Requiem: The Fall of the Templars (51 page)

“Sorry, sir,” said one, taking the reins of his horse. “Didn’t see you there.”

Will looked around, struck by the silence and emptiness of the place, the grooms seemingly without master or duties. He stared through the sheets of rain out across the deserted courtyard. Come rain or snow, the palace yard was always crowded with people, bustling through on business. “Where is everyone?”

The groom looked uncertainly at his comrades.

One, who was older than the rest came over. “At the funeral, sir.”

“Funeral?”

The youth looked surprised. “Of the queen, sir.”

Will sucked a breath through his teeth. On the heels of the shock came a slightly discomforting spark of hope. Surely this tragedy would delay Philippe’s designs for Bertrand and the Temple, giving him more time to put his own plans in place? He knew how close the king and queen had been. Then a fi nger of doubt laid its cool touch upon his anticipation. History had shown such deep sorrow could focus a man as well as distract him. He thought of Edward, who had grown only more ruthless in his bereavement over his beloved queen.

He was, Will realized, simply thinking of his own grief after the death of Elwen, a grief that had plunged him into years of directionless torment. No. He could not anticipate what this would do to Philippe, or his plans.

“They’re coming!”

Will turned as a young boy came scurrying into the stall. All at once, the grooms launched into a flurry of activity. Outside, Will heard the clapping of hooves in the wet. He moved into the rain to watch as the funeral cortége made its way into the palace.

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First came the guards, blinking rain from their eyes as they rode into the courtyard, their uniforms sopping. Behind came the king, alone and on foot, his face poised somewhere between anguish and disbelief, rendering his expression almost blank. His black robes trailed behind him, coated with mud.

Following him were his principal advisors, Pierre Dubois and Guillaume de Plaisans, the royal steward and his confessor, Guillaume de Paris. Of Nogaret, Will noted, there was no sign. After them came the children, Isabella small and lost, clutching the hand of her nursemaid and a single red rose. The handmaidens followed, Marguerite sobbing into her palm, Blanche at her side, supporting her. There was a host of other mourners: royal staff, bishops and clergy, dukes and dignitaries, all filing solemnly through the gates.

Within the line, Will glimpsed a thin, white figure in a black gown. He felt something wrench in him at the sight of his daughter, who looked so terribly alone in the midst of the vast crowd, stumbling along by herself. In a small sense, his single-minded determination to prevent the king from subjugating the Temple had been almost a relief, enabling him to ignore the rift that had widened into a chasm between him and Rose. He had told himself that once he made sure the Temple was protected, he would turn his attention to his daughter. But he knew this was just another form of escape, and he had done altogether too much of that in recent years. She was his daughter, in love if not in blood, and that had never changed or diminished. It was his courage that had faltered.

It was that realization that took him forward, his feet splashing through the puddles as he crossed to her. Rose flinched when he took her arm, but she let him lead her out of the line, away across the courtyard. She seemed to be in shock, numb and compliant at his side, as he steered her through the royal gardens to a stone bench in a secluded corner, sheltered by a broad yew.

“You’re wet through,” he murmured, as they sat. Realizing he had nothing to dry her with, for he too was soaked to the skin, he settled for brushing back the strands of her hair, dark with rain, that clung to her forehead. Will’s hand fell as he studied her face, her eyes staring and vacant, her skin pallid except for two hectic spots high on her cheeks. He realized he hadn’t seen her this close in months, maybe longer. As a child, he had been struck by how similar to Elwen she was, but those similarities had since faded from her and she had now grown into her own face. It was a face filled with sadness and loss so profound it took his breath away. He gripped her frozen hand. “Rose, I know you do not believe me and I have given you no reason to, but I never stopped 300 robyn

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loving you. If you believe nothing else, please believe that. I was scared.” He shook his head. “No, I was selfish. I put my grief before my love. I let what happened to Elwen—to your mother—overshadow what I felt for you and what I should have done as a father. I do not expect you to forgive me. But I hope—”

“It was me.”

Her voice was so quiet, it took him a moment to realize what she had said.

His heart pounded. She hadn’t said no.

“I killed the queen.”

Will felt shock slam the hope out of him. “What?”

She stared at the gardens, misty with rain.

Will gripped her shoulders, turning her to him. “Rose, talk to me. What do you mean?”

Her gaze focused on him. “I wished she would die so often. But I didn’t want that.” Rose shook her head. “I watched her die. Dear God.” Her face crumpled in disgust. “The smell of that room. The smell of death as the fever took hold and her blood was poisoned. She was in so much pain and it was so very slow. We could do nothing. Nothing but watch.”

“Then it was a sickness?” pressed Will, not daring to feel relief yet. “A fever?”

“In here.” Rose placed her hand low on her belly.

Now Will let the relief come. He sat back. “Why in Christ’s name would you say you killed her?”

“Didn’t you hear me?” Rose stood, her face hardening. “I said I wished it.”

“Why? Was she cruel to you?”

Rose went to walk away, but Will pursued her and took hold of her arm.

“Why did you wish the queen would die?”

“Because I love him.”

“Philippe?” he asked, after a long pause.

When she nodded, Will wondered grimly whether he had somehow been the cause of this; his abandonment driving her to seek affection at such impossible, reckless heights. The idea of his daughter wishing another woman dead in her fantasies about a man so dangerous and volatile, a man he was actively working against, was disturbing to say the least. Trying to push aside these deeper concerns, he focused instead on something he understood. “Listen to me, Rose,” he said, coaxing her back to the bench. “You didn’t kill the queen by wishing it.”

“You don’t know that.”

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“I do. I once thought I had done the same to my sister.”

She looked at him.

“I never told you this, any of it. But it was the reason my father took me out of Scotland when I was a boy, the reason he joined the Temple as a knight and the reason I spent so many years trying to follow in his footsteps.”

He had her full attention now.

“My sister Mary and I were rivals, closer in age than with my older sisters.

She was my father’s favorite, which didn’t help. I spent a long time wishing she would disappear, run away, get lost. I cannot recall if I ever wished she would die, but my feelings were clear: I didn’t want to share my house or my father with her. I told you long ago that my sister drowned. What I didn’t tell you was that I caused it.” Will looked away, unable still, after all these years, to look someone in the eye as he admitted this. “It was an accident. We were arguing by the loch near our estate and I pushed her away from me, harder than I meant to. She fell and hit her head. I tried to save her, but I failed. It tore my family apart. My father left for the Holy Land the year after and I never saw him again. Him or my mother.” Will thought he saw a look of understanding in Rose’s eyes, empathy even, but it was gone before he could be sure. “I carried my guilt for years, perhaps I always will. But for a long time it affected almost every choice I made, leading me to execute the most deplorable, thoughtless acts, all in some misguided attempt at atonement. I didn’t cause her death by wanting it, I caused it by accident. I know that now. But, Rose, I wasted so much on that false belief. I cannot bear to think of you doing the same.” Will grasped her hands. “Do not bear this burden. Let it go. Your guilt, your fear, this”—he shook his head—“hopeless love.”

Her face changed. It was like a wall going up. “Hopeless? You think he couldn’t love me?”

“Rose, I just—”

“Is it because I am too ugly to love?” She wrenched back the diamond-shaped sleeve of her gown to display her scars.

“Ugly?” Will stood. “God, no. You’re beautiful.”

“Because you caused this,
Father
.” She thrust her arm at him, her eyes now dry, cold as marble. “Just like you caused your sister to die!”

As she ran, he reached for her, but his fingers caught only the back of her veil, which pulled free in his grasp, leaving him standing there holding it, watching his daughter disappear in the rain, feeling a fresh wound opening inside him.

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the royal palace, paris, june 30, 1305 ad

Rose hovered in the doorway, listening to the sounds coming from within the king’s chamber: a rapid swish, followed by a sharp
fl ick
and a hiss of breath.

Her back ached from standing there so long, leaning against the frame, her hand clutching the door to stop it banging in the warm breeze whispering through the windows, but still she refused to move, not wanting to leave, yet not daring to cross the threshold. Every once in a while she caught footfalls in the corridor and cocked her head to hear if they were coming closer. But none did. The royal apartments were quiet these days.

Following the death of their mother, the princes and Isabella spent most of their time with their nursemaid. Minister de Nogaret was abroad on business and the rest of the royal advisors were rarely admitted an audience with the king, the palace staff having learned to tiptoe around, never laughing or raising their voices. The only person Philippe had spent more than a few hours with had been his confessor, the fearfully devout Dominican, Guillaume de Paris. The dormitory seemed especially hushed and empty now Marguerite and two of the other handmaidens had left to serve the wives of the king’s brothers. Rose, Blanche and one other remained to help with the children.

There was already some hushed talk of the king remarrying in the future, but Rose knew that was the last thing on Philippe’s mind.

These past months, she had stayed as close to him as she felt she could, creeping out of the dormitory to pick up his clothes when he tossed them carelessly on the floor, mending the stitching that was fraying on his favorite cloak, setting fresh flowers by his bed. They were all things that could be done by other people, things she doubted he even noticed, but she wanted—no, needed to do them.

Despite all her fantasies, the reality of the queen’s death had sickened her.

The very same desires that had sustained her for so long began to turn on her, the guilt and the shame swelling like a boil, poisoning her from within. At Mass, in the Sainte-Chapelle, she prayed more fervently than she ever had before, her eyes closed for the first time in years not in secret reverie, but in sincere penitence. The little tasks she performed for the king were not done because she wanted his affection. They were done in the hope of his forgiveness, a futile hope, she knew, since he had no knowledge of her thoughts or feelings.

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Rose winced as a grunt of pain sounded through the curtains of his private chapel, louder now. His breaths were coming fast and hard, in time with the swish and flick. Each one made her flinch, as if she were the one being struck.

Unable to stand it any longer, she opened the door and took a few steps into the room. She halted, caught in the mirror by his bedside, her image stock-still, hands clasped in front of her face, fingers pressed to her lips. Another
fl ick
distracted her and her gaze went to the black curtains, embroidered with the arms of France. Not allowing herself another pause, in which to think, to stop or turn around, she went forward and parted the curtains.

Philippe was on his knees in front of the altar. He wore no tunic and his bare back glistened in the daylight now fl ooding the recess, slick and red with blood. In his hand, he clutched a horsehair whip. The floor around him was spattered, as was the white cloth on the altar. His head jerked round, his eyes, blinking in the light, distant and feverish.

Rose dropped to a crouch in front of him, her dark blue dress spilling out around her. “Please, my lord,” she whispered, reaching out to take the whip.

“Please, stop.”

Philippe let her close her fi ngers over his fi st, but didn’t relinquish his hold on the whip. “Do you pray for me, Rose?” he asked, his voice hoarse with pain.

“Every day, my lord.”

“Do you think it will be enough? The prayers of my subjects?”

Rose shook her head, not understanding him.

Philippe stared blankly at the altar. “My confessor tells me with enough penance and enough prayer I will hear it.”

“Hear what, my lord?” Rose hadn’t taken her hand from his. The two of them were frozen together, their postures stiff and unnatural, her arm stretched out across him, her burns as vivid as his wounds in the pale light streaming into the chapel. The smell of his blood was overpowering.

“The voice of God.” Philippe’s eyes swung back to her. “So many great men, popes, princes, kings and scholars have spoken of it; that wondrous union, the ecstasy of being suffused with God’s divine love, His voice like a bell, ringing in their souls. My grandfather made mention of it often, so my father told me. He said God spoke as a river inside him, guiding him, propelling him. But I have never heard it.” His brow furrowed. “And if I cannot hear Him, surely it must mean God does not hear me? That none of my prayers has been strong enough to reach Him?”

Rose wanted to tell him that he needn’t worry. She never heard God either, 304 robyn

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although she often felt Him up there, watching her, judging her. But before she even uttered them her words seemed like tiny whispers that could never be heard against the vast booming voices of such illustrious men.