Alys Clare - Fortune Like the Moon

And after all, Josse thought, it was my decision to leave. Nobody ousted me, it was my own choice to test out my luck at the court of the tempestuous Plantagenets. It’s hardly the fault of my poor family if, in terms of variety and excitement, life here at Acquin can’t compete.

When at last on that disturbed night he managed to sleep, he dreamt that Richard Plantagenet had sent him an enormous cross set with rubies and ordered him to escort Queen Eleanor to Fontevraud, where, once she had stepped down from her horse, she donned a white headdress and a black veil and turned into Abbess Helewise. Terrified at the prospect of breaking the news to Richard that his mother had turned into someone else, Josse had ridden his horse so fast down a hillside that it had grown wings, thrown him off, turned into a huge bat and flapped away.

He awoke sweating and slightly shaky. And with the very beginnings of a plan forming in his mind …

* * *

The plan took several months to implement. Josse excused the delay, privately, by telling himself it was only fair, having disrupted his family by his return, to stay a good long time and make it worth everyone’s while. To salve his conscience over being an intruder in his own home — although everyone tried very hard to make him feel that he wasn’t — he turned his hand to anything that he thought might help. But, it became clear, his brothers and their servants were, to a man, better than Josse at most of the tasks commonly demanded by life on a big country estate.

The fact that he could handle a sword better than all of them put together was, really, not a great deal of use.

Still, the boar hunting was exceptional, and there was a pretty young sister of one of his brothers’ wives who, having lost her husband to the ravages of smallpox too many years ago for it still to pain her, was only too ready for some flirtatious dalliance on a November evening, when the hangings rippled in the draughts and folk snuggled close together round the great flaming fire.

Christmas came and went.

Then, in February of the New Year of 1190, just when Josse was mentally gearing himself up to quit the family home and set off back to the King’s court, the message came.

His brother Yves, who had received the weary and soaked messenger, brought him up to Josse.

Eyes alert with excited curiosity, Yves hissed to Josse, ‘He comes from the King!’

Josse led the messenger a little apart, and the man, producing a folded and sealed scroll from inside his tunic, verified that he did indeed come from Richard, who was at present in Normandy.

The King, it appeared, wished to see Josse d’Acquin, to convey his personal thanks in the matter of the deaths at Hawkenlye Abbey.

Josse, making an effort to close his dropped jaw, remembered his manners and ushered the messenger down to the kitchens, giving the kitchen staff orders to feed, water and warm him.

Then he went up to his own quarters to try to puzzle out just why, after all this time, the King should suddenly want to thank him.

* * *

He had his answer as soon as, a week later, his name was announced and, once more, he knelt before his King.

For, sitting elegantly in a chair only a little less ornate than Richard’s, sat the King’s mother.

Josse had seen her only a couple of times before, and that had been at a distance. And, he recalled, calculating rapidly, probably twenty years ago or more.

But the old Queen carried her years well. She must, Josse thought, be almost seventy, but her eyes were still bright, her skin, although a little weatherbeaten from the many months spent travelling, still quite smooth. The remains of that legendary beauty could be clearly seen; it was not difficult to comprehend how that anonymous German scholar had been moved to write of her, ‘If the world were mine from sea to Rhine, I’d renounce it with joy to hold the Queen of England in my arms…’

Dressed immaculately and fashionably, her fine linen barbette was secured by both veil and small coronet, and the sleeves of her samite silk gown were long enough to sweep to the ground. Against the chill of the day, she wore a fur-lined cloak, whose generous folds she had wrapped around her legs and feet like a blanket.

Honoured, delighted and humbled at being in the presence of a woman he had admired all his life, Josse half rose, moved to his right and, sinking down in front of her, bent his head low.

He felt a light touch on his shoulder; looking up, he saw that Eleanor had leaned down towards him, and was now extending her gloved right hand. In awe, he took hold of it and kissed it.

‘My mother asks me to convey my personal thanks to you, Acquin, for the service that you rendered to us last summer, while we prepared for our coronation,’ Richard said, experiencing, Josse noted, some difficulty over deciding whether he was going to use the first or the third person. Perhaps, Josse thought charitably, being King took a deal of getting used to.

‘Any service I can do for Your Majesty, Sire, it is my joy to perform,’ he replied.

Richard’s broad, handsome face briefly creased in a smile, which he as quickly smoothed away. ‘The foundation at Hawkenlye is particularly dear to my mother’s heart,’ he continued, ‘because of its similarities to the Mother House at Fontevraud, where my mother wishes shortly to retire in order to-’

‘I’m not going yet,’ said Queen Eleanor, ‘and I do wish, Richard, that you would not speak about me as if I were not here.’

Glancing at the King, her face wore, Josse observed, the sort of chiding, indulgent and loving glance common to mothers looking at their favourite sons. In Eleanor’s eyes, he thought, even a king like Richard could do no wrong.

‘My Lord d’Acquin,’ the Queen was addressing him, ‘I hear tell of your efforts at Hawkenlye, and I thank you for your part in the resolution of a crime that threatened to upset the smooth running and the good work of our Abbey there.’

‘It was not I alone, my lady,’ Josse hastened to say. Credit where it was due, and it had been Helewise, really, who had solved the murder. The murder that was no murder.

‘I am aware of that,’ Eleanor said, ‘and, indeed, I have already expressed my thanks and appreciation to Abbess Helewise. She is a fine woman, my lord, is she not?’

‘A fine woman,’ Josse echoed. He was trying to picture Helewise, presented with a visit from the Queen. Would she have started to flap and panic? Would she have been thrown into a ferment of anxiety, worked twenty-four hours a day to ensure that every little detail was perfect?

No. That didn’t sound a bit like Helewise. He grinned briefly; she’d have been more likely to say serenely, ‘The Abbey is as good as our efforts can make it, we can do no better. Let the Queen see us as we are.’

‘You smile, Sir Josse?’

She might be nearing seventy, Josse thought, but the voice still had a power to make a man quake. ‘Your pardon, my lady,’ he said, ‘I was thinking of the Abbess Helewise.’

‘And your thoughts were such as to make you smile?’

He made himself look up and meet her eyes. ‘A little, Your Majesty, although, I assure you, lady, I intended no disrespect.’

‘I am sure you did not,’ Eleanor said smoothly. ‘You might be interested to know that the Abbess also, when speaking of you, could not suppress her amusement.’

She knew — she must! — that he wanted to know what they’d been talking about, those two formidable women. Why the subject of Josse d’Acquin had made Helewise want to laugh. And, flirt that she still was, having dragged that tantalising little snippet in front of him, Eleanor wasn’t going to tell him.

Richard, it had become evident, was getting bored with this conversation about people and events of which he knew nothing. He had been drumming one hand on the arm of his chair, humming snatches of some song only just under his breath. Now, unable any longer to restrain his restless energy, he jumped up out of his seat, stretched, and said, ‘My lady mother, why not just tell him?’