Brother Luke had evidently returned to the abbey in time for Vespers and when Hildegard emerged he was making his way across the garth to intercept her. ‘Domina, I need a word of advice.’
They stood under the shelter of the south cloister. It was already dark this far north. Single flakes of snow were beginning to drop out of the velvety dark sky.
‘What’s the problem, Luke?’
‘I regret having to bother you with this, but I am, to put it frankly, at my wits’ end.’
‘What on earth has happened?’
‘You must remember the beautiful young woman …’ Words seemed to choke him and he struggled to continue.
‘Sabine, you mean?’
He nodded.
‘I understand you’re helping restore her cottage to rights?’
He swallowed. ‘That was my intention. I imagined it was what anyone would do – I mean, I couldn’t understand why no-one else offered to help. To leave someone in those conditions – so alone, so courageous – it is beyond my understanding. Her neighbours – where were they in her time of need?’ He bit his bottom lip. A struggle was clearly going on and eventually he burst out: ‘She is the victim of this cartel we’ve heard about. No man will work for her. The landlord of that wretched cottage has made threats to break the legs of anybody who lifts a finger to help.’ He beat the fist of one hand into the other. ‘Can you believe anything so diabolical?’
‘I know it does happen. I’ve heard that maybe the abbey sees him as a challenge too, buying up property and depleting the rents anciently due to them.’
‘It cannot be borne. That she should be a victim of such heartless greed!’
‘I fear it is not our problem, Luke. We are here for such a short time and the abbey and the town must sort things out between themselves.’
‘That’s not the worst of it.’
‘Oh?’
‘I went to speak to this fellow, this rapacious landlord. Do you know what? He had the effrontery to threaten me!’ He gave her an astonished look. ‘I’m a monk! Can he not see that?’
‘I fear our standing in the town is not what we would hope for. They do not trust the monastics here. They see them, in fact all of us, as people encroaching on their freedom.’
‘I’ve heard all about that. It’s why I felt I should step in and do something, to show that some of us have good intentions. There’s an old quarrel between the abbey and a family called Brek going back seventy years about rights and grievances …’ He bent his head. ‘Shall I tell you about it?’
‘Briefly. I haven’t eaten yet. But look …’ She put a hand on his arm, for he sounded desolate. ‘Why not come into the refectory and have something yourself while you explain?’
Everyone seemed to be present in the time between Vespers and Compline and the guest hall was full in expectation of the entertainment later on. They managed to find a space at a corner of one of the long tables where they could talk in private.
Luke could not hold back the words. He began even before he sat down. ‘When this dispute started all that while ago, nearly seventy years since, if you can believe it, it came down to a quarrel about ownership of a piece of land in Eskdale. The matter was taken to court and the abbot won. Since then the family involved – feeling that they’ve been thrown off land they’d always regarded as their own – have held a grudge against the abbey. You may feel that’s understandable. Recently, because they deemed Abbot Richmond more lenient than his predecessor, the Breks and a number of their allies decided they would rectify the situation.’
‘What could they do?’
‘What indeed! They broke into his enclosures, cut down his trees, removed the underwood, dug up his turbaries and stole his goods and chattels to the value of twenty pounds! They then let their cattle in to eat his corn and grass and all the saplings he’d recently had planted. Naturally, they were hauled before a jury on a charge of trespass. This is where it becomes complicated because several of the accused were fined but others were let off and the interesting thing is that the fines themselves were later cancelled by Abbot Richmond himself. You would think, wouldn’t you, that this made the abbey seem like the friend of its tenants, but it isn’t working out like that because there’s a schism here.’ He glanced round and lowered his voice. ‘I have it on good authority that the prior and the bursar deem Abbot Richmond too lax with regard to profit and loss. They are determined to claw back the disputed acres and are even demanding rent going far back over the decades to the original dispute.’
‘That’s going far.’
‘But don’t you see? Sabine, poor, lovely woman, is caught in the middle because she has a family connection to the Breks, but the abbey, out of grace and special favour, allow her to rent that hovel from them. You see how she’s caught between the two?’
‘Luke, I don’t think we can do anything about this. It’s for the law men and the justices to sort out.’
He ran his hand over his hair. ‘I know that. I know …’ He looked agonized. ‘But Sabine is so lovely and I long to relieve her suffering …’
His misery was so palpable that she could only place a hand on his arm and ask, ‘So how is she embroiled? It’s not her fault she’s related to the Breks.’
‘True, but she’s being dragged into it against her will and told to take sides.’
‘And it’s this that’s causing you such distress?’
‘It’s more than that. The fact is … she does not want my help.’ His voice held all the misery of a broken-heart. ‘She rejects me. She does not want anything to do with me.’ He put his head in his hands.
She indicated to one of the servants that they would like food and drink then turned back to Luke. ‘It’s painful when we’re rejected,’ she murmured. ‘We have to learn to accept that we cannot control everything. Our sincerest wishes can be thwarted and we have to learn to accept that. Not every problem is our own to be solved by our efforts either. Give to God what belongs to God. And trust in that.’
‘You see me as taking too much on myself? Maybe you think I lack humility?’ He looked confused. ‘It’s true I would lie down under her feet and let her walk all over me if it would make her happy.’
‘That is not humility, Luke. It is something else …’
‘What do you mean?’ When she did not reply, he said, ‘I worship her. She is my star in heaven.’
‘Luke, do you realize what you’re saying?’
He stared at her. Tears welled in his eyes. ‘This feeling – this power driving me to … Look, I’m ready to face any threat from those who want to harm her. I would die for her, for one smile.’
He pressed his knuckles into his eye sockets.
Hildegard’s expression was thoughtful. He was young. She could remember what it was like and also how the feeling of wildness was never entirely extinguished.
‘Have you asked yourself what might be behind your determination to …’ She searched for the right word, aware that much would hang on it. ‘Let’s look at it like this. By burning her out of her cottage there’s a financial advantage to the landlord because, as I hear, he wishes to pull down that row of cottages and build a bigger, more expensive house there to cater for the pilgrims wanting to visit the abbey and unable to find accommodation in the guest house. At the same time,’ she paused, speaking carefully, ‘Sabine herself has gone to live elsewhere.’
‘With Master Selby and his wife.’
‘A couple who happen to live comfortably in a large house in the stews.’
He looked affronted for a moment. ‘She can’t choose where she lives,’ he muttered. ‘You cannot blame her for living down there under their protection. It is not a free choice.’
‘Is it not?’ She gave him a steady glance. ‘Ask yourself honestly, Luke, is it not a free choice?’ To forestall a likely objection she added, ‘Is she not free insofar as any of us are free to do anything she chooses?’
‘I am in Hell,’ he muttered after a pause.
When Luke eventually got up to go, having picked at his food and left most of it, he opened the doors to a swirl of snowflakes. They flew inside as if to put the final seal on the prophetic skill of the falconer.
Hildegard watched him pull up his hood as he stepped outside. It must be the first time he had been beguiled by a beautiful woman. It was misfortune that he had been committed to celibacy before he had reached the age where he understood what it meant. Heaven knows, it’s difficult enough even so, she thought, despite all the knowledge in the world. An image of her beloved Hubert swam before her eyes. Like Luke she might weep with longing for a forbidden and unattainable love if she had not hardened herself against the wilful desires of her heart.
Steeling herself once more, she thrust the image of Hubert de Courcy aside and decided there was little else but to go out into the growing blizzard for the purpose of Compline. Sister Aveline was making herself agreeable to Sir Ranulph this evening and looked indifferent to the bell calling them forth. Hildegard resolutely pulled on her cloak and followed Luke into the snow.
It was already piling thickly across the path to the very edge where the ground fell away down the cliff to the town. The jumble of roofs of the cheek-by-jowl cottages facing the direction of the wind racing along the quay were already smothered and looked like great boulders scattered along the waterfront. Even in the darkness of the winter evening the River Esk could still be seen where it wound like a sheet of gleaming grey ice between its banks. Far out beyond the estuary a light bobbed and winked as it was lifted by the waves and dropped back into the heaving void.
Turning away, Hildegard trudged through the snow towards the gatehouse. Seen through the partly opened shutters, the porter’s lodge looked inviting, a fire blazing in a little hearth and the porter and his assistant warm inside with their feet up. He poked his head out when he heard the night door creak again to let her in under the arch and she returned the friendly lift of his hand as he watched her pass beneath the light shed from the cresset.
The bell was still tolling over the garth as she crossed to the church, her footprints briefly visible before being covered over. One or two people were stamping about in the doorway to clear snow off their boots before entering. Hildegard did the same, then pushed back her hood and went inside the chilly vault.
A few candles flickered here and there, nothing, she guessed, like the lavish display behind the screen to light the monks to heaven. On this side of the abbey servants made up most of the worshippers, an assortment of kitcheners, fetchers and carriers, a few outdoors men but not, she believed, peering through the shadows, Edred. Busy with his chores, she supposed. The ethereal singing of the choir closed around her and she gave herself up to different thoughts.
Afterwards, with the words of the evening Office still echoing in her ears, she approached the guest house expecting to find Edred sheltering under the lee of the wall, but there was no sign of anyone. The snow was untrodden, her own prints covered. She looked about to make sure he wasn’t sheltering anywhere else before hurrying inside to wait.
A narrow window loop beside the main doors let in draughts when its shutter was opened so, not wishing to cause any discomfort to those within, she took one quick look outside at the still bleakly empty foregate and the lane running down the cliff, then went to sit at a nearby table where she could wait. Three large trestles had been pushed back to make space for some planned event. An air of expectancy filled the place.
‘What’s on?’ she asked a passing wine servant.
‘Mummers sent up from the town,’ he replied. ‘Some acrobats. A stilt walker.’ He smiled with pleasure at the prospect.
Impatiently Hildegard went back to the shutter and peered out. The snow was still coming down but it seemed to be easing off. Maybe Edred was waiting for it to stop. His cloak had been somewhat thin. It must be hard to face the weather in so slight a garment.
The hall was quickly filling with guests and their retinues, platters of sweetmeats were being carried in, wine flagons refilled, the musicians struck up, and the mummers, six or seven of them, garbed in outlandish costumes, eventually burst in to the tumult of knackers and pipes.
It was true. There was a stilt walker. It was a young woman with streaming false locks who paced about like a stork looking down on the guests and doing feats of rare balance for the price of a few thrown coins and the shattering crescendo of the kettle drums.
An assistant, a very small man, was eagerly picking up the coins by scrambling between the legs of the guests which were adorned in well-turned-out coloured hosen. They also wore a variety of fancy indoor footwear, and as he stuffed every clinking piece into a leather pouch, he tugged playfully at feather and fur and jewel. Every so often he rose on his short legs and shook the pouch to make it jingle, showing the stilt walker what they had earned, and she would mime extravagant signs of gratitude which she quickly turned to tears as it was not enough. Urged to extract more from the onlookers, the little man hopped about to continue his cozening. And so it went.
Hildegard had waited with enough patience. Suddenly snapping, she dragged on her cloak and slipped quickly through the doors on to the foregate. Still no sign of Edred. Still none! The snow was untrodden, an unbroken crust, carved by the knifing wind into undulating ripples. It was bereft of life.
Pulling up her hood and tramping through the drifts as far as the gatehouse, she tapped on the shutter. The sound of voices inside stopped on the instant. She could tell that those inside were listening.
‘It’s Hildegard of Meaux. Open up!’
The porter imposed a bleary-eyed face in her line of vision.
When she asked him if he had seen Edred he shook his head. ‘Only fiends and fairies out on a night like this, domina. You’re not thinking of going far, are you?’
‘Only back to my bed. If you see him tell him to get them to wake me, will you?’ Thanking him, she trudged back.
Later, wearied by the fruitless wait and the necessity to keep on smiling at the tricks and treats taking place, she thought as she climbed into bed: So, he did not come!
Maybe he had decided there was little he could tell her, despite Dunstan’s view, or little enough to make it worth an outing in such weather.