The chamber was in velvet darkness except for a trail of moonlight across the floor. Peering into the deepest blackness, she eventually made out a lighter shape the size of a human face beside her bed.
‘Is there someone here?’
There was only a heavy, dragging silence in response.
‘Who is it?’ Her voice rose. ‘Who are you?’
There was no movement from across the chamber.
Groping along the wall with trembling fingers, she found the taper on the shelf beside the door. Found the tinder. Struck once. Failed to ignite it.
The shape by her bed did not move.
She tried again. A spark. Trembling between her fingers, the taper took the flame and flared up. Light everywhere. Wavering. Strengthening. Illuminating the shape beside her bed.
It was Athanasius. He was sitting on the prayer stool with his back propped against the wall. He did not move or greet her as the light washed over him.
Grasping the taper as both illumination and defence, she edged towards him.
‘Magister, what are you doing here?’ She stood over him then struggled to make sense of what she saw.
He would not answer. Could not.
In the yellow light his face was contorted in the rictus of death. His lips were fixed in a snarl. His eyes had rolled up horribly in their sockets and gazed unseeingly on a corner of the room. His body was set in a grotesque parody of ease. He was bare foot and his feet clawed rigidly as if frozen in the act of rising.
On his lap was her own travel bag, contents scattered. And in his hand was the clay pot with a broken seal.
Backing away, trying not to breathe in the toxic fumes that emanated from it, she fumbled behind her for the door with her thoughts running on.
Medford would not get his proof of Woodstock’s treachery after all.
She had no evidence against him.
It would be her word only and a story that sounded fanciful.
A momentary vision of King Richard, his serene and handsome face at the precise moment before he breathed in the poison, floated before her and she thanked his patron saint and all the angels for their timely intercession.
**
Aware that the witch hunt still continued, she fled down through the shadows until she reached the court yard and then, heart in her mouth, still shocked by what she had seen, on across the yard to the stables.
A shadowy group of figures met her, Hubert striding forward to pull her briefly and hard into his arms. ‘Thank Benet you’re safe.’ His lips brushed her cheek. He stepped back. ‘The boys were already waiting. They’ve trussed the stable lad lightly with twine so he won’t be blamed. He’d helped Simon saddle the horses by the time we turned up. Gregory has clean robes to slip into so neither of us smell like vintners.’
‘Blessed be. But your face?’ She reached out but did not touch.
‘It’ll heal. Let’s go.’
‘I’ll tell you about Athanasius as we ride.’
‘First change into this domina.’ It was Brother Gregory. ‘I trust it’s not too big for you. I should gather it up and tie it with this belt.’ He produced one from his pack. ‘We were about to leave here ourselves before this fracas delayed us.’
By the one dim light in the bracket on the stable wall she saw him hold out a folded robe. It smelt fresh and clean. Hurriedly she slipped out of her own wine-sodden garments and pulled on the clean one in the darkness while the others urged the horses to file one by one through the unlocked postern. Wide enough to take a horse with its sides scraping both post beams, it let them out into the lane that wound round the outside of the palace. There was an east gate from out of the town and they took that.
The sentries were uninterested in an abbot, two monks, a nun with their small retinue of five acolytes. It was a witch they were hoping to capture and burn. They let them go.
**
In the hour before dawn the sky was already pale above the horizon. They brought their galloping horses to a halt at last under some trees. There was no sound of pursuit from Avignon.
The countryside was spread before them in lustrous detail. Silent fields of winter crops. Ramshackle cottages set amid trees. Open, uncultivated land where nothing moved. A new day began to disperse the passing night. After a brief halt to check their direction Hubert led them on at the same punishing speed as before. They had almost reached the frontier into the Kingdom of France when the drumming of hooves, travelling fast, brought them to a milling halt.
‘Sounds as if that might be somebody gaining on us.’ It was Brother Egbert.
‘We could have a race and hope these old saddle-horses can outpace those of the papal militia.’ Hubert looked round with interest for their reaction. ‘Or,’ he suggested, ‘we can stand and fight.’
‘You need to ask?’ Brother Gregory was already throwing one long leg over his horse and droppng lightly to the ground. Egbert followed suit.
‘You boys and Hildegard keep out of it,’ Hubert ordered, unsheathing his sword.
Hildegard noticed a glance flash between Edmund and Bertram.
‘Do as he says, boys. He knows what he’s doing.’
Edmund rode a little way away into some bushes beside the track and Bertram, with a backward glance at Hildegard, slouched after him. The three smaller boys had already dismounted and were scrambling around, as if looking for something to throw.
Suddenly a group of five horsemen burst through the trees and bore down towards them. They were not papal militia after all, as their blazons showed, but Fitzjohn’s men-at-arms.
Hubert had dismounted and placed himself in the middle of the track and, as the lead horse drove straight at him, he side-stepped at the last moment and unseated its rider with one blow, using his sword as a stave. The rider fell heavily to the ground with the wind knocked out of him. Hubert snatched his sword. ‘You won’t be needing this.’
The man gave a curse and began to crawl away, throwing down a knife as well while his horse galloped off into the trees.
The two monks were equally swift in defence.
One man-at-arms, seeing what had happened to his captain, dismounted, drawing his sword and advancing with a snarl on Brother Gregory. He must have thought the monk was unarmed and easy game because, with his travel cloak round his shoulders and his threadbare habit Gregory looked harmless enough. But it was a bad choice.
When the man was near enough Gregory simply drew a sword with blurred speed as if from nowhere. As Hildegard had suspected when she first saw him, he was a dazzling swordsman, with a supple and swift grace. If their lives had not been at stake he would have been a joy to behold. As it was, after a few leisurely feints he sent the other man’s sword spinning to the ground then forced him to his knees until he was begging for mercy.
Gregory picked up the man’s fallen sword. ‘Get back to Avignon! That’s the best thing for you, sad miscreant. Go on. Back!’ He advanced again and the man, all bravado gone, took to his heels without another glance.
Meanwhile Egbert, uttering a great roar of joy, had thrown himself bodily onto the back of one of the other riders and after being carried so far, wrestled him off his horse. Locked together, they fell to the ground with a crash. A swift fight ensued but one of Egbert’s fists soon knocked the man out and he fell back as if dead. The monk unfastened the man’s sword belt and took it to Hubert.
There were shouts from the other side of the grove as the fourth rider, still mounted, was being driven into a corner by Edmund and Bertram.
He was putting up quite a fight, his sword glinting as, slashing first on one side and then on the other, he tried to hack his way between them while the boys continued to dance and duck in an attempt to drag him off his horse. Hildegard saw the edge of his sword whirl within inches of Edmund’s head but, when she turned to Hubert to beg him to intervene, he was watching with unmoving attention. When the rider eventually forced an escape Hubert went over to the two esquires with a smile of satisfaction, saying, ‘Well done, lads.’