The Autumn Throne (32 page)

‘The deck of the ship collapsed in Dieppe when I was boarding,’ he said with a grimace. ‘I managed to grab a strut and save myself but others were not so fortunate. Gilbert Pipart broke his arm.’

‘Have you seen a physician?’

He snorted. ‘Yes, he said I should rest it.’

Alienor took the letters he had for her. ‘Well, you can do that while I read these and you tell me your news.’

Belbel provided an extra cushion for his back.

‘I am
about to go and claim a young bride,’ he said, ‘and here I am easing myself into a chair like an old man.’

Alienor eyed him with amusement. ‘I doubt the parts that matter have lost their sap, William,’ she said, and then laughed at his expression. ‘Your spirit and the strength of your will!’ She sat down opposite him. ‘So Richard has given you Isabelle of Striguil despite you trying to kill him?’

William reddened. ‘I had no intention of killing the King – he knows that well. But I had to stop him. I told him I was not so much in my dotage that I no longer had the strength to put a lance in its intended target. And indeed, he has granted me Isabelle of Striguil in marriage. Once I have delivered these letters to you, I am bound for London to marry her, although what a girl of eighteen will think of a grizzled old warhorse like me I do not know.’

‘Either you are shamelessly angling for praise or you do not see yourself as women do,’ Alienor said. ‘You wear more years than when I first took you into my service but you were an untried boy then. Time has wrought experience, not lines. Isabelle de Clare will have no cause to complain of this match.’

‘I pray not,’ he said wryly.

Alienor looked at the letters in her lap. ‘So,’ she said after a moment, ‘you were with the King when he died.’

A bleak look entered his eyes. ‘Yes, but not at his deathbed, I am sorry to say, and it has troubled me deeply that he died alone.’

‘Died alone?’ she asked sharply. ‘Was there no one keeping vigil at his side?’

‘Madam, we were, but not at that moment, and it is to my deep regret. He had been delirious for a couple of days – burning up with fever and without control of his bodily functions.’

Alienor compressed her lips. Dear God, Henry. How many times had she thought he deserved to die alone and in agony, but now that this scenario was being presented to her, she was sickened. William faced her. Another man might have looked
down or away, but his gaze was steady and level – as it had been when he told her about Harry.

‘His bed linens and braies had to be changed and we left to take some respite from the sickroom while the servants dealt with the matter.’ He hesitated, took a deep breath and plunged on. ‘When we returned a short while later, the King was dead and the servants had fled leaving him naked on his unmade bed.’ He clenched his fists on his knees. ‘I find it very difficult to tell you this, madam. They had raided the chests, bundled all the movable goods of value into clean sheets and run away. One of our men covered the King’s body with his own cloak. We caught a couple of the runaways and before they were hanged they told us the King had died while they were changing him, and they had panicked and run.’ His eyes were fierce with chagrin and anger. ‘It was no end for such a great king and I am ashamed. We should not have left him for any reason.’

‘You were not to know,’ she said unsteadily, ‘but it is indeed a grievous end.’

‘We did our best with what we had – found him raiment and clothing from among us, and from what we recovered from the servants we caught – but we had little to give the crowds lining the road when we bore him to Fontevraud.’ He gave her a searching look. ‘It was my decision to take him there because it was scarce twenty miles away and I knew he had a fondness for the place.’

‘You did well.’ Alienor’s throat tightened. ‘It was a good decision.’ Her control was precarious, like walking on knives.

William made a small gesture of negation. ‘We waited for my lord Richard to arrive and to decide what to do. You should know that the King was given a fitting burial.’

‘I am glad of that. You did the best you could.’

William said nothing, clearly less forgiving of himself than she was.

‘What of John?’ she asked.

William’s face was expressionless. ‘My lord John did not see fit to stay with his father when it became plain that his
death was upon him and enemies closing in. The King had asked for a list of those who had betrayed him, and was sorely distressed that his youngest son was numbered first among them. The Count of Mortain has since joined my lord Richard and sworn him fealty.’

It was so like John’s nature, Alienor thought. He had never been able to stand in the storm even though he was attracted to power. She did not want to feel sorry for Henry, but the emotion came anyway, threatening to engulf her. ‘It grieves me to hear such news, but I understand why John made that decision.’ She defended him because he was her cub too. ‘I am glad though that you remained with the King and saw to his dignity.’

‘Jeoffrey FitzRoy was there also.’

Alienor narrowed her eyes. ‘Indeed?’

‘Yes, madam, and deeply concerned for his father’s welfare – genuinely. He wept for him as not all did.’

Alienor nodded brusquely. She had a duty and responsibility to her husband’s bastard, but she also had to protect her own sons. Henry had doted on his firstborn even if his mother had been a whore. He was an ambitious young man of proven ability and that made him both an asset and a danger. ‘Thank you, William,’ she said. ‘You have told me what I wish to know.’ She crossed herself. ‘God rest the King’s soul. Come now, let us talk of other matters – your wedding for one.’

When William had departed, limping but still with a buoyant tread, Alienor looked at the letters he had brought her. Matters of routine government. Instructions, requests, supplications. So much to do and so little time. The thought reminded her of Henry and how he had always been racing time until time had run out. Suddenly the emotion that had been gathering ever since she received the news of his death reared up and struck like a snake. A deep pain in her abdomen spread from there, tightening her chest, constricting her throat, burning her eyes. All the lost dreams, all the beautiful times between
them lay like a spring meadow over the soil of all the terrible things he had done to her, and to which she had retaliated in kind.

As the grief burgeoned, she uttered an anguished moan. She had been holding herself strong and defiant for so long against all the oppression, all that Henry had done to her, and now she had to let it go. All the rage and bitterness, all the regret and recrimination. She sought her bed, pulled the curtains around her and hugged the terrible pain of her grief. ‘Henry, you were such a fool,’ she raged, ‘such a stupid, stupid man for all your wits. We could have had everything if you had dared to reach out.’

The feelings rushed over her in a torrent. And swirling on the flood was the love she had once felt for a vigorous, energetic red-haired youth who had had the temerity and tenacity to believe he could conquer the world. She had believed him then too, and gloried in his ambition, until she realised that she was just something else to be conquered along his way and then left in his wake. It did not make the love she had once felt any less real. Her hatred washed out of her on a wave of stinging tears, leaving behind a scoured shoreline, clean but bruised with pity for Henry – and what might have been.

‘God have mercy on your soul,’ she whispered. ‘Be at peace, and let me have peace too.’

Pulling the coverlet over herself, she closed her eyes and slept properly for the first time since receiving the news.

She woke to the sound of her women whispering outside the bed curtains. Parting the hangings, she commanded them to bring her a bath, food, and clean raiment. She knew her face must bear signs of the raw emotions that had torn through her like a storm. Her hair was a sleep-tangled rats’ nest, and her clothes rumpled, but she was aware of a change in herself, of a feeling that this was real. She was Alienor, Queen of England, and she had work to do.

Alienor stroked
the palfrey’s muscular shoulder, admiring the red-gold sheen of the coat, contrasting with the flaxen mane and tail. A leggy foal with a white blaze sniffed Alienor with fearless curiosity.

‘She is a beauty,’ she said to Joan, Abbess of Amesbury.

‘Thank you, madam. We have good pasture here for horses and King Henry honoured us for several years.’

The nun’s tone was bland, but Alienor saw through it. The handsome palfrey and her foal were just two of a dozen horses Henry had stabled here at Amesbury’s expense. There were another five palfreys, three hackneys and two spirited chasers.

Alienor might have been standing in the Abbess’s place had she taken vows as Henry had intended. Joan D’Osmont must know this, but she stood serenely with clasped hands, her manner deferential but not obsequious.

‘I know how much cost you have incurred. The late King entrusted many houses of God with the care of his horses. I am of a mind to take the palfrey and foal off your hands as a wedding gift for my granddaughter and the Count of Perche, but I intend to freely grant you the others to do with as you wish – either to ride or to sell, and the same for every other abbey and priory in the land that currently stables the late King’s horses.’

‘Madam, that is generous indeed,’ the Abbess replied with pleasure.

‘Perhaps, but it is also fair. These animals have cost you dear and the new King recognises this.’ Added to which Richard, once crowned, would be busy raising money for his
crusade and what was given with one hand would balance what was taken with the other.

Before Richard could depart to the Holy Land, England had to be settled and peaceful with firm government, and that was for her to organise. She had sent out representatives far and wide to take oaths of fealty on Richard’s behalf. She had seen to the regulation of weights and measures throughout the land so that they were uniform. Everywhere she had ridden she had projected her authority and made herself conspicuous, dressing in royal robes, a jewelled crown over her veil and Snowit perched on her wrist. Soon Richard would arrive, but for now Alienor, Dowager Queen and Queen Mother, held the reins of government in hands that had always been capable, though often denied. She was deriving great satisfaction and pleasure from her progress. It soothed the deep scars left by her imprisonment and she felt refreshed and invigorated.

‘Madam, I have organised food and drink in my lodging.’ The Abbess made an open gesture towards the convent buildings.

‘That would be most welcome,’ Alienor responded. ‘I have to be in Winchester before nightfall, but there is time.’

Leaving the paddocks, she allowed the Abbess to escort her to her parlour. Earlier, she had knelt in the church to pray for Henry’s soul and had given alms to the abbey for the same. And not just for Henry. Hard on the heels of the news of Henry’s death, only two days later, a messenger had arrived from Brunswick bearing the tragic news that her daughter Matilda had died of fever and congestion of the lungs. Alienor had faced the news with numb disbelief and then dull acceptance because there was nothing she could do. The only succour was to keep her beloved daughter in her heart, give alms in her name and remember her every day in her prayers. Also to give extra love and tenderness to the children Matilda had left in her care – Richenza, Wilhelm, Lothar and Otto.

Although grief-stricken, Richenza had risen to a new maturity in dealing with her sorrow. She was her mother’s daughter,
and determined to do her justice. She had taken it upon herself to comfort her brothers and in so doing had found purpose and solace for herself. Alienor could not have been more proud of her.

‘The King was keen for me to retire here,’ Alienor said as she entered the Abbess’s guest chamber, ‘but I was not ready to lead a life of contemplation.’

‘But one day you might, madam?’ Abbess Joan asked with a quizzical smile.

‘One day’ – Alienor made a gesture that pushed the question aside – ‘but not yet. I have too much to do in the world – although,’ she added graciously, ‘I know that any abbess of the house of Fontevraud holds a distinguished position.’

Servants arrived with dishes of salmon in green herb sauce accompanied by bread and clear wine of Auxerre. Alienor dined with pleasure; food tasted so much better for the salt of freedom. She was eager to gorge herself on life. She had a reason to rise early from her bed every morning. She was filling up with all the light and air she had been denied in captivity. Yet she was grounded too, because her life had purpose, and that purpose was her children, Richard in particular, and she would see him very soon.

‘
Confinement is distasteful to mankind and it is a most delightful refreshment to the spirit to be liberated therefrom
.’

Listening to the scribe read the words back to her, Alienor felt their resonance at her core. She had ordered the release of all prisoners currently held in England’s gaols. An amnesty; a new start for a new reign, not to be taken as a sign of weakness, but of a queen’s clemency. She was truly embracing her role of peacemaker and healer of wounds. ‘Yes,’ she approved. ‘Let copies be made under my seal and sent to every sheriff.’