Free The Law of Angels by Cassandra Clark

The son of Earl de Hutton’s chief forester, he had risen to the rank of steward by sheer ability. The only thing different about him was his forever untidy shoulder-length hair. Bleached by the sun more than ever, it accentuated his tanned complexion and enhanced the ice blue sparkle of his eyes.
    At present he was striding around Master Danby’s workshop, poking into everything with the greatest interest. “So this is the crucible where you work your magic!” he declaimed, straightening and spreading his arms to include the entire workshop. Danby puffed with pride. Ulf peered into some clay pots containing coloured powders ranged along the windowsill. “And this is?” He lifted one of them up.
    “Pot metal,” explained Danby. “We buy in sheets of coloured glass from the Rhineland but paint on it what we wish. That’s where the real skill lies, the magic, if you like,” he added with a chuckle.
    Ulf lifted the pot to his nose then replaced it on the long trestle that ran the length of the room. Content in his domain, a man at ease, Danby picked it up and replaced it on the windowsill. An orderly man as well as content, Hildegard observed.
    Now the master sent his apprentice to call up a jug of wine from someone called Dorelia in a back room, then turned to his guests.
    There was already one man present. He had gone unnoticed at first, but when Danby introduced him as his brother Baldwin, also a glazier, he stepped forward a pace from out of the shadows in a corner of the workshop and bowed his head to Hildegard. The brother was tall where Edric Danby was short, and he was thin as if deprived of sustenance, while his elder brother was well-covered, no doubt from the contentment of dining well. Baldwin’s hair was clipped close to his skull and he wore his capuchon pushed down round his shoulders in artful folds. A large jewel on a silver chain was displayed in the opening of his tunic. Hildegard looked at it twice. If it had been real it would have been worth a small fortune.
    Baldwin was eyeing the visitors as if they were interlopers preventing him from conducting business. Hildegard noticed an empty beaker of wine in his hand. It showed he had been enjoying his brother’s hospitality for some time while he waited.
    Ulf had evidently only just arrived. He was peering along the racks of glass and commenting on the colours.
    “Those blue tablets of glass are from France,” Danby told him, happy to explain. “We mostly use glass from around Cologne as they seem to have good conditions for making it and it’s easier to get it by sea and upriver than by carting it the length of England from France. And there’s the trouble with the French as well. Makes supplies unreliable.” He slid a small tablet from the rack and held it up to the light. “Myself, I prefer the yellowish lustre of this Rhenish glass.” He handed the translucent tablet to Ulf with an air of pride.
    The apprentice, face beaming at something that must have happened in the back kitchen, returned with a jug of wine and without being told poured a generous amount into four beakers including his own, refilled the one held out by his master’s brother, then went to sit on a stool next to a partly whitewashed workbench.
    There was a pot on the bench with several sticks of charcoal and a few brushes of different sizes sticking out of it. A variety of other containers were set in an orderly fashion on a shelf at head level. The apprentice took one of them down. It was a receptacle for the off-cuts of glass that were of no further use and he selected a few pieces, put them in the mortar and began to grind them with the pestle.
    Baldwin spoke up. “Master Talcot wants to borrow yon journeyman of yours to draw the face of God.” He gave a somewhat contemptuous glance towards an inner chamber.
    The apprentice’s head was bent over his task, tousled hair in disarray with the vigour of his movements, but when he heard what Baldwin said he looked up