Fortune Like the Moon Page 22

  And the last two topics over dinner!

  I had forgotten, Josse thought to himself rather sadly as he settled down to sleep on the third night after his arrival. I had forgotten how small life is here in the country, how footling the preoccupations.

  Then, fair-mindedly, he corrected himself. Small and footling, perhaps, but the preoccupations were not unimportant. Acquin was a big estate, and, as well he knew, it took the conscientious work of all four of his brothers to keep it running smoothly. And that – its running smoothly – was vital, not only to the wellbeing and the fortunes of the immediate household, but to the vast number of peasant families who depended on them.

  And after all, Josse thought, it was my decision to leave. Nobody ousted me, it was my own choice to test out my luck at the court of the tempestuous Plantagenets. It’s hardly the fault of my poor family if, in terms of variety and excitement, life here at Acquin can’t compete.

  When at last on that disturbed night he managed to sleep, he dreamt that Richard Plantagenet had sent him an enormous cross set with rubies and ordered him to escort Queen Eleanor to Fontevraud, where, once she had stepped down from her horse, she donned a white headdress and a black veil and turned into Abbess Helewise. Terrified at the prospect of breaking the news to Richard that his mother had turned into someone else, Josse had ridden his horse so fast down a hillside that it had grown wings, thrown him off, turned into a huge bat and flapped away.

  He awoke sweating and slightly shaky. And with the very beginnings of a plan forming in his mind …

  * * *

  The plan took several months to implement. Josse excused the delay, privately, by telling himself it was only fair, having disrupted his family by his return, to stay a good long time and make it worth everyone’s while. To salve his conscience over being an intruder in his own home – although everyone tried very hard to make him feel that he wasn’t – he turned his hand to anything that he thought might help. But, it became clear, his brothers and their servants were, to a man, better than Josse at most of the tasks commonly demanded by life on a big country estate.

  The fact that he could handle a sword better than all of them put together was, really, not a great deal of use.

  Still, the boar hunting was exceptional, and there was a pretty young sister of one of his brothers’ wives who, having lost her husband to the ravages of smallpox too many years ago for it still to pain her, was only too ready for some flirtatious dalliance on a November evening, when the hangings rippled in the draughts and folk snuggled close together round the great flaming fire.

  Christmas came and went.

  Then, in February of the New Year of 1190, just when Josse was mentally gearing himself up to quit the family home and set off back to the King’s court, the message came.

  His brother Yves, who had received the weary and soaked messenger, brought him up to Josse.

  Eyes alert with excited curiosity, Yves hissed to Josse, ‘He comes from the King!’

  Josse led the messenger a little apart, and the man, producing a folded and sealed scroll from inside his tunic, verified that he did indeed come from Richard, who was at present in Normandy.

  The King, it appeared, wished to see Josse d’Acquin, to convey his personal thanks in the matter of the deaths at Hawkenlye Abbey.

  Josse, making an effort to close his dropped jaw, remembered his manners and ushered the messenger down to the kitchens, giving the kitchen staff orders to feed, water and warm him.

  Then he went up to his own quarters to try to puzzle out just why, after all this time, the King should suddenly want to thank him.

  * * *

  He had his answer as soon as, a week later, his name was announced and, once more, he knelt before his King.

  For, sitting elegantly in a chair only a little less ornate than Richard’s, sat the King’s mother.

  Josse had seen her only a couple of times before, and that had been at a distance. And, he recalled, calculating rapidly, probably twenty years ago or more.

  But the old Queen carried her years well. She must, Josse thought, be almost seventy, but her eyes were still bright, her skin, although a little weatherbeaten from the many months spent travelling, still quite smooth. The remains of that legendary beauty could be clearly seen; it was not difficult to comprehend how that anonymous German scholar had been moved to write of her, ‘If the world were mine from sea to Rhine, I’d renounce it with joy to hold the Queen of England in my arms…’

  Dressed immaculately and fashionably, her fine linen barbette was secured by both veil and small coronet, and the sleeves of her samite silk gown were long enough to sweep to the ground. Against the chill of the day, she wore a fur-lined cloak, whose generous folds she had wrapped around her legs and feet like a blanket.

  Honoured, delighted and humbled at being in the presence of a woman he had admired all his life, Josse half rose, moved to his right and, sinking down in front of her, bent his head low.

  He felt a light touch on his shoulder; looking up, he saw that Eleanor had leaned down towards him, and was now extending her gloved right hand. In awe, he took hold of it and kissed it.

  ‘My mother asks me to convey my personal thanks to you, Acquin, for the service that you rendered to us last summer, while we prepared for our coronation,’ Richard said, experiencing, Josse noted, some difficulty over deciding whether he was going to use the first or the third person. Perhaps, Josse thought charitably, being King took a deal of getting used to.

  ‘Any service I can do for Your Majesty, Sire, it is my joy to perform,’ he replied.

  Richard’s broad, handsome face briefly creased in a smile, which he as quickly smoothed away. ‘The foundation at Hawkenlye is particularly dear to my mother’s heart,’ he continued, ‘because of its similarities to the Mother House at Fontevraud, where my mother wishes shortly to retire in order to—’

  ‘I’m not going yet,’ said Queen Eleanor, ‘and I do wish, Richard, that you would not speak about me as if I were not here.’

  Glancing at the King, her face wore, Josse observed, the sort of chiding, indulgent and loving glance common to mothers looking at their favourite sons. In Eleanor’s eyes, he thought, even a king like Richard could do no wrong.

  ‘My Lord d’Acquin,’ the Queen was addressing him, ‘I hear tell of your efforts at Hawkenlye, and I thank you for your part in the resolution of a crime that threatened to upset the smooth running and the good work of our Abbey there.’

  ‘It was not I alone, my lady,’ Josse hastened to say. Credit where it was due, and it had been Helewise, really, who had solved the murder. The murder that was no murder.

  ‘I am aware of that,’ Eleanor said, ‘and, indeed, I have already expressed my thanks and appreciation to Abbess Helewise. She is a fine woman, my lord, is she not?’

  ‘A fine woman,’ Josse echoed. He was trying to picture Helewise, presented with a visit from the Queen. Would she have started to flap and panic? Would she have been thrown into a ferment of anxiety, worked twenty-four hours a day to ensure that every little detail was perfect?

  No. That didn’t sound a bit like Helewise. He grinned briefly; she’d have been more likely to say serenely, ‘The Abbey is as good as our efforts can make it, we can do no better. Let the Queen see us as we are.’

  ‘You smile, Sir Josse?’

  She might be nearing seventy, Josse thought, but the voice still had a power to make a man quake. ‘Your pardon, my lady,’ he said, ‘I was thinking of the Abbess Helewise.’

  ‘And your thoughts were such as to make you smile?’

  He made himself look up and meet her eyes. ‘A little, Your Majesty, although, I assure you, lady, I intended no disrespect.’

  ‘I am sure you did not,’ Eleanor said smoothly. ‘You might be interested to know that the Abbess also, when speaking of you, could not suppress her amusement.’

  She knew – she must! – that he wanted to know what they’d been talking about, those two formidable women
. Why the subject of Josse d’Acquin had made Helewise want to laugh. And, flirt that she still was, having dragged that tantalising little snippet in front of him, Eleanor wasn’t going to tell him.

  Richard, it had become evident, was getting bored with this conversation about people and events of which he knew nothing. He had been drumming one hand on the arm of his chair, humming snatches of some song only just under his breath. Now, unable any longer to restrain his restless energy, he jumped up out of his seat, stretched, and said, ‘My lady mother, why not just tell him?’

  ‘My son is not a great one for sitting and listening while others converse,’ Eleanor said, with only a small amount of irony. She gave Richard another of her loving glances. ‘Particularly when the matter under discussion is not to do with armaments, warhorses, ships or the journey to Outremer.’

  Richard glowered briefly, then – for she was his mother, and probably the only person in the whole world before whom he reined in his quick temper – said, ‘We have in our realm of England many manors and estates which we have made available to our subjects, should they wish to pay a fair price.’ Fixing his eyes on Josse, he broke off from what sounded like a prepared speech and asked, in a far more friendly and informal tone, ‘What did you think of England, Josse? Did you like it?’

  ‘Sire, I only saw a small corner of it,’ Josse said, ‘and I was preoccupied with a matter of some importance, and—’

  ‘Yes, yes, yes, I know all that.’ Richard waved his arms as if wafting Josse’s words away. ‘But it is a beautiful country, mm? Good hunting to be had, in all those forests, not a bad climate?’

  It was on the tip of Josse’s tongue to say, not a bad climate? You must have been lucky, Sire, in the few months you spent there!

  But he didn’t. Despite the friendliness, Richard was still the King.

  Uncertain still about what this summons meant, although he was beginning to have an idea, Josse said meekly, ‘I liked what I saw of England very much, Sire. My childhood memories served me well, and the impressions I formed on my latest visit served only to endorse the sense that it is a land in which I could happily live.’

  Was that wise? If, as everyone guessed, the King was on the point of setting off on crusade, would it have been more diplomatic to plead to go with him?

  But I don’t want to, Josse thought. Dear God in heaven, but I’ve had enough of war.

  ‘My son wishes to bestow on you a token of our gratitude, for your help in the Hawkenlye matter,’ Eleanor intervened. ‘He wishes to—’

  ‘Would you like an English manor, Josse?’ Richard said. ‘There are a few choice places still in my gift, even some not too many miles from Hawkenlye, even if the Clares have got most of that area tied up tighter than a cat’s—’ He broke off, shooting a look at his mother. ‘Er, a cat’s eyelids. What do you say, eh? A modest place, maybe, you being a single man, and at a reasonable price?’

  ‘Richard,’ his mother said quietly. ‘We agreed, did we not, that it was to be a gift?’

  Her emphasis on the word, Josse thought, suggested that it was one that was somewhat foreign to her son.

  ‘A little manor, then, as our gift to you, Josse,’ Richard said, beaming. Then, the benevolent expression hardening slightly, ‘Close to London, I suggest, so that you can be reached by me, when I am there, and by those in England who manage my affairs when I am not. For who knows,’ he added, throwing out a dramatic hand, ‘when another event will occur that threatens the peace of that particular corner of our kingdom?’

  Aha, Josse thought. There had to be a price.

  But was it a price he was prepared to pay? Would he, for the great prize of a manor – even a little manor – in King Richard’s England, be willing to become a king’s man? Someone Richard could rely on, to watch out for him, leap into action, when necessary, on his behalf?

  Richard, Josse thought, was proposing to set off for the Holy Land, where he planned, no doubt, to stay and fight it out until the Holy City had been wrested back from the Infidel and was once more in Christian hands.

  And God alone knew how long that was going to take.

  He needs men like me, Josse thought, with sudden perception. And I, who have just discovered that I no longer feel at home in my own home, have need of what he offers me.

  Of the two, my need is by far the greater.

  Richard, he realised, was watching him. Waiting for his reaction. And so was Eleanor.

  ‘Well?’ Richard prompted. ‘Do you accept the terms, Josse d’Acquin?’

  Josse met his eyes. ‘I do, Sire. Right gladly, and with heartfelt thanks.’

  ‘The thanks,’ Eleanor murmured, ‘are also ours.’

  But Richard was calling for wine and probably did not hear.

  The Third Death

  Chapter Twenty

  Very early one dull, foggy morning, when the season was meant to be spring but felt far more like dead of winter, the man let himself quietly out of the house and set off along the too-familiar path. He went on foot. The still, moisture-laden air seeming to cling round his lower legs as if trying to hold him back, he made his slow way back to the place where he had first broken down and cried out his grief for her.

  The place he had visited and revisited so many times that he could no longer count them.

  There was nobody about. Spring was late this year, and the promise of new growth was still but a hope. As if the world were being held back, halted in her year’s round, the predominant feeling in the air was of dead things. Last autumn’s leaves, choking the hedgerows and the ditches; old, dry stubble in the fields from last year’s crops. Bare branches on the trees, with still no optimistic, tentative first show of green. And, within the houses, still the comforting household fires were lit; for it remained bone-cold, the strength and power of the waxing sun so late in coming.

  The earth had endured her long winter sleep. Now, it should be spring.

  For him, time, cruelly, seemed to have stood still since her death. His eyes saw the outward small signs of the passage of weeks and months, but his brain didn’t accept what he saw. It was, and would ever be, the pre-dawn grey of a morning in July, when he ran in horror from what had happened to the one being in the world whom he had truly loved.

  They had cared for him devotedly, the round-faced nun and the fussy old monk. The sister, looking at him with a mixture of compassion and exasperation, had treated him like a recalcitrant child, who, knowing full well what was good for him, yet refused to do it. In vain she pleaded with him to get up and go for a walk in the good strong sunshine, or to eat up this fine, strength-building food, how could he expect to grow better if he did not look after himself?

  The monk, whom he had learned to call Brother Firmin, had placed his faith not in good food and hearty exercise but in the love of God. And in the holy spring water, a cool cup of which he brought to the patient every morning. And the patient had drunk it, more to please the old monk than for any belief that it would do him any good.

  The Abbess herself had not forgotten him. Far from it; regularly, every day that she could spare the time, she would come to the infirmary and sit with him when her work was done, before the evening meal. Often she would just remain silently at his side, sometimes saying her rosary, sometimes not. Or, if he greeted her with any sort of animation, she would talk to him. Not in a way that demanded a response; merely a brief description of some element of her day that she thought might interest him. An encounter with a fractious visitor to the shrine; details of how a sick patient was now getting better; even, once, the peaceful death of the oldest monk in the retirement house.

  And, for all that he rarely spoke a word, she did not abandon him, either.

  Perhaps, he reflected, he had been a hopeless case. For none of the various treatments had been of any benefit whatsoever; he wondered, later, if he had made up his mind that they wouldn’t be, even before those kind people’s efforts had begun. In the end, because accepting their well-intentioned ministrations
when he knew that nothing could make him better had started to seem a little callous, he had one day pronounced himself cured. Got up out of his bed, told them they needed it for more urgent cases. Gone with them one last time to church, where Brother Firmin, who seemed more inclined to believe in this sudden cure than did Sister Euphemia, had prayed in heartfelt thanks for God’s blessed miracle.

  Then the man had left.

  But she had known. Abbess Helewise had known.

  When he went to seek her out to tell her he was leaving the Abbey, she hadn’t, thank God, tried to stop him. It was as if some practical part of her were saying, ‘We’ve done all we can do, my monks, my nuns and I. If you are to be made whole again, it is up to God to make you so. You are in His hands now.’

  He had knelt before her as he had taken his leave, and, in a whisper, asked for her blessing. She had given a small gasp, almost as if she read what was in his heart. Then he had felt the pressure of her thumb as she traced the sign of the cross on his forehead and said quietly, ‘God go with you, Olivar.’

  She had given him Gunnora’s cross.

  * * *

  He had returned home to Brice, since that was the only place he could think of to go. Brice had adopted the tack of trying to jolly him out of his grief. Dear old Brice. Olivar smiled faintly at the memory of his brother, perplexed as ever before an emotion too deep for him to understand, suggesting they went off on pilgrimage together. ‘We could go to Santiago, even to the Holy City, if the Infidel will let us in!’ he said. ‘Wouldn’t you like that, Olivar? Wouldn’t it be good, to get right away from here, to be on the road together, meet new people, see wonderful sights? I’m willing! I’d love it, truly I would. I’ll go anywhere, if it’ll help you.’

  He’d meant well.

  They’d told him all about that other business, with Gunnora’s wild cousin Elanor. Olivar pitied both her and that foolish young husband of hers. They had been greedy and callous, yes, but whoever had imagined they killed Gunnora, Elanor holding her while Milon wielded the knife, had been quite wrong. Milon didn’t have it in him to kill, of that Olivar was sure. Not coldly and calculatingly, anyway, although it did appear that he had strangled Elanor in the heat of an angry quarrel.