The Night of the Wolf

By Cassandra Clark

The ruthless reign of Henry IV and the clerical tyranny of Archbishop Arundel keep Brother Chandler and his friends under constant threat in this gripping medieval mystery featuring friar-sleuth Rodric Chandler.

"Clark’s use of period detail is unparalleled, and the plot remains taut and brisk til the end" Publishers Weekly Starred Review

Chester, 1400. Riding for his life, with a copy of Chaucer's heretical Canterbury Tales in his possession, friar-sleuth Brother Chandler is ambushed on the road and wakes up in a stranger's house.

Is his 'rescuer', wool merchant John Willoughby, friend . . . or foe? Willoughby declares that he, like Chandler, has renounced the self-crowned King Henry IV and will help Chandler get his dangerous belongings to safety. He seems trustworthy, but Chandler knows that if he's caught by the King's merciless censors together with the Tales, he'll be burned at the stake.

But then Willoughby's young wife perishes in a terrible accident at their house - or so it seems . . . Willoughby asks Chandler to help investigate if it was indeed an accident or if someone had a hidden agenda.

All Chandler wants to do is find safe haven for Chaucer's Tales and return to London, but he accepts the case. Little does he know that it will lead to secrets being uncovered which will put not only Chandler but also those around him in unimaginable peril.

The Night of the Wolf is the third book in the Brother Chandler mystery series, following The Hour of the Fox and The Day of the Serpent. A great read for history lovers who enjoy puzzling murder mysteries with twists!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Severn House
• Release date: Jun 6, 2023
• ISBN: 9781448306718

Cassandra Clark

Cassandra Clark is an award-winning scriptwriter for theatre, radio and television, and the author of nine previous novels in the Hildegard of Meaux medieval mystery series. Running wild near the ruins of the Abbey of Meaux in the East Riding as a child became her inspiration for the series while the discovery in a dusty archive of the Chronicle of Meaux written in 1395 is the secret source for her research.

Book preview

ONE

Willoughby’s house, Chester, 1400

Rodric Chandler opened his eyes at the sound of his door being pushed open. Darkness lay like velvet over his eyes. The pad of bare feet approached his bed. He held his breath and listened more closely. There was no sound of steel and yet someone had entered the chamber with the stealth of an assassin.

Scarcely breathing he surreptitiously reached for the knife he kept under the pillow. Adjusting to the darkness he glimpsed a shadow flick across the lighted square of the window.

In the moonlight he had a brief vision of waist-length hair, gleaming like ebony.

She.

He let his breath out and waited without moving.

In a moment she was sliding into bed beside him. ‘I know you’re awake,’ she whispered. ‘I said I would come to you.’

‘You cannot come to me. I am your husband’s guest.’

‘I can and I have come to you, dear Rodric, for here I am.’

‘Then you must go back to your own bed.’

‘Dearest,’ she whispered, ‘you cannot be so strict.’

‘I can be very strict,’ he replied, turning away.

He felt her hands moving intimately over his body as she tried to draw herself closer, pressing her own hot and seeking body against his own, whispering endearments until her voice sharpened and she asked, ‘What’s this under your pillow?’

He twisted to stare at her and tried to gauge her expression in the slant of light from outside. ‘It’s my knife.’

‘No, it’s something wrapped in – I do believe it’s the little package you were wearing underneath your friar’s robes when my husband and his men rescued you from that gang on the road from Shrewsbury …!’

She gave a knowing chuckle and sat up with something clutched in her hands. Reaching out he prised the package from between her fingers and she stifled a gasp.

‘That hurt!’

‘I told you I could be strict.’

‘You can tell me what it is …’ She sidled against him. ‘Dearest Rodric – please be kind to me. You’ve no idea how dreadful my life is with that horrible old man—’

‘You must not do this, Evelyn. Go back to your bed. Where is your husband?’

‘Sleeping. Dreaming of money and sheep.’

‘If he did not dream of money and sheep you would be living in poverty. Go back to him.’

Even as he spoke he could feel her heat as she pressed the length of her body against his with greater urgency. Her shift was no more substantial than gossamer and was already rucked above her waist.

As she caressed him she was careful to avoid his wounds but not careful about anything else. ‘He’s too old for me,’ she whispered, lips tickling his ear.

He felt her tongue flicker along his jaw to search for his lips, darting small kisses until she found them. It had been an age since he had held Matilda in his arms and now she was far away, in safety as he hoped, somewhere away from London maybe, perhaps in Guelderland, or still on the ship, or travelling in safety in a char with the others through the countryside around Dieppe. With Adam.

The name entered his head and like a speck of grit would not be dislodged even as Evelyn pressed her lips against his and her tongue continued its teasing entry between his teeth.

He could push her aside in anger now. Say a prayer. Keep vows made to St Serapion as a boy, pretend he did not want her – more honestly ‘it’: the sin, a double sin to break faith with his saint and with her husband.

He could be a saint himself, resist temptation, if only she would not …

He heard her exclaim with pleasure as if there was no going back as she slid beneath him.

‘I think you’d better leave.’ He rolled aside and pushed the coverlet back.

For a moment he saw her face in the moonlight. She was gazing at him in astonishment. When he said again, ‘Leave,’ she drew in a breath. Her features contorted into ugliness.

‘How dare you!’ She swung her legs over the side of the bed in a sudden rage. ‘You mean it …?’ She hesitated as if expecting him to relent and when she saw he was serious she swore at him, saying, ‘You’ll regret this!’

‘I’ll live with that.’

With a haughty flounce she slithered off the bed. In the pale moonlight he saw her naked shoulders silvered over and, when she turned, her eyes were like two shadowed pits in the oval of her face.

Her mouth twisted with thwarted lust. ‘I hate you, Rodric Chandler! No man treats me like this!’

Without another word she pulled down her shift and swept from the chamber.

He’d been on the Great Drove Road three weeks before this difference of opinion with the merchant’s wife.

Parting from his fellow travellers, the bowmen, Will, Fulke and Underwood, and the lad Aethelstan, when they headed west to seek out Glyn Dwr and his army, he himself had taken a more northerly route towards an abbey he had heard of called Dieulacres. It was Cistercian. There he hoped to find someone in the scriptorium who might be interested in taking the banned booklets he had secretly carried from London, someone who would guard them until the time came when it would be safe to read Master Chaucer’s work again – after Henry Bolingbroke was defeated.

As he must be if God ruled.

It happened that he had been forced to flee for his life after being rescued from the heretics’ fire built for his burning at the stake in Westminster Yard.

Due to a statute being hurried through the Commons, one not yet in the law books but being pushed through as fast as possible, known as haeretico comburendo, he had been picked as a warning to anybody who believed it was their right to read and say what they wanted.

The new burning law, as it was called, was devised by Archbishop Arundel and the recent self-crowned king, Henry IV, Bolingbroke, the Duke of Lancaster of ill-fame. This duo of usurpers had decided to invent a law to allow them to burn alive any person who happened to hold views differing from their own. Censorship rose to the top of their list of things to do when they seized power.

It so happened that after the bowmen had snatched him from the stake, Master Chaucer’s scrivener, Adam Pinkhurst, had quickly pushed a small package of some banned booklets into his hands as he fled. ‘Keep them safe! Take them out of London! It’s the only copy of the master’s Canterbury Tales!’

This young woman, Evelyn, the wife of a wool merchant who had chanced upon an attempted ambush not far from here, had found the books when she had tended his wounds afterwards.

He hoped she had not realized the importance of what she had found under his pillow, that she would keep her mouth shut as, surely, as an adulteress, she was bound to do?

The men employed by his host, a merchant prominent in the sheep trade between Wales and London, were lounging about the yard and from their knowing glances when the merchant’s wife appeared halfway through the morning, he guessed she shared her favours lavishly among them. It made him wonder about her husband. He liked him. Not only because he and his men had saved him from the attack of a gang of ruffians, but for his steadiness and unassuming good sense and ultimately for his kindness to a stranger.

They had sounded each other out as soon as Chandler regained consciousness after the attack. Glancing round and wondering where he was after being hit over the head, he had taken in the orderly and well-kept chamber in which he was lying and then noticed the worried face hovering above his own.

The man had moved back with a look of relief when he saw Chandler come round.

‘Don’t try to move. You must be in pain. Could be worse though. Our leech woman has staunched your blood and cleansed your wounds. She left some salve with instructions to my wife to keep you lying in bed until she returns later on.’

‘I won’t ask where I am,’ Chandler murmured through bruised lips as he tried to force a smile.

‘You may. And I’ll tell you. You are in my house in the middle of a town called Chester.’

Chandler struggled to form a few words in reply. ‘All I remember is riding along a greenway … in the sunlight … then sudden shouting … and men appearing from nowhere …’ It came back to him in a sudden swamping of images. Strangers bursting out of the bushes on both sides of the track. ‘Four or five … mounted … well-armed—’

‘We’re plagued by outlaws in the woods all round here. After the destruction wrought in Cheshire by Bolingbroke on his way to meet King Richard when he landed in Wales last summer, many families were dispossessed … many men outlawed and forced to escape to the woods. Any traveller is fair game now, the men and their families being in such straits.’ He grimaced. ‘This so-called king, Henry, does not like Cheshire archers. Too much in favour of King Richard and the late prince, his father.’

Chandler stared at the man in astonishment at such open speech. In London he would have been thrown into Saltwood Castle and tortured, talking like this about Henry. So-called king?

He looked at him anew.

Unaware of Chandler’s thoughts he condemned himself further by saying, ‘The Cheshire archers objected to being called out to help a man take the crown from his cousin for no reason other than ambition and rank greed. They showed their disapproval by withholding their fealty. And Henry showed his disapproval by crying havoc on the county, as I’m sure you heard.’

He gave Chandler a quizzical glance then, glancing over his shoulder he lowered his voice. ‘We are alone, brother. I would not say this if anyone else was present. Lancastrians are everywhere. They’ve taken over the running of the town, as in London so I hear. Shrewsbury is now garrisoned by young Monmouth on behalf of his father. Henry’s place-man has now assumed control in Chester. I know all …’ He glanced pointedly to where Chandler’s robes were neatly folded on a chest.

On top of them lay his leather travel bag and inside it his rescuers must have placed the package containing the booklets.

His latest saviour leaned closer. ‘I have seen the bound pages you are carrying. My wife found the package hidden under your shirt when she ministered to you after you were attacked. I understand everything. You are among friends here … For King Richard – and the true Commons?’

‘But he is dead.’

‘Murdered at Pontefract? We know the story. But some say he escaped and fled to Scotland? He is a guest of the Lord of the Isles, they say.’

‘Rumour only, wishful thinking.’ Chandler’s head ached.

‘But even so you carry writings that are now forbidden. I read the first few pages to find out who we had here.’

‘It’s a few fragments only. His tales about the Canterbury pilgrims. Given to me in trust. I seek a safe home for them until this trouble blows over.’

‘I guessed as much. But look here, I’m at fault, let me tell you my name. It will mean nothing to you outside the wool trade which may be a new world to you?’ He half-smiled. ‘John Willoughby, at your service – and that of King Richard, if he lives.’

Chandler managed to reach out with one hand. In the clasp when he was able to manage it he felt the warmth of complicity. It was astonishing to him, afterwards, to find that he had instantly trusted the man. He was a stranger. He could have declared such an allegiance as a ploy to draw him out. Chandler was appalled at his gullibility … But he did trust him. The blow on the head had shaken his wits, he decided afterwards, but he found no reason not to trust him.

Feeling weakened by his beating, there was nothing he could do now about his lack of caution. No way of talking his way out of the books he carried. The fellow could betray him. Have him fetched and carried out to the marketplace and tied back on to a stake to be consumed in heretic fires. Especially if Bolingbroke’s men now commanded the town as he was warned.

‘Lucky I had a personal army with me enough to outnumber those devils,’ Willoughby was saying. ‘But I can see you need sleep, young fellow. Stay here in safety. Everything I have is yours.’

The door opened behind him and Willoughby sat up as if nothing of any intimacy, let alone sedition, had passed between them, as someone rustled into the chamber and Chandler turned his head.

‘My wife,’ Willoughby gestured. ‘Evelyn.’

Chandler opened his eyes expecting to see a stately, grey-haired merchant’s wife, adept at keeping his accounts in order. After all, the merchant was a dapper middle-aged man, greying around the temples, his beard worn in two forks like the murdered king but grizzled where young King Richard’s beard had been red-gold.

But his wife, now. Chandler stared.

Evelyn. A lascivious looking brunette, half Willoughby’s age.

She gave Chandler a knowing smile. ‘I see you’re feeling better already, brother.’

It took several days of assiduous care before he felt anything like himself again. His bruises were covered in arnica, a sword wound to his thigh was neatly rebandaged every day and began to heal, and his focus on his task returned. He began to feel impatient about not getting out on the road again.

It was a long enough ride to the abbey at Dieulacres, he was told, and the leech woman firmly advised against riding a horse until the wound had healed.

Willoughby seemed content to have him occupying one of his attics. ‘When you feel ready to leave I’ll have some men escort you. As you’ve experienced already, the woods are not for strangers.’

By that Chandler understood that he would be entering a no-go area, followers of the deposed king ruled the open country while the usurper’s men ruled the towns, and he was being offered protection for his own safety.

Bemused by his good fortune, the bad with the good, because good fortune would not have had him knocked unconscious and brought into Chester in the first place, he summoned all his strength to get back on his feet as soon as possible.

His first tentative steps took him down the attic stairs into the hall below. Invited to sit at the long table he eased himself on to the bench as the cook bustled in with a bowl of pottage and fresh bread and could not do enough for him.

When he eventually managed to make it outside into the yard, he had a look at his horse, the one Will had procured for him, and saw that he was being well cared for. When he met Master Willoughby again he said, ‘I cannot thank you enough.’

The merchant smiled. ‘It’s an honour and a privilege.’

Later Willoughby told him he had to go away for a few days. He did not say where but gave the impression he was going on business. He took several armed men with him but most of his men remained behind.

It was shortly before this that Evelyn had come to his bed and been given short-shrift. Since then she had ignored him. Only the ancient leech woman attended to his wounds now. She came every day and was beginning to cluck with satisfaction at his rapid improvement.

‘Soon be ready to be on your way, young man. But take care of this’n,’ she indicated the sword wound. ‘No riding yet for you.’

Chandler was determined to get off as soon as he could. After Willoughby left he went down to have another look at his horse.

A thickset, handsome youth, a horse-master, was always giving him black looks and he picked him out as the current lover whom inadvertently he had been chosen to usurp. Without admitting what had happened he could not put the lad’s mind at rest and could only treat him with a sort of deference that seemed to make him even more suspicious.

With Willoughby now away he had reminded the head man that an escort had been promised as soon as he was ready to leave.

The man grinned. ‘Fit enough to sit a horse again?’ He eyed him. ‘You still look a bit rough round the edges.’

‘I’ll cope.’

‘What about the day after tomorrow, first thing? I’ll get a couple of men to guide you through the woods to Dieulacres. It’s a day’s ride and not that easy to find. Hidden away as it is.’

‘I shall be in your debt – or …’ His hand reached for his scrip.

‘All in the day’s work, brother. The master said to take care of you while he’s away. And that we’ll do.’

‘That’s good of him and you.’

‘In the same game?’ He winked. ‘Be ready. I’ll have your horse saddled up.’

‘By the way,’ Chandler turned back, ‘when is he due to return?’

‘Who knows? How long is the leading-rein on a half-broken horse?’

He stomped off and Chandler returned to his attic still pondering the man’s words. He didn’t want to leave without a word of thanks, but his impatience was urging him to go. It was true he still felt rough, not like his old self. It was more than a few bruises.

It was as if he was being driven by demons, ones he would never shake from off his shoulders. They would pursue him until they ran him to ground. And if his dreams were anything to go by, they would never leave him until they pitched him into a heretic’s fire and watched him burn.

This is the aftershock of events in Westminster Yard, he told himself. Take a hold of yourself. That’s over. You escaped. You’re free. You’re among allies. Job done. You escaped. You have the books still, and you’re going to find this abbey, and there you’ll come across somebody who can keep them safe until Bolingbroke is himself usurped and the crown snatched from his sinful head.

After that, who knew what would happen? King Richard’s chosen heir was nothing but a child of seven or eight.

The demons were not all to do with problems in the realm, however. Some were more personal. Matilda. She happened to be Chaucer’s maid and things had become intensely personal between them.

When he had unwillingly worked as a spy for the House of Lancaster, more specifically, for the ambitious son of old John of Gaunt, the egregious Henry Bolingbroke, he had been set to spy on Matilda’s master, Chaucer. This was because of the poet’s suspected Lollardry which anyone who had heard him read his master work, The Canterbury Tales, knew all about. Trapped by the expectations of his Lancaster paymaster, Chandler had blatantly used Matilda to try to discover more evidence against Chaucer – and it so happened that he found her willing to allow him to seduce her. By this means he learned that she was secretly taking her master’s banned books to a safe house down river from Westminster where they were living at that time.

Henry’s men later discovered this but before Matilda could fall into their trap, Chandler himself had appeared and, risking everything to save her, had thrown the most incriminating book into the Thames. For that he had been condemned to death. But the bowmen had pulled off a dramatic rescue and he owed his life to them.

It was now, as he was going up to his chamber in the attic at Willoughby’s, that he saw Evelyn descending the stairs from the upper floor.

Wondering what she had been doing up there he stepped aside so she could pass when they drew level. She had not forgiven him for his rejection. And he had not explained nor yielded.

Now, in order to show her disdain, she brushed by unnecessarily close, her sleeve contemptuously brushing him as she lifted a hand to adjust her coif as if she had not noticed him. She did not speak. He did not give her the satisfaction of speaking either, but something made him take the stairs on to the upper landing two at a time.

As soon as he entered his chamber he knew she had been inside. A scent of rosewater still hung in the air under the pentroof.

A glance showed that his sword in the worn leather scabbard was still lying exactly where he had left it. He went to the bed and searched under his pillow until his fingers found the soft leather wrapping containing the pages of the little books. Something made him pull the package out and at once he noticed that it was slimmer than before. Quickly opening it he counted the booklets inside. Four. When there should have been five.

With an oath he turned to the door and clattered down after her in time to see her hurrying out of the main doors on to the street.

TWO

A few strides took him across the hall, but when he pushed the door he discovered it was locked. Locked! She had locked him in!

Determined now more than ever to pursue her and catch her red-handed, he tried to open one of the windows, but it was sealed shut.

Raging, he swivelled towards the back kitchen, skirting the obstacles and chaos of cooking for a score of men and stormed through to the yard. The kitcheners stared after him in astonishment. Striding rapidly towards the outer gates he shouldered them open.

She had already reached the end of the street and was inserting herself in among the crowds flocking down the main thoroughfare towards the market.

It took only moments to reach the market square.

He glanced about but could see no sign of her. Once in among the stalls and the slowly moving buyers it was impossible to make much headway. Which way had she gone? Left? Right? Was that blue mantle disappearing into the distance the one she had been wearing just now? He took a gamble and, striding between groups of shoppers as best he could, he followed in pursuit.

Where is the witless girl heading, he wondered when he reached the end of a line of stalls and did not see her. She looked as if she knew exactly where she was going with the book. His head ached. She must have an accomplice. Someone who would want what she had stolen. Who here would be bothered about a bundle of writing apart from the usurper’s men? Was she hoping to sell it – or was there a more dangerous aspect to her theft?

He thought of the cathedral with its scribes – they would understand what she had obtained – but she was heading in a different direction, north towards the toll gate. Maybe there was a chantry there with a priest who could read and write? Maybe she intended to have it passed on to this new sheriff for a price? He wished he knew the town better.

Following his best guess he turned off down a ginnel and soon came within sight of the archway at the north gate in the city walls. The guards were busy, roughly controlling the press of country folk trying to force their way inside but hampered by the number of carts bringing in produce and forcing everyone to a halt while their dockets were checked. It all added to the clamour and confusion – but of Evelyn there was still no sign.

He was right about the chantry, a small, stone-built building against the city walls, its doors open, a few people going in and out. He stepped into the shadow of a nearby building to see if she would turn up and if not, what other plan he might devise, when almost at once he was rewarded by her sudden eruption from a side street.

She was looking back over her shoulders as if in fear of someone following and it made him smile grimly to himself. He pressed further back into the shadows as she scurried towards the open doors of the chantry. He waited for his moment. Did she really think she could go unnoticed? What a sotwit.

As she reached the corner where he was standing, he stepped out in front of her.

She gawped as if seeing a ghost and before she could wipe the terrified expression