19
The royal castle at Tours was an imposing stronghold. It was stone-built, its walls grafted into the rock at the very edge of the river, which here flowed deep and wide to make a forbidding natural boundary between the kingdoms of Orleans and Paris. The castle was encircled by a moat, the water being let in by sluices from the river. The main gate was approached by a wooden bridge only wide enough for two horsemen riding abreast.
But once inside, the rather threatening approach could be forgotten. Alice and her father were housed in pleasant chambers facing south, and the furnishings were comfortable, even, in Alice’s room, pretty. The sun was warm on the stone of the window-sill, and the place was full of light. Swallows, here already from the south, skimmed and twittered outside in the bright air.
From this height the little town, clustered beyond the moat, looked clean and peaceful and toylike, with its red clay roofs and its melon-patches and flowering trees crowding right up to the walls of the great basilica which had been built a hundred years or so ago to shelter the shrine of the saint. It seemed a peaceful scene, no hint of threats to come, no sense that this was a border town of a suddenly weakened kingdom. The gates in the town walls were open, and people, beasts, carts bound for market, tiny in the distance, were moving through them.
But Alice, sitting by the window as Mariamne brushed out her hair, thought without regret that what should have been a pleasant and comfortable pilgrimage must be cut short. A day or two of rest, and her father’s devotions paid, and they would begin the long journey home. They had been assured by Marius that the Merwing would be at their disposal whenever they needed her.
She sighed. “Thank you, Mariamne. My gown now. No, not the blue, I mayn’t get the chance to wear that, but see to the skirt, will you? I knew that stuff would crush. Get me the fawn with the russet overdress, and the brown cloak with the hood. I think my father wants to go straight to the shrine now. We’d better hurry.”
“Yes, madam. The fawn and the brown cloak. Here they are, and they’ve travelled well. Don’t worry about the blue dress; I’ll get the creases out easily enough. Such a pity the queen’s not here, isn’t it? I was looking forward to seeing you in the blue.”
“It hardly matters, all things considered.” Alice, watching the maid as she smoothed the clothes laid out on the bed, saw that her eyes looked red, as if she had been crying. “What is it, Mariamne? It’s all very dreadful, but there’s nothing for us to be afraid of –”
“I’m not afraid. It’s not that.”
“What, then?”
“It’s nothing, madam.”
Alice suddenly understood. When she had told Mariamne that their place of pilgrimage would be Tours rather than Jerusalem, she had been surprised at the girl’s apparent pleasure, but the answer had been simple.
“Of course!” she said. “You were looking forward to meeting your fellow-countryman Jeshua again, weren’t you? Well, you couldn’t expect him to be here in the king’s castle, but I’ll see that we make time to go to the queen’s palace, never fear! Do you know if he’s still in her service?”
“Yes, madam, he is. I asked. But he’s not in Tours. He’s gone to Paris with the queen. He’s domesticus now, manages the whole household, a grand job, very important, they say. He would have to go with her. I suppose he’ll be in charge of all the fine doings when the young prince is crowned, but we won’t still be here then, will we?”
“I’m afraid not. I’m sorry.”
“It can’t be helped.” Mariamne, with a little shrug, turned to her work again. “And if all tales be true, the sooner we’re back home the better! If you’ll just sit for a moment, my lady, and let me fix your veil for you … There, that’s it. How long do you think my lord your father will want to stay here?”
“Not long, I think. Is that Berin at the door? I mustn’t keep my father waiting.”
Mariamne knelt to smooth the russet folds and settle the girdle at her mistress’s waist.
“Do you want me with you?”
Alice shook her head. She knew that Mariamne, whom she had always allowed to wait outside the Christian places of worship her mistress attended, had found the courts of St Martin’s basilica distressing, with their throngs of beggars, diseased, crippled and starving, fighting one another for the alms thrown to them by the godly, and crowding with threats and curses round anyone obliged to go there unattended. “No need. We’re to be escorted. There. Do I look sober and chaste, Mariamne?”
Mariamne privately thought that her mistress looked pretty enough to turn a thousand heads, even in church, but she merely smiled and curtseyed, opening the chamber door for Alice to pass through.
It was a stately little procession that set out across the narrow bridge spanning the moat. As well as the duke and his attendants and Alice’s waiting-women, there were four fully armed guards, and at the rear of the party walked two robed and cowled figures, Father Anselm the duke’s chaplain, and one of the queen’s priests, Brother John, their heads bent and their hands folded decorously out of sight in the heavy sleeves. The streets were crowded, but the presence of the men-at-arms, and possibly of the priests, kept the beggars and touts at bay, and most people went busily about their own affairs; but at the street corners there were gatherings, heads together, and anxious looks. Tours was safe, though the tide of war had not yet withdrawn; peace was not yet here in people’s minds. But nowhere did there seem to be the distress that might have been expected for the death – the hideous death – of the people’s king. A few loaded waggons were heading out of the gates, this time eastwards – the fugitives from Orleans thankfully returning home. One king dead, another to come; as long as their homes were safe what did it matter? Alice reached the church with a prayer for young Theudovald already in her heart.
The beauty of the chanting, the familiar comfort of the ritual, served both to soothe and smooth away the thoughts of death and the strange and violent future awaiting the boy she had known. She lost herself, as she had always loved to do, in the effort of prayer and in her own kind of communication with a God with whom she had always been on familiar terms. At one point in the service she stole a hand out to touch her father’s sleeve, and his hand came quickly over hers for a moment. The last pilgrimage together. After this – for him, his long dream of peace; for her, marriage, and whatever came with it …
Forget it. The future was God’s; this was now, her father beside her, and a ship waiting to take them both home.
20
They stayed for eight days.
The duke would have left sooner, but Alice could see that the long journey had tired him, so she persuaded him to rest, and, for the first two or three days, to make their visits to the shrine as brief as was acceptable. He was the more easily persuaded because he found that Bishop Ommatius was away for some days in Orleans, presumably over matters connected with the coming crowning of Theudovald. Ansirus and the bishop had met several times on the previous pilgrimage, and liked one another; since that time they had once or twice exchanged letters, and before his departure for Orleans the bishop had left a message begging Ansirus not to leave Tours before he himself could return.
Though the town was humming with rumour like an overturned bee-skep, the pilgrims were obviously in no danger. The men-at-arms who had accompanied them on the Merwing escorted them daily to the shrine, and (as Mariamne, awed, informed her mistress) kept guard over their rooms at night. In the absence of host or hostess, no use was made of the royal apartments or the great hall of the castle; their meals were served in a pleasant gallery overlooking the town and the southern slopes of the valley, and the major domo himself, an elderly man with a permanently worried expression, oversaw the men and women who served them. Their only company, apart from the duke’s own priest, Father Anselm, was Brother John, who (to his obvious regret) had been left to his duties at home when the queen and the young princes travelled to Paris. Brother John was young enough, and human enough, to find Alice’s presence some
thing of a consolation, and for her part, since he was witty and easy-mannered, she enjoyed his company at table. But she could not help thinking that this last pilgrimage, in spite of the promise – threat, even – of excitement, seemed likely to be as lonely for her as Jerusalem.
They had been in Tours for six days when Bishop Ommatius returned from Orleans, and an invitation came for the duke to visit him the next day and remain to dine. Since their stay had so far been uneventful, Ansirus was easily persuaded to let Alice spend the day as she pleased, shopping for her silks and riding out, guarded as usual, to see the countryside. The impending festivities in Orleans had made sure that the mercers’ shops were piled high with rich stuffs, and Alice soon found what she wanted; then, with Mariamne and the men-at-arms in due attendance, she rode out of the town gates and along the track to the queen’s palace.
It was as she remembered it, but rather smaller. The pigs still grunted in their sties; cattle lifted incurious heads from their grazing; sheep and goats crowded the riders’ horses in the narrow lane, and a gipsy-looking child was herding geese across the courtyard where Alice and Theudovald had run to escape their guardians. But there were changes. Though the servants’ quarters were still busy, there were no soldiers there, and in the deserted armoury there was no stock of weapons. Nor – what they were mainly looking for – was there any sign of Jeshua. It was obvious, from Mariamne’s downcast expression, that she had hoped at least for news of him, but all they got was the assurance (from one of the stewards remaining there) that he was still with the queen in Paris, and was likely to go straight to Orleans with her when she travelled south with the new king.
Late that night Alice was wakened from sleep by a soft touch on her shoulder and a hurried whisper.
“My lady. My lady! Wake up, please!”
“Mariamne?” Alice, fully awake in an instant, sat up in the bed, her mind racing to the worry that these days was constantly present. “Something’s wrong? What is it? Is my father ill?”
“No, no. It’s all right, don’t be alarmed. But he’s just come back from the bishop’s house, and he sent me to wake you. He wants to talk to you.”
“Quickly, then, my bedgown. Yes, that one will do. And light those candles, will you?”
Alice ran to the door and opened it. The duke was waiting outside, still hooded and cloaked from his walk home from the bishop’s house. He had thrown the hood back, and her anxious look at his face told her that the news, whatever it was, was very bad indeed.
“Father? Come in … No, keep your cloak, it’s chilly. Mariamne, that rug from the bed, please. Sit here, Father, let me put it round you … You’re cold. Shall Mariamne heat a posset?”
“No, no. I had more than enough to drink at dinner. I’m sorry to disturb you like this, Alice, but the matter is urgent. Tell your woman to go back to bed. I must talk to you alone. Don’t look so frightened, girl –” this to Mariamne, hovering wide-eyed by the door. “None of us is in danger. Go to bed now, and see that you wake your mistress in good time in the morning.”
When Mariamne had gone he put out a hand and drew Alice towards him. She sank down on the footstool before his chair. In spite of his reassuring words to the maid, she could see trouble in his face, and feel it in the taut grip of his hand.
“What is it, Father? What has happened?”
“A messenger came to Ommatius, one of his secret couriers. All these high-ranking clergy and nobles use spies – it’s easy to see why. The man brought news from Paris, and I’m afraid it is bad. It could not be worse. The boys are dead.”
The word fell like a blow, stunning belief. When at last she spoke, the words could barely be heard.
“But Father … The boys? The princes? Chlodomer’s sons? And – all of them?”
“All of them, poor children, murdered. Yes, it was murder. Being who they were, of course it was. I’m sorry.”
Alice’s head was bowed in her hands. She was remembering the sunny day not so long ago, and the two children running up through the dusty vines to sit chatting on the wall where the lizards played in the sun, and the queen’s guards watched from below.
“Theudovald … He must have only been about ten, or eleven now. Still so young, and looking forward to Orleans, and being crowned there.” She looked up. “He might have been a good king, Father. Queen Clotilda had brought him up, and she – But where was she? I thought she was in Paris with the boys?”
“She was, but one gathers that she was powerless to help them. Ommatius’ courier had no details, just the facts, some garbled tale from a frightened servant. All he knows is that King Lothar somehow persuaded King Childebert that he must get rid of the boys; possibly with some sort of promise that the three surviving brothers would share out Chlodomer’s kingdom between them. Lothar has married Chlodomer’s widow, Queen Guntheuc – yes, the boys’ mother – so the boys were a threat to him whatever happened. Or so these folk would see it.” He sounded weary, too weary for bitterness or condemnation. “One might have expected something like this, but it’s hard to credit, even here.”
“But Queen Clotilda?” insisted Alice. The tale, told like this, in the silent dark lit only by the guttering pair of candles, was not believable. “She controlled the family, or seemed to? Lothar and Childebert – they obeyed her before. So why this, now?”
“When she called them to war, yes, they obeyed her then. But this … We cannot know how it happened, but it seems that Clotilda was tricked into letting Lothar get his hands on the boys. All that the servant – the informant – knew was that the princes were taken to the king’s palace on the excuse of being prepared for the crowning, and there stabbed to death. Ommatius’ courier left straight away, before the news got out and the gates were locked. That’s all we know; the rest is guesswork; but it’s true the boys are dead. The man saw it.”
He fell silent, and Alice did not speak. What was there to say? The distress she felt was not so much for Theudovald, whom she had known so briefly, but somehow for the evil that is there in the world, so close even to the innocent and the good. Who, at ten years old, could deserve to die? And at the hands of those he trusted? And the other two were younger still …
She shivered, and reached again for her father’s hand. “You should go to bed, Father. I’ll wake Berin and he can heat a bedstone for your feet. And in the morning –”
“In the morning we go,” said the duke. “It would be foolish to delay longer. We must go while the Merwing is still at our disposal. I have sent to the master to tell him to make ready to sail tomorrow. Now, my dear, try to get some sleep, and tell your women in the morning to pack your things and be ready to embark before noon. We will go while we may.”
They embarked shortly before noon next day and, from the deck of the little ship, watched without regret as the roofs and blossoming trees and the turrets of Tours sank back and out of sight.
21
All afternoon the breeze blew, light but steady, and the Merwing held on her way. Alice stayed on deck with her father, watching the countryside slip by, and looking to see, in the little settlements they passed, any signs of disturbance. But all seemed peaceful. Twice they were hailed from one of the small wharves, but only, it seemed, as a gesture of greeting: someone, perhaps, who knew the ship’s master; they saw the latter lift an arm in response.
Towards evening the breeze died down, and their progress slowed. The river had widened, and islands lay here and there; the ship had to pick her way carefully through the channels between them. A servant approached to ask if the evening meal should be served, and they went below.
The royal cabin was not large, but it was comfortable almost to luxury. Queen Clotilda’s new austerity had not yet found its way there. Two smaller cabins lay forward of it; in one of these Alice had her bed, with a pallet nearby for Mariamne; the duke slept in the other. As on their former voyage, guards would be set on deck at the head of the companionway.
Evening drew down, and clouds, massing in the wes
t, brought darkness early. The Merwing was still making her way slowly between the islands which, with their willows and thickets of alder, showed only like darker clouds floating on the water.
Alice retired soon after supper was done. Mariamne, who had been understandably horrified, and also very frightened, at what Alice had told her of the boys’ murder, seemed to have forgotten her fears in the relief of going home; she was, indeed, inclined to be merry at the difficulties of attending her mistress in such cramped quarters, as she helped Alice undress and into her night clothing, brushed the long, shining hair, and then, having tidied the cabin as best she could, retired herself to the pallet no more than arm’s-length from her mistress’s bed. In a very short time she was asleep.
Alice did not find sleep come so easily. She lay on her back, listening to the creaking of timber and the sounds of water lapping along the ship’s side, her eyes on the small glow of the riding-light outside the square port-hole; smoky yellow light, patched with black shadows, that swayed and swung across the cabin ceiling. She moved restlessly, trying to hold her imagination back from the pictures that kept printing themselves on her brain: the three young princes, children still and surely blameless, who, thinking themselves safe and held in honour, had left their grandmother’s protection and gone trustfully to their uncle’s house and the foulest of murders …
Prayer helped, and the thought of home, and eventually she must have dozed, because when she next opened her eyes the pattern of light on the ceiling had changed. It was brighter and steadier. No sounds came now from on deck, but very near, close under where she lay, came a new sound; something bumping gently against the ship’s side.