by Alys Clare
It was a sobering realisation. And one which, he felt, reflected badly on him. What would his friend the Abbess Helewise say? She, he was quite sure, knew every one of her Hawkenlye nuns, aye, and the monks too; their names, what work they did, their strengths and weaknesses, their likes and dislikes. What would the Abbess say to a man who knew absolutely nothing about the people on whom his very existence depended?
Making up his mind, Josse clapped a hand across Will’s shoulder. ‘We will do this task together,’ he announced. ‘Tomorrow we shall ride out all around the manor, and you shall tell me all that you can of the people who inhabit it. We shall try to find you a young apprentice. It is time, Will.’ He gave his manservant another bracing slap. ‘It is time.’
Wrenching his startled face away from his rapt contemplation of his master with what seemed like quite an effort, Will said, with a slight but quite definite shake of his head, ‘I’ll go and find that cow.’
The next day, however, brought its own problems, and Josse’s fine resolve had to be put aside.
He was finishing an early midday meal – Ella had produced a dish of bream with a piquant, mustard-flavoured sauce, and it had crossed his mind to wonder if the mustard had been left over from Will’s poultice – when there came the sound of horses from outside on the road.
Many horses; from the commotion, perhaps as many as twelve or fifteen, even twenty . . .
A single horseman passing Josse’s gates was a common enough occurrence. A hunting party of four or five was rarer. A group of fifteen or more was so rare as to be all but unheard of.
Pushing himself away from the table and wiping his chin on his sleeve, Josse flew across the hall, out of the door, leapt down the steps and ran across the courtyard. Despite his natural optimism, a small part of his brain was thinking, this is highly unusual. And the unusual tends to mean trouble . . .
He maintained the presence of mind to slow his pace to a steady, casual walk before he came into the sight of whoever was outside; it would hardly be the right image for the lord of the manor to appear at a gallop, red-faced and flustered.
He was very glad of his foresight. For, as he approached the gates and stepped outside on to the rough track, he came face to face with a large group of men dressed to a degree of finery that could only mean one thing: that they were courtiers. To a man they were well mounted, their horses groomed to a shine and expensively caparisoned.
Before he could utter the formal words of greeting and welcome – before he had time to wonder what such a party was doing out there in the depths of the quiet countryside – a man in a tunic of crimson velvet kicked his mount forward. As he swept off his cap – he had stuck a cockade of pheasant’s feathers in it for decoration – he cried, ‘Have I the pleasure of addressing Sir Josse d’Acquin, lord of New Winnowlands in the county of Kent?’
‘Aye, sir, you have.’ Josse made a perfunctory bow. ‘May I know who has sought me out?’
The man laughed merrily, and others around him joined in. ‘I am William d’Arbret, sir knight, but it is not I but another who seeks you.’
With another dramatic flourish of his hat – this time the feathers caught against the brow of a nearby horse, who snorted and, but for his rider’s quick reactions and good horsemanship, would have bucked – he swept his arm up in a wide arc. As he did so, he reined his horse backwards and out of the way to reveal, in the midst of the group behind him, a strongly built man with dark auburn hair that curled thickly around his elaborately decorated black cap. He was in his mid-twenties, he sat a magnificent chestnut gelding with graceful ease and, as his blue eyes fell on Josse, an expression of amusement crossed his handsome face, as if he were about to burst into laughter at some private joke.
Still recognisable, after not far short of twenty years, was someone Josse had last seen when he was a lad of seven.
Despite what he had heard in the intervening years to suggest that the witty little lad he had liked so well had gone to the bad, Josse had always tried to reserve his judgement. It had not been easy; he himself had had occasion to refer to the man as a calculating bastard, although he had known full well that the latter epithet was inaccurate.
But now, coming face to face with him again after all that time, it was the most natural thing to fall to one knee in the dusty track, bow his head and say to Prince John, ‘Sire, I bid you heartfelt welcome. My house is at your disposal, as am I, your servant.’
High above him on the chestnut horse, Prince John’s amusement finally gained expression. His head still bowed, Josse heard that laugh he remembered so well – although now it was in the register of a man and not a little boy – and there was a rustle of costly fabric as John swung back his cloak and dismounted. Then Josse felt hands fall heavily on to his shoulders, he was hauled to his feet and Prince John was slapping him – hard – on the back.
Standing still to receive these attentions, Josse took in the Prince’s stature, revealed more fully now that he had dismounted and was on his feet. Yes, he was broad and not overly tall, like his late elder brother, Geoffrey, whom he also resembled in his features and his colouring. He clearly had extravagant tastes; his garments were beautifully cut and of the most expensive cloth, and the wide bands of embroidery at the neck and cuffs of his over-gown shone like spring flowers with the dew on them. He wore a considerable amount of gold jewellery. There was, Josse observed, a particularly clean look about him, as if he changed his linen frequently and enjoyed the refreshing comforts of a regular bath.
As if aware of Josse’s discreet scrutiny, the Prince gave him a final, even harder, slap across the shoulders. Then, moving round so that the two of them stood face to face, the bright, intelligent eyes looked up into Josse’s and Prince John said, ‘I like what I see, old friend. How say you?’
Sharp as ever, Josse thought, dropping his eyes. The man was fulfilling the promise of the child. ‘It is a rare pleasure to meet again someone whom I remember so well,’ he murmured, still staring at the ground; Prince John, he noticed, wore boots of soft leather, in a chestnut shade that almost exactly matched his horse. Mind working rapidly as he tried to recall just what foodstuffs and drink Ella might have stored away in her larder, he said cautiously, ‘Will the company take refreshments with me, Sire?’
The laugh came again. ‘No, Josse, the company will not,’ Prince John said. ‘We rest with old Sir Henry of Newenden, and he rushes forward to proffer food every time we so much as drop our backsides for an instant on the nearest bench. The silly old fool has stuffed us to bursting.’ He glanced over his shoulder at the courtiers, raising an ironic eyebrow. ‘He has a pretty young wife, however.’
The courtiers tittered at the witticism; recalling another rumour about John, Josse wondered if Sir Henry’s pretty young wife had been enticed into the Prince’s bed and decided that she probably had.
Straightening up – his neck was beginning to ache from standing in such an unnatural position – Josse said tentatively, ‘Then what service may––’
‘Ah, yes,’ John interrupted, ‘to business, yes. William!’
The man with the pheasant feather cockade slipped from his horse, swept off his hat and came to stand, head bowed, by his Prince. John made a gesture as if he were flicking away a persistent fly, which seemed to have more meaning for William d’Arbret than it had for Josse, for he reached inside his tunic and drew out a roll of parchment, handing it to Prince John. The Prince took it without a word.
He studied it for a moment. ‘New Winnowlands,’ he murmured. Josse had a dread feeling that he knew what was coming. ‘New Winnowlands . . . ah, yes!’ The blue eyes looked up from the parchment. ‘Formerly the dower house of Winnowlands proper, awarded to Sir Josse d’Acquin by my brother Richard in recognition of services rendered, and––’
It was not in any way wise to interrupt a prince, but Josse couldn’t help himself. ‘It was a gift, Sire!’ he protested.
There was a distressing sense of familiarity about the exchange.
Back in February, Josse had received a demand for rent on his gift of a house which, he surmised, had come from John. For John was in need of money, involved as he was in preparing for the increasingly likely possibility that he would become King.
Richard was still in Outremer, and news was in short supply. What there was of it was not good: it seemed almost certain now that the Crusade which had set off with such courage and optimism back in the summer of 1190 would turn out to be a dismal failure. Even now, crusaders were beginning to return to their homelands, bearing on their lips tales of defeat instead of songs of glory.
And there was no news whatsoever of Richard.
Glancing now at the King’s younger brother – clever, scheming, ruthless – Josse had to admit that, although precipitate, John’s actions were at least understandable. If Richard were indeed lost – God forbid it! – then John would probably be king. The true heir to the throne might well be Arthur of Brittany, Richard and John’s nephew, but would the English barons accept an alien child in place of a Prince already known to them?
The word was that they would not.
In which case, was it not prudent of John to prepare himself by enlisting support and raising funds?
Prudent, perhaps. But Josse did not intend to assist in the fundraising by parting with money that he did not in truth owe.
Dropping his eyes once more, he repeated, trying to keep the truculence out of his tone, ‘My manor was a gift, Sire.’ A sudden and very welcome thought struck him: hadn’t he ridden all the way to Amesbury Abbey, back in that icy, snowy February, to plead his case with John and Richard’s mother, Queen Eleanor? And hadn’t she written out, in her own fair hand, words confirming that Josse’s manor was a gift? ‘I have proof,’ Josse went on urgently, ‘proof in the form of an assurance from the Queen your mother herself that––’
But John, appearing abruptly to tire of the business, had rolled up the parchment and was waving it carelessly at William d’Arbret, who rushed forward to retrieve it.
‘Ah, yes,’ John said. ‘A gift. Of course.’ And the heavy lids descended over the bright eyes as John gave a bored yawn.
Josse, not entirely convinced by this show of indifference, stood waiting to see what would happen next.
Prince John made as if to re-mount his chestnut gelding. Then, as if a thought had just occurred to him, he said, ‘But now, I recall, there was another matter!’ The languid pose now gone as quickly as it had come, the Prince turned, head moving from side to side as he searched among the group of courtiers, and called out, ‘Magister! Where are you?’
The horsemen shifted to make room as a man slowly moved forward from the rear of the group. As his horse drew level with the Prince’s, he swung down from the saddle and stood beside John, head bent as he awaited instructions.
Josse stared at him. He was perhaps in his fifties – sixties? – although it was curiously hard to tell. He was tall, thin, very pale, and with a long beard the colour of milk that seemed to blend and merge with his white skin. As Josse watched, Prince John muttered something to him, and the tall man bent so as to speak his quiet reply into John’s ear.
Then they both turned to face Josse.
‘The Magister reminds me that we are also come on another matter,’ Prince John said, glancing across at his tall companion as he spoke. ‘We seek a stranger to these parts, one Galbertius Sidonius, and we request of you, Josse d’Acquin, whether you have news of him.’
‘I?’ Josse was amazed. ‘But you see where and in what manner I live, Sire, deep in the country and far from any centre of civilisation where I might hear tell of any strangers. Galbertius––?
‘Galbertius Sidonius.’ It was the pale man who spoke. His voice, low-pitched and melodious, was pleasant to listen to, with an almost hypnotic quality.
‘No.’ Josse shook his head. ‘The name means nothing to me. I am sorry that I cannot help.’
‘No stranger has come here recently seeking you out?’ Prince John persisted. There was a fierce glint in his eyes that put Josse on his guard; this matter, whatever it might be, seemed to be very important.
It occurred to him suddenly – and somehow he knew he was right – that the feeble attempt to extract rent from him had been but an excuse, a superficial and not very convincing reason for the visit, considering that the matter had been settled beyond all dispute back in February. Which, given the way in which John had so abruptly backed down, he already seemed to have known.
His real purpose all along had been to seek news of this Galbertius Sidonius.
‘Sir Josse!’ Prince John’s tone had risen towards anger. ‘We ask again: have you recently had a visit from a stranger?’
Josse put on his most winning expression; when a Plantagenet was about to lose his temper, it was wise to placate him rapidly. And as a boy John had, when provoked, been known to chew the rushes on the floor and set light to the furniture.
‘Sire, I have received no stranger these many months and years,’ he said, smiling, ‘save only yourself and your courtiers.’ He concluded his remark with another bow.
When he rose up again – the silence was becoming uncomfortable – it was to see that the Prince looked calm once more. Almost calm, anyway. With a final intense stare at Josse, he gave a curt nod and turned away, once more going to mount his horse.
Up in the saddle, preparing to leave, he called out, ‘Be sure and send word, Josse d’Acquin, if you hear anything. Galbertius Sidonius. Remember.’
With that he set spurs to his horse and hastened away, the courtiers, taken by surprise at this sudden departure, bumping and slipping in the saddle as their mounts surged forward in pursuit of the Prince.
Watching the group quickly fade from sight away under the trees that lined the road, Josse wondered just who Galbertius Sidonius might be.
And why Prince John, the likely next King of England, so badly wanted to find him.
2
The mood at Hawkenlye Abbey was far removed from its usual serenity.
It was a warm autumn day. Bright sunshine lit the ambers and oranges of dying leaves in the nearby Wealden Forest, making a pleasing contrast to the deep blue of the cloudless sky. And someone had just discovered a decomposing body.
They – or, more accurately, she, for the discovery had been made by the young daughter of a family of pilgrims visiting the Holy Water shrine in the Vale – had been drawn to the corpse by the smell. The girl was as well used to smells as any peasant child, living as she did so close to the rest of her family and to their animals. She probably would not even have noticed the stench of a festering midden, of a pile of cow dung, of ripe human sweat, of pigs in the sty.
But even a peasant child rarely came across the particularly sweet and disgustingly pungent odour of rotting human flesh.
Full of a six-year-old’s curiosity, the girl had literally followed her nose, pushing her way deep into a tract of thick bracken beside the path, hardly noticing the scratchy, brownish fronds as she brushed them aside. The smell had grown alarmingly so that, beginning to retch, she had been on the point of turning round and running for the safety of the group of little huts where the monks allowed visitors to the Vale to put up. Where, indeed, her mother was just beginning to wonder what had become of her youngest child.
But just then the girl had trodden on something. Something that squished horribly under her bare foot and emitted such a wave of stench that the girl’s piercing scream was abruptly cut off as she vomited up her scanty breakfast.
It was now noon. The child, now almost recovered from her horror, was actually beginning to enjoy all the attention.
She had been comforted, and her face – and, more crucially, her foot – had been bathed and cleansed. The infirmarer, large, kind and motherly, had attended to the girl herself. When repeated sponging with warm water had failed to rid the small, narrow foot of the clinging odour of dead meat, the infirmarer – her name was Sister Euphemia – had sent for an old nun with whiskers on her chin
and very penetrating eyes. She – her name was Sister Tiphaine, and they said she was the herbalist – had brought a little pot of some sort of paste that smelt like summer flowers. She spread the paste on the stinky foot and mixed it with water, so that it frothed to a foam that at last got rid of the smell.
The child, with the suppleness of being six, kept sitting on the ground and bringing her foot up close to her nose. She didn’t think she had ever smelt anything so lovely as the herbalist’s flowery paste.
Watching the little girl now, hands tucked away inside the opposite sleeves of her black habit, was Abbess Helewise.
‘She is over the shock, do you think?’ she quietly asked Sister Euphemia.
‘Aye, I reckon so,’ the infirmarer replied. ‘The resilience of youth, you know, Abbess.’
Helewise glanced away up the track that led alongside the pond and, ultimately, out of the Vale. It was beside this track that the body had lain.
Earlier, two of the lay brothers had performed the ghastly duty of shovelling the rotting body on to a hurdle and bringing it out of the bracken. It now lay a short distance further down the track – where its penetrating odour could not drift back to disturb the living – still on its hurdle and covered by a piece of sacking.
‘We must look at the body, Sister,’ the Abbess said firmly to the infirmarer. ‘If there is any means by which we may identify that poor soul, we must find it. We cannot rest easy if we merely do as we wish to do and bundle him – her – into a hasty grave and try to forget him. Her.’
‘A man, they say, Abbess.’ The infirmarer kept her voice low.
‘A man? How so?’
‘Young Augustus went with Brother Saul to bring out the remains. And he––’
‘Yes.’ Helewise remembered all about young Augustus’s talents. He had been her valued and trusted companion on a mission that she had had to make earlier in the year, and she knew from personal experience that he possessed the knowledge to tell the gender of a dead body. In the course of that mission, the puzzle presented to the young lay brother had been a burned skeleton. He had explained, with a modest and reassuring confidence, how the shape of the pelvis and the quality of the bones themselves – sturdy and robust for a man, lighter and finer for a woman – usually gave away a dead person’s sex.
