“So I was right!” said Caris. “But how do you know about the hinge? Sister Beth has not opened the vault since the audit, and the box was fine then. You must have removed it from the vault yourself, if you know that it has been interfered with.”
Philemon looked bewildered, and had no answer.
Cecilia turned to Lloyd. “Archdeacon, you are the bishop’s representative. I think it’s your duty to order the prior to return this money to the nuns.”
Lloyd looked worried. He said to Godwyn: “Have you got any of the money left?”
Caris said furiously: “When you’ve caught a thief, you don’t ask him whether he can afford to relinquish his ill-gotten gains!”
Godwyn said: “More than half has already been spent on the palace.”
“Building must stop immediately,” Caris said. “The men must be dismissed today, the building torn down and the materials sold. You have to return every penny. What you can’t pay in cash, after the palace has been demolished, you must make up in land or other assets.”
“I refuse,” Godwyn said.
Cecilia addressed Lloyd again. “Archdeacon, please do your duty. You cannot allow one of the bishop’s subordinates to steal from another, no matter that they both do God’s work.”
Lloyd said: “I can’t adjudicate a dispute such as this myself. It’s too serious.”
Caris was speechless with fury and dismay at Lloyd’s weakness.
Cecilia protested: “But you must!”
He looked trapped, but he shook his head stubbornly. “Accusations of theft, destruction of a will, a charge of forgery… This must go to the bishop himself!”
Cecilia said: “But Bishop Richard is on his way to France – and no one knows when he will be back. Meanwhile, Godwyn is spending the stolen money!”
“I can’t help that, I’m afraid,” Lloyd said. “You must appeal to Richard.”
“Very well, then,” said Caris. Something in her tone made them all look at her. “In that case there’s only one thing to do. We’ll go and find our bishop.”
46
In July of 1346, King Edward III assembled the largest invasion fleet England had ever seen, almost a thousand ships, at Portsmouth. Contrary winds delayed the armada, but they finally set sail on 11 July, their destination a secret.
Caris and Mair arrived in Portsmouth two days later, just missing Bishop Richard, who had sailed with the king.
They decided to follow the army to France.
It had not been easy to get approval even for the trip to Portsmouth. Mother Cecilia had invited the nuns in chapter to discuss the proposal, and some had felt that Caris would be in moral and physical danger. But nuns did leave their convents, not just on pilgrimages, but on business errands to London, Canterbury and Rome. And the Kingsbridge sisters wanted their stolen money back.
However, Caris was not sure that she would have got permission to cross the Channel. Fortunately she was not able to ask.
She and Mair could not have followed the army immediately, even if they had known the king’s destination, because every seaworthy vessel on the south coast of England had been commandeered for the invasion. So they fretted with impatience at a nunnery just outside Portsmouth and waited for news.
Caris learned later that King Edward and his army disembarked on a broad beach at St-Vaast-la-Hogue, on the north coast of France near Barfleur. However, the fleet did not return immediately. Instead, the ships followed the coast eastward for two weeks, tracking the invading army as far as Caen. There they loaded their holds with booty: jewellery, expensive cloth, and gold and silver plate looted by Edward’s army from the prosperous burgesses of Normandy. Then they returned.
One of the first back was the Grace, which was a cog – a broad-built cargo ship with rounded prow and stern. Her captain, a leather-faced salt called Rollo, was full of praise for the king. He had been paid at scarcity rates for his ship and his men, and he had gained a good share of the plunder himself. “Biggest army I’ve ever seen,” Rollo said with relish. He thought there were at least fifteen thousand men, about half of them archers, and probably five thousand horses. “You’ll have your work cut out to catch up with them,” he said. “I’ll take you to Caen, the last place I know them to have been, and you can pick up their trail there. Whatever direction they’ve taken, they’ll be about a week ahead of you.”
Caris and Mair negotiated a price with Rollo then went aboard the Grace with two sturdy ponies, Blackie and Stamp. They could not travel any faster than the army’s horses, but the army had to stop and fight every so often, Caris reasoned, and that should enable her to catch up.
When they reached the French side and sailed into the estuary of the Orne, early on a sunny August morning, Caris sniffed the breeze and noticed the unpleasant smell of old ashes. Studying the landscape on either side of the river, she saw that the farmland was black. It looked as if the crops had been burned in the fields. “Standard practice,” Rollo said. “What the army can’t take must be destroyed, otherwise it could benefit the enemy.” As they neared the port of Caen they passed the hulks of several burned-out ships, presumably fired for the same reason.
“No one knows the king’s plan,” Rollo told them. “He may go south and advance on Paris, or swing north-east to Calais and hope to meet up there with his Flemish allies. But you’ll be able to follow his trail. Just keep the blackened fields on either side of you.”
Before they disembarked, Rollo gave them a ham. “Thank you, but we’ve got some smoked fish and hard cheese in our saddlebags,” Caris said to him. “And we have money – we can buy anything else we need.”
“Money may not be much use to you,” the captain replied. “There may be nothing to buy. An army is like a plague of locusts, it strips the country bare. Take the ham.”
“You’re very kind. Goodbye.”
“Pray for me, if you would, sister. I’ve committed some heavy sins in my time.”
Caen was a city of several thousand houses. Like Kingsbridge, its two halves, Old Town and New Town, were divided by a river, the Odon, which was spanned by St Peter’s Bridge. On the river bank near the bridge, a few fishermen were selling their catch. Caris asked the price of an eel. She found the answer difficult to understand: the fisherman spoke a dialect of French she had never heard. When at last she was able to make out what he was saying, the price took her breath away. Food was so scarce, she realized, that it was more precious than jewels. She was grateful for Rollo’s generosity.
They had decided that if they were questioned they would say they were Irish nuns travelling to Rome. Now, however, as she and Mair rode away from the river, Caris wondered nervously whether local people would know from her accent that she was English.
There were not many local people to be seen. Broken-down doors and smashed shutters revealed empty houses. There was a ghostly hush – no vendors crying their wares, no children quarrelling, no church bells. The only work being done was burial. The battle had taken place more than a week ago, but small groups of grim-faced men were still bringing corpses out of buildings and loading them on to carts. It looked as if the English army had simply massacred men, women and children. They passed a church where a huge pit had been dug in the churchyard, and saw the bodies being tipped into a mass grave, without coffins or even shrouds, while a priest intoned a continuous burial service. The stench was unspeakable.
A well-dressed man bowed to them and asked if they needed assistance. His proprietorial manner suggested that he was a leading citizen concerned to make sure no harm came to religious visitors. Caris declined his offer of help, noting that his Norman French was no different from that of a nobleman in England. Perhaps, she thought, the lower orders all had their different local dialects, while the ruling class spoke with an international accent.