The Greatest Knight (30 page)

Twenty-four

Lyons-la-Forêt, Normandy, Spring 1186

Drawing rein, William eyed the timber hunting lodge standing amid the trees. The court was in residence and the opening in the palisade that divided the forest from the lodge was braided with a host of humanity weaving in both directions. Without the palisade, clustered like fanciful knots of embroidery on a robe, a sporadic overflow of tents and shelters stitched the ground.

William’s road to Lyons-la-Forêt had been more than two years in the travelling and he didn’t know if it was going to continue past without succour, or lead him back into a world that he had once known as intimately as his armour. There was only one way to find out, and he had never yet held back from a challenge. He nudged his palfrey’s flanks and the horse stepped out, a fine beast showing its eastern origins in the arch of its neck, its dished face, and hard blue hooves. He had bought it from the Templars in the week before he sailed from Saint Symeon for home—if home this was. Behind him, Eustace and Rhys rode second and third palfreys and led the packhorses and William’s two destriers on leading ropes.

Passing amid the flurry of tents, William approached the gateway of split logs. A pimply young guard stepped forward to demand his business and was immediately drawn aside by a more knowledgeable veteran.

“Messire Marshal.” The older man bowed deeply as if addressing a great lord rather than a travel-weary knight with two dusty attendants at his heels. The young guard’s eyes widened and flickered from William to the shield athwart the packhorse with its rampant red lion on a background half green, half yellow, and then he too bowed.

William inclined his head. The first barrier was down then. In truth, he did not expect to be thrown out on his ear, but royalty was nothing if not fickle. “Is the King within?” he asked, gesturing towards the main building.

“No, sir. He’s out hunting, but should return by dusk. He will be right pleased to see you.”

“And I him,” William answered with formal courtesy and rode on. Word had already raced ahead. The young guard might not have recognised William until prompted by his fellow and the sight of a shield that not so long ago had been famous across every tourney ground between Normandy and the Limousin, but others were not so ignorant.

“Sir!”

He turned at the call and as he dismounted was effusively embraced by a wiry little clerk with ink-stained fingers and receding curly dark hair. No ceremony here; no bowing. “Wigain!” William returned the hug full measure, feeling a warm rush of affection. “King Henry took you into his employ then?” he asked as he pushed away.

“Yes, sir. There’s always room for another clerk in the lord King’s household.” He gave William a sly look. “I’m not as rich as I used to be since you left the tourney road though.”

William chuckled. “Neither am I,” he said and began walking his palfrey towards the stable block. “Is the King well?”

Wigain made a face. “Most of the time, although of an early morning or late at night he sometimes remembers his years and his burdens.” He hesitated. “He misses our lord.”

William touched his breast where the sapphire ring now hung on a cord with a cross and a token of Saint Christopher. For a moment melancholy engulfed him, but then mercifully receded. It was an ebb tide these days rather than a running one. “So do I,” he said, thinking of summers spent in the pleasure of the tourney. Frivolous and fickle and, even while they had seemed endless, trickling through the fingers like grains of sand. The laughter and companionship, and beneath it the darkness and uncertainty. Friendships and betrayals, and that last terrible farewell.

“Did you reach Jerusalem, sir?”

They came to the stables and William gave his palfrey to Eustace and dismissed Rhys who he knew was desperate to go and find his wife who had been taken into the Angevin service as a laundry maid while he was absent on pilgrimage. “Would I be here if I had not?” Taking a travelling satchel from the palfrey’s saddle, he slung it at his shoulder and began to walk. “I laid the Young King’s cloak at the tomb of Christ, and lit candles for his soul. I am here to tell his father that I have fulfilled his son’s dying wish.”

“And you will stay?” Wigain looked eager. “The King will welcome you, I know he will…the Queen too.”

William checked his stride. “Queen Eleanor is here?”

“Yes, sir, although she returns to England soon.”

“Still a prisoner?” William resumed walking.

Wigain looked uncomfortable. “He gives her more freedom now, but he still won’t let her out of his sight unless she is closely guarded.”

William said nothing, although he wondered if King Henry was ever going to forgive his wife for rebelling against him and wanting more from her life and her marriage than he had been willing to yield.

Reaching the lodge, he took his leave of Wigain and entered alone. News of his arrival had flown before him; the door guards stood aside to let him pass and the usher welcomed him within a long room, lined by benches, its walls decorated with brightly painted shields and the skulls of boar and deer. William stood for a moment, allowing his eyes to adjust to the gloom after the spring brightness of the courtyard.

“Messire Marshal.”

William turned to face a striking fair-haired youth whose voice had but recently broken to judge from the way it strained between the first and second word. The lad bowed. “I am to take you to the Queen. She bid me say that you are most welcome.”

William nodded gravely in response and followed the youth. Eleanor still had an eye to a likely young man, he thought with amusement. Her apartments lay behind the main lodging and as her good-looking page led him through the door, the scented heat of the room reached out to William like a warm hand. Eleanor always complained that the northern climate was too chill for her thin southern blood and braziers burned in every corner of the room. The perfume of cinnamon and frankincense was sensual and familiar and overran his mind with a smoke of memories.

“William!” Eleanor hastened towards him, one hand extended in greeting, the other holding the embroidered hem of her crimson wool gown above the floor rushes.

“Madam.” Kneeling, he kissed her hand.

“Oh, it is good to see you!” Eleanor’s voice still travelled down his spine. Even at two and sixty and her husband’s prisoner, she had retained the ability to bring men to their knees, either broken or adoring.

“And you, madam, are a pleasing sight for travel-weary eyes,” William responded gallantly. “Of all the fair women I saw between here and Jerusalem, there were none to match the Queen of England.”

She laughed and, removing her hand from his possession, gestured him to his feet. “Ever the flatterer. Raoul, wine for Sir William.” A swift snap of her fingers sent the page hurrying to his duty.

“Madam, it is the truth. You will only ever receive truth from me.”

Eleanor looked pleased. “Then I must believe you, for even my beloved husband says that William Marshal does not know how to tell a lie.”

William took the cup from the page. The wine was the same hue as Eleanor’s gown and he studied it suspiciously.

“It’s all right to drink,” she assured him. “It is mine and for my use only. I refuse to touch the vinegar that my husband forces everyone else to swallow.”

William responded with a genuine grin. “Then in that case, madam, to your health,” he toasted her, and took a swallow. The taste was like her voice, rich, smooth, disturbing, and until this moment he hadn’t realised how much he had missed it.

Eleanor turned from him and resumed her chair behind a broad tapestry frame that was long enough for two of her women to work upon also. “Jerusalem,” she said and indicated that he should sit on a foldstool facing her. “Tell me.”

William drank his wine in which there were no lees, and by and by accepted a second cup and told her what she wanted to know, but kept many things to himself. It was her son’s dying vow that he had borne on his own shoulders to the Holy Sepulchre and seen fulfilled; she was entitled to know about that, and about the colour and taste of the land that she had once seen during her first marriage when she was the young Queen of France. He gave her too a small ampoule of rock crystal, containing waters from the river Jordan. But on other matters, such as the pall cloths he had purchased, he was reticent and Eleanor did not press him.

“You are changed, William,” Eleanor said softly, “but perhaps that is not surprising.”

He shrugged. “I shed my old life in Jerusalem, madam.”

“No more jousts and tourneys?” Her voice was teasing, but not the concentration of her stare.

“No,” he said. He had drunk his second cup to the dregs and was beginning to feel light-headed. He needed food and rest. It was not wise to have a wine-wild tongue in Queen Eleanor’s presence.

“Then what else will you do?”

He smiled. “Find a good woman and settle down.”

Eleanor narrowed her eyes at him, then gave her throaty laugh. “Well, that will be a quest and a half, but I can hardly see you carving out that role for yourself, whether you are changed or not. You’re a courtier, William, a knight, a soldier, a commander. The day you settle down is the day that you are buried. I still know you better than you know yourself.”

“Likely you do, madam,” he said graciously. “But of late I have thought of quiet days and nights with a wife at my side and sons at my feet.”

Eleanor pursed her lips and picked up her needle. “That shows you how much you know of marriage,” she said, and her amusement was now tinged with asperity, “…and that you must have ridden around with your eyes closed for the last twenty years.” She gave him a shrewd look. “I do not know how well informed your travels have been, but Marguerite is no longer at Philip’s court. She wed King Bela of Hungary last year.”

The thought of Marguerite sent a pang of emotion through William like sudden pressure on a healing wound. “I hope that she finds happiness in the match,” he said, realising that he would probably never see her again.

“Oh yes,” Eleanor said acerbically, “there is always hope.” His face must have given something away, for her expression softened slightly. “It was a good match,” she said, “better than either of mine have been.”

William was spared from answering as a knock on the chamber door heralded his summons to the presence of the King, who had returned from his hunting trip. As he rose to leave and bent over Eleanor’s hand in farewell, she said, “Be careful what you wish for, William, for you might receive it.”

“I hope so, madam,” he said with a rueful smile.

Eleanor watched him bow from the room, still graceful as a cat despite his travel-tiredness.

“I am a good woman,” offered her youngest maid, Gersendis, hopefully.

Eleanor gave her a pitying look. “Not William Marshal’s sort of good,” she said as she resumed her sewing. Now and then her eyes went to the small ampoule he had given her and she thought about what he had said, and even more about the spaces between his words.

***

William was shocked to see how much King Henry had aged in the three years since they had parted company at his son’s tomb in Rouen. Henry’s eyes were bloodshot, as if with too much wine or not enough sleep. His complexion was wind-blown and ruddy from hard exercise, but he looked neither healthy nor robust. Prince John, now nineteen years old, had accompanied him on the hunt. He possessed his mother’s high cheekbones and fine hazel eyes. An attempt at growing a beard had edged his strong chin and petulant upper lip with a minimal dark grizzle.

“Hah!” Henry clasped William’s arm in a hard grip and raised him to his feet. “You’ve returned to me then?”

“It was my duty…and my loyalty, sire.”

“Loyalty,” Henry repeated the word as if he didn’t know whether to choke on it or roar with laughter. “You always have the right words, Marshal, I’ll grant you that.” He turned to his half-smiling youngest son. “Loyalty is as valuable as gold,” he said. “Especially loyalty like the Marshal’s. Remember it well.”

“It can be bought with gold too,” John said, “or bought off.” He looked at William. “What’s your price, Marshal?”

William hesitated, tempted to tell John that it was more than a too-clever stripling like him could afford, but prudence curbed his tongue. He reminded himself that his elder brother was one of the Prince’s men. “That is between myself and your father, Lord John,” he replied, “should he wish to retain my services. What I did for your brother, I did for love, not gain.”

“But you will gain by it, won’t you!” the youth said with bright malice in his eyes.

“John, enough, stop teasing.” Henry raised an indulgent hand towards his youngest son. “Come, Marshal, share wine and tell me about the pilgrimage.”

***

It was very late when William returned to his tent, staggering through the cool spring evening, his way lit by stars and the soft flare of cooking fires. Time and again he was stopped by men who wanted to greet his return and welcome him home. He found the smiles, the right words to say; he managed brief conversations. He had had a long apprenticeship in the art and even when less than sober could still hold himself together to play the game. But it was wearisome and he felt a powerful sense of relief as he finally reached his pavilion. His fingers, usually so swift and dextrous, fumbled at the flap ties and Eustace had to undo them for him.