The Greatest Knight (27 page)

“Marshal, stay,” Henry said as William made to leave the room and seek his own pallet.

William hesitated, turned, and retraced his steps. Henry looked up at him, glassy-eyed. “Stay with me until I sleep,” he said. “I trust no one else.”

A pang arrowed through William at the words. What a poisoned chalice trust was, he thought, both for those who poured the wine and those who drank it. Unfolding a stool that was leaning against Henry’s coffer, he sat down at the bedside.

Henry’s lids wavered as he struggled to lift them. “My father won’t let go. He’s an old man. He should give me a chance to prove myself. I could rule if he would let me.” His hand raised and flopped on the coverlet. “I am going to go on pilgrimage, Marshal,” he slurred, “all the way to Jerusalem…I mean it…” His voice tailed off to an incoherent mutter and he began to snore. William drew the coverlet over him as if tending to a child. In a way perhaps he was, for although Henry had grown older, he had not matured and all his life was lived in the superficial glitter of the moment.

“Leave the bed curtains,” he said, as the squire made to close them. “And let the candle burn on. I will sleep across the door tonight. Stay within call.”

The youth looked surprised, but bowed acknowledgement. Quietly, William unfastened his belt, removed his surcoat, and, dragging a pallet from a pile in the corner, lay across the doorway, his sword close to hand. He felt uneasy, in the same way that his horses would twitch and shiver on the eve of a bad storm. Something was gathering that he was powerless to prevent. He told himself that it was no more than the disquiet caused by their stripping of the shrine at Rocamadour, that it would pass, but the hair continued to tingle at his nape. It was almost a relief when a thunderstorm did roll overhead in the small hours of the morning, for he was able to attribute his edginess to that. He fell asleep as the rumbles rolled away into the distance, leaving behind the steady, soporific sound of falling rain.

It was still raining at dawn and Henry woke to a devilish headache and a roiling gut. He rose late and, with a green face, declined the fresh bread and honey that the others were devouring to break their fast. No one thought much of it then, for several other knights of the mesnie, including Lusignan, had over-imbibed the previous night and were similarly affected. William’s own appetite was subdued but still present and he ate the thick heel of a loaf, liberally dipped in the honey dish. Henry turned away, his throat working, and staggered to the slop bowl in his chamber. Moments later, they heard him retching. A few of the knights chuckled and exchanged knowing, sympathetic glances.

Henry chose to remain in Martel that day, playing desultory games of dice and chess, rubbing his forehead, shivering, dashing now and again for the chamberpot. William saw to the patrols and set the knights to practising their lance work. By late afternoon, when William returned to the chamber, Henry was hot with fever and his bowels had turned to liquid. The chuckles had ceased and the knowing glances were now worried.

“It’s the vengeance of Saint Amadour,” muttered Peter de Preaux, crossing himself.

“It’s no such thing,” William snapped, although that thought was to the fore of his own mind. “Everyone’s suffered from the belly gripes at one time or another. They’ll pass.”

They didn’t. By the next morning the vomiting had ceased, but Henry was still flushed with fever and didn’t want to eat; his motions were liquid and bloody; and he was suffering from bouts of severe abdominal pain. No one else had been afflicted and the men lounged uneasily in the hall below the main chamber, mending equipment, sharpening swords, talking in low whispers. There were several squabbles in the mercenary camp and a vicious knife fight that ended in one man losing an ear. Some of the hired men slipped away, but others who were owed more wages than they could afford to lose stayed close to the lodging and watched the doors and windows with hawklike intensity.

The following day there was no improvement and it became plain to everyone, including Henry, that he might die. “Send for my father,” he groaned to William. “Tell him that I am mortally sick. Tell him that it’s true—that I’m not crying wolf.” He was lying in his bed, the curtains drawn back to admit the daylight and the shutters wide to expel the fetid aromas from the chamber. His cheekbones blazed like red stars but otherwise his complexion was waxen, and there was terror in his eyes.

William nodded. “Wigain’s already written the letter,” he said. “All it wants is your seal. I have summoned the Bishop of Cahors also.”

Henry pointed to the casket where his seal was stored. “Take it and be swift about it. I do not know how much time I have. I—” He broke off with a cry as his body was racked by an agonising spasm. William caught and braced him and helped him to the commode. The effluence from the Young King’s bowels was pure red, and William could feel the heat of his body burning through the nightshirt.

When it was over, William carried him back to the bed and directed the squires to wipe Henry down with cool cloths. Henry gasped and threw his head back on the bolster, his hair sweat-soaked and plastered to his skull. “Make haste to my father.” He seized William’s wrist in a febrile grip. “And bring my chaplain to me. I must vouchsafe my soul.”

“Sire.” William rose and Henry reluctantly released his grip, leaving pale imprints on William’s tanned wrists.

“You were right,” Henry whispered. “I shouldn’t have robbed Saint Amadour’s shrine.”

William wordlessly shook his head and wondered when the rest of them would be struck down, for although the pillage had been Henry’s decision, they were all guilty.

He saw the message sealed and handed it back to Wigain. “Take the grey courser, it’s the swiftest,” he said.

Wigain looked down at the packet in his hands. “Is he going to die?”

“That is in the hands of God,” William replied and as he spoke the words thought that he already knew the answer. He gave Wigain a push. “Make haste. Lord Henry desires to see his father…”

…
before it is too late
. The words hung unspoken between them like an invisible wraith. Wigain gave a swift nod and ran towards the stables, light as a youth on his feet. William watched him, then trod as heavily as a man with lead boots back into the lodging house.

***

In the grey light of dawn, William was pacing the yard of the house, breathing for a moment air untainted by the stenches of the sick room. Henry had barely slept and the gripes had been unremitting in their severity. Yesterday’s glimmer of hope had waned with the moon and not risen with the sun. That Henry was still lucid, despite all, and still had the strength for speech, were testaments to will power and the endurance of a young and well-nourished body, although now he resembled a cadaver, gaunt and sucked dry. They were going to lose him and William was numb.

“Rider!” de Lusignan shouted from the upstairs window where he was keeping watch at Henry’s bedside.

William hastened to the gate as Wigain galloped in on a fresh horse, presumably one of King Henry’s. He had pushed it hard, for even in the cool dawn air it was sweating, its flanks blowing like bellows and its nostrils flaring red. Wigain flung down from the saddle, panting as if he had run with the horse.

“He’s not coming,” Wigain gasped. “His advisers told him it was folly and he agreed with them. I tried to tell him how sick our lord was, but he wouldn’t risk it being another ruse…He said that one hole in his cloak and two dead heralds were enough and he would rather pray for his son from a distance.” Delving in his tunic, Wigain produced a ring threaded on a leather cord. “All he’s done is to send him this and say that he forgives him his lies and perfidies. I had to sweat blood even to get him to concede that much.” He placed a sapphire ring in William’s hand.

William closed his fingers over it and felt the solid pressure of the jewel pressing against his palm. But there wasn’t enough of that healing night-blue cold to quench Henry’s fever.

“Is he worse?” Wigain asked, as if reading William’s thoughts.

William hesitated, then nodded. “He is dying,” he said. “I need not tell you to keep it to yourself for the moment. Soon there will come a time when all will have to know, but not yet.”

“Not a word.” Wigain crossed himself. “God give him peace,” he said, his dark eyes bereft of their usual merriment.

“Amen.” William crossed himself too, thinking it was more likely that God was punishing Henry by giving him a foretaste of hell. With dragging feet he returned to the Young King’s chamber. The room was as crowded as a market place for as well as the knights of the mesnie, the Bishop of Cahors was here with all his retinue and also the Prior of Vigeois.

With soft tread William approached the bed. Henry was propped up against a mass of bolsters and pillows, and looked three times his age: a wizened old man clinging to the threads of life as one by one they were cut from under his clawing fingers. The congregation surrounding the bed parted to make way for William and he gestured people to move back. “Let him breathe,” he said curtly.

A choking laugh emerged from the cadaver on the bed. “While I still can, eh?”

“Sire.” William knelt on one knee. The sight of Henry’s febrile, dying weakness filled him with pity, compassion, and fear and he had to struggle to keep his expression neutral.

Henry rolled his gaze towards William and licked his fever-cracked lips. “The news must be bad,” he croaked. “You always look like that when it is…as if your mind’s as blank as your face.”

William grimaced. “Is it that obvious?”

“Plain as death…” Henry gave a painful swallow but turned his head from the cup that William was swift to offer him. “Runs straight through…just wet my lips.”

William did as Henry asked, then drew up a stool to the bedside. “Your father sends this ring to comfort you and says that he will come as soon as he has received the surrender of Limoges.”

Henry fixed his lustreless gaze on the ring William had produced as if he did not know what it was. “He’s not coming?” His voice rose and quavered. The anguish in it squeezed William’s heart. Silently he shook his head.

Henry stared towards the gathering of knights and clerics who had drawn off a little, but were still close enough to hear and bear witness. “He cannot come to my deathbed. Even now, he’d rather keep his castles than his sons…” His voice was a whisper in his desiccated throat, but he still had sufficient strength to hurl the ring through the gap in the bed curtains. It struck a coffer, bounced off, and landed in the floor rushes, midnight stone shining as if starlit. Henry turned his face to the wall.

William went to pick up the ring, his swift glance warning off the other men. Returning to the bed, he laid his hand to Henry’s sweat-soaked shoulder and turned him, then gently took Henry’s right hand in his and pushed the ring on to his lord’s middle finger. “Sire, you and your father have often quarrelled, but he loves you.”

“He doesn’t love me,” Henry muttered, but his left hand covered his right and he rubbed his thumb over the cold stone.

“Only as much as you do not love him, sire,” William replied, “and I know how deep your affection for him runs.” An affection that on Henry’s part had almost starved for want of attention; fed only on an empty diet of money and vague promises, it had mutated into a creature determined to lash out and inflict harm in its efforts to be noticed. That even on his deathbed he had failed must be the ultimate desolation.

William leaned over the Young King. “It does not matter that your father has not come,” he murmured for Henry’s ears alone. “You are a king, and if this is to be your final journey, then you must embark on it with dignity and greatness. Make of your leaving such a show that men will pass it down the ages for their sons and grandsons to know. That will be your memorial.”

Henry’s body quivered with the heat of his fever-tainted blood. Continuing to rub the ring, he gave William a pain-glazed stare. “You are right,” he said. “I will show my father the stuff that kings are made of, and when he hears the end I made, he will shred his clothes in grief and my death will be a torment to him for the rest of his days. I will forgive him, because I have to, but he will never forgive himself.”

William felt sick at the reply. Even now Henry was scheming vengeance on his father. He feared desperately for the Young King’s soul and felt a deep sense of failure. His task had been to mentor Henry, to imbue him with the honour and chivalry that would complement the pragmatic lessons of kingship. It should have been glorious, but instead it had come to this. Squalor and death and poisoned emotions.

***

Henry turned his attention towards preparing himself for death, arranging the rituals with all the care he had once reserved for the tourney and the court. Instead of layering himself in fine garments, cedar-scented from the clothing chests, he gave his clothes to his servants and retainers, reserving only a linen nightshirt for himself. He gave his jewels away too, except for the sapphire ring from his father, which William was entrusted to deliver to him on Henry’s death. He confessed and repented of his sins to the Bishop of Cahors, and then repeated that confession before all the knights of his mesnie. He even seemed to rally for a time as his mind was drawn beyond the suffering of his body by the tragic drama of the rituals being enacted. But the energy expended took its toll on him and he collapsed against the bolsters, struggling for breath.

“Not yet,” he gasped, his chest working for air and his mouth opening and closing like a distressed fish. “Make me a bed of ashes on the floor and set a rope around my neck. I would die a true penitent.”