The Winter King (34 page)

J
ehan de Ferronier reached down and patted the neck of his horse. ‘Not far now, Auban,’ he said, speaking in Breton since Auban was a Breton horse. ‘It’s been a long road, and both of us are hungry and weary, but soon we’ll be able to rest.’ The horse responded to his voice with a shake of his head, making the long, pale-coloured mane fly out in an arc which released a cloud of dust. Jehan, waving the dust away from his face, gave a short laugh. ‘Yes,’ he added, ‘and we’re both filthy. I forgot to mention that.’

He turned round in the saddle, looking back into the west. The sun would soon be setting – this was, after all, the shortest day of the year – but he reckoned enough daylight remained for him to reach his destination. The thought of yet another night curled up under some hedgerow that provided inadequate shelter from the cold was all but unendurable. Once or twice, at the start of his journey, he had treated himself and Auban to a night in an inn, but now he felt he must save every coin of the money that remained in his purse.

He thought – he
hoped
– he was going to be needing it.

He had been in Wales, where he had sought out and joined the group of fellow Bretons who had gone to add their strength to the Welshmen fighting under Llewellyn ap Iorwerth. Neither Jehan nor any of his companions had any personal allegiance to the Welsh lord; none had even met him before arriving in Wales. It was simply a case that
my enemy’s enemy is my friend.
Llewellyn was fighting King John for reasons of his own – most of Jehan’s fellow fighters had only the haziest idea of what these reasons were – and Jehan’s Bretons were willing to put their strength of arms behind anyone who fought the king of England.

Their own reason for fighting him was crystal clear, and it amounted almost to a holy crusade: King John had murdered his own nephew, and that precious young man had been the Bretons’ beloved Arthur, son of Constance of Brittany and King John’s brother, Geoffrey. The rumour – so widely believed that, in most men’s minds, it had turned into gospel truth – was that, at Easter 1203 in Rouen, John himself had crushed the life out of the young man, then weighted the body with a stone and thrown it out of a window into the Seine.

Jehan and his Bretons had found a confused and constantly changing state of affairs in Wales. The problem, as Jehan saw it, was that the majority of the Welsh lords were primarily – some of them solely – concerned with themselves and their own small fiefdoms, and, accordingly, they tended to switch their loyalty depending on which of the two protagonists, Llewellyn or John, was in the ascendancy. John’s initial attack had been an abject failure, leading the Welsh lords to flock to Llewellyn, but his second advance – better-planned, better-executed – had been devastatingly successful. When Jehan had left Wales, rumour had it that Llewellyn was in the middle of forming new and powerful allegiances with other Welsh lords, and that their uprising against John, when it happened, would have the support of no less a figure than Pope Innocent himself.

Less widely broadcast – in fact, Jehan had only heard it as the merest whisper – was the suspicion that Llewellyn was in touch with the French king, Philip Augustus, and together they were planning a massive counterstroke against John.

Jehan had not been the only Breton to leave Wales late that autumn, as the season slowly and irrevocably turned to winter. As the brave stand against King John had deteriorated into a squabble between rival Welsh lords, many of Jehan’s companions had also decided they’d had enough. Most of them were only there, in that mountainous, incomprehensible land so far from home, because they had believed they would be offered the chance to take a swing at the man who had murdered their Duke Arthur; because, with any luck, they might witness the royal head severed from the royal shoulders. Sitting in a dirty, damp, cold camp, with inadequate and pretty disgusting food and, most days, nothing to do, most of the Bretons had decided they would be better off back home.
We can always come back
, they reassured each other as they packed up their meagre possessions and prepared to leave.
When the fight begins anew, we’ll be here!

Jehan knew they meant it; knew they sincerely believed the brave proclamations. And, in truth, the mass departures suited him, for nobody thought to comment when he, too, announced he was off.

He said farewell to the last of his fellow Bretons – a group of seven who came from a small town near to Duke Arthur’s former stronghold in Nantes – as the road they had been travelling on diverged. His friends headed south, to the coast and a boat to take them home. Jehan went on eastwards, giving as his reason his urgent need to find a town or a village with a decent blacksmith to attend to Auban, who had cast a shoe and was beginning to favour his off hind leg.

Nobody questioned him, and the farewells were affectionate and sincere, with many calls of, ‘See you in the spring, when the fight resumes!’

As he headed off on his long road, Jehan felt a moment’s regret at his duplicity. Auban did indeed need the attentions of a blacksmith, but only because Jehan had himself removed the shoe. But he’d needed an excuse for not proceeding with his companions, and that was the best he’d been able to come up with.

He had two reasons for not returning to Brittany, and he was prepared to share neither of them with the men with whom he had been living and fighting for the past couple of months. The first was personal: he had promised Meggie he would join her in the Wealden Forest before winter made travel impossible. He knew he had left it very late, for the temperature had been steadily dropping and he was sure it would be snowing before long. The second reason was involved with the campaign he had just left behind in Wales.

Although Jehan had been careful not to say so out loud, he sensed that he was more deeply committed in his opposition to King John of England than many, if not most, of his Breton companions. He had nodded in agreement with the comments that suggested there was no point in remaining in Wales, while in his heart he had been angry with those who made them.
The struggle is not over
,
he wanted to shout.
We should take the initiative, and ally ourselves to Llewellyn himself, offering our swords and reiterating our reasons for joining the fight!
We should tell him what to do!

He had done nothing.

Other than, in the privacy of his own head, to formulate a plan of his own.

Yes, he would be returning to the south-east of England anyway, to honour his commitment to Meggie. It was fortunate, therefore, that the south-east was precisely where the king now resided – where, or so they said, he would be spending the next few weeks.

It made a lot more sense, really, for a man who wanted to kill him to be in the same vicinity …

He was on the very last leg of the long journey. To his right, the dark, shadowy forest loomed like a sleeping giant. Ahead, the road wound around the bulge of its northern perimeter. Presently he passed Hawkenlye Abbey, where, as the light began to fail, lamps were being lit.

He urged Auban forward, for suddenly he had need of haste.

He turned into the forest, casting in his memory and trying to picture the twists and turns of the track. After a while, he relaxed, and a smile spread across his face. It was all coming back to him; he knew he would find the way.

And, sooner than he expected, the clearing opened up before him.

Meggie was tidying the little hut, preparing to close up for the night and go down to the abbey. Once again, she was helping Sister Liese with a patient in the infirmary, and it made sense for her to sleep at Hawkenlye rather than walk back to the House in the Woods. Looking round the beloved hut, she sighed. She had tried over and over again to persuade Josse that she was as safe within its stout walls as anywhere on earth, but still he was not happy about her sleeping there alone. ‘When you have company – if Tiphaine, for example, is staying with you – then that’s different,’ he had said. ‘Otherwise please, Meggie, do as I ask and go down to the abbey at nightfall.’

Because the habit of obeying him was strong in her – and far more importantly, because she loved him and did not want him to worry about her – Meggie had given her word and she kept it. But, denied of the precious solitude of the hut overnight, instead she regularly escaped to it during the day. Whenever she was not needed in the infirmary – which, in fact, was quite often, since her contact with her patient involved talking to him and listening to him rather than actually nursing him – she slipped out of the abbey, up the long slope, in under the trees and along the track to the hut.

Now, as she finished her tidying, she reflected that she needed her time alone, more than ever, just at the moment, for her heart was uneasy. She remembered something one of her instructors over at Folles Pensées had told her:
Little is more exhausting to the human spirit than a mental conflict that cannot be resolved
.

The truth of that wise old man’s words was proved to her now. The one benefit – she smiled grimly to herself – was that, having experienced the condition herself, she might more easily be able to help fellow sufferers.

Her conflict was simple: she had met a man who was universally loathed, yet she was drawn to him. Not for the first time, she had allowed physical sensation to take over, seducing her into feeling deeply attracted to someone who, she knew very well, would use her and discard her with no more regard for her than if she had been a hound that would no longer run. Perhaps less, for he was said to treat his hunting dogs with particular care and affection.

For what felt like the hundredth time, she fought to suppress her vivid memories of that meeting in the glade. Yet again, she failed.
What if you had done as you so badly wanted to, and yielded?
she demanded of herself.
What do you think would have happened? Do not fool yourself with dreams of some sort of lasting commitment. Would you even want that, you idiot?

Of course not. Her life was here, in this beloved place, and, beyond it, with her family. And her future was with Jehan, who loved her and who treated her with respect, as his equal.
Who is coming back to me
, she reminded herself,
and already overdue
.

Amid the bigger anxiety, another worry niggled its way into her mind:
What if he’s not coming?

‘Stop it,’ she said aloud.

What troubled her most was that, despite every resolve, every promise she had made to herself, still she had found her footsteps returning to the glade where she had come across the king. He hadn’t been there, and she told herself she was very relieved. But then, drawn to the other place where she had encountered him, she had seen him, standing outside St Edmund’s Chapel. He had carried a cloth-wrapped parcel in his arms. Some warm, luxurious garment? Some vastly expensive, beautifully soft furs? She did not know. But she had been quite sure it had been for her.

You saved his life
, she thought.
Without your warning, he would have gone unsuspecting to Benedict de Vitré’s funeral feast, and now he would be dead
.
He probably wanted to present a gift to say thank you
.

Did kings do that? Did they ever feel the need to reward faithful, loyal service with gifts? Kings probably didn’t, she reflected. Men did, though, especially when the recipient was a woman they desired.

It had taken all her strength to turn back into the shelter and safety of the forest and softly walk away.

She had won that particular battle; the greater one – of stopping herself from thinking about him – was still going on. ‘It’s because I know what is in store for him,’ she whispered out loud, as if explaining herself to someone; perhaps the silent, unseen but constant presence of her mother. ‘I shared Lilas’s visions of his future, you see, and I know he hasn’t got many years left.’ She paused, for she was fighting tears. ‘And I know how he is going to die.’

Despite everything – despite the king’s selfishness and thoughtless cruelty; his savage treatment of his subjects; the deep intransigence that had made this stupid quarrel with the Pope go on for so long, so that the whole land suffered; the fact that England would undoubtedly be better off without him – still, the thought of his fate made her sad.

She stood for some time, quite still, letting her sadness and her distress abate. Then she raised her head, squared her shoulders and took a deep breath. It was time to go. She took one last look around the tidy space, then turned and opened the door.