As we approached Wales, I became wild with anxiety. How dare Lady Matilda spirit Theo away when we’d had an agreement? Her friendship with King John loomed more and more ominous. On the other hand, suppose she was a reasonable woman who’d fled for her life and Theo’s? What could have frightened her so?
King John. I could think of no other justification.
On our fifth night out, Wolfbane growled.
“Control yer wolf—I need to talk wi’ ye.”
Enoch squatted beside me; the wolf licked his hand as if in apology. “We’re near unto Hereford, Alix. We mun git our stories straight fer Bishop Giles.”
“I won’t argue about who should get the jewels, if that’s what you mean.”
“Ich doona think ye shuld mention the jules at all,” he said quietly. “Didna ye say that the jules be wrapped in a packet? That she doesna knaw quhat she has?”
“Aye.”
“Than Ich doona think the lady be runnin’ becas of the jules.”
Oh, he was shrewd. “Then why?”
“Ich doona knaw. May niver knaw. Mayhap somethin’ to do wi’ the fire.”
I could hardly speak. “What are you going to say to Bishop Giles then? How justify our pursuit?”
He was quiet a very long time. “Ich doona knaw.”
I offered my hand. “Whatever happens . . .” He stooped to hear me. “I’ll give you your share of my jewels when we find . . .”
Bonel’s jewels. Not royal perhaps, but real and valuable.
His face was in shadow. “Mast generous, Alix. I war aboot to offer ye a jewel to halp ye git started.”
The small city of Hereford was located on a flat plain, under the shadow of hills on our left. Behind Hereford Castle, the gate was open to rural traffic: farmers and herdsmen with flocks passed through without difficulty. Enoch surmised it must be market day. Though our small contingent moved closer, we still camped outside the wall while Enoch went to seek an appointment with Bishop Giles.
He would see us this same afternoon.
We entered the gate immediately after Haute Tierce. As in our previous village, the town sported a cross to keep evil-doers away. We stretched out on the grass in its shadow until time to enter the cathedral.
We could hardly climb the steps, so crowded were they with beggars and lepers. We entered under a pointed arch into an anteroom, then the vestuary, then a large high-ceilinged room with shafts of sun shooting through swirling dust.
The bishop was alone.
He turned when he heard us.
Though not young, he was a muscular well-built giant, with the figure of a knight. His drawn gray face belied his physique, however; this was a desperate man. His anguished expression fought for resignation. My heart squeezed, my breath became shallow.
“What do you know?” he blurted.
And I knew we were doomed—he wanted information from us!
He struggled for control. He’d received our message asking about Lady Matilda—did we have news of her whereabouts? Was she safe?
At that question, Enoch understood the hopelessness of our quest as well as anyone, but he asked bravely where Lady Matilda might be found. We’d followed her from London. Had Bishop Giles heard of the fire?
The bishop was appalled. He knew Lord Robert very well, had even heard of Enoch and the Brotherhood, and he feared it might be an attack on their organization. He didn’t think, however, that the fire was directed against Lady Matilda.
“Is she trying to escape you?” the bishop asked bluntly. “Maybe she doesn’t want to see you!”
Enoch repeated that we’d missed our rendezvous with the lady at Baynard Castle and why.
“Do you represent King John?”
We all stood dumbfounded, though I doubt if Enoch had the same thoughts that I did.
“The king has nothing to do with it!” I cried. “She carried jewels for me from Rouen!”
Enoch groaned.
“If you suspect that she stole them, you’re wrong!” Bishop Giles said stiffly, “I can assure you that she’s an honorable lady.”
He then broke into harsh sobs. Gruoth put her arms around him; the rest of us stared, beyond speech.
Did we know Lord William? he asked when he could speak.
No.
After a further silence while the bishop regained control, he said to Enoch, “I doubt if the fire had anything to with my sister-in-law. More probably, it was directed at Lord Robert fitzWalter himself, who . . .”
Enoch interrupted, “Quhy?”
“Nothing to do with your Brotherhood . . .” He fought for control again. “King John . . . the king . . . he’s angry, you see, that Lord Robert keeps London as a commune.” He blew his nose; I saw by his sleeve that he’d wept many tears.
Finally, he came to the point: She’d passed through Hereford about a week ago in a terrible hurry, he told us. “She didn’t confide in me—to protect me, I now think—and I don’t know her destination.”
King John, King John, oh God, let her enemy not be King John.
“We be fram Scotland,” Enoch said. “Our king be William.”
The bishop was again weeping.
Enoch put an arm over his shoulder and spoke in French. “We know that your brother fought most bravely for King John in Normandy.”
Bishop Giles looked up sharply. “Yes, he captured Arthur of Brittany for the king.”
I cried aloud!
“She’s probably in Wales, where she’s hiding from John. No doubt the king has heard of her treasure.”
I forgot the ephemeral jewels, for Enoch was finally getting directions to Wales. Theo, surely I would soon see Theo, perhaps this very day! If I did, I promised God, I would ask Lady Matilda de Braose not a single question about why she’d fled London.
We left the worried bishop with many vows to tell him what we discovered.
We rode through a wood to the border, marked by the fast-moving Wye River. We stopped at its edge.
“Wales luiks yust lak Scotland, doesn’t it, Donald?” Gruoth asked her husband.
“Aye, the sam bleak fells.”
“The ford be this way,” Enoch said, turning upstream.
In a short time we saw a clear path across the river where rocks were exposed and rivulets churned among pebbles. Now we had difficulty with Enoch’s knights, who wanted to take their spring baths in warm southern waters. We finally managed to cross in good time.
Enoch followed Bishop Giles’s instructions upward and to our right. A few squatting Welshmen watched us from behind rocks; they were pale as Druids and had hair like weeds, but seemed friendly withal. Streams tumbled down the mountainside to join the Wye, and when we passed under a falls, we all received our spring baths.
We climbed to a wide high plateau. Old oaks created a pleasant forest in the deep shadowed grass. Enoch looked up at the sun, down into the grass, and pointed. In single file, we walked our horses to a second river, really a moat.
“Bagnor Manor,” Enoch said.
Welsh knights guarded a narrow swaying bridge. After an interminable time during which each party tried to understand the other, they let us pass. Now herds of tame deer bounded away when they saw Wolfbane; two old bucks watched us pass along a twisting lane. What had Theo thought when he’d seen such wonders?
A long low manor stretched before us, easily three times the size of Wanthwaite. Built entirely of oak, it was cunningly beamed to form a pleasing pattern. Though there was no wall, nor even a fence, there were two guards wearing the Welsh green at the entry. We dismounted so they could take our horses while I held Wolfbane on his lead.
A manservant, also in green, greeted us at the door, then indicated we should wait for the butler, Geraldus by name, who shortly appeared. Speaking in heavily accented French, he demanded our identities, though the presence of females reassured him. Enoch, answering in equally accented French, said that we were Lady Angela’s party, that Lady Matilda expected us.
Were we from King John?
My heart stopped.
No, said Enoch; Lady Angela was from the north of England and had never met the king.
In that case, Geraldus was sorry to disappoint Lady Angela; Lady Matilda had been here for two days only, then left.
“With her family?” I whispered.
Geraldus addressed Enoch: yes, with the family she’d brought from Normandy.
“Ask him where they went!” I begged Enoch.
Geraldus didn’t know himself, nor did he know why she’d come here at all when she wasn’t expected for nearly a month, and yes, she’d seemed worried. He suggested that Lady Matilda’s personal monk might know more. She’d established a small Cistercian abbey on the premises, and he knew that she’d visited it during her brief stay. The place was called Margam Abbey; the monk was Father Davyyd.
Before dawn, Enoch and I were again riding silently among the oaks, now swathed in mist. I was filled with foreboding. Enoch, too, was facing disappointment, though hardly of the same depth.
We passed Margam Abbey three times before I saw a tiny passage carved into a rock with the sign of the cross above it. We crawled to a low oaken door with a magic twist of iron hanging in its middle. Enoch knocked and bellowed, “Father Davyyd,” again and again before a small bent man answered his summons. Obviously Welsh with his pale skin and weedy hair, he wore the black robe tied with a rope of his order, and walked on the bare feet of a hermit. He seemed so antique that I was startled when he spoke with a young, strong voice. Enoch introduced himself as Lord Enoch of Wanthwaite and me as Lady Angela from Durham, who’d had a rendezvous with Lady Matilda in London, which that lady had missed. He hoped that Father Davyyd could inform us of the lady’s whereabouts, for the case was urgent; a fortune was involved.
Were we from King John?
The question chilled.
When Enoch answered no, I realized that he, too, understood our danger. Or Lady Matilda’s.
Father Davyyd lapsed into a Welsh argot that Enoch understood, for he answered in a similar tongue. The monk pulled forth wooden benches for our comfort and then brought lathed oaken mugs filled with local elderberry wine. We sat and talked of many things—or the men talked, I was quiet—as Father Davyyd tested our honesty. Suddenly, the monk put down his mug.
“Follow me; I have something to show you,” he said in French.
He squeezed on his hands and knees through a hacked tunnel and into a larger cave with a hole open to the sun. Even with air, the floor was moist with mildew. Father Davyyd turned a desperate face.
His voice trembled. “Lady Matilda fled Bagnor at my advice. She wasn’t safe in Wales! She’s had warning, you see, that King John wanted her male children to be given over as hostages against her husband’s debts. She knew well what that meant, because . . . Read this.”
He pointed to a rock in the wall with new chisled letters. I read aloud, putting the French into English: After King John captured Arthur and kept him in prison for some time in the castle of Rouen, and after dinner, on the Wednesday before Easter, when he was drunk and possessed of the devil, King John slew his nephew with his own hand, and tying a heavy stone to his body, cast it into the Seine. It was discovered by fishermen in their net and being dragged to the bank and recognized, was taken for sacred burial in fear of the tyrant to the Priory of Bec, called Notre Dame de Prs.
“I knew it couldn’t be a fisherman!” I screamed.
Father Davvyd sobbed. “Now you understand, Lady Angela. Lord William de Braose, who captured Arthur for King John, was appalled at the prince’s fate, as was Lady Matilda. In London, King John demanded the children she had with her be given over to his routiers as hostages to ‘show that she did love him’; she replied, ‘Why should I give my children as hostages when the king murdered his own nephew, whom he should have protected?’”
Enoch caught me when I fell.
“She ha’e the falling sickness,” he explained. “Hit’s werse when she’s shocked. Ye con see the marks on her face whar she fell in London.”
But Father Davyyd wasn’t interested in my condition. “I advised Lady Matilda to seek the protection of the king of Scotland. Perhaps you may find her there. Isn’t the king in Edinburgh?”
Scotland, at least four hundred miles to the north.
Enoch thanked Father Davyyd profusely for his help, Deo gratias, for I couldn’t speak. He even made a contribution to his tiny cell. Then we were among the oaks again.
“The king of Scotland will protect her, ye’ll see.”
I didn’t respond.
“Mayhap ye shuld gae back to Wanthwaite and wait for me.”
“I must go to Scotland.”
Enoch stopped and dismounted. He looked up at me. “Do ye want to tell me the truth, Alix?”
After a period of silence, he remounted.
One of Enoch’s knights took Wolfbane to Wanthwaite.
Several knights, including Thorketil and Dugan, wanted to return to Wanthwaite when we reached the turnoff. Their horses were exhausted.
I spurred my mare—Enoch galloped after me. Thorketil and Dugan followed. Gruoth had never wavered.
We met a shepherd traveling south; aye, King William was in the capital; aye, the weather had been bonny in Scotland four days ago.
We passed through Durham with its stone bridge. Something was important about the city—ah yes, it had an ecclesiastic court. We rode close to the coast with its melancholy associations when we entered Scotland, then on to Edinburgh. The countryside was indeed like Wales: high cliffs, deep purple chasms, and a fast-moving sky. Tarns and falls and inlets from the sea were everwhere. We passed through Edinburgh to camp close to its port, called Leith.
Enoch and Thorketil rode back to the city to seek an audience with the king. They returned that same eve.
Enoch took me aside. “Be ye sartain that this Lady Matilda be nocht a criminal?” he asked.
“Why? Oh God, tell me!”
“King William turned the lady over to King John ond the Scottish king wouldna do swich a thing unless . . . She ond her brood be in prison at Windsor Castle!”
“Windsor?” I lost all caution. “I must go, Enoch! Must save him!”
Well, I’d just let it slip that something human was at risk—I didn’t care!
“Ye shuld wait in Wanthwaite while Thorketil and I . . . ”
“No! No! I must go! Your king is . . . Your king . . .” I couldn’t finish.
“I’ll tak ye, Alix. Doona wape, I’ll tak ye.”
We camped in a field near to Windsor called Runnymede—well named, for it was a waterland with many leets draining into the Thames River, just below Staines. Our camp was on a shallow pond with a dead tree in the middle. Gruoth—who wouldn’t leave me—hung our blankets on limbs close to the pond. The dampness cooled my hot body. Dugan caught fish in the Thames, which Enoch turned on a spit. Though we couldn’t see Windsor Castle, we could feel it close by.
In early morning, Enoch and Thorketil rode at once for Windsor. Thorketil knew one of the guards at the prison; they would beg for an audience with Lady Matilda. At the very least, they could get information.
I heard their plan, heard them leave. I twisted damp leaves; Theo was in prison. I’d never seen a prison—was he in chains? Why would anyone—even King John—want to put a baby in prison? John had been a baby once. A tiny lisping boy. And John himself had at least one son I’d heard of—named Henry. If he ever saw Theo . . . Who could resist Theo? Did he know who his father was? Perhaps John had given orders about Lady Matilda and didn’t know she had a babe in her custody. Aye, that was probably the case. Would Enoch approach King John if I asked?
Thus my fantastick cell worked throughout the day, now morbid, now hopeful. Dusk had fallen before the Scots appeared in the gloom. I tried to read their slow-moving figures: they seemed puzzled.
“Did you gain entry?”
Enoch dismounted. “Into the prison? Nay.”
“You didn’t talk to a guard?”
“On her person? Is she dead?”
He sighed heavily. “Gi’e me yer hond, Alix; ’tis a gory tale.”
“Tell me.” I knew by his tone: Theo was dead. Something died inside of me. The very worst, the very worst, my own life was finished.
His voice was gentle, the tone you use to speak to an idiot. “Wal, it could be werse, remember.”
What could be worse than death?
“King John be famous fer putting his prisoners in lead copes and sinking them slowly into brine. That be a turrible death!”
All death is terrible.
“He sank forty prisoners at the castle in Forte after he starved them.”
“Lady Matilda,” I whispered. “Was she at Forte?”
He put his hand on my cheek.
“I mun say that the lady war courageous. Quhan they tried to starve her . . .”
“She had children! Even John couldn’t . . . ”
“She had three childer wi’ her, two older—one luiked to be a cnicht—ond one a babe. The babe died ferst, o’ course.”
I heard him in a distance.
“The lady ond her older bairns et him.”
“Before or after . . . ?”
“The guard be sartain he war dead ferst . . . I doona knaw hu lang the older ones lasted.”
“The baby was eaten.” My words tolled in my ears.
“Aye. Whan the guards buried them, the babe had no face at all.”
He caught me when I fell.
Magna Carta
Book Two
8
I wanted to die, I tried to die, I didn’t die. John had won. I cared nothing for my own life, only Theo’s, and Theo was dead.
Mayhap I survived because I was in Wanthwaite again with the Scots, who took most excellent care of me. The malaise I’d experienced on the journey to Hereford and beyond now deepened to a catatonic state. People talked as through a haze, and, though I was aware of conversation, I no longer responded. Gradually, the Scots stopped addressing me. I replayed in my head every single night and day that Theo and I had lived in the Jewish commune together. When I got to the night he’d left, I started on the very first day again, when he’d been brought to me in his swaddling clothes, and the more I thought, the more I remembered. I carefully refrained from imagining his time with Lady Matilda.
The Prince of Poison Page 11