The Hammer of the Scots

by Виктория Холт

  So she had much to be thankful for, and the only time she had really asserted herself was when he had decided to go to the Holy Land. By that time she had shown herself to be a fertile wife – to the delight of the family – and in the nursery were John, Eleanor and little Henry. Edward had been deeply touched when she had stood before him and shown a firmness she had never displayed before.

  ‘Nothing should separate those whom God hath joined together,’ she had said, ‘and the way to Heaven is as near, if not nearer from Syria as from England or from Spain.’

  She remembered the blank amazement in Edward’s face when she had said that. He had laughed aloud and held her firmly in his arms while he explained the discomforts and dangers of the expedition.

  ‘All these things,’ she had replied, ‘I know full well. They have been the subjects of our songs for more than a hundred years. I know of your great-uncle, Richard Coeur de Lion, who was a prisoner until he was rescued by the faithful Blondel. I am aware of the dangers which you will have to face and I, as your wife, would share them with you.’

  He had shaken his head and told her that while he loved her for making the suggestion he must forbid her to carry it out.

  Edward then learned that the seemingly weak can sometimes be strong and that it is as though they give way on the smaller issues reserving the full force of their strength for the larger ones.

  She was determined to accompany him and she did. For he said he would not stand in the way of such love as that, and her father-in-law – good, kind King Henry – had listened with tears in his eyes and her mother-in-law had said that had she been in her place she would have insisted in the same way. Moreover the children would be in the good hands of their grandparents.

  And so they had set out.

  Of course she had suffered hardship and there had been times when she had thought longingly of the cool rains of England and the comforts of the royal palaces, for it was often uncomfortable – wretchedly so – sleeping in tents, pestered by flies and other obnoxious insects. And then she had become pregnant. Perhaps when she lost her little daughter a few days after her birth she had wondered whether she had been wise; but as soon as her depression over the loss had passed she knew she could never have stayed behind because it would have meant losing Edward and to share his life was of greater importance than being with her children.

  And as though there was a sign from Heaven she had almost immediately conceived and this time a healthy child was born. She called this daughter Joanna after her mother, and Joanna had the dark looks of Castile rather than those of the fair Plantagenets; and from the first she was lively and wilful and a daughter to delight in.

  People began to call her Joanna of Acre because of the place of her birth, and Edward said that the child would always remind him and the world of the wonderful wife he had who had accompanied him on his crusade and borne him a child during it.

  There was another reason why she knew she had been right. That was when Edward had been wounded in his tent. If she had not been there would Edward have survived? He said not. His doctors claimed the credit, of course, while admitting that some was due to him for submitting to the painful surgery. But Edward always said it was her action which had saved his life, and Providence was telling them that God liked well a brave wife who would follow her husband no matter where his duty took him.

  She would never think of that occasion without living again the dreadful moment when she thought she had lost him.

  Of course they were surrounded by danger and Edward was notoriously reckless. These bold knights believed it was part of the bravery expected of them to shrug aside danger or refuse to see it. Oh, how relieved she was to see those white cliffs, that impregnable fortress defiant on the cliff. Danger could come to them in England. A king could never lie easy in his bed. Her brother had told her that and again and again it had been shown to be true. But in a Holy War, when they were surrounded by the Saracens, danger was not just a possibility, it was a certainty.

  For as long as she would live she would have memories of the time she had spent in an alien land. Those still, hot nights, when a sudden noise could set her starting from her bed, would never be forgotten. Constantly they had been on the alert, for how could they know what fearful fate might overtake them at any moment, when there were a thousand dangers lurking waiting to spring? Often she had longed for home, and she knew that if she had asked Edward to let her go he would have arranged to send her back. But she had known she could never leave him. What would her life have been without him? She had once come close to discovering the answer to that question. In her nightmares now she would see the dead man lying on the floor of Edward’s tent, and Edward near to death stretched out on the bed. One glance had told her what had happened. The assassin had attempted to kill Edward and Edward had killed him. But in those first moments she had thought that Edward himself had been mortally wounded in the struggle.

  There was evil in that land and rumours were always circulating about the Old Man of the Mountains – a fabled creature who might have existed. Who could be sure? It was said that the Old Man lived in the mountains where he had created a paradise on earth. His palace there was made of chalcedony and marble, and in its gardens luscious fruits and colourful flowers grew in abundance. Men were lured to it, as mermaids were said to lure sailors to disaster. These victims lived in the Old Man’s paradise for many months with beautiful women to wait on them and supply their needs. Then one day the Old Man would send for them and tell them they were banished and must go back to the world. To have experienced this life for so long had affected these men so deeply that they could not contemplate living any differently. The Old Man would tell them that they could win their way back by carrying out his orders, and these dangerous assignments usually involved the murder of someone whom the Old Man wished destroyed. Thus the Old Man created a band of assassins who killed at his will which meant that he was a power throughout the world.

  Many people believed that it was the Old Man of the Mountains who had wanted Edward removed, although ostensibly his attacker came from the Emir of Joppa to whose employ he had recently come. The Emir was negotiating peace terms with Edward at that time and his messengers came frequently and freely to the camp. Thus it was that he aroused no suspicion and was allowed into Edward’s tent where he was lying on his bed without his armour and vulnerable to an assassin who could easily have plunged the knife into his heart, which was of course what had been intended. But Edward was alert, and his quick eye had detected the dagger which was slipped from the sleeve and raised to strike him, and with great presence of mind he had lifted his legs and kicked aside the raised arm. The action saved his life but he had not escaped entirely and the poisoned blade went deep into his arm.

  She shivered and Edward, standing beside her, noticed.

  ‘You are cold?’ he asked in surprise.

  She shook her head. ‘Nay. I was thinking of the assassin.’

  Edward laughed softly. How often had he found her lost in thought and discovered that she was thinking of the assassin?

  ‘It is all over, my dear. Thanks to your action my life was saved.’

  She shook her head. ‘It was the doctors who saved you. They performed that difficult operation …’

  He winced at the memory. He had never experienced such pain. She had wanted to stay in the tent while the operation was performed but they had insisted on her leaving. Once more she had shown that sternness in her nature and they had had to carry her protesting away.

  ‘I shall never forget how you put your mouth to that ugly wound and drained away the poison with your sweet lips,’ he said. ‘Eleanor, my Queen, if ever I forget what you did for me I deserve to lose my kingdom.’

  ‘Do not talk of losing your kingdom. It could be unlucky.’

  He took her hand and kissed it. ‘My grandfather lost his kingdom and all his possessions besides, even the crown jewels he lost in the Wash. My father came very near to losing his cr
own. What sort of king shall I be?’

  ‘The best the country has ever known.’

  ‘A rash pronouncement.’

  ‘Nevertheless a true one.’

  ‘You look fierce and stern. I believe, my little Queen, that all this gentleness is a disguise. Beneath is a woman of iron strength.’

  ‘I can be strong … for you and our children.’

  He bent and kissed her. She touched his arm … that arm which was scarred with the wound and would never be quite well again.

  ‘You still feel it, don’t you, Edward?’

  ‘’Tis nothing. Only a twinge.’

  But she knew it was not so. There were times when his face was grey with pain. She feared that all his life he would be reminded of that fearful moment in the tent when he had come face to face with death.

  ‘God means you to rule and be a great king,’ she said. ‘I know it. You see how you are protected. Do you remember that night in Bordeaux when we were seated on the couch talking of home and the children and suddenly lightning struck? The two men who were standing close to us were both killed but we were unharmed.’

  ‘They were in the direct path of the lightning.’

  ‘Yes, but we were saved. I believe Providence diverted it so that you should live to rule your country.’

  He smiled at her. ‘You really believe that, Eleanor?’

  ‘I am sure of it,’ she said fervently.

  He could see that she was comforted by the thought and he reminded her of another occasion when he was playing chess and had suddenly risen from the board without any reason – and afterwards could not say why he had done so. Almost immediately part of the roof had collapsed, killing his opponent at the board.

  They both turned their faces to the shore and now his thoughts were going back to his attempts to recover his strength after that poison had entered his body. He remembered the throbbing pain of his lacerated arm and the agony of the knife which had cut away the gangrenous flesh and the looks on the faces of those about him which showed clearly that they believed they would leave him behind in the Holy Land.

  But he had survived. By God, he thought now, there had been so much to survive for. There was England which would be his. There were his wife and his children … his father and mother … the sacred family which he had been brought up to believe was the most important thing a man could possess. But there was something more important if that man was a king. He had known it for a long time. The blood of his ancestors was in him and sometimes in his dreams it was as if those great men of the past came to him. William the Conqueror, Henry the Lion of Justice, his great-grandfather Henry II – those men who had cared for England, who had made it great. It was as though they said to him, ‘It is your turn now. You have the qualities we need. You, Edward Plantagenet, with the blood of the Normans in your veins. England – our England – has suffered through the weakness of your forebears. Rufus, Stephen, Richard – that brave man who deserted his country for a dream of glory in the Holy Land – disastrous and devilish John, and lastly – oh, yes, we know you do not like this – Henry, the father whom you loved, and who all but destroyed his country because he was so busy loving his family and pleasing an extravagant wife, who was always begging for luxury and draining away the life blood of the nation’s trade. You know this, Edward. It is for you, who are one of us, to save England.’

  ‘I will,’ he murmured. ‘God help me, I will.’

  He had of late realised his great responsibilities. After the affair of the poisoned dagger, it occurred to him that he did wrong to place himself in danger. His father was ageing and though he, Edward, had two sons in the nursery, John and Henry were but babies. His strength had been impaired; he needed the temperate climate of his own country. He had seen that there was no hope of conquering the Saracen. Others before him had failed in that endeavour. Even the great Coeur de Lion had not succeeded in capturing Jerusalem.

  When an opportunity had arisen to come to terms with the great Sultan Bibars he had taken it. A truce … it was all he had achieved but that could mean a few years’ respite. All that blood, all that danger to achieve that! His arm was painful; it had affected his health, he believed. He ought to go home, for who knew what the barons would be plotting? They were always suspicious of his father and they hated his mother, whose extravagance Edward knew in his heart should be curbed. A nation’s wealth should not be spent on banquets and fine jewels, indulging an extravagant wife and bestowing gifts and pensions on her impecunious relations. Much as he loved his father he could see clearly his shortcomings as a king.

  So he had left the Holy Land and in Sicily the heart-rending news was brought to him. First the death of his eldest son John. Poor Eleanor had been stricken with grief. She had asked herself whether she had been wrong to go and leave her children, and could not stop contemplating what a bitter choice a wife had to make when it was a question of leaving her children to be with her husband.

  There had followed the news of his father’s death. That had prostrated him indeed. He shut himself away from everyone, even Eleanor, and brooded on the loss of the kind parent who had loved him so dearly. He remembered how in the days of his childhood they had played together; when he had been ill – and oddly enough he had not been a strong child – the King with the Queen had been at his bedside. Matters of state could be neglected, important ministers made to wait in order that a sick child might be comforted. Never to see his father again! Never to talk with him! Never to stroll arm in arm with him in the palace gardens! Never to find comfort in that bond between them which only death had been able to break.

  The Sicilians had marvelled at him. He had such a short time earlier heard of the death of his eldest son but it had not affected him as deeply as the death of his father.

  ‘The loss of children can be repaired by the same God that gave them,’ he had said. ‘But when a man has lost a good father it is not in the course of nature for God to send him another.’

  And he knew of course that he must go home. He must comfort his sorrowing mother, for he guessed how she would take this bereavement. The death of his father had aged him, sobered him, set him looking back and thinking of the death of his great-grandfather, Henry II, who would be judged one of England’s most worthy kings and he thought of how he had died, deserted by his sons, sadly aware of it, and hated by his wife – in fact a lonely old man, friendless, and with few to wait at his bedside and offer him comfort. Yet he was a king who had done much for England. And that other Henry, Edward’s beloved father, who had brought the crown into danger and indeed had come near to losing it through men such as Simon de Montfort, had died mourned and regretted to such an extent that his children and his wife would be prostrate with grief and would keep his memory green for ever. Ironic, thought Edward, and wondered what his own fate would be. But it was not a matter of choice. Why should not a man be a good king and a good father? He knew that his Eleanor would stand beside him; she would not attempt to rule him as his mother had ruled his father. He loved his mother dearly but that did not mean to say that he did not realise her faults. Now that he was King he would have to curb her extravagance. He was not going to run into trouble with the barons as his father had done.

  In a sudden rush of affection he took his wife’s hand and pressed it as they stood there on the boat deck watching the white cliffs come closer.

  From the moment of his father’s death he had become the King, but he had not after all hastened home. He had better work to do on the Continent. This was not a time to indulge his grief but to consolidate his position. He visited the all-important Pope to ensure good relations with Rome; then he and Eleanor stayed awhile with her family in Castile, and then they came to Paris where he was entertained by the French King, Philip III, and Philip’s mother who was Edward’s Aunt Marguerite; he had even met the Count of Flanders at Montreuil and settled a dispute which had stopped the export of English wool to Flanders.

  He had made good use of his time an
d behaved, he believed, in a kingly manner by setting matters of state before his inclinations.

  Now the Queen had turned to him and she said, ‘Soon we must embark.’

  ‘It is a new life beginning for us,’ he replied. ‘When we step onto English soil again it will be as King and Queen.’

  ‘I wonder if the children will be there. Oh, Edward, our own babies and we may not recognise them.’

  There were tears in her eyes and he knew that she was thinking of Baby Joanna. He said gently, ‘You must not fret. It is not for long. She will come back to us.’

  ‘I should never have begged you to allow it,’ she said.

  ‘Think of your mother’s delight.’

  ‘I try to. Oh I must not be selfish. I have my two darlings waiting for me. It should have been three.’

  ‘You must not brood on that. Children die. But they can be replaced. We’ll have more. I promise you a round dozen.’

  ‘I pray to God that it may be so. But I cannot forget Joanna.’

  It was natural that her mother should have doted on the child. Joanna had been bright and lively from her very youngest days. It was strange how people were particularly drawn to their namesakes. So it had been with Eleanor’s mother. She had adored the baby from the moment she had seen her. She had carried her off to her own apartments and would not relinquish her to her nurses or to her mother; and when it had been time for Edward and Eleanor to leave the Castilian Court, she had become so desolate declaring that when they had gone, taking the baby with them, she would have nothing to live for. What could a loving daughter do? Poor Eleanor, her tender heart had been deeply touched by her mother’s lonely state. ‘We owe her something,’ she had said to Edward. ‘Your father made her waste her youth when he was pretending he would marry her. And afterwards he jilted her for the sake of your mother, and no one asked for her hand until my father came along. I was the only child there was time for then, and I am married and gone far away from her.’