The Autumn Throne (21 page)

William bowed his head. ‘I have sinned greatly in my life, and this is one of my greatest. I promised you I would protect him, and I did not, and for that I beg your forgiveness. I do not deserve to receive it, but if of your mercy you would show it, then I will go in peace and meet my maker. If God so desires it, then let my end be in Jerusalem where I have promised your son and my lord to make my pilgrimage.’

Alienor continued to grip his fingers in hers, feeling the vital living flesh and bone where her son had none.

‘It is more than a pledge, madam, it is my life’s duty and nothing will stand in my way.’

‘I believe you will do it,’ she whispered. ‘I forgive you without reserve. You have burdens enough to bear and I will not add to them. In truth, it was the plotting of your enemies at court that meant you were not there when you were needed, when you might have turned the tide.’

A look of disgust crossed William’s face. ‘I will not speak of those insinuations, madam. To think of them sickens me.’

‘I know the truth of your honour and I do not doubt it.’

He
gently reclaimed his hands. ‘By your leave, madam.’

He went to his baggage, returning a moment later with a leather satchel from which he took a roll of plain grey cloth and unfastened the ties. Folded inside it was a brown woollen cloak, a cross of white linen stitched over the heart.

Alienor had never seen the garment before. William did not have to say it had been laid upon Harry’s dying body. A strand of his hair like gold thread sparkled on the collar. ‘Is this all I am to have of him? A solitary hair?’ Her grief welled up.

William said nothing, his lips tight and his throat working. For a while Alienor could not speak. This small, inconsequential thread was as precious to her as a relic because it had been part of her boy when he was alive. If only she could conjure his whole body from this one tenuous strand. With tender care she threaded the hair onto one of her silver needles and pinned it securely to a piece of silk cloth in her sewing casket.

‘When do you leave for Jerusalem?’ she asked when she could speak again.

‘As soon as I may, madam. First I must visit my family and make my farewells, and I have to prepare for the journey.’

She raised a warning forefinger. ‘It will be long and arduous, I promise you that.’ She had travelled the road to Jerusalem, had survived the vagaries of the pilgrim road, storm-tossed seas, hostile attacks by infidel tribes, Greek political dealing that made sewage seem clean by comparison, and a husband she had come to loathe beyond bearing.

‘Even if the road was paved with thorns from Dover to Jerusalem and I had to go on my knees, I would not turn back. God willing I shall accomplish my task, and if I do not, it will be because I have died in the attempt.’

‘My resources are limited,’ she said, ‘but I can provide you with horses and provisions for your journey. It is a long time since I took the pilgrim road, but I have friends upon whom you may call to aid you should you have need. I will help you in any way I can to reach the Sepulchre.’

He
nodded stiffly. ‘Thank you, madam. I am grateful, and it is more than I deserve.’

‘I would move heaven and earth to get you there – for my son’s sake.’ She gestured to the cloak. ‘Put it out of my sight, William. I cannot bear to look on it any more and at the same time I am so tempted to take it from you and keep it close that it is destroying me.’

In silence he set about folding the garment and returning it to its satchel, his moves careful and reverent.

‘Have you talked to the King? Yes, of course, you must have.’

William latched the bag. ‘Yes, madam. He grieves deeply even if he buries it before others. He said that although his son had cost him more money in life than it took to rule a country, he still wished he was alive to cost him more.’

Alienor closed her eyes. Harry would still be alive if Henry had given him land and responsibility instead of handing him money and empty promises.

William sat back on his heels and looked at her. ‘He has buried the grief deep and shows nothing to the world. He has given me funds for the journey in exchange for two of my horses, and letters of safe conduct, and promised me a place in his service should I return from Jerusalem – although I do not believe he expects me to.’

‘You must,’ she said fiercely, ‘because I need to know you have achieved your goal, and because of Harry. You say you will do or die; then I entrust you with “do”, William, and if you let me down in this I shall seek you out in the afterlife and I swear I will kill you again.’

He knelt at her feet and taking her hand, pressed his lips to her fingers. She reached out her other one to lay a light benediction on his head. ‘God be with you,’ she said. ‘And God keep you safe. My prayers are with you every step of the way.’

William departed the next morning, furnished with a barrel of silver for his expenses and the promise of more. Alienor had already set her scribes to writing letters of commendation. She
came to the courtyard to see him off with his small entourage. In the bright summer morning, the toll of recent weeks showed evidence in the gaunt hollows of his cheeks. There was a determined, almost grim set to his shoulders, and the familiar wide smile was gone from his lips.

‘William, you have a sacred charge. I will see you again, swear it to me.’

‘If God wills it, madam,’ he replied, reminding her that her word was not the final one.

She watched him set his foot in the stirrup and mount his palfrey. The grace, the limber movements were still there. She remembered him as a young knight, riding at her side in Poitou, entertaining her on the road, and then putting himself in the path of her assailants, buying her time to escape. He had been captured and she had paid his ransom and taken him into her household because she could not allow such courage to escape her service. He was intelligent, courtly, honest and brave, and for those very qualities she had entrusted Harry’s care to him – and it had not been enough. Watching him ride away now was like watching another part of her life that had been good and solid tear off and float away downriver and out of sight.

Alienor came to Rouen Cathedral on a glorious September day that hung like a jewel on the end of summer. The sky was deep blue and the clouds puffy white without obscuring the sun which was still strong enough to be hot, and yet the shadow cast by the cathedral was dense – palpably black and damp.

She had arrived late yesterday, crossing the Narrow Sea for
the first time in more than ten years of being held prisoner at Henry’s whim. Nothing had changed save that he had lengthened her leash. It was not because of compassion following Harry’s death. He did not care whether she mourned at his tomb or not, but there was the matter of inheritance to be decided and he needed her presence for that since she was Duchess of Aquitaine.

She had been dreading this moment ever since receiving Henry’s summons at Sarum. To know her son was dead was difficult enough, but to confront his tomb and face the evidence of finality was beyond endurance, yet endure it she must. She was like an effigy, hard and regal, her face taut with effort as she swallowed her grief and felt it lodge like a stone at her core.

Henry paced at her side, his jaw set and his posture stiff. He had not looked at her once since they had arrived under separate escort at the cathedral doors. He had visited his son’s tomb before, and this for him was a matter of formality, of escorting her as his consort, and presenting to the world an image of parents mourning a son.

Harry had been interred before the cathedral’s high altar, and a blaze of candles surrounded the tomb. The effigy had yet to be carved and his resting place was marked by a plinth of pale marble, covered with an embellished silk cloth. Offerings surrounded the tomb – coins and trinkets, candles, and the wax image of a hand and arm presented by the grateful recipient of a cure. In death her son was loved and esteemed a miracle worker, a hundred times more powerful than he had been in life. That was why Le Mans had wanted him and Rouen had fought back. Canterbury had the martyr Thomas Becket who had died because of Henry. Rouen had Henry’s son, dead of the same source cause.

Wreathed in coils of incense, Alienor stood upright before the tomb and resisted the urge to fall across it and wail. The effort made her movements jerky. Her expression rigid and fierce, she gave a single sharp nod, and turning to Robert de Neubourg, Dean of Rouen, gave him a soft pouch of red silk
containing a mark of gold, acknowledging his part in settling Harry to rest and making all seemly.

De Neubourg bowed and accepted the pouch with gravitas. Alienor returned his bow and went to pray alone in the side chapel dedicated to the Virgin Mary. A blaze of candles surrounded a carved statue of the Mother of God painted in crimson, blue and gold, the baby Jesus perched on her knee. On another wall hung an image of Christ on the cross, his face contorted with suffering.

Alienor knelt, signed her breast and bent her head. As she prayed, she thought of Mary, holding her infant son in her lap, nurturing and sustaining him through his childhood, and then watching all that love and care dying tortured on the cross. But in dying, the Blessed Virgin’s son had granted eternal life to all.

‘Of your great compassion, Lord Jesus Christ,’ she whispered, ‘have mercy on my soul for all my wrongdoings, no matter what they are. And have mercy on my son’s soul and grant that we may meet again in the next life, and may that meeting be swift.’ She crossed herself and gazed at the windows, shedding rainbow colours on the chapel’s stone floor. The light from these windows shone just the same as it had when Harry was alive; that had not changed. And she must go on the same too, unchanging, for even when the sun did not shine the colours in the glass still existed.

Alienor knew well the chamber she had been allotted in the Tower of Rouen for she had stayed here many years ago when the children were small. It was well maintained and pleasantly appointed with colourful wall hangings and a good fire burning in the hearth.

Henry had followed her into the room to see her bestowed there following their visit to the cathedral but was already poised to depart. However, she would not let him go, and stood before him, blocking his way as she looked him in the eyes.

‘This is all your fault. If you had given him the funds and
the lands, he would have had no business to go marauding about making trouble and plundering his brothers’ estates. He would still be alive had you not forced him into a corner.’

‘I forced him nowhere,’ Henry retorted, grey eyes glittering with anger. ‘His end was of his own doing.’

‘Which would not have happened if you had had sufficient fatherly concern to heed his complaints and let him live as a man.’

‘I emptied my treasury for him, how dare you say that.’

‘Yes,’ she said with contempt. ‘Money, Henry. You made a beggar of him by giving him money. Small wonder he was driven to do what he did.’

He ground his jaw. ‘I do not need a lecture from you on the matter of my sons, madam. You have done quite enough in that department already, little of it commendable. You know nothing.’ He made a grasping motion with his hands as if he wanted to set them around her throat, then turned on his heel and slammed from the room.

Alienor stood alone, one fist pressed to her heart, and wondered why she had bothered to speak at all and feeling empty and powerless now that her outburst was over.

‘Mama?’

She turned her gaze to the young woman standing on the threshold of the chamber. She was tall with wide grey eyes like Henry’s, strong cheekbones and a natural upward curve to her lips that was almost a smile.

‘Matilda,’ Alienor breathed. ‘Daughter …’

The young woman came forward and knelt at her feet, the scarlet hem of her gown puddling around her knees.

Her formal greeting gave Alienor a vital moment to recover. Her last view of Matilda had been of a little girl of ten years old, waving from the deck of a ship as it receded to the horizon, carrying her to her marriage to Heinrich, Duke of Saxony.

She looked down at the fine weave on Matilda’s headdress and a shiny strand of hair that had slipped loose. Golden-brown, tinged
with copper. Harry’s hair had been like that but a shade lighter. So much joy, so much sorrow. How was she supposed to navigate a course through such jagged straits?

‘I am so pleased to see you,’ she said, and then the formality shattered and she flung her arms around Matilda with joy and tears. ‘It lights my darkness to set eyes on you again, for I thought I never would. Let me look at you.’ She held her away. ‘My child has become a beautiful woman!’

A pink flush coloured Matilda’s cheeks. ‘She has become a mother too, several times over.’ She placed her hand on her belly which was the softly rounded one of a fertile matron. ‘If you have the strength, I will summon your grandchildren and present them to you.’

Alienor’s smile was starry with tears. ‘Indeed, bring them to me. They give me strength to go on. They are my hope for the future.’