“He has never been this bad before,” he heard Isabelle say, her voice tremulous with distress. “I cannot bear it, Will. I wish I could take his pain.”
“Hush, Mama, I know,” their eldest son replied in a comforting murmur. “So do we all. The physician’s nostrum will help in a short while.”
The brightness diminished, and William was able to open his eyes and see his chamber, as if lit by dusty sunlight. “It is not my pain, and I bear it gladly,” he whispered. He could not tell if they had heard him. The terrible tearing sensation had diminished to a biting ache. He was drained and exhausted, but he could focus now and he had more understanding. It was like being torn open, but only so that a missing piece could be restored in order to heal the entirety. “Tell your mother not to be concerned,” he said hoarsely. “Tell her to pray for me and then take some rest.”
“As you wish, sire,” Will said, “but I will stay with you. Do not say there is no need, because my will is as stubborn as yours.”
William managed a smile. “How could it not be when you have it from both parents?”
His son gave him a wry look before turning to put his arm around his mother and murmur words of reassurance. William heard her draw a deep breath, gathering herself before she came to stoop over the bed, kiss his cheek, and press his hand. “I will offer up prayers for you and come back later, my love.”
“I am depending on it.”
She left the room, and he knew she would weep outside the door and he felt guilty and sad, but soaring above that was enormous pride in his woman. In their thirty years together, she had never once shown weakness or let him down.
“Make sure your mother eats and drinks and takes some rest,” he said.
“I will do my best,” Will replied, “although as you have said, she is stubborn when set upon her path.” He raised the goblet. “You should drink some more tisane. I can tell you are in pain.” William started to shake his head but changed his mind and succumbed to the inevitable and took small sips of bitterness from the cup. Will’s hand was as steady as a rock, and William’s was weak and shaking.
“As once you cared for and protected me, so I honor you the same, my father,” Will said, and then added curiously, “What did you mean when you said it was not your pain?”
William swallowed, but still some tisane dribbled from the side of his mouth, and Will dabbed it away on a napkin. “I was dreaming,” he said. “I was not in this time and place.”
“Then where were you? What had happened to cause you such distress?”
“It wasn’t my distress,” William said, “but it was of my making, and it was long ago, in Outremer.”
“You never speak of that time,” Will said, “or if you do, it is only to tell a tale to amuse an audience. It is like rain running down a sheet of glass—what remains protected behind that glass is unknown to all.”
William closed his eyes and felt Will tuck the covers around him. He heard the squeak of the lantern hinge as someone inserted a fresh candle. “Yes, but in my dreams, I am on the other side of that glass and standing in the rain.” He shifted his head on the pillow. “Has there been any news from Jean?”
“No, sire, but I do not think he will be long now. Three days perhaps.”
William closed his eyes. Three days. So much could happen in three days.
* * *
He woke up curled on his side facing the wall, fists clenched, and for a moment, all he saw was blank whiteness. Was it daylight? Had he lost his sight? Perhaps he was dead. Rolling over with great difficulty, he realized he was still in his bed at Caversham, although superimposed upon the walls and rafters was a vision of the domed room in Jerusalem. He could clearly see the mosaics even though they were transparent, and as he watched, the pieces of tesserae came flaking down around him in a jeweled and jagged rain.
The image shimmered and faded, leaving him in the solid reality of his chamber; indeed, more solid than usual in a strange way. His gaze was drawn to a pair of banners propped against the wall in the corner. The pied flag of the Templars and the white cross of the Hospitallers were draped against each other in unison. Light from the window sparkled on the spear point, and another vision pierced him, stealing current reality. He saw himself kneeling, arms outspread, and felt the stinging triple ends of a knotted lash striking his shoulders and back. The pain was fiery, but he welcomed it because he deserved it, and each blow was an acknowledgment and purging of sin. He clenched his teeth, took the blow, and the next one, and it was very real.
“Father?”
The shimmer left the air and the vision dissolved, but the pain was still with him in a fan of fire across his spine and the back of his rib cage. His youngest son, Ancel, eleven years old, was looking at him with consternation in his dark hazel eyes.
William motioned that he wanted a drink, and Ancel was swiftly attentive. The cold rock crystal touched his lips, and as he swallowed, the sweet, pure spring water assuaged some of the pain. “I am glad to see you.” He winced to hear the weakness in his voice. “Plump the pillows for me, there’s a good boy.”
Ancel obliged, and William gazed at the bloom on his skin and saw his youth and strength. His younger sons were often present in the background in the sickroom, helping out, acting as squires, but he knew the constraints that his illness set upon them and the rest of the household. They were unable to roam far because they might instantly be recalled.
“Are you well, Papa?” Ancel asked—a polite question with lurking concern.
William nodded reassurance. “Yes, now I have seen you.”
“Shall I sit with you?”
William gestured assent. “But you do not need to talk to me. It will be enough to know you are here.” He held out his hand and Ancel took it, and as William gazed, the child’s hand in his became a man’s.
34
Jerusalem, July 1185
William was curled up on his bed facing the wall when the door opened on an aroma of bread and savory broth. The smell almost made him retch. He heard the tray being set on the floor and then felt a touch on his shoulder. Turning, he faced his brother.
“Asmaria sends you soup and bread and her good wishes,” Ancel said.
“Thank her for them, but I am not hungry.” His belly was full with grief.
Ancel frowned. “You must eat. You cannot go any longer without nourishment. We are all worried about you and we don’t know what to do.” His tone bore a note of aggrieved exasperation. “You tell us when we must go on patrol or pilgrim escort. You are the one who goes to the palace and talks to the officials and barons. A few days ago, you were organizing to leave, and now you take to your bed and won’t speak. It’s like having an empty space where you ought to be. You have never been like this before—never. And I do not understand.” Ancel drew up a stool close to the bed and put his palm to William’s brow. “You had a high fever for a couple of days but that’s gone. You should be recovering by now. What is wrong?”
Guilt twisted inside William, and remorse, for he was indeed their leader and he had let them down. “I cannot tell you, except that I have committed the greatest folly of my life and I do not deserve your concern.”
Ancel eyed him sidelong. “Just what have you been doing, Gwim?” He sat down on the bed and gestured to the food. “Asmaria’s broth will grow cold, and she has gone to the trouble of making it for you. I will be in serious trouble unless I tell her that you drank it all.”
Ancel’s use of the childhood diminutive softened William’s resistance and allowed a crack of light into the darkness. He sat up, took the tray onto his knee, and regarded the steaming bowl. The scent cramped his stomach and he almost heaved. For Ancel’s sake he took a few swallows, but it was all he could manage. “I am sorry, you will have to drink it yourself and lie to her.”
Ancel removed the tray and set it aside. “Tell me what is wrong,” h
e urged. “You say you do not need a physician, but I am going to bring someone from the hospital.” His voice was suddenly ragged and angry. “If you die, Gwim, then where does it leave the rest of us? If you are a leader, then in Christ’s name, be one!”
The words, the anguish in his brother’s voice, forced William back from the edge of the abyss. “Perhaps you are better off without me—choose another leader.”
“We don’t want another. We want you, and it’s because of you that we are here at all and that we have come this far.”
William rubbed his hand over his face. “If I tell you, I could get my throat cut, and you would risk yours too.”
“Have I ever let you down? I can keep my mouth shut.”
“On our family’s honor,” William said intensely.
“On our family’s honor,” Ancel repeated, crossing himself. “On God’s honor too.”
William flinched. “Not on God’s honor. What I have done is not in line with God’s holy law.”
Ancel stared at him, fear dawning alongside the astonishment. Nevertheless, he reached out and grasped William’s hands. “If you cannot tell your own brother, then what does it say about the way you think of him?”
William struggled to speak. The words reached his mouth but lodged there, unuttered. At last, he forced them out like shards. “I have done a heinous thing,” he said. “For many months, I have been conducting a liaison with a lady of the court.”
Ancel’s mouth dropped open. And then anger sparked. “You tell me this and then will go no further? What of the rest? Who is she?” A look of sheer horror crossed his face. “Dear God, do not tell me you have been fornicating with the wife of Guy de Lusignan.”
William stiffened. “No,” he said tersely, “not the Lady Sybilla.” The guilt twisted inside him. “You really do not know, do you?”
Ancel mutely shook his head, and William struggled with his words. Even to speak her name was painful. “The lady Paschia de Riveri,” he said. “I have offered her my hand in honorable marriage.”
Ancel’s jaw dropped in astonishment. “Sweet God on the cross. Are you mad? The patriarch’s concubine!”
William grimaced. “All offers have been refused in no uncertain terms—it is over between us. Indeed, the lady has turned against me and warned me not to approach her on pain of death. You speak of playing with fire. Well, for my sins, I am in that fire, and I am damned.”
“Ah no, Gwim, do not say that. It is not true!” Ancel put his arm around William’s shoulder and gave him a fierce hug and then said with a valiant effort at lightening the moment: “I understand… Hah, I am living with a widow myself!”
William gave a humorless smile. “But she does not have a prior arrangement with the patriarch, nor does she have an uncle who wants to kill you.”
Ancel shrugged as if the difference between their situations was a trifling thing. “I will not breathe a word of this to anyone, I swear to you on my life. It is as safe with me as a sealed casket.”
William was humbled by Ancel’s response. All their lives until recently, he had been Ancel’s place of safety, but now their roles had reversed, and he knew he was unworthy to receive such grace. “I have failed you and the men.”
“You cannot be a god all the time, Gwim. I used to think you were, and I was angry whenever you fell off the pedestal I’d given you, but I’ve learned since then. You have feet of clay like the rest of us, and I welcome that and take you as you are—sins and all.” He picked up the bowl and began spooning the broth into his mouth. “You really should have some. It is not right that a man nicknamed Greedy Guts should be ignoring his food.”
Tears pricked William’s eyes. “You are by far the wiser and purer man for staying out of this bind, Brother. Everything I did on the way to Jerusalem, all the effort to bring our young lord’s cloak to the tomb of Christ, all the atonement and prayers to put everything right—I have made it all pointless because of this.”
Ancel twitched his shoulders. “Everyone is a sinner. Many have committed far worse than you. You should confess and have done.”
“I do not think I will ever ‘have done,’” William said bleakly. “My burden is a heavy weight. But you are right about the confession. We should leave as I had planned, but if I am to wash away my sins, then it must be in Jerusalem because there is no holier place on earth. If I cannot make my penance here, then where else shall I go?” He bent his head. “Had she agreed to come with me, we could have been married, and our union would have become an honorable thing, but now, it stands as the sin of fornication.”
“But how would you have lived?” Ancel asked practically.
“That is what she said too—that it was a dream. If so, then I am now in the nightmare.”
Ancel scraped up the last of the broth and set his bowl aside. “You’ll feel better when you have eaten and slept. Yes, you lay with a woman of the court, a concubine—you should not have done it, but it is over. Seek absolution and be done.”
William wished it was as simple as that, but he said nothing. Revealing his affair had been difficult enough.
Neither of them spoke again for a while. As twilight darkened the room, Ancel lit the candles and stayed at William’s side. He broke the loaf that Asmaria had sent with the broth, and William ate some this time and drank a cup of wine. When his men Guyon and Guillaume came to inquire how William was faring, Ancel opened the door a crack and reported that William was recovering from a bout of fever and sleeping but would soon be well and speak to them on the morrow.
Returning to the bed, he poured more wine for both of them. “Do you remember when we were children? You were a lot older, but you still played with me. You used to pull me on a sled on the frozen pond at Hamstead—I thought you were as strong as an ox.”
William found a smile. “I certainly felt like one pulling you!” The fierce cold burning his breath, the laughter, the kinship, their sisters throwing snowballs.
“And I remember you at the forge, making a perfect horseshoe. I can still see you striking that bar of red iron as clear as day. I thought how miraculous it was and how I wanted to be just like that.”
William nodded. He had been ten years old, proud of his precocious natural ability, and he had enjoyed showing off to his wide-eyed little brother.
“And carrying me on your back when we all went mushroom picking with Mama. Do you remember that?”
William’s mind filled with the image of an autumn day, sunlight filtering through the trees in dusty rays. Himself and his siblings dancing along the path with the leaves turning to copper on the branches and underfoot. Their mother with a foraging basket over her arm, teaching them which fungi were safe to pick and which to avoid. A golden day with King Henry recently come to the throne and the future secure after the depredations of war. He could feel Ancel’s arms clinging around his neck as he ran with him down the path, Ancel pretending that he was a knight and William his sturdy destrier. And then tumbling in the leaves and play wrestling. A time of joy, and even if the war had taken their innocence, those days of foraging in the woods were a memory of incorruptible sustenance.
“Yes, I remember.”
“Then it is enough. Go to sleep. I will keep watch.”
* * *
William was jerked awake some hours later by the sound of loud banging on the door and Zaccariah of Nablus shouting, “Come out here, you brazen son of a whore. I want words with you!”
Ancel sprang to his feet, and William rolled over on the bed and sat up, heart racing.
Fists pounded again and the door shook. “Open up!”
Ancel looked over his shoulder at William and, swallowing, drew his knife. “Go away!” he shouted back. “My brother is ill. I will not have you disturbing him while he rages with fever. For God’s love, leave him be!”
“I will cool his blood for him,” Zaccariah yelled, his
words slurred with drink, “for I shall spill it in the air! Do not think I will let this rest. I will return, and he shall face me and account for what he owes—he knows full well what I mean!” He gave another mighty crash on the door and then they heard him stumbling away down the stairs, cursing to himself.
Breathing harshly, Ancel sheathed his knife. “Dear Christ,” he said, and almost retched. “Gwim, you cannot stay here.”
William rose unsteadily from his bed, weak as a lamb. “Have the men take themselves to the Templar compound as soon as it is light, and we should go there now. Onri and Augustine will vouch for us.”
Ancel nodded brusquely. “Jesu.” He let out his tension on a hard breath. “What would Mother say?”
In the middle of all William’s darkness and desperation, a sudden glimmer of dark humor kindled unbidden. The remark was always Ancel’s greatest rebuke, higher even than God’s disapproval.
“I never want to know,” he said, and the laughter died as swiftly as it had arisen.
* * *
Over the next few days, William gradually recovered, going to ground in a groom’s chamber in a corner of the vast underground Templar stable complex where he was able to sleep. Ancel kept watch over him, and Onri made sure they were not disturbed. His men were given quarters on the west side of the compound, where there were dwellings for secular knights and employees.
When William was awake, his mind was often as dark as the darkness of sleep, but within its deepest recesses, he was examining the ruins of what had gone before and leveling the ground in order to rebuild his life. The debris had to be swept aside and what remained must be purged and cleansed.
By the third morning, he felt slightly better and even had an appetite for the chicken pasties that Ancel presented to him from Asmaria’s kitchen.
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