Blood Moon (18 page)

‘I am Walter de Ixworth, sire. My mother is the Lady Isabel de Ixworth of Ixworth Hall and -’

‘Yes yes yes, I know who you are,’ he said impatiently waving me silent. He snapped his fingers again. ‘I know what I’ll call you:
Bumble
, because you’re for ever poking your nose into things you shouldn’t ought. Eh? Eh?’ He grinned round at his courtiers again. ‘Do you like that, my lords? Bumble? Like the busy bee? Buzz-buzz?’

They liked it very much. In fact, judging by their reaction, it must have been the funniest thing they’d heard all year.

‘Sire,’ said de Saye trying again, ‘we should move on.’

‘
In a minute,’ frowned John irritably. ‘Well go on then,’ he said to me.

‘Sire?’

‘A message you said. Let’s hear it. I haven’t got all day.’

It was what I had come for. It was now or never. I took a deep breath.

‘Sire, there is a boy – Raoul de Gray by name. You may have heard of him. He is the nephew of Bishop John de Gray of Norwich.’

‘What of him?’

‘He has been wrongfully accused of murdering his wife’s maid - by Prior Herbert and my lord de Saye, here.’ I nodded to Lord Geoffrey.

John looked round at him inquiringly.

De Saye looked furious. ‘Sire,’ he said confidentially, ‘it is as I said. This man is a trouble maker. Nothing he says can be relied upon.’

‘Well, if he is indeed malicious I will have his tongue pulled out and his nose split.’ John smiled brightly at me. ‘You have proof of what you say?’

‘I do, my liege.’

Again the king looked expectantly at de Saye.

De Saye exploded. ‘This is preposterous!’

But John would not be fobbed off. He waited
, eyebrows raised.

‘The evidence condemns the boy,’ growled de Saye reluctantly.
‘This monk alone denies it.’

‘The
evidence,
’ I insisted raising my chin defiantly, ‘such as it is,
exonerates Raoul.’

‘Isn’t that for the courts to decide?’ said John. ‘I presume my justices have been informed?’

‘No, sire,’ I put in quickly before de Saye, ‘they have not.’

John raised his eyebrows
again at de Saye who was getting redder and redder by the minute.

‘Sire,’ he growled, ‘the boy has absconded and is now a fugitive. By his own actions he condemns himself.’

‘That makes sense,’ nodded John to me. ‘If he is innocent why would he run?’

‘I don’t believe he has run,’ I replied. ‘I believe my lord de Saye has him under guard.’

At this de Saye almost exploded.

‘Really?’ John
cut across him. ‘To what purpose?’

‘I don’t know. Only my lord de Saye has the answer to that, so maybe you should ask him.’

I caught the look of annoyance on John’s face at that but by now I could not stop myself:

‘Raoul de Gray and his entire family vanished overnight. They could not have done so without Lord de Saye’s knowledge. His troops were everywhere. Surely you must have noticed
on the road?’

I thought Geoffrey de Saye was about to jump me, but John said quietly:

‘You know, come to think of it, I do remember you now. Something about some money being owed to a Jew. Wasn’t it at the beginning of our reign? Yes, and there was a murder that time, too, I think.’ He looked rather pleased with himself. ‘Bumble, we shall be here for a day or two yet. Maybe we will find time to speak again. Right - on!’

And with that he moved off leaving me standing alone unsure whether I had achieved anything or whether it had all been for nothing. Prior Herbert had no such doubts. As the king’s party disappeared
I saw him lurking in their wake where he had been watching the little drama unfold with a look on his face somewhere between amusement and incredulity. He waited until the others were gone before coming over.

‘Well
now Walter, that was quite a performance.’ He wiped a small trickle of blood from my chin with his thumb. ‘I do believe you may just have signed your own death warrant.’

Chapter
19

THE PRICE OF LOYALTY

I
didn’t know whether I was doing right by challenging de Saye so openly in front of the king or whether I had, as Herbert so graphically put it, “signed my own death warrant”. It was a gamble. But it certainly felt good. Just the look of pain on de Saye’s face was reward enough for the pain he inflicted on me in the gatekeeper’s lodge. I was, however, under no illusion that John would take my side against one of his leading nobles whatever the rights or wrongs in the matter. Abbot Samson once said to me that the great families of England stick together “like dog-shit sticks to fur”; and he was surely right because ultimately whatever threatens one threatens them all. What gave me hope this time, however, was the sense I got that my lord de Saye did not entirely enjoy the king’s confidence. Whatever else John was he was nobody’s fool. He knew exactly the worth of Geoffrey de Saye. So Joseph may also be right when he said de Saye was unlikely to do anything to antagonize the king while he was in Bury. That surely boded well for Rosabel and the de Grays.

Meanwhile John let it be known that he would remain in the town for a few more days during which time he expected the decision taken in the chapterhouse
over the new abbot to be reversed. Fat chance there was of that happening. My brother monks were cock-a-hoop over what happened believing they had twisted the lion’s tail. But the lion can bite back, and John needed to do little in order to draw blood. He could simply leave the abbacy vacant and continue to reap the income for himself, and all the while the abbey’s wealth and prestige would slowly ebb away. We needed a resolution to the question of the new abbot even more than he did. But John was a capricious man and could change his plans at any minute. It wouldn’t surprise me to wake the next morning to find the whole abbey turned upside down again with the king gone and his entourage hastily packing up ready to leave. But while John remained he gave me time to find out where de Saye was holding the de Gray family – if indeed he was holding them - and in this I had help from an unexpected quarter. King John had a well-known penchant for entertainment and to this end our customary Christmas celebrations were hastily brought forward under the able direction of Brother Kevin, the sub-novice master. John would surely stay for that.

I have long been an admirer of Brother Kevin’s talents despite his flamboyant mannerisms which some of my more staid brothers find distasteful. He inspires all with his enthusiasm and energy and on this occasion rose magnificently to the challenge of amusing the king, beginning with a Feast of Fools. This was enacted by some of the novices and students from the abbey school who were in effect given licence for one day to mock their elders and betters and generally to say under the anonymity of the mime what they were constrained from saying openly the rest of the year. Not that anybody was fooled by the disguise; we all recognised the identities of players beneath the masks. But the fiction of secrecy was maintained thus enabling the targets to learn some home truths that would otherwise not be voiced, and possibly amend them. And it is all done in a spirit of good humour, albeit humour with a sting. We had a Pope of Unreason, a Boy Bishop, and even someone got up as the Abbot of Fools – or should that have been the
Prior
of Fools for the lad playing him got Herbert’s whining voice off to a T. Herbert laughed along with the rest of us though I suspect he was enjoying more the prospect of my impending demise than his own lampooning. The king certainly enjoyed himself going blue in the face with laughter and nearly falling off his chair. His was the one character that was not mocked, however – there was no
King
of Fools, probably wisely under the circumstances.

After this there was a cock fight followed by jugglers, clowns and acrobats from the town, all splendidly professional and exciting. Finally as the sun began to sink a series of tableaux of scenes from the Bible were acted out. Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden
- a moment of unintentional hilarity here when the novice playing Adam bit into the apple only to find it rotten inside and immediately spat it out again. Jocelin who was sitting next to me whispered gleefully that had the real Adam done the same it might have altered entirely the subsequent history of the world.

Next came Jonah and the Whale. With so much water being flung about to represent the waves, the “whale” slipped on the wooden boards, broke in half and regurgitated a somewhat surprised Jonah prematurely onto the shore who had to be hastily reinserted back into the whale’s belly
by Brother Kevin. Noah and the Flood fared hardly better although there was so much water left over from the previous tableau that there was little need to imagine the deluge – the “animals” in the ark looked as though they were already half-drowned before the waters had even begun to rise.

The grand finale was the Christmas story itself with a sombre representation of the Stable in Bethlehem: The three Wise Men; the shepherds; Mary gazing tenderly at a rather grotesque and oversized dummy of the Christ-child; Joseph looking suitably contemplative and aloof - all played by the older novices. The Holy Mother was convincingly portrayed by young Timothy, I noted, whose angelic face charmed all, while the angel was played by a stoical Brother Eusebius garbed in his odd Gilbertine robes. As he appeared the audience gasped for he seemed to rise unaided above the stable and remained there suspended by invisible cords, his robe flapping like wings in the breeze. Once the initial shock was over we all burst into spontaneous applause as we realised the trick Kevin had played on us with ropes and pulleys. It was a fine end to the entertainment but seeing both Eusebius and Timothy on stage together gave me a slight feeling of uneasiness.

As the performers took their final bows and we all applauded with heart-felt enthusiasm, I felt a tap on my shoulder. Turning, I saw it was one of the royal servants in his dark blue livery. It seemed the king was now ready to receive me.

*

‘Ah, there you are, Bumble. Come in, come in. You’ve met the queen?’

I entered upon an unexpected and charming scene of a happy family
at their ease, albeit the grandest family in the land. King John was standing with his back to the fire while seated before him upon a cushioned chair was a beautiful young woman in her mid-twenties together with three attending ladies-in-waiting all chattering in French. From her magnificent raiment of silk and shot gold there could be little doubt that this was the fabled Queen Isabelle of Angoulême, King John’s second wife. I had no idea she was even in the town; she must have arrived quietly while the entertainment was underway. She was playing with a child of about seven or eight years of age who I assumed be one of her children. The little boy’s wide eyes took me in as I fell to my knees before his mother and bowed my head low.

‘My lady.’

I have to admit to goose pimples prickling my flesh as she deigned to permit her eye to fall upon me. All Europe had heard of this lady’s beauty which was rumoured to have so captivated the king from the moment he first saw her at the tender age of twelve that he stole her from her betrothed in the very hour of their wedding. I had seen her only once before and that at a distance when John had shown her off to her new subjects in a progress around the country shortly after her coronation. Then she had been a beautiful young girl who had stolen the heart of every Englishman who saw her. Seeing her now a dozen years later I could see she had lost none of her magic.

‘We have met before?’ she asked me in her thick French accent.

‘Unfortunately not, my lady,’ I replied - and then added: ‘But I have long cherished the name Isabel for it is also my mother’s name.’

‘
Non
,’ she replied wagging an imperious finger. ‘You are wrong,
mon frère.
Your mother has
my
name, not I hers.’ So saying, she stood up and with a sigh took the small boy by the hand. ‘Come Henri. We must leave your father to his business.’

As the door miraculously opened by itself and she passed through followed by the three ladies, I heard the little boy ask, ‘Who was that funny man,
maman
?’

‘
Juste un vieux moine, petit. Pas quelqu’un important,
’ she replied. Just an old monk. Nobody important.

As soon as they had gone the guard stepped forward to frisk me, but John put up his hand. ‘There’s no need. Brother Bumble and I are old friends, and old friends don’t stick knives in each other, do we Bumble?’ he smiled.

‘I hope not, sire.’

The guard looked a little perplexed and stepped back but kept his hand poised on his sword hilt just in case.

John giggled. ‘Go on,’ he said pushing the man gently. ‘You can go too. Bumble and I have things to discuss that are not for your ears. Go and get a tankard of ale. I’ll call if I need you.’

Reluctantly, the guard went out leaving me alone in the room for
only the second time in my life with the most powerful man in England who shivered as he pushed a stray log back into the fire sending sparks flying to the roof and rubbed his backside against the flames.

‘Christ in heaven, it’s cold here. How you monks put up with no heating is beyond me. You must have ice in your veins.’

‘We have a fire, sir,’ I replied. ‘In the warming room.’

He grunted. ‘One fire for seventy. God help the littlest, I say. Well now, Bumble. What shall we talk about?’

I had hoped we’d be discussing the murder and Raoul de Gray. It was what I thought I had been summoned to discuss.

‘Sire…’ I began.

‘So you think he’s the right man for the job?’

I stopped. ‘Raoul de Gray?’

He frowned. ‘No no no. Hugh Northwold. A Norfolk man - like yourself.’

I had to quickly refocus my thoughts. ‘I, er, think he could make a fine abbot.’

John nodded gravely. ‘So do I. But it wouldn’t do to let that lot know it.’ He nodded to the door as though the entire brethren of Saint Edmunds were standing outside. ‘Makes me look weak.’ He smiled.

‘Would it not make your highness look statesmanlike to graciously accede to what was so overwhelmingly a joyful choice of his brother monks?’ I ventured hesitantly.

His smile vanished. ‘No, it would not. Not with half my baronage threatening rebellion at any moment.’

My jaw started to drop open but I managed to stop it in time. I was at a loss to know how to respond.

John grinned and rubbed his hands together. ‘Tell me, what did you think of my entertainment? Good wasn’t it?’

Another jolt. ‘I, er… enjoyed it very much, sire.’

He giggled delightedly. ‘So did I. Nearly pissed myself when that goat shat on the stage.’ He sniggered like a naughty schoolboy.

‘Sire, I…’

‘It’s what they’re planning,’ he cut across me. ‘Rebellion against their lawful king. That’s treason, you know?’

‘Surely not, sire.’

‘No? You think not? They’ve done it before. To my father when he was king as well as to my brother. But Richard was never here. That was the thing, you see? Ten years as king and less than six months of it in the country. He wanted to go off and fight Saracens and they were happy to let him - so long as he left them alone to run the firm their way. But I won’t, and that’s what they can’t stand.’

I could see he was working himself up into one of his rants and I was beginning to think my hopes for Raoul de Gray had been entirely foolhardy.

‘But surely, sire, the barons are your most loyal subjects?’ I said naively.

He snorted. ‘Loyalty!
Let me tell you about loyalty, my innocent friend. You fancy this manor? Fifty marks and it’s yours. A bishopric? A thousand marks. A county? Ten thousand. Only you never pay, see? And I never ask for payment. That puts you in my debt. That’s how a king keeps control. Loyalty comes at a price. It’s a sad reflection, Bumble. A sad reflection,’ he said poking the fire again.

I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing and waited listening to the wood crackling in the flames. Eventually he refocused on me again, his expression dark.

‘Now that I’ve told you all this I suppose I shall have to silence you, too. Can’t have you blabbing my strategies to all and sundry, can I?’

He took out a gold-handled dagger from beneath his jerkin and flashed it in the air.