The Greatest Knight (32 page)

Heloise paused in gathering up her belongings. “I’m sorry,” she said, suddenly contrite. “You don’t want to hear me say things like that, do you? I wouldn’t in your place.”

Isabelle swallowed her envy and forced a smile. “Don’t be so foolish. If I’m out of sorts it’s because I wish I was going with you. Take your good fortune and squeeze every drop from it; that’s a command.”

Predictably Heloise rushed over to engulf Isabelle in a tearful bear hug. “I’ll have a scribe write to you with news,” she said. “And I’ll visit you if I can…but who knows, you might have left here by then.”

“Who knows,” Isabelle repeated bravely, thinking that even if she did, it wouldn’t be with an unbeaten tourney champion with a courtier’s burnish and an easy, smiling manner.

***

In the morning, Heloise left soon after dawn to begin her journey home to Kendal. Standing on the sward, Damask in her arms, Isabelle watched William Marshal boost Heloise into the saddle of a placid brown mare. Heloise said something to him that made him laugh as she gathered the reins and adjusted her seat. He fed the mare a piece of purple carrot off the palm of his hand and rubbed her nose. Gilded in pale sunshine, his garments immaculate, he might have stepped straight from a stained-glass window or the pages of a psalter. He slapped the mare’s neck and turning to his own black palfrey swung into the saddle as lightly as a youth. Heloise waved to Isabelle and with much kicking of her heels and flapping of her reins, managed, at last, to turn her mare. William Marshal looked across the sward to Isabelle, saluted her, and heeled the palfrey about. Biting her lip, Isabelle watched the party ride away. Then she turned and putting Damask down, walked her beneath the great, imprisoning walls. The lions were silent today and Isabelle’s eyes were so dry that they burned.

Twenty-seven

William came to Kendal in full summer, the sky deep blue with high feathers of cloud and the curlews calling over moor and pasture. A place of empty spaces, richer in sheep than in people, and those sheep providing a fine income from their fleeces. It was a landscape of lowering hills, lakes, and meres, fields divided by dry stone walls that had stood time out of mind. A beautiful, wind-cleaned world, and one so different to any William had encountered before that it overwhelmed him almost as much as the Holy Land had done. Here there was no harshness of sun, no desiccating heat, but there was the same sense of majesty, a brooding quality and the hint of a desolate harshness that was only a rainstorm away.

He explored his new responsibilities thoroughly, from the great lake of Windermere to the wide flat sands of Morecambe Bay. He visited the castles and priories and the forests, still populated by boar and wolf, creatures that had been hunted to the verge of extinction in the more populated south. Soaking up this new, strange landscape, he was exhilarated. After the tense and dangerous life he had led in the Young King’s entourage, his arduous pilgrimage and spiritual scouring, it was a relief to have naught but mundane administrative duties to attend to, and time to enter into a firmer peace with God.

Heloise accompanied him everywhere, for as her warden he was responsible for her safety and security. She dined with him most nights, and he enjoyed her company for she made him laugh and she was incorrigible. But he decided that he was not about to make her his wife, whatever King Henry had intended. She was an entertaining distraction, and her wellbeing and that of her lands was his responsibility, but she was not his future. At the back of William’s mind, Queen Eleanor’s words continued to haunt him and he often thought about Isabelle de Clare…and wondered.

They heard the news in the autumn that the King’s son Geoffrey had been killed in a tourney in Paris, trampled under the hooves of his stallion. William said prayers for his soul and kept vigil in memory of the little boy he remembered watching practise on the tilt ground at Argentan, and of the uneasy young man who had tried to play both sides in the disputes between his father and brothers and often fallen between two stools. He left a small daughter, Constance, and an unborn child growing in his wife’s womb. William thought of the life’s grace afforded himself; he had survived the tourneys, the bitter internal warring of the Angevin royal house, and a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. He had the conviction that God had reserved him for a purpose, and although it was not William’s place to question, he did not believe that it was to wed Heloise of Kendal and dwell here in obscurity.

***

For almost two years, William tarried in the north. The leaves of his second autumn as lord of Kendal changed the trees from green to fìre-red and gold, and as the weather grew cold he topped the linen layers of summer with woollen tunics and heavy, fur-lined cloaks. The roars of rutting stags echoed through the woods and smoky mist drenched forest, moor, and pasture. News came that Jerusalem had fallen into Saracen hands and a rallying cry rippled through Christendom, calling for a new crusade. King Henry pledged to go, so did Philip of France, and Prince Richard also, but for the moment, they were travelling no further than words. William felt a pang of guilt, wondering if he should have remained in the Holy Land and pledged his sword to the Templars…but had he done so, he would now be a rotting corpse on the field of Hattin where the Saracen commander Saladin had led his troops to overwhelming victory. To assuage his feelings of guilt and restlessness, William began plans to found a priory on his lands at Cartmel and spent much time, thought, and prayer upon the creation of the establishment.

The business of administering the lands for which he had fallen responsible was largely a matter of common sense and putting capable men in positions that suited them. He enjoyed the tasks but they did not stretch him and he began to feel like a man with insufficient food on his plate to make a satisfying meal. It helped that he had the squires to train. They were lively, likeable lads, although it didn’t prevent them from being fiercely competitive with each other. His nephew was the sturdier of the two and better at wrestling and hand-fighting. Jean D’Earley was lighter on his feet and excellent at swordplay. He was a good rider too, although Jack, with his more robust build, was going to have the edge as a jouster.

Just before winter, William’s brother visited him on his way to Lancaster on business for Prince John. Alais had borne another daughter but the child had died at little more than a month old.

“Alais has taken it very hard,” John said morosely. “She says that it is God’s judgement on us for our sin of fornication outside wedlock and I cannot reason with her. She spends all her time shut away, weeping.”

“The Young Queen was like that for many months after she and Henry lost their son,” William said. “It is a wound that only time will close.”

John’s mouth turned down at the corners. “She refuses to lie with me lest she conceive again. She says that she will no longer be my whore…Jesu God, when she said that word…” He rubbed one hand over his face then looked at William, his gaze heavy with weariness. “Ach, I know why she spoke as she did. It’s not just the death of the child.”

William said nothing and waited, letting the moment ripen. He had suspected that there was more to it than grief for the death of a baby. When he had visited John and Alais at Hamstead before coming north, he had noticed small signs of strain between them. Looks, silent reproach, anxiety.

John sighed deeply. “Soon after our mother died, Adam de Port offered me his daughter Aline in marriage, and I said I would seriously consider the proposal.”

“Ah,” William said. That explained a great deal.

“The girl’s not yet of marriageable age, but soon will be. Her father has influence at court and the girl’s dowry is rich. I’d be an idiot not to accept the offer. I know our mother would have approved.”

“And Alais?”

John made an impatient sound. “I cannot marry her, she knows that—it’s been understood from the start. I’ve always respected her; never have I treated her like a whore, but she won’t see sense. She says that our child dying and the offer of marriage are holy signs that we shouldn’t cohabit…and nothing will convince her otherwise.”

William shook his head. “I am sorry,” he said, thinking of John and Alais a few years ago, and the envy he had felt for the aura of warmth and contentment surrounding them. Now that envy had become pity. “Perhaps given time…” He knew he was mouthing platitudes.

“Perhaps,” John agreed, but his expression was that of a soldier who had fought to a standstill and didn’t have the strength to go on. “What of yourself? Have you made a decision about your ward?” John’s glance flickered towards Heloise, who was playing at knucklebones with the squires.

William watched her too. Her hair was escaping its net and there was a smut of dirt on her cheek from some escapade or other. He loved her dearly but in the way that he would love a puppy; in the way he had once loved a princess named Marguerite. It was unbearable. “I doubt I’ll be inviting you to our wedding,” he said quietly.

“But surely even if she doesn’t suit, her lands do,” John said.

Since his brother was on the cusp of taking a bride for her dowry with no consideration for compatibility of character, William didn’t think it tactful to argue that particular point. “Yes,” he said, “and they are mine to administer as I see fit, whether I marry her or not.”

“They’d be more secure if you were to wed her.”

“Indeed, but I’d not be free to look further afield.”

“Ah,” John’s eyes narrowed astutely. “A taste isn’t enough. You’re ambitious for more.”

William tugged his ear lobe. John had hit close to the truth of his dilemma. Should he take what Henry had freely given, or hold out for what the Queen said was his due? “I cannot see me living out my years in this place,” he said after a moment, and was surprised to hear the note of impatience in his own voice.

John folded his arms. “Just make sure that you don’t overreach yourself,” he said darkly. “A handful of crumbs is better than no loaf at all—as you should well know by now.”

***

William took the royal writ the scribe had just finished reading to him and stared at it. The neat lines of brown-black writing were incomprehensible to him. William’s attempts at understanding and mastering the skill of literacy had left him with little more than ink-stained fingers and a deep frustration. No matter how many times his tutor had tried to beat the meaning of the symbols into his skull, his brain had stubbornly refused to make sense of them. He had long since accepted that what came naturally to some men was a mystery to others. Faced with besieging a castle, or getting the best out of a company of serjeants, William knew exactly what to do…and that was why he had received this summons. His stomach wallowed queasily, but outwardly his expression remained mild.

Harry Norreis was looking at him as expectantly as a hound waiting for a titbit. “You’re going to answer it, aren’t you?” he asked eagerly.

“No,” William said flatly. “I’m going to sit on my arse and do nothing.”

The comment was met with a look of horrified astonishment. William folded the parchment in four and grinned. “Of course I’m answering it, you dolt. Do you think I’d do anything else?” He glanced down at the letter which he had memorised as the scribe read it to him. It was a summons to join the King as soon as he could. King Philip of France had seized Henry’s fortress of Châteauroux. War was brewing up faster than summer lightning and Henry needed experienced, stalwart men to stand in the storm. “The King wants me to bring as many knights and experienced men as I can.” William clasped his shoulder. “You can start by passing on the news and mustering the men. I’ll need to talk to those here and send out fast riders to the rest. I want to be ready to leave by the morrow dawn.”

***

Heloise looked at William, her puppyish manner now decidedly hangdog. “I knew you would not stay,” she said with a drooping lower lip.

It was late at night and they were sitting in his private chamber, supposedly playing chess, but neither of them had taken a turn in a while. William’s mind was far away, already with the King, and Heloise’s had been glued to the thought of his imminent departure.

William toyed with a stubby ivory pawn, turning it between his fingers. “I cannot,” he said. “The King has need of me.”

“And it is what you have been waiting for.”

William looked across the board at her and adjusted the focus of his thoughts. “Yes,” he said.

“What of your duties in the north?”

“I have able deputies to leave in my stead.”

Her eyes filled with accusation. “So all you have been doing is marking time and milking the cow.”

He looked at her steadily until she dropped her gaze. “I have been doing both of those, but I am sorry if you believe that has been my entire purpose.” William leaned back in his curved chair and folded his arms. “When I take on a task I do my best and I don’t renege,” he said softly. “You will not suffer under my wardship, I swear to you.”

“I suppose you are thinking it a godsend that you did not marry me,” she said in a small voice.

William smiled. “I am thinking that it is a privilege to have you for my ward.” He took her hand in his. There were gold rings on two of her fingers, but carelessly worn, the claw setting on the one with a stone was damaged. She had been biting her nails again and there were grazes on her knuckles where one of the hound pups had chewed her hand. He lifted it to his lips and kissed it in the fashion of the court, and then he turned it over and kissed her palm and folded her fingers over the kiss. He had done it a hundred times before with different women, sometimes in flattery, occasionally as a prelude to more intimate embraces, and sometimes, like this, in a spirit of affection, compassion, and regret.

“You do not need to humour me,” she said with wounded dignity.

“I am not. I may dress words in courtly language, but you have my honesty.”

Heloise studied her hand, still folded over the courtesy of his kiss. “What of Denise de Châteauroux? Will she have your honesty too?”

William frowned. Henry’s plea for aid had arrived with a bribe. Only let William come to his aid, bringing as many knights as he could muster, and Henry would give him the fortress of Châteauroux to hold by right of marriage to its young heiress, Denise, lady of Berry. He shrugged. “In the end she may have nothing of me at all.” Stretching, he rose from the chessboard, abandoning all pretence at playing the game.

Heloise toyed with her braid, winding it around her forefinger. “I do not understand,” she said in a puzzled voice.

“Châteauroux is in the hands of the French King. Henry has promised me something for which I will have to fight tooth and claw to regain. He is never generous unless forced to be.”

“Can you do it?”

“It remains to be seen how hard the King of France wants to hold on to it and how deep the distrust between Prince Richard and his father has etched.” He rumpled his hands through his hair and sighed. “God forbid that I should ever raise sons the like of Henry’s.”

Heloise eyed him curiously. He was usually smilingly reticent about the royal masters who played their tunes from a distance and expected lesser mortals to dance to them. “You dislike them?”