The Rose of the World (19 page)

He heard voices. His lord's, speaking to a woman who sounded calm and composed as she answered the questions. He listened. They did not seem to be discussing anything of great note.

Then his lord spoke a name, and suddenly the young man was fully alert. ‘Hugh de Brionne is dead, they tell me,' the lord was saying, ‘and his body lies here at the abbey.'

Hugh was dead.
Dead
. The young man began to shake.

‘—must break the news as soon as he wakes up,' the lord went on. ‘He will take it hard.'

A tear rolled out of the young man's eye.

After a moment, he called out in a weak voice for water, and almost immediately a black-clad nun appeared in the recess to tend him.

Josse watched as Olivier de Brionne's bed was carefully lifted by a quartet of lay brothers and carried across to where the king lay reclining against his pillows, in the opposite recess. There were matters to discuss, matters that could not be yelled out loud over the width of the large room. Turning to Meggie, gently Josse told her to wait outside. Then he went into the recess and drew the curtains.

The king said, ‘Josse, this is Olivier de Brionne. Tell him, if you will, about Hugh.'

Josse turned to look at the young man. He saw straight away the resemblance to Ninian that Meggie had seen. The blue eyes were unmistakable. ‘I am very sorry to inform you that your brother Hugh is dead,' he said gently.

Olivier opened and closed his mouth a couple of times, licked his dry lips and said, ‘I heard them say so. How did he die?'

‘From the bruises and abrasions to his face and his knuckles, it appears he was in a fight,' Josse replied. His heart ached with pity for the young man's evident anguish. ‘His opponent drove him backwards, or perhaps pushed him, and he fell, crushing his skull against a stone.'

‘Crushing his skull,' Olivier repeated in a whisper. Then he screwed his eyes up tightly, as if trying to shut out the dreadful image.

Josse wished there were some comfort that he could offer. He had been informed – by Hugh and Olivier's own mother – of the relationship between her sons.
The brothers are not close
, she had said. Yet, observing Olivier's evident grief and distress, he wondered if she had misread her sons.

‘I do not think that he suffered,' Josse said, looking down at the pale, strained face. ‘The blow would have knocked him out instantly.'

Olivier said nothing for some time. Then his eyes opened and he stared at Josse. ‘Who killed him?' he whispered. ‘Have you any idea?'

‘No,' Josse admitted. ‘Gervase de Gifford, who is sheriff of Tonbridge, is on his way here.' A messenger had been sent urgently to find him as soon as the identity of Olivier's companion had been revealed. ‘He is an efficient and resourceful man, and he does not give up. He will bring your brother's murderer to justice, have no fear.'

Momentarily, Olivier closed his eyes again, and Josse, respecting his grief, bowed his head.

But then Olivier spoke. ‘I have a suggestion,' he said.

Josse glanced at the king, who nodded. ‘We would hear it, if you please,' Josse said.

Olivier was silent for some time, as if collecting his thoughts. Then he said, ‘I must first apologize most sincerely for my part in the business regarding the young girl.'

Josse, who had almost forgotten about Rosamund, mentally kicked himself. Dear Lord, but there was so much to this! ‘And what was your part, exactly?' he asked.

Olivier looked shamefaced. ‘I hate to speak ill of my dear brother, but the idea was his. I – we observed that our lord the king was much taken with her when he saw her up by the chapel and—'

‘Most assuredly I was not,' the king's hard, cold voice interrupted. ‘You and Hugh were gravely mistaken, Olivier.'

‘Yes, my lord, and I must humbly beg your pardon,' Olivier said hastily. ‘Believing we were acting in a way that would please you, Hugh sent me to find her and bring her to you. I was to go to join you at the hunting lodge and present the girl to you there so that you—'

‘
Enough
!' roared the king.

Olivier flinched as if he had been struck. ‘I did not know what had become of my brother,' he said in a whisper. ‘I thought I had better proceed with the plan alone, which is what I did.' He hesitated.

‘You said you had a suggestion,' Josse prompted him gently. ‘May we hear it?'

Olivier shot him a quick look, almost instantly dropping his head. ‘I am reluctant to speak it,' he muttered.

The king made an explosive sound of impatience. ‘For God's sake, Olivier, pull yourself together!' Perhaps feeling he had spoken too harshly to a man who had so recently learned of a bereavement, he added, slightly more kindly, ‘If you have information that has any bearing on Hugh's death, it is your duty to pass it on so that it can be acted upon.'

Olivier drew a shaking breath. ‘Very well.' He looked up at Josse. ‘What I have to say is this. Up in the clearing by the chapel, my lord and I were attacked by a madman wielding a sword and knife, and both of us were badly wounded.' He winced, as if speaking of his wound had made it throb with pain. ‘The madman was acting, or so it would seem, in defence of the two women, the girl and her older companion.'

Josse realized that he meant Meggie. He felt very cold suddenly.

‘I believe,' Olivier went on slowly, ‘that it may have happened this way: the madman somehow learned of Hugh's plan and, while I was engaged with taking the girl to the hunting lodge, he sought out Hugh and challenged him, demanding to know where the girl was. Hugh, determined to carry out his scheme, would not tell him, and the two men fought. Perhaps the madman did not mean to kill him –' he turned earnest blue eyes first to the king and then to Josse – ‘but, all the same, my brother died.'

Josse's heart was thumping very hard.
The madman
. Ninian. Dear Lord, this man was suggesting that Ninian had killed Hugh de Brionne!

He hadn't, he could not have done, Josse told himself over and over again.

But then, as if in a waking dream, he seemed to hear his own voice speaking.

Ninian.

The king lay back and closed his eyes. He was alone; a state so rare in his life that he was tempted to simply relish the moment. It would not last, for the old knight Josse d'Acquin had just been informed that the sheriff had arrived and so had hurried away to inform him of the recent developments. Soon both of them would be there, and undoubtedly they would very quickly be joined by the gaggle of self-promoting lords and lordlings that habitually flocked in the king's wake like seagulls after a fishing boat. Not to mention his bodyguards . . .

The curtains that enclosed the recess had been left partly open, and he looked out at the infirmary. He usually had an instinctive reaction against all abbeys: the result of having spent the first years of his life a virtual prisoner in his mother's beloved Fontevrault. They had thought to make a monk of him, but even as a child he had summoned the means to demonstrate in no uncertain terms that, no matter what they did,
that
was never going to happen. He had escaped the cloister, yes, but those early experiences had left him with a deep-seated revulsion against the soft footfalls and the sombre robes of the avowed.

It was strange, then, he mused, that this Hawkenlye Abbey did not make his skin crawl. Quite the opposite, in fact; against all expectations, he was enjoying himself. The wound in his shoulder was not severe, and it was pleasant to be fussed over. In addition, that glorious woman was here and, whatever happened, he was determined to see her again, preferably alone.

Meggie. Her name was Meggie.

She had raised her sword to him, and normally that was a hanging offence. They would call it treason, in fact, and so the means of death would be longer drawn out and decidedly more painful. For a moment he thought of her suffering. Dying. It was not a good thought. He would spare her, he decided. He would make no accusation against her. She would be so very grateful, but he was sure he could come up with a way in which she could demonstrate that gratitude.

He thought about that, too.

Presently, his breathing slowing once more, he recalled that she had said her mother's name was Joanna de Courtenay. She'd had a distant cousin at court. He let his mind wander freely, and after a while a memory surfaced.

It had been one of those wild, rollicking Christmas celebrations when it seemed that almost all the rich and the powerful in the land gathered together, determined to have a good time. It had been at Windsor; he thought hard and tried to recall the year. It had been soon after his elder brother Henry, the Young King, had died, succumbing to a terrible attack of dysentery following his hare-brained looting of the holy shrine at Rocamadour. The Young King died in 1183, so the Christmas in question must have been 1184. And a laughing, dashing, daredevil of a man called Denys de Courtenay had brought a young cousin to court, and the king had bedded her every night for almost a fortnight.

King John smiled at the memory. He'd had his fair share of women that Christmas, but he hadn't been invited to share any of his father's. He remembered Joanna de Courtney, though; she had been gorgeous, and they'd all envied King Henry and grumbled because a bandy, randy old man had won the best pickings of the season.

If she had borne a child following the rampant days of that Christmas, he had never heard tell of it. Meggie was too young to have been conceived so long ago and, besides, Josse d'Acquin had said she was his daughter and the resemblance between them supported the claim.

Yet there had been a child; a son. He was certain of it, for the evidence had been right before his eyes only a matter of hours ago. A young man had stood challenging him, a sword in one hand and a knife in the other, and for a weird, disorienting moment John had thought he was looking at his own father, as he had looked in John's earliest memories.

If he was right – and in his mind there was no shadow of a doubt – then his opponent in that short and ferocious struggle up by the chapel had been his half brother.

A slow smile spread across the king's face. He did not care to have stray half brothers loose in the land; you never know when some hothead might decide to make such a man a rallying point for insubordination. Well, this particular bastard brother had just attacked his king and gravely wounded one of his close companions, which had effectively signed his death warrant.

It was just a matter of catching him.

There was the sound of booted feet coming into the quiet infirmary; it appeared that Josse had located the sheriff. Swiftly, the king turned his mind to the orders he would issue, and then it would only be a matter of time before his blue-eyed half brother was screaming out his death agony.

The king's smile broadened, and he gave a soft laugh.

ELEVEN

J
osse and Gervase stood outside the recess where the king lay. The king had just finished issuing his orders to Gervase. The sheriff was to gather together as many men as he needed and send them out searching for the man who had attacked the king and Olivier de Brionne in the clearing by the chapel. The man was accused of gravely wounding Olivier, of causing the death of Hugh de Brionne and, most serious of all, of raising arms against the king. The king had given a detailed description of the wanted man and curtly commanded Gervase to circulate it among his men.

Several favourites from the king's inner circle had gradually insinuated themselves into the recess, and they were joined by a quartet of bodyguards and a couple of servants. As soon as the king announced he was ready, they would organize a litter or a cart and take him back to one of his London residences, where he could be nursed and fussed back to health by his own team of physicians. Josse, Gervase and everyone at Hawkenlye were redundant.

Gervase looked at Josse and silently jerked his head towards the infirmary door. They walked quickly away, only stopping when they were out of earshot of the building and the many men loitering outside it.

Josse waited. He was all but certain Gervase had recognized Ninian from the king's description. If so, he appreciated that the sheriff was in an impossible position. His duty to his monarch was indisputable, for he had been given a direct order to find the wanted man and bring him to justice. But this wanted man was the adopted son of his oldest friend, and Josse was well aware that Gervase himself had grown to like, trust and admire Ninian.

After a moment, Gervase sighed and said, ‘Josse, I have to go. There are things I must do . . .' He raised his head and stared into the distance, his expression deeply grave and his eyes narrowed, as if the tasks awaiting him were too awful to bear contemplation. Then he turned back to Josse. ‘I am going to Tonbridge to organize my search parties, and to begin with I intend to concentrate on the main roads to London and the coast. Only when we have explored the most obvious escape routes will I start on the tracks and the byways.'

Just for an instant, Josse wondered why Gervase was explaining in such detail. Then he realized. He could have embraced his friend, but that would have been unwise for there were far too many pairs of suspicious and unfriendly eyes watching.

‘Very well, my lord sheriff,' Josse replied stiffly and in a voice audible to the king's men by the infirmary. ‘I will detail whatever men I can summon to begin searching in the vicinity of the abbey.'

Gervase hurried away towards the stables, calling for his horse as he ran. Very quickly he and his men were clattering across the courtyard and out through the gates. The king's men were watching and, taking advantage of their distraction, Josse slipped away, out through the small rear gate, around the side of the abbey and up the slope to where the trees began. He had had to leave Alfred in the Hawkenlye stables for a lay brother to take home later – he could not have fetched him without being seen – but he would do as well on foot, for he was going into the forest.