by Alys Clare
Any misgivings that Josse might have entertained over how the family at Lewes would receive a kinsman who had stayed so long away dissipated as soon as he set foot across the threshold. Admittedly, it had been but three days before Christmas Day, and the household was already clearly feeling the jubilatory influence of the Lord of Misrule. However, whatever the reason, they had welcomed him in as if he were the one person whose presence was required to make the festivities perfect.
They had been quite a party. Most senior were Hugh, now a stout, balding man of more than fifty years, and his wife Ysabel, quiet and calm where her husband was loud and demonstrative, but clearly the mistress of the household. Although grown plump and breathless, the remnant of her former beauty was still there for those with eyes to see it. Then there were Isabella, Editha and Aeleis, the elder daughters accompanied by their husbands, Arthur and the dull-witted Howell, and by Isabella’s and Editha’s daughters. Isabella also had a son, called Herbert after his grandfather and always referred to in the family as Young Herbert. He, however, was not of the company since, having reached the age of twelve, he was squire in the household of another knight. Aeleis, the youngest of the sisters, had been widowed two years previously and was childless. She might secretly mourn the latter state – Josse did not know – but she gave no sign that she missed her late husband. He had been some twelve years older than Aeleis and, according to Editha, might as well have been his lively wife’s senior by twenty or even thirty years. ‘Better for both of them to have him snug in his grave,’ Editha had murmured privately to Josse, ‘that way he doesn’t wear himself to a shadow fretting and fussing at her and she can breathe again.’
There had been nothing, Josse felt, which he could say by way of an answer to that remarkable statement, especially on such short reacquaintance. He had contented himself with going ‘Hmm’ earnestly and attempting to look wise. He guessed that Editha was not fooled for an instant because she had gone off giggling to report to her widowed sister and their combined laughter had rung up to the beams of the wide hall.
In addition to the immediate family, there had been cousins, relatives of the sons-in-law, friends of the children and all manner of sundry other folk who, it seemed, presented themselves in Hugh’s hall and took advantage of his generosity for no better reason than that they happened to be passing. Nobody appeared to mind; there was plenty of food and drink and the entire family, Josse concluded, loved nothing better than to sit comfortably before a roaring fire and gossip away the short days and the long, dark, December nights.
But then January ushered in a new year and, after the twelve days, the Christmas celebrations at last came to an end with the Feast of Epiphany. Merrymakers sobered up, guests began to think about leaving, adult sons and daughters departed from their parents’ homes and made for their own. Only Josse, still enjoying his uncle’s company and in no hurry to depart, stayed on as the weeks of January slipped by and February blew in. Then, so far only for the ears of those with access to inner court circles, came the frightful news about the King.
The kinsman of Editha’s husband Howell heard it. He was in fact one of the first among the common folk to do so, working as he did in the employ of the great Walter of Coutances. A King’s man to his very bones, Walter led the Council of Regency appointed to act on Richard’s behalf while he was away on Crusade. Desperately worried throughout the autumn of 1192 by the lack of tidings concerning the King, Walter had sent his spies across to the Continent to see what news could be gleaned. One of his men had infiltrated the court of King Philip of France, and it was he who sent his master Walter a copy of the very letter announcing to Philip the capture of his enemy, King Richard.
That the King was captive was all that was known, as yet, to anyone outside the closest of court circles. And in all conscience, Josse thought now as he tried to sharpen his wits for a game of chess with an unknown prelate, it was enough . . .
He was losing to Father Edgar when there came the sound of a horseman in the courtyard outside. The hour was late – Josse had been working on the principle that the right moves might miraculously occur to him if he took his time, and consequently he and the priest seemed to have been playing for hours – and Hugh hurried to the door in some surprise. But then, as a servant wrested it open and Hugh could see who had arrived, he called out loudly, ‘Howell! We had all but given you up! Come in and warm yourself, and quickly – my lads will see to your horse. Editha is not with you, I see?’
Howell, trying to shrug off his heavy travelling cloak, rub some life back into his cold hands and embrace his father-in-law all at once, readily allowed himself to be led across to the fire. Josse and Father Edgar moved to make room for him, and the Father pushed his mug of warmed ale into Howell’s hands.
‘Ah, that’s good.’ Howell nodded his thanks. ‘Dear God, it’s cold enough to freeze a man’s b— er, to freeze his legs to the saddle.’
‘Quite so,’ murmured the priest.
‘Surprised you came so late,’ Hugh said. ‘As I said, we weren’t really expecting to see you tonight – thought you’d leave the journey till the morrow.’
‘Editha insisted,’ Howell said with the faint air of resignation of a man used to doing what his wife said. ‘She sends her love and says it’s too cold for her to ride abroad and anyway Philomena’s gone down with a bad chill and Editha’s nursing her.’ Having done his duty and delivered his wife’s message, Howell gave himself up to the ale.
Only when he had drained the pewter mug did Hugh say, ‘Howell, why did Editha insist that you came tonight? Is there – oh, my heart misgives me, but I must ask! Is there news of the King?’
Howell sank down on to the bench where Josse had been sitting, stretching his short, sturdy legs towards the fire. ‘There’s news, aye. And Editha said she had promised you would hear, soon as there was anything to tell. We’ve had the honour of entertaining my cousin William’ – the fatigue miraculously left him as he swelled with the pride of being related to a man thrust into importance, even if it was only a temporary state – ‘and he’s revealed to us all that he is allowed to tell. It’s secret, see.’
‘Of course,’ Hugh said, even as Josse said ‘Naturally’ and Father Edgar breathed ‘But yes!’
Satisfied with these reassurances – he would, Josse thought briefly, have been satisfied with even less, so eager was he to regale them with his news – Howell took a deep breath, leaned confidingly forward and said, ‘It’s the Austrians, they’ve got him. Duke Leopold’s men took him when he was sick and hiding out in a little village a few miles from Vienna – was it Vienna?’ – he frowned – ‘and now he’s held captive in some great castle on that big river.’
‘Which big river?’ Hugh demanded.
‘Er – I don’t know.’
‘The Rhine?’ Josse suggested. His knowledge of the geography of Europe was no less hazy than the next man’s, but he had an idea that both the Rhine and Austria were somewhere in the middle.
‘No, it wasn’t the Rhine.’ Howell was scratching his head in an apparent effort to help his memory along. ‘What was it, now?’
‘The Danube,’ Father Edgar said quietly. ‘If you relate correctly what you were told and King Richard was indeed taken near to Vienna, then the river in question is undoubtedly the Danube.’
There were nods of satisfaction, quickly curtailed as the four men realised that knowing where the King was did not in fact do much to help him regain his freedom.
‘What do they want?’ Hugh burst out. ‘I mean, I know there were stories that King Richard didn’t always see eye to eye with the other captains of the West out there in Outremer, but to take him captive! As I say, why? What’s it for?’
‘Money,’ Father Edgar said. ‘I may be wrong, Howell, but I imagine there is – or there will be – a ransom demand.’
‘I know nothing about a ransom,’ Howell said stiffly, looking at the priest with an affronted expression as if the despicable idea had originated with hi
m.
‘But there will be a demand of some sort, I’m certain,’ Josse said heatedly. ‘That will be what those devils are after, that and the terrible humiliation they impose on the King of England by walling him up inside one of their foul dungeons!’
‘Oh, it is not to be borne!’ wailed Hugh. ‘Dear God above, what are we to do? What is England to do?’
Josse, Hugh and Father Edgar all looked at Howell, who shrugged and, flushing, muttered, ‘Don’t ask me!’
There was a short silence as the four men reflected on the King’s fate. Then, turning to Father Edgar, Josse said, ‘I have an idea, Father, that this frightful action is in violation of the Truce of God?’
The priest nodded. ‘My thoughts run to the same conclusion,’ he agreed. ‘Will these wretches stop at nothing?’
‘What is this truce?’ Howell asked.
Father Edgar explained. ‘In essence, the Truce of God protects the person and property of a man whilst he is absent on crusade, and those who violate it run the grave risk of excommunication.’
‘Excommunication!’ someone – Howell or Hugh, Josse was not sure – breathed softly. Then there was utter, horrified silence as the men reflected on what that meant.
After some time, Hugh cleared his throat and said, ‘The Queen will take this hard, God bless her.’
‘Aye,’ Josse agreed.
‘She’s not so young as she was,’ Howell said lovingly. ‘It fair tears at my heart, to think of her spending her Christmas alone at Westminster with all her loved ones far away. And oh, how I feel for her, that she must bear this new burden.’
‘Old she may be,’ the priest put in, ‘but she still has her fortitude.’
‘She’ll be needing it,’ Hugh muttered.
It was interesting, Josse thought, how all of them knew without asking that when Hugh had referred to the Queen, he meant Queen Eleanor, the King’s mother, and not Berengaria, his wife. To be fair to Berengaria, she had not yet even set foot in the realm in which she was to reign as Richard’s queen, so it was no reflection on her that the people took little notice of her. Eleanor, determined that a suitable bride be found for her favourite son, had fetched Berengaria from her native Navarre and hurried out to the Mediterranean in pursuit of the crusading bridegroom. She had caught up with him in Sicily, where Berengaria had ceremonially been handed over, and the royal couple’s nuptials had subsequently been performed in Cyprus. Since then, Berengaria had been in Outremer with Richard; exactly where she was now was not certain. But she was not in England.
It was hardly surprising that Eleanor remained queen to the English; they had known her and loved her for almost forty years.
‘She’ll be suffering, aye, there can be no doubt of it,’ Hugh sighed.
‘She will take comfort, as always, in the help and the strong support of God,’ Father Edgar said gently. ‘He has seen her through many trials and will not desert her in this one.’
‘Amen,’ the others murmured.
But she knows what it is to be a prisoner, Josse thought. And, knowing Richard as she does, she will fully comprehend his suffering.
Poor soul.
Eleanor, Josse was recalling, had also borne the heavy burden of imprisonment. In her case, her captor had been her own husband, Henry II of England. Tiring at last of his wife’s tendency to plot against him with his own sons, the late King had had her shut away under close guard, mainly at Winchester, on and off for fifteen years.
Aye. Queen Eleanor would likely suffer along with anyone wrongly imprisoned. What she must be feeling on her beloved son’s account hardly bore thinking about.
Josse stirred from his reverie, realising that Howell was speaking once more.
‘ . . . said that she wanted to go and find him, straight away, like, only her sense of duty is such a force in her that she knew she couldn’t. Who would guard England and Richard’s throne if he were imprisoned and she went to fetch him home?’
‘Thank God for a Queen who knows her duty,’ Hugh said piously.
And, once more, the others all said, ‘Amen.’
There was not a great deal more talk that night. Howell had run fairly quickly to the end of his real news; what followed was mainly conjecture and speculation, and the latter became increasingly wild as the night went on.
In the end, the priest had tactfully suggested that the others join him in prayer, and then they had gone their separate ways to bed.
Josse woke to a bright day, with a weak but determined February sun sparking flashes of light off the frost.
He knew where he would go that day. He had been dreaming of Queen Eleanor, and it seemed that he witnessed her distress. Then he became aware of another figure, although it remained in the shadows and he could not identify it.
His waking mind, however, knew who it was.
He thought of that person now, of how her kind heart and the forbidden pride that remained in her loved and treasured the special relationship with the Queen. How she would welcome the Queen when she visited, cosset her, listen to her, tentatively and tactfully offer what comfort she felt the Queen would accept.
Ah yes, but she would be needed now! For, if Eleanor could make the time, then this was one place to which she would surely go.
As he took the first meal of the day with Hugh and the household, Josse announced that today he must depart. When Ysabel asked if he would return to New Winnowlands, his manor in Kent, he said no, not straight away.
‘I am bound for Hawkenlye Abbey,’ he explained.
Where, he added silently to himself, I shall seek out the Abbess Helewise and indulge myself in the pleasure of a very long talk with her.
2
Hawkenlye Abbey, serene and quiet under the hard, pale blue sky, did not at first glance look like a place in which wild and destructive emotions were running free. The stone walls stood stout, protecting those within in a strong embrace, yet, by day at least, the wooden gates were always open and admission was offered to those who came to lay their burdens, their sickness of mind, body or soul, on the Abbey’s patient and caring nuns and monks.
It was the winter season, and the trees whose branches protected the Abbey were bare. Nature was asleep and nothing grew; even the plants that thrived so well in the herb garden under Sister Tiphaine’s experienced hands were little more than dry twigs.
Behind the Abbey, its perpetual dark backdrop, the great Wealden Forest brooded. Here too the trees were skeletal, the majority of leafless deciduous specimens interspersed with a smaller number of yew, juniper and holly that broke up the uniform greyness of bare branches with dots and splashes of deep green. The forest was a forbidding place, a secret world of myth and rumour; some said that the faint tracks that wound through it, twisting this way and that, had been made by the Romans seeking iron ore. Some said they had been made by people far more ancient than that, people who, it was whispered, were barely human . . .
Those who spent their lives within the Abbey’s protecting walls spared scarcely a thought for their silent neighbour. The life of prayer and of service was hard, and nuns whose days began in the darkness before dawn and ended, exhausting hours later, with a very welcome sleep on a straw mattress, had few free moments in which to ponder on the nature of who, or what, might be found within the forest. Most of Hawkenlye’s nuns and monks were content merely to accept that it was there and leave it at that.
Most of them.
The very few exceptions had the good sense to keep their thoughts – their wanderings – to themselves.
Totally in keeping with the Abbey’s air of serenity was the absorbed figure of Sister Phillipa. Despite the cold, she sat in the meagre shelter afforded by a secluded corner of the cloister where, with fingerless mittens on her hands, she was engaged in painting an illuminated manuscript.
To be accurate, she was working on a practice piece. She had prepared an old scrap of parchment, a decent-sized cutting left over from someone else’s earlier work, on which that same someone
had tried out pigments and styles of lettering. Sister Phillipa was doing her very best work, the letters bold, stylish and even, the tiny painting – of a bramble, showing leaf, blossom, berry and prickle – delicate yet vivid. She knew she was on trial and, if she passed, that she might very well be granted the great honour of producing a herbal.
More than that she had not been told and did not dare to ask. It was not her place, a nun who had but six months ago taken her perpetual vows and was hence one of the youngest of the fully professed, to question anything that the great Abbess Helewise said. Or, in this case, did not say. What did it matter, anyway? The wonderful thing for Sister Phillipa was that, after so long – only three years, perhaps, but it felt like a lifetime! – she was once again engaged on the work she loved. And for which – yes, it was boastful, prideful, and she would have to confess and do penance but, despite all that, it was the truth! – she had a rare talent.
She had become aware of that talent at a young age. Perhaps been made aware of it expressed it better, for, isolated little girl that she had been, she had unthinkingly assumed that every small child drew and painted with the fluency given to her. It had been her father – gentle, learned, head-in-the-clouds Gwydo – who had lovingly pointed out the error: ‘You’re an artist, Philly, and no mistake. You’ve inherited what skills I possess, and to those you add something very special that belongs just to you.’
He had taught her everything he knew. With no wife – Phillipa’s mother had died of the dreaded childbed fever a month after giving birth to her only child – his little daughter had been the sole recipient of his love. They had lived close in their little hut, father and daughter, each content in the other and in the beauty of the work at which both were so talented. Artist and visionary, Gwydo had tried to put his daydreams and his nightmares into his pictures. When pigment and parchment proved too small a vessel to contain his soaring imagination, he had been known to fling his materials against the wall of the hut in a fury that temporarily blinded him. Phillipa feared only for him when the ill humour took him; aware of the depths of his love for her, she knew him to be incapable of hurting her and so never feared for herself.
