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The Dragon of Handale

St. Martin's Press

The blade plunged gently between the man's buttocks, then pushed its full length in one slow movement to the hilt. The action was perfectly controlled. The stiletto was withdrawn and the assassin wiped the blade on his surcoat. His accomplice, pressing the man's face into the bedclothes, felt the shudder run through him.

Replacing the stiletto in its sheath, the assassin picked up the leather document bag from beside the bed, fingered through it, then threw it to the floor, grunting, "Untie him. Let's get out."

* * *

They had picked up the courier's trail outside York after he left the archbishop's palace, taking over from the previous riders, who had followed him all the way from Westminster. For sure he became aware of them fairly soon. The flat November light could conceal no one. The roads were deserted, apart from a few peasants walking to the fields.

Autumn rains had churned the track through the forest to mud, and even the well-maintained king's highway made hellish going. Horses up to their bellies in mud. Slipping, stumbling, near enough breaking their legs to keep up. He was riding at a desperate speed. To make it worse, the rivers were in spate, and many fords were impassable. He gave them a run for their money all right, doubling back on himself, even turning off the road and striking out into dense woodland when the opportunity arose, and generally making life difficult for them. They cursed when they lost him somewhere near Knaresborough but rejoiced when they picked up his trail—more by chance than from their own skill, as they admitted—when he started out across the moors.

"He's going the wrong away about it if he thinks he's heading for Alnwick Castle," observed the elder of the two. His accent was northern but not Scottish. The man with him gave a growl of assent. Like a lymer, he hunted in silence. And he didn't care where the man was going. He wouldn't get there.

On the high moor, the trail led towards the coast, Whitby the only town of note unless he decided to strike north to the Tees. He was perfectly visible now, with nowhere to hide in the oppressive desolation. It was made worse by bellied clouds full of sleet. The load was scattered now and then, driving hard fragments of ice into their muffled faces. They allowed him to keep a mile or so ahead, as if running free. He was a dot in the landscape, the only moving thing. A speck of colour hardly brighter than the winter moors, comical really, riding hard down one side of the undulating moorland and equally hard up the other. All that effort.

They saw him disappear over a far ridge, and when they reached the top themselves, there he was again, still kicking up the mud, horse racing as gallantly as ever, with mane flying, across the wide dale below. But even the best courier has to stop sometime.

He chose an inn conspicuously in the middle of nowhere. Perhaps he thought nothing could happen to him with so few travellers on the road. A stranger highly visible in such a place. Anything that happened would be noticed at once, the perpetrators seen and remembered.

Maybe that's how his pursuers thought about it, as well. His disappearance would be an event in this godforsaken place. His lord and master would be informed as soon as ever. His missive stillborn, as it were. And maybe that's how they wanted it.

They closed in.

* * *

"Has a companion of ours just ridden up, master?" They knew he had.

The aleman gave them a sharp look. "He might have."

"Wanting to get his head down for an hour or so, I shouldn't wonder. We noticed his horse in your yard. He rides like the devil. We have a message for him, but it's taken us a hell of a ride to catch up with him." Squat, mongrel-featured, his local accent making him acceptable, and he gave what passed for a smile to add to it.

The alemaster nodded. "He's bested you, all right. He's taken t' chamber up aloft." He thumbed the air above his head. "Nobody else in this day. The weather. Who's travelling in this but for thieves and gentlemen such as yourselves?" He lifted an eyebrow. A big man. Veteran of the Scottish wars. A cleaver on the trestle in front of him. He could afford to say what he liked.

"We'll go and disturb him from his slumber, beggin' your leave." The man nudged his companion.

Unchecked, the two went out.

The alemaster was suddenly uneasy. He glanced at his companion, a Saxon blonde, breasts jutting out of her shift the way he liked, and frowned. "What do you say, Mary dove?"

"Oh, let them be. They're covered in muck. They must have been on the road for hours. It's nowt to do with us. They can only be heading for Whitby, and what's there?"

He shook his head. Priests and fish merchants came and went. His regulars were shepherds. When the fair was on at Corpus Christi, it was different.

"Go up and see if you can hear owt."

Flouncing, but wary of disobeying in case he decided he could do without her, she climbed the wooden stairs and hovered outside the door. Came only the murmur of men's voices from within. Then a little silence. An exclamation following. Nothing much. When she heard footsteps crossing the floor, she hurriedly slipped back down the stairs, and the two men only caught up with her when she was at the bottom.

The shorter of the two gave her a lingering leer and his glance came to rest on her breasts with such intensity, it seemed he would never look away. "Time for a quick one, mistress?" he asked, his eyes never lifting. He moved closer. She could smell his breath.

"What's your will, master?"

He squeezed one of the swollen globes and sighed, then pressed himself against her, so she could feel the doorframe digging into her back and the links of his chain-mail hauberk crushing her breasts.

"You'd best ask"—she nodded towards the aleman—"and settle it with him."

He stepped back. "We'll eat first. Our friend does not want to be disturbed until morning. He gives you this." He held up a silver coin. "Later," he told her as she reached for it. "Don't be greedy."

Affronted by the man, she turned to the alemaster, but he pretended not to have heard and instead continued to pour the two guests long stoups of ale from a flagon, then chivvied her into going out back to bring bread and pottage for them.

* * *

When they left, the alemaster lifted Mary's skirt and gave a groan as he entered her and began to pound her against the counter. When he finished, he wiped himself on a cloth and said, "I thought those bastards would never leave. I didn't like them."

"They went back the way they came," she pointed out. "It must have been an important message to bring them all this way out." She rearranged her kirtle.

A few customers came in. The day progressed. The night. Morning came.

There was no sound from the guest chamber, and Mary went to stand outside the door to listen to the silence. When it continued and curiosity got the better of her, she pushed open the door and poked her head round.

Slanted light across a bed from between half-closed shutters. Three cloak hooks on the wall. His cloak where he had flung it. Stale straw underfoot. And the guest still in bed.

A cover was pulled up to his shoulders and he lay facedown, one arm trailing to the floor.

Above the ale room's clatter and stink, the air was fetid with the stench of butcher's blood.

She had the silver coin safe in the cleft between her breasts. The alemaster had laughed at her. "Think it's safe there, doxy?" He had proved it wasn't but, later, had given it back with interest.

Nothing to lose, she went over to the bed. "Master, it's morning now. He'll be docking another day's silver for your extra use of his chamber if you don't stir yourself."

The man did not move. Neither was there the rise and fall of breath of someone asleep. When she put out a hand to shake him, she felt the chill of dead flesh under her fingers. She screamed, long and loud.

When she found herself somehow at the bottom of the stairs, the aleman gawped. "What's up, dove? Your face is as white as a nun's thighs."

Hildegard pushed open the door into the prioress's cell.

"Ah, there you are." The prioress of Swyne lifted her head from her missal.

Her tone of voice suggested that she had seen Hildegard only moments before. In fact, Hildegard had trudged back to the priory the previous night after more than a year's absence. She stepped inside the stone chamber and was met by the usual blast of cold air that came funnelling through a small unglazed aperture next to the altar.

"Safely back from Santiago de Compostela," the prioress commented. "So how was it?"

As no invitation to be seated was made and, indeed, the chamber contained only one small bench, where a cat resided, Hildegard remained standing, as did the prioress.

"The pilgrimage was not without its adventures," Hildegard began. "As you know, the duke of Lancaster, our ambitious John of Gaunt, had himself crowned king of Castile in the cathedral at Compostela. His militia was much in evidence in the surrounding countryside."

"I understand his Portuguese ally, King Joao, has proved more duplicitous than even Duke John could anticipate?"

"Be it so, I believe the duke will find a way to turn the situation to his advantage. He has already shown he means business by having a would-be assassin burned alive in the marketplace at Ourense."

The prioress raised her eyebrows. "Heaven forfend such barbaric practices do not take hold in the realm of England."

"I can hardly see King Richard wishing to burn anyone alive. Some say he is too lenient with his enemies."

The prioress nodded. "I believe it. And he is reaping the harvest of his softness already. But what about Compostela itself?"

"Bursting at the seams with pilgrims from all over Europe. A most feisty bunch. The cathedral custodians are forced to swing a great censer of incense above the nave to keep down the stink of unwashed bodies. Of course," she added generously, "most of them have walked from as far a field as Flanders, an immense distance. We English only had to walk the eighty miles or so from Coruna, and we had ample opportunity to wash. In fact, the friars at the refuges on the way make a point of bathing the feet of pilgrims in thyme soaked in sweet springwater as they arrive."

"No doubt for their own comfort," the prioress sniffed. "And you yourself?" She gave Hildegard a piercing glance.

"I—" Uncharacteristically, Hildegard faltered.

"Travelling as Mistress York without the protection of your Cistercian habit must have been an interesting experience?"

"It was, but I was fortunate enough to meet a helpful group of pilgrims on board the ship from Bordeaux and in particular a Bristol merchant who took everybody under his wing and made sure none of us was shortchanged."

"A widower?"

"As it happens. His pilgrimage was in order to light a candle for his wife at the shrine of Saint James."

The prioress gave her another piercing glance. "You would both have something in common, then?"

Hildegard lowered her head.

"And were you invited to become this merchant's wife?"

"I believe the idea crossed his mind."

"And you were tempted?"

Her head shot up. "Hardly so. Nor do I wish to be anybody's wife."

"After that no-good fellow you were involved with in London, I'm not surprised."

Hildegard gave the prioress a stare of such coldness even she faltered and added hurriedly, "I was led to believe that Rivera was a spy for Bolingbroke and therefore an enemy of our anointed king?"

"He saw his error."

"So, after Brother Rivera, as I said—"

"Nothing more would have been possible at that time," Hildegard said hoarsely. "Not between us. I was always aware of that. There was too much against us and—" She broke off, scarcely able to speak for the lump in her throat. At least his name was out in the open, and with the prioress observing her so closely, she felt little need to add anything else.

"If you feel like that," the prioress observed more softly after a considering pause, "you may as well rejoin the Order." She gave Hildegard a good long look. It was not without kindness. "But you're still undecided?"

She nodded, but before she could excuse her reluctance to make a decision, the prioress smiled. "I have an idea, Hildegard. If you're doubtful about us here at Swyne, and still see yourself as a lost soul—which the Church undoubtedly does—then why not stay as a guest at another priory? See things from another side?"

"How do you mean?"

"Stay at a different monastic house belonging to another Order, without the obligation of donning a habit."

"Somewhere like Watton?"

The prioress laughed. "With all the overprivileged ladies and their little dogs? Hardly! I can't see that appealing to you. I'll ask my brother about a congenial place in the north of the county." The brother she referred to was Alexander Neville, archbishop of York. The previous year, Hildegard had been his eyes and ears during the time of the Westminster Parliament. He fell foul of the king's enemies and his situation had become precarious.

"Is he back at his palace at York?" she asked now.

"He is." The prioress looked disconcerted for a moment but shrugged the matter aside. "He's likely to know somewhere that would suit you. This East Riding air is too mild for you at present."

Hildegard was already shuddering with cold in the chill cell.

The prioress, as ever, seemed oblivious to it. "I'm thinking of somewhere near Northumberland's territory." She smiled. "Let me think on it."

Suspecting her of an ulterior motive with her reference to the earl of Northumberland, whom some were calling the "king of the north," Hildegard was unsurprised when the prioress exclaimed, "I know just the place for you! Small, remote, bracing—and Benedictine. That should help you achieve clarity. It's called Handale Priory. Go there."

"Very well." Wondering what she would find to do in such a place except pray for Rivera's soul and her own, she went out into the cloister as soon as she was dismissed. The prioress, however, called her back.

"It may be as dull as you obviously imagine, but I've heard an interesting report that the serpent has been seen again."

"Serpent?"

"Oh, some faradiddle about a fire-breathing monster, a kind of dragon, they say. Feeds on virgins. Superstitious nonsense, of course, but it should be enough to take your mind off things. Oh, by the way," she added, "I permit you to take an extra cloak. You'll need it up there."

It was not in the prioress's power to permit or forbid anything at present, as Hildegard had not yet renewed her vows, but she merely nodded her head in thanks and left.

* * *

With her bag as yet unpacked after the long pilgrimage back across the sea from northern Spain, Hildegard had little to do but have her boots repaired and a horse readied for her onwards journey to Handale.

Attired in the garments of a townswoman, she felt out of place at Swyne among the familiar white-robed sisters who had been her companions in the past and she was now glad to have an excuse to leave. To their questions, she had no answers. She did not know whether she would rejoin the Order, having left it after discovering that her husband, believed dead, was alive. Much else had happened to send her on the long miles to Compostela, there to light candles for Rivera, the man for whom she would willingly have relinquished her soul into the flames of hell if it would have brought him back to life.

Now she knew that if the desire to achieve certainty about rejoining the Cistercians had been her aim, then it had failed. There was something to be said for living outside the Order as an ordinary woman in the thick of everyday events. Much to be said, also, for renewing her vows and returning to life in a nunnery, where she might do some good.

Maybe Handale Priory and its nuns would provide an answer to her dilemma.

She wondered if Abbot Hubert de Courcy shared the Church's view that she was a soul lost to God's grace.

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Excerpted from The Dragon of Handale by Cassandra Clark. Copyright © 2015 Cassandra Clark. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
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