done.’
‘I doubt their future venison knows well enough to keep behind their own lines!’ Egbert grimaced. ‘There must be plenty of occasions for disagreement.’
‘Nothing to do with us,’ Gregory rejoined with satisfaction.
As he spoke, it began to rain. Coming down without warning, it was a cloudburst, hard and vicious, halfway to being sleet already. They pulled their cloaks tighter, re-knotted the linen strips over their faces, and did not slow down but drove their mounts on into the full pitch of it.
Luke urged his horse forward and took the lead. ‘I’ll have a look up ahead,’ he told them. ‘See if I can spot anything.’ He became a blur as he disappeared into the pelting rain.
When he reached the next bend some way ahead they heard him give a great shout. Egbert reached under his cloak for his sword but stayed his hand when he saw Luke stand up in the stirrups and punch the sky.
‘He looks like a Compostela pilgrim!’ Hildegard exclaimed.
But it wasn’t the name of St James he bellowed. It was the name of the Whitby abbess, St Hild.
‘Be praised! Huzzah for the Abbess!’
They quickened their pace to where the hawthorns opened out into a wide, rain-swept pasture. Beyond it, on the summit of the cliff, glittering and grey and even more massive than expected, rose a building of spires and roofs and one great east window set in the high wall facing them. It was a building erected so precipitously on the wild headland that it had nothing but sky behind it.
‘Whitby Abbey!’ breathed Hildegard.
‘Amazing!’ exclaimed Egbert. He gazed open-mouthed in the rain despite the many splendours he had seen on his travels.
‘Impressive,’ agreed Gregory with less emotion. ‘Hail the master builders!’
Luke was exclaiming in awe as he rode back a few paces down the slope to urge them on. His face was streaming with rain. ‘Just look at that great east window. Isn’t it glorious?’
Suddenly the entire edifice shone, brilliant and sinister, in a single splinter of light torn from the sun. The turrets spiking into the belly of the rain clouds glittered. Then, as the brief shaft of light died, the height and weight of stone acquired an aura of foreboding as it slipped back behind the rain.
They continued towards the summit. Sleet, borne on a bitter wind, began to slice into them. It obliterated the towers and roofs and allowed only a sense of the awesome authority of the church: its massive power stamped on the entire landscape, on the abbey pastures and the small, soft shapes of huddled sheep, on the thatched hovels, the distant outbuildings, the store sheds and the stables and on the large stone buildings that could be brewery or bake house attached to the grange. All of them were squat and diminished in the looming shadow of this symbol of power, the holy edifice of the abbey.
By now everything was streaming with rain and pricked by sleet – the horses, the four riders, everything in all directions was swamped and lashed by the sharp lances of the storm. Their cloaks flew in the wind like rags.
‘We must find shelter!’ Gregory shouted. He spurred his willing horse up the slope and, as it seemed, towards their fate.
‘At least we shall be within the enclave before nightfall!’ Hildegard exclaimed as she followed into the teeth of the storm.
Egbert urged his mount up the last remaining challenge until he overtook them both and began to canter across the pasture on a track that eventually skirted a long stretch of reed-fringed water. When he came to the margins he shouted something to the others, stood in his stirrups, and pointed: an image of the abbey was doubled in the rain-pleated surface as in a pocked looking glass.
For a moment, despite the weather, they were stopped, awed by the sight.
‘Not one abbey but two!’ Gregory exclaimed.
‘It seems to be made of water and vapour. It’s Undine’s realm. It is not of our world of earth and stone and mud.’ Luke furrowed his brow, and spoke in wonder. ‘What alien realm are we about to enter?’
‘Make haste!’ Egbert called back. ‘This storm is going to roll right over the headland. See!’ He pointed towards the east. ‘It’s driving straight for us! Hurry, before it hurls us off the cliff to our doom.’
He didn’t wait but whipped his streaming horse to a canter. After a brief, awed glance at the visible doubling of the abbey’s image in the lake they hurried on to where the track bypassed the east end of the abbey church, skirted the unprotected north side and revealed the welcome shelter of the west gate.
Rain sliced across the foregate, turned to sleet and filled the tracks of their horses’ hooves with pellets of ice as they hurried for shelter. Silence fell as soon as the constant roar of rain drumming on their waxed cloaks stopped.
‘So here we are!’ Hildegard said in a subdued voice as she pushed with the others further underneath the vault and out of the storm.
This was going to be a penance to satisfy even the Abbot of Meaux.