Under Henry’s instructions boards were strapped to the sides of Guillaume’s head to stop it moving. Carrying him on a litter, they reached Flint before nightfall. It was only when they had arrived at this meagre civilisation and could boil water in a requisitioned tavern that the King allowed his brother’s helmet to be removed. Guillaume moaned but said nothing as knights pulled gingerly at the metal. When it was off they stepped back, grimacing. A surgeon was already busy with hot water and herbs. Henry turned away, into the arms of Strongbow. ‘Blind. They’ve blinded him,’ he sobbed into the Earl’s neck. After a few moments he collected himself. ‘Bring the chief captive,’ he ordered.
A handsome young man, his wrists tied behind him, was shoved forward. ‘Who are you?’ Henry demanded.
The prisoner jerked his chin up, his lips closed tight. He was so intent on refusing to give his enemy the satisfaction of an answer he did not see Henry snatch a dagger from his belt. One thrust. A yell. Gasps from the assembled men.
The eyeball lay on the dust of the tavern floor.
The young man fell to his hands and knees, banging his forehead against the floor, vainly trying to push the eye back into his face.
‘Stand him up,’ Henry said. His expression was impassive. ‘Who are you?’ he repeated. The young man remained mute. ‘I did that swiftly,’ the King continued. ‘It surprised you but it didn’t really hurt. Tell me who you are or the other one comes out slowly.’ He was not even sure the man understood English. He was certain he understood the tone of voice.
‘I’m Arianwyn.’
‘Son of?’
‘Son of Prince Owain, English dog.’
‘I’m not a dog,’ Henry replied icily. ‘I fuck dogs. Then I eat them.’ He walked behind Owain’s son.
‘Maybe I’ll fuck you. Before I have you roasted on a spit.’
He watched the princeling swallow.
‘I have another question. What was that scream we heard coming from Ewloe Castle? I heard it. My brother heard it. It distracted him.’
The Welshman swallowed again. Henry walked in front of Arianwyn, to his right, where he still had an eye. He ran his thumb over the edge of his dagger. ‘It sounded like a woman’s voice.’ Henry turned to a knight. ‘Release his wrists,’ he said. ‘He wants to feel his face.’
Owain’s son dropped his head into his hands.
‘Don’t do that,’ Henry said. ‘Stand upright. You’ll bleed less.’
The man obeyed him.
‘Who screamed and why?’ Henry believed he knew the answer.
The prisoner still refused to speak. Henry stepped towards him, bringing the dagger close to his face. ‘I’ll make many small cuts on the your eyeball. When I do, you’ll beg to be allowed to tell me.’
‘That was my cousin.’
‘Alaw, was it?’
Arianwyn gave a small, stiff nod.
‘You tricked her into leaving her father Cadwaladr, then seized her. You intended to use her as a hostage on account of my brother’s love for her?’
A twitch of the prisoner’s mouth showed his guess was accurate.
‘Why then did your father murder her by flinging her from the castle into a ravine?’
‘She played the harp!’ Arianwayn burst out. ‘The castle lookouts saw your army and she played the harp to warn your brother we were in the woods.’
Henry inhaled deeply. ‘As I thought,’ he muttered. ‘One dead princess. Two men without eyes …’
Arianwyn also drew a deep breath but his turned into a sob. He began shaking uncontrollably. Henry jerked his head to the knights. ‘Take him to the surgeon. Give him a pallet to lie on. Soon the pain will start.’
The royal standard bearer, Henry of Essex, had galloped from the battle and arrived at Flint hours before the army. He had been hiding from the King. When at last he dared show himself, his lord said nothing, but his eyes emanated such violent fury Essex fell in a faint.
‘Don’t revive him,’ Henry said.
Henry lay all night beside Guillaume, babbling to himself. ‘The fairest flower of our family. A knight of perfect valour and humility. Eyeless. Unable to shoot an arrow. Probably unable to use a sword. Perhaps he’ll die as Papa did, from poisoned blood. My fault. All my fault. I underestimated my enemy.’
Guillaume’s face was as still as marble. A bandage, discolouring from the poultice it held in place, wrapped his head from under his left ear, across his cheek, over the ruined eye, across his black hair.
Lying on the floor next to him, the Earl of Pembroke murmured, ‘Ssh, Henry. Your brother may yet return to strength.
He may or may not be able to fight, but he has many talents.’
Guillaume had not spoken since he’d cried out that they were ambushed. Henry could not bring himself to ask the surgeon if the sword had entered his brain; would he be an imbecile? Paralytic? He decided, If that’s what’s happened, I myself must end his life. What a fool I am! Why didn’t I ask The Guardian before going to war? But I know why. I didn’t want to hear a warning of disaster. His feverish mind cooled as he contemplated the otherworldly presence. ‘Saint George, please guide me,’ he prayed.
The answer horrified him. ‘Your navy is almost destroyed. Only with my help can you extract yourself with honour.’
In the morning the naval catastrophe was revealed. Ships slid into harbour with tales of attack in the pit of night. All but the watchmen were asleep when silently, from a black sea, men leapt aboard to cut throats, set fire to masts, stays, hulls and disappeared again like spirits. Prince Cadwaladr had escaped from drowning by clinging to a half-burnt spar.
‘What do I do?’ Henry asked the Guardian.
‘Cut down Owain’s trees. He worships their spirits. Cut them down. Day after day, cut them down. He’ll sue for peace.’
The forest rang with the sound of axe blows and creaking timber followed by the thunder of a falling tree. Henry tried to imagine Owain’s state of mind as his gods were destroyed. Surely he’ll venture out to try to stop us. He placed a protective ring of his best archers around the men wielding axes and at twilight sent a couple of scouts up the hillside to the castle. They returned in a quiver of excitement. ‘None but the ladies are there!’
That night the scouts led a group of soldiers to a weak spot in the castle wall. It was only half stone, the rest encircled with a wooden palisade. Henry’s orders were: ‘Gag and tie them all. Unless they attack you with weapons, offer them no violence. Bring them down the hillside before dawn.’
There were fifteen women. After sunrise Henry examined them, noting their clothes, their hands and jewels. A number were beautiful. He judged eight were Owain’s wives or daughters. The rest were servants. ‘They’re all to be treated with courtesy,’ he ordered. ‘I’ll castrate any man who violates them.’ As a precaution against escape he had the women put in irons.
A fortnight after the disaster of Ewloe Wood a whole mountainside had been destroyed and English horses were dragging tree trunks down to the river. ‘It’s fine timber. We can take it back to England to rebuild our ships,’ Henry said. His tent was only twenty yards from the shore where what was left of his navy rode at anchor.
Guillaume’s warbler had not left his shoulder. It sang to him most of the day, sometimes taking flight to catch an insect that it tried to poke between his lips. He had yet to speak but had moved his mouth as if thirsty. When water was dribbled through a straw, he swallowed. After two days without food he ate pottage, fed to him on a spoon, his head propped in the King’s lap.
‘Catch a nanny goat,’ Henry said. ‘There must be a goat somewhere.’
A goat with a kid at heel was found. They ate the kid. Every hour the nanny’s milk was squeezed into a bowl and spooned into Guillaume’s mouth. His inner organs functioned and twice a day, while he remained unconscious, men carried him to a warm bath to wash soil away. There was still no colour in his face.
Next morning Prince Owain sent an emissary.
The King received him while seated on the fresh-cut stump of a mighty birch. Guillaume lay on the ground beside him, well covered against cold. Around them the forest groaned with falling trees. As the emissary stood before the King, Henry played with his dagger, ignoring him. The man continued to stand until he realised he must abase himself. Henry waited until he was prostrate at his feet before he deigned to notice him. He’d seen a slight movement in the thick of the woods through which his men were clearing a path: Owain, he guessed. With hostages. Beside Owain’s son, some other relatives and the royal women, his army had captured thirty Welshmen. But England’s losses were higher – thirty knights killed, seventy wounded, some of whom would die, an unknown number of men captured. For the first time in his reign Henry was losing a war. The outcome depended on sang froid. He could not understand a word the emissary said. I should have brought Richard, he thought, mentally cursing Becket. At length he motioned for Arianwyn.
His bandage was identical to Guillaume’s, but with the help of a soldier he could walk slowly. ‘My father offers the King of the English a truce,’ he translated for the emissary.
‘That does not satisfy me,’ Henry said. ‘I have another three hundred men armed and ready to join me. I shall cut down and burn all your father’s forests. Not one tree will be left.’
When this was translated the emissary scrambled to his feet and backed away, rushing to a part of the forest as yet unfelled. After a while he reappeared. ‘Prince Owain offers peace in return for his son, his wives and daughters.’
‘The King of England demands homage!’ Henry bellowed. ‘He demands Owain return all English hostages. He demands Owain reinstate his brother, Cadwaladr, to his rightful lands. For the murder of Cadwaladr’s daughter he demands Owain give as hostage five of his own sons.’
A few minutes later Owain emerged from the trees. He was tall, thick-bearded, dirty and ferocious. Henry fixed him with a carnivorous stare until the other man dropped his gaze. He jerked his index finger, pointing to the ground. Prince Owain knelt. He repeated the vow of homage that Arianwyn translated. Still seated, Henry gestured that the English hostages and the Welsh sons should come forward. The captives shuffled out from among the trees, their ankles roped. The Welshmen walked out. All knelt.
Henry suspected Owain may have picked any young men to pass off as his own. ‘Are any of these your brothers?’ he asked. Arianwyn went immediately to the five males whose legs were free and placed his hand on each of their heads. There was some family resemblance. ‘Tie them up,’ Henry ordered. He glanced at Arianwyn and smiled. ‘You may tell your father the King of England admires your courage. You fought with honour. You have behaved with dignity. You’re free to go. May God bless you.’
He hastened unsteadily to his sire. Owain grunted but did not embrace him. Vermin, Henry thought. ‘My father asks that his wives and daughters be freed,’ Arianwyn called. Henry had their irons struck off. The women rushed, shrieking, to their prince. Owain scowled as he questioned each of them. They shook their heads vigorously and after some minutes turned to smile at their captors.
‘He assumed we raped them,’ Henry muttered to Strongbow. ‘I think he’s now convinced we did not.’
Strongbow said, ‘What about the princess? She must have a Christian burial.’
‘We demand the return of the body of Princess Alaw,’ Henry called to Owain. As Arianwyn translated Henry watched his father’s lips curl in a sneer.
‘When he captured her he didn’t hold back, although she was his own niece,’ Henry muttered.
Strongbow too had been observing closely. He nodded. ‘How many of his sons joined him, I wonder?’
Henry looked at the faces of the young men Owain had given as hostages. All but the youngest, a boy of about nine, had the same, smug sneer of men who’ve despoiled the treasure of a rival. ‘Those four,’ Henry said. ‘Do you have vassals willing?’
Strongbow gave his slow, crooked smiled. ‘Henry,’ he drawled, ‘After that ambush we’ll have more volunteers than we can use. We’ll all enjoy the spectacle.’
‘Send the women away,’ Henry shouted at Owain. He turned to a knight. ‘Take the youngest son somewhere out of sight. Blindfold him.’ To Owain he shouted, ‘We do this in remembrance of Princess Alaw.’
Henry’s knights forced Owain to watch, jerking his chin up with the blade of a halberd when he tried to turn his face away. At first he was stalwart but when the third son’s turn came and the youth screamed in terror, he began to tremble.
‘Cry baby!’ men jeered.
‘Cowards get what they deserve,’ Henry roared at Owain. ‘Return the body of the Princess or tomorrow at dawn it’s the boy’s turn. For my whole army. Until he’s dead.’
That night the remains of Rippling Water were carried to Henry’s tent. Only slender fingers and silver-white hair identified the smashed bones and gobbets of flesh as hers. Henry had her wrapped in a green samite cloak. He draped across it Guillaume’s standard of gold leopards. Six knights carried her on their shoulders to her father.
The King said to Strongbow, ‘We garrison the castles of Rhuddlan and Basingwerk. I want Owain to understand I’m here to stay.’ Before he reached Chester, the prince of southern Wales, Rhys of Deheubarth, rode north to pay homage.
But still Guillaume remained unconscious. Before Henry’s eyes his brother was fading to a wraith. His cheeks hollowed, his powerful forearms showed the bones of his wrists. Henry decided his best chance of recovery was in Clifford Castle. He sent a post-rider to summon Richard from Winchester Palace in case he needed translation of the marcher tongues.
With no great distinction Sir Walter had fought in Ewloe Wood where he sustained a minor injury to one hand and a wrenched shoulder. He’d been a spectator at the punishment of Owain’s sons, leaping in the air for a better view, his face lit with savagery. Pity you didn’t fight with such vigour, Henry thought. By the time Guillaume was carried past the gatehouse the Cliffords had summoned every physician for a hundred miles; their infirmary was a treasure chamber of herbs and cordials.
As Henry rode across the drawbridge he saw the child Rosamund stretching her slender arms for him to pick her up. A knight hoisted her to the King. He sat her between his thighs, facing him. ‘Greetings, little queen.’ She kissed his lips and again he felt the strange intoxication of her turquoise eyes. ‘You must do something special,’ he whispered. He felt foolish, talking like this to a child. Rachel came sharply into his mind. Nobody could less resemble her dark, sunny beauty than this elf with a disconcertingly precocious manner.
‘Sire?’
‘My brother is deathly ill. He’s been blinded in one eye. You’re to help cure him.’
She wriggled. She wanted to be put down. Henry lowered her from his horse to the arms of the knight. She scampered into the castle where her mother was already overseeing Guillaume’s bedchamber, instructing the servants who were to care for him. He was laid in a large, well-aired chamber with south-facing windows that allowed sunlight for most of the day. It had three braziers for warmth at night. The warbler was staring at her, its head thrust forward, uttering small, angry clicking noises. ‘What to do with that wretched bird?’ the lady cried. ‘It’ll make a mess!’ She turned as her daughter ran into the chamber followed by the stride of the King.
She blushed deeply. ‘Sire, how little could we have expected to meet again in such unhappy circumstances!’
He gave her a long, silent look. At length he replied, ‘Yours is a house of healing, my Lady. I’m sure the love you and your daughter will give my brother will return him to life.’ He lifted her hand to his lips.
It took her a few moments before she could speak. ‘Will you deign to stay with us, Highness?’
‘I stay until my brother is alive again. Or until I must end his life.’
Margaret Clifford’s eyes flew open, but Rosamund, who had been following the conversation, if not the intentions of the adults, piped up, ‘He’ll live, Henry! The angel told me he’ll live.’
Her mother was about to rebuke her for interrupting the King.
‘What angel is that?’ he asked.
‘The one who talks to me.’
‘What does it look like?’
She was suddenly bashful. ‘I’m not allowed to say.’
‘My brother has been speechless, drifting in and out of consciousness for almost a month. Will the angel tell you when we’ll know if Guillaume is to live?’
Rosamund’s lids flickered. ‘On the fourth day,’ she
announced. ‘On the fourth day he’ll open his eyes. One eye, that is.’
‘And he’ll be …?’ Henry could not finish the sentence.
‘He’ll be perfect,’ the child said blithely. ‘Except he’ll only have one eye.’
Above her head, he and Margaret Clifford exchanged glances.
The moon was waxing huge, always a time for lovemaking. That evening he caressed the chatelaine with a tenderness he often pretended but rarely felt. ‘You’re sure the time is safe?’ he asked. She’d nodded. ‘As if my body knew you were about to arrive, my bleeding stopped this morning, in time for me to bathe.’ They were not obliged to use the bath chamber because her husband had taken to bed with noisy descriptions of his war wounds and imaginary ones of those he’d inflicted on the enemy.
Margaret Clifford’s tears wet the hair on Henry’s chest. ‘Did you confess to the Virgin, but no one else, as I told you?’
‘I did, my Lord.’
‘You don’t have to call me that, Margaret. I said before you can call me Henry.’
‘But you are my Lord. You’re the centre of my life. I think of you day and night. I pray for you.’
‘That’s very kind of you.’
He wanted to end her enchantment, but didn’t know how. His mind drifted back to Eleanor. He wanted Margaret to be as playful with him as his wife. When they were friends, Eleanor was frisky in bed, frolicsome, as full of amusements as his most expensive whores. She sometimes suggested the company of the women, whose quinnies she rubbed beneath her own. She also liked to wear one of the ‘implements’ that a family in Poitiers had fashioned for generations for the dukes and duchesses of Aquitaine. Eleanor had a collection in different sizes, each carefully wrapped in silk. ‘I showed one to Louis. He was so outraged he refused my bed for three months.’ She spoke gaily, while enlisting Henry’s help in strapping the implement between her legs. She knew the names of all the royal whores and all seemed to dote on her. As they entered the bedchamber they greeted her with sparkling eyes. She satisfies herself with them while I’m away, he thought. His reverie was broken by Margaret Clifford, who was weeping again from the realisation that his mind was elsewhere. ‘Sssh Margaret. I’ll make love to you all night,’ he whispered. ‘Tomorrow your legs will shake when you remember what we did together.’
Soon after dawn on the fourth day Rosamund came to Henry’s apartment and insisted she be allowed inside. She jumped onto the bed and snuggled against him.
‘Leave us,’ Henry ordered a house churl. ‘He’s alive?’
When he looked down into her little tear-stained face, he felt as if he’d been punched in the belly.
‘Something went wrong,’ she whispered.
‘He’s dead?’
She shook her head. ‘The angel says there’s a curse on him. He can’t return until the curse is removed.’
Henry turned away from her, so angry he wanted to choke her. He wanted to shout, ‘You gave me false hope! Hope has been my bread. My only sustenance. ’ He lay on his side with his back to her, gaining control of himself. He roiled in self-rebuke for believing the fantasies of a pixie with eyes that were not quite human. The father was a fraud. The mother was morbidly, senselessly emotional. He ground his teeth in fury.
‘Don’t do that,’ she said quietly.
‘What!’
‘Henry, don’t spoil your beautiful teeth with anger.’
I’ve lost my mind. I’m King, and a petite fille gives me orders. He stopped grinding his teeth, composed his features and turned to face her. ‘Would you care to explain, child, what the angel said about a curse on my brother?’
‘Not if you glare at me.’
‘Rosamund, speak to me truthfully or I’ll have you whipped.’
She ignored the threat. ‘The truth is your brother is not yet ready to return. He needs to ask forgiveness from a man he wronged.’
‘What man?’
‘I don’t know. But he’s dead. Your brother terrorised him. He’s now ashamed. So he refuses to return to his body until the man forgives him.’
Henry lay still. The Rumlar, he thought. Guillaume was heartsick after he returned from visiting the Rumlar in Paris. He wept for hours after the man killed himself and the cuckoo. ‘What if the man refuses to forgive him?’
Rosamund grinned as if he were dim-witted. ‘Nobody refuses forgiveness if it’s sincerely asked. Especially if they’re dead.’
‘Well, then …’
‘Dead people’s time is different from living people’s time.’
Henry’s temper began rising again. ‘By God’s feet, girl! Speak words that make sense. What are you trying to tell me? If you are trying to tell me something.’
‘I am telling you. You’re not listening properly,’ she replied.
‘So tell me again and I’ll listen carefully.’
Her eyelids fluttered. ‘About six months,’ she said.
‘What! He’ll be a skeleton in six months. And why should I believe you? You told me four days.’
‘The fourth day, I said.’ She shrugged. ‘Sometimes I make mistakes. Sometimes the angel tells me things that make sense to it, but not to me.’
‘I may as well cut his throat now.’
There was a long silence. Then Henry began to weep. He gathered the small, bony body to his chest and wept into white hair that smelled unwashed and faintly mousey. She embraced his neck with her thin arms. The import of his own words suddenly stuck Henry. Cut his throat. The Rumlar cut his throat. Perhaps it is I who must ask his forgiveness. I never gave the man a thought. I felt only rage against him and sorrow for myself. He stopped weeping and lifted Rosamund away from him. ‘I regret my anger with you. Now get out of bed and fetch me a churl. I need to make my toilette.’
‘Will you still marry me when I grow up?’
‘Of course I will.’ He pondered if he should put an end to his and Guillaume’s agony that very day.
Outside the bedchamber Lady Clifford grabbed Rosamund. ‘You’ve been an hour with His Highness! What have you been doing?’ Her face was red with anger.
‘I can’t remember. Just talking. He cried.’
‘His Highness cried! This is a scandal. Have you told him lies about his brother?’
‘I told the truth.’
Lady Clifford slapped Rosamund across the face. ‘You lie and lie and lie. I know you. You invent fantasies. Your father believes them. I don’t! I know you better, you little witch.’
The child and her mother glared at each other. In a clear, steady voice Rosamund said, ‘You’re in love with him. You don’t love Father anymore. You only love him. I heard the servants—’
Margaret Clifford picked up her daughter and carried her to an empty chamber. She slammed the door behind them and hit the girl all over her body so hard her hand ached. ‘I’ll have you shut in a nunnery, Rosamund. That will stop your wickedness.’ She left her daughter cowering beside a chair and locked the door behind her.
Rosamund’s nursemaid hovered in the corridor outside. ‘She’s to have neither food nor water until I tell you otherwise,’ the chatelaine said. ‘Where’s Sir Walter?’
‘Still recovering in bed, my Lady.’
Margaret Clifford walked purposefully towards the chamber where Guillaume hovered between life and death. The bird was perched on his shoulder, singing to him. It had shat on a red damask cushion, she noted with anger. She lifted one of his hands and examined the elegant fingers. It felt warm enough, but without life. ‘His nails need trimming,’ she said to an attendant. She scrutinised his beautiful, still face. ‘Our Lord, crucified,’ she whispered.
The attendant nodded. ‘When I fed him and gave him goat’s milk to drink, I thought …’
‘What!’
‘He tried to make a small movement. As if thanking me.’
Lady Clifford crossed herself.
Summer was at an end, but the weather was still hot during the long hours of daylight. Richard, exhausted from hard riding, arrived from Westminster before breakfast and closeted himself with the King.
Henry came to the hall late, excusing himself for keeping the company from eating their breakfast. He was barbered and bathed, dressed in a blue linen riding habit embroidered with gold lions. Richard followed him.
‘Highness, you come to breakfast dressed as if for a banquet. I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed in what …’ Margaret Clifford said.
‘It’s not for food that I dress formally, my Lady.’ His face was stony. ‘I go today to visit my uncle, Bishop Foliot.’
‘But you’ll return to us?’ Her voice was alarmed.
He nodded gloomily. What Richard had told him was almost incredible. The youth added it would be impolitic for him to accompany the monarch ‘since your uncle loathes me’.
‘I’m sure he does,’ Henry had agreed.
He and a small body of knights arrived at the episcopal palace at dinnertime. A post-rider had gone on ahead, so the Bishop was forewarned of Henry’s visit. ‘Don’t expect anything but rabbit food,’ the King warned his men. But Foliot, with the good manners of his rank, had prepared meat for them. The whole district knew Guillaume Plantagenet had been grievously wounded in an ambush and Foliot was sure the visit was connected to this unhappy circumstance. Seated side by side he and Henry were virtually silent while they ate. At the end of the meal the King said, ‘I want to ask you, Uncle, to become my confessor.’
‘You don’t have one?’
His nephew’s smile was ironic. ‘Of course, I have the Archdeacon of Canterbury.’
‘I suggest the Michael Chapel,’ the Bishop replied briskly. He nominated this sacred space because he sensed his kinsman would be more able to confess in front of the divine warrior. Beneath the gaze of the Archangel, Gilbert Foliot heard the King’s confession of rash military action and how, two years earlier, he had forced a man of great learning into a position in which he committed the worst of mortal sins. ‘Nothing more?’ his uncle prompted.
‘Lies. I’m often obliged to lie.’
‘The best of kings are forced to lie in performing the role to which God appoints them,’ Foliot answered. ‘Only in times of peace can a monarch hope to become a saint – and he does so thanks to the sins of his predecessors. You were reckless in your attack on Wales. Your punishment is heavy. The scholar himself chose suicide. You are absolved.’
‘And if I end my brother’s life tonight?’
The Bishop pondered before he replied. ‘I know a woman who uses herbs. Years ago a deacon pointed her out in a market where she barters medicines for flour and cloth. He said she treats the villagers for fevers, boils and toothache. I told him they should be seeking cure from our relics.’ He paused. ‘I considered having her arrested for witchcraft but because I myself was suffering toothache, I changed my mind.’ His cool expression flamed with excitement. ‘Henry, she stopped it! She removed the tooth. I felt no pain. I bled only one drop. I’ve never had toothache since. When I first visited her she told me all her medicines contain ingredients that to some men are poisons.’
‘When you first visited her?’ Richard had told Henry much more about Gilbert Foliot and the forest women, but he needed to hear it from the Bishop himself.
The prelate inhaled through fine-boned nostrils. He exhaled carefully. ‘I visit her monthly. As a penance.’
‘Dressed in your episcopal robes?’
‘Out of consideration for the possibility that evils minds could misconstrue my penance, I use non-clerical garb. I’ve seen her face clearly only once, the time when she treated my toothache.’ After his punishment, when Foliot opened his eyes, she’d be out of sight, he told his nephew. Often he wondered how old she was. He did not mention his craving was for a girl of twenty or that sometimes as he regained consciousness he thought he glimpsed a firm, naked buttock, or a small, high breast. He knew these images were the traces of the humiliation to which he had subjected himself before he pitched into oblivion, ‘mea culpa!’ fading on his lips. No matter how cold the weather, when he awoke he was always naked and she would be laughing at him.
The King’s eyes narrowed. Foliot thought, Men of Henry’s animal nature cannot imagine what anguish it is for those of us who wish to be pure to be trapped inside this dungeon of blood.
Suddenly his nephew spoke. ‘Gilbert my dear, we have nothing to lose it would seem by seeking out your hag. Forest people are wise from knowledge handed down through centuries.’ His eye glinted with amusement.
Foliot almost heard him thinking, Sly Dog! Fornicating with an outlaw woman when the moon is full.
The Bishop needed to grasp the doorframe as they exited the Michael Chapel. They had been together many hours. The golden afternoon disappeared and twilight covered the earth when they emerged. Henry’s expression was sober but his eyes were alive for the first time in weeks. The prelate seemed to have aged ten years. At the doorway a thought struck him with such force he was unable to pass beneath the lintel. He plucked the King’s sleeve. ‘The Lilith may refuse! No man can command her.’
‘You seem able to,’ Henry answered tersely. He glanced at the twilight sky where, in the east, a huge moon of red-gold was rising from behind some trees. ‘Bring her tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Show her this.’ He pulled a ruby from his index finger. ‘It will be hers if her medicinals work.’
That evening the royal party returned to Clifford Castle bathed in moonlight. ‘My brother is to be moved to the edge of the forest at dawn tomorrow morning,’ Henry told the Cliffords.
Sir Walter’s injuries now allowed him to leave his bed and he was waiting to greet the King. ‘Sire, may we ask why?’
‘No.’
Supper was silent and tense. Henry announced he needed to sleep early and left before the company had finished eating. He entered Guillaume’s chamber where he dismissed the servants. His brother was as lifeless as a stone. Outside the window a silver glow spread across the blackness of the sky.
Henry had rehearsed what he’d say to Guillaume as he and his companions rode back from the Bishop’s palace. But now he held the warm, motionless hand the speech he’d planned seemed pusillanimous. He lifted his brother against his chest and covered him with kisses. ‘I love you! I love you!’ was all he said. ‘I’m so ashamed. I’m the ram of the flock. To protect it the ram hides his ewes and lambs among rocks and in caves. He then goes out and fights the wolf himself. But I led my flock into the wolf’s mouth. And now you lie blinded and dying.’ After some moments he felt the strong, steady rhythm of Guillaume’s heart beating against his. He lowered him back to the bed and knelt beside it. ‘Forgive me,’ he murmured. ‘If we don’t meet again in this world, forgive me, brother.’