“Rider!” de Lusignan shouted from the upstairs window where he was keeping watch at Henry’s bedside.
William hastened to the gate as Wigain galloped in on a fresh horse, presumably one of King Henry’s. He had pushed it hard, for even in the cool dawn air it was sweating, its flanks blowing like bellows and its nostrils flaring red. Wigain flung down from the saddle, panting as if he had run with the horse.
“He’s not coming,” Wigain gasped. “His advisers told him it was folly and he agreed with them. I tried to tell him how sick our lord was, but he wouldn’t risk it being another ruse…He said that one hole in his cloak and two dead heralds were enough and he would rather pray for his son from a distance.” Delving in his tunic, Wigain produced a ring threaded on a leather cord. “All he’s done is to send him this and say that he forgives him his lies and perfidies. I had to sweat blood even to get him to concede that much.” He placed a sapphire ring in William’s hand.
William closed his fingers over it and felt the solid pressure of the jewel pressing against his palm. But there wasn’t enough of that healing night-blue cold to quench Henry’s fever.
“Is he worse?” Wigain asked, as if reading William’s thoughts.
William hesitated, then nodded. “He is dying,” he said. “I need not tell you to keep it to yourself for the moment. Soon there will come a time when all will have to know, but not yet.”
“Not a word.” Wigain crossed himself. “God give him peace,” he said, his dark eyes bereft of their usual merriment.
“Amen.” William crossed himself too, thinking it was more likely that God was punishing Henry by giving him a foretaste of hell. With dragging feet he returned to the Young King’s chamber. The room was as crowded as a market place for as well as the knights of the mesnie, the Bishop of Cahors was here with all his retinue and also the Prior of Vigeois.
With soft tread William approached the bed. Henry was propped up against a mass of bolsters and pillows, and looked three times his age: a wizened old man clinging to the threads of life as one by one they were cut from under his clawing fingers. The congregation surrounding the bed parted to make way for William and he gestured people to move back. “Let him breathe,” he said curtly.
A choking laugh emerged from the cadaver on the bed. “While I still can, eh?”
“Sire.” William knelt on one knee. The sight of Henry’s febrile, dying weakness filled him with pity, compassion, and fear and he had to struggle to keep his expression neutral.
Henry rolled his gaze towards William and licked his fever-cracked lips. “The news must be bad,” he croaked. “You always look like that when it is…as if your mind’s as blank as your face.”
William grimaced. “Is it that obvious?”
“Plain as death…” Henry gave a painful swallow but turned his head from the cup that William was swift to offer him. “Runs straight through…just wet my lips.”
William did as Henry asked, then drew up a stool to the bedside. “Your father sends this ring to comfort you and says that he will come as soon as he has received the surrender of Limoges.”
Henry fixed his lustreless gaze on the ring William had produced as if he did not know what it was. “He’s not coming?” His voice rose and quavered. The anguish in it squeezed William’s heart. Silently he shook his head.
Henry stared towards the gathering of knights and clerics who had drawn off a little, but were still close enough to hear and bear witness. “He cannot come to my deathbed. Even now, he’d rather keep his castles than his sons…” His voice was a whisper in his desiccated throat, but he still had sufficient strength to hurl the ring through the gap in the bed curtains. It struck a coffer, bounced off, and landed in the floor rushes, midnight stone shining as if starlit. Henry turned his face to the wall.
William went to pick up the ring, his swift glance warning off the other men. Returning to the bed, he laid his hand to Henry’s sweat-soaked shoulder and turned him, then gently took Henry’s right hand in his and pushed the ring on to his lord’s middle finger. “Sire, you and your father have often quarrelled, but he loves you.”
“He doesn’t love me,” Henry muttered, but his left hand covered his right and he rubbed his thumb over the cold stone.
“Only as much as you do not love him, sire,” William replied, “and I know how deep your affection for him runs.” An affection that on Henry’s part had almost starved for want of attention; fed only on an empty diet of money and vague promises, it had mutated into a creature determined to lash out and inflict harm in its efforts to be noticed. That even on his deathbed he had failed must be the ultimate desolation.
William leaned over the Young King. “It does not matter that your father has not come,” he murmured for Henry’s ears alone. “You are a king, and if this is to be your final journey, then you must embark on it with dignity and greatness. Make of your leaving such a show that men will pass it down the ages for their sons and grandsons to know. That will be your memorial.”
Henry’s body quivered with the heat of his fever-tainted blood. Continuing to rub the ring, he gave William a pain-glazed stare. “You are right,” he said. “I will show my father the stuff that kings are made of, and when he hears the end I made, he will shred his clothes in grief and my death will be a torment to him for the rest of his days. I will forgive him, because I have to, but he will never forgive himself.”
William felt sick at the reply. Even now Henry was scheming vengeance on his father. He feared desperately for the Young King’s soul and felt a deep sense of failure. His task had been to mentor Henry, to imbue him with the honour and chivalry that would complement the pragmatic lessons of kingship. It should have been glorious, but instead it had come to this. Squalor and death and poisoned emotions.
Henry turned his attention towards preparing himself for death, arranging the rituals with all the care he had once reserved for the tourney and the court. Instead of layering himself in fine garments, cedar-scented from the clothing chests, he gave his clothes to his servants and retainers, reserving only a linen nightshirt for himself. He gave his jewels away too, except for the sapphire ring from his father, which William was entrusted to deliver to him on Henry’s death. He confessed and repented of his sins to the Bishop of Cahors, and then repeated that confession before all the knights of his mesnie. He even seemed to rally for a time as his mind was drawn beyond the suffering of his body by the tragic drama of the rituals being enacted. But the energy expended took its toll on him and he collapsed against the bolsters, struggling for breath.
“Not yet,” he gasped, his chest working for air and his mouth opening and closing like a distressed fish. “Make me a bed of ashes on the floor and set a rope around my neck. I would die a true penitent.”
Some of the knights baulked at such a show of piety, thinking that it was a step too far, but William ordered them fiercely to do it, for it was as his lord wanted, and it could only help him in the afterlife. As the attendants hastened to make a pallet on the floor and sent down to the midden for some buckets of cold ashes, Henry grabbed William’s arm. “My vow to kneel at the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem…Marshal, you must fulfil it in my stead.” Fresh sweat broke out on his brow as he was consumed by a fierce abdominal spasm. “Holy Jesus, save me...” His grip dug into William’s wrist with a desperate strength that was to leave a legacy of oval bruises. “Swear to me…swear to me that for my soul’s sake and yours, you will do this thing for me,” he entreated.
“I swear.” William braced his arm and held firm while Henry rode out the pain. “I will not fail you…”
Henry’s grip slowly released and fell to his side. “You have never failed me, Marshal,” he panted, eyes squeezed shut. “Take my horses…they will serve you well. My father…he will see you provided for…tell him that I made a good end.”
William’s throat constricted. “I will do so, sire.”
“And my mother…Make sure she hears the news from a friend.”
