A murmur of shock followed this presentation, which Lord William immediately stopped with a peremptory gesture.
“I’m not yet finished!” he shouted. “My chief forester wants to speak!”
The company was appalled to have a commoner at the podium, but the forest laws was what I’d expected.
The forester, a brawny young man with no hair, dressed in the green of his trade, was in place before anyone could complain, however. Master Enderby, as he introduced himself, was an inarticulate man with a chubby face and a wandering eye.
“I thankee all fer lettin’ me speak wi’ the gentry,” he said humbly in a raspy voice. “I know my cas may be unimportant to the laks of ye, but I thocht ye micht lak to knaw that the king abuses us lowly folk as weil as the gentry.
“The king’s men ha’e tald me oft enow that his greatest income be from fines collected for forest infractions. Therefore, I turn over every poacher as I find, never mind if he be starvin’. I draw the line, howsomever, at my wif. My wif—” He couldn’t go on.
Lord William hastened to his side. “His wife recently offered the king two dozen eggs if she might be allowed one night with her husband.”
We were all shocked to silence.
Then, to my even greater astonishment, Enoch called Lord Eustace de Vesci to the podium. Eustace’s sandy hair was now streaked with white, and he’d lost weight to rival Bishop Giles. His voice, no longer supercilious, had diminished to the point that he was difficult to hear. I would prefer his former condescension to this pitiful creature.
“My Brother lords, I’ll be brief.” His voice stopped—he seemed not to know where he was. Enoch rushed to his side. “Unhand me!” Lord Eustace would have struck Enoch except that the Scot twisted away. Lord Eustace didn’t speak, however; he panted as if he would swoon. Then he seemed to melt; he sat on the floor sobbing like a babe. When he swooned altogether, Lord Robert and Enoch carried him outside into the rain.
Where he had stood, a pillar of fire now shot to the smoke hole. Inside its flames, the peasant girl in red raised her fist. I heard the crackle, felt the heat—did it come from within? I nodded grimly. I knew at last what I must say.
When Enoch and Lord Robert returned, Edwina announced loudly that we would break for Haute Tierce. The entire company breathed a sigh of relief and were soon eating pork and cheese pies and sipping ale, after which they slept.
When we reassembled, Enoch again took the podium. Lord Eustace felt too weak to talk, so he’d asked Lord Robert fitzWalter to do the honors in his place.
Lord Robert walked gracefully to the podium, swinging his golden chain, which was encrusted, I saw, with tiny diamond facets. The company fell silent. This man, more than any other, represented the power of the Brotherhood.
“My friends,” he said in Parisian French, his voice low and musical, “Lord Eustace apologizes profoundly for his sudden weakness. He has endured much, as some of you already know, and I can only hope that I can convey the depth of his agony in his place. King John spends much of his time on the road with a huge contingent of servants and knights and family members in the manner of all royalty. Unlike others, however, this king keeps his itinerary secret and therefore appears at our estates unannounced. Hospitality under such conditions and especially at certain seasons poses a hardship on the host, however flattered he may be.”
He paused for wine.
“In January—I believe it was January, yes, that’s right—King John arrived at Alnwick unannounced, expecting hospitality. Lord Eustace and Princess Margaret moved with all haste to accept their guests. They supped, they prepared rooms, they did everything they could at such short notice.
“After their evening supper, King John indicated that he was ready to retire. Lord Eustace offered to accompany him to the lord’s own suite of rooms, which servants had prepared for the king. The king stopped him; he never slept alone. Could Lord Eustace spare his own wife for the king’s pleasure?”
The entire company moaned.
“Lord Eustace stammered, too shocked to be articulate. Then his wife, Princess Margaret, stepped forth swiftly: of course she would be most honored to share the king’s bed. She would join him as soon as she could change her chemise.”
Again he sipped.
“She left; Lord Eustace paced in a small closet throughout the night. In the morning, she assured him that she had sent a handmaid in her place. Yet the king said nothing, and Lord Eustace has become the broken man you saw.”
He seemed finished. Yet he still stood at the podium. When he began again, it was in a different voice, more like the broken tones of Lord Eustace.
The flames flared again.
With the smoke coiling around him, Lord Robert spoke of Lady Matilda’s visit to Baynard Castle just before the castle was burned, and shortly before she and her children were starved by the king at Windsor. He didn’t mention Theo by name or even his presence with the lady. Instead, he described her in detail: her lusty humor, her courage, her energy.
“Hear! Hear!” A few barons obviously had known Matilda.
“How Lady Matilda earned the emnity of this mad king is still a mystery, though his emnity seems easy to attain. I personally suspect it was her knowledge about the death of Arthur of Brittany. I wonder how many people in Rouen suffered her fate?”
Did he know about Theo? Aye, I thought he did. The flames crackled louder—I looked at my sleeve, expecting to see a spark—but it was all in my fantastick cell. Again he had to stop for the barons to quiet, this time to an ominous silence, whether from the mention of Arthur’s death or the suggestion that the king’s vengeance had spread, I didn’t know. They looked to him as a sage, however.
“Lady Matilda’s presence had nothing to do with the loss of Baynard Castle, however. I was warned—I knew it was coming. And I warned her when I heard that the event was near. It has been rumored that the king’s men threw their torches because he would not permit London to be a commune. London is still a commune, milords! It will stay a commune so long as I live!”
There was a stamping of boots on rushes.
He held up a hand; the Hall fell silent. Then, like Lord Eustace, he lost control of his voice. “That was the reason the king gave, I say, and there’s an element of truth, but only an element.” He paused so long that I thought he was finished. “I had a daughter—her name was also Matilda.” His voice became difficult to hear. “For those of you who met her, you know that she was the most beautiful maiden ever to tread the earth.” He continued in a whisper. “And she was my favorite child. Oh, I have sons and daughters married to great heirs all over England, but Matilda was . . . special, the fruit of old loins. King John saw her, lusted, asked for her in his bed. I refused. He set Baynard Castle aflame.”
The flames around Lord Robert crackled.
“The flames didn’t touch Matilda—with my cousin Guy de Mandeville’s help, I spirited her out of the city and up to my estate at Dunmow. But I underestimated the monster’s persistence. King John followed us. I didn’t know. He found Matilda alone. I hope he didn’t have her—I hope he didn’t murder her. According to my apothecary, she drank poison of her own free will.” His shoulders heaved. “She died.”
Barons and knights sobbed openly. I was too angry to weep.
I understood at last: desperation. I walked to the front. Enoch introduced me as his wife and the former concubine of King Richard of the Lion Heart.
Now I stood in the midst of crackling flames.
Softly at first, I began to speak. I spoke not of a great passion; rather, I concentrated on Richard’s determination to leave an heir, of his forcing me to sign a contract agreeing to give him a son for his own purposes, his wound and the certificate naming my son as the future king, then the betrayal of both the dead Richard and my embryo son by King John and Queen Eleanor.
Enoch watched me intently.
“After King Richard died of gangrene, I had only a scroll and a sacred order to make my child king. I still
have the scroll.”
I took a deep breath.
“Yet while the dead king was still lying on display, I had to flee for my very life.”
I described in gory detail King John’s pursuit, his drunken proposition, my biting of Raoul, the deer trap, Bok’s decapitation.
“You will think me dense—I think of myself as dense—for not connecting King John’s threats with these tragic events. I’d been seduced by the Plantagenet view that he was a silly boy, mischievous but harmless. Then, at La Rochelle, I had an epiphany.”
I described my yearning for sardines, my loathing of wormy bacon, then the dead peasant girl and the grapes.
“In my sandy grave, I faced the truth. King John was willing to kill every young woman in the kingdom to assure that Richard’s child would die. Silly and young he might be; he was also cunning, powerful, ruthless, perhaps mad. At that moment, I swore two things: to escape and to kill him before he could kill me or the son I was carrying.”
I described my pact with the flaming peasant girl, my nun’s habit, my efforts to hide along the road. One knight rushed from the chamber when I described the difficulties of eating worms. I could hardly hear my own voice in the flames’ crackle.
“At that point—I think it was then—my babe stopped growing. I didn’t give birth, didn’t know what to do, so I simply continued on my way north to Rouen with a dead fetus inside me. After a time, I sailed back to England.”
I glanced at Enoch. “I had long accepted that I carried a dead person inside my womb. And yet . . . recently . . . my unborn babe has quickened. I can’t explain it—maybe it’s because I’m home, safe. All I know is that I’m growing apace and will soon give birth to King Richard’s son, the rightful prince of England.”
Did the barons believe me? Aye, for the same reason they believed that Lord Eustace’s wife had sent her handmaid: because they wanted to believe. Enoch’s face was pale; his hands trembled. Like Joseph, he accepted Mary’s son as coming from God. I went to the kitchen court.
He followed me. “Air ye sartain?”
I turned.
“Aboot the quickening?”
“Oh yes, that.”
“May I feel?”
“You amaze me, Enoch. Not only do you half-believe that this is Richard’s child, you behave as if you want it to live.”
His face reddened. “O’course Ich do! Ha’e ye gone tinty?”
“Have you forgotten Theo? I haven’t won, Enoch, even if I escape John, even if I get him before he gets me.”
“Ye’ll have another son.” His eyes were moist.
“Then you didn’t understand: King John will kill this babe as surely as he did Theo. And me as well.”
“Nay, Alix, he may try, but he willna succeed.”
Lord Robert pushed his way past cheese pies. The great baron looked deeply into my eyes with tears in his own. “Theo was a beautiful boy, my dear, a fit son for such a beautiful mother and great father. And he was happy, I want you to know that.”
“Thank you, my lord.” My voice fell to a whisper. “I’m sorry about your—”
“I know.” He pressed my hands, then went on: The barons had voted to accept Richard’s son as their new king.
“As for the boy you call Theo, that’s the name I will give my son.”
This time there were flames instead of tears in his eyes. “Good girl.”
I congratulated Enoch. His mad plan was going forward. John would be displaced and replaced.
Yet my spirits drooped. I wanted my bairn to live.
I wanted to live.
Which meant . . . ?
Shortly before the Nativity, I rode into Dunsmere with Donald and Gruoth beside me. Gruoth led us directly to a small hut on the lane where Dame Margery had lived. Inside a dark room, we huddled close to a fire pit under an open smoke hole. A short gravid woman surrounded by children introduced herself as Dame Queenhild.
“Rip!” She pulled a small boy away from the fire.
“That’s a most unusual name, Rip,” I commented.
“Rip for Ripple,” Dame Queenhild explained. “All my childer be named for water whence we all cum. The boys be Rip, Current, and Tarn—water what moves—and the girls be Spring, Mere, and yif this one be a female, ’twill be Well, the deep water ye see.”
Like the sisters on the coast naming their cows for fish, everything from water. Or, I recalled my water breaking in Rouen. Aye, babes swam in water; water was their element.
“’Tis a bonny thought, Dame Queenhild.”
She then agreed to serve as my wet nurse, probably in November. When we started back to Wanthwaite a light snow began to fall.
Enoch followed us.
10
In like manner, I found Dame Berdeth in Dunsmere to serve as my midwife. My “prince” was now extremely active; I could no longer sleep lying down. Nor was I any longer of sanguine disposition. I would have him and instantly lose him.
“Alix, oncit ye tald me hu ye escaped from Wanthwaite when that Sir Roland de Roncechaux attacked.” Enoch stood in the door of my room.
I forced myself awake. “Yes. Why?”
“Ye sayed as there war a labyrinth summers on the estate.”
“On most estates, I believe.”
His pale face frightened me.
“Do we need to hide?”
“Shaw me.”
He supported me on our way to the stable. Once inside the dim interior, I felt the eastern wall with my hands.
“Here, aye, here. Push to your right.”
Half a wall slid open to reveal a rough earthen hole. I hadn’t been in the labyrinth since that awful day my parents had died—I felt sick.
“It’s a tunnel down to the Wanthwaite River,” I said in a hushed voice—the place seemed like death to me—“big enough for a horse. Maisry and I used to play in the cave at the bottom.”
Aye, with stick horses. My hands shook.
“Be the cave wisible below?”
“You’ve never noticed it, have you?” He waited. “I think not; honeysuckle vines mask it during the summer. During winter, snow drifts conceal it.” I tried to recall playing there during winter months. “Ice forms well inside.”
“Be there also a door?”
“At the bottom? Not unless you put one there.”
He stepped inside. “’Tis muckle hot!”
“And filled with rats and spiders.” He returned quickly to the stable. “Why are you asking these questions, Enoch?”
“The king.” He put his hands on my shoulders. “Yif we’re attacked, Alix, I want ye shuld bring all the womenfolk here ond stay till I say it’s safe.”
His serious tone chilled me.
“I’ll soon be in labor.”
“Ond ye mun protect our prince.”
“Something’s happened, Enoch. Tell me!”
Before he could answer, I clutched his arm. “Quick, Enoch! Send for the midwife!”
“Air ye . . . ?”
“Aye!”
We reached my closet just as the babe descended. Unlike the Jews, my English help used the birthing stool. Clinging to a rope, I pushed—my babe dropped! It was so sudden—so easy—that I couldn’t believe my eyes when Dame Berdeth held up a mewing waxy triangle. She swung the babe to Gruoth’s waiting hands.
“Careful!” I cried.
Enoch’s wet face came close.
“What are you doing here? Leave!”
“Hu do ye feel?”
“Better than you do, methinks.”
“What will ye call it?” Dame Berdeth shouted.
“Richard. He’s Richard II!”
Enoch licked his lips. “’Tis a wench,” he apologized. “We mun try agin.”
I laughed helplessly. A daughter, I had a daughter. Oh, Deo gratias, a daughter! A worthless female! Not the next prince of England after all! Who wanted a queen on the throne? What father wanted to raise a dowry for his daughter? She would be all mine.
Of course, there was stil
l the problem of King John. Never mind, for the moment let me revel—I had a daughter!
Once she’d had her wax removed and Gruoth had bitten her cord, Enoch cradled her against his neck. Then he held her at arms’ length to gaze in wonder. “We’ll nam her for my mudder. This be little Garnette.”
“Her name is Leith.”
“Leith! Quhat sart o’ a nam be Leith?”
“Leith, the port of Edinburgh.”
Deep water for a girl, and the last place I’d been when Theo had still lived.
“’Tis a beautiful nam fer a beautiful gal!”
Leith now lay by my side. After his first enchantment with her, Enoch had disappeared, to tell the barons the sorry news, no doubt.
“That’s men, my dear,” I told Leith, “a fickle breed, every one.”
She opened one lapis eye. Poor thing looked like Enoch. His snub nose, his red-gold hair, his stubborn chin. Yet she was my daughter, too, for she had dimples in her fat cheeks. She gave forth a bleat; Dame Queenhild rose from the dark corner.
“Little Leak wants the nipple.”
“Leith, her name is Leith.” Which she knew quite well—she was jealous that she hadn’t thought of it.
Leith burped on cue and was back.
And so was Enoch, who entered unannounced. He’d sent Donald with the bad news.
“May I lie beside her?” he asked humbly.
“No!”
Too late, he placed her on his chest.
That was just the beginning. The very next morn I had to run after him to the stable, where he placed the infant on his huge fighting destrier. He would hold her, he said; he wouldn’t let her fall! If Dame Queenhild hadn’t supported me, poor Leith would have tumbled to her death or been frozen in the storm now brewing. Enoch couldn’t bear to have her out of his sight. If she couldn’t join his world, he would join hers. At first it was surprising, then touching, then irritating. He knew naught of the care of bairns, which didn’t stop him from challenging all of Queenhild’s decisions.
The Prince of Poison Page 14
