The Rose of the World

by Alys Clare

  ‘Now, if you please, I would like to see the other man.’

  Sister Liese led the way out of the recess, across the infirmary and into the cubicle on the opposite side. Here there was another narrow bed and, in it, a man dressed only in his undershirt, a clean sheet drawn up to his waist. The blood had been washed away from his shoulder, and now the wound was covered in a neat bandage that wove across his broad chest and around his arm.

  Josse stopped dead and stared at him.

  As the shock receded a little and he began to think he might be able to breathe again after all, the one thought that filled his head, loud and insistent as a war cry, was: Thank God Meggie persuaded Ninian to flee!

  For the man in the bed was no ordinary lord . . .

  Josse dropped on one knee, dragging Meggie down beside him. He waited.

  ‘Josse d’Acquin,’ the man said. ‘It must be near twenty years since I have set eyes on you.’

  Josse looked up to meet the intense blue stare. ‘Eighteen years, if I may say so, sire.’

  ‘I wondered if I would be seeing something of you,’ the man went on conversationally, ‘when the child mentioned that she lived at New Winnowlands. Your place, I believe.’

  ‘Indeed it – er, that’s so, lord.’

  The man nodded slowly. ‘I do not forget, you see, Josse,’ he murmured. ‘The little girl is kin to you?’

  ‘Not to me. She is the granddaughter of Helewise Warin, once abbess here.’

  ‘Ah, yes.’ His eyes strayed to Meggie. Watching intently, Josse could have sworn his lips twisted into a quick smile. ‘And who is this?’

  Josse took a deep breath. There was a correct way of doing this, but he had quite forgotten what it was. Well, since memory had failed, common courtesy would have to do. He stood up, pulling Meggie with him. ‘My lord, may I present my daughter Meggie?’ He took her hand and put it into that of the man in the bed. ‘Meggie, make your curtsey to King John.’

  TEN

  Meggie rose from her deep bow and found the bright blue eyes studying her intently. ‘So that is who you are,’ he said softly. He glanced at Josse. ‘Who is her mother?’

  Meggie did not know if it was against etiquette to address a king when he had not first spoken to you, but she did not let it stop her. ‘My mother was Joanna de Courtenay,’ she said.

  His blue gaze had returned to her. ‘De Courtenay,’ he repeated. ‘I believe I have heard the name before. Did she have connections at court?’

  Meggie opened her mouth to speak, but even as she did so, Josse trod on her foot, quite hard. ‘A distant cousin, I believe, my lord,’ he said easily. ‘That is probably why the name is familiar to you.’

  The king studied Josse. Meggie could see that he was not entirely convinced. A warning sounded in her head. This is a man to watch, she thought. He is intelligent and cunning, and he will not easily be deceived.

  She wondered why her father did not want her to reveal Joanna’s connection with the court . . .

  Josse had edged forward so that now he stood between Meggie and the king. ‘My lord, I regret greatly the mischance that has brought you here, but might I be permitted to ask if you can help us with another grave matter?’

  The king waved a hand in assent. ‘You may.’

  ‘You have been in the area for a few days, sire?’

  ‘Yes. My agents came here to the abbey, and I took the chance to visit the chapel which my revered and lamented mother built in remembrance of my brother, the late king. From there I went on to the hunting lodge on the Ashdown Forest.’ A smile quirked the side of his mouth. ‘The sport was excellent.’

  ‘I am glad to hear it, my lord,’ Josse muttered. ‘Did you – may I ask you if a man by the name of Hugh de Brionne was of your company?’

  The languid air vanished as the king heard the name. ‘Hugh de Brionne was with me when we reached the abbey,’ he confirmed. ‘I know him well. He is a sound man.’ Narrowing his eyes, he stared at Josse as if he were trying to read his mind. ‘You have news of Hugh; I see it in your face. Tell me.’

  ‘He is dead, sire,’ Josse said simply. ‘His body was discovered early yesterday, by a bend in the river between here and Hartfield.’

  ‘How did he die?’ The words rapped out like a stabbing knife.

  ‘It appears he was in a fight. There were the marks of fists on his face, and his hands were bruised and swollen. There was a wound to the back of his head, presumably where he fell, and this is probably what killed him.’

  The king did not speak for some time. Meggie crept closer to Josse, in need of his stolid strength. She was afraid, and she did not yet understand why.

  Eventually, the king closed his eyes and, with a wince of pain, leaned back on his pillows. ‘Be careful how you break the news to my companion,’ he said quietly. ‘He is Olivier de Brionne, and he is Hugh’s brother.’

  Josse and Meggie were outside the infirmary. Sister Liese, coming to check on her patients, had observed the king’s pallor, and his obvious fatigue, and sent them away. The other man – Olivier de Brionne, they now knew – was still unconscious.

  Josse took hold of Meggie’s hands. ‘This is very grave,’ he muttered, frowning deeply. ‘We must find Ninian and help him get right away. No accusations have yet been made against him, but two men lie wounded and one of them is the king.’ He looked down at his daughter. ‘I am sorry that I crushed your foot,’ he said with a faint smile.

  ‘You did no lasting damage,’ she replied. ‘But, Father, why did you not wish me to speak of my mother’s court connections?’

  He frowned thoughtfully, trying to find the right words. ‘Daughter, your mother had no reason to treasure the memory of what happened to her; far from it. A cousin of hers, considerably older than she was, took her to King Henry’s Christmas court one year, because she was young, innocent and very lovely and the cousin wished to impress the king and his lascivious friends with new blood. Then—’ He stopped. This was not his story to tell. If Joanna had not revealed to Meggie the truth of what had happened to her, then it was not up to Josse to do so. ‘My love, it may be that one day you will be told,’ he said. ‘There is a connection between our family and the king, but, if he has forgotten it or did not know of it, then I do not want to bring it to his mind.’ He studied her face. ‘Is that enough?’

  Slowly, she nodded. She was thinking hard, he could tell. ‘It is,’ she said presently. ‘I trust you, Father.’

  But Josse hardly heard. His mind had gone back to a day more than eighteen years ago when Joanna had first told him about herself. They had lain together beside the fire, in the house where Josse now lived with his extended family. The memory was so vivid, bringing both overwhelming joy and sudden sharp pain, that for a moment he felt faint.

  Meggie was looking at him anxiously. ‘What is it, Father?’ she asked. ‘Are you unwell?’

  ‘No, no!’ He hastened to reassure her. The day he was remembering was around the time of her conception. Such things were not for a daughter to hear, although he yearned to tell her. They all said she was so like him, this beloved child of his, and such remarks always made his heart glow with pride. But, sometimes, he wished she looked more like her mother . . .

  He was aware of Meggie beside him, concerned for him and gently rubbing her fingers across the back of his hand. ‘It’s cold out here, Father,’ she said. ‘You are shivering. Won’t you go inside?’

  He turned to her, shaking himself out of his reverie and trying to summon a smile. There was enough to worry about in the here and now without mourning over things he could not control. ‘Dearest, I must think what to do,’ he said briskly. ‘I sense some dreadful threat hanging over me – hanging over all of us – and I am fearful.’ He attempted a laugh but it was a miserable failure. ‘You will think I am being foolish, no doubt, and—’

  But she took his hand and tightened her fingers around it. ‘No, I don’t,’ she said. ‘For one thing, I hardly ever think you’re foolish, and for anoth
er, I feel exactly the same.’

  He met her eyes. He did not know if to be relieved that she so readily gave him her support or even more worried because she shared his fears. On balance, the latter won.

  ‘We should—’ he began.

  Just then one of the nursing nuns appeared in the infirmary doorway, looked around and caught sight of them. Hurrying over, she said, ‘I am glad to find you still here, Sir Josse! Sister Liese sent me to fetch you. The second man brought in earlier has recovered consciousness. Sister Liese says you must come.’

  With the sense that he was going to some fateful encounter, Josse squared his shoulders and, with Meggie beside him, went back into the infirmary.

  The young man had awakened to fear so intense that his first instinct was to leap out of the strange bed with the worn but clean sheets and run. The smallest movement, however, caused such a fire of agony in his right side and his left forearm that he quickly changed his mind. Paralysed by his pain and his terror, he quickly closed his eyes again, taking refuge in the pretence of continuing unconsciousness.

  He wondered where he was. Risking a quick look, he saw curtains and, in the narrow gap between them, a glimpse of more beds and a well-scrubbed stone-flagged floor. He saw a woman in black, then another. He closed his eyes once more. He must be in the infirmary at Hawkenlye Abbey. It was the obvious place to bring a wounded man.

  He thought about the fight. He saw again the blue-eyed man with the knife and the long sword. He recalled the ferocity of the attack and the terrible moment when he had believed he was about to die. Then there had been three of them, grappling together in a painful knot of fists, elbows, knives . . . Somehow he had defended himself and, as the hot blood rush had coursed through him, he knew he had made a strike. Against who, he was not so sure.

  He heard voices. His lord’s, speaking to a woman who sounded calm and composed as she answered the questions. He listened. They did not seem to be discussing anything of great note.

  Then his lord spoke a name, and suddenly the young man was fully alert. ‘Hugh de Brionne is dead, they tell me,’ the lord was saying, ‘and his body lies here at the abbey.’

  Hugh was dead. Dead. The young man began to shake.

  ‘—must break the news as soon as he wakes up,’ the lord went on. ‘He will take it hard.’

  A tear rolled out of the young man’s eye.

  After a moment, he called out in a weak voice for water, and almost immediately a black-clad nun appeared in the recess to tend him.

  Josse watched as Olivier de Brionne’s bed was carefully lifted by a quartet of lay brothers and carried across to where the king lay reclining against his pillows, in the opposite recess. There were matters to discuss, matters that could not be yelled out loud over the width of the large room. Turning to Meggie, gently Josse told her to wait outside. Then he went into the recess and drew the curtains.

  The king said, ‘Josse, this is Olivier de Brionne. Tell him, if you will, about Hugh.’

  Josse turned to look at the young man. He saw straight away the resemblance to Ninian that Meggie had seen. The blue eyes were unmistakable. ‘I am very sorry to inform you that your brother Hugh is dead,’ he said gently.

  Olivier opened and closed his mouth a couple of times, licked his dry lips and said, ‘I heard them say so. How did he die?’

  ‘From the bruises and abrasions to his face and his knuckles, it appears he was in a fight,’ Josse replied. His heart ached with pity for the young man’s evident anguish. ‘His opponent drove him backwards, or perhaps pushed him, and he fell, crushing his skull against a stone.’

  ‘Crushing his skull,’ Olivier repeated in a whisper. Then he screwed his eyes up tightly, as if trying to shut out the dreadful image.

  Josse wished there were some comfort that he could offer. He had been informed – by Hugh and Olivier’s own mother – of the relationship between her sons. The brothers are not close, she had said. Yet, observing Olivier’s evident grief and distress, he wondered if she had misread her sons.

  ‘I do not think that he suffered,’ Josse said, looking down at the pale, strained face. ‘The blow would have knocked him out instantly.’

  Olivier said nothing for some time. Then his eyes opened and he stared at Josse. ‘Who killed him?’ he whispered. ‘Have you any idea?’

  ‘No,’ Josse admitted. ‘Gervase de Gifford, who is sheriff of Tonbridge, is on his way here.’ A messenger had been sent urgently to find him as soon as the identity of Olivier’s companion had been revealed. ‘He is an efficient and resourceful man, and he does not give up. He will bring your brother’s murderer to justice, have no fear.’

  Momentarily, Olivier closed his eyes again, and Josse, respecting his grief, bowed his head.

  But then Olivier spoke. ‘I have a suggestion,’ he said.

  Josse glanced at the king, who nodded. ‘We would hear it, if you please,’ Josse said.

  Olivier was silent for some time, as if collecting his thoughts. Then he said, ‘I must first apologize most sincerely for my part in the business regarding the young girl.’

  Josse, who had almost forgotten about Rosamund, mentally kicked himself. Dear Lord, but there was so much to this! ‘And what was your part, exactly?’ he asked.

  Olivier looked shamefaced. ‘I hate to speak ill of my dear brother, but the idea was his. I – we observed that our lord the king was much taken with her when he saw her up by the chapel and—’

  ‘Most assuredly I was not,’ the king’s hard, cold voice interrupted. ‘You and Hugh were gravely mistaken, Olivier.’

  ‘Yes, my lord, and I must humbly beg your pardon,’ Olivier said hastily. ‘Believing we were acting in a way that would please you, Hugh sent me to find her and bring her to you. I was to go to join you at the hunting lodge and present the girl to you there so that you—’

  ‘Enough!’ roared the king.

  Olivier flinched as if he had been struck. ‘I did not know what had become of my brother,’ he said in a whisper. ‘I thought I had better proceed with the plan alone, which is what I did.’ He hesitated.

  ‘You said you had a suggestion,’ Josse prompted him gently. ‘May we hear it?’

  Olivier shot him a quick look, almost instantly dropping his head. ‘I am reluctant to speak it,’ he muttered.

  The king made an explosive sound of impatience. ‘For God’s sake, Olivier, pull yourself together!’ Perhaps feeling he had spoken too harshly to a man who had so recently learned of a bereavement, he added, slightly more kindly, ‘If you have information that has any bearing on Hugh’s death, it is your duty to pass it on so that it can be acted upon.’

  Olivier drew a shaking breath. ‘Very well.’ He looked up at Josse. ‘What I have to say is this. Up in the clearing by the chapel, my lord and I were attacked by a madman wielding a sword and knife, and both of us were badly wounded.’ He winced, as if speaking of his wound had made it throb with pain. ‘The madman was acting, or so it would seem, in defence of the two women, the girl and her older companion.’

  Josse realized that he meant Meggie. He felt very cold suddenly.

  ‘I believe,’ Olivier went on slowly, ‘that it may have happened this way: the madman somehow learned of Hugh’s plan and, while I was engaged with taking the girl to the hunting lodge, he sought out Hugh and challenged him, demanding to know where the girl was. Hugh, determined to carry out his scheme, would not tell him, and the two men fought. Perhaps the madman did not mean to kill him –’ he turned earnest blue eyes first to the king and then to Josse – ‘but, all the same, my brother died.’

  Josse’s heart was thumping very hard. The madman. Ninian. Dear Lord, this man was suggesting that Ninian had killed Hugh de Brionne!

  He hadn’t, he could not have done, Josse told himself over and over again.

  But then, as if in a waking dream, he seemed to hear his own voice speaking.

  I fear we must face the possibility that the man who fought the dead man is the one person who ough
t to be here and isn’t. Whom none of us has seen since the evening we discovered that Rosamund was missing.

  Ninian.

  The king lay back and closed his eyes. He was alone; a state so rare in his life that he was tempted to simply relish the moment. It would not last, for the old knight Josse d’Acquin had just been informed that the sheriff had arrived and so had hurried away to inform him of the recent developments. Soon both of them would be there, and undoubtedly they would very quickly be joined by the gaggle of self-promoting lords and lordlings that habitually flocked in the king’s wake like seagulls after a fishing boat. Not to mention his bodyguards . . .

  The curtains that enclosed the recess had been left partly open, and he looked out at the infirmary. He usually had an instinctive reaction against all abbeys: the result of having spent the first years of his life a virtual prisoner in his mother’s beloved Fontevrault. They had thought to make a monk of him, but even as a child he had summoned the means to demonstrate in no uncertain terms that, no matter what they did, that was never going to happen. He had escaped the cloister, yes, but those early experiences had left him with a deep-seated revulsion against the soft footfalls and the sombre robes of the avowed.

  It was strange, then, he mused, that this Hawkenlye Abbey did not make his skin crawl. Quite the opposite, in fact; against all expectations, he was enjoying himself. The wound in his shoulder was not severe, and it was pleasant to be fussed over. In addition, that glorious woman was here and, whatever happened, he was determined to see her again, preferably alone.

  Meggie. Her name was Meggie.

  She had raised her sword to him, and normally that was a hanging offence. They would call it treason, in fact, and so the means of death would be longer drawn out and decidedly more painful. For a moment he thought of her suffering. Dying. It was not a good thought. He would spare her, he decided. He would make no accusation against her. She would be so very grateful, but he was sure he could come up with a way in which she could demonstrate that gratitude.

  He thought about that, too.

  Presently, his breathing slowing once more, he recalled that she had said her mother’s name was Joanna de Courtenay. She’d had a distant cousin at court. He let his mind wander freely, and after a while a memory surfaced.