The Rose of the World h-13 Read online

  The Rose of the World

  ( Hawkenlye - 13 )

  Alys Clare

  Alys Clare

  The Rose of the World

  Prologue

  Early autumn 1210

  T hewoman stood by the tiny window, staring out at the mountains. There was no snow yet on their distant, desolate peaks, but soon there would be. People who knew this place better than she did were already muttering ominously about signs and portents, predicting that a savage, bitter winter was on its way.

  She sighed. As if there was not sufficient to worry about already, without the hardships, perils and discomforts of snow that endured for months…

  Enough, she told herself firmly. She knew she must not allow herself the luxury of a good moan, even in the privacy of her thoughts. They all had to keep cheerful, for in that way they encouraged one another and life did not seem too bad. Their main bulwark was, of course, their faith. It was the reason why they were all there together. The reason for everything that had happened.

  Briefly, the woman closed her eyes, detaching from the sparsely-furnished, chilly little room. Very soon her mind soared, up and away, and a slow smile spread over her thin face. It was so easy to find that bliss; to enter in spirit that wonderful realm that was the goal of them all. If she was very lucky — and just occasionally she was — it seemed to her that she could almost catch the vaguest, mistiest glimpse of the heavenly home. More importantly — oh, far more importantly! — once she thought she had heard… Her physical body forgotten, she gave herself up to the joy that never failed.

  Some time later, sounds from the narrow alley below the window brought the woman back to herself. Darkness had fallen. The sounds had been made by her neighbour, closing, locking and barring his door for the night. She wondered if she had locked her own door, and, leaving the room, she went down the steep wooden stairs to check. Yes; all was well. It was not her companions that she feared — of course it wasn’t, for those who had endured so much together could never be a threat to one another — but there were other, far greater dangers out there.

  They were not yet nearby, or so all those brave spies reported. But one day they would come; of that there was no doubt. If luck were with the community, the painstaking net of eyes and ears that they had created around them would function as it should and those that came hunting would find nothing but empty houses. If luck had turned her back, then…

  No. She must not think about that.

  It was time for bed. She climbed back up the stairs, a hand in the small of her back. Her bones ached at the end of a long day, and already she was anticipating the pleasure of lying down on the hard, straw-stuffed mattress that barely covered her small bed. Compared with what she had once known, it offered sparse comfort, for in her previous life she had lived in luxury. She had been married to a knight who had not been a poor man, but her wealth had been her own; her family name had been — still was — an important one in the region. Twenty years ago her husband had died, and she had given up all that she had, all that she possessed, running joyfully to embrace the life she had dreamed of.

  She stood in her small room, unpinning her veil and removing the close-fitting coif she wore beneath it. She had no looking glass in which to peer at her image, but she was sure her once-dark hair must surely be streaked with silver. The shed hairs she found on her pillow and on her garments told her so. She had been a wife; she had borne a son, and he, she knew, had a son. Perhaps more children had come along by now. She did not know, for news was a long time reaching the lonely little village hidden away on the knees of the mountains. A grandmother, she reflected. It would have been good to have held her son’s child in her arms.

  She turned her mind from the thought. She loosened the laces of her black gown and slipped it off, smoothing down the chemise she wore beneath and feeling her bones protruding through her flesh. She was thin: from grief, from hardship, from fasting. It was difficult to recall the woman she once had been, with the curvaceous hips and the full, generous breasts enhanced by the cut of the gorgeous gowns in colours chosen always to flatter, to bring out the green in her eyes. She had been attractive, beautiful, even, if the men who had danced attendance on her were to be believed. She shook her head, smiling, dismissing a past she neither regretted nor wanted back. It was two decades since she had embraced a man or a boy; were a handsome, naked stranger to appear magically in her bed, she wondered if she would even remember what to do.

  She lay down, closed her eyes and made herself relax, hoping to return to the sacred realm she had visited in her thoughts before she prepared for bed. But she could not find it now; other images were intruding, horrible images whose brutality did not lessen even though she had seen them in her mind a hundred times. It was more than a year now since that unspeakable day. She wondered, as she lay in the darkness and endured her memories, how long it would be before the agony faded. If it ever did. In addition to her almost physical reaction to what she had seen, there was also guilt because she had survived where so many had not. Thanks to the spy network, some of them had suspected what was going to happen and had not been there on the Magdalene’s feast day. She had been one of them, forewarned and far away when the blow fell. She had tried to make more of her people come away with her, but they had refused to see the danger until it was too late. What a price they had paid. Death by the sword, death by beating, death by burning. Death.

  She thought about death. It called to her in sweet, gentle tones, and she wanted very much to answer. Not yet; it was not her time, and such things were not for her to decide.

  As if there had been an obligation to recall yet again the awful day when the world had changed, now that she had done so it was easy to let her mind drift. Perhaps it was a reward for enduring her memories and her guilt without protest, for now the horrors had faded away and the blessed realm seemed very close. She gave a deep sigh and gave herself up to the images, dimly making out the angels in their bliss, a vision shot with gold and rose-pink like the sunset. Just for the blink of an eye, she thought she heard the precious, holy sounds…

  The vision had gone. Once more she lay alone in a cold, stone-walled room, lit only by the distant stars. She strove as hard as she could to recall those sounds, but it was no good: you had to hear them even as they issued out of the silence, for they would not remain in the mind once they had ceased.

  But there used to be a way, the woman reflected. Before the threat had come, there had been books. Not many, for they were priceless and the knowledge they contained was reserved for those who had proved themselves deserving. But the precious books were all far beyond her reach, some lost forever in the flames, some hidden away so deep that they would never see the light of day again.

  She lay in silent contemplation for some time. A memory was stirring, and patiently she waited until it had formed.

  At long last she turned on her side and, pulling the thin blanket closer around her, prepared for sleep. She knew what she had to do. Tomorrow she would work out how to get a message out of that besieged land.

  ONE

  Abbess Caliste of Hawkenlye Abbey paced to and fro across her room behind a firmly-closed door, doing her utmost to control her fury. Her heart was hammering so hard that she felt light-headed, and her fists were clenched so fiercely that her fingernails had cut into her palms.

  How dare they! she thought, clamping her lips together to prevent the anguished cry roaring out of her. As if the abbey and the people we serve were not suffering enough already!

  She indulged her anger for a while longer. Then she drew a couple of deep breaths, walked slowly around behind the wide table where she worked and sat down in the throne-like chair. She drew a piece of scrap p
archment towards her and dipped her quill into the ink horn. Then she began to write down the details of the information that had just been issued to her.

  Even as she wrote the terrible words, part of her mind was busy trying to work out what she was going to do…

  It was the eleventh year of King John’s reign and the second of the interdict imposed on England by Pope Innocent because of the king’s refusal to accept Innocent’s choice, Stephen Langton, as archbishop of Canterbury. Since then, church services had been suspended. Some of the clergy, braver — or, perhaps, like the Cistercians, more arrogant — than their fellow churchmen, had defied the interdict and were continuing their habitual daily rounds. The majority were not, and most of the bishops of England had fled to France. The interdict had not made the king submit to the pope and, a year ago, King John had been excommunicated. Now, if any good Christian helped or supported the king, that man stood in peril of losing his immortal soul.

  Not that any of the king’s subjects much wanted to help him. His record was not impressive. He had lost most of England’s continental possessions, he had failed in his duel with the pope, and the country was poorly governed. Failure, however, cost as much — or more — than success, for taxes were extortionate already and constantly there were further demands. In addition, John was cruel, he had a reputation for avarice and everyone knew he was no true lover of God. Learned as he was in theology — hadn’t he after all spent the formative years of his life with the monks at Fontevrault? — he only studied the great texts of the church so that he could argue points of doctrine with the clergy. Or so people said.

  If the pope had hoped that expelling King John from the faith would encourage those with a grievance against him to rise up in rebellion, he was disappointed. The barons had their own reasons for muttering against the king, and these had little to do with the church. As for the mass of the population, they were far from falling into fear and despair at being deprived of the comfort of their church, as the pope had no doubt expected they would. In fact, to the dismay of the clergy, the people of England gave every impression of managing perfectly well. The clergy were beginning to fear that religion would lose its grip, and, indeed, many people were heard grumbling that they didn’t see why they should go on having to pay tithes to a church that did absolutely nothing for them.

  Nobody could bring their child to be christened, nobody could marry his or her sweetheart, nobody could bring their dead for Christian burial. Far from appearing horrified, the population just shrugged their shoulders and got on with their lives. It was said that people performed secret baptisms according to the old rights, buried their dead in ditches and under hedgerows, and — much as they had always done and always would — bedded each other regardless.

  King John’s response to the pope’s drastic move was, initially, incandescent rage. Those who witnessed it said the king almost went mad, blaspheming against the pope and swearing by God’s teeth to banish every last churchman from the realm. If any spy sent to England by the pope were to be discovered, the king would personally tear out the man’s eyes, split his nose and pack him off back to Rome as a warning to the rest.

  Once he was over his fury, however, John turned the pope’s action against him to his own advantage. If the clergy were going to obey their master and cease to do their work, then John would seize their property. There was, after all, little point in a monastery or an abbey if those within were not permitted to support and succour the people. John’s officials were dispatched all over England to act in his name, and sheriffs were appointed to administer the properties and, of course, to ensure that the revenues made their way to the king. Those in power in the church were summarily deposed, permitted to return to their posts only if they paid for it; the going rate for a prior was sixty marks.

  The king was making a fortune…

  Now, a year after the excommunication, King John’s men had come to Hawkenlye Abbey. Abbess Caliste reflected that, had the abbey not been one of the favourite places of the king’s late mother, Queen Eleanor, they’d have come a lot sooner. In the two and a half years since the interdict, Hawkenlye had been kept under observation — a very unsubtle observation at that — and Caliste had been forced to obey the instruction to close up the church and discontinue all services. Nothing specific had been said regarding the shelter down in the Vale, where Hawkenlye’s monks and lay brothers administered the holy water from the miracle spring and looked after visiting pilgrims. Abbess Caliste, unshakeable in her conviction that in a time of such hardship people needed the comforts offered in the Vale even more urgently, had taken the decision that the brethren would continue as normal.

  They were doing their best. Like the rest of the abbey, they were on short rations, for the new regulations meant that everything from corn to clothing had been seized and locked away in the king’s name, doled out with a mean hand at intervals that came far too infrequently. The brethren had tightened their belts and were managing to live on virtually nothing, for this was the only way they could keep food back to give to those who crawled to them on the brink of starvation.

  Caliste’s disturbing thoughts got the better of her and, putting down her quill, she pictured Brother Saul. He was getting old now, but he still worked as hard as he had always done. He would, Caliste knew, be far too modest to realize it, but the other monks saw him as their unofficial leader, a link to the days when Abbess Helewise had sat in the chair now occupied by Caliste. Brother Saul had been one of Hawkenlye’s rocks back then, and he still was.

  Caliste’s stomach gave a sudden growl. She was hungry, so hungry…

  Resolutely, she put aside her poignant thoughts on old Saul and her own discomfort. Dipping her quill in the ink, she picked up the thread of what she had been writing.

  The king’s agents had just left the abbey. Their leader had issued his orders to her as she stood at the gates looking up at them. Since the nuns and monks of Hawkenlye were not called upon to do any work, he’d said, they could not rely on the king’s generosity to maintain them in idleness.

  The abbey’s income was considerable, since Hawkenlye owned large tracts of good land as far afield as the north side of the Weald and the marshlands to the south east. Most importantly, it also had plenty of grazing land suitable for sheep. Sheep provided so much: parchment from their skins, cheese from their milk and, of course, their wool. English wool was in great demand, and Hawkenlye was earning its fair share of the new wealth. Under the current conditions, this wealth now belonged to the king. As his agents had just told the abbess, she was now commanded to record every penny that came in and went out — as if she had not been doing so already! — and keep her accounts ready for inspection at any time. A small amount — of our own money! she thought, fuming — would be paid out to the abbey each month.

  Standing there, refusing to allow those haughty men on their fine horses to intimidate her, Caliste had raised her chin, looked their leader firmly in the eye and said, ‘How, pray, am I to feed my nuns, my monks and those who come to us for help?’

  The man had glared at her, and then his face had twisted into an unpleasant sneer. ‘Your church is closed, Abbess Caliste,’ he said. ‘Nobody will come here any more. As to you and your community…’ He had looked round at the assembled monks and nuns, all of them thin, clad in broken sandals and patched, threadbare habits, and shivering in the chilly October air.

  Leaving his sentence unfinished, he had turned back to Caliste and shrugged. Then he and his men had ridden away.

  She looked down at her notes, trying yet again to reconcile the tiny allowance with the minimum she knew she needed to keep the abbey alive. It could not be done. Resisting the overriding urge to drop her head on her hands and howl — a waste of time that would be — she closed her eyes, folded her hands together and forced her weary, desperate mind to think.

  So many people depended on her, one way or another. She had to find a way to help them. She sat up straight, squared her shoulders and
went back to her calculations.

  The House in the Woods had a new name: it was officially called Hawkenlye Manor. Few people referred to it in that way. The country people had long memories, and they did not like change. The House in the Woods had been good enough for their parents and their grandparents — probably their great-grandparents too — so why go altering it?

  On that late October day, Josse was returning home after a long ride. His old horse Horace had finally died, at an age so advanced that Josse could no longer calculate it, and now he rode a lighter horse that his young son Geoffroi had insisted be called Alfred. Josse and his family had known Alfred from when he was newborn, for he was descended from a golden mare called Honey who had once belonged to Geoffroi’s mother, Joanna. Alfred had inherited his grand-dam’s golden coat, but his dark mane and the luxuriously long tail were all his own.

  As was his intractable temperament; Josse had been riding him for two years now, but his manners still left quite a lot to be desired. Today’s excursion had been to remind Alfred who was in control, and Josse was feeling sore and tired. He was also feeling maudlin, for almost without his volition he had found himself riding past the track in the forest that led off to the hut where Joanna had lived.

  She had been gone for more than ten years now, but he still missed her. She was the mother of his two children, Meggie and Geoffroi, and also of his adopted son, Ninian. Her death — if, indeed, she really was dead — had left a hole in his life that had never been filled. That line of thought, too, made him sad.

  Helewise had come to live at the House in the Woods. After waiting for her for so many years, finally she was there, under his very roof. She had arrived back in June — Good Lord, he thought, was it only four months ago? — and to begin with he had been so overjoyed that he had not noticed that all was not as he had hoped. She might have left the abbey, renounced her vows and become an ordinary woman, but the problem was — or so he saw it — that in her heart she was still a nun.