He swallowed hard. Blinked his eyes several times. Osbern could not be here, for a dagger had been thrust into his heart. A blade meant for William.
He had been abed, huddled beneath the furs, his feet and legs curled close against his belly to find what little warmth there was. It was cold, frost lay white outside, the water in the hand basin was frozen – even his piddle in the unemptied chamber pot had a rim of ice around it. His breath had come in great puffs of cloud from his mouth as he had removed his outer garments before scuttling into the bed. The brazier in that austere chamber had given off barely enough heat to warm the hands, let alone the entire room. Osbern was sitting at the edge of the hard, unyielding bed, removing leather over-tunic, cussing that his fingers were too ice-frozen to unlace the ties. The door had crashed open, William had shot upright, Osbern had shouted alarm, grabbed for his sword that lay sheathed on the bed. Two men were running into the chamber, weapons drawn, intent on spilling blood, William’s blood, but Osbern got to one of them first. William had screamed, shrieked for help. He blushed at that thought now, as he knelt before the altar, blushed that he should have been so frightened at the hideous look of murder on the faces of those two men.
He released a sigh. It had not been the first attempt on his life, but it would be the last. At the age of seven, William had learnt that grown men rarely behave with honour. They harbour jealousies and greed for that which is not theirs. With the boy William gone, the door would be open for someone else to inherit Normandy, someone such as Grimoald de Plessis, Rannulf, Vicomte de la Bessin or Guy, Comte de Brionne, successor to Gilbert and that respected title, yet his very opposite in nature. All of them men who wanted the title of duke for their own; men who were prepared to risk much in order to get it. Including the attempted murder of a child.
William smiled, a slow, wide-spread smile of satisfaction. They had not succeeded. He was sixteen and he was still here, still very much alive. From now, he would rule as he wanted, as he wished. No more guardians or good-intentioned abbots, no more regents. And no more attempts at murder. The smile faded into an expression that bordered on the sinister. Those words, no more attempts at murder, rolled around his mind, as a good wine trickles around the palate. Come tomorrow – daybreak – those same men who were plotting to be rid of him would kneel and kiss his hand, would swear their homage and allegiance. The ritual would all be pretence, of course, on both sides. From them, a public display of fealty; from him, a genial smile, a nod of greeting.
The capitulation of two in particular he was eager to witness, eager to watch the expression on their faces as they came to bend the knee before him. They would have received their gifts by then, Guy de Brionne and Rannulf de la Bessin. Osbern’s son Will would have quietly and efficiently arranged it. Would they show fear and anxiety – or puzzlement and doubt? They would not be wholly certain that the gifts were from him, from their duke, from William, but they would wonder and tread with extreme care.
The pain in his knees and back had eased. Or had he found the way to ignore it? Soon light would come to the sky, dawn would stream through the three circular windows in the eastern wall of the abbey, illuminating the vibrant-coloured plastering and the goldembroidered tapestries. King Henry would dress William in his armour and present him with arms, and then they would move to the abbey steps where the men who were to swear allegiance would submit in homage.
Kneeling there in the silence of the abbey of St Ouen, a thought came to William, a passing, almost flippant thought, but one that would swell in its appeal throughout the years that were to follow. He, Duke William the bastard born, need kneel to none save God and Henry, King of France. And one day, perhaps one day, he need not even kneel to Henry.
Guy, Comte de Brionne, grandson of Duke Richard II of Normandy, lay naked in bed, his arm tossed across the breast of his companion, the tavern keeper’s nubile young daughter. She was pretty enough for his taste, but then his taste ran to any woman with red lips and a lingering smile. The tavern, the Rutting Boar, was a passable hostelry; Guy had spent one or two nights in this chamber before now, but not with the same girl. She had been a child on his last visit here to Rouen, what, three years before. On this occasion, as then, Guy had shared the jest of the tavern’s name with his friends. ‘An appropriate place for us to spend this tedious night!’ they had carolled as they stepped from the street into the noisy bustle of the inn, arms round each other’s shoulders, eyes swiftly assessing the suitability of the serving girls. A few jars of wine and a belly full of stew confirmed their opinion that it was an agreeable place; it was not until late that Guy lurched up the staircase with the virgin girl to find a bed and sport for the night.
He had no especial desire to be here in Rouen, but the order to attend had come from King Henry himself and could not, without serious repercussions, be ignored. Would he have ignored the summons had it come from that poxed little boy who thought himself worthy of becoming a duke? From William the Bastard? They had laughed over that as they drank, he and Rannulf, each capping the other’s lewd remarks about the boy’s whore of a mother, eventually deciding that an invitation from Herleve would be readily accepted . . . but that a lengthy bowel-emptying session in the midden hut would be preferable to any from William.
They did not worry unduly about being overheard; few in Rouen held much fondness for William. Guy knew most would prefer to follow his own banner, should the time ever arise.
He was dreaming. His arm and leg twitched; his shoulder jerked. The girl slept, drunk from her father’s wine, content with the handsome payment that the Comte had offered her. Guy was twenty-five years of age, held sway over a large rich domain, and his grandfather was the same man as the Bastard’s grandfather. The difference was that Guy had been born to a daughter, William to a son. He regarded the issue of gender as irrelevant, for he was legitimate, not a by-blow of a whore. Normandy was his by blood, not William’s . . . and he was damned if he was going to kneel in homage to that upstart come the morrow! New knighted or not. He grunted, angered, even in his sleep.
Outside the chamber a knuckle rapped on the closed door. Guy mumbled and turned over in his sleep. Again knocking, more urgent. The latch clicked downwards, the door opened. A young man, dressed only in hose and under-tunic, tripped across the doorstep and groped his way into the dimly lit chamber, his left hand holding a wildly flickering candle. Rannulf, Vicomte de la Bessin was four years Guy’s junior and much influenced by the older man. He stumbled over to the bed and began to shake Guy’s shoulder.
‘What is it?’ Guy complained, reluctantly opening his eyes. ‘Rannulf? What are you doing here? God’s teeth, go find your own whore to lie with!’ He began pulling the bed fur tighter around his chest, but Rannulf tugged it aside.
‘My Lord! Guy! Something has happened – please, I beg of you, wake and listen to me!’
Guy pulled himself up to a sitting position and yawned extravagantly. The girl remained asleep, snoring gently. ‘Well?’ de Brionne snapped. ‘Why are you here in my chamber, not amusing yourself in yours?’
Rannulf called forward a servant whose face was streaked as grey and fearful as his master’s. He carried a wooden, lidded box, which he set on the nearest table, then scuttled out of the room.
‘I found this in my room a few moments since, at the foot of my bed. I had got up to use the piss pot.’ Rannulf swallowed and took several breaths to calm himself. ‘I found this.’
Guy sat forward, tucking the flea-ridden fur around his nakedness for warmth. ‘A box. How interesting,’ he said drily. Waited.
Again Rannulf swallowed, putting a hand over his mouth.
‘And inside this box?’ Guy drawled.
Without speaking Rannulf opened it, flicking the lid up quickly with one finger.
Shuffling from the bed, Guy peered inside. There were some redstained, dirty pieces of something lying there. ‘What is it?’ he asked, impatiently, his nose wrinkling from the putrid smell.
Rannulf worke
d his mouth but it took a while for the words to form. ‘Skin,’ he said, with a quick, gagging breath. ‘It is skin. Human skin.’
Guy puckered his mouth in disgust and slammed the lid. ‘Some fool’s idea of a jest, no doubt,’ he said disdainfully. ‘I see no humour in it.’
‘I . . . I think.’ Rannulf was finding it difficult not to vomit. ‘I think it is to do with those body parts that they found at dawn yesterday. The parts nailed to the east gate? What was left of Robert, son of Roger de Montgomery, they think.’ Rannulf hastily crossed himself.
Guy flapped his right hand dismissively. Supposition! He crossed the chamber, poured himself a generous goblet of wine, drank it down and lit another candle. Robert fitz Montgomery had been implicated in the murder of Osbern, William’s steward, a week or so ago. Damn fool had killed the steward, but not the poxed Duke! So those gruesome pieces nailed to the gate – the bits that had been gelded and disembowelled – were rumoured to belong to Robert? That was fairly obvious. But to assume that the stuff in this box was from his body also? Nonsense!
He poured more wine, then thought to offer some to his friend. He turned and saw the younger man, open-mouthed in silent horror, pointing with a quivering finger at something beside Guy’s bed.
Guy raised the candle, its light casting quick-moving, elongated shadows across the low-ceilinged room.
Rannulf recognised what it was first. He bolted from the room, his hand over his mouth, vomit spewing from between his fingers.
The item sat on a square of cloth. Red cloth, embroidered with a golden leopard. William’s personal ducal emblem. On the cloth a severed head. The head of Robert fitz Montgomery. Robert, who had been well known to Guy and Rannulf, and all the others who plotted William the Bastard’s death. Robert, who last week had slain the steward Osbern in William’s bedchamber.
Guy stared at the eyeless, hacked and bloodied head. The meaning was plain. William knew who else was behind that blundered attempt at murder. And he could, if he so desired, punish them also.
Guy did not make it to the chamber pot. He spewed the contents of his stomach on to the timber floor at his feet.
10
Nazeing Edyth stood at the edge of the small copse of trees, looking down into the valley. The river, swollen from winter snow-melt and recent rain, covered the flood plain, which glistened under the spring sunshine. Some of the fruit trees in the orchard were already breaking into leaf, their winter-bare branches bearing a distinct green bloom, and blossom was beginning to bud. A few more days of sunshine and the primroses would be clustered in their gay mass of yellow flowers under the elder and hawthorn hedgerows. The air was full of the sound of birds, exuberant in their courtship, busy with marking their territory and the building of nests. It would be nice to have the swifts, swallows and house martins back, raising their families under the eaves of the great barn, but it was too early, too cold, for them yet. Although today it was almost as warm as early summer.
She was dressed for riding, wearing loose-fitting, heavy-spun linen breeches, thigh-length tunic and a long cloak, her fair hair tied back in a tight single braid. She was waiting, as impatient as her fidgeting pony, for Harold to come from the Hall. After lying abed so very long, and with the sun so bright and cheerful, he had wanted to be outside. Had asked if she would care to ride to Waltham with him.
The Earl had been so much better this last week. He remained pale and painfully thin, but he felt well enough, at last, to sit a horse
– although only a quiet gelding, not his own stallion. To ride rather than suffer the discomfort and indignity of a litter had very much cheered his spirits. Edyth was pleased that he was almost healed, but her joy was tempered by more than a little inward pain. For when well again he would leave Nazeing and return to his other life overseeing East Anglia. Once he was gone she would, like as not, never see him again. He would forget this farmsteading that crowned the high ground above the village of Nazeing. At court, he would be among the women of the nobility, would not remember her. That was how it must be, for he was an earl and she only the daughter of a thegn. How she wished he need not leave! And then she would chide herself for being selfish. That would be wanting for him a life riddled with illness and pain, of days abed and nights of sweating fever.
Edyth had a suspicion that it was more than the sun-bright day that had prompted Harold to ask her to ride with him. He had something to tell her – she had known it these past three nights, for several times he had begun to talk to her, only to stop himself. He was trying to tell her in the gentlest way he could that he would soon be gone. Would there ever be a kind way of saying goodbye? It would be easier for him at the church perhaps; she could find comfort there in the quiet company of Christ and His mother. Edyth was almost tempted to unsaddle her pony, turn her loose in the field and go find some task or other that required doing – but what point in delaying the moment? The pain would sear whenever she learnt of his going.
For almost a month, now, he had been carried down twice weekly to the modest little church of Waltham Holy Cross, to pray before its sacred stone crucifix. Perhaps the healing power of the Cross would help her, too? The story of the Cross was an old and much loved one. Edyth’s father told it often and she in turn had related it to Harold as he lay ill in his bed. Mayhap it was her storytelling that had urged him to go to Waltham, when his strength had begun to return.
A carpenter of Somerset, so it was said, was once told in a dream to dig on the hill above his village. He ignored the dream at first, but each night it returned and so eventually he obeyed, and accompanied by the villagers went to the hill. After digging a great hole he found a marble slab broken in two and beneath it a stone crucifix, a book, a bell and a smaller cross. The lord of the village was a much loved man called Tovi the Proud, an official of King Cnut. Loading the treasures into a cart pulled by two oxen, Tovi decreed that the sacred items should be taken to a religious centre
– but which one? The oxen refused to move until his modest estate at Waltham was mentioned, whereupon the cart began to trundle forward. And so the Cross was brought to the church in the hamlet of Waltham beside the Lea river in the shire of Essex. Tovi had the church rebuilt to house the relics and people came from far and near to see their wonder.
Earl Harold had benefited from his uncomfortable journeys to Waltham to pray – but although his strength was returning his left arm remained stiff and unusable, and that same side of his face drooped, the muscles slack and unresponsive, his mouth and lower lip twisting downward. The use of his arm, the apothecaries and doctors all agreed, would return in time, for he had feeling there in his fingertips. Time, however, was passing too slow.
Once Countess Gytha’s second son had been safe from death, she had returned to her own home, leaving Harold in Ælfthryth’s competent hands. And Edyth’s. ‘Take care of my son, young lady,’ she had said to Edyth on the day she had left. ‘He has a fondness for you that will see him through his difficulty.’
Edyth’s pony, a chestnut roan of no more than twelve hands affectionately called Squirrel, nudged at her mistress’s shoulder, snatching at the reins in an attempt to crop greedily the sweet spring grass. Edyth reprimanded her sharply, her voice carrying across the cobbled yard and through the open doorway of the Hall.
Harold stood inside, patiently allowing his body servant to adjust his cloak pin. He found it frustrating that so many tasks had to be done for him: his cloak fastened, his clothes laced, meat cut. He had not realised how essential the use of two hands were until he had lost the use of one of them. With the half of his mouth that worked efficiently he smiled at Ælfthryth. ‘I will take care of your daughter, Mistress Ælfthryth,’ he said. ‘For all her youth – or perhaps because of it – she is pleasant company. It is her laughter and agreeable chatter that has kept me from despair these past months.’
‘She is a daughter to be proud of. I would not have harm come to her.’ Ælfthryth’s answer carried a hint of maternal warning, protective
of childhood innocence.
Harold waved his servant aside, stepped closer to his hostess and took her fingers within his sound right hand. ‘Lady, you need have no fear for your daughter with me.’ He looked at the stiff fingers of his useless arm and shrugged. ‘I cannot personally defend her from wolves or thieves, but equally’ – he grinned, making a jest of his misfortune – ‘I cannot take advantage of her!’ He glanced at his feet, surprised to find that he felt a sudden rush of embarrassment. ‘I shall talk to your husband this evening but at this moment it is to you I speak, not him.’ Clearing his throat, Harold rushed on in one quick breath before courage should fail him. ‘I am aware that Edyth . . . admires me. At first I was too ill to notice or care, and then I began to find it flattering and amusing. But, Lady, these past weeks I have felt myself growing more fond of her.’ He sought Ælfthryth’s eyes, held them to emphasise his sincerity. ‘I am almost healed of my illness and soon I must take my leave of your good care and kind hospitality. There is but one thing I regret. I am loath to leave behind your daughter.’
Ælfthryth answered quickly and with concern. Too many men in positions of authority were eager to take advantage of a virgin maid. Ælfthryth had not judged Harold to be such a man, but what if she were wrong? ‘My Lord, for all that you are the second son of Godwine and earl in your own right, I would not have my child illused.’
‘Lady,’ Harold responded instantly, ‘you have my assurance that I would never ill-use Edyth.’ He kissed her fingers and took a step backwards. He had said enough; before he spoke more he ought go to Waltham and pray again before the Holy Cross. Be certain in his own mind that the path he was about to take was the right one.
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