‘Whatever happened to those two maidens?’
‘I can send for them, sire.’
‘Good, I’ll see them tonight. I will have my strength back by then. Organize a feast with the best Graves.’
There were tears in his eyes; he knew he was dying. I put my good hand on his chest, and he rested his strong right hand on it.
‘We have been through a lot together, my friend. Will you stay with me until the end?’
‘Of course, sire.’
My eyes filled with tears, and they began to roll down my face.
‘No tears, Ranulf. Not when I’m gone, either. I’m afraid there is nothing to stop John taking the throne now. If I try to prevent it, war will follow and it will tear the Empire apart. My mother is the only hope to steady the ship. She will need you and the Grand Quintet to help her. If she calls on you, please go to her and do all you can.’
‘I will, until my dying day.’
‘Let’s hope that day is much further away than mine!’
The King closed his eyes, but then they sprang open again.
‘You should take the talisman. If my mother sees it, she will suspect that I did not destroy the manuscripts. Besides, I think my time with it is over and that I should return it to its guardian.’
I lifted it off his neck as gently as I could and put it into its leather pouch.
‘How will you find its next recipient?’
‘I don’t know, sire. Perhaps I should bury it with the casket and let it find its own inheritor. I suspect it’s been buried before and has always been found. Maybe it’s time for it to be dormant again.’
‘Knowing who has worn it before me, I have been proud to wear it. It would comfort me to think that I may be the last of its heirs in its current life. Perhaps you should go back to St Cirq Lapopie and lay it to rest with my grandfather. It would be good to know it was in the soil of Aquitaine. He grew to love my homeland, as I grew to love his. I’m glad England has found peace after so many years of violence and anguish. Thanks to you, I now know it is my home too and that I share the blood of its people. When you return, give them my love; walk through its fair meadows and by its sweet streams, and think of me.’
The King gripped my hand; he closed his eyes once more and fell into a sleep that, for the first time in days, seemed restful.
The siege of Chalus-Chabrol was ended by Mercadier two days later. The sappers had dug deep under a corner of the castle walls and had managed to bring it down into a heap of rubble. It did not take Mercadier long to find the culprit who had shot the King, and he dragged him before us in chains. He had been badly beaten.
The Lionheart was slowly slipping away, but he was still conscious for short periods.
Mercadier roused him.
‘Sire, I have brought the man who shot you. I can’t get him to say much.’
The King peered at the man and asked to be lifted so that he could see him better.
‘You are no more than a boy. How old are you?’
The young man, who was little more than eighteen, looked at the King with a sneer of contempt and answered defiantly.
‘Old enough to kill you.’
Mercadier kicked the boy in the groin, sending him sprawling.
‘Hold, Mercadier! The boy has the heart of a lion and the eye of a hawk. I don’t want him hurt. Ranulf, help him up.’
He adopted a gentle tone with his assailant.
‘What is your name?’
‘Pierre Basil, a son of the Limousin.’
‘Where did you learn to use an arbalest as accurately as that?’
‘My grandfather taught me, as he had my father and my brother. He also showed me how to make the swallowtail quarrel and how to dip it in leopard’s bane and pig shit to make sure it killed its target.’
‘Then he is a wonderful teacher.’
‘Was! He’s dead now, as are my father and brother.’
‘How did they die?’
‘My grandfather died two weeks ago; he was old. But
‘Where?’
‘In a skirmish near Pacy-sur-Eure in Normandy, late last year. You cut my father down with your sword, and my brother was trampled to death by your horse.’
The Lionheart looked at the boy. His eyes were moist, but there was also a look of admiration on his face.
‘They would be very proud of you; you have avenged them.’
He then turned to Mercadier.
‘Set the boy free, and give him a hundred shillings.’
Mercadier was furious. But out of respect for the King’s wishes, he took the boy out of the tent much more gently than he had brought him in.
The boy’s confession that he had used poison and pig shit to make his missile more lethal explained why the Lionheart now faced his maker.
By Sunday 3 April, the King was still alive, but fading fast. Queen Eleanor and the Grand Quintet had arrived, but not Berengere, who was not well enough to travel.
A vigil was organized around the King’s bed. His tent had become a shrine, where members of his army came every day to pray for him. The Bishop of Limoges gave him Extreme Unction and we all awaited his death as calmly as we could, knowing that that was what he would have demanded.
The words the King had spoken to Mercadier about the boy were his last. He lost consciousness permanently, his great strength the only thing keeping him alive, but Queen Eleanor said that when she took his hand, she could feel him tighten his grip on her.
Richard I of England, known to the world as the Lionheart, the name he had earned when only a boy, died in the early evening of 6 April 1199.
There were no tears from those gathered around him, just an enormous sense of desolation, a void created by the loss of the finest man any of us had ever known. We drew strength from his presence in our lives; the tears would wait until the months and years to come.
His body was laid out under the awning of his tent so that his army could file past and show their respects. They were not short of tears; grizzled campaigners wept openly, and many fell to their knees to touch the hem of the Lionheart’s cape. Some left flowers and the bulbs of spring, others left pieces of silver, or little tokens they had carved for him.
They had followed him to the far reaches of the earth and were immensely proud of it.
According to his wishes, and in his family’s tradition, his heart was taken to Rouen by the Grand Quintet. His mother took his body to the Abbey of Fontevraud, in the Loire, so that he could be buried next to his father.
Negu and I went south, to St Cirq Lapopie, where we completed our obligations to the Lionheart, and also to Earl Harold and Abbot Alun. We met the local families to which Harold had left the estate – a charming group of simple Quercynoise folk – and they left us alone to pay our respects at Earl Harold’s grave.
It was a beautiful spring day, with nature beginning to bloom in Quercy’s forests. I had bought a small silver box in Brive as a home for the talisman and, as the Lionheart had suggested, I used my seax to dig a deep hole at the base of Earl Harold’s headstone as a resting place for the ancient amulet.
At sunset, on an evening to lift the soul, Negu sat and stared across the beautiful valley of the Lot, as I sat by Earl Harold’s grave and fulfilled my promise to tell him the story of his grandson’s life and deeds.
I am sure he was as proud to hear it as I was to tell it.
We were sad to leave the paradise that was St Cirq Lapopie, but knew that we had our own utopia waiting
