Chapter Thirty-two

The apparelling house was a cavity built between the wheels of the wagon under the acting area. Its contents were concealed by a curtain. Inside were the props, and if there were any devices being used, that’s where they were stored.

The glaziers’ play was fortieth in the sequence. The actors were not required until later in the morning, and now they hung around the wagon on pageant green, suffering various degrees of anxiety over their lines.

It was a large cast of fifteen actors for the Harrowing of Hell. Satan, Jesus and a small part of four lines that had belonged to Jankin, now to be spoken by Gilbert as the Archangel Michael.

He was at present sitting a little apart from everyone else. As a militant angel wielding a firey sword he was unconvincing. Hildegard wondered if he guessed he was under suspicion. Danby was putting up a good show in the role of genial guildmaster, swapping jokes with the leads, ribbing John the Baptist about the smell from his animal skins, handing round a flagon of what turned out to be good Rhenish from his own cellar. She handed the flagon on to Gilbert after she had had her turn.

“Word perfect?” she asked.

“I was word perfect weeks ago,” he said, “having to listen to that sot wit trying to get his few lines into his thick skull.” His face was pale, devoid of any expression. Outlined in black charcoal his eyes appeared even more translucent than usual. Despite the harshness of his tone she found it difficult to gauge his mood and suspected that it concealed more emotion than he was willing to admit openly.

“How’s the window for Lord de Hutton?” she asked.

“Nearly finished. As soon as this bollocks is over I’ll paint in the faces, get them fired and fit them in. Job done.” His eyes briefly sparked. “I should be working on it now instead of indulging in all this,” he added.

“Don’t you believe Corpus Christi should be celebrated?” she asked.

“What do you think?”

“I take that as a ‘no’ then.” It was a common view that the church put on these holy days to keep everybody in their place. Bread and circuses, just like the Romans.

“At least it gives folks a chance to have a day off from the daily grind.” He nodded towards the cheerful crowd behind the barrier. “I would never begrudge the poor fools that.”

“What time are you setting off?”

“Ages yet. Time for stage fright to settle in and get a hold.” He handed the flagon back and she drank and passed it on to one of the nearby devils.

To answer Danby’s question: No, she couldn’t believe Gilbert would do such a wicked thing.

And yet … there was that handwritten warning of the wrath to come.

*   *   *

Ulf’s absence had been explained. That was one bright spot in the current situation. He wasn’t trying to avoid her because she had broken his heart. According to Danby he was working on security, not lounging around with his lord and guests at the first station enjoying himself. Now it had been drawn to her notice she perceived that the street was full of men wearing the city’s blazon of leopards. Once you suspected weapons you could see them barely concealed beneath their cloaks.

The de Huttons were still in the stand and had been joined by several gaudily attired visitors. They looked like local merchants, small landowners, wealthy burgesses. Food was being handed up on platters from a portable kitchen at the back. The Tuscan chef was shouting orders in the sort of English that sent the yeomen of the board into stitches, but it was all good humoured and everyone was pulling together.

The cooking was being done on a makeshift brazier and a spit of roast pheasant and other fowl was turning above the flames giving off an enticing aroma. A boar’s head, as yet uncooked, stood on a trestle close by.

There was a lot of fire around, not only here with the brazier, but on the pageant wagons themselves. Hildegard considered what it had taken to set alight the market booth with its terrible outcome. She recalled Stapylton’s outraged description of the attempted firing of his workshop and his mention of the brass bowl presumably containing the wax common to both outbreaks.

When she considered the matter she realised that almost every play she could think of had its possibly lethal ration of flame: Lucifer, obviously, as she had just witnessed; Abraham with the sacrificial fire for his son; the thunder and lightning denoting the wrath of God as the flood swept all but Noah and his family from the world; the Annunciation; the Holy Light seen by the shepherds; the flames of hell in the Harrowing; not to mention the Last Judgement with its firey glory hole into which the damned were hurled.

Fire was a favourite device, thrilling the audience, with every burst of flame set to outdo the preceding one, and safe enough when confined to the wagons. The apprentices were well advised to stand by with buckets of water and the players themselves would be alert for their own safety, exposed upon the open stage.

But what about the crowds? she wondered now. What if fire broke out in the thick of it? There would be panic. Children would be trampled, the old and infirm would be injured, people might finish up like the poor woman who had died with that long-drawn-out scream of agony, devoured by a ball of flame in the fabric booth, or delirious with blackened skin and talking of crocodiles like her husband in the hospital of St. Leonard.

Drunkenness would make the situation worse. With minds bleared by alcohol, nobody would notice a figure in the crowd putting a light to some device. They would take it as part of the entertainment. But then the fire-setter’s own life would be at risk as well. It would have to be a timed explosion. It would need to be set up as at the chandler’s workshop and in the puppet booth—in such a way that by the time of its death-dealing the madman who had devised such a stunt would be away to safety.

A device like that would not be difficult to set. As Stapylton had said, any fool could do it. Even though it would have to be done in secret, where it was likely to go unobserved until too late, it could be done.

She remembered how Stapylton had told them about the cloths hanging above the bowl of wax so that the flames set light to them and it was the cloths that were then supposed to set light to the beams above. An apparelling house would be the ideal setting except for the fact that there were always people on hand.

There were many other ways of making an explosion.

It need not be bees wax.

Saltpetre was easy to get hold of, as was brimstone.

There were other substances, imported from the east. There was the mysterious stuff called Greek Fire, although nobody really seemed to know if it existed or not. There was even an experiment done with mirrors that was said to have set alight the sails of a warship off Constantinople. The sun was certainly bright enough today to experiment with such a device.

Stapylton, in his mood of black suspicion, had also claimed that there were some young rebels so enraged by their political impotence that they would even risk their own lives for the cause. She imagined how an explosive device could be strapped to the body of one with such desperation in his soul.

In fear she went back under the stand to where the spit was turning. Roger kept a full complement of servants. There were people around all the time and none without his blazon on their tunics to declaim their allegiance. Unobtrusively she stood by for a while, observing what went on and ultimately deciding that if anyone tried to set up a firebomb here it would be noticed at once.

Even so, she climbed the steps between the strings of fluttering pennants to where everyone was still watching the plays and asked if she might sit next to Roger for a moment. The Chamberlain moved up, scarcely taking his eyes off the stage.

She leaned forward. “My lord, a word?” When she explained her fears he nodded, then called for his kitchen clerk and whispered in his ear. Grim-faced, the man went down underneath the stand. Roger put his hand over hers. “Be reassured, Hildegard. If anybody can get away with it they’ll have to make themselves invisible.”

*   *   *

Invisible. The only person she had met recently who could make himself invisible had been the mage, Theophilus, otherwise known as John of Berwick, with perhaps other names besides.

According to Danby, he had sent word to Dorelia’s betrothed to inform him of recent events. Today he had been invisible all right. She had seen no sign of him. It looked as if he had given up on a sure profit in the streets of York to take the message into the West Riding himself.

Still haunted by uneasy premonitions she again went down into the street. It was heaving with activity.

Aware that it was useless to try to second-guess the actions of the one who had written the threat on the minster doors, and conscious that poor Brother Thomas must still be lying in St. Leonard’s on the other side of town, she decided it was high time to pay him a visit. She had scarcely given him a thought in her fear of the fire-raisers.

At the same time she would keep an eye open for the mage. His view on things was often confirmed by the confidences he picked up.

*   *   *

The procession following the pageant wagons already stretched down the hill towards the bridge. It was another hot morning promising more of the same. It seemed as if the fine weather would never end. There was a new heaviness in the air, however, pressing down like the lid over a furnace. It was becoming uncomfortable, the sort of weather to bring headaches and ill-temper.

The third pageant station was at John Gisburne’s mansion near North Street. It was on the way to St. Leonard’s, so Hildegard made her way towards it in the wake of the followers.

Robert Harpham, in whose house Roger’s party was staying, had had a simple balcony erected, on a level with his first-floor windows. It was wide enough for the old merchant to sit there in comfort above the street with a couple of body-servants and a few members of his family beside him.

Gisburne’s viewing place, on the other hand, was an elaborate three-storey erection, hung with enough gaudy tapestries to make sure everyone knew he was a man of wealth.

Not that it was doing him any good now, in prison.

Undaunted by his fate, his wife, accompanied by a handsome young man in lieu of her husband, was surrounded by servants and visitors. There was a charge to sit on the upper level and a household clerk was doing brisk business from a queue of people who had tired of the growing rowdiness of the streets and wished for a little privacy. As Ulf had said, now was the right time to make a killing. It was frightening to think that was what the fire-raisers might think too, in a different sense.

Hildegard continued down the hill. It was difficult to know what to look for, but she was alert for anything that seemed suspicious. The firebombings were seen as the work of the White Hart, designed to spoil the religious festival and put a question mark around the whole idea of the body of Christ being turned to bread and wine.

The last notice, however, the one pinned to the minster doors, had been different. It was a direct threat against the mayor and his men. It was common knowledge that the council was loyal to King Richard and openly stood against John of Gaunt and his allies. It made no sense for the freethinkers to threaten the council. The suspicion that Gilbert had written it only led to confusion.

Praying that their suspicions were groundless, she crossed the bridge. The route was being kept open by the constables, but it was thick with spectators on both sides. After watching the wagons go past they would gather to watch the procession of the Host after it emerged from the minster.

People were gathered at every station she passed, although they were at different levels of expectation. Those at the end of Conyngsgate were already cheering the arrival of the armourers’ wagon, while at the sixth station on Castlegate the fullers were just bringing their play to an end.

Farther on the performing space was taken up by entertainers—jugglers, acrobats, minstrels, sword-dancers, fortune-tellers, a chained and muzzled bear, conjurors, card-sharps and a ventriloquist or two—all making the most of a captive audience with money to throw at their feet in the time before the wagons appeared.

It was steamy down here in the heart of the town. The crowd was rougher, less well dressed, less polite and, inevitably, already drunk. Hildegard made her way to the end of Jubbergate and on to the next station, then wended back towards Conyngsgate towards the Common Hall.

There was no sign of the mage.

Regretting that she had made a detour away from St. Leonard’s she headed back towards the river. In doing so she had to cross the square outside the Common Hall.

Here things were a little more decorous. The mayor, Simon de Quixlay, had just arrived and was about to climb the steps to take his place alongside his aldermen on the official stand. Banners in the colours of the city livery adorned the platform and flags were strung from one side of the square to the other.

De Quixlay gave a genial wave to a crowd of supporters as he took his seat. He had guards, she noted, posted all the way along the front. Clearly his genial nature did not extend to welcoming possible fire-raisers.

She watched for a moment or two. The stand was similar to the one Roger had had built. The kitchens, however, were in the adjoining Hall and there were guards posted on the doors doing an efficient job in preventing entry to anyone they did not recognise. Just to test them she made her way over and tried to get inside. She was stopped at once.

“Despite your Cistercian habit, sister, I beg leave to ask for your avouchment.” The guard’s manner showed that he didn’t know whether she was genuine or had merely adopted the white habit as a form of motley.

“I have no proof of my identity,” she told him, “other than my word.”

“In that case, with the utmost regret, I am forced to bar entry. Go and ask for permission from the aldermen if you know any of ’em.” He turned his attention to other matters.

The next station was somewhere along Stonegate. It was not too far out of the way to St. Leonard’s. With her linen undershift sticking to her in the heat she made her way slowly in that direction and had just reached the corner when a man she took to be a beggar stepped into her path. He wore a travel-stained robe of rough fustian and had leather sandals on his feet. Reaching for her pouch she extracted a few coins then, as she tried to drop them into his palm, she glanced into his face.

Her lips opened.

It was a second or two before she managed to recover. Dropping to her knees at once and with head bent she crossed herself. “My lord.”

“Arise, sister.”

Trembling, she straightened. Eye to eye, she saw she was not mistaken.

It was Abbot Hubert de Courcy.