The Law of Angels (36 page)

He held the book as if he didn’t know whether to throw it across the yard or open it again and have another look at the drawings. His eyes watered. “It’s a rare skill. He draws like an angel. How can I blame him—she’s a beauty. Anybody with the art would want to capture that. I’ve got drawings myself, though not so skilled.” His eyes filled again. “When he comes back in will you come over?”

“Are you sure you want me to?”

He nodded.

*   *   *

While she was waiting she took out the feather she had found in Jankin’s sleeping chamber and looked closely at it.

The talk of geese had reminded her of it. The mattress on the bed was made of straw. When she inspected it she saw it could be the breast-feather of a goose or a swan. It wasn’t a wing feather like the ones used for writing or drawing. There was a brown stain of some sort on several of the fibres. The pageant angels wore wings made of feathers. Some had feathers painted on them, others, the ones with more important roles or in the poulterers’ or the wealthier guilds, had wings sewn with hundreds of real feathers. The Glaziers’ Guild was going to perform the play called
The Harrowing of Hell
. Jankin was cast as the Archangel Michael.

The feather must be off his costume, she decided. But why had he risked a fine and brought it from the pageant house?

And, more important, where was it now?

She would ask Danby when the opportunity arose.

*   *   *

Gilbert trailed back to the yard a couple of hours later. Apparently, after his secret vigil at the mill, he had gone straight to a rehearsal because he was wearing a haphazard garment of fustian and carrying a wooden stave like a crook. He came straight into the workshop and threw the crook into a corner then lifted his head, having suddenly noticed Danby standing like a statue by the far door.

He raised his eyebrows as if about to ask his master what was wrong when his glance fell to the bench and on it, prominently displayed, his own open sketchbook with a picture of Dorelia, naked, lying on what was presumably the marital bed.

He went over and looked at it.

For a long moment he didn’t speak. When at last he did he simply said, “I see.” He looked across at Danby. “So…” It wasn’t a question. It was more like
so there it is
or
that’s that then
.

“Where was I when all this was going on?” Danby asked in a hoarse voice. Hildegard was surprised at how calm he sounded.

“You were off on guild business mostly. You’ve been busy with planning for the pageant these last few months.”

“I thought I could trust you.” Danby gave him a look of profound disappointment and added, “I thought I could trust her.”

Gilbert made no reply but turned and went through into the small workshop. Danby followed him and stood in the doorway while the journeyman took a brush from a pot, a few pieces of charcoal and some sheaves of used vellum and put them in a leather bag he unhooked from a peg on the back of the door. He limped over to where his cloak was flung on his mattress in a corner of the workshop and picked it up.

“What are you doing?” Danby asked.

Gilbert straightened. “You don’t need to put it into words.”

“What?” Danby took a step forward.

“It’s the end. I don’t blame you. Just let’s not say anything we’ll hear in our minds for the rest of our days.”

“Stop a minute. Where are you going?”

“I’ll find somewhere.” Gilbert’s head was down and his hair shone like a blazing veil, hiding his face. His fingers were shaking as he fumbled with the strap of his bag.

“Gilbert, stop!”

Danby could still show some authority even though he was a broken man and Gilbert jerked his head up in surprise. His face was stiff with misery but his eyes flickered over his master’s face with no sign of submission.

“You think you’re just going to walk out?” asked Danby.

“I won’t make you say what I don’t want to hear. What’s the point? I know what you’ll say. It’ll be what I’ve said to myself time after time. But it was too good a chance to miss. She’s perfect. Her beauty at its height. I had to record that. Soon time will make a mockery of her like it does with all of us. But until then…” He shrugged. “I had to record it. I can use her looks for the rest of my life.”

Danby was silent. There was a mixture of emotion on his face, none of which Hildegard found easy to name. Rage, certainly. Grief, without any doubt. But there was something else, a kindness of sorts.

When he spoke she knew it was also admiration, the respect of one craftsman for another.

He went over and clamped both hands down hard on Gilbert’s shoulders and forced him to stop trying to stuff things into his bag. He banged him back hard against the wall and for a moment Hildegard thought he was going to strike him.

“You’re going nowhere!” he growled instead. “I’m master here. I don’t give permission for you to go. You work for me. Nothing’s changed. If you walk out now you’ll be well outside the law. You know that. You won’t have a future. They’ll hang you. You came to me begging me to save you and you gave me a promise. A year and a day. Well, your time’s still to run. I’m not releasing you.”

Gilbert’s lips parted in astonishment. “I betrayed you. There’s no two ways about that.”

“I know it. I feel it. God, you don’t know how much I feel that. It’s a wound that will never heal, you little bastard. But she betrayed me as well. And,” he added, “she was also betrayed.”

“How so?”

“By her beauty, you fool. It led her along a path she would never willingly have chosen. She has more temptations than most women. I have to forgive her for straying. Isn’t that what Our Lady tells us, sister?” He turned to Hildegard at last as to a witness.

She came to herself with a start. It was like being spoken to by one of the players on one of the pageant wagons. “That’s what she tells us, yes,” she agreed.

Danby put his arms round Gilbert in a brotherly hug and after standing stiffly for a moment the journeyman rested his forehead on Danby’s shoulder and muttered, “I didn’t mean anything against you. You know that, Edric. She broke no vows with me. She simply let me draw her.”

Both men stepped back.

Danby gave a strange sort of laugh, almost a sob. “I expected to be shouting you out of town, exulting in your pursuit by hand and horn, dragging you before the justices, cheering as they hanged you from the gibbet,” he said. “That was my first intention. To see you swing!”

Gilbert looked frightened. “If you want I’ll—”

“Go? Never. You stay. My dream is this: Dorelia will think better of her running off and she’ll come walking back in here as if nothing’s happened. Where else could she better be than in a workshop where her beauty is revered for its true value?”

Hildegard spoke as if from the prompt box at a play. “We have to find her now. I think Gilbert may have some ideas on that score.”

So Baldwin was wrong, she thought. Gilbert was not a man obsessed by love of a woman he could never have. In fact, it could be said he had her in a way that Baldwin, for all he was in the glazier’s trade, would never understand.

*   *   *

Danby decided they would go out to Two Mills Dale later that afternoon to give themselves time to get into position before Baldwin arrived. They could observe the situation and, if necessary, confront him. “If we surprise him he won’t be able to talk his way out of it.” It was evident he was used to his brother’s glib tongue.

He was clearly unconvinced that there was anything in Gilbert’s suspicions, but to set his mind at rest he said he was willing to go along with things and put him to the test.

“He can’t have abducted her. Why the hell would he do a thing like that? Is he after a ransom? I’ve had no note. And to keep her at that old mill? I don’t believe it! And what about Jankin?”

He was scathing, yet there was no other option but to check out the facts. His wife was missing. He had to follow every trail however slight. They would go to the mill and lie in wait for Baldwin when he put in an appearance before vespers.

“My own brother?” He gave Gilbert a hard glance. “If this turns out to be a pack of lies I’ll not find it so easy to forgive. Once yes, but twice? Never.”

Hildegard suggested taking some supporters. The guard was armed after all but Danby shook his head. “I’ve made enough of a fool of myself over this. I want to keep it quiet. If I can’t take on my own brother then so be it. But it won’t come to that.”

“What about the guard?” Hildegard insisted.

“I’m not helpless,” said Gilbert.

She decided to take her hounds.

*   *   *

Hildegard already knew that waiting for the prioress’s letter to arrive would be like waiting for an axe to fall.

And then at last, before they left for the mill, a courier hurried into the yard, confirmed her identity then thrust a sealed letter into her hands, and she knew this was it. She took the letter straight up to her chamber.

After the usual greetings the prioress came to the point:

By now it will be well known that you possess what some desire. My suggestion is that you do not conceal your whereabouts. When they come for it, as they shall, their identity will be revealed. Inform his Grace at once. He can then do as he thinks fit.

There were a few general wishes of a solicitous nature which cut no ice with Hildegard.

The prioress was instructing her to be a decoy.

When they come for it.
And what was she to do when they did? Discuss the matter of the cross with them? Ask for payment? With a sword in her ribs?

She gazed in disbelief at the letter and read it twice more.

No word about what she was to tell the canons in Florence who had entrusted her with the cross if it fell into the wrong hands again.

No word about what she was to do if confronted by a band of rebels with nothing to lose and everything to gain by wresting it from her possession.

No word about what to do if it was Bolingbroke who had instigated the theft and was now trying to get the cross back in order to bolster his claim to the throne of England.

No word if it was the Earl of Douglas or even King Robert of Scotland himself who was after it.

No hint, of course, about a knight in black strolling at large round Danby’s yard apparently on the look-out for lead.

The prioress may suspect that it was no parochial theft. That there were people with power involved. But whoever they were they had no qualms about cold-blooded murder. The butchery of the rebel band swam before her eyes.

Placing the letter into the pocket in her sleeve she remained at the window until she saw Danby and Gilbert come out into the yard. There was a suspicious-looking bulge at Danby’s side, poorly concealed under his cloak, and Gilbert had a determined mien though not much else. She couldn’t see Danby wielding a sword and Gilbert wouldn’t frighten a flea.

Putting her own personal predicament to one side for the time being, she went outside to meet them.

*   *   *

Half an hour later the three of them, accompanied by the two hounds, Duchess and Bermonda, were approaching High Mill through the water meadows.

It had been as busy as ever in the town and as they came out of the passage into the street Hildegard had noticed that the henchman belonging to the smiling, broken-toothed knight had gone. Evidently they had decided it wasn’t worth burgling the glazier’s workshop after all. If, indeed, that had been their intention.

Farther down Stonegate the entertainers were doing brisk business and their assistants were taking the hat round with grinning faces. In among them all a familiar figure was rattling through his patter about love potions, but when he noticed Hildegard in the crowd his eyes widened and, taking in the sight of her two companions and the hounds, he broke off and stepped down from his stage with a nod to a bare-chested young man standing by holding a firebrand and what looked like a bottle of water.

Hildegard threw a glance over her shoulder and the mage read it aright, and from then on kept his distance. Behind him the young fire-eater had taken over his pitch and was already spitting flames into the air to the joy of his audience.

The mage followed all the way to the edge of the woods without being noticed by the two men and now, as they left the heat of the sun and entered the shade, he was still there, slipping along like a fleet shadow behind them.

Danby was getting cold feet already. “Besides,” he was saying, “we don’t have any reason to think she’s here, do we? Why should she be? We’re going to look right sot wits. It’ll be some deal he’s made. Stored goods, exempt from tax. Always been a bit of a rogue, my brother. I’d be the first to admit it.”

Gilbert said he wasn’t sure whether he hoped she was there or hoped she wasn’t. As for Jankin, where was he, poor devil? Nobody seemed to give a damn what had happened to him.

Danby shot a sidelong glance when they came to a halt to get their bearings in the confusing pathways of the thicket and said, “Don’t think I’m not worried about Jankin. Of course I am. But he’s not my wife. It’s a different thing altogether. And if he’s been taking advantage he deserves all he gets.”

Gilbert said nothing.

“Do we have a plan?” asked Hildegard.

“Yes,” replied Danby. “We lie low until Baldwin appears. When he’s gone inside we enter and demand to know what the hell’s going on. Then when he’s defended himself with an explanation we should have thought of ourselves, we all shake hands, hope he doesn’t bear a grudge and go home.”

He reminded Hildegard of Roger de Hutton. Except for Roger’s immense wealth they had a similar straightforward, some would say, naive belief in human nature and their own power to dictate matters.

They emerged at the edge of the clearing with the mill in front of them and, well-concealed, settled down to wait.

Somewhere in the thicket of hawthorns and flowering ash the mage was watching too. When a cuckoo started up close by it seemed to Hildegard to go on past all belief. The others, however, were intent on the mill and clearly thought nothing of it.

By the time the shadows had lengthened somewhat, casting the clearing into deeper gloom, it began to seem that, maybe, they were going to be disappointed and Baldwin was not going to show up after all. The guard was still sitting outside, however, and both she and Gilbert had to dissuade Danby from bursting forth, hailing him and demanding to know his business.