Livestock were loose upon the road. Sheep wandered aimlessly along the forest path, and within the trees they saw domestic pigs rooting for food. At one point, a loose horse galloped past them, nostrils flaring, eyes showing white with fear.
Then they saw the refugees. Men, women, and children carrying their belongings on their backs streamed along the road in search of refuge in some manor, castle, abbey, or town where they could remain until they judged it was safe to return to their despoiled city.
The news Hugh gathered from the fleeing residents was not encouraging. The attack against Worcester’s walls had come early in the morning, with Gloucester’s troops finally breaking into the city on its north side. The soldiers had driven off all the town’s livestock, murdered and maimed its inhabitants, and set fire to the town.
“They kidnapped many of our women, too,” one of the refugees told Hugh indignantly. “They even took some of the nuns from the convent!”
Hugh felt his blood grow cold.
Isabel would tell them who she was, he thought, desperately trying to reassure himself. They wouldn’t dare harm a sister of Simon of Evesham!
But the refugees said that the soldiers were drunk. Who knew what could happen during the rape and pillage of a city by drunken troops?
Hugh urged Rufus into a gallop, impelled by a sense of urgency that would not be denied.
He had to get to Worcester and find his mother.
They encountered no soldiers as they drew near to the city.
The raiders must have finished their work and gone, Hugh thought grimly.
He smelled the burning even before Worcester’s walls came into view.
Hugh and his escort entered the city through the battered-down north gate. Everywhere they looked there was devastation. Fires raged on every street. Groups of citizens had organized to put them out, and Hugh and his small company passed by lines of firefighters throwing water on the roaring flames. The women and children who had remained in the city helped to pass the buckets along. The wet smoldering ashes of a number of houses testified to the fact that the firefighters had already been successful in some places.
Hugh asked one of the women passing buckets if she could tell him the location of the Benedictine convent. She directed him to the south of the city.
Hugh tried not to think as he and Nigel’s three knights rode through the streets of the devastated city. The fear that he was too late, that his mother might be…
I won’t think of it, he told himself sternly. In just a few more minutes I will know for sure.
As soon as they rode past the unoccupied convent gatehouse and into the small Benedictine enclave, it became brutally clear that even the sanctity of this holy place had been violated. Fires raged at all the wooden outbuildings and the nuns, dressed in smoke-stained habits, scurried about trying to put them out. They were assisted by a number of men of the town.
In a voice that he tried to keep steady, Hugh asked one of the nuns if she knew aught of Isabel de Leon.
“I haven’t seen her,” the nun said distractedly. “You had better speak to the prioress.” And she directed him to the church.
“You go, Hugh,” Thomas said. “We’ll stay here and help with the fires.”
Hugh nodded and turned Rufus in the direction of the convent church.
The day was growing dark and the interior of the church was dim as Hugh came in. He stopped for a moment inside the doorway to let his eyes grow accustomed to the lack of light. After a moment he saw a nun, standing still as a statue in the center of the nave.
Hugh looked slowly around the church.
The altar was empty. No gold candlesticks. No gold tabernacle. No gold chalices. The rug that had covered the altar steps was gone, exposing the lighter-colored wood that it had once hidden. Even the stations of the cross, which had once hung upon the stone walls, were gone.
Perhaps the nuns hid everything, Hugh thought. But from the desolate look of the still and silent figure in the middle of the nave, he did not think so.
Hugh removed his helmet and walked slowly toward the solitary prioress. She watched him come without comment. He stopped in front of her and instinctively bowed his head. She looked at him, waiting. Her face, framed by her wimple, was smooth and pale, the color of her eyes indecipherable in the dim light of the church. Her age could have been anywhere from fifty to seventy.
Hugh said quietly, “Reverend Mother, I have come in search of Isabel de Leon. Can you tell me where I might find her?”
“She’s not here,” the prioress said.
Hugh stopped breathing.
“Her brother came and fetched her away the day before the attack,” the prioress went on.
Hugh felt momentarily dizzy, so intense was his relief.
Thank you, God, he thought.
He inhaled deeply, willing the world to steady itself around him.
“I am glad to hear that,” he said.
“Lord Simon offered to escort all of the sisters to safety, but I refused.” The prioress’s voice was bitter with self-recrimination. “I felt that we could not desert the city at such a time, that it was our duty to remain. If we gathered together in the church, I was certain we would be safe. The soldiers might steal from us, I thought, but surely they would respect the habit of a nun.”
“They did not?” Hugh asked in the same quiet voice he had used before.
“They were drunk and wild,” the prioress said. “They took all of our sacred objects and-as if that were not bad enough! — they took some of our novices, those that were young and well-favored.” For the first time her voice quivered. “They laughed at me when I protested.”
Hugh did not know what to say.
“It was well that Isabel left when she did,” the prioress said. “She is no longer young, but she would not have been ignored by those crazed men.”
“I am so sorry, Reverend Mother,” Hugh said. “You have been through a terrible ordeal. Is there aught I can do to help you?”
For the first time the prioress seemed to register Hugh’s face. She stared at him and her eyes widened.
“You look like Isabel,” she said in wonder.
“Aye,” Hugh replied. He inhaled deeply, then, slowly and carefully, he let the breath out. “I am her son.”
“Her son?” the prioress echoed. “The one who was lost when her husband was killed?”
“Aye,” said Hugh again.
The prioress looked at him thoughtfully. She did not reply.
“Is there anything I can do for you, Reverend Mother?” Hugh repeated.
She roused herself from her contemplation of his face. “No,” she said. “I think your need is to see your mother.”
Hugh drew another long, steadying breath. “Aye,” he said starkly. “I think you are right.”
It was almost evening and Hugh decided it would be wise to wait until the following day before setting out for Evesham. He had no desire to run into a band of drunk and rowdy soldiers in the dark.
He and his men worked far into the night helping to put out the fires in the convent outbuildings. After a few hours’ rest on the floor of the guest hall, which had been stripped bare even of its bedding, they rose to a dark and overcast sky.
The stench and desolation of Worcester the day after the attack was depressing in the extreme. Anger against Gloucester was running at fever pitch in the town, but Hugh was not naive enough to think that Gloucester’s men were the only ones capable of such savagery. He had seen Malmesbury when Stephen had finished with it. He knew what the countryside around Trowbridge must look like with the king laying siege to the castle.
It was the face of war.
Hugh had been trained in the arts of war since he was a young child. He was a knight. War should be his natural milieu.