‘And the lads and I said, we’re with you, we want to fight, we’re aching for a chance to draw blood, and-’
‘And so we launched a surprise attack, disarmed and unhorsed four of them, at which the rest fled!’
‘Four?’ Josse d’Acquin had a humorous face, and his generous mouth was quirking into a smile. ‘Sire, I would stake my life on its being six.’ He glanced at Richard. ‘At the very least.’
‘Six, seven, eight, think you?’ Richard was smiling, too.
‘What a day,’ Josse mused, sitting back on his heels.
‘Indeed.’ The King was staring at him, absently noting the muddy puddle water seeping into the seat of the hose and the hem of the elaborately bordered tunic. ‘I never forget a face,’ he said. ‘Knew perfectly well I’d met you before, Josse.’
Josse bowed his head. ‘Sire.’
They remained quite still for some moments, as if suddenly turned into a painting. Some knightly illustration, with the loyal servant waiting, head bent, for the command of his lord. Of his king.
The King, in this case, was thinking. Wondering, in fact, if the vague and general pleas for help which he had been sending up, immediately before this character from the past had reappeared, might just have been answered.
Deliberately Richard stilled his mind, allowed himself to be a receptacle.
After a moment, he had, he was quite sure, received the message he was waiting for.
He reached down and lightly touched Josse d’Acquin on the shoulder. ‘D’Acquin,’ he began, then, less distantly, ‘Josse. Oh, get up, man, you’ve got your backside in a puddle.’ Josse scrambled to his feet, instantly bending into a sort of half crouch; both he and Richard had noticed he was almost a head taller than the King.
‘Josse,’ Richard went on, ‘you’re a local man? Of Norman stock, yes?’
‘My family estates are at Acquin, sire. Near to the town of Saint Omer, a little to the south of Calais.’
‘Acquin?’ Richard ran swiftly through his mind to see if he’d heard of it, decided he hadn’t. ‘Ah. I see. And what of England, our new kingdom over the water? Are you familiar with England?’
‘England,’ Josse echoed, in the manner of someone saying, a pigpen. Then, as if instantly regretting it as less than tactful, when the land’s throne had just been inherited by the man standing in front of him, he said with patently false enthusiasm, ‘England, yes, indeed, sire, I know it quite well. My mother, you see, was an Englishwoman, born and bred in Lewes — that’s a town in the south-east — and in my youth she insisted that I get to know her country, her language, her people’s ways, that sort of thing.’ He smiled faintly. ‘People didn’t say no to my mother, sire.’
‘I know that sort of mother,’ Richard muttered feelingly. ‘So, England and the English hold no fears for you?’
‘I wouldn’t say that, exactly, sire.’ Josse frowned. ‘There’s always fear attached to the unknown. Well, not fear, more apprehension. Well, maybe not even that, but-’
‘A sensible amount of wariness?’ Richard supplied.
‘Precisely.’ Josse smiled openly now, and his teeth, Richard observed, were a great improvement on Bishop Absolon’s. Then, as if remembering where the conversation had begun: ‘Sire? Why do we speak of England?’
‘Because,’ Richard replied simply, ‘I want you to go there.’
Chapter Two
Josse had gone to Richard the Poitevin’s court because of fond memories from the past, not because of hopes for the future. It had been enough, or so he’d thought, to be in that stimulating, action-packed company, where the restless energy of Richard seemed to permeate right through court society, so that you just never knew, from one day to the next, what was going to happen.
And, whenever the court hadn’t had to up sticks and follow Richard off to some distant part of his territory, there was the sheer exuberance of life back in Aquitaine. Richard, brought up in the expectation of inheriting those rich, colourful lands, had thrown himself into the ways of the people, cultivating the love of music, song, the poetry of the troubadors, and the free thinking that characterised his mother. He was utterly her son, and wealthy society in the Poitevin court faithfully reflected the character and habits of both of them.
As he set out on the dusty, crowded London road out of Hastings, Josse reflected how dramatic a change had happened to him, purely because he’d obeyed a sudden whim and joined the group that rode off with Richard that day in Normandy. He didn’t flatter himself with the notion that Richard had chosen him for this delicate mission because of any strengths Josse possessed; only an irredeemable egotist could think that. Why, the king had even had to be reminded of who Josse was!
No. It was nothing more than having been in the right place at the right time.
Something, Josse admitted modestly to himself, that whatever guardian angel it was who guided his footsteps was quite good at arranging.
He was, without a doubt, very pleased to have been entrusted with the job. Richard had briefed him fully, or as fully as he could, when he himself had only Queen Eleanor’s first report to go on. What emerged most powerfully, for Josse, was that Richard seemed genuinely disturbed at the thought of this magnanimous gesture, this releasing of prisoners, going wrong. Being misinterpreted.
Mind you, Josse thought as he edged his horse to a canter and hurried past an overloaded waggon that was creating clouds of choking dust, mind you, it always did sound a cockeyed notion. Me, I agree with that Augustinian canon in Yorkshire — what was his name? William of Newburg? — who was heard to remark that, through the so-called clemency of this new king, a crowd of pests had been released on the long-suffering public to commit worse crimes in future.
But maybe the King and his good lady mother weren’t as familiar with the sort of scum that habitually languished in England’s jails as Josse was. Josse was quite unsurprised at the concept of one such released felon reverting to his old ways; the surprise, in fact, was that they weren’t all at it.
* * *
As the long, bright day wore on, he became hotter, dustier, thirstier, sweatier, and more out of sorts. By mid-afternoon, he was beginning to wish he’d been anywhere but standing before the King when this notion of sending an agent to investigate the murder had been conceived.
If only I were back in Aquitaine, he mused as he encouraged his weary horse up the gentle but long slope to the High Weald, I would be relaxing in a shady courtyard, jug of fine wine at my elbow, perfumed air in my nostrils, music playing softly in my ears, prospect of an evening’s entertainment ahead. And a damned good dinner. And that pretty widowed lady, the one with the secret smile and the irresistible dimple, to seek out and pursue …
No. Best not to fantasise about her, since, in the absence of Josse, she would undoubtedly have turned her tempting dimple elsewhere by now.
Instead he turned his thoughts to his own lands. To Acquin, and his sturdy family home. Perhaps the squat buildings and the thick-walled courtyard were not exactly elegant, but they were safe. The gates were solid oak and barred with iron, and, in times of threat, there was room within the spacious yard not only for the family but for the majority of the peasants whose right it was to look to their lord for protection. Not that it happened often: Acquin, hidden in a fold of the sheltered valley of the Aa river, was well enough off the beaten track for danger, usually, to pass it by.
Occupied with thoughts of his brothers, his sisters-in-law and his many nephews and nieces, Josse was surprised to discover he was at the summit of the low rise he had been so laboriously climbing. Drawing rein, he stared out across the Medway Vale, opening up before him. Up to his left somewhere, on the fringes of the great Wealden Forest, was Hawkenlye Abbey, his ultimate destination. Waiting for him, together with its abbess. Richard had seemed quite in awe of its abbess, when he told Josse about her. The sudden proximity of both the abbey and its mistress concentrated Josse’s mind with swift efficiency; straightening his back, collecting his dozy mount, he stepped up the pace to a brisk trot and set off down the road to Tonbridge.