William looked at him. “More?” The word was ominous.
Wigain licked his lips. “King Richard has landed at Sandwich. He’s on his way to attend the siege at Nottingham and he bids you, as you love him, join him with all haste at his muster in Huntingdon.” The clerk looked uncomfortable. “There were rumours that you were in Marlborough with your brother…that you had chosen to defy the King.”
William clenched his fists and fought a powerful surge of fury. Turn your back and in an instant your enemies had their knives out. “But I wasn’t, was I?”
“No, my lord,” Wigain said, looking as ashamed as if he were the creator of the news and not just the bearer. “I am sorry. I didn’t know which to tell you first…”
“Does a brother come before a king?” William asked with a bitter, humourless smile. He looked down at his sons. His youngest one was gazing up at him out of wide, dark eyes. He remembered his own father, who had been willing to put his ambition and a would-be queen before his family.
“Is that the end of the story, Papa?” Will asked. “I didn’t like it.”
“Didn’t like it,” Richard echoed, beginning to pout.
“No, it’s not the end,” William answered, ruffling his heir’s hazel-brown hair. “Far from it, and for what it’s worth, I didn’t like it either.”
“You’ll like it even less when I tell you that William Longchamp is with the King,” Wigain said. “Richard’s revoked his banishment and welcomed him back to his side. He needs his money-grubbing skills and Longchamp has always been as slippery as an eel.”
William felt revulsion churn his stomach. His hand remained on his son’s head. “No need to ask who has been stirring the pot,” he said. “I had better make haste before I’m accused of full-blown treason.”
Riding hard, William met his brother’s funeral cortège on the outskirts of Cirencester as it progressed towards the cathedral. Aline had hired a group of six professional mourners and they walked either side of the coffin, garbed in long dark-coloured mantles with voluminous hoods. Periodically they wailed and struck their breasts. Aline was as pale as a shroud and her eyes were smudged with exhaustion, but she had control of herself. Whatever grief and difficulty had come from her marriage to John Marshal, she had gained stature and maturity too. William dismounted from his courser to walk beside the bier. John’s sword, their father’s sword, was laid atop the pall of red silk. There was a grieving twist of regret in William’s soul that he and John had not been closer in life, and now it was too late. Jack dismounted too and silently took his place among the mourners. The rest of William’s knights followed suit.
“In the end he didn’t have to surrender,” Aline said to William and Jack as they walked. She too wore a dark mantle and hood, but beneath it her gown of costly red wool showed as a bright border with each step. “His body gave out and I am glad for him that it did—that he did not have to yield the keep and his pride.” She bit her lip, remembering. “He came down from the wall walk to take a respite from commanding the men, and collapsed at the foot of the tower stairs. By the time I reached him, his soul had fled. There was nothing anyone could do.”
“I am glad for him too, that he was still lord of Marlborough when he died,” William said hoarsely, “although I would rather he had lived.”
They walked in sombre and contemplative silence for a long time, but at last William turned to the wan girl pacing at his side. “What will you do now?” he asked.
She gave a forlorn shrug. “Return to my family…serve them by making another match and hope that it is a good one.”
The grief and regret twisted a little tighter inside him. “I hope so too, my lady,” he said.
Following the vigil and mass in Cirencester, William left his nephew and the majority of his knights to escort the coffin the rest of the way to Bradenstoke Priory, and prepared to ride fast for Huntingdon. In Cirencester too, he knighted young Jack Marshal. “Since you are your father’s only son and a man, you should have the standing of knighthood,” William said as he belted Jack with his father’s sword. “Besides, you have earned it, and your father should have a senior member of his family and a sworn knight to lead his cortège.” Guilt and grief bit at him. He knew that it was his place to ride to Bradenstoke with them, but he couldn’t afford to.
Jack nodded, his jaw stiff with controlled emotion. William clasped his shoulder, man to man. “Join me in Nottingham when you have done your duty by your father,” he said. “I’ll have need of you.”
Leaving the cathedral, he breathed deeply of the bitter March air and gathered himself for the next ordeal.
It was late morning when William rode into Huntingdon, having set out from Bedford at dawn. He and his three knights were stopped at the town gate and a messenger was sent running to inform the King of their arrival. As William waited on his sweating palfrey, he was aware of the speculative glances cast in his direction and he did not have to imagine hard what men were wondering.
“You ride light, my lord,” said the captain of mercenaries who was in charge of the gate. He toyed with his sword hilt.
“The rest of my troop are following,” William answered in a neutral voice. “They’ll join us at Nottingham.”
The mercenary nodded and said nothing, but William could sense him questioning on whose side. No one offered him hospitality, but William didn’t cavil. He knew the game that was being played, and he was adept at it. He dismounted from his horse and threw a blanket over its sweating back, gesturing his knights to follow suit. He made soldiers’ small talk and waited with an outward show of aplomb, although within himself he was fidgeting like a man sitting on a nest of red ants.
The messenger eventually returned with the instruction that William was to be brought to King Richard’s pavilion. William Longchamp had accompanied the messenger, and there was a supercilious smile parting his full black beard. He was obviously bent on enjoying this moment and on paying back old scores.
“You’re hanging in the balance, Marshal,” Longchamp said, malice glittering. “I hope for your sake that you’re in an eloquent mood.”
William looked stonily at the Bishop. “I have hung in the balance before, and survived. Either the King knows me well enough by now, or he doesn’t. Words, no matter how eloquent, will not alter that.”
Longchamp’s upper lip curled. “No, they won’t,” he said in an insinuating voice. “And the King is waiting to hear them and make judgement.”
William gave his horse into the keeping of Roger D’Abernon. “I am ready,” he said impassively, “and I do not fear to be judged.”
“The garrison at Nottingham is still refusing to yield to the King,” Longchamp said as he limped at William’s side through the camp towards Richard’s pavilion. “It’s strongly held but no match for us. The pity is that the justiciars ever returned it to John in the first place.” His voice was bland, but since William had been the justiciar responsible for Nottingham’s custody and subsequent handing over to John during peace negotiations, his words were neither innocent nor indifferent comment.
“I did as I deemed fit,” he said curtly.
