The Dragon of Handale (38 page)

Outside, the full moon glittered coldly over the priory, its buildings, its garth.

Hildegard held her breath.

Without pausing, the shape began to ascend the stairs. Hildegard watched with mounting alarm. Who was it? Should she follow in case the prioress did anything foolish? Whoever this was would certainly be armed with a weapon of some sort. Her thoughts flew to the missing claw chisel.

Before she had chance to set one foot in front of the other, there was an exclamation from the floor above. Suddenly, a light blazed at the top of the stairs.

“Who are you?” It was the prioress. She sounded unafraid. “Remove your hood at once!”

There was a scuffle and a gasp, then a heavy crunch, as if someone had fallen heavily against the wooden stair rail.

“What are you doing here, you old bitch?” It was a voice Hildegard recognised, confirmed by the prioress.

“Desiderata! What are you doing here?”

“What do you think I’m doing? I’m here to find out what that spying York woman thinks she’s found. I’ll destroy it; then I’ll destroy her!”

“I should have guessed it! You haven’t changed. You murderous whore. It was you killed him, wasn’t it?”

“So what, lady? The world’s well rid of men like him. It was the easiest thing to slip his medecing into the holy wine. He was a no-good whore/son, preening himself among us nuns, listening to our confessions with that false, sad smile. He was like all the rest of them. A strutting cock of the walk. He deserved to die!”

“You vindictive little madam! I took you in because I believed you deserved a second chance.”

“More fool you, my lady.” Desiderata gave a cackling laugh. “And now you’re at my mercy! You stupid, gullible old woman! Did you really think I was sorry for my righteous culling of sinners? Someone has to do it. I am the avenging angel, sent by the Lord to cleanse the foul sin of venery from this stinking hell pit. You should thank me for my mercy in sending the fouldoers to their doom. But my work isn’t finished yet. You yourself are the fount of iniquity, and for once your bodyguard is absent. That cellaress, Josiana! She can’t protect you now! And when she shows her worthless face again, I’ll do for her what I’m going to do for you!”

Hildegard was already halfway up the stairs when she heard Desiderata give that uncanny cackling laugh again. There was a flash of light as something was ignited. She heard Basilda cry out. Then there was a roaring, louder than the gale outside, a weird and frightening sound. This time, it was not the dragon of Handale.

It was the roar of flames.

A bright glow came from inside the chamber. Basilda screamed, not in fear, but with rage. Desiderata’s laughter rang out. By the time Hildegard reached the top, the place was turning into an inferno.

Basilda was on her hands and knees, heading through the smoke towards the door.

Desiderata, rushing madly from one side of the chamber to the other with a burning brand, kept thrusting it into the wattles between the timbers. Soon the timbers themselves were alight. Basilda, coughing, was crawling inch by inch towards the door.

Hildegard reached out to help her, but Desiderata caught sight of her through the smoke and let loose an insane shriek.

“You. Mistress York? I’ve been following you! I should have done for you in the woods when you were whoring with those masons. But it’s your turn now, you fornicating bitch from hell!”

By now, Desiderata’s clothes were on fire. She seemed not to notice. Instead, she stumbled across the floor towards Hildegard, the brand raised aloft. Hildegard hesitated. With the apparent intention of bringing the burning brand down across the prioress’s back, Desiderata lunged.

In the trick of time, Basilda reached the lip of the stair and threw herself over the edge and began to slither down.

A sound came from below. Then a figure raced up the stairs two at a time, and as Hildegard tried to break the slow tumbling of the prioress, this second figure held out its arms and together the two of them struggled with the great weight bearing down upon them in an attempt to break its headlong fall.

Basilda’s robes were alight.

Through the smoke, Hildegard recognised Josiana. Her large hands smothered the flames. She was shouting to Basilda to get out of the burning house, but the prioress was wedged halfway down the narrow stairs, while behind her the inferno took hold with a furious and deadly certainty. The thatch was by now a mass of flames.

Coughing and spluttering, the two women managed to drag the prioress down the stairs. They could still hear Desiderata’s insane laughter above them, interspersed with a list of names.

Hildegard started back up the stairs. Desiderata stood at the top. Her hair was alight. Her black robes were a mass of flames. She did not attempt to descend, just stood there, burning, declaiming with a rapt expression the list of names as the flames devoured her.

As she slithered to the bottom of the stairs, Basilda panted, ‘That’s the litany of souls she has cast into hell! God bless them all!”

Beaten back by the inferno, Hildegard ran back down the stairs to where Josiana was beating out the last of the flames from their garments.

Basilda was on her knees, shouting, “Murderous, insane child of God. My own fault. Mea culpa! Mea culpa! I should never have taken her in. God forgive me.” She broke off in a fit of coughing.

“Come outside into the fresh air,” Josiana barked. “Come on now, move!”

“I’m doing my best. Don’t bully me, Josiana.” The prioress crawled down the last few steps and the cellaress hauled her with difficulty to her feet.

“What is that in your hand, Basilda?”

For the first time, Hildegard noticed that the prioress was clutching a small object. It was her son’s leather-bound missal, the one she had seen lying on his desk, where he had last used it. Basilda held it close to her heart and said nothing as she allowed the two women to help her outside.

Once far enough away, they turned to look back at the burning house. It shone brighter than the moon. They saw the roof cave in with a huge roar and from the heart of the conflagration they could hear the exultant screams of the nun in her death throes.

It was not over. The danger of fire increased as gusts of wind carried the raging flames across the priory roots, settling them on thatch and tiles indiscriminately. The thatch of the
dortoir
caught fire. For a moment, there was a lull. It was damp from the snows, but then billows of smoke rose up. Hildegard started to run towards the building as flames began to shoot upwards.

“Get out, everyone! Get out!” she shouted.

Faces appeared at the windows as she banged on the door to rouse them. Face black with smoke, she was a warning of what had happened. The garth was illuminated by the lurid light from the priest’s house. By now, the nuns were beginning to understand. One by one, they came tumbling out of their cells and down the stairs into the garth.

“Free the penitents!” shouted Hildegard, remembering how they were locked in their cells. Everything was confusion. Some nuns tried to go back up stairs to the upper floor to where the penitents were trapped. Others were still running down in bewilderment. Shouting to them to release the penitents, Hildegard forced her way inside. Mariana was standing at the top of the stairs.

“Open the doors. Let them get out. The roof’s on fire!” Hildegard shouted to her.

Quickly, the nun ran two at a time to the second floor. When Hildegard reached the top soon after, she could hear her shouting at the penitents to get out. She was heaving the wooden beams off the doors and dragging the occupants out into the corridor. Flames were already beginning to sputter along the ceiling. She worked her way rapidly towards the far end of the corridor. Hildegard screamed at her to get outside. Saw her hesitate. Then watched as she went on to open another door.

Driven by a need to rescue the woman from her own foolhardiness, Hildegard ran along the corridor, colliding with the penitents, who were now streaming down the corridor. She managed to grab Mariana by the sleeve. “Enough, now. Come away!”

“One more,” she replied in a hoarse, smoke-dried voice. She wrenched the bar away to release the last of the imprisoned nuns; then together, all three fled down the corridor, hands touching both sides to guide them through the thickening smoke towards the stairs.

Face blackened, reeking of charred wood and straw, coughing now and then, but otherwise alive, Basilda had collapsed on the ground in the garth. She raised a hand towards Hildegard. “You saved my life, mistress. I hope you think it worth it.”

Still her usual self after all that, thought Hildegard, going over to her.

Basilda added, “We certainly flushed out the rat we were after. I should never have given her a second chance. It went against my nature to do so. But compassion won. I suppose you know her story?”

Hildegard admitted that she had glimpsed something of the details in the priory rolls but had not been able to believe it was the same woman.

“That was only the half of it. She was a murderess from childhood, her first victims her own baby brother and younger sister. The boy was found headfirst in a water butt. She locked the latter in the pigpen with a farrow known for its ill temper. Cleverly done. Children are always being killed in such a ways.” Basilda drew a rattling breath and Josiana slapped her on the back until she got her breath back.

“No one thought to doubt they were accidents,” the prioress continued. “She must have become mad with the knowledge that she held the power of death in her hands. She pushed another child into a cooking fire, another into a river. I know this because she confessed to my son and he came to me in great distress, wondering what to do. Josiana here kept an eye on her as best she could.”

“I was her jailer. I kept her close to us with duties that made her feel trusted. I bear as much blame as you, Basilda. It’s not all yours to shoulder alone. We were fools.”

“But knowing all that, how did she escape the law? Why was she brought here?” Hildegard asked in astonishment.

“She had a wealthy and doting father. He paid for her to be hidden, first at Rosedale, and when they found her too much, then here at Handale. He believed she could do no wrong.” Basilda rubbed the back of one smoke-blackened hand across her face. “She was his daughter and he loved her despite everything. She had a way of beguiling men. She used her power to lure them to sin and then she felt justified in killing them because, in her insane view, they proved themselves servants of the devil. My poor son.” Basilda blinked. “Despite what he knew about her, he fell for that beguiling smile. He thought he could help her.”

“Don’t, Basilda.” Josiana rested a hand on her shoulder.

The cellaress took up the story. “Her father believed the devils could be knocked out of her by prayer. She’d be better here rather than on the gibbet she deserved, with the flames of hell to follow. He believed she was not at fault for the murder that brought her to the notice of the law. She told him she’d been raped by the young man she later stabbed and mutilated. It was not true, of course. The youth’s only sin was to fall in love with a pretty face. Her mind was so twisted by her consciousness of her own guilty desires, she turned her hatred on him. Blaming men when they succumbed to her witchcraft and believing it her duty to rid the world of them—revenge of a devilish kind.”

“It’s God’s work, she told me when that apprentice Giles was found. I prayed she had had nothing to do with it,” Basilda said.

Hildegard nodded. “She used a claw chisel to attack him, one she stole from the masons’ lodge. I believed she used it to attack the miller’s deerhound, as well. And then she worked on its body with a knife.” Hildegard recalled the conversation in the cloisters on the subject of whether animals had souls.

“Go and make sure everyone got out in time, Josiana.” Basilda gestured towards the burning building.

The thatched roof of the dortoir was well ablaze. Nuns stood around in the garth and watched it burn with dazed expressions. The wind seemed to lift the flames and deposit them with a loud whoosh, as if from a giant hand, onto different parts of the brittle straw.

“This is the hand of God.” Basilda surveyed the destruction of her priory with suppressed rage. She had not given up on it. Soon she was ordering the nuns to bring water from the overflowing butts to douse the flames. Conversi scrambled to fetch ladders so they could pour water on the more distant buildings on the opposite side of the garth, which so far had escaped the flames. Constructed of stone and slate, they were less vulnerable than the buildings in the outer garth made of wattle, daub, and thatch. Belatedly, the sacristan went to the tower and swung the bell in a racketing alarm.

Everyone was out now: the bailiff and his two men; Master Schockwynde in a long nightgown; the coroner, shrugging on a fur-lined cloak over his long undershirt; the masons, rubbing their eyes in the smoke and gazing with dismay at the destruction.

“Everyone accounted for?” It was a miracle no one had been injured. Hildegard could see no one missing, except, of course, for Fulke, who would be in some safe house by now.

Basilda’s hand was still closed round her son’s missal. Something pathetic in her smoke-smeared face touched Hildegard’s heart for a moment before she turned away, saying, “Let’s get those who need it to the infirmary. and call your herberer with salve for burns.”

“No need, mistress. She’s already approaching.”

Indeed, the old herberer, spry and upright, was marching across the garth with a large leather scrip over her shoulder, which Hildegard guessed would contain all that was needed to treat the wounded. She went over to see what she could do to help.

C
HAPTER
35

It was much later, when the bell began to toll for the night office, that someone exclaimed, “Still only matins! It seems as if a full twenty-four hours have gone by. What a time!”

Fortunately, there had been few injuries. Smoke was the main problem, and everyone was instructed to clear their lungs for themselves. With the wind beginning to drop, voices had become lowered, as well.