Free The Dragon of Handale by Cassandra Clark Page A

shadows. “Go,” she whispered. “Trust me.”
    Poor little creature, she thought as the girl slid nervously into the darkness. Hildegard paced the floor for some time after the novice left, until a plan began to form. She would need outside help, but how to obtain it was the question.
    The doleful bell began its summons again. Compline. She let herself out and crossed the garth.
     
     
    “Next morning, she hurriedly broke her fast, then went to see the mesons. Matt sheered her then blurted, Giles probably died because of me. I was hankering after a really good-size piece of beech and he said he knew just where to find one. That’s where it happened. By the great beech.” Matt’s every-ready smile had faded and his eyes clouded over.
    Before Hildegard could offer any remark, Carola put a hand on his shoulder. “That’s a sot-witted thing to say and you know it.” She turned to Hildegard.
    “I’m sure Mistress York would like to see some of your work.”
    “I would indeed.” The two women exchanged a look.
    Matt, oblivious, stood up. “This chair,”—he indicated the one he had been sitting in—“What do you think to it?”
    “Did you make this?” Hildegard ran her hand over the silky wood. It was a fine piece of craft work.
    “Oh, he’s that proud of it. You’d think nobody had ever made a chair before.” Carola punched him teasingly on the shoulder.
    “I haven’t made one before, and that’s a fact, so give me leave to strut in my achievement.” He smiled faintly.
    Carola said, “I hope that there fat prioress appreciates it.”
    “You don’t think I’m leaving this for her to sit on and turn to matchwood, do you?”
    “You’ll be copping it, then. She’ll have you up for stealing priory property.”
    “She owns all the wood God grows, does she?”
    “All that on priory lands, yes.”
    “She’ll get it returned in its former state, then, as a lump of wood. See what she does with that. My craft isn’t for sale to any old barterer.”
    Despite the apparent good nature of their exchange, there was heaviness in their humour. It was apparent that the death of their fellow mason weighed on them all.
    “Show Mistress York your little figures,” suggested Dakin.
    Matt went to a shelf and lifted down some pieces carved from wood: an angel, a grotesque, and a stag at bay, its antlers as graceful as the real thing but in delicate miniature.
    “All wood from hereabouts,” he explained.
    “And this one?” asked Hildegard, noticing another one on the ledge.
    They all looked at it in silence. Matt made no move to get it down.
    It was a dragon, unfinished, but its claws and the scales on its back gave testimony to what it was.
    Dakin broke in. “Mistress York, come and look at our edifice. If Matt can strut, so can we.”
    He led her outside. “He’s taking Giles’s death hard, both of ’em being of an age and mates, like,” he confided. “We’re all cut up, of course. It shouldn’t have happened. We’re still waiting to hear back from the master. He’ll root out the culprit, sure as hellfire. It’s the waiting for justice that’s getting us down.”
    “I notice the coroner hasn’t shown up yet,” Hildegard said.
    “It’ll be the weather that’s holding him up. Until he shows his face we’re stuck here in this hellhole.” His voice, though not much above a whisper as they stepped inside the shell of the building, echoed round the half-built stone walls with frustrated rage.
    “It seems close to being finished,” observed Hildegard, looking about. “When does the roof go on?”
    “Not yet awhile. Foundations laid last summer. Walls half-built before the bad weather set in. Two storeys. A spiral stair, half-built. The whole to be roofed in slate. We’re making use of the weather to construct the wooden centring to support the stone/work. We can’t get on with the rest of it until the weather improves. Too wet now. The mortar won’t set. Then we have to bash a hole