The Prince and the Pilgrim (17 page)

Late that night Alice was wakened from sleep by a soft touch on her shoulder and a hurried whisper.

“My lady. My lady! Wake up, please!”

“Mariamne?” Alice, fully awake in an instant, sat up in the bed, her mind racing to the worry that these days was constantly present. “Something’s wrong? What is it? Is my father ill?”

“No, no. It’s all right, don’t be alarmed. But he’s just come back from the bishop’s house, and he sent me to wake you. He wants to talk to you.”

“Quickly, then, my bedgown. Yes, that one will do. And light those candles, will you?”

Alice ran to the door and opened it. The duke was waiting outside, still hooded and cloaked from his walk home from the bishop’s house. He had thrown the hood back, and her anxious look
at
his face told her that the news, whatever it was, was very bad indeed.

“Father? Come in … No, keep your cloak, it’s chilly. Mariamne, that rug from the bed, please. Sit here, Father, let me put it round you … You’re cold. Shall Mariamne heat a posset?”

“No, no. I had more than enough to drink at dinner. I’m sorry to disturb you like this, Alice, but the matter is urgent. Tell your woman to go back to bed. I must talk to you alone. Don’t look so frightened, girl –” this to Mariamne, hovering wide-eyed by the door. “None of us is in danger. Go to bed now, and see that you wake your mistress in good time in the morning.”

When Mariamne had gone he put out a hand and drew Alice towards him. She sank down on the footstool before his chair. In spite of his reassuring words to the maid, she could see trouble in his face, and feel it in the taut grip of his hand.

“What is it, Father? What has happened?”

“A messenger came to Ommatius, one of his secret couriers. All these high-ranking clergy and nobles use spies – it’s easy to see why. The man brought news from Paris, and I’m afraid it is bad. It could not be worse. The boys are dead.”

The word fell like a blow, stunning belief. When at last she spoke, the words could barely be heard.

“But Father … The boys? The princes? Chlodomer’s sons? And – all of them?”

“All of them, poor children, murdered. Yes, it was murder. Being who they were, of course it was. I’m sorry.”

Alice’s head was bowed in her hands. She was
remembering
the sunny day not so long ago, and the two children running up through the dusty vines to sit chatting on the wall where the lizards played in the sun, and the queen’s guards watched from below.

“Theudovald … He must have only been about ten, or eleven now. Still so young, and looking forward to Orleans, and being crowned there.” She looked up. “He might have been a good king, Father. Queen Clotilda had brought him up, and she – But where was she? I thought she was in Paris with the boys?”

“She was, but one gathers that she was powerless to help them. Ommatius’ courier had no details, just the facts, some garbled tale from a frightened servant. All he knows is that King Lothar somehow persuaded King Childebert that he must get rid of the boys; possibly with some sort of promise that the three surviving brothers would share out Chlodomer’s kingdom between them. Lothar has married Chlodomer’s widow, Queen Guntheuc – yes, the boys’ mother – so the boys were a threat to him whatever happened. Or so these folk would see it.” He sounded weary, too weary for bitterness or condemnation. “One might have expected something like this, but it’s hard to credit, even here.”

“But Queen Clotilda?” insisted Alice. The tale, told like this, in the silent dark lit only by the guttering pair of candles, was not believable. “She controlled the family, or seemed to? Lothar and Childebert – they obeyed her before. So why this, now?”

“When she called them to war, yes, they obeyed
her
then. But this … We cannot know how it happened, but it seems that Clotilda was tricked into letting Lothar get his hands on the boys. All that the servant – the informant – knew was that the princes were taken to the king’s palace on the excuse of being prepared for the crowning, and there stabbed to death. Ommatius’ courier left straight away, before the news got out and the gates were locked. That’s all we know; the rest is guesswork; but it’s true the boys are dead. The man saw it.”

He fell silent, and Alice did not speak. What was there to say? The distress she felt was not so much for Theudovald, whom she had known so briefly, but somehow for the evil that is there in the world, so close even to the innocent and the good. Who, at ten years old, could deserve to die? And at the hands of those he trusted? And the other two were younger still …

She shivered, and reached again for her father’s hand. “You should go to bed, Father. I’ll wake Berin and he can heat a bedstone for your feet. And in the morning –”

“In the morning we go,” said the duke. “It would be foolish to delay longer. We must go while the
Merwing
is still at our disposal. I have sent to the master to tell him to make ready to sail tomorrow. Now, my dear, try to get some sleep, and tell your women in the morning to pack your things and be ready to embark before noon. We will go while we may.”

They
embarked shortly before noon next day and, from the deck of the little ship, watched without regret as the roofs and blossoming trees and the turrets of Tours sank back and out of sight.

All afternoon the breeze blew, light but steady, and the
Merwing
held on her way. Alice stayed on deck with her father, watching the countryside slip by, and looking to see, in the little settlements they passed, any signs of disturbance. But all seemed peaceful. Twice they were hailed from one of the small wharves, but only, it seemed, as a gesture of greeting: someone, perhaps, who knew the ship’s master; they saw the latter lift an arm in response.

Towards evening the breeze died down, and their progress slowed. The river had widened, and islands lay here and there; the ship had to pick her way carefully through the channels between them. A servant approached to ask if the evening meal should be served, and they went below.

The royal cabin was not large, but it was comfortable almost to luxury. Queen Clotilda’s new austerity had not yet found its way there. Two smaller cabins lay forward of it; in one of these Alice had her bed, with a pallet nearby for Mariamne; the duke slept in the other. As on their former voyage, guards would be set on deck at the head of the companionway.

Evening drew down, and clouds, massing in
the
west, brought darkness early. The
Merwing
was still making her way slowly between the islands which, with their willows and thickets of alder, showed only like darker clouds floating on the water.

Alice retired soon after supper was done. Mariamne, who had been understandably horrified, and also very frightened, at what Alice had told her of the boys’ murder, seemed to have forgotten her fears in the relief of going home; she was, indeed, inclined to be merry at the difficulties of attending her mistress in such cramped quarters, as she helped Alice undress and into her night clothing, brushed the long, shining hair, and then, having tidied the cabin as best she could, retired herself to the pallet no more than arm’s-length from her mistress’s bed. In a very short time she was asleep.

Alice did not find sleep come so easily. She lay on her back, listening to the creaking of timber and the sounds of water lapping along the ship’s side, her eyes on the small glow of the riding-light outside the square port-hole; smoky yellow light, patched with black shadows, that swayed and swung across the cabin ceiling. She moved restlessly, trying to hold her imagination back from the pictures that kept printing themselves on her brain: the three young princes, children still and surely blameless, who, thinking themselves safe and held in honour, had left their grandmother’s protection and gone trustfully to their uncle’s house and the foulest of murders …

Prayer helped, and the thought of home, and eventually she must have dozed, because when
she
next opened her eyes the pattern of light on the ceiling had changed. It was brighter and steadier. No sounds came now from on deck, but very near, close under where she lay, came a new sound; something bumping gently against the ship’s side.

Then voices, kept low; men’s voices, whispering, but echoing from the water, and carried up through the open port. Then the soft slap of rope against the ship’s side, and the creak and strain of the ladder as someone climbed it.

Alice sat up and threw back the rugs. Mariamne, undisturbed, slept on. Alice took the three steps to the port-hole and stretched on tiptoe to peer out.

Her cabin, on the starboard side, looked straight out over a narrow stretch of water towards a sizeable island thick with trees. The
Merwing
hardly seemed to be moving at all; the island seemed to float, still, black on smooth water.

But directly below the port-hole there were ripples, ringing out edged with a faint apricot shimmer from the riding-light. A boat lay close under the ship’s side, and, a little way to the right of the port-hole, a rope ladder hung down. A man stood in the boat, holding the ladder steady for the climber. She tried to lean out, straining upward to see, but he must already have reached the deck. The ladder, released, came snaking down, and slid into the water with hardly a splash. The boatman dragged it in, piling it anyhow in a heap, then, with no more than a wave of the arm, thrust the boat away from the ship’s side and propelled
it
with silent oars to be lost in the dense shadow of the island trees.

Alice snatched up her bedgown, belted it quickly round her, failed to find her slippers, and ran barefoot out of the cabin to seek her father.

The door of his cabin was open. The bulkhead lantern was lit, and showed an empty bed. She ran for the companionway, where the guards ought to be awake and on station.

Someone was coming down the stairs. Not the duke; a tall man, moving carefully, his cloak wrapped round some bulky bundle carried in his arms.

He blocked the stairway. She backed, drew breath to call out, and then stopped as he spoke quietly, under his breath.

“Lady Alice? Little maid?”

As he came into the edge of the lantern’s glimmer she knew him.

“Jeshua!”

He looked weary, and there was a smear of mud on his face. He smelled of sweat and horses and dank water. He was smiling.

“The same. By your leave, lady. This is your father’s bedchamber?” He went past her and stooping, laid his burden, still close-wrapped, on the duke’s bed.

“What are you doing here? What’s happening? Where’s my father? And what is that?”

The questions poured out, as if a dam had broken that had held back the tensions of the last night and day.

He answered only two of them, but they were enough.

“Your father is on deck, talking with the master. And this –” indicating the motionless bundle on the bed – “this is Chlodovald, King of Orleans, whose brothers, as you know, were killed, and who, by your leave, is going home with you.”

She stared at Jeshua for a breathless moment, feeling the blood rushing up into her face.

“Chlodovald? Prince Chlodovald? We were told they were all dead!”

“The two eldest are. We managed to smuggle the third boy away. Now if you –”

Her hands flew to her cheeks. She swung round to look at the motionless lump in the bed. “Is he all right? Was he hurt?”

“No, no. He’s asleep. It’s been a long journey and a hard one, and he’s very young. He’s been dead to everything for the last hour or more. Now, Lady Alice, I must go and talk to your father. He’s above, with the master. I’m glad you woke. If you of your goodness would stay here with the boy, in case he should wake, and wonder where he is? He’s a brave little boy, but he must be very frightened.”

“Of course I’ll stay with him. Ah, we’re under way again. The master expected this?”

“He hoped. We managed to send word ahead, so he has been watching for us. Now by your leave –?”

“Of course.”

She watched him take the steps to the deck two
at
a time, heard a softly spoken word, presumably to one of the guards, and he was gone. She tiptoed across to the bedside and stooped over the boy.