Alys Clare: The Tavern in the Morning

Then, damnation take it, two years on and along comes a demand for rent! Rent! Josse had been alarmed, horrified — the mentioned sum of rent arrears was more than sizeable, it was downright huge — and, finally, furiously angry.

‘The King gave me my house!’ he had raged, pacing up and down before his fireplace, spinning round so violently that Will, his manservant, nipped forward and rescued a tray bearing a jug of wine and a half-full goblet before Josse could send them flying. ‘Two years and more ago, it was a gift! And now he wants me to pay for it!’ He turned furious eyes to Will. ‘In God’s name, what can he be thinking of?’

Will, who wasn’t in a temper and who therefore retained the power of logical thought, pointed out that, with King Richard still far away on crusade in Outremer, the rental demand could scarcely have come from him. ‘He’ll be far too busy with them devil Saracens to worry about a tiddly little manor house, sir,’ Will went on, with scant diplomacy, ‘you mark my words.’

Josse, amused despite himself, nodded sagely. ‘How right you are, Will,’ he said, in almost his normal voice. Frowning hard, he muttered, ‘If not the King, then who?’

It took neither Josse nor Will more than a few seconds to come up with the probable answer. Simultaneously Will said, ‘It’ll be that John Lackland, I’ll stake money on it,’ while Josse exploded, ‘That calculating, money-grabbing bastard, John! It’s him!’

* * *

A demand for money, however, was a demand for money, and needed to be dealt with. Especially when it came from the King’s younger brother, a man who saw himself — and was busy trying to make everyone else see him — as the next King of England. Whose coronation, if John had his way, couldn’t come too soon.

The trouble was, Josse mused, as he tried to decide what to do, was that Richard, God bless his single-mindedness and his courage, seemed to have forgotten about his realm of England the moment he quit it — a matter of weeks after his coronation in September 1189 — to go off on crusade. He’s playing right into John’s grasping hands, Josse thought, and it’s hardly surprising that people are half-inclined to believe John when he puts it around that King Richard will never come home.

And what if he’s right? Crusading’s no picnic, that’s for sure, and our Richard isn’t a man to stand at the back and order others into the fray. And, as well as the perils of fighting, there’s sickness. The dear Lord alone knows what ills a man may fall foul of out there. Fevers, the flux, and who knows what others?

Supposing King Richard dies?

It was a sobering thought. The King’s marriage to Berengaria of Navarre was but a few months old, and gossip was already declaring that the swift conception and birth of a son and heir was most unlikely. Well, with some justification, Josse acknowledged, since a man with fighting on his mind isn’t as likely as some to bed his wife with the regularity necessary to impregnate her. As matters currently stood, the heir to the throne of England was a four-year-old boy, Arthur of Brittany, the posthumous son of Richard and John’s brother, Geoffrey, and his wife. Constance.

And the word of the wise was saying that the barons of England weren’t going to be happy supporting Arthur.

Would they be any happier supporting John? Surely not! No man in his right mind would back the untrustworthy John, not all the time there remained even the slimmest chance of Richard returning home hale and hearty.

Josse slowly shook his head, his thoughts returning to that ominous demand for money. John, it was clearly apparent, was building up funds. For what? For some well-thought-out and clever plan, knowing John; whatever else you thought of him, you had to admit he was clever. Or possibly cunning was a better word …

In a flash of inspiration, Josse knew what he must do. He must put his case before Queen Eleanor. She had interceded on his behalf with her favourite son, so surely she would do the same with John.

It was worth a try.

It was, in fact, Josse’s only hope.

* * *

Eleanor was lodging with the nuns of Amesbury Abbey. And Amesbury was in Wiltshire, half of the width of southern England away from Josse, whose manor was in Kent.

Still, it could have been worse. The Queen had spent Christmas in Normandy, and, had she still been there, it would have meant a dangerous sea crossing in addition to days and days on roads made all but impassable by the winter weather. It was pure good fortune that she was this side of the Channel, brought over in a rush to plead with John to abandon his scheme to ally himself with King Philip of France. Ally himself against Richard.

Nothing could have lent more speed to the Queen’s feet than a threat to her beloved Richard, whose interests, both in England and on the Continent, she was doing her best to look after in his absence. With the present danger averted — for the time being — she had retired to Amesbury to catch her breath.

Which was where Josse found her.

To his amazement, she remembered him. ‘Josse d’Acquin,’ she said, extending a hand gloved in fine white kid fringed with some soft, dense, pale fur, ‘my son’s solver of puzzles.’

‘My lady,’ Josse replied, bending low over her hand.

‘How are matters in Kent?’ she enquired.

‘Quiet, my lady, in this severe weather.’

‘Indeed.’ She nodded. ‘And how fares my friend the Abbess of Hawkenlye?’

‘Abbess Helewise is well, as far as I know.’

‘Ah.’ There was a pause. Then Eleanor said, ‘Given the aforementioned weather, Sir Josse, would we be right in concluding that you have not ventured all the way from Kent purely to kiss our hand?’

Josse looked up and met her amused eyes. ‘My lady, it would be worth the journey,’ he began gallantly, only to be interrupted by her burst of laughter.

‘In May, perhaps, but in February? What nonsense, sir knight!’ she said. Smiling — really, Josse thought, she was still the most beautiful woman, despite her seventy-odd years — she said kindly, ‘Now, let us waste no more time. Tell me how I may help you.’

Humbly — for it was surely a great thing, not only to be remembered fondly by the great Eleanor of Aquitaine, but also to be so unconditionally offered her help — Josse outlined his problem.

‘I hesitate to put what must seem so trivial a matter before you, Lady,’ he finished, ‘and I only do so because…’ He trailed off. Because your son promised that Winnowlands was to be a gift, was the honest reason. But it would sound so very blunt!

The Queen, however, was ahead of him. ‘Because, as you and I both very well recall, Sir Josse, Richard gave your manor to you. Not without prompting, as I remember,’ she added in a murmur. ‘But a gift is a gift,’ she announced grandly, ‘and ever more should remain so.’ With a wave of her hand she summoned a lady-in-waiting from the small group huddled around the fireplace of the Abbey’s reception hall. ‘Writing materials, please,’ she said, and the woman hurried to fetch them.

Then, as Josse watched, Eleanor calmly wrote out three or four brief lines, decorating the thick parchment with an elegant, flowing hand. Not wanting to peer too closely, Josse made himself keep back. When she had finished, snapping her fingers at her lady-in-waiting, who proffered the royal seal, Eleanor raised her head, smiled swiftly as if she knew exactly what he was thinking, and, rolling up the parchment, handed it to him.

‘Should my youngest son ever present himself in person to claim what he accuses you of owing,’ she said tonelessly, ‘then you may show him this. Anyone else you may dismiss out of hand.’