‘Ask your wife,’ Harold said and strode away, clattering from the hall with his men at his back and making straight for his ships.
William looked at Mathilda, puzzled. For a dread moment she saw Harold dancing her around the hall, saw her own lips telling him he would make a good king, saw Fitz’s blood-red rage as he stepped between them. She lifted a hand to her husband and he reached out to take it, but then, without warning, his face twisted and he clutched at his gut and, with a strange groaning noise, fell at her feet, dark eyes rolling back in his head and his breath twisting from him as if it meant to leave forever.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
All was panic and confusion. For a moment everyone stood stock still, as if waiting for their duke to leap up and tease them for falling for his jest, but this was William – he did not jest. Fitz recovered first. He ran to his lord and friend, dropping down before him and feeling in his neck for the pulse of his lifeblood.
‘He lives,’ he shouted. ‘Fetch a pallet and fast. We must get him to his chamber.’
Roger de Beaumont leaped forward, summoning a pallet bed from the back of the hall with an imperious wave of the walking stick he now used. Mathilda stood helplessly to one side as Fitz and Fulk eased William onto the pallet as carefully as if he were made of precious glass and lifted him themselves. Hugh and Odo rushed to help and they bore him from the hall on their shoulders as if he were dead already.
‘William . . .’ His name escaped her lips as she went after them, a whisper at first and then louder: ‘William!’
He could not die, must not die, not now they were so close to their goal. They’d endured all these battles and rebellions and she had never once had to face the possibility that he might die, so why now? She pictured Adela shuddering out of life this very afternoon and tears raked at the back of her throat. She had not grieved, not enough. She was Adela’s mother. She should have been struck down by her loss, but instead she had let her go and turned to the business of Harold’s oath. Perhaps God was punishing her by taking William too; or perhaps he was testing if she was as callous about her husband as her daughter.
Mathilda felt the lurching, painful sensation that this was a fair test. That foolish dance with Harold had proved it. Tears ran down her cheeks as William’s loyal men laid him, at last, on his bed, easing the pallet from beneath him so he could sink into the softness of the mattress Mathilda had ordered brought from Paris when she had refurbished this apartment two years ago – a treat to herself after all the work in Caen. She looked around the soft blues and greens she had so carefully chosen to match the colours of the shifting sea beyond and wondered if she had made it beautiful simply to lose him within its elegant walls. Adela had been born in this room, she remembered – born too early, only to be lost too early too. And now William.
He did not move, not a sigh of relief, nor a wince of pain, nor any sign at all that he still breathed save the faint rise and fall of his broad chest. Mathilda pushed past the men and scrambled up beside him, clasping his hand in hers.
‘He’s hot! He’s so hot; we must cool him.’
She fumbled at his tunic clasps.
‘Are you sure, my lady? Is that not dangerous?’
‘Less dangerous than letting his blood boil inside him.’
‘She’s right,’ Fulk said unexpectedly. ‘At least, that’s what Mabel always does. Shall I fetch Mabel, Mathilda?’
‘And her poisons? No, thank you. I will care for William. Cloths please, and water, cool water, and, and . . .’ She had no more knowledge. ‘And prayers! Send messages to all the abbeys and all the churches. Normandy’s duke has given himself for her all his life and now she must give a little back. All must pray.’
‘Yes, my lady.’
Fulk bowed out, Hugh and Roger following, but Fitz lingered at William’s feet, head low. Mathilda took up the cloth the servers had brought and bathed William’s burning temples and strong wrists. She ran it over his muscled chest, dipping it tenderly into the scars and grooves of his life as a warrior. So many battles and this, the worst of them all. She looked back to Fitz.
‘Did you tell him?’
‘What?’
‘What I said about, about . . .’
Words failed her and she fumbled again for William’s hand, clutching it and willing his fingers to at least twitch against her own.
‘No, Mathilda. I said I would not.’
‘So you did not. Of course. You are very like him, Fitz.’
‘I am nothing like. He is ten times the man I am.’
‘That’s not true. He is a duke, yes, but . . .’
‘It’s more than that. William isn’t just a duke by title or even by his actions, but all the way through to his core. He is a tough man but an honourable one. He sees so very, very clearly how the world should be and his vision is right. He wants only justice and fairness and people rewarded according to their actions.’
‘Bad as well as good?’
‘Of course, but he is not harsh, my lady. So many lords have been pardoned these last years, so many rebels returned from exile or released from prison. He does not want opposition – he wants loyalty, craves it almost, and why not? If all stand behind their leader none can break them and William is a leader all should stand behind.’
‘All,’ Mathilda repeated faintly – all including his own wife. She remembered how she had refused to marry him at first, refused as Adela had refused Harold. She had been as guilty as the rest of thinking his bastardy lessened him, when all the time her own haughty blood had been the weaker. ‘Nobility is not in blood but in bearing,’ he had told her at Herleva’s death and he had always borne himself as a noble indeed.
‘He cannot die, Fitz,’ she cried, ‘he cannot.’
‘But what can we do?’
‘I know not. Just be here, talk to him, show him we care.’
So they did. They pulled two high-backed, softly cushioned chairs away from the window and up to the bed and they talked to the prostrate figure upon it. Fitz spoke of victories they had shared, of camps on strange hillsides and in deep woods and around many a town and city and Mathilda had a glimpse into the rough road of a soldier. He spoke of their childhood, before their fathers had died, when all had been apple-scrumping and wall-climbing and river-jumping, and Mathilda wished William had told her more of this himself – and that she had asked.
She spoke to him of Caen, of how grand they would make it once he recovered. She talked of their wedding, of their children and later, when Fitz dozed, of their bed. There, as in all aspects of their life, he had ever worked for her joy and she, like a fool, had thought the heat between them to be more about skill than passion. She had even wondered if others, like Emeline, found lovemaking somehow headier, less workmanlike – more like dancing. Always she had been obsessed with dancing.
‘Please, William,’ she begged, twisting the soft green bed-hangings around and around in her hot fingers, ‘please don’t die. I don’t care about the dancing. I gave up on such stupidities when I married you and it has only been my weakness if I have at times forgotten that. We are rulers together, remember – together.’
He did not move. He did not even twitch until much, much later as darkness enfolded them and his face flickered in the candlelight and the plainsong of the monks singing for his life filled the still air. And then, suddenly, he was speaking – nay, rambling. He thrashed out in his bed, knocking Mathilda so she had to scramble away. He shouted and babbled and clawed at his stomach as if trying to rip it out. Mathilda and Fitz tried to hold him down but he was too strong.
‘He’ll break himself!’ Fitz gasped.
‘The bed is soft,’ Mathilda said, ‘let him fight.’
So they stood back but William was weakening already, his hands flapping uselessly now and his head crashing from one side to the other on his pillows, sweat pouring from his forehead.
‘He’s fading.’
‘No!’
Mathilda leaped forward again, d
odging William’s still-jerking arms to wipe at his face with the cloths but he was moving so much that it splashed and splattered ridiculously.
‘William, please rest. You must rest.’
‘He never rests,’ Fitz said. ‘Except maybe with you. It was the same with his mother, God bless her soul.’
‘He is not going to her,’ Mathilda said fiercely.
Herleva had asked her to look after William; perhaps she had not done it well enough.
‘I will,’ she said to the ceiling. ‘I will care. I do care.’
‘William knows that.’
‘Not enough. He doesn’t know enough.’
‘He does, Mathilda, for he loves you.’
The word punched all the air out of her. She stared at Fitz over William’s prone form and as she fought to regain her breath she saw the simple truth of it. William loved her, loved her because he had been open to doing so, as she had not. He had called her his ‘Mora’ from their very first night together. He had told her that he wished to gain a throne to prove his love for her. He had told her that clearly but she had not listened. She had chosen to believe that he was too hard a man to truly love, when the truth was that she had been the hard one. Hard and foolish too, confusing poetry-and-petals wooing with true feeling.
She thought guiltily back over the last years in which she’d mooned around comparing her own marriage to Hugh whisking Emeline off to Italy, or to Fulk and Mabel with their sparky complicity, or even Raoul marrying his royal love in a deserted chapel. She’d thought them all so romantic but such things were not romance. Emeline said Italy had been hell at first, whilst William had always kept her in comfort and security. Fulk had only won Mabel over by exerting a control bordering on cruelty where William had ever been gentle with her. And what was so wonderful about a deserted chapel? William had defied the entire Roman church to wed her and then fought unceasingly for the sanction of what he had always told her was a true marriage. True because he loved her; he had always loved her.
‘I thought him hard, Fitz,’ she whispered.
‘He is but there are two sides, surely, to everyone?’
Mathilda looked again to the bed where William now lay unmoving, though his hands gripped madly at the air and his lips moved as if fighting to speak. She leaned closer but he took a sudden shuddering breath and was still again. Fitz scrambled for his life-pulse as she watched, horrified.
‘He’s not dead but it’s weak, Mathilda. We need help.’
He was right. She could not lose him, not now – there was too much to say. Mathilda drew in a deep breath of her own. There are two sides to everyone, Fitz had said and pray God he spoke true.
‘Fetch Mabel, Fitz.’
‘Truly?’
Mathilda swallowed. Mabel might be a poisoner but she was the only chance they had.
‘Truly, Fitz. Please.’
He ran, slamming out of the door calling Fulk’s name, and Mathilda was alone with William. She crawled onto the bed again and lay herself against him, curling into the crook of his powerful arm as she had done so many times, though this night it did not curve around her as it always had before. His fingers did not run across her skin and he did not speak to her so that his voice echoed out of his hard chest into her ear. He just lay there and Mathilda felt a huge emptiness looming over her and clutched madly at him.
‘Don’t go, William. Don’t leave me.’
She knelt up, taking his chiselled face in her hands and bending in to kiss his lips as if she could breathe her own life into him.
‘Heavens, Mathilda, it’s hardly the time for that!’
Mathilda whirled furiously around.
‘I’m just . . .’
But Mabel put out a hand.
‘I know. I’m sorry. I cannot help myself. There is so much darkness in the world, it is sometimes easier to make light.’
‘Much of the darkness is your own creation, Mabel.’
‘Perhaps, but what can kill can also cure.’
‘You won’t kill him?’
Mabel stepped closer to the bed.
‘Something else is killing him, I’m afraid.’
‘A demon?’
‘No! Or if so, one made in nature to eat at him from inside.’
Mathilda looked at William, seeing dark, scurrying bugs within him, teeth scraping at his flesh, and could not bear it.
‘It is in his stomach, I think, like the Spanish sailors.’
‘Good.’
‘Good?’
‘Good information, Mathilda. I can work with that.’
Mabel set down a basket on the carved sideboard and began removing little vials and caskets, busily mixing several liquids into a stone bowl.
‘Mint,’ she said, seeing Mathilda staring, ‘and chamomile, to ease the cramps. And yarrow for the fever. Now, help me get it into him.’ Still Mathilda stared and Mabel tutted impatiently. ‘It is not poison, Mathilda. Now, please, can we help William before it is too late?’
‘Of course. How?’
‘Hold his nose.’
‘But . . .’
‘Now, Mathilda. If he cannot breathe through his nose, he must open his mouth.’
‘Or not breathe at all.’
‘As will happen if we do not hurry. Now!’
Mathilda held William’s nose and watched as her poor husband opened his mouth and Mabel, slick as a grass snake, slid her potion between his lips and clamped them shut.
‘Let go.’
Mathilda did so. William struggled and then swallowed. His eyes shot open and he looked wildly around, then he closed them again and groaned.
‘What have you done?’ Mathilda demanded. ‘He sounds awful.’
‘Oh, and he was the picture of health before, was he? It probably just tastes unpleasant. I hadn’t time to sweeten it with honey as I usually do.’
‘You do?’
‘Oh, Mathilda, grow up. I may know how to poison but I take no joy in it. Bad things are always reported – and credited – more than good. Look at the lost English prince.’
‘Who you killed,’ Mathilda snapped but Mabel just smiled. ‘You did kill him, Mabel?’
‘Believe what you wish.’
‘But why would you want people to think that of you if it is not true?’
Mabel just shrugged.
‘It might be true. It certainly could be true. Let people think what they wish, Mathilda, for they will anyway, especially of us women, and you might as well make use of it.’
‘By making them all terrified of you?’
‘Exactly!’ She gave a low laugh, then, glancing at William again she sobered. ‘In truth, Mathilda, I care little for poisons and far more for their antidotes. Medicine is the future, I am sure of it. Imagine if we could learn how to break fevers and stop wounds being infected and make childbirth safer.’
Mathilda jolted.
‘Childbirth?’
‘Of course. We women surely owe it to each other to ease it all we can.’
‘And that is what you did for me?’
‘When?’
‘When Adela was born early – just hours after we talked of you poisoning poor Hugh.’
Mabel stared.
‘You think I did that to you? To another pregnant woman? To my duchess?’
Mathilda shifted awkwardly.
‘I feared so, yes.’
Mabel looked for a moment as if she would erupt in fury but then she released it in a low sigh.
‘As I said, people will think what they wish. We have been too long enemies, Mathilda. It is foolish of us both.’
She was right.
‘I’m sorry. It’s just William. I’m . . . worried.’
‘As you should be.’ Mathilda blinked. Would she ever get used to this Norman predilection for such ruthless honesty? But then Mabel placed a hand on her arm – a surprisingly gentle hand. ‘But we have done what we can. It is in God’s hands now. I will be next door. Call me if you need me.’
‘I . . .
Yes. And Mabel, thank you.’
‘I don’t do it for you; I do it for William. He has been the making of Normandy and he can be the making of England too.’
‘If he lives.’
‘Yes.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The night uncurled, candle-notch by candle-notch. William did not struggle so violently but he continued to twitch and gasp until Mathilda began to wish he were deathly still again. She prayed. She prayed as she had never prayed before, begging God’s forgiveness for not being a good mother to poor Adela, for sneaking around after her husband at Alençon, and above all for thinking him no more than a partner in rule.
‘Love is not something that can simply be allowed to sweep over you,’ Baldwin had told her all those years ago when she’d rejected even the idea of William as a husband. ‘Love must be earned with years of partnership, with mutual goals and considered plans.’ She had thought him mean back then but she saw now that he had spoken true and that only foolish stubbornness had stopped her from realising it in these last years. She had clung onto the idea of damned Brihtric, but he had not been romancing her with his fancy wooing, merely exercising his power, propositioning her to test if his damned Saxon curls would tempt her.
William in stark contrast was solid and caring and so, so generous to her and she could not bear to lose him. She watched as he muttered strange, stray words and waited, agonised, for her own name but it did not come. Then, suddenly, with the first licks of dawn light, he started up on his pillows, staring as if he had spotted the answer to some great mystery.
‘Dance,’ he blurted. ‘Must. Dance. Mathilda must dance.’
‘No, William,’ she said urgently. ‘I do not need to dance. I just need you. I will sit out every dance forever more if I can do so at your side.’
He seemed to freeze, looking for a terrifying moment like his own effigy, and then, in a miracle, his eyes opened and he stared straight at her.
‘But I would like to dance,’ he said, as lucid as ever.
‘William? Oh God, William – is that you?’
‘Of course it is, Wife. Who else would it be?’
‘William!’ She fell against him, laughing and crying, and felt him pat her back as if she’d simply got herself in a fret about one of the children, or an ill-fitting gown, or a poor menu choice. ‘I am so glad to see you well – truly this dawn is coloured with promise.’
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