Again I glanced at Raife. His face remained impassive.
‘My lords, hear me out,’ said Hugh. ‘We have deduced all this from a number of careful observations, and I would like to lay them out before you. My lord king, this concerns your realm, and it concerns your highest magnates, so do not toss me that impatient glance again lest you want your realm to vanish entirely!’
For one moment I thought Edmond was going to thump his fist on the table and shout at the Templar master, perhaps even have him expelled. Edmond’s fist clenched, his face tightened and flushed, but he collected himself and gave Hugh the smallest, tightest nod possible.
‘My lords,’ said Hugh, ‘let us leave the matter of the diadem momentarily and discuss this plague. It began in the land of the Ghaznavids, where it tormented the people, and then spread rapidly into the Holy Lands. From there, as you all know, through the lands of Europe and then into this realm.
‘But this plague did not travel like other pestilences. It followed a narrow path, devastating towns and hamlets in a thin corridor that led from the Holy Lands, through the Byzantine empire, the Germanic lands, northern France, Normandy and then to England. Everyone outside of this slender path has been spared. What other plague has spread this way?’
No one answered him.
‘And once it entered England,’ Hugh continued. ‘What did it do? Again, that relatively narrow path across the southern and central parts of your realm, Edmond. As if it were following a scent. It travelled in a straight path.
‘Straight to Pengraic. Where it stopped.’
‘What do you intimate?’ said Raife. ‘That I have been harbouring some devilish —’
Hugh held up a hand. ‘If you please, a moment, my lord. Now the plague has reoccurred. How is it travelling? May I ask?’
‘It is travelling from Pengraic straight toward London,’ said Richard, Edmond’s son.
Hugh smiled, staring right at Raife. ‘Ah. It is travelling in a direct line from Pengraic right toward London.’
‘It is following the earl?’ Edmond said, his voice thick with disbelief.
‘I believe not,’ said Hugh. ‘I think, as does my Brother Fulke here, that it is following the earl’s wife, the Lady Maeb.’
Raife sprang to his feet, thumping a fist on the table as he did so. ‘What new accusation is this cast at my wife? Eh? You asked her here under false pretences, monk!’
Hugh spread his hands. ‘Hear me out. None of this made sense to us, until I arrived in England recently and Brother Fulke here told me that final piece of information which did make sense of everything.
‘A few months before the pestilence and the Devil’s imp’s arrival in the Holy Lands, one of the Order’s sergeants, Godfrey Langtofte, left both the Order and the Holy Lands and returned to his native country.’
I felt cold.
Hugh gave a slight shrug. ‘Sometimes we lose people back to the sinful life. It happens. At the time we thought nothing of it, and I had continued to think nothing of it until I arrived here in London and Brother Fulke informed me of both the path of the plague here in England, and of the identity of the Earl of Pengraic’s new wife.’
He paused, and I looked at the table top, unable to look at him or anyone else about the table.
‘The Lady Maeb,’ Hugh said. ‘Godfrey’s daughter.’
I closed my eyes momentarily at the sudden buzz of murmuring.
‘What are you saying?’ Edmond hissed through the low voices.
‘We think now that someone found the Devil’s diadem within the crypt of the Temple of Solomon, and stole it, fixated by its beauty. We believe that person to be Godfrey Langtofte — he is the only member of our Order in Jerusalem at the appropriate time, who had access to the Temple, and whom we cannot account for. That he fled Jerusalem with little reason given to us is damning. As is the fact the plague trails at Langtofte’s daughter’s heels, from one side of this realm to the other, town by town as she rides through, and then back again. It does not deviate.
‘Lady Maeb’s father stole the Devil’s diadem from the crypt within the Temple at Jerusalem,’ Hugh said again, his voice as calm as if he discussed the clouds in the sky, ‘then brought it to England, where he gave it to his daughter Maeb before he died. As the pestilence follows her every move, then Lady Maeb must have the diadem.’
‘I have not!’ I said, looking to Raife for support.
He was gazing at me with an unfathomable look. Sweet Jesu! Did he believe this?
‘I do not have any diadem,’ I said as forcefully as I could.
‘This is truly some fantastical tale,’ Edmond said slowly, but even he was regarding me speculatively.
I felt increasingly ill with fear. Was this why the imps had been in our house at Cornhill? But I did not have any diadem! I did not! I closed my eyes briefly, praying that Raife did not mention the imps.
‘Did your father give you anything before he died?’ Edmond said.
‘How many times must I say this?’ I said. ‘My father gave me nothing but a few rags to wear and the name of his house. That is all. Sweet Jesu! He left everything else in his will to the Templars! You have it, Master Hugh! You must have! Perhaps buried in the crypt at your round church on Holbournestrate. Has your Brother Fulke neglected to mention it to you?’
‘We have searched your father’s old estate carefully,’ Fulke d’Ecouis said. ‘There is nothing there.’
‘Then I give you full permission to search my chests and chambers, Brother Fulke. You may search my body, too, lest you think I secrete the diadem in this belly.’ I struck my belly with my hand.
‘You may have hidden it anywhere,’ d’Ecouis said. ‘You’ve had long enough.’
‘I do not have the damned thing!’ I cried, and the note of hysteria in my voice finally brought Raife to my support.
‘My wife has no diadem,’ he said. ‘I know her belongings as well as any. She does not harbour the diadem. If what you say is true then my wife must be carrying it about, hither and thither, but yet I have not seen it, nor have, I wager, any of her attending women. Believe me, if she was secreting the Devil’s diadem then I think I would know it.’
‘I have nothing to hide,’ I said, still emotional and frightened. ‘Search what you will. You have my entire permission. Ask my women! Search! I dare you to find this thing!’
I was so angry that I found myself weeping, and Raife put a hand on my shoulder.
‘If the plague is, as you suggest, coming now to London,’ he said to the Templars, ‘then you must believe that the diadem is here, now, in London. Then come search my house, I beg you, and let this matter rest.’ He paused, then thumped the table with his fist. ‘Lord God above, I am heartily sick of these attacks on my wife! How often must she prove herself innocent to you?’
‘I stand with my lord of Pengraic on this issue,’ said Edmond. His voice was calm, but very authoritative. ‘The countess has already been venomously attacked and proven by God and before all to be innocent. This is a truly fantastical tale you weave, Master Hugh, and on what? Mere supposition?’
‘How many other people have been through Jerusalem and then back in England in the past few years?’ Raife said. ‘If the diadem is here — if it exists at all — then anyone might have brought it. Thousands of pilgrims and crusaders have been to and fro this realm and Jerusalem in the past years. Why fixate so on my wife?’
‘Because, unusually for a mere sergeant, her father had access to the crypt before he vanished from our Order so precipitously,’ said Hugh. ‘We kept stores of gold there, which he accounted for.
‘Because the plague clearly follows your wife’s steps. And because of your wife’s sheer damned luck over the past year — she survived the plague, and rose from obscurity to sit at the king’s right hand as your wife. I find that … fascinating.’
‘My horse, Dulcette, might be harbouring the diadem,’ I said. ‘The plague could as easily have been following her as me.’
‘Think
not to use wit to —’ Hugh began.
‘Enough!’ Edmond said, raising both hands. ‘I have heard enough of this! It is a fine tale, master, but I cannot yet believe it. I have a city half burned and de-populated, a people terrified by the renewed ravages of the plague, and here you sit prating of strange jewels and devilish pestilences and accusing one of my court of harbouring a crown so vile that it surely must have stained her hands black with venom had she ever handled it. Yet I see no stain, Master Hugh, not on her hands nor on her character.’
He threw his hands up in the air. ‘What will the Countess of Pengraic be accused of next? Crucifying Christ himself ?
‘Enough, I say. Now all I want to hear from this table are practical measures by which we can aid those affected by fire and drowning, as those by plague who are either in its grip or in its path. Speak, if you will.’
‘Raife, look. This is all my father ever gave me.’
We were back in our privy chamber in the Cornhill house. Soon my ladies would be with me to aid me pack for our removal into the chambers in the Tower. But for now, Raife had wanted to see what precisely I had from my father.
Raife held the old, ragged folded cloth in his hands, fingered it to make sure it was not concealing a diadem, then he shook it out and looked at it.
‘It displays a somewhat poorly worked depiction of the Last Supper,’ I said.
He nodded, laying it back in the chest from whence I had taken it. ‘It is nothing but tapestry,’ he said. ‘There is nothing else?’
‘No, he gave me nothing else. Most of what I brought with me from my childhood home have been passed on. Two kirtles and several chemises and ribbons. The ribbons I still have, there,’ I pointed to where they lay atop my new chemises, ‘and the kirtles and chemises I gave to two good wives in Crickhoel before we came to Edmond’s court. After your generosity, I had no further need of them.’
‘You are sure your father gave you nothing else?’
‘I am certain!’
Raife sighed and sat down. ‘What are those Templars on about?’
‘I do not know why they fixate on my father.’
‘He brought nothing back with him from the Holy Lands?’
‘Raife, how am I to know? He might have brought Christ’s crown of thorns with him for all I know, and buried it somewhere along the way. I was not his keeper. I do not know where he went or what he brought here or there! All I know is that I do not have this diadem and I saw no evidence of it in my father’s possession in those few months at Witenie before he died. He made no mention of any such thing.’
‘And the Templars have your father’s lands and manor at Witenie.’
‘Yes.’
‘Perhaps I should ride there …’
‘And search for this piece of Templar fabrication? You cannot believe this story!’
He gave me a long, considering look, then a small smile. ‘Of course not. Now, send for your women that they may pack your finery, and we shall be off to enjoy Edmond’s hospitality once more.’
As our house was to be prepared to take in victims of the plague, should it arrive in London, we moved much of our household into the apartments Edmond gave us at the Tower. There Isouda, Ella and Gytha and I unpacked and tried to make our chambers as homely as possible. I felt safer here, not so much from the plague that approached, but from the Templars.
I wondered if Henry was behind their accusations. It seemed that those who plotted against me, having failed to prove me the murderess in God’s eyes, had now moved to making me the consort of the Devil — or at least of his diadem.
I might have laughed away their accusations, their fanciful tale, but for one thing.
Those imps who seemed to follow me. Had not one of them been searching among my linens? Had not one of them followed me when I’d got lost within Edmond’s palace at Oxeneford? God’s truth, one had even secreted itself under the ice, no doubt to see if I had hidden the diadem under my skirts!
Why did they believe this of me? I had no diadem!
I did not speak to Raife of these doubts. He had been late in my defence when the Templars had related this tale in Edmond’s council, and I think he had truly been considering riding to Witenie to find this mythical diadem himself. I had also never mentioned the imp under the ice to him, so could hardly bring this matter up now.
So I sat, and worried, and wondered what fate, or God, or even the Devil, had in store for me.
Chapter Ten
I tried to put the Templars and their accusations behind me. The days passed. I kept mostly to our chambers within the Tower complex. My child was growing heavier, I needed to rest more and, as Edmond was so concerned with London, there was no court to attend. I saw little of Raife, as he spent most of the days out in London, helping where he could.
When I did see him he made no mention of what had been said in the council chamber. Beforehand, he had been so adamant that he would defend me from any more accusations, but now one had been made he was strangely silent.
We did not speak of it, but from time to time I found him looking at me speculatively.
No one else spoke to me of this diadem, either. I do not know if de Lacy had told his wife, but I had not seen Alianor since leaving her hall. She had returned north to her husband’s estates in Blachburnscire while her husband Robert rode with the Queen’s funeral procession. I missed her company.
I grew bored. My women and I sewed garments for the baby, and we made what arrangements we could for my confinement within the Tower, as it seemed I would give birth there, but I did little else save stroll about inner and outer bailies, and sometimes, with the gentle Ghent at my side, along the moat outside the outer curtain wall.
One morning I rose very early, well before dawn. I had spent another uncomfortable night — alone, as it happened, as Raife had sent word to say he was staying overnight in the Cornhill house. Uncomfortable, cramped and achy, I decided to visit Saint John’s chapel to pray.
Ella came with me. She had been lying in bed, too cold to sleep, and was happy to accompany me (Raife had forbidden me to wander about beyond our chambers alone in the dark). We wrapped ourselves warmly and set out across the inner bailey.
The Tower was very quiet. Guards on the staircase into the lesser hall on the first floor allowed us entry unchallenged (both of us were well known about the Tower now). The hall was comfortably warmer than outside, all its fireplaces roaring, stoked by the boys set by each one to maintain them overnight. People lay huddled about wrapped in mantles, cloaks and covers. A few dogs nosed around looking for scraps.
‘You stay by the fires here, Ella,’ I murmured as we walked through the hall. ‘I would like to pray by myself. I cannot have you loitering to your death in this cold in the gallery outside the chapel.’
‘Are you sure my lady?’
‘Certain, Ella. Look. There is a stool by that fire. Take it now, and I shall know where to find you on my return. I shall not be long.’
Ella nodded, grateful for the command, and she left me for her place by the fire. I hugged my mantle closer, walking through to the north-east tower stairs and then up to the southern gallery and into the chapel.
It was freezing in the chapel, and I thought I would not spend long at my prayers at all; the walk was what I had wanted more than anything else. I walked toward a statue of the Virgin Mary where I thought I would kneel and ask for her intervention during my confinement that both I and the child might survive.
I stepped about a pillar — then gasped and took a step back in shock. ‘My lady, I did not mean to startle you.’
Edmond was sitting on the floor of the chapel, his back against the pillar. I did not know if he was drunk, or ill, or in despair, for I had never seen his face look so terrible, or his posture so slumped.
I knelt down, ungainly in my pregnancy. ‘My lord? Are you ill? Should I summon —’
He waved his hand. ‘Not ill. Raddled with guilt.’
‘My lord? What is wrong?’
He let out a deep breath. ‘News came during the night. Adelaide is dead.’
My mind was so fogged it took me several heartbeats to remember who Adelaide was.
‘Your queen is gone? God rest her soul, sir. May the saints watch over her.’
Another wave of that hand. ‘May the saints watch over her? I should have been the one watching over her, Maeb. Instead I let her slip further and further from my mind. I did not realise how ill she was … I never thought.’
‘I had heard she miscarried a few months ago.’
‘Aye, and she continued to bleed from that miscarry until it killed her, and yet none thought to tell me. Yet neither did I think to enquire. I sent messengers occasionally to spout hackneyed words regarding her welfare, but I have not truly thought of her in months. Is that the fate of all wives, Maeb? Is this what husbands do to you all? Do we all swagger our way through the concerns of the wider world and thus leave you to die alone and forgot in our thoughts?’
I did not know what to say. I thought banal words of reassurance that he had not treated Adelaide badly would be met with irritation, and so I did not speak them.
‘Many times, my lord, yes,’ I said softly.
Tears had formed in his eyes, and he wiped them away with one hand. ‘I will show her the respect in death I should have done in life,’ he said. ‘Adelaide shall be buried in Hereford Cathedral whose building she championed throughout her life; she told me once she wished to rest there. But that deed shall not atone for my neglect during our marriage. Oh God, Maeb, what shall I do?’
It distressed me to see him so melancholy. ‘You could rise from this cold floor, my lord king. That would be a start. I am near-encased in ice sitting here with you.’
‘Jesu God!’ he said, getting to his feet and holding out his hands to assist me to rise. ‘Here I am wallowing in my own self-reproach and letting you sit amid this frozen lake of a floor! What more do I need to prove my neglect of those about me?’
Even with his support I struggled to get to my feet, and both of us were smiling at my ungainliness by the time I stood before him.