“Yes. And she begged me to see him established there in some house of religion. It appears – this was from Jeshua – that she has always had hopes that the youngest of the boys would turn to the holy life, and now this does seem to be his only choice.”
“If he agrees.”
“Indeed. He may well be filled with thoughts of bloody revenge. That would be normal, for a Merwing. Until we’ve had a chance to talk with him, we can’t tell. But it does look as if a monastery would be the best place for him in the meantime.”
“St Martin’s?”
“Why not? It’s not far from Castle Rose, and I shall soon be there myself. We can lodge there on the way home, and I’ll talk to Abbot Theodore. Ah, look, there, away on the horizon, that could be Nantes. And there is Jeshua, going below to wake the prince and bid him to eat with us. We shall have to be careful with him, Alice. God alone knows what grief and fear that child has suffered.”
“He’s very young,” said Alice, practically, “and probably very hungry. So no doubt God will see us through.”
No one was in the main cabin but the servants. They finished laying the meal, then, at the duke’s bidding, withdrew. As the door closed behind them the inner door opened, and Chlodovald came in, with Father Anselm behind him.
It was like seeing Theudovald again, a fair boy, slightly built but whippy and quick-moving, with the same proud carriage. There were the wide-set blue eyes and jutting nose that would, in adulthood, be aquiline, but the mouth showed a sweeter line than the elder boy’s, and this child – understandably enough – displayed nothing of his brother’s mischievous self-assurance.
He had washed and tidied himself as best he could, but still wore the travel-stained shirt and tunic which were presumably the only clothes that had been salvaged for him in his flight. Though the day was warm, he kept the dark cloak still hugged about him, with the hood pulled close.
The priest stooped to whisper something, then with a bow to the duke, left the cabin. The boy still hesitated in the doorway.
Alice, smiling, lifted the cover from one of the dishes. “Be welcome, Prince, to your own table. I’m glad you slept so late. I hope you’re recovered now, and hungry? Won’t you come and eat with us?”
The duke, moving to one side, indicated the high-backed chair at the table’s end, but at that the boy shook his head. He came quickly forward and, with an abrupt gesture, pushed the hood of his cloak back.
The gesture was both dramatic and startling. His hair had been cut short. The long tresses, symbol of Merwing royalty, had gone; the hair hung straight, thick and short, roughly cut just to cover the ears. The presumptive King of Orleans had, by his own act, abdicated.
He said nothing, but stood straight as a spear, his head high, with an air of defiance, of aggression almost, that must be the nearest a Merwing prince could ever get to betraying insecurity. As Alice and her father sought for the right thing – anything – to say, the boy’s hand went up in the gesture Alice remembered his brother using, the sweep of the hand to push back the heavy mane of hair. It met the rough crop and slid down over the bare neck at the back.
“It feels so strange,” he said uncertainly. “Cold.”
“Dear boy,” said the duke gently, “I think you have done well this day. Later you shall talk with us, but now be welcome, rest and eat.”
Alice merely smiled again, and began to serve the food. When the duke once more would have ushered the boy into the master chair, the latter shook his head, and pulled out a stool. “I am a prince no longer, my lord. That place is for you.”
He was certainly very hungry, and over an excellent meal the constraints slackened. Neither the duke nor Alice would have mentioned the tragic doings in Paris, but Chlodovald, perhaps in reaction to the recent time of fear, seemed eager to talk.
“Jeshua told me what happened. My uncles knew that the people loved my grandmother, and they needed her support, or the pretence of it, if they were to seize our lands. Of course they knew she would never give it willingly, so they sent that rat, that – that thing of my uncle’s – Arcadius of Clermont, to trick her or force her into it. But perhaps you know this already?”
“No matter. Go on.”
He set down the capon leg he had been gnawing, and wiped his fingers. “He came early in the morning. My grandmother had been at vigil all the day before, and through the night, praying for my father’s soul, and she had not yet broken her fast. That was the time he chose to force his way into her presence to tell her that my brothers were prisoners, and in danger of death unless they renounced their claim to my father’s lands. He showed her a dagger and a pair of shears, and told her it was the only choice. He shouted at her. At my grandmother! And no one dared lay a hand to him. His men were at the gate, and besides, she didn’t know where my brothers were being held.”
He reached for his goblet and drank, then pushed his platter aside. Neither Alice nor the duke spoke, but waited for the boy to finish his story.
Though the duke had heard it already from Jeshua, the tale came more movingly, told in that childish voice, with details perhaps gleaned from some other servant who had been present. They heard how the old queen, exhausted by her vigil, terrified for the boys, and furiously angry at her sons’ treachery, had reacted violently and with instinctive arrogance. “I would sooner see them dead than with their hair cut short! They are of Clovis’s blood! They are kings!” Beside herself, she had almost screamed her answer, but when, minutes later, after a brief but passionate burst of weeping, she would have called the words back, Arcadius was already beyond her gates, heading at full speed for his master’s court.
Chlodovald told it almost without emotion, like someone still numb from the shock of disaster.
“But we did hear, when we lay one night on the road – I forget the name of the place, but the monks were kind – that my brothers had been carried to St Peter’s church in Paris, and my grandmother saw them buried there with all the honours that were due to them, and the people wept and hung the streets with mourning.”
“But how was this possible?” Alice was startled into speaking. “Surely your uncles –”
“After it was done they ran away.” Chlodovald sounded indifferent. “They were afraid. They will quarrel now, and kill one another. It is with God.”
“Perhaps, since the people love your grandmother, and mourn for your brothers, they’ll want you to go back?”
“No. My grandmother will go into the convent now. She planned it long ago. And I –” a lift of the shorn head – “I need never be king.”
“‘Need’?” That was the duke.
Chlodovald met his eyes with a sort of defiance. “I cut my hair myself. I would have you know that. And I did not cut it from fear.”
“You don’t need to tell me that, Prince Chlodovald. I’ve assumed that you’re set on entering God’s service. As I am myself. My daughter and I were speaking of this earlier. There’s plenty of time, before we reach Britain, to make plans for the future. We’ll see you safe there, and later, when you are grown to manhood, you will know what decisions to make.”
“I shall come back home,” said Chlodovald. He spoke with a total lack of emphasis that somehow made the words more final than a vow.
“Home? To the Frankish kingdoms?” exclaimed Alice. “To Orleans?”
“To Orleans, I think not. But to my own land, yes. Not as a king, no, but I shall return. I have something that I must bring back to my own country.”
“What is that?”
“If you will excuse me?” He slipped from his stool and went quickly into the inner cabin. In a moment he came back carrying a box.
He threw a quick glance at the door. “They will not come in?”
“Not until I bid them,” said the duke.
“Then I will show you. My grandmother entrusted it to me, and she bade me keep it safely and one day bring it home.”
He set the box on the table, pushing the used dishes out of the way, and opened the lid. The
box appeared to be full of floss silk, blond and shining.
“Your hair?” said Alice, wonderingly. The long-haired kings held this symbol so very sacred? As sacred and precious as a real crown?
But Chlodovald pulled the soft stuff aside to show what was packed in it. A goblet, more golden than the gold hair, with gems glittering crimson and green and primrose yellow in the handles. A beautiful thing, certainly very precious, but seemingly more than that. As he unveiled the thing from the enwrapping silk, the boy crossed himself, then turned, eyes shining, to Alice and the duke.
“It’s the Grail!” he said, reverently. “The True Cup! The Grail itself!”
“At least,” said Ansirus to his daughter, as they stood on deck while the Merwing picked her way into the crowded harbour of Nantes, “he has told no one else about it. Not even Jeshua. So we stand a reasonable chance of getting it – and him – safely landed at Glannaventa and across Rheged to St Martin’s.”
“But Father, it can’t be the Grail! You know it can’t!”
“I know. I suppose I have seen as many ‘true cups’ as any man, being traded to and fro in Jerusalem. But it’s still a treasure. A treasure that will have a most practical use.”
“What use?”
“The boy has been forced to leave his kingdom – renounce it – with nothing but the clothes he stands in. Now, even without my sponsorship, the monks of St Martin’s would accept him from pure charity, but if he brings with him something of such a price – for it’s both rare and ancient, you may be sure of that – why then, he brings his payment with him.”
“But if he tells them it’s the Grail –”
“Listen, Alice. If men believe – if they need a focus for their worship, then, grail or not, this cup will be as true for them as a cross you or I could fashion out of wood from our own orchards at Rheged. Don’t you see, child?”
“Ye – es. Yes, I suppose so. But –”
“So we say nothing, and Abbot Theodore will make his own decisions. What happens will be his concern. Look, we’re almost in. We’ll be making fast very soon. Where’s your maid, my dear?”
Alice laughed. “At a guess, getting Jeshua to help her with my baggage. You know what’s happening there, I suppose? Once he’s seen the pr – Chlodovald safely into St Martin’s, we’ll have to find a place for him at Castle Rose.”
“If his duty doesn’t take him back to the queen’s service he’ll be most welcome in mine,” said the duke. “I already had it in mind to speak to him about it. Beltrane, like me, is ageing, and I think he will be glad of experienced help. When we get to St Martin’s I plan to stay there for a few days to see the boy settled in, and to talk things over with Abbot Theodore, so it might be a good idea to send Jeshua straight home from Glannaventa with our heavy baggage. Don’t you think so? He can give Beltrane warning that we’ll be home sooner than expected, and help him if it’s needed.”
“I’m sure it will be! They won’t be looking for us for at least another month, and every room will be turned out for cleaning! May I tell Mariamne?”
“Of course.” He smiled. “She may help persuade him to stay, at least until you are safely wed. When I’m no longer there, it will be good to know that you have a servant as brave and as faithful as he has shown himself to be.”
They drew in then to the wharfside, and Alice, in the bustle of leave-taking and disembarkation, was able, though with some difficulty, to turn her mind away from what awaited her at home.
* * *
FIVE
Alexander in Love
* * *
24
It would be tedious to detail the all-too-swift and inevitable process by which Alexander came to be Queen Morgan’s lover. She nursed him, and if the low fever took rather a long time to leave him, why, then, the lovely queen spent all the more time in the sickroom, and all the more often brewed for him her subtle concoctions of herbs and fruits and other, secret, ingredients. The Lady Luned kept aloof; the other young men of Morgan’s party might smile or sulk and talk among themselves, but the queen herself seemed to have eyes – and time – for Alexander alone.
At length the fever left him. There were some who noticed that it only left him when he was securely in the queen’s toils, and then, when he was seen to think only of her, and pine for her touch, her look, her presence – why, then she withdrew herself from the sickroom, and let old Brigit do the nursing. From which time the young prince gained strength rapidly, and was soon able to leave his bed, to stand and walk about the chamber and bathe and dress himself without aid. Which he did, one evening when Brigit had left him, taking out his best clothes – which had been washed and laid carefully away in one of the chests – and set out to look for the queen.
The royal rooms where Alexander had been housed were in the central part of the castle, with doors opening on a corridor running to right and left towards the twin towers. He hesitated outside his door, wondering where the main stairway lay that would take him down to the castle’s public rooms. He had no doubt that now, favoured as he apparently was by the queen, he would be received by the Lady Luned and made free of the castle’s hospitality. Eager though he was to see Morgan again, he realised that courtesy required him first to seek out his hostess, tender her his respects and thanks, and wait for her invitation to join the company that evening.
A boy in Morgan’s livery came running along the corridor, bent on some errand. Alexander put out a hand.
“A moment, if you please! What’s your name?”
“Gregory, sir.” The boy regarded him with a curiosity that Alexander found flattering. The queen’s servants had no doubt been whispering about him, and he thought – hoped – that he knew what was being said.
“Well, Gregory, can you tell me where I can find the Lady Luned? Will she be free at this hour to receive me?”
“I’m not sure about that, sir. But I do know where you’ll probably find her. At this time she’s usually in one of the rooms where the ladies sit. Down that way.” He pointed back the way he had come. “Down the staircase there, sir, and one of the servants will show you.”
“The ladies? Then Queen Morgan will be there?”
“Oh, no!” The boy’s amused surprise was wasted on Alexander. “She doesn’t sit with the ladies! I’m on my way to find her now. They came in from riding an hour ago, and I think they’ll be in the east tower.”
“‘They’?”
“My mistress the queen and her knights.”
“Indeed,” said Alexander, conscious of an urgent wish to detach the lovely queen from such company, but still held back by courtesy, and also by another sudden thought. “No, wait a moment, please. Can you tell me – am I right in thinking – I must have heard someone say it – that there are men from Cornwall among the queen’s knights?”
He knew now that Queen Morgan had not found out his name by any sort of magic art; all she had heard was some muttering in a brief bout of delirium, when some instinct had kept him discreet. To her and Brigit – and so presumably to all the castle – he was “Alexander the Fatherless”, noble, apparently, but probably base-born. The thought had at first irked him, but then he saw it as another romantic touch in this adventure he had stumbled into: no doubt at some later stage there would be the discovery scene beloved of the poets when he would be revealed as a prince in his own right, and a fitting lover for a queen. Farther than this his imagination had not taken him. But he knew that now he must not risk confronting men from March’s court, who might see the resemblance to his dead father, and so place his family in danger, along with Sadok and Erbin, who had shielded their escape all those years ago. So he waited anxiously for the boy’s answer.
It was reassuring. “There were, sir. Two of King March’s men, and two from some duchy in Dumnonia, in the south, but I forget the name. They’re not here now. They weren’t the queen’s knights, they just came with messages, and they left last week.”
“I see. Well … The east tower, you said?”
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“Yes, sir, but –” The boy stopped, biting his lip.
“But?”
“Forgive me, but I serve the queen, and I know what the orders are. It’s no use your going now to the east tower. We all, her servants, that is, have orders to let no one in while she and her knights are in council. But later, at dinner-time, I am sure you’ll be welcome.”
“‘In council’? What do you mean, in council?”
He spoke sharply, and the boy, confused, began to stammer. “I only meant – they have meetings … I don’t know what about, how should I? But she is a queen, and even if her state is small, and she is called a prisoner, she keeps her court. I’m sorry, my lord –”
“I see. It’s all right. Anyway, it’s the Lady Luned I’m looking for, not the queen. Thank you, you’d better go now. I’ll find my own way.”
The boy ran off. Alexander, watching him go, wondered briefly how long it would be before he, too, was made a member of that select and fortunate court assembled in the east tower. Not long, he thought with satisfaction; not long.
Meanwhile there was a duty to be done. He found his way easily enough to the women’s rooms, where the Lady Luned and her women were busy with their needlework. Luned received him with apparent pleasure, and the ladies exclaimed kindly over his happy restoration to looks and health. He made, and then repeated, his apologies for making so prolonged a visit at such a time, apologies she disclaimed charmingly, repeating her welcome. It was to be noticed, through all the apologies, that neither the lady nor Alexander made any attempt to bring that visit to a close; Luned because Morgan, whom she feared, had made it very clear that he must stay, and Alexander because he was fiercely determined, with all the arrogance of youth and the consuming desire that Morgan’s drugs and spider-wiles had lit in him, to plunge headlong – and publicly – into this, his first real love affair. And what a love affair! Like any young man of his age, he had looked here and there, but this was not like the passing fancies of youth. This was different! The loveliest woman he had ever seen, and she a queen, and sister to the High King! And he, chosen (as he was sure) by her, and madly in love, longed only now to be taken to her bed and thereafter declared her lover in the sight of the world – or at any rate in the sight of the other young knights of her “council”.