The Devil's Diadem (66 page)

‘Of course, mama. Why should I not be well?’

Then he walked away from me, back toward the horses and cart, his sister and her guardians, and I had to hurry to keep up with him.

Whenever I tried to speak with Hugh about this day, and the meeting with Stephen and Uda, he always smiled at me and said he had totally forgot, and what day did I mean? After a few months I supposed he had totally forgot it, and thus I did, too.

I did not ever see my strange knight again, or Uda. Nor did I ever step onto a falloway again for the rest of my life.

It has not been until now, close to my death, that I realise that Hugh had never forgot that day and that the falloways had never forgot him.

Chapter Four

M
y world went to nothing when Edmond died. Some days it felt to me as if there was naught remaining of any worth or comfort. Edmond had been my lover, my confidant, my protector for almost thirty years. Even though many weeks, sometimes months, might pass when I did not see him and he was busy on his progress about the country, still I knew he was there, and messengers shuttled back and forth between us regularly. It was enough that I knew he lived, and thought of me, and our reunions were always sweet.

But now he was dead. Nothing filled the gap he left. My world now became one of complete emptiness. Always the passing of Stephen and Raife had hung about me like shadows, but Edmond had been there to lighten my days, and push the shadows away, and make me laugh.

Now I had lost three loves, those three brilliant men who had stood framed in the sun on the steps of the Oxeneford palace chapel so many years ago.

They were gone, and the shadows became heavy, horrid, menacing.

I felt utterly alone, and inconsolable in that loneliness. People surrounded me — my lady companions, the stewards and servants of my estates, minstrels and jugglers, priests and sundry visitors, even Owain who now writes these words — but none of them could console me, nor fill the terrible void that Edmond’s death created.

Gytha, still with me and my closest friend, could not even begin to fill that empty space.

My children tried. My son Geoffrey made the suggestion (from duty, nothing else) that I remove myself to Pengraic and was doubtless immensely relieved when I declined. I could not face Pengraic and all its memories yet, nor the cold regard of Geoffrey. My daughters offered their homes for their mother, but they also (as their husbands) appeared relieved at my decision to refuse their kindness.

Hugh abandoned his own wife and young family to return to me, but after some weeks I told him to go home. I loved Hugh with all my heart, but even he reminded me of loss, both of Raife’s and of Edmond’s. At thirty he was in the full bloom of his beauty and power, one of the distinguished nobles of England, and I admit that I was jealous of his youth and the future before him.

During my time by Edmond’s side we had lived either at Elesberie or at Westminster, with the occasional foray back to the Oxeneford palace where I’d seen the first imp, or to one of Edmond’s other royal manors. But now, with Richard on the throne, I was welcomed at none of these places and so I moved to my manor of Remany near Glowecestre.

Remany was an estate that Edmond had given me. It was large, had a big stone manor house, and was in a beautiful and peaceful part of the country. It was far from court — neither the new King Richard nor his younger brother John wanted me anywhere near the new court — and yet close to the Welsh Marches. I felt somehow connected to Pengraic, yet distant enough from it that its memories did not haunt me too intensely.

Here I thought I would rebuild my life in peace. Find something other than a husband or lover to focus on.

Try not to think of the past.

Gytha and I went for long walks, often accompanied by Gytha’s daughter, Guietta. (Guietta had been an unexpected addition to my household some fifteen years earlier, when Gytha’s swelling belly had announced that she was breeding. I did not know who Guietta’s father was, nor did I ever ask.) I was long past riding now, and in fact had largely given up when my lovely Dulcette had died years before.

I spent months with my steward, learning the rhythms of the seasons that I had known as a girl and largely forgotten during my adult life at court.

I began, slowly, to take pleasure in life once more.

And then … then …

A half year after Edmond died, close to Christmastide of my fifty-first year, I grew ill. It was a slow, insidious malaise, creeping up on me so silently that it took me weeks to become fully aware of it.

My fatigue increased with each day so that after some weeks my mind was so fogged with exhaustion I could not string two thoughts together. I could not sleep, even though I longed desperately for it, and my temper grew so short that now my ladies actively sought reason to avoid me (all save Gytha, who endured my ill temper with stoic goodwill). Increasingly, I could not keep any food down, save the sloppiest of gruels, such as you might feed a baby, and more often than not they, too, returned straight into the light of day. My limbs grew skeletal, but my belly grew large and uncomfortable, as if it was drawing into itself my remaining life force. I looked as though I was with child, although I knew I could not possibly be so.

All through winter, herbalists and physicians came and went. They bled me, they medicated me, and nothing helped. Even Owain’s ministrations did little other than allow me to snatch a few hours sleep at night.

By early spring I knew I was dying. I knew it, everyone knew it. No one mentioned it. False cheer swirled about me like the lies you feed an idiot child, while all the time Death’s fingers clawed deeper into me.

Then, twelve days ago, Hugh returned to see me. He breezed into my solar where I lay on a couch, and he bent down to me as if he could not see that I was wasted and dying and kissed my mouth.

‘Lady mama!’ he said, using his childish expression which I always loved, then sat down in the chair, smiling slowly at me.

Despite my general despondency and pain I smiled back. I was glad to see him, if only to say goodbye.

‘What do you here, Hugh?’ I said.

‘What do I here? Ah, madam, what a question to ask of the son who adores you. I had heard you sickened, and thus I am here.’

His expression sobered. ‘I came. I had to. And now I will stay with you until we part.’

My eyes filled with tears. How had I managed to birth such a wonderful child?

As quickly as his expression had sobered, now Hugh’s face once more lit up with humour.

‘And I have brought you a gift! Am I not the dutiful child?’

He snapped his fingers, and a servant hurried forth from the doorway. In his arms, the servant carried a large, rolled up, linen covered bundle.

‘Roll it out on the table under the window,’ Hugh said, and the man complied, carefully unknotting the ties holding the bundle, removing the linen, then rolling out what lay beneath.

It was a tapestry, very large. I struggled up on one elbow, thinking to rise and walk over to view it. Hugh assisted me to sit, but then he gestured me to stay where I was for the moment. He waved the servant out of the chamber, asking that he close the door.

There was just Hugh and myself in the chamber now.

‘I commissioned this tapestry two years ago,’ Hugh said, ‘when I knew your time was close.’

Two years ago? But then both Edmond and I were in full health. Who could have known that within two years one of us would be dead and the other dying?

‘It tells an amazing story,’ he said.

‘The story of my father.’

Of Edmond? I smiled at him, thinking him the precious man to do this for me.

Hugh leaned closer, and his green eyes became vivid, bright, compelling. ‘But before you view it I beg you to remember something my father told you many, many years ago. Speak not the word, for remember that the wind shall carry your word to all the corners of the earth, as also to the ears of God and of the Devil both.’

I went very still, utterly shocked. Raife had said that to me,
not
Edmond. Hugh knew that Raife was his father?

Hugh’s eyes were still fixed on mine. ‘I have always known, my lady,’ he said, softly.

‘I have known everything.
Remember what my father told you
.’

I could scarcely breathe. Hugh had known?

‘Mother,’ he ground out, ‘
will you remember it?
’

I managed a nod. ‘Speak not the word,’ I said. ‘Yes, I will remember it.’ I said it, and I promised I would remember it, but I had no idea why he told me this.

And then my brain came out of its shock enough to piece together what Hugh had said. This tapestry told the story of
Raife
?

Speak not the word, Hugh mouthed at me, and again I gave a nod.

Then he assisted me to rise, and took my arm, and led me over to the table by the window on which rested the tapestry.

I studied it for a long time, and then suddenly I understood what it meant, and I understood what Raife, the poor doomed man, had been attempting to do that day he tried to show me the drawings on the vellum pages that the imp had tried to snatch.

I had refused to trust him, when I
should
have trusted him, when I had
promised
to trust him, and in the refusing, I had committed such an act of betrayal that I could not now bear it. It was all too much, and the events of thirty years ago rushed forward and enveloped me, and I gave a loud cry, and fainted.

I came round after a short while.

Hugh had carried me back to my couch, and was holding my hand, chafing its cold flesh between his two warm hands.

‘What have I done?’ I whispered.

‘Sweet Jesu, Hugh. Sweet Jesu …’

‘Remember,’ he said, and I nodded.
Speak not the word
.

Hugh gave a lovely, soft, gentle smile. ‘It would have been so much better had you learned your letters,’ he said.

Oh, yes, because then Hugh’s father could have written it for me, because to speak it was to alert the Devil to what was really happening, and that Raife could not do. But because I did not know my letters, Raife could not
write
the truth. Instead he, like Hugh now had, had drawn it for me, but I’d not had the time to understand before the imp tried to snatch the pages and Raife had destroyed them to save himself. If the Devil had seen what was on those pages … oh, sweet God, Raife would have been utterly undone.

All Raife could do, then, was to implore me to trust him.

To simply trust him.

And I hadn’t. He had tried so hard, but I would not trust him, nor even try for a single moment to understand what he really was.

Then Hugh leaned forward and kissed me on the mouth — a lover’s kiss.

I stared at him.

‘That was from my father,’ he said, ‘who thinks you are nothing but a dear, sweet trouble, and who wants you to know that he loves you very much.’

And now, twelve days after that day, I am going to ask Owain to write a little in the voice of his pen, because I
cannot speak the words
.

Chapter Five

Owain’s Testimony

M
y lady, the countess that was, wishes me to relate now the tale worked into the tapestry. Because I have sat here these past days and writ down each word of her testimony, and given my own knowledge of the myths of the Old People, I could easily understand the tapestry when she showed it to me yesterday.

It depicts a story from the Old Times, the pagan times when the Old People lived upon this land, before the Celts came, and before the Anglo-Saxons came, and before the Viking raiders or their cousins, the Normans, lived here. It depicts those peoples I was long familiar with, both from the legends of my youth in Crickhoel and from the strange figures depicted on the walls of the chapel in Pengraic Castle.

It depicts the Old People, to whom I owe even more loyalty and honour than I owe to our sweet Lord Christ.

The tapestry initially tells the story of a mighty prince of the Old People, resplendent in his citadel in the ancient mountains. On his head he wore a magnificent and enchanted diadem, fitting symbol of his rank and power, a diadem worked by the ancient forest magic of fairy hands. About its crown danced the sun and the moon and the stars of the heavens drawn in jewels that, as the countess that was, once said, were more glorious than diamonds.

Then one night, while the ancient prince slept, a long-fingered imp, a malevolent sprite from hell, came to the prince’s chamber and stole away the diadem.

The imp took the diadem to the Devil, trading it for favours from the satanic prince. Above, in the realm of the Old People, the prince awoke to find his diadem gone. He could smell the lingering odour of the imp, and knew to what dark master the thief would have ferried the diadem.

The prince could think of only one way to recover his diadem. He took himself down to hell, and, over the centuries, worked his way through the ranks surrounding the Devil until he became the Devil’s trusted confidant.

It was not something I could do overnight, the earl had said to his lady.

Yet still the prince did not know where the Devil had hid the diadem.

Then one day, horribly, the Devil cried that his diadem had been stolen, gone! Taken to the mortal world! The Devil hatched a scheme where the hounds of hell would scent out the diadem and, of the deepest irony, sent his favourite captain — the prince of the Old People in his disguise — into the mortal realm that he might be the one to carry the diadem back to hell.

But the prince, masquerading as the Earl of Pengraic and by now wed to a fair lady he loved beyond life, meant to trick the Devil. He endured the horror that the Devil unleashed on this mortal realm and followed the trail the horror laid down until he came to the diadem’s resting place. He retrieved the diadem, his lady present at his side, and it remained only for him to retreat into the ancient world of the Old People with his lady for his task to be complete.