CHAPTER EIGHTEEN #3
‘Tan?’ he called out, peering into the gloom.
The sound of footsteps came towards him, but these were not the fleet, scurrying feet of the boy, but much heavier.
It was Jean who emerged from the gloom. As he drew closer to the fire, Tudor saw that his face was contorted, that the veins at his temples bulged blue and angry.
‘Jean? What is it? What has happened.’
‘The letter,’ he said simply. ‘Give it to me.’
‘What?’
‘Why won’t you give it to me?!’ he shouted.
And as he shouted, he ran at Tudor. And because he was shouting, and his actions were so unexpected and sudden, Tudor was unaware of Albert moving to stand close behind him.
It was only in the second that Jean reached him that he saw the knife in his hand.
That he saw the blood on that knife. That he understood what the French knight was about to do.
‘Jean, no!’ he cried out and tried to leap to one side. But Albert reached out and grabbed his arms, pinning them to his sides. And in that instant, Jean plunged the knife into Tudor’s belly.
‘That letter will never reach the king, and nor will you!’ Jean hissed as he withdrew the knife and then plunged it into Tudor’s chest.
As he slid to the ground, Tudor was overcome with a terrible sadness.
Being a knight, he had risked his life many times.
Danger was part of his existence, and every warrior accepted that he might die suddenly and before his natural time.
To die at the hands of a friend, a fellow knight, however, was the ultimate betrayal.
To know he would leave his wife a widow and his child an orphan broke his stuttering heart.
But above all this, the thing that made his very soul cry out even as he resisted screaming, was the wickedness in these men that would prevent peace from being agreed.
The letter would be destroyed. The king would fight on.
Thousands would die. The ugliness he saw in Jean’s eyes as he leant over him to snatch the letter from his breast pocket would go on and on and there was nothing he could do to stop it.
He lay helpless, feeling his own blood seeping into the sand, unable to do anything but watch as the two men gathered their things, mounted up and rode away.
As his vision started to fade he felt the gentle thuds of slow hoofbeats through the ground beneath him.
Blinking, he saw that his own horse had come to him.
It reached down and he felt its soft nose and warm breath on his neck.
In that lonely place, two thousand miles from home, with his horse standing sentinel over him, Tudor’s eyes closed for the final time.
Gloucestershire, 1191
The house Rhiannon had been directed to was smaller than she had imagined it would be.
It was timber framed, painted with a white wash, and topped with a smart thatch.
To one side of it was a productive kitchen garden, and chickens scratched in the yard.
It was not quite a farm, but she saw pigs in a pen and two young horses in a paddock.
A doe eyed Jersey cow was tethered near the entrance, grazing the hedgerow.
It looked, she thought wistfully, like a perfect family home.
Except that this was a shattered family now.
When she had had confirmation of Tudor’s death she had been so heartbroken it had made her unwell.
She had taken to her bed and stayed there for two dreadful, almost delirious weeks.
Such behaviour was so out of character, her friends and servants had feared she might die.
But she had not. As the body blow of knowing she had lost him faded, she regained her strength.
Her friends cared for her with great tenderness, even though they did not know, in truth, what ailed her.
At last, she recovered enough to walk in the gardens.
She listened to news of the farms and the harvests.
She attended church. To the outside world, she was well again.
All who knew her heaved a collective sigh of relief, offered up a prayer or two, and considered the crisis over.
For Rhiannon, however, the torment continued.
She had lost him before, of course. And she knew she would do so again.
But this time should have been different.
She had had a vision of her fellow witch.
She had heard his words of reassurance: He will be safe.
She had believed in her very bones that this time would be different because they would find each other. They would be together.
She had felt it, the moment Tudor’s soul had left his body.
She had been carrying eggs from the hen house.
A dozen of them, glossy and dark brown, cradled in her skirt as she hooked it up around them, and walked back towards the kitchen.
That moment, that instant of his passing from one world to the next, accompanied as it was by a cry of anguish from the witch who had promised to keep him safe, had been so profound that she dropped the eggs.
She had stood there, looking at the smashed mess on the ground, aware that people were speaking to her, but unable to make out their words.
All she was certain of was that he had gone. She had lost him again.
She had determined to discover the facts of what had happened.
She knew he had been in the service of the king.
She had used her connections at court, called in a favour from a wine merchant who had business in London, and generally pressed into service anyone who could follow the trail that would lead her to the life he had before he died.
She was not, naturally, surprised to find out he was a knight, for that would always be his given role.
She was deeply saddened to learn he had been betrayed and died not in battle, as he might have wished, but at the hands of thieves and traitors who had killed him for reasons no-one entirely understood.
Beyond the fact of having once again lost the part of her heart that travelled with Tudor, the most moving thing for Rhiannon had been learning of his wife and child.
She was not jealous. Nor was she surprised.
She wanted his happiness above all else, even her own.
If they were never to meet in this lifetime of his, better he should have the companionship, yes, think it, the love, of a good wife, than be alone.
Better he should know the joy of being a father.
Yet now, that wife, that child, they had lost him too.
They, like her, would be grieving. Unlike her, they had also lost their provider.
So it was, when she saw the humble home his widow and orphan now inhabited, Rhiannon knew they would not have the means to support themselves.
It was as she knew it might be: they would be adrift, at the mercy of a landlord and would be suitors, with no other hope of a provider.
She had known at once what she should do.
It was why she, her maid, a stable lad and two guards had made the journey to this quiet corner of Gloucestershire.
‘Stay here,’ she said to her men as she dismounted.
She passed the reins of her horse to Owain, remembering for an instant the time when she and his grandfather had ridden to Gloucester to petition the king all those years ago.
Now, in this little house, she had a more personal but equally important mission.
Before she reached the end of the garden path, the front door opened.
The woman who emerged was pretty, shapely, with sad eyes made all the more sad by her recent grief.
A little girl, no more than two years old, Rhiannon thought, peered around her mother’s skirts.
‘Are you Maryanne Tudor?’ Rhiannon asked.
‘I am,’ the woman replied, an unmistakeable catch in her voice at the mention of her husband’s name.
‘I am Lady Rhiannon of the Black Mountains.’
‘We have not met before, my Lady?’
‘We have not. My father, the late Lord of Cwmdu, was a friend of your husband’s family,’ she explained, delivering the white lie she had prepared.
‘Rhys Tudor, his great uncle, was an ally to my father. I remember him saying, shortly before he died, that he was in the man’s debt.
My father would not wish that debt to go unpaid. ’
Maryanne looked confused. ‘Forgive me, my Lady. I did not know Tudor’s family beyond his mother, who has been dead some years now, God rest her soul. At least she did not live to see her son die,’ she added, her eyes filling with tears.
‘I am sorry for your loss. Truly, I am. I am come here in the hope that you may be able to help me.’
‘Me, help you?’
‘Yes, you see, it troubles me that my father is left indebted, and has done so ever since he died. I now see a way I might repay that debt on his behalf. But to do so, I require your help.’
Maryanne looked tired from the effort of polite and unexpected conversation with a stranger. The strain of her grief was already taking its toll. ‘I will help you if I am able, my Lady,’ she said quietly.
‘I do so hope you will. My dearest wish is that you and your daughter will accept my offer of hospitality. I have a comfortable house in a pretty valley, two days west of here. If you will agree, I would have you join me there. I have need of another maid, you see, my most trusted one having recently left my employ to marry.’ When Maryanne looked as if she might reject the idea out of hand, Rhiannon went on.
‘And of course, your sweet child will have schooling with the other children of the village.’
‘Schooling?’ The thought of such an unusual offer was clearly tempting.
‘Oh yes, I feel very strongly that all children should learn to read and write. They should also learn to sew and sing. And we have a church in the village. And a stream full of quick, clever fish.’ She crouched down to look the little girl in the eye.
‘Do you like to tickle trout, my dear? Would you like to help my shepherd raise his lambs? There are two other girls almost exactly your age who would be so happy to have a new friend to play with. Would you like that?’ She waited, treating the child to one of her warmest smiles.
To her mother’s surprise, the child slipped from her hiding place and went forward.
As Rhiannon held out her arms, the little one fell into them, letting her hold her close.
Rhiannon closed her eyes, her heart bursting at the thought that she was embracing Tudor’s baby.
When she looked up, Maryanne’s face brightened by joy, as if she could see that there could be a happy future for both of them.
‘Will you come, Maryanne? Will you make your home with me?’
Biting her lip to hold back tears of relief, she nodded. ‘Yes. Yes, please, my Lady!’ she whispered.
Rhiannon smiled again. ‘All will be well,’ she said, standing up, and reaching out her hand to take Maryanne’s. ‘All will be well.’