On the third evening of Henry’s deteriorating condition, Baldwin and William were taking a brief respite in a wine shop not far from the palace. Wigain had accompanied them, and Walter Map, and many of the knights of the chamber were sequestered around the scrubbed benches and trestles. Geoffrey, Henry’s bastard son, was among their company and more drunk than William had ever seen him.
“I saw more men leaving today,” Baldwin announced, hunching over his cup. “The hired soldiers know that there is nothing left for them here. Either they’re going home to their farms or riding to join the unholy trinity of Richard, Philip, and John.”
A girl came to refill their wine pitcher. Wigain’s pinch of her bottom was half-hearted. “You should ride for England and claim your bride while you still can,” he told William morosely.
William shook his head. “How long do you think I would keep her if I did? The lord Richard is not well disposed in my direction, is he?” He tipped wine into his cup. “At least I have some rents in Saint-Omer and a standing offer from Philip of Flanders.”
“Not the same as an earldom though, is it?”
William smiled without humour. “Beggars can’t be choosers.”
At the other table Geoffrey FitzRoy raised his voice in angry protest. “I may have been trained in Holy Orders, but I’m not taking vows. Even if Richard does become King, he’ll not make me.”
Walter Map tilted his head in Geoffrey’s direction. “He wants to be a prince,” he remarked. “He was hoping his father would give him lands and titles and set him up in his own little kingdom, but when Henry dies, Richard and John won’t wear it. Whether he likes it or not, ‘brother Geoffrey’ is going to become ‘Brother Geoffrey.’” He smirked at his own pun. No one else did.
“And what of ‘brother John?’” Wigain asked. “What’s to stop him from testing his backside on the throne?”
“If John had wanted the crown, he’d have stayed with his father,” William said, “not gone running to Richard. I am not saying that he does not desire the crown, but since he is Richard’s heir and Richard has sworn to go on crusade, he has time to bide while he chooses his path.”
“The slippery one to hell,” Wigain muttered.
“Very likely,” William answered, emptying more wine into his cup. He wasn’t so much drowning his sorrows as toasting farewell to an almost glittering future. As he started to drink, Jean D’Earley shouldered his way through the press of soldiers and courtiers. William immediately set the cup back on the trestle, for the squire’s features were grim.
“You need to come quickly, sir,” he said.
***
William climbed the stairs to King Henry’s chamber, the wine roiling in his gut and filling the back of his throat with a sour taste. There were no guards on the door, save for his nephew and another white-faced squire who was swallowing convulsively. William strode through the door, noting immediately that the walls to either side of the entrance had been denuded of their hangings and the pole above the doorway was bereft of its embroidered curtain. The chamber was bare, as if it had been stripped ready for a move. The King’s clothing and storage coffers were still in place and a fire was charring to ash in the grate, but all the smaller boxes and chests were gone, including the fine enamelled ones that contained the royal jewels. The sideboard was bare of the cups, plates, and flagons that should have adorned it and the bedcovers and hangings had gone, leaving the bare wood and the curtain poles. On the bed itself the king lay naked with not so much as a sheet to shroud him.
William went swiftly to him and stopped as if he had been struck. “Christ Jesu have mercy on his soul,” he muttered before his throat closed with pity and horror.
The body was sprawled like a child’s doll abandoned in mid-play and the King’s pallid flesh was stained with the blood that had gushed from his nose and mouth in his final paroxysm. The grey eyes stared, dull as dry stones. Behind him, William heard someone retching into the floor rushes.
Gilbert FitzReinfred silently handed William his cloak and William spread the garment over Henry’s body and gently closed the staring eyes. Geoffrey came to the bedside, wiping his mouth. “I should have stayed with him.” Tears streamed down his face. “God forgive me, I should have stayed.” White and shaking, he knelt by the corpse.
“We all should,” William said grimly. He laid his hand to the young man’s shoulder and gave it a brief squeeze. Anger simmered within him. Turning, he barked swift commands to several of the knights and with hands on swords they strode from the stripped and desecrated room. He had no doubt that the thieves were long gone, but if they could be caught, he’d see them strung up higher than the man in the moon.
The King’s body was carefully washed and tended. His coffers had all been robbed and there was no robe in which to fittingly clad the corpse. Geoffrey, who was the same size as his father, donated his best one—of costly dark red wool.
Henry was borne to the chapel and following high mass William and the knights of the household kept guard around the body in full mail, their swords drawn. All of them were suffering pangs of guilt brought on by the knowledge that while they had been drinking in a hostel, the King had been enduring his death throes as his chamber and body were robbed of possessions and dignity. It was the latter that most affected William. No one should die like that and it froze his marrow to think on it.
In the morning the body was placed on a bier and the knights took it in turns to carry it on their shoulders as they set out from Chinon to Henry’s designated resting place at the Abbey of Fontevrault. There were no alms to distribute to the poor, for Henry’s strongboxes were all empty and his seneschal denied all knowledge of the money. The crowd that had gathered in the hope of receiving silver as the funeral cortège made its journey were disappointed and had to be dispersed with a niggardly handful of coin distributed from the pouches of the knights who had remained to see the King to his grave.
At Fontevrault the Abbess and the nuns emerged in procession to lead Henry’s bier into the church, their voices raised in sweet plainchant. William measured his steps to the altar and to the trestle that waited before it to receive the bier. His shoulders were burning with the weight of bearing the King’s body, but his heart felt as if it were carrying the greatest burden of all. He had borne the Young King to his tomb; now he was doing the same for the father, and once again his own future was in turmoil. Dry-eyed, numb, William helped the other knights to ease the bier down on to the trestle. Resisting the urge to rub his shoulder, he bowed to the Abbess and left the body in her care. His eyes were gritty with fatigue as he returned to the open air, cooling now as afternoon shadows crossed the grass and mellowed the stone—a sight that Henry would never feel and see again.
“Sir?”
He turned to face his squire, Jean, who was standing quietly in the background. He hoped the lad wasn’t going to bedevil him with questions that he was in no case to answer.
“Jack’s arranged stabling for the horses and we’ve stowed your baggage in the guest house.”
William nodded absently for he would have expected the squires to have done so as a matter of course. “And?” he said a trifle irritably.
Jean flushed. “I thought you might want to bathe and eat. I persuaded one of the lay sisters to fill a tub and I begged some food from the kitchens.”
William was immediately contrite. From somewhere he found the semblance of a smile. “You’re both fine squires,” he said and clapped Jean on the shoulder by way of apology.
The tub was a large oval affair, used for the scrubbing of laundry as well as the occasional bathing of guests. William would have liked nothing more than to wallow in the steaming water until it grew cold, but that would have been selfish, and his squires deserved a reward for their labours, so he gave them the use of the water once he had finished and indicated that he would dry and dress himself. There was some jesting in the guest house about William’s fastidiousness and more than one knight declared that washing the goodness out of one’s body wasn’t wise. There was nothing wrong with the smell of good, honest sweat.
