Even as the foursome began to make their way back towards the enclave they could hear the evening’s revels from below the cliff. Faint in the distance it sounded as if a band of pipes and tabors was wending its way up the hill towards them.
‘This must be by special invitation of the guests,’ Hildegard remarked, her heart sinking at the thought of having to face yet another night disturbed by the Twelve Days revelry.
No wonder Dickson had made that comment about how he preferred women to look rested. He must have taken one look at her and decided that what she needed was a good night’s sleep.
If he had dared to say anything to her about preferring his women to look rested she would have retorted that she preferred men to keep their opinions to themselves – especially when engaged in the running of brothels.
Gregory noticed her dismay and must have guessed the reason. ‘You could always beg a comfortable corner in the infirmary if it gets too much.’
‘Maybe they won’t stay late. It’s early now. They may be going on somewhere else.’
By the time they reached the foregate the band were already at the top of the cliff. They had attracted a large crowd of followers from the town who were toiling up the path in their wake. A few children ran alongside, banging their own small drums and tootling shrilly on little wooden flutes.
It was soon revealed that the musicians were the harbingers of a group of mummers who came toiling up the cliff side behind them. They were masked mostly, and wearing weird garments suggesting devils, angels, and a version of court dress that mocked any pretensions King Richard’s courtiers may have had to elegance. Enormous shoes, the poulaines of the Bohemian court, with exaggerated points attached by chains to their knees, made walking a problem. They struggled up the path with hoots of laughter and much falling about. There were also men dressed as women with long string wigs, trailing skirts, fake bosoms and over-painted faces, and others of no particular gender like the angel with trailing wings of grubby white goose-feathers who was either a beautiful knave or a large-eyed maiden, and one followed after with a waist-length fake beard, either a fat ale-wife or a corpulent, ale-quaffing husband, and the leader of the band in a turban covered with silver stars wore a wooden scimitar stuffed in his belt and something like walnut stain on his face. In and out of this mob were jugglers, concentrating on their tricks, a conjuror in cap and bells producing eggs from every orifice to the raucous delight of his followers, and the stilt walker from the previous evening, the stilts carried by the little man who himself was a one-man band with cymbals attached to his knees, bells and rattles jangling from his headdress, his elbows, and anywhere else they could be attached without impeding his climb up the path.
The stilt walker kept flicking back strands of hair from the flaxen wig with a graceful hand while urging the crowd to follow. ‘Every step brings you closer to Heaven, my darlings. Onwards!’
A dragon-headed figure wielded a bag on a stick to entice those out of range to part with a few coins. ‘Silver or gold!’ he kept bellowing through his mask. ‘We are not choosy! So long as they’re coins with our dear king’s head on them we shall be delighted to thank you in our prayers tonight. Come on, you misers! Put your hands in your pouches!’
The drums rolled with a flourish every time a coin was dropped into the bag.
‘Still they come!’ murmured Gregory as the crowd swelled. A boyish look of delight was on his face. ‘They must be fellows from the Mysteries in York, surely? Look at that bishop! Dressed almost as lavishly as the real thing!’
It was a child being carried on a small palanquin made up of boards and covered in rough cloth. He was blessing the crowd with a benign expression as his carriers jolted him along.
Somebody began to shout, ‘Make way for the King!’
The crowd of folk still toiling upwards parted to allow a group of white-winged children to scramble into view. Behind them a tall, emaciated fellow with curly blond locks spurting from underneath a huge wooden crown was attired fully in gold. To cheers he came striding up the hill using his sceptre to club stragglers out of his way.
‘Is that a pretty girl under all that stuff on his face or an equally pretty boy?’ Egbert queried.
The king was smiling and blessing his jostling followers and in a surge of noise and the whirling legs of acrobats he was conducted on to the foregate to a blast from a sackbut.
As Hildegard suddenly noticed, visitors at the guest house, obviously forewarned, had appeared in the doorway. There was Sir Ranulph, smiling as genially as ever, with one arm round an excited Amabel; Darius gazing ironically down on the rabble; Sister Aveline, positioned close to Amabel, with her hand on her arm; the three corrodians within sight of each other, and the Glastonbury fellow in the furs who had been whisked away that first night when the hunting party returned with only slightly less noise than the mummers were making now. Body servants and others crowded in a chattering mob behind them.
The king strode into the centre of the space carved out for him and took up a position. He raised his sceptre to begin a speech.
Before he said more than half a dozen words the brick bats started to fly. Clods of earth, small stones, something that looked like a dead gull, fish heads, apparently brought along for this very purpose, hailed down on him and the mummers. The winged children fled shrieking and giggling in a little flock. A couple of guards wearing fake armour began to sing a Te Deum. The king himself scurried behind them and tried, with mock inefficiency, to hide. Then the whole lot surged towards the porter’s lodge to push their way inside the enclave.
Remaining on the foregate, Hildegard heard the minstrels strike up as soon as they entered the garth while more and more onlookers pushed inside to set foot on forbidden ground. It was a hurling, raucous confusion of colour and clamour, the noise ricocheting from the high stone walls and doubling its effect.
Gregory caught Hildegard’s eye. ‘You saw it too? Let’s not lose sight of him! Come! Follow me!’
Luke pulled at Hildegard’s sleeve. ‘What’s he saying?’
‘Hurry! Keep up!’ She knew what Gregory had seen.
He had already merged into the crowd with Egbert close on his heels by the time Hildegard, dragging Luke behind her, managed to force a way inside.
‘Tell me what he said!’ he repeated. ‘What is it?’
Half-turning she mouthed, ‘The popinjay!’
Luke nodded, not entirely understanding, but followed her without further delay.
With everyone pressed into the small area of cloister garth and several brawny Northumberland pipers appearing from somewhere to join the minstrels, it was a scene of carnival within.
The music invited everyone to dance. People linked arms with anybody who happened to be standing next to them and, kicking up their heels, women swirled their skirts, men stamped and shouted, the jugglers performed their tricks and anyone who could sing raised their voices to the old tunes and sang their hearts out.
Only one group did not join in. Apart from the Cistercians, the monks of the abbey, hoods thrown back, faces smiling much as Darius had been smiling, with a bemused condescension, were ranged around three sides of the cloister in silence.
‘This way,’ muttered Gregory in Hildegard’s ear.
He forced a path behind the crowd who were now preparing to dance a salterello as the music changed. They came out on the opposite side of the garth where the king was still brushing himself down after his costume had been despoiled by the missiles hurled at him. The dragon-headed character strode into the middle and shouted through his mask for the musicians to hold quiet.
One by one the instruments fell silent as a troop of actors launched themselves into a play in which the dragon itself was a chief character. A surgeon in realistically blood-stained garments drew out an enormous knife and made a few feints with it.
One luckless fellow was roughly plucked from the crowd while the rest of the players joined in with gusto. After a chase they tied their victim down while the crowd cheered.
The stilt walker presided over the surgeon’s antics from on high and in a loud horror-stricken voice described the operation with relish. ‘And now he puts both hands inside the gaping wound and draws forth his organs …’ Fake entrails, or real ones from some butchered beasts of the field, were drawn as from the victim’s belly as the crowd groaned in mock horror and sniggers of derision.
‘There, see him?’ muttered Gregory.
‘Or her,’ Egbert replied, following his glance.
Hildegard peered over to where Gregory had indicated.
In the milling crowd someone wearing a white smock with a pair of red horns on their head was yelling as lustily as everyone else.
On his shoulder: a live bird.
‘A popinjay!’ breathed Hildegard.
At that moment, astonishingly, the man stepped forward into the play’s action and began to berate the surgeon. In response he got a bucket of convincing-looking blood thrown over him. The green parrot sheltered inside his capuchon to the delight of the crowd.
In response the man encouraged the bird to jump on to his wrist and pose like a hawk until he sent it flying round the garth. Everyone watched open-mouthed to see if it would make a bid for freedom, but to loud hoots and cheers it swooped down on to the man’s wrist again and squawked something only those standing by could hear. The fellow held the bird aloft and took a bow. The parrot mirrored him.
Hildegard noticed the fellow’s eyes as he lowered his head and how they darted from side to side over his audience. ‘Gregory, is that our man?’
Egbert flexed his fists.
Luke was frowning. ‘What are we going to do?’
‘Wait,’ suggested Gregory. ‘An opportunity will come to observe him at closer quarters.’
The abbey brewster, one of the men up at the buildings on the perimeter of the enclave they had met earlier, had commanded a team of muscular lads who had manhandled a few barrels on to the garth and the crowd began to jostle for free drinks. Hildegard wondered how the monks were going to clear the place when the time came for everyone to leave, or whether they would have to retreat to their dortoir in the face of such mayhem, leaving the security of the abbey in God’s hands.
Unobserved, however, the garth and the town folk in it were being surreptitiously controlled because all around, where people might have thought to wander off to find some unattended gold chalice or crucifix, the abbey servants, many of whom she now recognized, stood with folded arms at the exits and entrances to the private areas of the precinct.
After a word from one of the sub-priors the musicians were soon playing music suitable for a farandole at which, gradually, as the sound and the rhythm penetrated their hearing, the players began to link arms to form a snake that started to wind its way around the garth.
When everyone saw what was happening they joined in and soon the living creature with a thousand legs was jigging in and out of the cloisters and eventually snaking back at the same cheerful pace through the gatehouse and on to the path to town.
It took time, and no-one was bothered about that, but with the sound of the drums and pipes fading down the side of the cliff the entire rowdy mob gradually returned from whence it had emerged.
The tolling of the bell put the final seal on things, drowning out the last whisper.
The Benedictines, their abbey safe again, were already filing into church but Gregory, pushing his companions on ahead of him, suggested they join the last of the followers. ‘We’ll see where this green parrot goes. Its keeper might be a townsman, or one of the mummers as seems more likely. We’ll find him and talk to him after he’s had a few stoups of ale.’
‘In vino veritas,’ muttered Luke.
Already dark now, the flares lighting the path helped them keep their footing on the steep track. A few figures in outlandish glitter could be seen heading past the parish church. With the red horns in their sights the Cistercians tagged on behind.
The town. Moments later.
A febrile atmosphere had the streets and alleys in its grip by the time they reached the bottom. Every door was open. Groups still arm-in-arm reeled slowly from one house to the next. The loudest sounds of revelry came from Church Street where the crowd was thickest, and when they reached the corner they saw that it was impassable, thick with onlookers and the crowd following the procession meeting another one forcing its way up from the direction of the quay.
The two groups clashed somewhere lower down near the moot hall. Flames leaped upwards. An explosion was heard. Cheering onlookers reassured those too far away to see what was happening that everything was going well.
‘It looks as if the mummers are putting on their show again,’ Gregory reported from the height that enabled him to see over the heads in front. ‘The other procession seems to be in charge of the tar barrels.’
Luke was searching the faces of the crowd with a strained expression and when Hildegard noticed the girls hanging out of upstairs windows and shouting down into the throng below she understood why. Sabine would surely be in the Selby house. Not out here on the main thoroughfare.
‘There he is!’ exclaimed Egbert, catching a glimpse of the red-horned devil with the parrot through a gap in the crowds. They pushed forward, leaning into the wall of bodies until it gently opened, received them, then closed behind them. In this way they managed to press forward until they were close enough to the horned figure for Hildegard to make cooing noises to the bird. Its owner turned.
‘Salve, ma donna!’
‘Salvete,’ replied Hildegard including the popinjay in her greeting.
A young, beard-less, nut-brown face with taut, wind-honed skin and dancing eyes was visible when he pushed aside the mask. Without speaking he encouraged the bird to step off his shoulder on to his hand, then he offered it to Hildegard. The well-trained creature knew how to behave. It stepped fearlessly on to Hildegard’s wrist and began to speak and bob its head.
‘Is it Latin?’ she asked its owner in astonishment.
‘A good Christian popinjay,’ he boasted. ‘Take him. He likes you.’
‘He is so sleek and fine,’ she murmured, running one finger down the parrot’s chest. Its feathers lay as smooth and soft as silk over its bony chest.
‘Take. He is yours.’ He made as if to move off.
‘I have no way of keeping him,’ she explained.
‘In your house. Your husband like? You make pretty hat with feathers?’ He ran one of his own fingers down the sleek side of the bird and gave Hildegard a penetrating stare.
Was he a Fleming, a Lombard? He seemed to have mistaken her habit for a player’s garb. She touched it at the neck and as she pulled forth her little wooden cross a look of astonishment flooded his face. Then he roared with laughter. ‘You keep him. Teach him prayers. He speak good Latin. Go to popinjay heaven. Maybe he become Pope?’
He took her by the other hand and squeezed it as if to convey some kind of meaning. The crowd pressed them close together and the bird stepped on to her shoulder. The merry eyes of its owner hovered close to her face and he bent his head. ‘Aren’t you a mummer, after all?’
She shook her head. Pulling a face he took the popinjay and, speaking gibberish to it, replaced it on his own shoulder. ‘Vale, ma donna.’ With a quick bob of his head he slipped away into the crowd.
Gregory swooped down. ‘What was that about?’
‘He tried to give me the popinjay. It speaks Latin. I feel I’ve missed something.’
‘There he goes.’ Gregory, still taking advantage of his height, gestured down the street. ‘He seems to be trying to give it to someone else now. A friar by the look of him, although he could be a fish merchant in holy day garb.’ The crowd milled about them and Gregory asked, ‘What was the bird saying?’
‘I couldn’t tell.’
‘All I can say is he didn’t look as if he was likely to hit somebody over the head and push them into a fish pond.’ Egbert still had his eyes on him. ‘There he goes, predictably into an ale house.’
‘You can slide into a drinking den without being noticed, Egbert. Why don’t you go and listen to that mysterious bird to find out what it’s saying?’
Egbert adopted a parrot’s voice and said something about his master pushing a nice fellow into a lake. ‘Huzzah! Huzzah!’ he squawked, causing heads to turn. ‘I always get the rough end of the stick,’ he pretended to moan. ‘Ale drinking …’ He shivered.
‘We’ll wait for you in the street … Ready to carry you home,’ Gregory called after him as Egbert followed the horned head piece down the street to one of the houses with broom over the lintel where it had disappeared inside.
Hildegard felt disillusioned. ‘I feel we’re on the wrong track. He’s a foreigner. He can’t have anything to do with Aelwyn or Edred, can he?’
‘So how did a feather from his popinjay get into the fish pond close to where Edred’s body was found?’
‘If it was from that and not another bird. I feel we’ve missed a turn somewhere.’
‘The truth is we’ve never seen a turn to miss because we’ve never even been on any track.’
Leaning against a corner of a house, they stood a little apart from the milling crowds lining the street to watch the first of the barrels being dragged up the slope. Once at the top they would be set alight and allowed to roll down so that youths could risk setting themselves on fire as they leaped over them.
‘You can’t escape the fact,’ he said, ‘that there’s been precious little to go on.’
Turning her back on the activity in the street, Hildegard suggested they went over what had happened so far. ‘First Brother Aelwyn.’ Remembering Dickson’s comment, she asked, ‘Whose toes did he step on?’
‘Some animosity from the town?’
‘They seemed to like him if the comments at his memorial service were anything to go by.’
‘From the brotherhood then?’
‘That’s more likely. His flagrant disregard for celibacy must have angered some of the purists. Or,’ she said, ‘maybe he became too involved with the followers of Wycliffe?’
‘A reason for doing away with him? Surely it’s not enough except for the most arrant purist willing to risk hellfire for his absolutism? And anyway, the law deals with heretics. I can see no reason for anyone to take matters into their own hands over it.’
‘The Duke of Gloucester and his friend Richard Arundel have recently made it a hanging matter to shelter heretics.’
‘That’s true. But Gloucester’s a long way off. Up here they have a disdain for Westminster law if it doesn’t suit them, especially if it comes from him. Surely it must be something more local?’
‘Or more personal?’
‘In such a tight-knit community – I mean the abbey as well as the town – it’s unlikely that anyone is going to drop any hints to us. We’re outsiders.’ He frowned. ‘I can’t help feeling the abbey high-ups are aware of the fact and hope to play on it. That’s probably the main reason the matter was handed to us.’
‘You don’t trust them, do you?’
‘No I don’t. And that’s personal!’ He gave one of his tantalizing smiles. ‘They regard us as fools and you know how that rankles!’
‘That aside, Gregory, let’s look at the facts again, so far as we know them: Aelwyn’s movements were common knowledge. Everybody knew he used to go up to the apple store most days. They wouldn’t have troubled to steal the means to block up the air vents if they hadn’t. But they would have to time it so that he was the last one to go up that day.’
‘So it seems to mean that someone managed to lure him there at a specific time. I’m thinking of a tryst with Sabine, for instance, now we know of their relationship.’
‘Surely she wouldn’t harm Aelwyn? According to Luke she was distraught the morning she heard he’d died.’
He made no reply.
Instead he reminded her of how the path up to the abbey passed Sabine’s house lower down. ‘It would be easy for her to walk up from her house to the top of the cliff, but instead of entering the abbey she could have taken the path towards the orchard without even going inside the enclave.’
‘With the intention of meeting Aelwyn? … Hmm.’ After a pause she said, ‘To meet him, yes, I can accept that … but to lure him into the store so as to kill him?’
‘We know so little about these people. That’s our problem. We’re groping in the dark trying to understand their loves and hatreds. And what about Edred’s death? Do we suspect that the person who murdered him had also earlier murdered Aelwyn?’
‘I think we’re assuming so.’
‘But again, we have to ask, why? What’s the link?’ He paused. ‘Such a theory would surely exempt Sabine. Can you see her pushing a man into a lake?’
‘As for a link between Aelwyn and Edred?’
‘Talk. To swap opinions? Edred’s body was found close to the farm buildings. With Aelwyn dead, though, his usual purpose was thwarted, so what took him up there that night?’
‘Maybe he had a message for someone there?’
‘Despite the blizzard?’
‘Yes. And he walked up, bypassing the abbey enclave where he was to meet me, and instead met the man with the popinjay?’
‘But why? How would he know him? And what do you think he was going to tell you if he’d managed to turn up?’
‘Brother Dunstan was vague. He thought only that it might help us understand a little more about the undercurrents sweeping the abbey.’
Remembering the friar in the tavern on the day of their clash with the abbey mercenaries, Hildegard mentioned again a link between supporters of Wycliffe, the desire to be able to speak out freely, and for Edred as with many, a desire to question the official doctrines like those associated with the Eucharist and to have the Bible in translation so that all could freely read it.
‘The desire for bonded men to attain their freedom is a strong pressure on many to join the rebels, whatever the religious arguments. Plenty of folk live in the woods to escape the bondage of a master. They’re open about fighting the scourge of slavery. They vow never to give in, to fight on to the end, whatever the penalty.’
‘And both Aelwyn and Edred appear to hold similar views. It’s not too much to call them allies. It seems to be fairly common knowledge around the abbey precincts that Aelwyn was a sympathizer, tacitly at least. He must have been something of a rebel as a novice, transgressing the Rule when he was a youth. Then, for some reason being allowed back into the fold … Was it at a price, do you think?’
‘What do you mean? … As a spy?’
‘It would be useful to have a grateful brother reporting back to the abbot anything that might harm abbey interests. And Edred might have been a useful source of information for him, given his connections in the town with men like Dickson.’
‘And thus they stepped on someone’s toes?’
‘By the way, where is Luke?’
Gregory glanced about. ‘He was here a few moments ago.’
Hildegard stood on tiptoe and stared down the street. It was too crowded to make anyone out.
They exchanged glances.
‘At least let’s go and rescue Egbert from the claws of the demon drink.’
‘And then approach the sanctuary of Master Selby to rescue Luke?’