It was not the highest point in the steeple but it was the highest level accessible to the masons where the great windlass stood. Tied now, monstrous and immobile, if filled up most of the space on the edge of the long drop down to the nave. All the ropes were coiled against the walls.
Wind was whistling through the loop holes and from the gap in the wooden floor, where building materials had been hoisted inside the steeple, there was an echoing roar from the floor of the cathedral at the end of mass as people came and went two hundred feet below.
She fled to the far side of the chamber. De Lincoln kicked the door shut and lurched towards her. She lifted her head the better to outface him. He trod heavily to within a couple of paces of where she stood.
He reached out with one bloodied hand. ‘I need your help, Hildegard. Get rid of this for me.’ He began to tug helplessly at the yellow gown. His face, still streaked with charcoal, was streaming with sweat. He was breathing loudly, gasping with every inhalation as if the air had thinned. ‘How do you get out of these devilish things?’ He pulled and tore at the fabric.
She didn’t move. ‘I thought that would be something you’d know about.’
‘Please, help me. If I’m to die I shall die as a man.’ He pulled savagely at the neck of the gown and the fabric was ripped a little more.
By now persuaded she was wrong about his having murdered the two apprentices she moved closer.
‘Like this.’ She lifted the skirts and pulled them up over his head. It was then she could have escaped or drawn her knife on him. He was helpless and unprotected. A feeling like compassion unexpectedly stayed her hand. He had taken a savage slash from Gregory’s sword. Blood soaked his white undershirt. He was innocent of the apprentices’ death.
Shaking his head and shoulders out of the gown he allowed it to fall to the floor. Evidently aware of his brief vulnerability he gave her a startled glance and picked up his sword. ‘Why did you not take your chance then?’ he asked hoarsely.
‘It would have been unfair.’
‘No more unfair than me with my greater strength dragging you up here - ’
‘I know.’ She gave him a steady glance. ‘I simply cannot.’
‘Because you’re a nun?’ His lips twisted. ‘Or are you truly that more complicated creature, Mistress York?’
She shrugged. It was a question she had asked herself often enough.
He smiled and for once his eyes came alive. ‘Say which it is to be. My mistress or my lady?’ He moved closer. ‘Now we’re safe from intruders maybe we can find out?’
Still smiling and still holding his sword in one hand he opened his arms. ‘You will stay. You will come to me. You will stand by me when they arrive as they will. I know you will not desert me.’ He took a pace towards her. ‘All I ask is my May Day reward. One little kiss.’
‘I thought you wanted the list of King Richard’s supporters?’
‘That later. Come to me now. We have a little time before they get here.’
‘De Lincoln. Is everything you told me about having no part in Robin’s death the truth?’
‘Why should I want him dead? He was of little consequence but he worked for me well enough.’
‘Is that the truth?’
He put one palm over the blood stain near his heart. ‘I swear to God and St Thomas.’
‘Then I have wronged you.’
‘Only in that one instance. I have wronged you more by trying to kill your Cistercian brother just now and I will try again if he shows his face.’ A look of sadness filled his eyes for a moment and the dancing light faded as swiftly as it had arisen. ‘Everything is equal in the end. We do what we must until the performance is ended. Then eternity claims us. Amen.’
As if shamed by any hint of weakness his head lifted. ‘Well, mistress. Are you going to give me a kiss or do I have to take one? It’s all the same to me. But I will have one.’
She did not move.
He took it as in invitation to come to her instead. The blood oozing from his wound was spreading. It was in stark contrast to the white of his linen under-shirt. He looked monstrous with his charcoal-smeared face, the sweat, the blood and most of all the look in his eyes.
She lifted both hands to ward him off. He was breathing raggedly and with more difficulty than ever.
She said, ‘I can try to staunch the blood if you wish - ’
He glanced down as if having forgotten it. ‘Later. A kiss first. Show me you have forgiven me.’
‘De Lincoln, don’t you understand? If you had reneged on your allegiance to Bolingbroke or Gloucester or whichever enemy of the king you serve, I would more readily believe in your repentance for what happened on Ludgate Hill.’
‘And my reward will be a kiss?’
Closing her eyes she nodded.
‘In that case...’ He dropped onto both knees and held his sword point down with both hands resting on the pommel, ‘I renege on all vows made to Henry Bolingbroke, and to his father John of Gaunt, the duke of Lancaster, King of Castile, and to their allies, the duke of Gloucester and the earls of Arundel and Warwick, and especially to that slimy braggart, Bolingbroke’s half-brother, Sir Thomas Swynford. I renege all fealty and every promise made to them or their kin.’
He reached inside the leather pouch hanging from his belt under his shirt and withdrew some coins. Throwing them to the floor he said, ‘I return their tainted gold.’
Lifting his lightless eyes to Hildegard he said, ‘By all that is most holy, Hildegard, come to me.’
He held out one blood-stained hand in invitation.
As he found it difficult to rise she went to crouch beside him. ‘Let me staunch your wounds first.’
Tearing a strip off the hem of his shirt she pressed it to the worst of the sword cuts.
Pushing her hands aside he brought an arm round her neck for support and pressed his mouth hungrily over her face. Sweat was streaming over his skin.
‘Forget all that,’ he murmured feverishly. ‘My pleasure will be to die in your arms.’ He pressed his mouth over hers again and again as he spoke, ‘Yes, my lady, yes, kiss me, yes, let me feel your lips, open your mouth to me, Hildegard, yes, kiss me, I want you. Give me your mouth. Yield to me. Yes. This is destiny...’
He gripped her in a tight and bloody embrace, first kissing her hard on the mouth and then lowering his kisses to cover her breasts. His blood smeared her skin where he ripped her garments aside. ‘This is fate,’ he mumbled. ‘It is written.’
A sound at the door made her lift a desperate glance over his shoulder.
At first de Lincoln did not seem to notice that the door had burst open and a crowd of armed constables followed by the serjeant were rushing inside. He lifted his head as, after them, came Brother Gregory, a rope tied round his wrists. Then even more people in their May Day disguises kept coming up the stairs and erupting, red-faced and panting, into the chamber where they milled to a confused halt, made wary by the gaping hole in the middle of the floor and, when they noticed it, stunned to astonishment by the sight of blood and two blood-stained people in an embrace, and one of them a nun.
A trail of red led to where de Lincoln was kneeling with his arms round Hildegard. He observed the intruders with bleared amusement and announced, ‘No-one will take me alive! Nor will you wrest this woman from me!’
With a huge effort of will he managed to rise to his feet. ‘Give me your arm, my lady.’ He held out his free hand.
Leaning heavily against her, he stumbled across the chamber towards the windlass and, still holding her tightly against him, managed to wedge them both against it with his sword in his right hand. He was gasping for breath.
The constables surged forward but he raised his sword and they fell back at once. In the turmoil she noticed that Gregory’s wrists had been cut loose. She saw him snatch a sword from the man standing next to him.
‘Come on, de Lincoln,’ he called taking several paces from out of the crowd. ‘Free Hildegard and then give yourself up.’
‘Never. I am innocent. I have done nothing wrong!’
‘You’ve abducted a nun, for one,’ said the serjeant. ‘And instigated an affray in a public place within the walls, for another. So put your sword down like a good fellow and let’s be having you.’ A nod towards his constables had them nervously spreading out while trying to keep close to the safety of the door.
Greatly outnumbered, de Lincoln simply roared with laughter. With a kind of mad heroism and clearly unafraid of going onto the attack against so many he released Hildegard and advanced an unsteady pace or two from the protection of the windlass. He raised his sword against Gregory.
The monk merely lifted his borrowed one as protection. ‘I’m not going to spill your blood on sacred ground, de Lincoln. You are outnumbered. A wiser course is to submit.’
‘Never!’
‘A charge of treason against the king is what you have to face, man, unless your overlord is willing to stand for you,’ declared the serjeant, amending his previous list of accusations.
There was a commotion at the door and the rumbling bass of a new voice spoke up. ‘No lord of his will speak for him!’ A tall, barrel-chested red-faced old man dressed in wedding clothes burst into the chamber. It was the brother-in-law of Master Gervase, Sir Maurice de Quincy. His grey beard jutted aggressively as he pulled his sword from its scabbard.
‘Wait until I stand before the King’s Bench and tell’em how he tried to lure good men to speak treason!’ he declaimed. ‘He wove a web of treachery that would have cost us our heads!’
He was a military man, with a strong, physical presence despite his grey hair, and he strutted into the middle of the chamber to address the bystanders as if he was appearing in parliament.
‘That young traitor Robin Treadwell - ‘ he began, ‘all his mis-spent days causing trouble but now, praise God and St Thomas, to cause it no more! What did he do, my friends? To what depths of treachery did he stoop? I’ll tell you! He betrayed his brethren! He had no honour in him. He betrayed them one by one. He offered any name, for a price in silver and blood, to this deep-died, double-dealing fellow here.’
He pointed at de Lincoln with his free hand. A large ring flashed on one of his fingers. Strutting up to de Lincoln but making sure he was out of range of his sword, he demanded, ‘Who is this devil in human form, you might ask. Many of you will know him as Sir John. Others will know him as an upstart in the service of Arundel. Look at him well, my friends! This is the spy who bought information to sell to the king’s enemies. He bought it from Robin Treadwell. He bought it from others. Yes, from others!’ He cast a glowering look over the bystanders in their motley. ‘Don’t think you’re safe because you’ve still got a head on your shoulders! We know who you are! We know where you live!’ His voice rose. ‘We shall root you out! Do not doubt it! Treadwell learned this to his cost and paid the penalty. Jack Winter was another. Running to fetch the serjeant in order to tell him, what?’
He glared round, challenging, furious - and, Hildegard now knew, this was a man guilty of double murder.
She stepped forward from behind the windlass. ‘He intended to tell him that he knew you had climbed the steeple on the night of Robin’s murder.’
Sir Maurice did not falter. ‘Yes! What a fool! An enemy to his own brethren! Who would believe a mason could betray his brethren? Had he no honour? Of course I climbed up here. Who else could move the windlass by himself?’
De Lincoln managed bring his hands together in a slow hand-clap. ‘Well done, old man. The wheel of fortune turns! But wait until Arundel hears of this. Wait until the list of Burley’s supporters is nailed to the doors of Westminster Hall!’
Sir Maurice turned with a howl of rage. ‘Let me at the traitor!’
He lunged passionately towards de Lincoln who, though wounded, was still able to defend himself.
With one arm hooked round a treadle of the windlass he parried the knight’s sword, an ironic smile on his face, and within a moment it clattered predictably out of Sir Maurice’s hand. De Lincoln made a grab for Hildegard and propelled her towards the opening where the cable dropped to the floor of the crossing.
To her he said, ‘Come with me, my lovely! We have no choice. Our destiny awaits!’
His intention became suddenly obvious.
Even the onlookers realised what was about to happen and a gasp arose.
‘Don’t do it!’ ordered the serjeant.
Trapped, de Lincoln had seen that he had no choice if he didn’t want to be taken alive. The gap in the floor with its long, plummeting drop was drawing him unstoppably. Horrified, Hildegard pulled back. There was a tussle that brought them closer to the brink.
‘Let’s leave all this and die together!’ he growled. ‘We’ll share kisses forever be it in heaven or hell!’
‘No, de Lincoln,’ she protested. ‘Live! Face them!’
‘I am already dead,’ he gasped. ‘Look how I bleed! And since you refuse to hand me the list of traitors you must come with me.’
‘But you reneged on your fealty to the king’s enemies. You’ll be pardoned!’
‘Words, my lady! The cheapest commodity we have.’ He began to laugh. ‘I am Bolingbroke’s man and always will be!’
He gripped a handful of cloth from her skirt and to the horrified shouts of the onlookers forced her towards the drop. The wind moaned round them with the force of the updraught as she fumbled to find a grip on the wooden struts round the opening and she felt her fingers slipping as de Lincoln pushed her closer towards the edge.
‘You lied to me!’ she shouted above the howl of the wind.
‘Of course I lied! But it didn’t move you. They’ll find the list of traitors when you’re dead. They are already doomed. So come with me! Share my fate! Let’s die together!’
Before de Lincoln could put his diabolical plan into action an authoritative voice rang out above the tumult. ‘Release her!’
Someone grabbed her round the waist from behind and for a long moment all three of them, Hildegard, de Lincoln and the unexpected stranger, struggled at the edge of the drop. De Lincoln still grappled at her robes and now he stumbled and almost lost his footing. Yet with his superhuman strength he managed to force her further over the edge until she could see down into the nave to the stone floor two hundred feet below and he was still grasping her robes in his blood-soaked hand as she struggled to free herself and felt her grip on the wooden struts beginning to slip.
Then de Lincoln himself began to weaken as he shifted his grasp and tried to stop himself from plunging down first to his death. The fabric he held began to tear. He swayed for one long moment on the brink as the torn cloth suddenly came away in his hand.
He was staring back at Hildegard. His glance was locked on hers. In it she saw rage, triumph, fear, astonishment and then a look she did not recognise. And then abruptly he was gone.
She imagined she could hear the parting of the air in his long descent to the bottom of the tower.
There was silence.
She clung onto the edge in a paralysis of shock. Then she felt herself being hauled to safety and she turned with a gasp of gratitude into the arms of her rescuer.
But she could only stare.
‘Hubert? Hubert de Courcy?’ She reached out with one trembling hand to touch his face. ‘My lord abbot, you could have been killed!’