The Stone Rose

by Carol Townend

  It was no knight that Alan was succouring.

  Impossibly, it was Ned.

  Lady Juliana had seen what was happening. She rose gracefully. ‘Come, Mistress Fletcher,’ she said, with the unruffled assurance of a woman who had tended men’s hurts on such occasions a thousand times before. When Gwenn made no move, she gently took her arm. ‘We’ll go to Sir Raoul’s pavilion and see what needs to be done.’

  ***

  Alan had barely had time to lay Ned down on a pallet when Duchess Constance’s messenger arrived, chest heaving, at Sir Raoul’s pavilion. ‘Lady Juliana!’ the messenger panted, shoving his head unceremoniously through the tent flap. ‘The Duchess is calling for you, there’s been another accident!’

  ‘Another?’ Lady Juliana lifted her eyes from the bloody mess that had been Ned Fletcher’s chest and avoided looking at Gwenn.

  ‘My lady, you’re to come at once!’

  Lady Juliana rocked back on her heels, secretly relieved at her timely reprieve. As God was her witness, she didn’t mind helping when a man had a chance. But Ned Fletcher was a doomed man and she did not want to be the one to tell his young, pregnant wife. ‘One moment, my man.’ She stared at Gwenn’s jawline. ‘Can you cope, my dear?’

  ‘I...I think so.’ Trembling fingers reached for Ned Fletcher’s slashed gambeson. ‘But there’s not much we can do, is there?’

  Lady Juliana squirmed, unable to avoid such a direct question. ‘My dear, I’m afraid it’s only a matter of time. It’s tragic, such an unlucky blow. Both lungs are affected.’

  ‘Both?’ This from Alan.

  ‘Aye. With lungs, if one only is damaged, it is not necessarily a mortal blow. But two... It’s tragic. And when the bubbles of blood come to the mouth, you know the end is near.’ Lady Juliana pressed a linen cloth to Ned’s mouth, and displayed the stained cloth to the injured man’s wife and cousin.

  Gwenn fixed her with agonised dark eyes. ‘You’re saying he’s going? That it’s only a matter of time?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But there must be something we can do! We’ll try anything, won’t we, Alan?’

  ‘Anything. My lady, are you certain we can do nothing?’ Iron fingers sunk into Lady Juliana’s arm.

  ‘I’m sorry, Captain. He’s drowning–’

  His wife stirred. ‘Ned’s drowning in his own blood. Oh, sweet Jesus. Ned. Ned.’

  Gwenn felt Ned’s pain as if it were her own. If only there was something she could do to help him. She would sell her soul if it kept Ned alive. That morning Ned had been so happy, so excited. Ned was young. Ned was strong. He should not be dying. How could God destroy someone as kind and selfless as Ned? Where was the divine purpose in his death? And why had it been Ned who had stopped that lance? It might just as easily have been someone else. Why Ned? Why?

  The ducal messenger was wringing his hands. ‘My lady, you must come,’ he said. ‘The Duchess has need of you.’

  ‘Yes, you’re needed elsewhere,’ Gwenn said, dully. ‘Thank you, Lady Juliana. We’ll manage.’

  ‘Good girl,’ Lady Juliana approved, briskly. She shook herself free of Alan’s grip, faltering only when she saw the impotent rage in his eyes. ‘I...I’ll see a priest is sent, so he doesn’t die unshriven.’ Lady Juliana picked up her skirts and fled.

  She kept her word, and soon one of Duke Geoffrey’s chaplains arrived at Sir Raoul’s pavilion. He took one look at Ned and efficiently administered the last rites. This done, he hovered near the entrance, unwilling to leave until Sir Raoul’s squire had gone to God.

  The pain in Ned’s chest had expanded and taken over the whole of his body. He couldn’t move. He could barely see for the black shapes which floated like dark wraiths across his sight. But he could hear. He could hear a sawing noise. It was very loud. He could also hear voices – Gwenn and Alan and someone else.

  Ned wanted to speak to his wife. The sawing noise faded. He managed a pathetic gasp. ‘Gwenn?’ Was that him? He tried again. ‘Gwenn?’ When he had done, he was desperate for air, and as he laboured to drag in a breath the sawing noise recommenced, and he made the chilling discovery that the sawing noise wasn’t sawing at all – it was his lungs fighting for air.

  ‘Hush, Ned.’ Gwenn’s voice had a break in it, as though she were forcing back tears. ‘Try to rest. Try to regain your strength.’

  Something light brushed across Ned’s brow. Her hand? A cloth? His senses were disordered and it was difficult to make the distinction. He couldn’t even tell whether he was lying on a palliasse or the bare earth.

  ‘Gwenn?’ He coughed, and pain shrieked along every nerve. Immediately that soft something feathered across his lips. He heard a sob, a smothered gasp, and dimly made out what she said.

  ‘Look, Alan, more blood. Ned, don’t leave me.’ Her voice dropped. ‘You’re all I’ve got. Without you...’

  Ned tried to sit up, but his limbs were sleeping. He tried to make his lips give Gwenn the reassurance that she was asking for, but they would not work either. He gave up the struggle, resolving to rest as she had suggested, for then he would be able to tell her. In a moment he would have conserved the strength to remind her that he would never leave her. Never. Had he not sworn it?

  For a time, the only sound in the tent was the harsh rasping of his breathing.

  ‘I don’t understand it,’ the priest murmured in an undertone to Alan, whom he recognised. ‘By rights your countryman should be dead already. He’s suffering greatly. If only we could ease his passage.’

  Numb with grief, Alan watched Gwenn kneeling by his cousin’s bed, grasping those solid, waxen hands. He knew what was holding Ned from the brink of death. Gwenn was, with the tears in her eyes, and the catch in her voice, and the loving touch of her hand. It was Gwenn who was making Ned cling to life, and in so doing she was prolonging his agony, for Ned would never leave this earth while she was at his side, pleading for him to stay. Ned’s face had been blue when they had brought him here. Now it was like a death-mask, and yet he lived. It was cruel that his last moments should be tortured ones. Ned had never in all his young life tormented anyone. Alan thought he knew how he could ease his cousin’s passage to death. Yet he hesitated. ‘You swear there’s no hope?’ he whispered.

  ‘None. God is waiting for him.’

  Alan nodded. He walked to the bed and held out his hand. ‘Gwenn? Come with me.’

  Gwenn looked at him from a world of sorrow, eyelids swollen and red.

  A cold stone lay in Alan’s belly. ‘Come.’ He bent, and taking her hand from Ned’s, enfolded it in his own. Ruthlessly ignoring her reluctance, he drew her into dazzling sunlight. ‘We’ll walk awhile.’

  ‘But, Alan, I want to be with him.’

  ‘No. It’s better for Ned if you come with me.’

  In the shadowy pavilion, Ned stirred, and stretched his hand after his wife, while sooty flakes swirled in his vision. Weakly, his hand sank back. The pain was unendurable. God help me, Ned thought. Where’s Gwenn? He strained to see her, but impenetrable grey veils screened her from his sight. Ned’s search was not completely fruitless, for in a small recess of his fragmented consciousness he found a space, a heavenly space that was not all pain.

  Gwenn? Gwenn?

  The space was dark, but welcoming, because it contained no pain. Ned reached towards it, but his body and the pain he was enduring were weighing him down. Tentatively, he pushed his pain aside.

  The Duke’s chaplain had taken Gwenn’s place at Ned’s bedside. Scenting release, he made the sign of the cross and smiled.

  Gwenn? Where was Gwenn? Lurching back into himself, Ned discovered there was nothing where Gwenn had been except unendurable agony. Floundering, he sought that blissful, pain-free space. It had grown larger. It was almost big enough for him to walk into, and it was expanding. Soon it would be large enough to swallow up the whole of the earth, the sky, and all of God’s creation. But there was one thing missing, one vital thing. It did not hold Gwenn. Ned jerked himself bac
k, back towards pain... His hand lifted, stretching to the afternoon sunlight pouring through the door slit. The chaplain caught his hand. Ned focused on him. The chaplain had brown eyes like Gwenn’s, and in them Ned saw warm and abiding love, and great understanding. It occurred to him that if he died, he would be leaving Gwenn with his cousin. Simultaneous with that thought, came a crucifying convulsion. ‘Gwenn...’ he moaned.

  ‘Relax, my son,’ the priest murmured. ‘You cannot fight the inevitable. Relax, and trust to God that your souls will meet in the eternal. Let go.’

  ‘But, Gwenn...’

  His groan was weak, but the priest heard. ‘Your friend will care for her.’

  Ned tried to shake his head. Tried to say that that would not do, but he had no power to explain to a priest, even one with compassionate eyes.

  ‘Put yourself and Gwenn into God’s hands, my son. Trust in His infinite wisdom.’

  Ned’s mouth wouldn’t move. He wanted to admit that he did not think he could do that. What if he let go, and Gwenn never came? An eternity without her was unthinkable, but he was bone-tired. ‘Tell Alan... Tell my cousin...’

  ‘Aye?’

  ‘Tell him to see her safe to Plou–’ he coughed, ‘Ploumanach.’

  ‘I will.’

  Ned drew a rattling, agonised breath. ‘Father?’

  ‘My son?’

  ‘Ask him...ask Alan to tell my mother...to give her my love, and...’ Ned wasn’t able to finish. He was past talking. He was past worrying. His eyes closed. The great darkness was in front of him; the darkness where there was no pain. It seemed to beckon him. Slowly, Ned let go, and left his broken body behind him. He was not confident he would see Gwenn again, and could only hope that perhaps, out there, in those vast uncharted reaches, that would not matter. Bathed in peace, Ned breathed a blissful sigh. His last.

  ‘Requiescat in pace,’ the Duke’s chaplain muttered, and solemnly he reached out and folded Ned’s capable, farmer’s hands over the wound in the shattered, bloody chest.

  ***

  Having escaped one death-bed, Lady Juliana had found herself standing at another, for minutes after the accident in which her fiancé’s squire had been hurt, the Duke of Brittany had fallen.

  Head bowed, Lady Juliana left the ermine pavilion. Her proud features wore a stunned, incredulous look.

  Sir Raoul was waiting for her. He pushed past the guards. ‘What news?’ he demanded, eyeing the closed tent flap.

  Lady Juliana shook her head. It was a struggle to find any words. ‘He’s gone, Raoul,’ she said. ‘The Duke is gone.’

  Sir Raoul crossed himself. ‘Mother of God, not Brittany too! He was twenty-eight – only a year older than I. How did he die? One reckless gesture too many, I suppose? He was ever a showman.’

  ‘He was crushed and... Please, Raoul, I don’t want to talk about it.’

  ‘My apologies, my dear. And Duchess Constance? How is she taking it?’

  ‘Composedly. She’s not shed a tear. But King Philip’s weeping would cause the Seine to burst its banks.’

  Sir Raoul jerked his head at the white silk pavilion. ‘His Grace the King is inside?’

  ‘Aye. And crying like a babe. The Duchess is comforting him.’

  ‘It’s a bad business.’

  ‘Aye.’ Lady Juliana had only come out for a breath of clean, untainted air. The heat and the smell of death in the tent was suffocating. When the King left, she would have to see to her Duchess.

  ‘All in all three men have died this day,’ Sir Raoul informed her. ‘Our Duke, Fletcher, and a knight from Gascony whom I do not know. Two more men have been sorely wounded, and are fighting for their lives. Oh, aye, and apparently there’s a dead beggar.’

  ‘B...beggar? What beggar?’ Lady Juliana seized on the diversion, for beggars did not count.

  ‘Christ knows. He only had one hand, so he was probably a convicted thief. One of the King’s guards heard a stray dog barking in the forest. When the barking didn’t let up, he investigated and found the body. The guard knew him for a beggar because he had seen the same man hanging around for scraps by the cookhouse. His throat had been cut, and he’d been mutilated. Hacked about.’

  A look of distaste flickered across Lady Juliana’s features. ‘No grisly details, Raoul. I’ve had my fill for today.’

  ‘Sorry, my dear. But what in blazes could anyone gain by torturing a lousy beggar?’

  ‘Raoul, please.’

  ‘My apologies. Dear God, it’s been a bad day. The rest of the tournament will probably be cancelled.’

  ‘I should think so.’

  ‘A bad business,’ he muttered glumly, ‘a bad business.’

  ‘You will have to do something about that young man’s widow, Raoul. She’s pregnant.’

  ‘Oh, hell, is she?’ Raoul Martell sighed. ‘Then I suppose I will, especially as Fletcher was trying to warn me.’

  ‘Warn you?’ Lady Juliana looked a question.

  Flushing, Sir Raoul fixed his eyes on a tent peg. ‘Aye, he was warning me. Some Frenchman took it into his head that I caused him to lose a favourite hawk.’

  ‘And did you?’

  ‘What, lose the wretched man his sparrowhawk? Jesu, no. It wasn’t my fault if his falconer had trained the bird ill. A tourney’s no place for a half-trained bird. It happened yesterday. All I did was ride past his hawk; it took a dislike to my horse, bated, snapped its leash, and was into the blue before you could bat an eye. The Frenchman took it into his head I was to blame. At any rate, he banded together with some other French knights and they chose me as their target. Fletcher ran onto the field to warn me.’

  ‘By now he will be dead,’ Lady Juliana whispered. The guy ropes of the ducal pavilion creaked. The tent flap was folded back, and Philip of France strode past them. His eyelids were swollen, his cheeks mottled and his lips compressed, but he was every inch a king. Lady Juliana curtsied deeply, and the knight bowed; but they were too slow, and their obeisances were directed at the King’s back.

  ‘I’d best go in, Raoul.’

  ‘Aye. You attend your Duchess, and I’ll attend Ned Fletcher’s widow. Adieu, till later, my dear.’ And bending over his fiancée’s hand, Sir Raoul pressed his lips to her fingers and turned on his heel.

  ***

  It was past the ninth hour and the light was fading. Ned had been laid to rest under newly cut turves that afternoon, less than an hour after he had died. Alan and Gwenn had been his only mourners, Sir Raoul being too taken up with the Duke’s death. It had been a hasty, improvised burial on hallowed ground in a nearby village churchyard. For Alan it had been heart-breaking; it had been too quick and too impersonal. Alan had seen many such funerals, funerals of hired men whose masters hardly knew them. But it was no stranger Alan was bidding farewell today. This was his childhood playmate and cousin. For Gwenn it must have been hell. She seemed to have done into deep shock.

  On their return from the burial, she had disappeared into the tent. She had been alone there for three hours, and Alan hadn’t heard so much as a whisper from her. It was unnatural. He had spent most of that three hours gazing sightlessly into his tent-side fire, straining his ears in case she broke down. It was the loneliest, most miserable guard duty that he had ever undertaken. He couldn’t believe Ned was dead. His cousin had been the happiest, most contented, accepting man Alan had ever known. And Ned was no more. Alan couldn’t believe Duke Geoffrey had gone either, but at least the Duke’s death could be thought of calmly, without too much emotion. Alan wondered whether the Duchess was reacting to her husband’s death.

  Alan’s stomach felt empty. How could he feel hunger at a time like this? He drank a skinful of wine, but his hunger remained, a gnawing ache, deep in his guts. He had no food with him. He did not want to leave Gwenn to go to the cookhouse, not even for half an hour. And from his tent? Nothing. No sobbing, no weeping. Nothing.

  Gwenn had taken the purse that a heavy-browed Sir Raoul had offered her by way of compensation for a
lost husband. She had nodded when the knight said that he had arranged for Ned’s burial, and she seemed to accept, for the time being at least, Alan’s guardianship of her. But not a solitary tea had she shed. It was as if this latest tragedy had turned her to stone.

  When Alan had told Sir Raoul that Ned’s last wishes had been that he should take care of Gwenn, the knight’s brow had cleared – what with the Duke of Brittany’s death, noblemen had politics on their minds, and no doubt the future of an untried squire’s widow did not loom large. No one had objected to her spending the night in Alan’s tent. Had she been a lady of high estate, matters would have been arranged very differently. Not that Alan was complaining. If anyone was indelicate enough to imply that he would lay a hand on her while she grieved for her husband, he’d split their slanderous tongues for them.

  He had heard the rumours concerning Ned’s foray into the lists. He scowled an accusation at the fading glow in the western sky. ‘Ned, you were a fool, a chivalrous fool. See where your folly has left us.’ But it was no use blaming the dead. Ned could not help his nature any more than he could his. He would miss his vital young cousin.

  Marshalling his emotions, Alan eyed the closed flap with misgivings. She had gone into his tent meekly as a lamb, asking if she could be left alone. Assuming she wished to grieve in private, Alan had withdrawn. But she was not grieving. What was she doing? Could he disturb her? Should he disturb her? His stomach growled, and thus prompted, he rose to his feet. There was bread and water in the tent.

  She was sitting cross-legged exactly as he had left her, on the thin mattress she had shared with Ned. Sir Raoul’s drawstring purse was in front of her. It was unopened. Great eyes lifted briefly to Alan as he came in.

  ‘I came for water,’ he said, unhooking the flask from a knob on a tent pole.

  Silence.

  ‘Are you thirsty?’

  Silence.

  ‘Gwenn...’ Helplessly, Alan watched her downcast head. With a jerky movement he slung the waterskin onto his pallet and tried again. ‘Gwenn? Oh, Jesu, Gwenn, say something.’