Chapter One
Linnet was so cold her legs had become mercifully numb.
That didn’t help with the slipping and sliding over the wet sands and the mud, but at least the stinging, freezing pain was gone.
She stopped again to try and find her way.
The path had seemed simple from the shore, but that was over an hour ago, and she cursed herself, not for the first time, for her impatience to get on the island.
She should have got a guide. She would only have had to wait another night, but then the thought of Guy coming after her flooded her with fear again, and she knew she couldn’t have waited.
She looked over the seas that were creeping ever closer, the water rushing up and away, like a playful creature.
The sky had got darker since she started, not only the lack of daylight on this, one of the shortest days of the year, but with slate storm clouds and a grey sprinkle of snow showers.
Holy Island lay in front of her like a delicate curl of land, and felt further away than when she left the shore.
She was close enough to see the brooding shape of the Priory overshadowing the village houses.
‘Unlovely and unloved,’ her father used to say about it, she remembered now.
She’d seen many cathedrals and priories, and they could soar, floating above a city or a town, but here the Priory squatted, heavy on the thin island, absurdly large for its place.
She put her head down, she would get as far as that small dark boulder ahead of her, and then try and work out the safest route again.
The white stones the landlady at Beale had told her to look out for were almost impossible to see in the gloom.
She was almost all the way to the boulder when it moved, startling her enough that she lost her footing and sat down heavily on the mud.
It was a seal, staring at her with frank curiosity with its dark, soulful eyes, before slipping away silently into the suddenly deep sea behind it.
She sent up a quick prayer of thanks to St Gertrude as she realised this would have been the path she took and she would have drowned in a matter of minutes.
She had always invoked St Gertrude ever since she’d seen a shrine to her with the little mice carvings, and of course she was a saint who could conquer the sea and the storms. Saint Lucy would do nothing for her today, even though it was her saint’s day.
Precious little light around but wait – a flash of white stone showed her another way and she scrambled to her feet and, walking like a drunk with the wind and the snow flurries around her, made it safely onto the beach where she began shaking and couldn’t stop.
It took a while for her to hear the man speaking to her, but when she looked up, it was Tom. Tom the fisherman she remembered from her childhood visits to the island.
‘What are you doing here?’ he was asking, looking concerned, but with no glimmer of recognition.
‘Tom,’ she said. ‘I’m Linnet, you remember? From years ago?’ Just saying her real name after all these years felt like a blessing.
And then he did remember and a smile spread across his face.
He helped her to her feet and started talking and remembering.
She interrupted to ask after his mother and he stopped talking again, and shook his head and said ‘last year’.
And she felt her heart sink a little at the thought of a woman who had been so kind to her, fallen into dust.
‘I’d better take you to the Prior,’ he said and started leading the way up to the Priory, the buildings disappearing into the gloom as night fell, and she followed, meekly enough for now, her mind racing as to what she was going to say.
They went past the big door to the Priory Church, firmly closed, and he took her through a gate at the side into the inner courtyard, and past a bustling kitchen to the Prior’s parlour.
He knocked but it was empty, the singing coming from the Priory Church telling her why.
‘You can wait in here with the fire to warm you until he’s back. I’ll go and tell him who you are, it’s Prior Richard, he’s heard of John-the-Lies of course so he’ll know.’
And with that, Tom had left her there, looking around this elegant room which felt so far away from the cold, wet, dark walk she’d just done.
As she warmed through, the needles of cold came rushing back into her legs and hands, and she put her bag down and began to stomp her feet a little to get the pain to go faster.
Her little finger gave that special extra ache from the time Guy broke it, a pain she clung on to now to remind her why she had fled.
Walking around the room she could see letters left on the Prior’s desk.
She glanced carefully at the door before looking down to read what she could of the first one.
It was from the Bishop of Durham who was scolding the Prior for not having dismissed one of the monks sooner.
His drunkenness was bringing shame to the island, the Bishop had written, and something about the unsteadiness of his hand.
Was this dismissed monk a scribe? If so, she may have found herself a way to stay here for a little while at least. At worst, she would have a night here before she had to make more plans.
The waters had rushed over the path she’d taken as soon as she’d reached the beach, there was nowhere for her to go until the tides changed.
Voices outside gave her just enough time to move away from the desk and the letter and she composed herself to be looking down demurely as the Prior came into the room. Tom was talking to him, and they were followed by a shorter man who glared at her with frank suspicion.
She tried to discreetly brush off the worst of the mud from her cloak, but realised it would make no difference. Her hair was still plastered to her face, swept into rough tendrils by the wind and the snow flurries, and she looked, she knew, slovenly.
The Prior held up a hand to stop Tom speaking and spoke directly to Linnet.
‘Tom says you’re the daughter of John-the-Lies? What are you doing here, woman, and what do you want us to do with you?’
His words were brisk but his tone wasn’t harsh and she pinched her hands together behind her back to give her the vigour she needed.
‘My father said he would be coming to Holy Island and I lost my lodgings and had to move on, so I thought to come here and wait for him. I won’t be a burden though, I can work for you while I wait.’
She wouldn’t tell him where her father had gone, nor the suspicions she had about what he was doing there, or the danger he might be in.
He frowned at her and gestured for her to go on.
‘I can scribe if you’ve a need of it, and I’m a limner and can make inks.’
Tom leaned forward. ‘Her father taught her the inks and the scribing, Prior, she were ever so good at it even as a little girl, she—’
But the Prior silenced him again and beckoned Linnet forward to the desk, sweeping the letters and papers away until he found a scrap of parchment.
‘Write the Pater Noster on there then, show me what you can do.’
Thankful for the few minutes she’d had to warm her hands, Linnet found her pens and her little travelling pot of oak gall ink, and muttering the familiar words, began to scribe them, then stopped.
‘I can show you more, Prior, do you have a hand you’d like me to copy?’
His face sharpened with interest then and he pulled a few pages from a prayer book towards her and said, ‘Copy that.’
She looked at the hand, cramped, wavering, the dispatched monk’s hand she was sure, and then did her best to mimic it but also smooth it out, making the marks and the flourishes seem purposeful, more graceful and intended. She was so intent it made her jump when the Prior spoke again.
‘Yes, you can stay here, at least to finish this prayer book, and then we’ll see. Speak to Ann in the kitchen, she’ll tell you where you can sleep.’
‘And will I get paid?’
The smaller man pushed forward then. ‘When the Prior is doing you kindness in having you stay here? How dare you—’
But the Prior stopped him. ‘That is Brother Oswyn, our bursar. We will pay you for a fair copy when it is done and I’ll decide what that price should be.’
She nodded. Honour was satisfied. He knew she was skilled and she knew she would not work for nothing but board.
She felt like she held her breath for the next few hours as she was taken from the parlour to the kitchens, shown the privies near the stables, met a prickly woman, Ann, unimpressed with her or the task she’d been given, and finally shown to a small cell above the kitchens with some bales arranged so that she could sleep on them and a poor blanket to cover herself with.
She’d made it. For a while at least, she would be safe.