A Vigil of Spies

PROLOGUE

Bishopthorpe Palace, late September 1373

Archbishop Thoresby held up his hand to silence Brother Michaelo’s arguments. ‘God’s will does not align with ours, Michaelo. We tried and failed. The chapter will not choose my nephew Richard to succeed me. It is finished.’

Though His Grace’s voice was weak, his personal secretary heard in it the clear resolve. He reminded himself of the fourth step of humility in St Benedict’s rule — To go even further than [simple obedience] by readily accepting in patient and silent endurance, without thought of giving up or avoiding the issue, any hard and demanding things that may come our way in the course of that obedience … We are encouraged to such patience by the words of scripture: Whoever perseveres to the very end will be saved. Bowing, Michaelo began to back away from the great bed.

‘I had not realised how much you had set your heart on Richard succeeding me,’ said Thoresby. ‘Why, Michaelo?’

In his mind’s eye, Michaelo was back at the wretched day ten years earlier when he lay at the entrance to the abbey oratory, his forehead pressed to the cold, indifferently cleaned tiles, while his brethren shuffled past him. A few stumbled on his robes, one grazed his foot, another kicked his right hand. Then came a long silence in which his attempts to pray that this prostration might signal his repentance and his humility were overridden by his self-loathing. He could not believe that God wished to hear him. Ten years in Thoresby’s service had restored his belief, his ability to pray. He’d believed that in the service of Richard Ravenser he would yet be safe from himself.

‘I cannot return to St Mary’s Abbey, Your Grace.’

‘That choice passed with Abbot Campion’s death. We spoke of a modest priory in Normandy where you might retreat into silent prayer. My nephew will see to that.’

A small priory in his native Normandy, near his kin, in perpetual retreat. Michaelo knew it to be a wise choice, and yet he doubted his ability to surrender to it. He was but thirty-five, too young to die to the world. He doubted that years of silent prayer and mortification of the flesh could protect him from the inevitable encounter with a young monk who stirred his desire. This was the devil undermining his courage. The devil who knew him.

‘God go with you, Your Grace,’ Michaelo murmured, then turned and withdrew from the sickroom. Alone in the corridor, he slumped against the wall and prayed for the strength to remain by His Grace’s side to the end, for the fortitude to resist the terror that bade him flee before despair overcame him. As the archbishop’s personal secretary, Michaelo had found his way to grace as if residing in the presence of a man of grace had transformed him. But he feared for his strength once Thoresby died, and his death was imminent. The archbishop would not live to see another Christmas, so predicted the healer Magda Digby. Brother Michaelo felt the devil hovering over his left shoulder, whispering darksome thoughts in quiet moments.

His only hope had been in His Grace’s winning the dean and chapter’s support for his nephew, Sir Richard Ravenser, to succeed him as Archbishop of York. Ravenser had asked Michaelo to serve him as his personal secretary if he won the election. But, except for a few of the Thoresby/Ravenser kin in the chapter and their old friend Nicholas Louth, the canons supported Alexander Neville, for King Edward apparently approved of him, or so claimed the Neville family in their aggressive campaign.

Michaelo rubbed his left shoulder. Already it ached with hellish cold.