Coda: The Third Albert Mystery (The Albert Mysteries Book 3)

by David Crossman

  De Rode was struck by the notion that, perhaps, the souls of the man and his borrowed beast would ride to heaven together, but the news he bore allowed no leisure for poetical notions. He drew a breath to speak when Isabella preempted him. “He’s been killed?”

  The knight looked away. “No, your majesty. The king was alive when I left him.”

  “Then what, de Rode? You’ve obviously come a great distance—at what risk to yourself I can only imagine—to what purpose if only to tell me the king is alive and well?”

  De Rode breathed deeply, and delivered his burden on the exhale. “The king is alive, but only just.”

  “Wounded?” said the queen, twining her fingers, their white knuckles betraying the force of emotion she was restraining.

  “He’s ill, your majesty.”

  “Ill? Ill how? With what?”

  “The flux.”

  Relief burst from the queen in a single syllable. “Flux!” She laughed. “He’s had the flux before. He’s prone to it!”

  “But . . .”

  The queen stood and began pacing at foot of her bed. “He eats too fast, that’s his problem. Always has . . . fruit out of season, peaches and . . .”

  “Your majesty . . .”

  “And sweets! You tell him I said he oughtn’t have so many sweets! It’s lard, you know, that’s what seizes his bowels. The goose.”

  “It’s not the same thing this time,” said de Rode quickly. “He’s bleeding badly, and it’s affected his mind.”

  “His mind?”

  The towering knight sank to a nearby chair, even though he hadn’t been given permission. “He’s become irrational. Paranoid.”

  “Paranoid! Of course he’s paranoid; he’s the king, de Rode! A king who’s not paranoid is soon a corpse!”

  “Granted, caution is a wise course for the head that wears the crown, your majesty, but this is worse. He trusts no one, even those of us who have remained loyal to him through it all! He thinks we’re poisoning him.”

  “And are you?” Isabella snapped, and at once relented. “Forgive me, de Rode. Ralph. I don’t question your loyalty. But can you say the same for all his companions? Loyalties change like the tide. Look at his own brothers!”

  “William is back with him now.”

  “My point exactly! First with him, then with Louis, then back with him, on his knees no doubt. It’s impossible to tell whom to trust. Who’s his physician?”

  “He has none, majesty.”

  “What do you mean. What of Father Confrere? Or Langburne, he’s a good man with leeches.”

  “He’s sent them away. He even had Langburne flogged, for no reason other than that he objected to the man’s breath which, said his majesty, reminded him of a donkey. He had a saddle put on the man and rode him across a bridge which exertion made the old fellow collapse, spilling the king in the mud. So he had him flogged for insult to the royal person and turned loose in the fens.”

  Isabella sat again. Her voice fell to a whisper. “Langburne has been with the family forever.” The eyes she raised to de Rode nearly stopped his heart. “What attempts have been made to restore his humours?”

  De Rode shrugged. “He won’t allow anyone near him. He’s fixated upon his treasures.”

  “He has them all?”

  De Rode nodded. “Yes. The Crown Jewels, of course, he keeps with him, lest they fall into the hands of the barons. The household plate and his personal collection is in a separate wagon traveling with Foss, but he treats even that faithful old graybeard with suspicion; couriers are going back and forth between his own train and that of his household at all hours, day and night, taking never-ending inventories—and that with the barons nipping at their heals, storms pushing the sea up the Wash so it’s hard to tell the highway from quicksand, and reports that Alexander has broken his treaty and left Scotland, heading south to London with three or four thousand troops to lift the siege. Meaning their paths are likely to cross as the King pushes to Lincoln.”

  The queen allowed De Rode to vent his feelings without interruption. “What is your opinion of his condition?” she said at last.

  De Rode’s impulse was to take the woman in his arms, as he would have his daughters, or his wife, or sister, and comfort her against the blow he was about to deliver; but experience had taught him that Isabella was not merely a woman, but a queen, and not simply a queen, but a thunderbolt; notoriously volatile at the best of times. He folded his hands behind his back. “Not good, your majesty. Not good at all.”

  “Who sent you? Surely not the King.”

  “Foss, your majesty. He sent me to protect—to ensure Henry’s safety in the event. . . “

  “This is the king’s wish, to secure the throne for my son should the King die?”

  “Yes, your majesty. That is what Foss said.”

  “The King’s last commands to me come from his fool!”

  “Foss is faithful, your majesty. None moreso. And certainly not foolish.”

  The queen studied her hands. “This is just too ludicrous, to think the King might succumb to the flux, when half the swag-bellied tosspots of England have had their swords drawn against him these last four years!” She seized the canopy of her bed as if it was a lifeline. “Where is he now?”

  “He was near Bishop’s Lynn, near the Millfleet when I saw him last. Foss says the king is determined to make it to Newark castle. He seems convinced the monks at the priory can cure him.”

  Death must be imminent, she knew, for John to have sought the aid of clergy, a population he had assiduously avoided, except when required by ceremony, for the better part of half a century.

  The horrible pronouncement was pregnant with consequence; were John to die, the children—if they survived—would lose a father and she a husband, but of more immediate import, the nation would lose its king and she would become a dowager queen, relegated to a life of carefully circumscribed luxury - sequestered away in some obscure country estate, her future entirely in the hands of a King’s Council who would have it in their power to determine when, where, who, andif she would marry again.

  She was twenty-eight years old!

  “Do you think he may be dead already?”

  De Rode bowed his head. “As you say, the king has recovered from flux in the past.”

  “But?”

  The knight held his tongue, and the Queen read the threat in his silence.

  “We have to get Henry to Gloucester!” The tears de Rode had anticipated were not forthcoming. What, in his experience of her, had led him to imagine they would be? The queen, by turns petulant, provocative, vain, and frighteningly capricious—and why not, for no one had ever said her ‘no’?—was not a shrinking violet. She rose like a tongue of fire from the ashes of her private bereavement with but one goal; hasten to the nearest cathedral and, there, have her eldest son crowned king.

  Henry the Third.

  He was still a child; malleable, and she, if she could have the church recognize her as regent until he came to his majority, would have ample time to make him the king she needed him to be. Meantime, the power inherent in her position would place her beyond the reach of anyone attempting to orchestrate her life or circumscribe her activities.

  “Corfe, first, m’lady. Gloucester needs to be fortified and the Cardinal and executors assembled before a coronation can take place. Until then, Corfe’s the safest castle.”

  The sound of hoofbeats striking sparks from the stones in the courtyard tore her from consideration of possibilities.

  “The barons!” said De Rode, leaping to his feet. “Where are the children!?”

  “In their beds, please Lord,” the queen replied. She ran to the door and, flinging it open, held a hasty conference with her ladies-in-waiting who scattered in various directions to fulfill her commands. Isabella returned to her bedside where, from a massive oaken table, she lifted a small casket of jewels and, in a single fluid motion, emptied it into a pillowcase, together with her crown—a delic
ate circlet of gold—that sat atop a silken pillow. “The barons will not be allowed in. Whether fealty will bar them from beating down the door and slaughtering my household depends on who is their leader.” She rifled through her wardrobe and drew out a dark blue cape which she flung about her shoulders. “If it’s Louie’s treble-faced pathicus Beauchamp, God help us.”

  She tossed the sack of jewels at De Rode. “Guard those with your life, de Rode. You understand? We’ll need them. Whether for ransom or to purchase an army depends on your getting us to Gloucestershire before those neckless brutes overtake us!”

  De Rode, mesmerized by the scene unfolding before his eyes—one that must have been rehearsed many times, for it was flawless—inclined his head, but said nothing. Had the moment not been captive to terror, he would have been embarrassed by the intimacy of watching the queen strap the barbette around her neck and, gathering the cascade of golden hair from her shoulders, fold it so expertly under her crespine that it was all but invisible except at the very back of her neck.

  She had made herself a shadow.

  “Close your mouth, de Rode. A slack jaw does not become you.”

  “Your majesty,” said de Rode, snapping his mouth shut.

  Isabella scanned the room with a careful eye then, without a word, swept into the hall. De Rode, as was expected of him, fell in behind her, but had the presence of mind to shut and lock the door. Should the barons gain access to the castle and find the door to the queen’s bedchamber locked, the process of arguing amongst themselves as to the protocol of breaking it in and the deed itself would buy a precious minute or two.

  He followed her through a dizzying warren of hallways lit only by a mildly curious moon, which peeked in, now and then, at arrow slits and other chinks in the castle’s stony armor.

  As surely as if she were following a string laid for the purpose, the queen made her way down the spiral stairs of a northwest-facing tower to a room at its base where the King’s offspring were huddled, trembling, amongst the skirts of their nurses and other females of the queen’s retinue. All but Henry, the eldest at nine, who stood a manly distance from the women, dimly aware that ancient forces were at work in the chaos of the moment, and that their demands would transform him either into a king, or a corpse.

  He drew his shoulders back. “What are we going to do, mother?”

  The queen took a quick, meaningful survey of her attendants, then dropped to her knees before the boy. “The women and the other children will make their way to Langar. This man . . .”

  “I remember de Rode.” He and the knight exchanged a nod of recognition.

  “Yes, of course you do. He will take us to Corfe, then to Gloucester.” She pulled his tunic tightly around his neck and tied it.

  “Why to Gloucester? Why not to father?”

  Isabella placed her lips by her son’s ear and whispered. “You must be strong, Henry. The other children must not know, your father . . . is very ill. He may even be dead.”

  Henry suddenly understood the immediacy of the peril which he, in particular, was in from the barons who, even now, were converting the sturdy oak of the castle door to kindling.

  “What’s out this way, your Majesty?” asked de Rode, pointing at the door toward which everyone was being herded.

  “The kitchen gardens,” Isabella said. She tented her children with her cloak and swept them before her, all but the infant Eleanor, who, through all the tumult, sucked contentedly at the breast of her wet nurse. “Then the peasant’s path through the forest and down to the village.”

  De Rode at once saw the sense of this. The castle was built on a wedge of land overlooking the valley, surrounded on two sides by steep cliffs—down one of which they would be descending to the village, and which only a madman would attempt on horseback. The third side led through the remains of the ancient motte and bailey to the highway; in times of peace the easiest route to Gloucester.

  Clearly not an option.

  “I’ll go first,” said de Rode, forcing his way tremulous little throng toward the door.

  The queen, with a touch on his shoulder, detained him as surely as if he’d been struck by lightning. “No, Isomene will go first.”

  The girl toward whom she nodded at been hovering excitedly at the fringe of de Rode’s awareness. Not much more than ten or eleven, he reckoned, she stepped to the small vacancy into which the queen beckoned her. “Now, my little Judas. You understand what needs to be done?”

  Isomene’s curtsey of response was awkward but sincere.

  “Go.”

  “What do you mean, Judas? Where is she going?”

  The queen watched after the girl as she fled into the shadows on her errand. “Judas was God’s right-hand man, de Rode. Without him there would never have been an arrest, a trial, a crucifixion, a Resurrection. No Christ to redeem us all.”

  De Rode, a man whose spiritual impulses had long ago been drowned beneath a tide of blood, bent his brows at the queen’s speech. “Isomene is Henry’s little Judas. She will open the door to the barons and, if she is as good a liar as she has always proved herself, convince them that we have fled through the cellars where a door gives way through the western wall. There is a footpath along the top of the ridge, paralleling the highway and separated from it by a thick copse. A logical escape for a frightened gaggle of women and children.”

  “Thus saving our future king,” said de Rode. Here was a woman whose mind was every inch the equal of a warrior. Even better, for to her’s was added the subtlety, duplicity, and craft of which only a woman or a king was capable. Her’s was blue blood; reptile blood, the mark of true nobility.

  “Now, see that the way is clear, de Rode,” she commanded, standing aside to clear his path to the door.

  The Damascus steel of his blade sang a brief, deadly note as he drew his sword from its sheath. He stepped forward, wedging his boot a few inches from the bass of the door in the event someone was on the other side, waiting for their chance. He quietly lifted the bolt and gave Isabella one hasty backward glance. She breathed deeply and nodded, pressing her children against the wall.

  The moon, which had tracked them in fleeting glances on their flight through the castle, regarded them now with undiluted intensity as, one-by-one, the silent parade emerged into the kitchen garden. The air was still and, even this time of year, supported a mixed salad of scents; rosemary, thyme; meadowsweet and marjoram; germander, hyssop, and mint, the last leaping to prominence as its vines and leaves were trod upon.

  The searching moon found the blade of de Rode’s sword and struck it a glancing blow that sent shards of light splintering into the night.

  “Put that down!” Isabella commanded in a sharp whisper. De Rode had done so before the words died.

  “Which way?” he said under his breath.

  Isabella pushed a serving girl to the fore. “This is Hermione. She’s from the village. Follow her.”

  De Rode stepped into the thicket of dead grasses bordering the narrow path, and gestured the girl forward. When she had passed, he fell in behind her.

  Suddenly a girl’s scream cleaved the night.

  “Isomene!” Isabella rasped. She turned just in time to see the shadow of the girl running from the castle toward her as if demons were at her heals. Her screams continued, if anything intensifying as she caught sight of her queen. She burst into the open, with her arm upraised, a fleshly fountain of blood made blue-black by the moonlight where her hand had been.

  Excepting De Rode, everyone in the little party was transfixed with horror. The knight ran at the girl and, with a single, swift motion, ended her suffering and her screams.

  Isabella’s eyes widened with disbelief as they absorbed the sight of Isomene’s head slowly titling from her neck and tumbling to the ground at her feet. For what seemed a long moment, her body remained standing - its arm upraised as if there was something she had meant to say but couldn’t think what it was, then, at last, the knees buckled and the little female
edifice settled to earth, gently enfolding the head whose servant it had once been.

  Isabella nearly choked with fury. “De Rode! What have you done!”

  “What was needful,” said de Rode unapologetically, but his words were punctuated by the striking of iron horseshoes on stone, and the unmistakable tinker’s wagon’s clash and clatter of men in armor rounding the castle from the south.

  The threat from that quarter, however, was mitigated by a more present, if unaccountable danger. In that startled instant, de Rode couldn’t believe his ears; someone had pursued the girl through the castle on horseback! There was no other accounting for the frenzied chorus of cascading metal and thunderous hoofbeats—at once muted by and tripling from the castle’s interior walls—that belched through the door from which the unfortunate Isomene had so recently tumbled into the fate of Judas.

  Isabella and De Rode caught one another’s astonished eyes. Only one horseman could be so possessed by bloodlust to make such a mad attempt. “Beauchamp!” they said in unison; the one man at whose hands none of their party would receive quarter.

  “Go!” Isabella screamed, and Hermione, who needed no further coaxing, vanished through the tiny gate leading from the kitchen garden to the footpath that dove perilously through the forest of the ravine toward the river below and its tiny stone bridge into the village.

  Flight would have been in vain had it not been for the fact that Beauchamp—or whoever it was who pursued them—had to dismount and drag, push, or coax his terrorized steed through the opening of the tower door that wouldn’t accommodate both of them at once.

  The little group of exiles, like a menagerie of Lot’s wives, momentarily heedless of the peril to themselves, looked back at the tumult and seemed suddenly transfixed by the sheer impossibility of the scene unfolding before their eyes. “Henry!” De Rode shouted. “Follow Hermione!”

  Henry stood his ground, trying to detach his fascinated gaze. “See to the safety of the others, de Rode,” he said, the words sounding girlish in his nine-year old throat. “I’ll follow.”