Authors: C B Hanley
He looked up, squinting, and realised that there were men right up at the top, balancing precariously on scaffolding. At floor level there were ropes and pulleys, and as he watched, a large carved piece of stone was hauled up. He marvelled at the way the men above seemed unconcerned at being so high. He was sure he could never manage it.
‘It must be a very difficult task to make sure all the pieces go in the right places properly.’
William nodded, animated as he considered the huge building. ‘Yes. But it is to the glory of the Lord, and of the Blessed Hugh, the old bishop who will be a saint before too long if miracles at his tomb continue. I have lived in the shadow of this building since the day I was born, and it comforts me to know that it will soon be whole again. We have one of the best master masons in the country in charge of the building works. There he is over there, but before you meet him I should tell you that I am almost sure that he is a French spy.’
Edwin wasn’t sure he’d heard properly. ‘What did you say?’
‘I said I am sure he is a French spy.’
Edwin spoke with great care. ‘And why do you say that?’
William looked uncomfortable. ‘Well … he is a foreigner. At least, he is not from around here, and I did hear him say once that before he came to Lincoln, he worked on a cathedral in France.’ He folded his arms and looked satisfied.
Edwin thought that he probably needed a bit more information than that before he could condemn a man as a spy. But here was his first real piece of information. ‘Do you have any evidence that he’s been spying? Has anyone seen him trying to communicate with the French?’
William unfolded his arms and stroked his beard. ‘Not as such, no. But he is always roving about here and there, and he has a good many men working for him who are not local, either. And … well, he has an air of suspicion about him. Look.’
Edwin followed the direction of the pointing finger and saw two men deep in conversation: one tall and gaunt-looking, the other small with hunched shoulders. ‘Which?’
‘The tall one. You see what I mean?’
Edwin conceded to himself that William did have a point – if the man had set out to look as suspicious as possible then he’d done a fine job, what with the skeletal frame and the black tunic and cloak.
William pulled his arm. ‘Come, let us greet him, and you can talk to him and see what you think. I shall engage him in conversation on normal matters, to try and draw him in, and you can see what you can discover.’
As they drew near, Edwin could hear the master mason speaking.
‘… and he didn’t regain his wits at all?’
The other shook his head. ‘No, or so she says. But …’ He stopped as he became aware of the men approaching.
William greeted the mason. ‘Master Michael, how good to see you being able to carry on with the work.’ He threw a broad wink at Edwin.
The tall man bowed his head at William, casting barely a glance at Edwin. ‘Greetings, Master Mayor. Yes, it will not be many more years before all the cathedral’s wounds will be healed and she will be well again.’
William looked again at Edwin. ‘If only the same could be said of our poor city.’
Master Michael stroked his chin. ‘Of course. I have been here nearly fifteen years now and think of it as my home; I shall be sad to leave once the cathedral is complete. But perhaps the current situation will work in my favour in the end – there will be many repairs to be done to the city walls and the castle once this is all over.’ He looked up, squinting high up towards the scaffolding. ‘But now I must ascend to see that keystone safely installed, for the next arch will be completed once it is in place.’ He turned and strode off without another word; his cloak swirling dramatically in a manner which Edwin felt almost sure was intentional. Edwin looked around him for the other man, but he had also disappeared – presumably he was one of the masons and had returned to his duties. He sighed. How in the Lord’s name could he tell whether someone was a spy or not from such a short and banal conversation? And he’d met so many others this morning who might have all sorts of motives or none – how was he to find what happened to the dead messenger, and whether the city folk had any plans to help the castle? Time was passing – half a day, almost one quarter of his allotted time – and as yet he knew nothing. And to be forthright about it, the company of William wasn’t really helping much.
He moved to a quiet corner, thinking to sit and consider things for a while, but then saw William speaking to three more people whom he hadn’t met. This time it was a woman of maybe just more than middle years and a young man who bore a strong resemblance to her, together with a slight man wearing a jaunty red hat with a feather. William saw him looking and beckoned him over.
‘Mistress, I do not think you know my nephew, Edwin of Retford? Edwin, this is Master Pinel, who imports dyes’ – he gestured to the man in the red hat – ‘and Mistress Guildersleeve, a widow who runs a haberdashery business down in the Drapery.’
This time Edwin was ready with his lines about his supposed family, but they were not needed. The woman nodded, introduced the young man as ‘My son, Gervase’ and barely stopped for breath as she chattered to William. Gervase looked sheepishly at Edwin and shrugged his shoulders, by which Edwin guessed that this was probably a regular occurrence. He occupied himself trying to work out what haberdashery might be.
From what the woman was saying, it sounded as though there would be a funeral that afternoon. Edwin caught the name ‘Nicholas’ and realised that it was probably the man that the two Peters had been talking about that morning. If that were the case then he had only been dead a few hours, which would have been a little too soon for a funeral in Edwin’s home village, where they might have waited until the morrow, but perhaps here in the city they did things differently. With so many people around they probably didn’t want to leave bodies lying around for too long, lest they spread disease.
He had lost track. He needed to concentrate more on the conversation, where William was speaking.
‘… and such a shame about those boys being missing.’
On one side of Edwin, Gervase opened his mouth, but he couldn’t speak before his mother cut in. Edwin felt trapped between them. ‘Oh yes, such fine boys. But no doubt they will come home once all the trouble is over.’
Edwin thought to himself that everyone he had met today was talking about ‘when the trouble would be over’, but he wasn’t sure whether this was just a common phrase in the city, much in the way of the villagers at home saying ‘once the winter is over’, or whether they really knew something about what was going on. He glanced furtively at the slight man – what had his name been again? Pinel? – and wished he could develop the ability to judge people just by looking at them. It would make his present situation much easier, that was for sure.
He had missed another part of the conversation. They had apparently stopped talking about boys and were speaking of a girl, William interrupting the flow from Mistress Guildersleeve. ‘It must be such a comfort for her to have you nearby, for is she not betrothed to your son?’
To Edwin’s left, Gervase started to put his hand out towards his mother, but dropped it again; to his right, Mistress Guildersleeve took in a sharp breath and looked as though she were about to launch into some kind of tirade. The words that came out of her mouth did not match, though, for they were platitudes about nothing being formal yet, things needing to be settled, and the inevitable aside to ‘waiting until all this was over.’ William didn’t seem to have noticed anything strange, so Edwin thought it was of no great importance. After all, William knew these people much better than he did.
Gervase spoke for the first time, touching his mother on the arm and pointing out yet another citizen whom Edwin didn’t know. He had no idea how he was going to keep track of them all. This latest was a youngish man who craned his neck forward and peered at them carefully before stepping over a pile of muck in the street to join them. Gervase greeted him, but infuriatingly he didn’t say the man’s name. Edwin listened as the newcomer was told all about the funeral that afternoon, and was firmly instructed by Mistress Guildersleeve to tidy himself up and be there.
The conversation turned to the late Nicholas Holland, with Pinel wondering aloud what he could have been doing when he was struck down. Mistress Guildersleeve seemed ready to gossip, but Edwin happened to be looking at the man whose name he didn’t know, and he was interested to note that at the mention of Nicholas he looked immediately wary, almost backing away. Edwin tried desperately to think of some way to engage him in conversation to find out more about him, but the man made a quiet nod to the others and slipped away before he had the chance to think of something. Damn!
The rest of the party was breaking up now, with promises that they would see each other that afternoon. Pinel and the others nodded as they departed, and after they had all gone, William decided it was time to go home for something to eat. As they trudged back to the house, and as the silent Juliana put bread and ale down in front of them on the table, William quizzed Edwin about everything he had seen. What did he think of the town and its people? What did he think was going on? Did he have any ideas as to who might be in league with the castle?
Edwin said as little as he could. Firstly, he had scarcely had time to think things through himself, and wasn’t really sure what he thought; and secondly, William seemed just a little over-eager to hear his impressions. It was like having an elderly puppy fawning round him, and it was a little disconcerting. Edwin was not quite sure that he wanted to share everything with his host – if the last couple of weeks had taught him anything, it was to trust absolutely nobody.
After they had eaten their frugal meal, and Edwin had thanked Juliana and received no reply, William rose stiffly and announced that it was time he went to Nicholas’s funeral. Edwin decided not to accompany him – not only had he not known the man, but he could use the extra hour or two to wander round the city free of his host, to see if there was anything else he could pick up. So, as William shuffled off towards the southern end of town, Edwin walked the other way, towards the castle.
He couldn’t get too near it of course, but he would get something of a closer look to see if anything was to be gained by observing the men besieging it. First he went round to the north-eastern edge, but as all the houses there had been razed, he would look suspicious loitering in the rubble, so he turned to walk towards the southern side. As he turned, he noticed a large dark stain on the floor which had a cloud of flies buzzing over it. He stooped and looked at it, realising it was dried blood. Someone had been struck down here, perhaps even the very man they were burying this afternoon. He looked up at the castle and saw that he was pretty much as close as he could get without moving right out on to the open ground. Nicholas, if it was he, had been attacked within shouting distance of the castle. Had he been trying to contact them? Or was he a spy for the French? Or could there have been another explanation? He needed to think. Over to one side was a stone, also smeared in blood. He picked it up. On examining it more closely he saw that there was hair stuck to it and what looked to be flesh – this was presumably what had been used to hit the man over the head. It was fairly weighty but he could lift it in one hand – probably why Nicholas had been knocked senseless but hadn’t died straight away. He didn’t want to take it with him but couldn’t bear just to leave it there in the open. He put it in the rubble of wooden spars where a house had once stood, and stirred the debris with his foot to cover it.
Next he set off for the south side of the castle. Here the houses approaching the open ground were still intact, so he had more cover, although one or two people on the street were looking at him strangely. He tried to appear nonchalant as he looked over towards the besiegers, crouching to fiddle with his boot.
Along the flat ground, a number of machines were lined up, with men moving round them. They were strange contraptions made of wood, with ropes round them here and there. As he looked more closely he could see that they were of two different types. One or two had long arms balanced in the middle, with a sling at one end and a weight at the other. These did not appear in use at the moment, but he could see how they would work: if you put a stone in the sling, and then lifted and dropped the weight, it would cause the stone to be thrown at the walls. Fascinating. He wondered how someone had thought of such an idea, and what else such a machine might be used for … people were looking at him. He had better move on. He supposed that the engines had become a regular sight for the citizens, so by staring so openly he was marking himself out as a stranger. Fortunately none of the men at the machines appeared to have noticed him. He moved into a shaded alley and fumbled as though he were about to relieve himself. That was better – he would not be so obvious here. He kept to the shadow as he looked back at the machines.
Some men were working on one of the other type of engine. Again there was wood and rope, but the arm which would carry the stone was pivoted at one end instead of in the middle. That end was stuck in the middle of what looked like a pile of rope, but as he watched, the men started to winch the arm backwards, and he could see that the rope was tightly twisted, and that as they turned they were winding it ever tighter, so that it was exerting greater and greater force on the machine. Still they pulled, straining themselves and grunting with exertion, and the timbers of the engine started to groan and creak with the force. For no reason that Edwin could think of, John Marshal suddenly came to mind – all that tightly wound, pent-up energy just waiting to explode.
The men were putting a stone in a sort of cup attachment which was at the end of the arm. Then they all moved back to a safe distance, except for one who held the end of a line, which was joined to a pin holding all the wound-up rope in place. At the command of the man who seemed to be in charge, he pulled it and the pin flew out. All the force was released at once, and the arm of the machine shot round so quickly that Edwin couldn’t follow it with his eye. The great stone was flung out and flew towards the castle. Edwin felt a stone in his own throat, but was pleased when the missile appeared to miss the wall, sailed right over it and into the bailey. But his relief was short-lived as a terrible scream came from inside. Dear Lord. He closed his eyes and gulped, listening to the cheers of the men at the machine and the congratulations given to the man in charge. He prayed in silence for whoever had been hit by the stone, and swore revenge on those who were doing such evil things and enjoying it. His resolve hardened into a knot in his heart. He would find out how to help those people in the castle, and in the Lord’s name he would help them to fight against that evil bombardment. He slipped out of the alley and away down the street.