Alys Clare: The Joys of My Life

The chapel looked beautiful. The plain white walls threw the glorious glass into prominence. Sun shone through the jewel-bright colours of the window and danced on the stone flags of the floor; the pale oak of the rood screen glowed like gold. Helewise, performing a solitary final inspection the night before the king was due to arrive, tried to see the chapel as it would appear to someone new to it, someone who had not been witness to its long birth. It will impress, she decided; it cannot fail to do so.

The king was unlikely to notice that one of the flagstones was in fact a trapdoor leading down to the crypt, where the black goddess sat in her niche down in the darkness. Helewise visited her regularly, as, she well knew, did various others. The king would not be told about her; neither would the vast party of clergy summoned to the ceremony. What they did not know could not hurt them. She left the chapel, carefully closing and locking the door. In time, there would be no need for a lock.

She walked over to the little habitation, now also complete. Martin’s men had built it to her exact specification. Its new inhabitant would not take up residence yet — not this year and perhaps not the next — and Helewise would look after the simple dwelling until the time came.

She went outside into the evening air. It was growing cold — there would be a hard frost tonight — and she wrapped her cloak more tightly around her. She stared down at the lights of the abbey, shining out into the night like a beacon of hope. It is a good place, she thought. It will be one of the last places to succumb, but succumb it will. She sighed, for the thought made her sad. But the future was not entirely bleak — far from it.

Her eyes roved on and she stared at the distant vale. Josse was down there, with Ninian, his adopted son, and Meggie and Geoffroi, the children of his blood. They were staying in the monks’ quarters and, like everyone else, were excited at the prospect of tomorrow’s ceremony. It was not every day, after all, that a chapel right on your doorstep was dedicated to a warrior king. Josse’s entire household had accompanied him, although Will, Ella, Gussie and Tilly had only just arrived and would have to go back to the house in the woods immediately after the ceremony to see to their duties.

For now, though, they were all here at Hawkenlye and Helewise revelled in their company. She was now a regular visitor in Josse’s house, welcomed by everyone with such warmth that it always moved her. Sometimes she would meet other loved ones there; Josse’s building programme had been forced to halt back in the autumn, but he had plans to expand as soon as the new season started. For now, guests such as her elder son Leofgar and his wife Rohaise, and Dominic and Paradisa, seemed perfectly happy to muck in with everyone else. From living a lonely life at New Winnowlands, Josse was now the treasured head of a diverse household who were united, if by nothing else, by their love for him.

She sensed that he was happy. She hoped and prayed that he was, that the pain of the deep wound left by the loss of Joanna was, if not healed, then at least assuaged by the company of everyone else who loved him.

She set off down the path to the abbey. One of these days, she thought, I must ask him.

Ten Years Later, June 1210

The abbess sat in her little room staring down at the thick cream parchment unrolled on the table before her. She held it down and read through every word that was written on it, absently running her fingers over the outline of the heavy wax seal at the bottom of the page. She had no need to study it in such detail, for she knew what the wording said and she had long been expecting it. Nevertheless, to see this vital document before her eyes was still a shock, for its import was momentous; for her, for Hawkenlye Abbey and, most important, for the person to whom the document referred. Despite all the reassurances, she knew very well that from now on, nothing was going to be the same.

She sat back in the great throne-like chair, thinking back to when it had begun. Well, to be honest, she did not really know, for who can read another’s deepest thoughts? She could calculate readily enough when the first external signs had become apparent, but that was not to say that the process that led ultimately to this moment had not been set in motion months — years — before that. Indeed, this had in fact been intimated to her.

The first signs became apparent ten years ago, when Queen Eleanor commanded that St Edmund’s Chapel be built at Hawkenlye to commemorate her son King Richard. The abbess smiled, as she always did when she thought about the chapel, for in every respect it had succeeded beyond her wildest dreams. From the start it had attracted numerous visitors; increasingly, the ordinary people were overawed by what the Church was becoming and many preferred the simple building on the forest fringes to the magnificent abbey church. From the time that there had been someone living in the little dwelling place beside the chapel, a steady stream of the hungry, the distressed, the grieving and the troubled turned up every day, to kneel in prayer within the plain white walls of the chapel, stare in wonder at the beautiful window and, hopefully, spare a thought and a prayer for the late king, before going outside to be greeted with a smiling face, a kind word, a bite to eat and a sympathetic ear for whatever ailed them. Often they would gently be redirected to the infirmary, or the monks in the vale; sometimes, comforted, they would simply melt away.

The abbess sighed. Life had always been hard for the poor of England; now, for many, it had turned into a battle for survival.

King John’s reign had become increasingly oppressive. Even the nobility suffered, for the king’s constant need for more funds had led to a sharp increase in the frequency with which he demanded money from them. His favourite means was to impose the tax known as scutage, which vassals paid in lieu of military service. He had overseen a ferocious tightening of the forest laws — the imposition of severe fines was another way to increase the flow of money into his coffers — and yet there seemed little to show for everything he demanded. The king had proved an ineffectual military leader; far from following in his warrior brother’s aggressive footsteps, John had done little but lose Continental territory to his enemies. The last strongholds in Anjou and Normandy had gone; Poitou was teetering on the brink. Now, with cruel accuracy, they called the king ‘Soft-Sword’.

King John had taken a new bride soon after coming to the throne. Typical of he who knew no half-measures, he had seen and fallen for the fourteen-year-old daughter of the Count of Angouleme when her father was paying homage to him, ruthlessly breaking off her betrothal to another man, who, incensed, appealed to Philip of France for justice and witnessed with satisfaction the French king forfeit John’s Continental fiefs. The young Queen Isabella had fulfilled her prime duty: already there were two little princes in the royal nursery and the queen was said to be pregnant again.

Although she tried not to listen, the abbess had heard what the soothsayers predicted. The king’s heir, Henry, they whispered, would be a fat, witless weakling and England would not be great again until his own mighty son came to reign. She sighed. I doubt I shall live to see those times, she thought. I must do the best I can with the days I do have.

Oh, but it was hard. Five years ago, the king had quarrelled with Rome over who should become Archbishop of Canterbury. John had selected the wrong adversary, for Pope Innocent III was even more determined than the king and, when John refused to back down, he laid an interdict on England suspending all church services. John still did not come to heel and last year the Pope had excommunicated him. Church and State were at loggerheads and all England suffered.