Falls the Shadow: A Novel

by Sharon Kay Penman

  John merely shrugged. “Blasphemy? Nay, that is but the Gospel according to Evesham. Bran’s father and brothers died for his mistake. He arrived at the battle not in time to save them, but in time to see Earl Simon’s head on a Marcher pike. You tell me, my lord King of the Romans, just what prayers can exorcise a memory like that.”

  From the chronicle of the thirteenth-century monk Robert of Gloucester:

  “Such was the murder of Evesham,

  For battle it was none.”

  39

  ________

  Dover Castle, England

  August 1265

  ________

  Monday, August 10, was typical of Nell’s overburdened afternoons; her responsibilities seemed to multiply in direct proportion to the day’s diminishing hours. For some moments now, she’d been laboring to reassure one of her ladies in waiting; Hawisa’s brother was with Simon’s army, and the waiting was shredding her nerves raw. While Nell sought to dispel Hawisa’s qualms, her steward, Richard Gobion, hovered close at hand, as did her patient scribe, pen poised to do his lady’s bidding.

  Having convinced Hawisa that she need not read sinister significance into the silence echoing from the west, Nell beckoned to her steward. “Richard, did you arrange to send those barrels of herring to St Mary’s Hospital? Very good. I looked over your inventory, agree that we’ll need additional supplies of firewood. More corn, too, enough to get us through until harvest-time. You’d best send some men to Wickham on the morrow. As for the wine, let’s buy it again from Master Augustine, the vintner at Sandwich.”

  Gobion was the epitome of efficiency, would carry out her orders with dispatch, and Nell at last felt free to turn her attention back to her scribe. “Mauger, are you ready? Write as follows: To my dear husband, the Earl of Leicester, greetings. We are all well, although I will admit to some unease of mind, for I have not heard from you for almost a fortnight. I assume that by now you have been able to reach Kenilworth, so I have instructed Picard to go there first. Now for my news. I have sent our youngest lad to Winchelsea to engage men-at-arms. I’m sure you remember the raw pride of sixteen, Simon; so set was he upon playing a man’s part that I had to let him—’ God’s wrath!”

  Mauger and Hawisa were equally startled. When the screaming came again, Nell paled, for this time she recognized the voice. “Jesú, my daughter!” Mauger darted for the door, jerked it open just as Richard Gobion stumbled back into the bedchamber. “Madame,” he cried, “hurry!”

  Nell found herself assailed by noise, by a rising babble of distraught voices that broke and swirled about her in a surging current of tumultuous sound. The great chamber was in utter chaos; the scent of fear was in the air. All eyes were turning toward Nell, hands plucking at her sleeve as she moved unflinchingly into the very midst of this maelstrom. But she was intent only upon reaching her weeping daughter. “Ellen? My God, child, what’s wrong?”

  “Oh, Mama!” Ellen sobbed, flung herself into Nell’s arms. “He…he said…” She could not get the words out, choked on her tears. Nell could make out only “Papa” and “dead.”

  Grasping Ellen by the shoulders, Nell shook her until the child’s hair whipped wildly about her face. “Ellen, get hold of yourself! Your father is not dead. Who told you that he was?”

  “Wat…Wat did,” Ellen gasped, pointing an accusing finger toward a red-faced youngster who suddenly found himself alone in a crowd, naked to Nell’s wrath. He was a huge, hulking youth, a good-natured, slow-witted lad who could, nevertheless, work wonders with horses. He towered over Nell, but he’d begun to tremble even before she drew her arm back, slapped him across the mouth.

  “How dare you terrify my daughter and disrupt my household with your vile gossip? Look at you, stinking with ale! Instead of the stables, you were in the town, at the Mermaid’s Tail, I’d wager! Dare you deny it? No, I thought not. Get your belongings together; I want you gone from here within the hour.”

  Ignoring the young groom’s horrified sputter of protest, Nell swung around to face the others. “You’d best take this fool’s fate to heart, all of you, for I will dismiss any man who brings ale-house babble into my household—no matter how long he’s been in my service. Is that understood?”

  “My lady!” Wat fell to his knees. “It was not ale-house gossip, I swear by my very soul! There was a man coming up the hill to the castle, and I stopped, for his horse had gone lame… He told me, my lady, he told me! If I ought not to have believed him, I’m most heartily sorry! If you’ll but give me another chance—” The rest of his plea was drowned out by a sudden resurgence of sound; people were turning toward the door. Not daring to abandon his supplicant’s pose, he glanced over his shoulder, then gave a stutter of excitement. “Th—that’s him! The stranger I met on the road!”

  But he was no stranger to Nell, this haggard, begrimed man limping toward her, bearing her husband’s badge upon his arm and grief beyond measure upon his face. Nell tried to swallow and failed. She stood very still as he passed through the suddenly silent crowd, treading upon the floor rushes as if his boots were lined with lead, so heavy was his step. It took him a long time to reach her, this man who had loved Simon well, who’d served him for twenty faithful years. Nell swayed slightly, dug her nails into the palm of her hand, watching wordlessly as he slowly sank to his knees before her.

  “I’d rather cut out my tongue than bring you news like this, my lady,” he said, his voice thickening as his eyes met hers. Reaching into his tunic, he drew forth a wax-sealed parchment.

  Nell did not take it, looked upon her brother Richard’s signet without recognition. “Tell me,” she said, very low, and his eyes filled with tears.

  “There was a battle, my lady. On Tuesday last, near the abbey of Evesham. The day…it went against your lord husband. He and your sons died on the field. They are dead, my lady, they are all dead.”

  Nell’s memory was no longer functioning as it should; her recollections were fragmented, marred by strange gaps and sudden blanks. There were moments she could recall with merciless clarity, hours she could not remember at all.

  She remembered standing in the great chamber, her ears echoing with the words “They are dead.” She remembered struggling to quell the ensuing panic. And she remembered trying to allay her daughter’s hysterics. Ellen’s grieving was so frenzied, so intense, that she’d finally resorted to a sleeping draught of henbane and black poppy. Nell remembered every one of Ellen’s screams. But once she’d been able to withdraw into her own bedchamber, she remembered nothing beyond the sound of the bolt sliding into place against the door.

  She’d lost hours, more than a few, for the chamber was dark, unlit by candles or cresset lamps. The only illumination came from two unshuttered windows. She reached for the edge of the bed, pulled herself to a sitting position in the floor rushes. Her movement disturbed the dog huddled at her feet. It whined, licked her hand, and Nell leaned over, rested her cheek against the greyhound’s silky head, its fur silvered by faint shimmerings of moonlight. Her eyes stung, swollen to slits, and her skin felt hot to the touch. Could the soul be stricken by fevers, too? She was forty-nine and her health was good. Yet now she got to her feet with difficulty, and as she moved toward the door, it was with the faltering, slow step of a very old woman.

  Men had spread their bedding out along the walls of the great chamber, as if this were a night like any other. And some were, indeed, sleeping. But more were slumped in the shadows, seeking comfort from wineskins, staring dully into space. Nell’s second greyhound had been keeping lonely vigil by her door; it greeted her now with joyful wriggles and blissful tail wagging. Nell patted it unthinkingly. Then she saw the other dog, the black alaunt, for so many years Harry’s devoted shadow.

  The pain was savage enough to restore portions of her blocked memory. So had it been during those anguished hours alone upon the floor of her bedchamber. The grieving had come in waves—Simon, Harry, Guy, then Simon again—with no time to catch her breath. No sooner wo
uld she fight her way free of one memory when another would engulf her. A birthday, a night of lovemaking, a glimpse of cherished ghosts, haunting the lost country of childhood, sturdy, boisterous boys of her flesh, Simon’s blood. Pranks and playful bedlam. Simon’s return from the Holy Land, on the beach at Brindisi. Harry’s laugh and Guy’s swagger. The familiar look upon Simon’s face when he had a problem to solve, so stubbornly single-minded, so intense—and then the sudden flash of a quicksilver smile. Nell had no defenses against memories like that, memories that would drag her down to drowning depths—if she did not blot them out, save her sanity with denial.

  There was a chair a few feet away. Nell stumbled toward it, caught the wooden back for support. When a solicitous voice offered assistance, she shook her head. “Let me be.” Only a whisper, but so fiercely uttered that her samaritan prudently withdrew. When she at last pushed away from the chair, her greyhounds and Harry’s alaunt loyally trailed her across the chamber, into the great hall that filled the entire east side of the keep. Only when she entered the narrow, shadowed passage that led to the sacristy and chapel did the dogs hesitate, abandon their escort.

  The sacristy was dark; so was the nave. Not until Nell reached the chancel did she find a flicker of light, two tall candles on either side of the altar. Kneeling in the circle cast by their feeble glow, she made the sign of the cross. “I beseech Thee, Lord God Almighty, all powerful and everlasting Father…” But she got no further, the words lodging in her throat. She could not complete the prayer. She could not seek solace from a God Who allowed such evil, a God Who had turned His face away whilst her husband and sons died in His Name.

  It came as a shock, the recognition of this dangerous, unholy rage. But the flame was too hot to be disavowed. She could not deny that her grieving was inextricably entwined with a bitter sense of betrayal. How could the Almighty have abandoned Simon in his hour of need? No, she would not pray to such a God. She would find it easier to follow the example of the wife cited in Scriptures, the one who had counseled her suffering husband to “curse God and die.”

  But she could not even do that, dare not crave blessed oblivion, an end to her pain, lest this one perverse prayer be answered. If she died, what would befall her children? If Richard’s letter was to be believed, Bran was half-crazed with grief and guilt. Amaury was just nineteen, trained in naught but the theology of the Church. The younger children were even more vulnerable, dazed and defenseless amidst the wreckage of the only world they’d ever known. They had no one now—no one but a mother who lacked even the will to live.

  “I am not strong enough. I cannot do what must be done, Simon. You must not forsake me now. Give me a sign that you’re still with me, that I’m not alone…”

  Her words trailed off into a despairing silence. She sat on the floor by the altar for a long time, not sure if she was indeed waiting for a response. If so, it did not come. Never had she felt so alone as she did then, there in the dark of a deserted chapel, crying out to a dead man.

  Dover’s keep was a masterwork of defense, thick enough to accommodate a number of mural chambers within the width of its walls. Standing before the door of her daughter’s chamber, Nell at last forced herself to reach for the latch.

  Ellen’s nurse slept on a pallet by the foot of the bed. So did Nell’s own damsels, Christiana and Hawisa. Amaury was the surprise, slouched in a chair by the window, keeping vigil at his sister’s bedside just as Nell’s greyhound had kept one for her. He did not look as if he’d slept any. At sight of his mother, he jumped to his feet. Nell put her finger to her lips. “Did the sleeping draught work?” she whispered.

  He nodded. “Yes, but she wept in her sleep.”

  Nell reached for his hand, led him back to the bed. Ellen stirred as they bent over her, whimpered softly. Nell sat down beside her daughter, gathered the sleeping child into her arms. Ellen whimpered again, opened eyes dark and drugged. “Mama?” Her lashes flickered; she was fighting her return to reality.

  “I’m here, Ellen,” Nell said softly. “I’m here.”

  The monk from Evesham Abbey arrived in mid-afternoon. It was a Sunday, the 16th of August, the day after the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. But to Nell, it was simply Day Twelve, for the familiar calendar was forgotten, and she now calculated all time as of the day of her husband’s death.

  The monk had been uncertain of his reception; as young as he was, he knew how easily missions of mercy could go astray. But he need not have worried. The word “Evesham” was an instant passport into the presence of Simon’s Countess and her children, and within moments, he’d been escorted from the great hall into the privacy of Nell’s bedchamber.

  Nell was flanked by two young men, whom she introduced as her sons, Amaury and Richard. “And this is my daughter, Ellen,” she said, slipping a protective arm around the waist of a pale, pretty child with great, tragic eyes. “You are Brother…?”

  “Damian, my lady.” He’d rehearsed this speech so often, but he found himself suddenly tongue-tied, at a loss for words. “We’ve not had an abbot for two years now. My brothers and I…we decided on our own that one of us should come to you, tell you of the battle, of the Earl’s last hours…”

  “We want to hear,” Nell said, “to hear it all. But you can do even more for us, Brother Damian. You can end our suspense—one way or the other. You see, two days past I heard from—Well, the name does not matter. Suffice to say he was one who believed in my husband. He sent us word that my son Guy did not die on the battlefield. We’ve been afraid to believe him. But you were there, you tended the wounded, you buried the dead. If any man knows the truth, you must. Brother Damian, does my son still live?”

  Damian hesitated. “Yes, he does, but…but Madame, I would not give you false hope. Sir Guy was one of the few found alive after the battle. We treated him in our infirmary, and he was later taken—despite our protests—by horse litter to Windsor Castle. His wounds are most grievous, my lady, and in all honesty, he may not survive.”

  Nell’s arms tightened around her daughter. After a long pause, she said, “False hope, Brother Damian, is better than none.”

  Damian saw that he need not have fretted about misleading the Countess; this woman would never again err on the side of optimism. But her sons still clung to the innocent faith that was their birthright, looked much more relieved than he knew his news warranted. He wondered whether he ought to try again to stress the gravity of Guy’s injuries, but decided that would be a needless cruelty to the Countess—and to her daughter, for he sensed that for Ellen, too, hope had died at Evesham with Simon and Harry de Montfort.

  “You said there were others found alive, too?”

  “Yes, my lady, but pitifully few, most of them close to death…like Sir Humphrey de Bohun. It is a miracle that he survived this long, but a cruel one; those who love him can only pray that God soon frees him from his pain.” He saw Nell’s mouth tighten, remembered, too late, that Humphrey was a friend. “But my news is not all dismal, Madame. Peter de Montfort’s sons survived the battle, and I think their wounds will heal in time. So, too, will Sir Henry de Hastings, Sir Nicholas Segrave, and Sir John Fitz John recover.”

  “And that is all?” Amaury sounded bewildered. “Why so few?”

  “Evesham was not like other battles. Even after your father’s men fell, their enemies kept hacking at them. Sir Guy Baliol, your lord father’s standard bearer, was so mangled that we could not even strip off his armor, had to bury him in his bloodied, broken chain-mail.”

  Damian fumbled within the scrip at his belt, drawing out a crumpled scrap of parchment. “We kept count of the bodies, my lady. With your lord husband died one hundred eighty knights, two hundred twenty young squires, and two thousand men-at-arms. And then there were the Welsh. They fled the field at the onset of the battle, but that did not save them. Large numbers drowned trying to cross the Avon; local folk have begun to call one ford ‘Dead Man’s Ait,’ so many bodies were found there. And
those who got across the river still had to escape Roger de Mortimer’s men, for he hunted them down without mercy. We cannot ever be sure how many died, but we think several thousand Welsh perished ere that bloody day was done, mayhap even more.”

  Ellen broke her silence at that, with a soft sound, almost like a whimper, quickly stifled. Damian wondered why the Welsh deaths should so distress her; his heart went out to this troubled child, and he was racking his brain for some comfort to offer when Nell said, “Tell us of the battle.”

  He did, haltingly at first. Simon’s arrival at the abbey. The coming storm. The false banners. Reliving it in the retelling, he tore open an unhealed wound, and when he at last concluded, tears were running freely down his face. “Men will not forget how Earl Simon died. They will not forget his courage, and they will not forget his faith.”

  “Faith,” Nell said slowly. “Do you think that my husband’s faith faltered once he realized he was doomed?”

  “Oh, no, my lady! I know it did not, for I heard him speak to his men ere the battle began. Their cause was just, he said, and would prevail. Indeed, never did his faith burn so brightly as in the last hour of his life!”

  Nell turned away abruptly, moved to the window. “He was lucky, then,” she said, and if there was irony in that, there was also envy. Ah, Simon, how did you do it? How could you hold fast in the face of certain defeat? You should have taught me how, my love, should…She was perilously close to tears, but she would not give in to them. What good would tears do now? “My husband and son…where are they buried, Brother Damian? At the abbey?”

  She heard him gasp, a sound so full of pain that she spun around, caught upon his face a look of sheer horror. “My lady, I…I thought you knew!”

  “Knew what? Tell me!”