Gisburne shuddered again—at the thought of being the subject of stories, at what nonsense they might contain.
Reading his expression, she waved her hand dismissively. “I took those with a pinch of salt,” she said. “And I was right to. I already suspected he wasn’t what everyone said he was.”
“I fear we brought disaster upon this place.”
She shook her head in dismay. “Disaster was already here,” she said. Then she turned to him, her face open and candid. “Do you know what makes me most angry? Not that she did evil; not that alone. It is that she persuaded people to believe in her. That she persuaded me. In all my years, this is the thing of which I am most ashamed. It was I who championed her, in spite of everything. I was so proud when she became Prioress. Sister Elizabeth—the Prioress before her—was never convinced. She said she was, but in truth she sensed something wrong, from the very start. And I—through naivety or vanity—refused to see it. For thirty years...” She shook her head again. “God, what have I done? How many have suffered at her hand, while my back was turned?”
“You cannot blame yourself for the sins of others.”
“Can I not? It was I brought her here, Sir Guy, all those years ago. I. And it was faith made me do it. Do you know Vézelay?”
“I do.”
She nodded. “I was returning from there—from pilgrimage—full of all the things such a place inspires. You know the Magdalene’s relics reside there?” She sighed. “I had always loved the Magdalene... Then, passing through the Vexin, en route to the coast, I wandered into chaos. Soldiers everywhere. The land scoured. The place was on the brink of war.”
“Old King Henry,” said Gisburne distantly. “The King of France and the Count of Blois were pointing their lances at Normandy, but the Old King was having none of it. My father gave me chapter and verse.”
“Well, I took refuge in a wood. A curious idyll, in the midst of it all. And there was this girl, barely more than sixteen. Barefoot, standing, staring. No bag or purse. No sign of how she came to be there. Just as if she had dropped out of the sky.” She chuckled, once. “She had been used by men, I did not doubt. But when I spoke to her, she answered in English. Perhaps she had been among the camp followers. I never did know. I’m not sure she did. But then she said her name was Mary. And I... I saw it as a sign. I had come from the shrine to Mary Magdalene, and here was this ragged, lost girl... She said she couldn’t remember where she was from. So she came back with me. And that wood, I learned, was called Le Bois d’Espeir—the ‘wood of hope’—after the fresh water spring that rises there. That fuelled my faith further still. And, for want of anything better, she became Mary of Hoppewood. I took her in, protected her. She must have had the babe growing in her belly even then.”
Gisburne thought of the copper token. The flower that Hood—impatient, oblivious Hood—had always taken to be a rose. The secret at which it hinted was hidden now in but two places on Earth: sunk at the bottom of a pond, and in Gisburne’s heart. And there it would stay.
“It’s not your fault that you were deceived,” he said. “That your trust was abused.”
She looked him square in the face, her grey, sad eyes as bright as a child’s. “It will always feel so. The nun who stabbed Magdalena... Sister Matilda. She was one of the purest souls I have ever met. And yet look what she was driven to. What other terrible things must have passed under this roof?” Her mouth quivered and she turned away, no longer able to hold his gaze. “The girl will do her penance, but she will have a chance to be redeemed. We owe her that much, at least. Christ teaches forgiveness. I, in turn, will try to forgive Magdalena. I will. But for now, I say good riddance.” And, then shaking with rage, she actually spat at the Prioress’s grave.
Briga wiped her mouth with the back of a wrinkled hand, then gave a humourless laugh. “See how her poison continues to infect? To spread hate?” She sighed heavily, as if trying to expel all her woes with one breath. “Faith is everything to me. It is my life. To think that it was misplaced for so long...” She shook her head, unable even to finish the sentence. “There are many sins, many crimes. But none more bitter than betrayal.”
Gisburne looked at Hood’s grave. “That man buried yonder—I cannot begin to reckon the evils for which he is responsible. Yet once, even I believed in him. Perhaps now he can finally do some good.”
This last comment he had intended to be dismissive—to suggest that now, his blood and bones might at least enrich the soil—that though none would place flowers upon that grave, it may yet nourish new growth of its own. But even as he said it, the wider possibility occurred to him. What if Hood’s wild boasts about his legend were true? What if, months or years from now, its distorted story inspired others to acts of genuine worth? Of valour, fairness, justice?
Would this not be the best possible revenge upon Hood—not for him to be lost to posterity, but to become its servant, and an agent for all the good things that he never once believed?
Suddenly, his thoughts went to the Christ—an earthly life ended in humiliation and torture, from which, nonetheless, the noblest of ideals sprang. Perhaps, even in Magdalena’s crazed idolatry, there existed a grain of truth.
“Doing,” said Briga, breaking in upon Gisburne’s thoughts. “That is how I deal with things. Not sitting and brooding on what cannot be done, but by concentrating on what can.”
She was speaking as much to herself as to Gisburne.
“That is a philosophy I wholeheartedly endorse,” he said.
She nodded to herself. “I will personally scrub Magdalena’s library clean of its filth. That will be my task, and my penance.”
“Let the other nuns see it first,” said Gisburne. “In fact, make sure they do.”
Briga gave a weak smile and nodded.
Gisburne gestured towards the infirmary. “You tend to the poor and sick of Sherwood here?”
“We do,” said Briga, happy to switch to this topic. “I never understood what compelled them to come all this way. Until now.”
“More will be coming, out of the forest. The survivors of Hood’s ministry. Give them food and shelter, and set them upon the right path. Show them what compassion is—empty though their bellies may be, that is the thing of which they have been most starved.” He dug into his scrip bag and hauled out a thick leather purse, which he held out to her. “Here...”
“Our coffers are already full,” protested Briga, her hand raised. “Hood’s ill-gotten gains—though I am hardly comfortable that we have profited from his crimes.”
“Keep it. Keep it all. Turn it to the good. And the purse, too. Please.”
He pushed it closer, and reluctantly she took it. Her hand dipped at its unexpected weight, then with shaking, crooked fingers, she pulled apart the cords and peered in. The contents made her gasp. Not silver; gold. “Why, there is enough here to feed the five thousand...”
“Build a new chapel. Somewhere in sight of Galfrid’s grave. And dedicate it to the Magdalene. The real one.”
Briga smiled, bowed her head, and clutched the purse to her breast. Gisburne was happy to do without the rigmarole of a token argument. He had only known this woman these few minutes, but he liked her already.
“He might be alive now, were it not for me,” he said. He did not know where the words came from—they seemed to emerge all on their own.
“You don’t know that,” said Briga. “He was his own man. Perhaps you helped him to truly live.”
Gisburne nodded, numbly. But a sudden, desperate emptiness came upon him—one so profound, so overwhelming, that had another grave been lying open before him he would have let himself fall into it.
One of Briga’s crooked hands shot out, and grasped his fingers. Her eyes were fixed on his with a fierce intensity. “You will think an old nun knows nothing of life and love,” she said. “But listen to me: I was born the very same year as Queen Eleanor, may God bless and protect her.” She crossed herself. “We are in our seventy-second year, she
and I—both graced with long lives, and the challenges those bring. But none of us knows when we shall be called. So make the most of life. Cherish every second. Once wasted, years cannot be got back, and hollow regret makes a poor bedfellow...”
Gisburne stared down at her, dumbfounded. She gripped his hand tighter, and shook it in time with each of her words.
“Lady Mélisande... She loves you. Love her. Protect her.”
He should have been taken aback, but there was something in her manner—an honesty—that made the sudden intimacy seem the most natural thing in the world.
“I don’t think she needs my protection,” said Gisburne, wondering, somewhere in the back of his reeling head, what exactly had passed between the two women.
Briga chuckled. “No, she does not need it. But that is not quite what I meant...” She cocked her head to one side, peering past his arm, back towards the Priory, and her face lit up. “Ah!”
Gisburne turned, and there, emerging from the herb garden, was Mélisande de Champagne, smiling as she approached; Sir John de Rosseley—bandaged, limping, but ever unbowed—following close behind.
And in that moment, he was decided.
LXXVI
Cliftone
April, 1194
“I HEAR RICHARD has spoken in praise of Gilbert de Gaillon,” said de Rosseley. He sipped his cup of ale and looked across at the swaying trees. It was a beautiful day. A proper spring day, thought Mélisande. “Plans are also afoot to take his bones for reburial at Rouen—and his old lands are to be restored to his nephew.”
Gisburne nodded. “That is good news indeed.” He almost managed a smile. “I had never thought such a thing possible.”
“What would any of us have done, if we’d stopped to think if it were possible?” said Mélisande. She smiled at Gisburne, but it seemed wasted on him. He looked like a man done with life.
“There’s much I would not have done,” conceded Gisburne, staring into the depths of his cup.
The three of them were sat around a table outside an inn. The sun shone; the spring air was fresh and charged with new possibilities. But Gisburne was like the last chill wind of winter.
“Well...” said de Rosseley after a moment. “It would seem all your goals are achieved. Tancred is redeemed. You are released from Prince John’s service and have a generous gift from the King. And Hood is finally gone.”
“Gone...” said Gisburne, with a grim laugh. “Are you sure?”
De Rosseley smiled. “I should be. I put him in the damned ground myself. Believe me, I stamped that earth down hard.”
“That’s not him in the ground,” said Gisburne with a shake of his head. De Rosseley gave Mélisande a look somewhere between concern and bemusement. “In the heart of an Englishman,” continued Gisburne, “that is where Hood lies...” He laughed bitterly. “Did you note that word? Lies... Lies are Hood’s legacy.”
“But the man is dead,” said Mélisande. “And you are alive. And I am glad of it.”
Gisburne put his hand to his eye, seemed momentarily surprised to find a bandage there, then scratched, gingerly, at its lower edge. Mélisande noticed a slight tremor to his hand. “There is one more duty yet to perform,” he said. “I must tell Sir Robert Fitzwalter of the fate of his daughter.” He said this as if he dreaded it more than all the bloody confrontations of past days put together.
Mélisande cast her eyes down. “What will you tell him?”
Gisburne turned his cup around on the table top. “Lies,” he said. Then he looked her in the eye. “Well, wouldn’t you? I always thought there was greater value in truth, but now... Sometimes lies are better.”
“It’s over now,” she said.
“But at such a cost.” He let his head drop, staring at the table top. “There was a time I could have taken it in my stride. But now...” He sighed heavily. “People talk of victory and defeat as if they are as separate things—as distinct as night and day. But I have never known one without the other. And this victory... It is more bitter than any defeat I have ever known.”
De Rosseley gazed into his ale for a moment, then raised his cup. “Here’s to Galfrid,” he said, and they all drank in silence.
“What of you, Sir John?” asked Mélisande after a moment. The jollity sounded forced, and it was, but she’d rather that than silence.
De Rosseley took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “Time to settle. Rest these battered bones. Become a damned farmer.”
Mélisande laughed. “You think being a farmer is restful...?”
“Well, time to settle, anyway,” he said. “And...”
“And?”
“There is a woman. Back home.”
Mélisande’s eyes widened. “This is a revelation. How did you keep that so quiet?” She looked to Gisburne, but he seemed so locked in his private world that not even this could coax him out.
“A revelation to me, too,” de Rosseley said. “It is someone I have cared about all my life, and I never even knew it. For years I’ve been searching for a suitable match—a high-born lady—but the real answer was under my nose all that time. I have learned to pay attention to such things of late.”
“I take it she is not high-born?”
“Far from it.”
“That will not make you popular.”
“I’ve been popular all my life, my lady,” said de Rosseley with a smile. “Time to try something different.”
Mélisande smiled. “Assuming she’ll have you, of course...”
De Rosseley chuckled, and blushed. “Yes. Assuming that. But I have a good feeling about it. About everything, actually. Spring is upon us, the rains have abated. It is time for things to go right. Don’t you agree, Gisburne?”
Gisburne snapped out of his reverie, but appeared entirely unaware of what had been said.
“Time for things to go right,” de Rosseley said. Then, when no answer was forthcoming, he added: “So, what will you do, Guy?”
But he just shook his head. “I’m done, Ross.”
Gisburne spoke little after that. Mélisande watched him sink back into a world of his own—distant, inaccessible. Back behind the walls of his fortress.
LITTLE WAS SAID as they mounted their horses. Mélisande saw de Rosseley studying the pair of them, his gaze flicking back and forth, clearly expecting something, uncertain whether he should stay or go.
So distracted was she by it that she did not even see Gisburne come up beside her.
She jumped at his sudden presence—then saw that he was holding out a small package to her. It was little bigger than a pear, wrapped in green silk and tied with a fine yellow ribbon. For a moment, she thought that was what it was. She thought of Llewellyn and that drink of his.
“What’s this?” she said.
“A gift,” he said.
She took it.
And there was nothing more after that. He did not say goodbye. He did not speak another word. He merely gave a nod to each of them, turned his horse toward the north, and rode away up the hill. The pounding of the hooves felt like blows.
There was disbelief upon de Rosseley’s face as they watched him go. He looked at her, then after Gisburne, then back again.
“Somehow, I thought...”
Mélisande nodded. De Rosseley did not need to finish the sentence—anyway, she did not wish to hear it. Somehow, to utter the words would only make it more real.
He shook his head in dismay. “I don’t understand.”
She shrugged. It seemed a woefully inadequate gesture. “He is hurting,” she said, “and needs to heal.”
“He’s damned lucky to be alive.”
“I don’t mean his wounds, Sir John.”
De Rosseley frowned, then nodded.
“You said he had achieved all his goals,” said Mélisande. “But in doing so he has lost everything.”
“Surely not everything. In one respect, at least, I thought he had gained.”
She gave a weak smile. “Gisburne asks nothing
of me. He never has. Never questioned who or what I was, never asked about my past or where my loyalties lay. To him, I was just as he found me. What I said, what I did... I have never encountered anyone like that before. The one time he did ask something of me was on the battlement of Dover Castle. I almost died as a result. It was my choice to follow him, and mine alone; but he blames himself. And for Galfrid. For Asif.”
De Rosseley pondered her words for a moment. “There was something he said to the King. Something about Asif. He said the man came of his own free will, and that he merely extended an invitation.”
“It was true of us all,” said Mélisande.
De Rosseley bowed his head, nodding slowly. “But Gisburne cannot allow himself to fully believe it.”
“He wants to, but... He is not as separate from the world as he would have everyone think.”
De Rosseley sighed. “I always thought that Gisburne didn’t really need other people, but now I see it’s just habit. He has simply spent too long on his own, relying on no one but himself.”
“Haven’t you done just the same?”
“Me?” De Rosseley drew himself up in his saddle and affected indignation. “I relish company, my lady. The good cheer, the camaraderie. We are not alike, he and I. I actively seek out the company of others.”
“And then beat them senseless them with an array of weapons...”
“I dispute ‘array.’ I’m gregarious, but not ostentatious.”
“You are different, it’s true; in some ways, at least. Perhaps that’s why you get along so well. But I think you’re wrong about Gisburne. He needs people as much as any of us. Perhaps more.”
“He will realise, one day,” said de Rosseley, suddenly serious. “I am sure of it. How could he not? And this...” He gestured vaguely in Gisburne’s direction. “Do not take it to heart.”
But it was already far too late for that.
She smiled once more, though there was little joy in it. “He will never again ask anything of me. Of that I am sure.”
Guy of Gisburne- The Omnibus Page 132
