by Deryn Lake
‘Very well,’ answered the younger woman slowly. ‘But know that it is against my better judgement.’
Taking a key from around her neck Alice Waleis opened a small wooden chest which she dragged from its hiding place beneath her bed. Margaret caught herself peering inside as the hinges creaked back, only to be disappointed. What lay within were no more than small stone tablets with strange carvings upon them. Nonetheless as she put her hand upon them they seemed to vibrate beneath her touch, and it was with a certain awe that she saw Alice throw them down at random upon the stone floor.
‘Why are you doing that?’
‘I am casting them.’
‘How did you learn?’
‘From my mother. They have been in her family for generations. I think they came from the old Norse land originally.’
The stones rolled and clattered and finally came to rest. There was a pause as Alice sank to her knees, the better to see them closely, her pointed face taking on a distant faraway expression. Then Lady Waleis swayed from side to side, a lock of dark hair escaping her wimple and falling down over her cheek. It cast a strange shadow, sculpting the face beneath to something not quite human. Quite inadvertently, Margaret made the sign of the cross.
‘You will never be rid of your rival and yet you will be rid of her for ever.’
Margaret stared blankly. ‘What does that mean?’
‘I don’t know. Sometimes the stones speak in riddles. But she will not bother you long, Margaret. Robert will return to your side and willingly.’
‘God be thanked.’
‘And there is something else.’
‘What?’
‘Changes are coming. Great changes that will affect not only you but all your family.’ Alice looked up, her slanting eyes green as a cat’s in the dim light. ‘You must be careful, Margaret. When the strangers come nothing will ever be the same again.’
A thrill of fear shot the length of Margaret’s spine. ‘What strangers are these?’
‘Two men, both of whom you will love in vastly different ways.’
‘Love? I? Alice, what nonsense is this?’
‘No nonsense. Mark my words this night. They have crossed water to get here and they will never go away once they have found this place. Everything will be different when they arrive.’
‘Will it be better or worse?’
‘The stones say these men have power to change things. But they do not say more than that. We shall have to wait and observe in order to know.’
In the tense silence that followed there came a roar of laughter from the distant hall where the servants were gathered.
‘I pray God the strangers are not evil,’ said Margaret.
‘Amen,’ answered Alice — and then drew a frightened breath as the moon fought its way from behind the fierceness of the cloud mass and threw a sudden beam through the small, high window, lighting both the stones and the faces of the two women who crouched over them so intently.
*
That same faint moon could not penetrate the sky which loomed, thick as a hood, over Canterbury; and the evening meal of the monks of the Abbey of St Augustine — served in the later part of the afternoon — was eaten in a refectory lit by rushlight alone. As the abbot led the benediction shadows fell over the monks and the travellers who rested at the abbey that day, softening their faces and easing out the lines of weariness and care borne by so many of them, the men of God and journeyers alike. Even the youngest present, the lean and hawklike Marcus, was improved by the kindness of the light and, as he hungrily broke bread and wolfed it down, he looked boyish and gentle for a moment.
To the right of the abbot sat Paul d’Estrange, honoured thus as a knight of Gascony, and as the wine was poured and the food served, the two men were drawn into conversation. They were very different, the abbot being thin to the point of emaciation and eating sparsely, little more than the wing of a fowl and some watered wine passing his thin and somewhat mauvish lips, whereas Paul fell on his vittals like a trencherman.
He consumed a whole jugged hare, a duck, several spiced rissoles and half a pike before he finally sat back replete, patting his stomach and puffing out his cheeks in appreciation.
‘A wonderful repast, my Lord,’ he said. ‘And rendered all the better by your cooks’ use of spices and herbs.’
‘The abbey prides itself on its board, Sir. Not that I care for a great deal of food. I have been plagued for years with an evil pain that strikes me if I have more than a few mouthfuls. I have tried many cures but none to any avail.’
A look of interest, quite at odds with his generally bland air, crossed Paul’s face.
‘You have taken herbal remedies, of course?’
‘Many differing ones. Why do you ask? Do you have knowledge of the subject?’
‘I was taught Arab medicine by a priest who had studied for many years. I venture to say that if I can find the right substances in your garden, or perhaps the meadows, I could mix you a compound that would cure your complaint.’
The abbot leant back in his chair, his thin face lit by a disbelieving smile. ‘Then I enjoin you to try, Sir Paul. It would be a great relief to me and also to the brothers, who dare not eat their fill whilst their abbot is so abstemious.’
His voice, quiet though it might be, had carried down the long refectory table, and Paul found himself regarded with a certain amount of interest.
‘Those are brave words, Sir,’ said a sharp-faced monk, his brown eyes crisp as two withered leaves. ‘I have tried for many years to cure our Lord Abbot but with no avail.’
Paul was instantly urbane, determined to make no enemies. ‘It is but a thought, Brother. To cure your lord would be the least I could do to repay his hospitality. Certain roots, certain plants and herbs compounded together, can sometimes have the right effect.’
The doubting monk snorted and it was the abbot himself who put an end to the budding disagreement.
‘I am willing to try anything. Sir Paul’s knowledge of Arab medicine interests me.’
He stood up to signify that the meal was at an end and the monks obediently crouched in prayer, reminding Marcus of a row of mushrooms with their tonsured heads and habits like stalks. The abbot’s voice, as thin and dry as himself, thanked the Lord for sustenance and for life, and then he walked out quietly followed by a smiling Paul. Marcus grinned to himself. His patron, the knight he had served as squire since he — Marcus — had been a boy, had won himself an important ally. The abbot of St Augustine’s had invited the Gascon to converse with him further in his chamber.
The monks began to file out and Marcus, suddenly tired, made his way to the small cell which was to be his room for the night. There he removed his jerkin and his shoes and lay down upon the hard truckle bed, his hands folded beneath his head and his eyes open, gazing at the dimly-lit ceiling. He felt in a strange mood, neither elated nor sad but somehow suspended, waiting ...
He thought of the circumstances which had brought him to this sparse chamber on this miserably wet spring night; thought of how, like a parcel, he had been abandoned as a child in a strange village, on a hill above which stood a small castle. Remembered how he had been taken to Sir Paul, the owner, and how the knight had, without hesitation, agreed to let the boy stay in his household.
Marcus had puzzled about that for years: why a knight of Gascony should allow a homeless two-year-old to be brought up in his entourage, and why he should later single out the boy to become his squire. A boy who could remember nothing of his mother at all, only having an impression of a pair of long green-gold eyes and a perfume heavy as musk. She had pinned a ring to his hat: a man’s ring which Sir Paul had removed and then returned to Marcus when he was fourteen. That had been the only clue to her identity.
He had hated his bastard state then — and still did to a certain extent — not even Paul’s patronage and affection compensating for his lack of known parents. How many nights, Marcus wondered, had he spent staring at the ring on his fing
er, wishing that it would reveal its secret to him. But it never had and he was no nearer knowing his true identity now, at twenty-one, than he had been when he had first gone to Paul’s home.
Marcus sighed and turned on his side. A long day lay before him and probably long weeks as well if he and his patron were to plead their cause with the English king. But plead they must, for Paul’s lands in Gascony, an area which had belonged to the English crown since the marriage of Eleanor of Aquitaine to Henry II had, only last winter, been invaded and seized by Philip de Valois. The French king’s raids and incursions on this English possession had started three years earlier — yet another sign of the growing ambitions of an insolent France.
‘I am not only a bastard but homeless too!’ thought Marcus wryly. ‘I wonder how it will end.’
Five
It was dusk, and John de Stratford sat on a stone seat in the palace herb garden, staring at the play of light on the ancient walls as the sky changed colour and listening to the sounds that helped to form the essence of this warm Sussex night.
To the east the evening had grown violet, but westward, behind the servants’ tower, streaks of lilac blended with the jade of an early summer sunset. Beneath the tower, lights from the hall window glowed as flambeaux were lit, and the archbishop saw a sudden burst of scarlet which meant the central brazier had just taken flame. The sound of feet and clatter of platters told him that the table on the dais was being set, for the Sharndenes were to dine privately with him this night.
Beyond the hall lay the main buildings; the kitchens in the north wing — for the whole building was square, built round an open to the skies courtyard — sending forth a tremendous smell of roasting meat which mixed, not unpleasantly, with the heady perfume of wild flowers from the fields beyond.
Above these ground floor offices he could see the windows of his great chamber and above that those of the solar which, just now, caught the last rays of the sun, reflecting the gleam so that the archbishop could not see in. But he knew that Colin was sitting there, alone in the soft shadows, for, as if in incantation to the moon’s rebirth, the voice of the gittern suddenly rose clearly above the household’s cheerful domestic sounds.
Instantly everything seemed to still itself to listen, even the birds’ evensong hushing beneath the rapturous sound. The archbishop found that he had, quite unconsciously, gripped the edge of the stone seat on which he sat, the problem of Colin coming to him even more poignantly in the uncertain half light.
And then Stratford’s thoughts left his brother and began to race as the darker side of his nature rose in full strength to torment him. As always when this mood descended he saw a scene as clearly as if it were taking place now. And yet it had been ... how many years ago? Two? Three?
‘No,’ he thought in amazement, ‘it was seven!’
He could remember the date now that he concentrated — 16 January 1327 — but he would never forget the grim events. No passage of time could dim the memory of the vaulted hall of Kenilworth Castle; the pitiful figure of King Edward clad from head to foot in a gown of jet, and the hard, set faces of the men looking on.
The deputation had been led by Sir William Trussel, he of the great big voice and little tiny eye, who had fought for Thomas of Lancaster and had pronounced sentence of death on the king’s lover, Hugh Despenser. Then, those seven years ago, Trussel had opened his mouth to boom but before he could utter so much as a sound the king had fallen down in a dead faint, crumbling like the pathetic soft creature he was on to the stone floor without so much as a sigh.
It had been Bishop Orleton who had raised him to his feet: Orleton, who by his very brutality in private audience just beforehand, an audience at which the only other person present had been Bishop Stratford of Winchester, had reduced the king to such a pitiable state.
Here, here in the warm palace gardens of Maghefeld, the archbishop began to shake. He would never forget the moment when Orleton had thrust his fist into Edward II’s face and said, ‘You are finished, Sire. The whole country calls for your abdication. It comes of having too many sweet boys in your bed.’
Wretched bawd that the king had been, Stratford had never thought to hear God’s anointed addressed so. But though he had not spoken insults himself, he, in the past, had been just as cruel to Edward. He had sided with Isabella the queen when the power struggle began: when she had had enough of her husband’s humiliation. A humiliation that had begun when the king had given his lover, Piers de Gaveston, the best of her jewels and wedding presents, and which had culminated with her being abandoned, three months pregnant, as the lovers fled to Scarborough Castle to evade the wrath of the nobility.
That mighty insult had never been forgiven: from that moment the seed of revenge had been planted in sixteen-year-old Isabella’s mind. The fact that Gaveston had been seized and executed without trial had not been enough; the king of France’s daughter would not be content until she had, one day, brought her husband down. Not without reason would she earn the sobriquet ‘the she-wolf of France’.
Sitting in the herb garden, the archbishop felt sweat pour from him, not just from the power of his wild thoughts but from the memory of the evil that had held England in its thrall. He recalled the sickness of the realm when the young Despenser had replaced the long-mourned Gaveston in the king’s affection; how Isabella, who had until then managed to live in a state of marital truce, turned cruel with fury. It had not taken her long to welcome Roger Mortimer, Earl of March, into her bed and into dark corners where they might plot the king’s downfall. They had gathered round them some of the mightiest people in the land, including John de Stratford, then Bishop of Winchester. The culmination had been at Kenilworth — the king a prisoner, Hugh Despenser hanged, drawn and quartered. Isabella and the Earl had won their bitter victory; her son, a boy of fourteen, waiting to seize the English crown.
Stratford saw again the crumpled heap that had once been his sovereign, lord of all England; remembered the bearded face, the colour of rennet, as Orleton manhandled the king back on to his feet, shouting, ‘You must abdicate, Sire. You are finished and done. Only by your going voluntarily can you ensure the succession of your son.’
It had been pitiable to see a man weep, childlike, but this was what happened. With a great sob Edward had flooded at both eyes and mouth.
‘Well?’ Bishop Orleton had taken an angry step forward.
‘Though I may be repudiated by my people,’ came the choking reply, ‘at least I rejoice that they see fit to crown my son.’
An indescribable roar had broken from Sir William Trussel. He had bellowed, with his mean and minute eye aglint, ‘On behalf of the whole kingdom, I renounce all homage and allegiance to you. The reign of Edward — the second to bear that name — is over.’
As soon as he had finished speaking, Sir Thomas Blount, the King’s Steward, had snapped his staff of office over his knee to show that the Royal Household was disbanded. And, without another word, the whole deputation had turned on their heels and gone, leaving the solitary figure staring hollow-eyed after them.
‘If only it had ended there,’ thought Stratford. ‘If only that could have been the finish of the affair.’
He thanked God now that he had not been party to the last and most terrible plot of all; the plot in which the deposed monarch had been removed by order of the Earl of March to Berkeley Castle and where, after an almost successful rescue attempt, he had been thrown into the castle pit, along with the carcasses of diseased cattle, in the hope that the stench would kill him. But it had not: the king had survived, filthy and gibbering, covered in unspeakable things, his hair matted and disgusting.
Then came the announcement that Edward had died of natural causes. And, in truth, when dignitaries were called to examine the body there was not a mark on it. Yet there was a horrid and persistent rumour that the king had been murdered within the confines of the castle walls; and that the manner of his death had been of unbelievable savagery, an exquisite and cruel
parody of the form of pleasure which he had once so much enjoyed. It was said that Edward died when a red hot poker had been inserted into his ‘secret place posterialle’.
Stratford’s face took on its customary frozen look, the ascetic side of his nature shuddering away from the contemplation of such a nightmare. Nor could he bear to think that he had, in any way, been an accessory to the deed, albeit before the execution. But the truth was that his hatred, first for Gaveston and then for Despenser, had led him into Isabella’s faction and it had been he who had written the Articles of Deposition which accused Edward II of all manner of ills, culminating in the violation of the sovereign’s coronation oath. As surely as if he had been present, John de Stratford had been partly responsible for the death of a king of England.
The sound of the gittern ceased abruptly and the archbishop glanced upwards. High above him his brother waved his arm, then turned away, his shoulders slumping a little. Stratford knew at once that Colin longed to join him, longed not to be kept so rigidly from palace life.
‘And why not?’ thought John, in a flash of clarity. ‘What is the point of hiding him? Everyone knows of his existence. If they cannot see him they hear him play. Why do I try to deceive?’
Stratford had a moment of genuine sorrow that he should be so ashamed of Colin’s madness, for, after all, was not his brother just as much one of God’s creations as he? But the feeling lasted only a minute, the survivor pushing the sentimentalist firmly down. Colin was assuredly an embarrassment to others and was, himself, happier kept quietly from the world’s thrust. Nevertheless, it was a problem to know what should eventually be done with him. There would come a time when neither the archbishop nor his brother, Robert, would be able to cope with Colin’s welfare. And when they died before him — as presumably they must — what then? What future for a child dwelling within a man’s body?
The archbishop gave a deep sigh and rose from his seat. He could see by the sun’s angle that it would be half an hour before he must attend the Sharndenes in the hall and his footsteps turned automatically towards the great chamber, and to the little chapel where Thomas à Becket had once bowed himself in prayer. This night, with thoughts of Colin weighing so heavily on his mind, Stratford felt that he must forget about the past and pray instead for guidance for the future. And what greater inspiration could he have than to touch the stones where once a saint had mastered his spiritual struggle and put his private devils behind him?
