They obeyed at once, Ranulf halting only long enough to shepherd the peasants ahead of him. He thought, too, to close the door behind them, and the hut was plunged into darkness. Henry welcomed it, for instincts honed as sharp as any sword blade were warning that he’d have need of its camouflaging kindness. The prior took several steps forward, would have knelt if Henry had not stopped him. “I do not bring good news, sire,” he said softly.
Henry closed his eyes, never wanted to have to open them again. “My son…” he whispered, but he could go no further, struck by superstitious dread that to say it aloud would banish any splinters of hope, would indeed make it so.
“The young king is dead, my liege, stricken by fever and the bloody flux.” The prior knew those were just symptoms of Hal’s death; the real cause was the Vengeance of God for his wanton acts of sacrilege. He saw no need to salt the king’s wounds by saying so, though, and instead continued quietly, telling Henry that Hal’s knights had arrived at Grandmont that morn, bearing the body of their lord and the sorrowful story of his last days. After a few moments, he realized that Henry was not listening. “Shall I go, sire?”
Henry nodded, but cried out as the prior reached the door. “Wait! Wh…when?”
“On Saturday eve, my lord,” the prior said sadly, and Henry shut his eyes again. On Saturday. There had been time. If only he’d believed, he could have been at Hal’s deathbed. If he’d not given in to his damnable doubts and suspicions, he’d have been there when his son needed him the most. The sound of a closing door told him that he was alone, and he sank to his knees, but prayers would not come. He prostrated himself on the floor of the hut, just as he’d once done upon the cold tiles before Becket’s tomb, pressing his cheek into the dirt, hearing no other sound in the world but the wild hammering of his heart.
As word spread, men began to gather near the hut. It was a subdued crowd, conversing only in hushed murmurs, and since Henry was not in sight, they were watching his advisors and confidants, for it was well known that the king would have gone to Martel if his counselors had not talked him out of it. But the latter were oblivious to the stares and speculation, for they could focus upon nothing except the man in that cottage.
Geoff, Ranulf, Willem, and Maurice de Craon were standing together, not speaking, each one alone with his regrets. After the prior had emerged from the hut, they’d heard only one cry, a lament that raised the hairs on the back of their necks, for it was a wail of pure pain and utter despair. After that, though, there had been silence, and somehow they found that more chilling than weeping or cursing or raging would have been.
Richard was trying out a relatively new siege engine at Aixe. Called a trebuchet, it had a long arm pivoting on an axle. The shorter end of the arm held the counterweight, and the longer end, called the verge, was being winched down to the ground so they could load heavy stones into its sling. Once it was ready, the engineers waited for the duke’s signal and then released the trigger. As the counterweight plummeted down, the verge shot upward and rocks rained down upon the walls of the castle. The soldiers let out a cheer, and Richard turned to Alfonso with a delighted grin, looking like a boy who’d just been given a surprise present.
“It has a much greater range than the mangonels,” he marveled, “and is more accurate, too. If those fools don’t surrender soon, we’ll bring the castle walls down about their ears!”
Alfonso agreed, equally impressed with the deadly potential of this new weapon. Thinking he’d love to test it against the Count of Toulouse, he followed after Richard as the duke paced around the trebuchet, inspecting it from every angle.
“Good work, Guy,” he told a soldier, who beamed at the praise. Men were scurrying about, making ready to reload, and Richard watched intently, his brow furrowed in thought. When Alfonso caught up with him, he murmured, almost as if talking to himself, “I wonder…if we shortened the sling, would that increase the arc of the stone’s flight? If so, it would cover greater distance, might even hit the keep itself.”
When he looked questioningly at Alfonso, the Aragonese king smiled and agreed, although he had no clear idea what Richard was talking about. It was enough for him that the trebuchet worked; unlike Richard, he felt no need to understand how and why it did. But if Richard thought so, he was probably correct; at twenty-five, the duke was well on the way to becoming a master of the art of war.
“Are we within crossbow range?” Alfonso asked suddenly, for he’d noticed that Richard seemed remarkably casual about matters of personal safety. When his friend mocked his caution, he reminded Richard amiably that his son and heir was only nine years old, too young to rule in his own right. “So if I were killed at Aixe, it would cause no end of trouble in Aragon. Whereas if you, my lord duke, were to take a fatal arrow in the chest, your brother the young king would be happy to step into your shoes.”
Richard’s knights were taken aback, but Richard was amused, not offended, by Alfonso’s irreverence, and laughed. “Dukes may be expendable in Aragon, but here in Aquitaine, the duke’s death matters more than the loss of any king. As for the ‘young king,’ he’ll never see the day dawn when he…” He stopped in mid-sentence, and Alfonso, following his gaze, saw that riders were being escorted into the encampment.
“Is that not your brother, the chancellor?”
Richard nodded. “And to judge by the doleful look on his face, he is bringing yet more bad news. I am beginning to think my father ought to have christened him Jonah rather than Geoffrey.”
Geoff and his men had dismounted by the time Richard and Alfonso reached them. At close range, Geoff’s agitation was even more obvious and Richard braced himself for yet more bad news. He greeted his brother brusquely, then said, “Well, what have you come to tell me that I will not want to hear?”
“It is not bad news for you. It might even be good news for England, too, but it is the worst possible news our father could have gotten.”
Richard stared at him. “Are you saying…You mean Hal was actually telling the truth for once?”
“Yes, he was. He died on Saturday at Martel.”
There were gasps and exclamations from those who’d heard. Alfonso made the sign of the cross. Richard was dumbfounded, for he’d had no doubts whatsoever that Hal had been lying through his teeth. He took a moment to absorb it, and then scowled. “Splendor of God! We’re all in the soup, then, and me most of all. When he starts doling out blame, I’m likely to get the lion’s share.”
Geoff glared at him. “You have never understood our father, have you? He is not a man to seek scapegoats. When we tried to apologize for giving him such faulty advice, he would not hear it, saying ‘I am not Louis Capet.’ He has taken all the blame upon himself for not going to Martel, and when we argued that it was the only decision under the circumstances, he just looked at us with hollow, empty eyes.”
Alfonso was becoming aware of an undercurrent of excitement surging through the camp. As word passed from one man to another, they were elated, understanding what this would mean for their duke. They were struggling to act sober and respectful, knowing it was not seemly to gloat over Hal’s death, but most could not contain their glee. Glancing at Richard, Alfonso saw that the full implications of Hal’s death had not yet registered with him; he’d reacted instinctively as a son and a brother. He kept his eyes upon his friend’s face, and he would later tell his queen that he’d seen the exact moment when Richard realized that not only had he won his war, he was now the heir to the English crown. Geoff was still chiding him on Henry’s behalf; he was no longer listening. His expression gave away nothing, but Alfonso was close enough to catch the hint of a smile curving the corners of his mouth.
Henry had learned of his son’s death on Tuesday afternoon. It was now Wednesday night and he was utterly exhausted, for he’d slept no more than four or five hours in that time. And when he had fallen asleep, he’d been tormented by remorseful dreams of Hal that gave him neither peace nor rest. As the hours dragged on, he’d told his squires to go to bed; in the shadowed chamber, he could barely make them out, sprawled on pallets in the corner. As tired as he was, he was not yet ready to plunge into the nightmare cauldron of his dreams, and he remained sitting in a window-seat, doing his best to keep the past at bay.
When a discreet knock sounded, he chose to answer the door himself, much to the surprise of the bishop’s servant. He blinked and then said, speaking in the overly solicitous voice that people used to address the mortally ill, “My lord…Sir William Marshal has just ridden in. Since you are still awake, do you wish to see him? Or shall I tell him to wait till the morrow?”
Henry had known this moment would come, when he’d have to listen to a first-person account of his son’s suffering. “I will see him,” he said and tried to brace himself for the ordeal.
Will’s muscles were cramping, and he was grateful when Henry gestured for him to rise and told him to find a
