‘And where do you come from? I feel that I recognize the name but I cannot place it.’
‘It is the name of my mother’s kin, madam.’
The queen was still staring at him, a faint frown deepening the creases on her brow. ‘De Courtenay… I believe I once met a Marie de Courtenay, but she would have been too old to be your mother — your grandmother, perhaps.’ She shook her head as if to free it from that thought and, with an obvious effort, smiled at Ninian and said, ‘But we are not here to discuss your grandmother. You have something to tell me, I am told?’
With a shining and very apparent honesty, Ninian told his tale. Josse noticed with interest and approval that the boy too obeyed the same instinct as he had done himself not to risk distressing the queen. Like Josse, he did not speak of the true horror of what had happened that night.
‘And King Richard took you and your master out to his ship?’
‘Yes, my lady.’
Josse went to say something but stopped himself. You did not speak to a queen; you waited until she spoke to you.
She must have sensed he had something to add. ‘Sir Josse?’
‘Madam, it was the man who rowed the king, the boy and his master to the ship who disclosed the secret of the king’s presence on Oleron that night,’ he said. ‘He spoke the truth, my lady.’
The queen smiled. ‘No need to remind me, Sir Josse,’ she said with discernible irony. ‘I promise I shall not have the man arrested and his tongue slit for telling lies.’
Josse hung his head, but the queen said, ‘Sir Josse?’ and he looked up at her. She studied him for a few moments. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘You have removed a terrible fear from my mind. Now I shall indeed be able to let my son rest in peace.’ There was a short silence, as if all three of them were paying silent homage to the dead king. Then Eleanor said, ‘So where now, Sir Josse?’
‘I shall return to Hawkenlye Abbey and tell the abbess that-’ Too late he realized what he was saying; to reveal to the queen that he was going to relate the outcome of the matter to the abbess implied that he had told her about it, and Eleanor had sworn him to secrecy.
But she was laughing softly. ‘It’s all right, Sir Josse,’ she said. ‘I think I always understood that, for you, sharing a confidence with Helewise of Hawkenlye was almost the same thing as talking to yourself.’
He was not entirely sure what she meant, but there was no time to work it out. She had risen to her feet and, taking this as an indication that the interview was over, Josse began backing away, nudging Ninian to make him do the same.
Eleanor, however, had not quite finished. Reaching beneath her chair, she pulled out a leather bag. It was quite large and clearly very heavy. ‘You have no doubt been put to considerable expense in this mission,’ she said smoothly. ‘Allow me, if you will, to recompense you.’ She handed him the bag.
Josse took it, too taken aback to comment other than a muttered ‘Thank you, my lady.’
Then with one final, long look at Ninian, she dismissed them.
Josse reined in his impatience until he and Ninian were back in the stables, collecting their horses. Then, while Ninian stood guard, he untied the laces that fastened the leather bag. Within there were gold coins: a lot of gold coins. With shaking fingers Josse tried to count them, but he made a mistake. He must have done, for the total seemed to come to a sum that was sufficient to build a fair-sized house.
Part Four
Sixteen
H elewise had not realized just how disruptive it would be to have even a modest and simple chapel built so close to the abbey. She had imagined that an added advantage of siting the new building outside the walls would mean that the community could go about its daily round in peace; this, however, proved not to be the case. Everyone, from the most senior and dignified nuns down to the youngest, newest lay brother, was suddenly preoccupied with thinking up excuses that took them out beyond the gates and past the workmen hard at work at the top of the slope on the edge of the forest. They did not content themselves with a quick look to check on progress; instead, Helewise noticed, quietly fuming, they would stand there in what looked like a light trance, wide eyes fixed on the apparently fascinating sight of a mason chipping away at a chunk of stone.
She was not immune from the draw of the new chapel, but she forced herself not to waste time during her working hours; instead, she made a daily visit to the site just after vespers, when the workmen would be packing up for the day. Quite often she took Meggie with her, and the little girl seemed to enjoy the special time together as much as she did. Meggie appeared to be happy enough, although frequently she stopped and looked around, as if searching for Josse, or, indeed, Helewise thought with pain, for her mother. Everyone made a pet of the child, Helewise included, for she was easy to love and a cheerful companion, which made the evening visits to the new chapel all the more enjoyable. Helewise would exchange a few words with Martin and one or two of his team and then, once they had all gone, walk slowly around, seeing for herself the day’s progress.
Slowly, almost unaware of it, she fell under the spell of St Edmund’s Chapel. It was not large: perhaps twenty paces from the west wall to the rounded apse behind the place where the altar would stand, and a fraction over half that distance from the north wall to the south. Beneath the nave, a crypt had been hollowed out; it was there for a specific purpose. It was odd but every time Helewise thought about what that purpose was, something seemed to fudge her thoughts and she would find her mind had been turned to something else.
The chapel’s entrance was in the south wall, and the apse extended under the trees at the very edge of the forest. There would be three small windows glazed with plain glass set high up in the apse, so that the morning sun would shine down on the altar. The west end faced the abbey, which was wonderful because Helewise was to have her wish. Martin had told her that the two strong buttresses that would stand at either end of the west wall were there for support. She had looked blankly at him, not understanding. ‘We’ll strengthen that wall, my lady,’ he explained, ‘because then we can leave a great big space in it.’
‘But-’
‘And we’ll fill it with glass,’ he finished.
Not just any glass; Helewise discovered as Martin showed her the drawings that Queen Eleanor had been very specific. She must have seen for herself what was planned for Chartres and she wanted something equally beautiful for the new chapel built for her son. The west window in Hawkenlye’s St Edmund Chapel would have a huge stained-glass illustration whose central panel depicted the saint on horseback, sword raised to strike down the enemies of the Lord. If St Edmund was tall, auburn-haired and blue-eyed and bore a resemblance to the queen’s favourite son, then it would be a hard-hearted person who failed to sympathize and understand.
Helewise was amazed at how quickly the building was going up. June turned into July and the team made the most of the long sunny days. Construction always came to an end in October, she well knew, when any incomplete structures would be carefully padded with bracken or straw to prevent damage by winter frosts. Such a measure, she slowly came to realize, would not be necessary here, for unless some unforeseen setback occurred, the chapel roof ought to be on long before the autumn set in.
She talked at length with Martin concerning the chapel’s interior. They were in agreement that the walls should simply be whitewashed; anything else would detract from the glorious colours of the west window. Martin persuaded her to have a rood screen. The master carpenter produced a sketch of a plain structure made of local oak and consisting of a series of arches, two narrow ones on either side and a wider one in the middle, giving access to the choir. The altar was to be a large block of sandstone, quarried locally and dragged up to Hawkenlye on a massive cart drawn by a whole team of oxen. Martin’s masons were already working on it, shaping and smoothing it to form a rectangular cube.