‘I will send for Jean de Veyrac, Bishop of Limoges, he’s the nearest high prelate.’
Negu, thinking she may have hastened the Lionheart’s demise, was distraught.
‘We should also find the King’s physician.’
‘He’s a dead man; he will be executed as soon as he’s found. They can bring someone from Limoges with the Bishop, but I fear his skills may be redundant.’
The next morning, when we cleaned and dressed the wound, it looked angry. The skin was fiercely hot to the touch, and the King was very edgy. Negu had prepared a poultice and a medicinal broth, both based on cures devised by Hildegard.
‘We must get his fever down.’
As Negu was applying the poultice, Mercadier noticed the talisman around the King’s neck.
‘What in God’s name is that?’
‘It is the Talisman of Truth, something very precious to him.’
Mercadier grasped the chain to remove it.
‘It is an amulet of the occult; it has no place around the King’s neck.’
‘Leave it! It belongs to the King.’
Few men ever crossed Mercadier, or spoke to him as I did, but he knew that my resolve was unshakeable. He backed off and walked away.
‘I’m going to finish the siege; I want the man who did this.’
Negu’s poultices and broth began to work, and the fever appeared to relent a little.
But on the fourth day, she summoned me as she was dressing the wound. What I saw turned my stomach, and I had to leave.
Negu joined me outside the tent when she had finished.
‘The wound is putrefying; it’s gangrene.’
‘What can we do?’
‘We could try canker maggots, but the infection is very deep. The King knows; I think he accepts the inevitable.’
I went inside to see him.
‘Sire, is there anything I can do to make you more comfortable?’
‘Whatever happened to those two maidens?’
‘I can send for them, sire.’
‘Good, I’ll see them tonight. I will have my strength back by then. Organize a feast with the best Graves.’
There were tears in his eyes; he knew he was dying. I put my good hand on his chest, and he rested his strong right hand on it.
‘We have been through a lot together, my friend. Will you stay with me until the end?’
‘Of course, sire.’
My eyes filled with tears, and they began to roll down my face.
‘No tears, Ranulf. Not when I’m gone, either. I’m afraid there is nothing to stop John taking the throne now. If I try to prevent it, war will follow and it will tear the Empire apart. My mother is the only hope to steady the ship. She will need you and the Grand Quintet to help her. If she calls on you, please go to her and do all you can.’
‘I will, until my dying day.’
‘Let’s hope that day is much further away than mine!’
The King closed his eyes, but then they sprang open again.
‘You should take the talisman. If my mother sees it, she will suspect that I did not destroy the manuscripts. Besides, I think my time with it is over and that I should return it to its guardian.’
I lifted it off his neck as gently as I could and put it into its leather pouch.
‘How will you find its next recipient?’
‘I don’t know, sire. Perhaps I should bury it with the casket and let it find its own inheritor. I suspect it’s been buried before and has always been found. Maybe it’s time for it to be dormant again.’
‘Knowing who has worn it before me, I have been proud to wear it. It would comfort me to think that I may be the last of its heirs in its current life. Perhaps you should go back to St Cirq Lapopie and lay it to rest with my grandfather. It would be good to know it was in the soil of Aquitaine. He grew to love my homeland, as I grew to love his. I’m glad England has found peace after so many years of violence and anguish. Thanks to you, I now know it is my home too and that I share the blood of its people. When you return, give them my love; walk through its fair meadows and by its sweet streams, and think of me.’
The King gripped my hand; he closed his eyes once more and fell into a sleep that, for the first time in days, seemed restful.
The siege of Chalus-Chabrol was ended by Mercadier two days later. The sappers had dug deep under a corner of the castle walls and had managed to bring it down into a heap of rubble. It did not take Mercadier long to find the culprit who had shot the King, and he dragged him before us in chains. He had been badly beaten.
The Lionheart was slowly slipping away, but he was still conscious for short periods.
Mercadier roused him.
‘Sire, I have brought the man who shot you. I can’t get him to say much.’
The King peered at the man and asked to be lifted so that he could see him better.
‘You are no more than a boy. How old are you?’
The young man, who was little more than eighteen, looked at the King with a sneer of contempt and answered defiantly.
‘Old enough to kill you.’
Mercadier kicked the boy in the groin, sending him sprawling.
‘Hold, Mercadier! The boy has the heart of a lion and the eye of a hawk. I don’t want him hurt. Ranulf, help him up.’
He adopted a gentle tone with his assailant.
‘What is your name?’
‘Pierre Basil, a son of the Limousin.’
‘Where did you learn to use an arbalest as accurately as that?’
‘My grandfather taught me, as he had my father and my brother. He also showed me how to make the swallowtail quarrel and how to dip it in leopard’s bane and pig shit to make sure it killed its target.’
‘Then he is a wonderful teacher.’
‘Was! He’s dead now, as are my father and brother.’
‘How did they die?’
‘My grandfather died two weeks ago; he was old. But you killed my father and brother!’
‘Where?’
‘In a skirmish near Pacy-sur-Eure in Normandy, late last year. You cut my father down with your sword, and my brother was trampled to death by your horse.’
The Lionheart looked at the boy. His eyes were moist, but there was also a look of admiration on his face.
‘They would be very proud of you; you have avenged them.’
He then turned to Mercadier.
‘Set the boy free, and give him a hundred shillings.’
Mercadier was furious. But out of respect for the King’s wishes, he took the boy out of the tent much more gently than he had brought him in.
The boy’s confession that he had used poison and pig shit to make his missile more lethal explained why the Lionheart now faced his maker.
By Sunday 3 April, the King was still alive, but fading fast. Queen Eleanor and the Grand Quintet had arrived, but not Bérengère, who was not well enough to travel.
A vigil was organized around the King’s bed. His tent had become a shrine, where members of his army came every day to pray for him. The Bishop of Limoges gave him Extreme Unction and we all awaited his death as calmly as we could, knowing that that was what he would have demanded.
The words the King had spoken to Mercadier about the boy were his last. He lost consciousness permanently, his great strength the only thing keeping him alive, but Queen Eleanor said that when she took his hand, she could feel him tighten his grip on her.
Richard I of England, known to the world as the Lionheart, the name he had earned when only a boy, died in the early evening of 6 April 1199.
There were no tears from those gathered around him, just an enormous sense of desolation, a void created by the loss of the finest man any of us had ever known. We drew strength from his presence in our lives; the tears would wait until the months and years to come.
His body was laid out under the awning of his tent so that his army could file past and show their respects. They were not short of tears; grizzled campaigners wept ope
nly, and many fell to their knees to touch the hem of the Lionheart’s cape. Some left flowers and the bulbs of spring, others left pieces of silver, or little tokens they had carved for him.
They had followed him to the far reaches of the earth and were immensely proud of it.
According to his wishes, and in his family’s tradition, his heart was taken to Rouen by the Grand Quintet. His mother took his body to the Abbey of Fontevraud, in the Loire, so that he could be buried next to his father.
Negu and I went south, to St Cirq Lapopie, where we completed our obligations to the Lionheart, and also to Earl Harold and Abbot Alun. We met the local families to which Harold had left the estate – a charming group of simple Quercynoise folk – and they left us alone to pay our respects at Earl Harold’s grave.
It was a beautiful spring day, with nature beginning to bloom in Quercy’s forests. I had bought a small silver box in Brive as a home for the talisman and, as the Lionheart had suggested, I used my seax to dig a deep hole at the base of Earl Harold’s headstone as a resting place for the ancient amulet.
At sunset, on an evening to lift the soul, Negu sat and stared across the beautiful valley of the Lot, as I sat by Earl Harold’s grave and fulfilled my promise to tell him the story of his grandson’s life and deeds.
I am sure he was as proud to hear it as I was to tell it.
We were sad to leave the paradise that was St Cirq Lapopie, but knew that we had our own utopia waiting for us in England.
Negu and I made our way back to Bolton Priory. It was a subdued journey home. We were both full of reflections and memories, and lingered in several places: in Poitiers, with Queen Eleanor; at the Lionheart’s new tomb in Fontevraud; at Rouen and at Westminster. We finally reached Bolton Priory in time to enjoy the best of a beautiful English summer.
The priory was all but complete and Negu and I began to adjust to a tranquil future together in our haven in the valley of the Wharfe. In the midst of that splendid summer, I often thought about the resting places of those whose stories I had come to know so well. Some like Hereward of Bourne, Sweyn of Bourne and Earl Harold of Hereford were at peace on foreign soil. Others like Torfida and her father, the Old Man of the Wildwood, were at rest in English soil in the wildwoods they cherished so much.
When Negu and I took our daily walk in Strid Wood by the Wharfe, our own piece of ancient woodland, through which the Pennine River hurried like a torrent, I always thought about the Wodewose, our Green Man of English legend. Was he watching over us, as King Richard’s ancestors Torfida and her father believed? Did the Wodewose approve of what had been done by them, and by those who followed them, in England’s name?
I derived great satisfaction from being sure that he did.
As for our memories of the Lionheart, we thought of him every time we strolled by the Wharfe, as he had asked us to, and as we sat by the fire in my hall – especially during the long winter nights. We reflected on the happy times, and sometimes on those that had been less than pleasant. We tried not to bury the sad memories; they had been as much a part of our journey as the happy times, and they were good for the soul. We remembered the astonishing effect the Lionheart had on those around him; his companionship and humour; his strength and courage; his fearsome temper and indomitable spirit. We knew we would never meet his like again, but felt honoured that we had known him so well.
In the autumn of 1203, Roger de Lacy came to stay with us. He was about to depart for the Limousin, to become Castellan of the Lionheart’s Castle of the Rock. He had become a good friend and wanted to say farewell. He brought a poem with him, which had been circulating in England for a while. It had been written by Geoffrey of Vinsauf, a Norman poet and a monk at St Frideswide’s Priory in Oxford.
When Lord Roger read it to us, we wept openly. It said everything that could be said about our friend, the noble Lionheart.
Oh death! Do you realize who you snatched from us? To our eyes he was light; to our ears melody; to our minds amazement.
He was the lord of warriors, the glory of kings, the delight of the world.
In life he inspired with such terror that he is still feared now he is dead.
By this lesson you have made us know how brief is the laughter of the earth, how long are its tears.
Epilogue
John Lackland, the fifth son of Henry Plantagenet, was crowned King of England at Westminster on 27 May 1199. His reign was not a happy one. He presided over the loss of Normandy to Philip of France and the decline of the Plantagenet Empire beyond the Channel.
He was vain and vindictive, and was disliked by his senior magnates and by his subjects. His relationships with the Celtic kings and princes of Ireland, Scotland and Wales suffered greatly, leading him to trust no one and to harbour petty jealousies.
In the year 1212, his inability to inspire affection, as well as the huge taxes he had to levy to pay for his campaigns against the French, led to a revolt by his senior lords, which flung England into chaos.
By then, our good friend, Roger de Lacy, had died. But his son, John de Lacy, the Eighth Earl, had become very close to us; we thought of him as our grandson. Although he was still just twenty years old, he was one of England’s most respected young lords and a leader of the revolt against King John.
Three years later, the rebels had brought the King to his knees and he agreed to settle with them on their terms. Although I was sixty-four years old, when John de Lacy asked me to travel with him to witness the ceremonial confirmation of the agreement between the King and his lords, I was honoured to do so. It was especially appealing as young John was one of the twenty-five lords charged with making sure the King kept to the terms of the settlement.
The deed was signed in the presence of all the magnates of England in a water meadow next to the Thames, at Runnymede, close to William the Conqueror’s fortress at Windsor. It was called the Great Charter of the Liberties of England.
When its terms were read, my heart swelled with pride.
Much of what Hereward and his rebels had fought for at Ely 140 years before, as well as the hopes of his Brotherhood and the dreams of his daughter’s Brethren, had come to pass.
Its principles were based on the Charter of Liberties that Edgar the Atheling had been instrumental in creating for the coronation of Henry I, in 1101.
In the Great Charter, King John agreed to accept that, like any man, he was subject to the law of the land and that all men had the protection of the law, even against a king, if that king’s actions were judged by the law to be cruel or oppressive.
As King John affixed his seal to the Great Charter, I looked at John de Lacy. He was a handsome young warrior. I thought of Hereward at the same age, of Earl Harold and all the others. They would now be content in their resting places; their journey was over, their ambitions fulfilled.
I made my way back to the north to bring the news to Negu. Our journey would also come to an end soon, but we would face it with joy in our hearts.
Dramatis Personae
(Entries are listed alphabetically according to the name most often used in the novel.)
AYYUBID DYNASTY
The Ayyubid dynasty was a Muslim dynasty founded by Saladin. It ruled much of the Middle East during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
After the death of Saladin, his sons contested control over the sultanate, but Saladin’s brother, Saphadin, eventually established himself as Sultan, in 1200.
BALDWIN OF BETHUNE
Through the stormy years of King John’s reign, Baldwin occupied himself with running both his extensive estates in England. He died in October 1212 at Burstwick in Yorkshire, and was buried in the chapter house at Meaux Abbey, of which nothing now remains.
BÉRENGÈRE
Bérengère never visited England during King Richard’s lifetime, but she probably did so following his death. She also sent envoys to England to enquire about the pension she was due as Richard’s widow, which King John failed to pay. Although Queen Eleanor o
f Aquitaine intervened and Pope Innocent III threatened John with an interdict if he did not pay, King John still owed her more than £4,000 when he died. However, during the reign of his son, Henry III of England, her payments were made.
Bérengère eventually settled in Le Mans and became a benefactress of the abbey of L’Épau in Le Mans. She died, in 1230, at the age of sixty-five. Her skeleton was rediscovered during the restoration of the abbey, in 1960. The remains are preserved beneath the stone effigy of the Queen, to be found in the chapter house of the abbey.
BLONDEL DE NESLE
Little is known of his whereabouts or his circumstances after the Third Crusade. In fact, his role with King Richard and exact identity are subject to much debate. Today, his name is attributed to twenty-five songs of the twelfth century.
ELEANOR OF AQUITAINE
When war broke out between King John and Philip of France, in 1201, Eleanor declared her support for John, her son. She set out from Fontevraud to her capital, Poitiers, to prevent her grandson, Arthur I, Duke of Brittany, John’s enemy, from taking control. Arthur learned of her whereabouts and besieged her in the castle of Mirabeau. As soon as John heard of this, he marched south, overcame the besiegers and captured Arthur. Eleanor then returned to Fontevraud, where she took the veil as a nun. Eleanor died, in 1204, at the age of eighty-two. She was buried in Fontevraud Abbey next to her husband Henry and her son Richard. By the time of her death she had outlived all of her children except for King John of England and Queen Eleanor of Castile.
GUY OF LUSIGNAN
Guy of Lusignan died in 1194, without surviving issue. He was succeeded by his brother Amalric, who received the royal crown from Henry VI, Holy Roman Emperor. Descendants of the Lusignans continued to rule the Kingdom of Cyprus until 1489. He was buried at the Church of the Templars in Nicosia.
HENRY II OF CHAMPAGNE
Henry died, in 1197, after falling from a window at his palace in Acre in what was almost certainly an accident. Suggestions that he was behind the assassination of Conrad of Montferrat are still current. His widow, Queen Isabella, remarried soon after his death, to her fourth (and last) husband, Amalric of Lusignan, who became King of Cyprus after the death of his brother, Guy of Lusignan. She died, in 1205, at the age of thirty-two.
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