Chapter 2
The next day’s biting cold did not deter the men from their intention of riding out to hunt in the park beyond the palace complex.
They gathered in the courtyard soon after a red sunrise and stood in breath-misted groups, talking, jesting, bonding as the grooms brought the horses and the dogs milled underfoot, snuffling, eager to be away.
Standing on the periphery to wave them off, Jeanette heard Edward ask Tom to hand him his gauntlets, which the boy did with careful alacrity, his cheeks rosy-bright with cold.
Edward pulled them on, clenching his fists to ease the fit over his knuckles before turning to his black courser.
He swung effortlessly into the saddle, long-legged, powerful.
One hand on his thigh, the other gripping the reins, he observed Tom mounting his own pony and remarked positively on his horsemanship.
Tom jutted his chin with pride and flicked Edward a worshipping look.
Then Edward similarly complimented Johan and winked at him as he managed his sturdy little bay.
Jeanette smiled at the exchange while feeling a little sad.
Her longing for Thomas was still strong this morning, like a shadow at her side.
She wished she had gone with him to Rouen, but there had been business to deal with at home and he had assured her it would not be for long.
But it was three months now, and in the short winter daylight it felt like for ever.
The King gestured from the saddle of his dappled stallion and the fewterers blew the hunting horns, sounding the away.
In a clatter of hooves and exuberant shouts, the company departed at a brisk trot, dogs straining their leashes and already giving excited tongue.
Tom and Johan were too busy staying close to the Prince, their hero, to turn and wave to her, and Jeanette recognised yet another sign of their all too rapid travel towards independent manhood.
When the last rider had clattered from the yard leaving the grooms to sweep up the dung, she set out with her two closest ladies, Hawise and Eleanor, to walk Hal and Nimble.
Her daughters had remained behind in the communal royal nursery with their playmates, which meant Jeanette could stride out as she loved to do.
The mud on the trails winding through Woodstock’s gardens and woodlands was solid enough to walk on, with ice crusting the puddles of last week’s rain.
Walking briskly, unleashing the dogs to let them run and sniff, Jeanette took the familiar ways she had known since childhood, to the place known by local folk as ‘Rosamund’s Well’.
Whenever at Woodstock, Jeanette always paid her respects to this special spring and pool.
She would drink the water and say a prayer with the same reverence as lighting a candle in church.
A tale attached to the location told how one of her ancestors, a king long ago, had built a water garden here for his mistress, who had then died untimely.
Jeanette did not know how true it was, but the place had always exerted a pull on her emotions.
Stooping to cup her hand in the icepure water, she made a silent request that Thomas might soon come back to her.
As she spoke her amen, it started to snow.
By the time she and her ladies returned to the palace the ground wore a light dusting like sifted flour, and their footsteps left dark tracks across the powdered courtyard.
Small, scurfy flakes rebounded off her cloak, stinging her face, and she thought with relish of the cup of hot wine and the blazing fire waiting within.
They were crossing the yard when a horseman arrived and dismounted from a hard-ridden chestnut, mud-splattered and steaming.
As he handed his reins to a groom, Jeanette recognised with a jolt of shock Henry de la Haye, one of Thomas’s retainers, who had accompanied him to Rouen.
His gaze fell on her with her ladies, and he swallowed jerkily.
Hal and Nimble ran to him, boisterous with excitement, eagerly greeting a fellow pack member.
‘Henry? What is it? Is there news from the Earl?’ Jeanette hurried towards him, her stomach sinking while the dogs bounded and jumped for joy.
‘God save you, madam,’ he said hoarsely. ‘There is indeed news, and I have ridden hard to bring it, but we should go within out of the cold. I cannot tell it to you here.’
He was grey with exhaustion, and shivering, and Jeanette began to feel sick and frightened.
She would have stamped her foot and commanded him to tell her on the instant, but he was ready to collapse, and she knew already he bore news she did not want to hear, for there was a world of grief in his eyes.
Eleanor took her arm. ‘Madam, we should go inside as Sir Henry says.’
Jeanette snapped at the dogs to cease their leaping, and turned towards the palace. Each step she took was like wading through waves.
A roaring fire greeted them in the hall where servants were toing and froing with dishes and cups, baskets of bread and wheels of cheese, preparing for the hunting party’s return.
‘Madam, will you sit down?’ Henry gestured to an empty window seat.
Jeanette’s dread increased. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Tell me the news now – standing or sitting, it will make no difference.’
Tears swam in his eyes, and he swallowed hard. ‘Madam, I do not know how to say this, yet I must. The Earl, my lord, your husband, was taken by a fever and went to God five nights since. His body and his soul are in the care of the Friars of Rouen.’
The words crossed the space between them, creating the reality, but she had raised a barrier against them.
She heard what he said, but the sense was meaningless.
Once, long ago, her mother had attacked her with the false news that Thomas was dead in battle.
She had believed the lie, and it had led her down a nine-year path of suffering.
This might be a lie too, even though Henry was one of Thomas’s close companions and his expression raw with anguish.
‘Madam, truly you should sit down.’
‘No!’ She shook her head in vigorous denial.
‘We are all grieving and shocked, but I give you the truth. The Earl passed to God three days after the morning of Christ’s nativity.
I was at his side with others and the last word to leave his lips was your name.
’ Henry cuffed his eyes. ‘Bringing you this news is the hardest thing I have ever had to do in my life, but I undertook it, for my lord’s honour and for yours. ’
Jeanette continued to stare at him while her mind and body plunged into an icy limbo.
The words still meant nothing because she would not allow them to.
It was unbelievable. Thomas, who had been her lodestar and reason to live since she was twelve years old.
Thomas was dead, and suddenly her heart was a stone.
‘If you are lying to me, I will have your head,’ she said in an ashy whisper.
‘And I would give it gladly, madam.’ Henry’s shoulders shook, and his voice broke with grief. ‘I wish indeed that I was lying, for then it would not have to be true for any of us.’
The numbness intensified, whitening her vision, but then came the pain, flooding her veins, filling her up, coagulating.
She screamed in denial and continued to scream until her breath failed.
Henry caught her as she collapsed and her last awareness was of his arms wrapping around her as he shouted for help.
Time blurred. Jeanette surfaced momentarily from debilitating shock to realise she was no longer in the hall but in the Queen’s apartments, lying in a soft feather bed with people gathered around her, murmuring in sympathy and consternation as they tended to her.
She drank the various tisanes and nostrums they gave her, and was aware of the constant presence of priests and the coming and going of physicians and friends, but she resisted full lucidity – not wanting to return to a world without Thomas in it.
At one point she heard Edward enquiring after her in a worried voice and turned her face to the wall, refusing to see him.
Various ladies took turns to sit with her and pat her hands and none of it mattered.
She sought refuge in numb slumber. For an instant on waking all would be well before she remembered that Thomas would never wake again, and it was so unbearable that she turned again into darkness.
Eventually, the pain withdrew, becoming a dull, cramping ache, and the fog thinned to mist. Tears came and, with them, harsh, choking sobs that left her throat raw and her body exhausted.
Reality, however, remained solid. No matter how much she sought oblivion, she was back in the world.
The children were brought to see her, and she gathered them tightly to her body and cried.
She and Thomas would create no more sons and daughters.
These four precious souls were all she had of him.
They were his legacy, each one half of his being.
Joannie was too young to understand and would not remember him, and for Maud too that awareness would fade; his daughters would have to live on the stories they were told.
But Johan was old enough to hold clear memories, and Tom, his father’s heir and representative, was fully aware.
He watched her with serious tawny eyes, smudged with shadows.
Dear God, how she loved these children, but bearing their grief on top of her own was so hard when her heart was shattered and the world was grey.