The Greatest Knight (17 page)

The men were leaving the field when a herald came running towards them, waving his arms. “Sire, my lord, the Queen is delivered of a son!” he cried, his face shining with the joy of the news he carried.

Henry shouted a thank you to God and whirled to William, grey eyes fierce with triumph. “Do you hear that, Marshal? A son! I have a son!” He fisted William’s arm hard enough to bruise, even through gambeson and tunic.

“That is great news, my lord!” William fisted him back, although without quite as much force. “How is the Queen?” he enquired of the messenger.

“The women say very tired but joyful, sir.”

“I must see him!” Henry’s expression was incandescent as he spurred for the stables, pulling up in the yard so fast that the horse skidded on its haunches. Flinging from its back, he ran into the palace. William followed at a more sedate pace, a burden lifting from his mind. Marguerite had survived the ordeal and the sight of his young lord’s energy and eagerness gave him hope that everything might yet turn out for the best.

“The heir to England and Normandy now has an heir of his own,” said Baldwin de Béthune, riding up beside William, his lips parted in a white grin. “That’ll change him.”

William smiled agreement. He had seen the difference the birth of little Jack had made to his brother…a difference that perhaps he would never know and, through his pleasure, he felt a twinge of regret.

***

Marguerite gazed at the baby sleeping in her arms. He had been tightly bound in swaddling so that he resembled a little parcelled-up fly in a spider’s larder. His eyes were closed and the tiny lashes glittered as if dusted with gold. Delicate blue shadows lay beneath them and his skin had the pale hue of lavender flowers. His breathing was so silent that she could hardly hear it, or feel it confined within the shroud-like layers of swaddling.

“William,” she whispered his name to herself and the speaking of it warmed the cold place in her heart. He had been named for his three times great-grandfather, the Norman duke who had conquered England, and for Henry’s small brother who had died whilst still an infant and who would have been the “Young King” had he lived. But there was another named William in their lives too, whose presence perhaps mattered more.

She thought of the joy on her husband’s face as he entered the birthing chamber, his pride as he held his newborn son, and the way that he had shown the child to all in the room in the same way that he would enthuse over a new piece of harness or jousting equipment. It was the first time in their marriage that he had shown such a spark when it had a direct connection to her. It had made her feel sad and overwhelmed with happiness at the same time. The new Prince had been taken from the room and briefly shown to the other members of their household. She had wanted to ask Henry what William Marshal had thought, but she had been asleep when Henry returned the baby and he had not stayed, but departed to celebrate the birth of his heir with his mesnie. She fancied that if she strained her ears she would hear them in the hall, raising toasts, celebrating her achievement by f êting Henry for all he was worth.

With a soft rustle of movement a midwife parted the half-closed bed curtains. The wet nurse who had been engaged to suckle the baby stood a little behind her. “Is our princeling ready for a feed yet?” The midwife held out her arms for the baby. “He should be by now.”

Awkwardly, Marguerite gathered his little body and handed him to the midwife, who cradled him gently across to the wet nurse. The women exchanged glances. “What is it, what’s wrong?” Alarmed, Marguerite pulled herself upright on the bolsters and felt the hot trickle of blood between her thighs. “Please…”

“Nothing, madam, calm yourself, nothing is wrong. Your son is just tired after his hard passage into the world. Come now.”

A second midwife arrived to tend to her. The blood-soaked cloths between her legs were checked and changed. The woman gave her a bitter-tasting potion to drink and plumped the pillows. Beyond the curtains she heard the rapid whispering of the women like leaves chased before a storm. She knew that something was amiss and struggled to rise from the bed, but exhaustion and loss of blood made her weak and when she set her foot on the floor there was no strength in her limbs and she collapsed. Her women came running and, with cries of consternation, put her back to bed.

“My son,” she wept, “where is my son?”

“Hush now, madam, hush now. Do not trouble yourself. He is in good hands.” Cool fingers stroked her brow and the soporific they had given her made her lids heavy. She fought sleep, but it came anyway on rolling dark waves. The last she heard was the soothing murmur of her women, soft but treacherous as the sea, and not a single gull-like mew of a newborn infant. As she sank fathoms deep into slumber, forced beneath the waves like a broken ship, her son breathed softly once, twice, and with a gentle shudder in the nurse’s arms, died.

***

The younger knights were indulging in a drinking game that involved reciting a poem without forgetting the words and adding a new verse before downing a goblet of wine. William had declined to join in and was discussing tourney tactics with Baldwin and Roger de Gaugi when he glanced up and saw one of Marguerite’s midwives talking to Henry’s steward and wringing her hands. The steward glanced in Henry’s direction and, even from a distance, William could tell from his expression that the news was dire. He watched him clench his fists, straighten his spine, steel himself while the midwife crept back up the stairs, her harbingering complete.

William swallowed his wine in a single fierce gulp and braced his own shoulders, knowing that strength on the tourney field was as nothing compared to the strength he was going to need now. He wondered which one it was, Marguerite or the baby.

Henry banged a dripping goblet on to the board in front of William. “Your turn,” he declared, spreading his free arm wide. “Don’t spoil the sport…have to do it once, I command it…” His voice slurred at the edges.

“Sire…”

The steward reached them, stooped, and murmured in the Young King’s ear. Henry’s smile levelled, faded and beneath the tan of a summer spent in the saddle, his complexion was suddenly the colour of ashes. His throat worked. “No,” he said.

“My lord King…”

“No!” He would have struck the steward in the face with his clenched fist but William was there first, capturing the descending arm, bearing it down while the ghost-faced servant took a step back.

“He’s a stinking liar. It’s not true!” Henry wrestled against William’s restraining arm. Full of denial and rage the grey eyes blazed into William’s and William held on hard, for love, for pity, for the tragic truth ripping through the shield of that denial. A ragged silence had begun to fall; men were staring, lowering cups. William felt Henry’s shudder enter his own body as the young man turned from flesh to stone in his arms…and ceased fighting. Stiff as an effigy on a tomb, the Young King pushed William away and, using his entire body as if his individual limbs had fused together, turned to the steward.

“I will see him,” he said, his jaw barely moving to enunciate the word and the tendons in his throat like hawsers. “Marshal…Marshal, come with me.”

It was the child then, William thought as he followed Henry away from the dais table to the stairs. He thought of the fragile skull he had briefly cradled in his palm, the smallness and vulnerability of the newborn infant.

Men bowed as the Young King passed. The silence had only extended as far as the folk on the dais and a low babble continued in the well of the hall where guests and retainers were still celebrating the birth of their Young King’s first child. William made a signal to Baldwin: with a nod, the knight summoned the stewards and began to undertake what was necessary. Messengers would have to be sent in haste to overtake those who had ridden out earlier bearing different, joyful tidings.

Henry halted before his wife’s chamber, his breathing hard from the climb up the stairs. His expression remained rigid, but William could see the cracks striating the precarious control. William stood behind him, saying nothing, providing the backbone. The guard on the door stood to attention, his focus blank as if he too were part of this tableau of stone.

“There has to be a mistake,” Henry said. He set his hand to the latch and entered the room. The shutters were fastened against the night and candles burned in every sconce. At the end of the chamber, the heavy red hangings closed off the Queen’s bed like a sealed box. Her women sat in a huddle, whispering, weeping quietly, clutching their breasts, rocking back and forth in muted grief that would waken neither the sleeping nor the dead.

The senior midwife stood by the cradle, her face pleated with apprehension and sorrow. She dropped in a deep curtsey to Henry and remained with her head bowed. He came to the cradle and gazed down. “Why?” he asked hoarsely.

“It was a difficult birth, sire,” the midwife said. “He spent so long entering the world that he had no strength left to live in it.”

“Does the Queen know?” William asked.

The woman shook her head. “No, my lord. We took the infant from her to see if he would feed at the nurse’s breast and because we were concerned for him. He had scarcely cried since he was born and his colour was poor. I gave the Queen a sleeping potion. She will have peace for a few hours yet.”

And then peace no more, William thought pityingly. Now would come the platitudes, about the child having lived long enough to be baptised, about Henry and Marguerite being young and strong and with time enough to begin again. But he wasn’t going to be the one to utter them.

Henry gazed down on his dead son for a moment longer, before pivoting abruptly on his heel and striding from the room. William hesitated, glanced towards the closed bed curtains, and then hurried after his lord. Henry had turned aside into one of the garderobes cut into the wall and was retching down the waste shaft, his hands braced on the wooden seat.

William waited, saying nothing, feeling inadequate. There were no words of comfort that would cocoon the rawness of Henry’s bleeding grief and lacerated pride. The flood of joy followed by the back-surge of loss was bound to drown all but the strongest swimmer. Slowly Henry straightened and wiped his mouth. His eyes were dull now, quenched of light. “Why does God allow these things to happen?” he asked William in a torn voice. “If he didn’t want my son to live, why did he make her quicken with my seed in the first place?”

William shook his head. “You should speak to your chaplain, sire. I have no answers.”

“He won’t have any either.” Henry sat down on the garderobe seat and put his head in his hands. “Christ, I’m drunk. I thought this was a celebration. I thought that in the morning I would…Oh Christ Jesu, Christ have mercy.” His body shuddered with dry sobs. “Why does the gold in my hands always trickle through my fingers like common sand and leave me no better than a beggar?” he demanded in an aching, forlorn voice.

William swallowed and felt his own eyes burn. What could he say? That if one spread one’s fingers instead of making a fist, one would never hold on to anything. That Henry had the choice between cladding himself in the riches of a king or a beggar’s rags. Even now he was mourning for himself, not the piteous swaddled scrap lying cold and pale in the royal cradle. But that didn’t make the heartache any less intense. In Henry’s case, the opposite.

William cleared the harshness of emotion from his throat. “You should sleep, sire,” he said, “and in the morning, do what you must.”

Henry swallowed and palmed his hands over his face. “Yes,” he said. “You’re right. Do what I must.”

***

Clara took one look at William’s pouched and reddened eyes, the stubble foresting his jaw, his blank expression and, without a word, fetched wine laced with aqua vitae and pressed him down on the bed. Totally passive, William allowed her to strip his garments, standing when she bade him stand, sitting when she bade him sit. Once he was clad in a fresh shirt and loose-fitting tunic, she laid her hand to his shoulder and placed a kiss at the corner of his mouth.

“Have you eaten?”

He shrugged, unable to remember. The hollow sensation in his gut might be hunger, but could as well be a reaction to the atmosphere at the palace; to being drained by all that he had witnessed and the burdens he had been forced to shoulder. Marguerite distraught and wild-haired in her bed, racked with grief and guilt; her husband drunk, then sober, then drunk again. The wine he had consumed half keeping pace with Henry had soured his gut and caused a dull ache behind his eyes. Babies died unborn or at birth. Children did not survive infancy and childhood. Only the strong and the fortunate grew to maturity…only those blessed by God. Everyone knew that; everyone was prepared until it happened to them.

Clara brought him fresh wheaten bread and a pot of game terrine. When he didn’t touch it, she broke the bread herself and put a chunk of the spicy paté on it. “Eat,” she commanded.

The strong aroma reached his nose and made his mouth water and his stomach rebel. “I will be sick,” he said.

“It doesn’t matter. Eat.”

William did as she commanded, glad to have someone make a decision for him. She watched him, saying nothing, as William had watched and waited and said nothing, a witness and a beast of burden to the Young King’s grief and Marguerite’s suffering. The robust flavours of the food awakened his appetite and after the first mouthful, his nausea was subjugated by ravenous hunger, as if he had been starved of life itself and now felt it returning in the tastes and textures exploding on his tongue. He forced himself to eat slowly. Clara replaced the fortified wine with an ordinary jug of Gascony and brought a platter of sweet dried dates and figs to the low bench they were using as a table. Gradually the colours of the world returned and came into sharper focus. He became aware of Clara’s quiet stare and the fact that he was wearing more comfortable clothes than his formal court attire, although how he came to be doing so, he could not remember.