Jo had all the notes she needed on Ann by four o’clock. They had walked the smallholding again, taken more pictures, and Jo had tried her hand at milking. It was in the cowshed that Ann turned to her, leaning against the angular rump of the pretty Jersey cow.
“Would you allow me to try some regression techniques on you later, when the kids are in bed?”
Jo hesitated. “I don’t know. I think I’d be embarrassed-”
She glanced at Ben, who was gently rubbing some ointment into the eye of one of his calves.
“No need. You are concerned to find out about Matilda’s children and grandchildren. You need to see some of the happy side of her life, if she had any, poor lady. Why not let me try and lead you there? Better than going back to Hay and violently hallucinating in the parking lot all alone.”
Jo made a face. “Put like that-”
“You can’t refuse. Good. Listen, go and call your landlady and tell her you are staying here tonight. We’d love to have you, and that way it won’t matter if it gets late. We’ll keep it happy and loose, I promise.”
They drank homemade wine while Ann prepared the quiche for supper, then, when they had eaten, she led Jo to the sofa and sat her down.
Ben perched himself uncomfortably in the corner, his eyes on his wife’s face as she talked Jo back into a trance.
“Hell, Annie, I didn’t know you could do that,” he murmured as Jo obediently raised her arm and held it suspended over her head.
Ann took off her glasses. “I have a lot of talents you don’t know about, Benjamin,” she retorted. “Now, to work.” She knelt at Jo’s feet. “Matilda de Braose, I want you to listen to me. I want you to talk to me about your son. Your eldest son, Will, the child who gave you so much pain at his birth. He is grown up now. Tell me about him…”
“Will had been ill all winter again.” Jo shook her head sadly. “So ill. He wanted to go with his father to fight with the king and Prince John against the French, but he had to stay with me at Bramber. Then, at the end of May, it happened. John came back to us.”
Matilda was waiting in the great hall, arrayed in her finest gown, her hair netted in a fillet of silver, with Will, gaunt still, but stronger, at her right hand, when a flurry of activity at the door announced the arrival of their new king.
King Richard had died on 6 April in the Limousin, to be succeeded, not by Arthur, his elder brother’s child, the true heir, some said, by strict right of primogeniture, but by his younger brother, John. John, the grown man the country needed for its king.
William had been among the first to kneel to declare his allegiance before the new king set off for England, and Bramber had been their first stop on the road to Westminster after landing at Shoreham.
Staring at the doorway, Matilda felt a slight constriction in her throat as John appeared, surrounded by his followers; but with every ounce of courage she possessed, she stepped forward to greet him, curtsying to the ground over the hand that he held to be kissed.
His blue eyes, as she glanced up, were inscrutable, but he retained her fingers in his for a moment longer than necessary. “I trust you remember, my lady, that I invited you, many years ago, to be at my coronation.”
“Thank you, Your Grace, I shall be there.” Her glance shifted to William, who was beaming at the king’s side. Behind him, the king’s retinue were crowding into the great hall: nobles, officers, captains of his guard, all travel- stained and weary after the Channel crossing, but eager for the refreshment that Matilda’s cooks and butlers had been preparing since dawn.
With the king ensconced on the high seat of honor, reaching out for the goblet of wine that Will, on one knee, passed him, Matilda gave a little sigh. This should have been a moment of great pride and happiness, with her husband so obviously high in the favor of the new king, so why was she uneasy? She glanced at John and found he was watching her over the rim of the goblet. In spite of herself she felt the heat rising in her face and she looked away again.
Then he was speaking and she knew that, over the hubbub of talk and the intervening crowds who fawned and crowded around him, John was talking to her.
“We look forward to our coronation and to services from our loyal and devoted subjects, as we know you all to be. We know there can be no treachery among those of you who stay our friends.” He rose and flourished the cup and William, delighted, responded pledge for pledge.
Matilda thought of the coronation to come at Westminster Abbey, lit with a thousand candles, thick with incense, and then of the ceremonies that would follow, and tried to put her worries out of her mind. John was king now. He would almost at once, Will assured her, be returning to France. With William so high in favor the next years should be good. Forcing herself to be calm and to share the excitement and good humor of the gathering, she at last took up her own cup and held it out to be filled.
“That’s good,” Ann put in softly, almost afraid to speak as the silence stretched out in the room. “But I don’t want you to think about the king too much. Tell me about your children. About their marriages. Talk about Reginald and Giles and Will. Talk about the good times, if you can…”
For a moment Jo stayed silent and Ben shifted uncomfortably in his seat, his eyes leaving her face at last to stare out of the window to where the last pale-green reflections of the sunset were slowly merging into true darkness. From the hillside he could hear the occasional contented exchange between his grazing sheep, and involuntarily he felt himself clutching at the arms of his chair as if to reassure himself of its solidity.
The Christmas celebrations had already begun when, in a flurry of lathered, muddy horses, William arrived at Hay and greeted his wife. He was in a high good mood as he kissed her. And, uncharacteristically, he had brought her a gift, a milk-white mare with a mane and tail like pure watered silk, trapped out in gilded harness.
“It’s a horse such as the infidels ride in the Holy Land,” he claimed proudly as he led Matilda out into the windswept bailey to see. “See how she carries her head, and the set of her tail? She will make a queen of you, my dear.”
The mare nuzzled Matilda’s hands, blowing gently as she stroked it and Matilda bent to kiss the silky nose. Her heart had sunk, as always, when her husband returned. But, for the horse, she felt instant and unqualified love.
William called for mulled wine to be sent up to their chamber that night. As his wife sat clad only in her loose, fur-lined bedgown, William, still dressed, perched on the high bed, sipping the steaming drink. He watched as she sent away her women and she herself started to unbraid the long copper hair. Now there were silver streaks in the tresses that reached to the floor.
Favor with King John had brought yet more power to William, and Matilda, as so often, found herself looking secretly at him as he sat preening himself, wondering apprehensively at the pride and confidence he displayed.
He was becoming increasingly unpopular in the country, and part of this unpopularity was, she knew, due to jealousy. The king had favored him, a border baron, above many another man of far higher birth and better claim to the monarch’s favor, and she often asked herself secretly why John gave William so much trust. He had favored him from their first meetings when the king was but a boy, seeming to prefer the bluff, stocky baron to the more effete of his earls, and yet she wondered sometimes whether John really liked him at all. She had seen those intense blue eyes studying William as the older man grew drunk and incautious at banquets and festivals; it was always after that that the cold gaze would stray to her and she would look quickly away, refusing to meet John eye to eye.
Shortly after his coronation, at which Isabella of Gloucester had not appeared, John had had his marriage annulled on the pretext that as he and his wife were second cousins and he had never had the papal dispensation required to marry her, the marriage was invalid. Matilda had at first been angry beyond all reason, but quickly she realized that such an end to the marriage could only bring relief and happiness to the poor, scared child. She had
