Doctor Mirabilis (9 page)

He knew well enough where to find the Lady Eleanor where else she might have gone in drafty Beaumont; but once out of the
hall he did not hurry, walking instead as gravely as he might in his youth through the barrel-vaulted corridors with their
smoke-blackened hangings, appearing not to notice the gleam of the occasional torches against the chain-mail of the King’s
sentries standing in their niches like statues of saints militant. It was his duty not to alarm his ‘penitent – she who had
so much to alarm her already, though but barely turned twenty-four: not only sister of this royally incontinent King, but
widow scarce two years of the son of William earl-Marshal of the realm, once holder of those Pembroke estates (which she could
never convey) for the stewardship of which Hubert de Burgh had failed to account. Small marvel that she had found herself
unable to stand placidly at her brother’s side while he trumpeted wrath on the beloved stern guardian of her bridal fief,
the green pleasaunces of which – now nothing to Henry but money, and the heady possibility of blood – encompassed as well
all the garden-ensorcelled girlhood she would ever be able to remember.

Adam was not challenged as he crossed into Eleanor’s apartments in the left wing of the castle, but he was recognized quickly
and embarrassingly by her tiring-maid, a fresh girl of eighteen attached to Eleanor’s service as a courtesy by the Bigods,
her dead husband’s claiming relatives; a girl all too plainly bemused enough by Adam to see in him her. Peter Abelard, and
herself an Heloise; but Eleanor was not there. She would, therefore, be in the chapel which her brother had made for her,
which was at some distance from the apartments; but there was a passage that Adam knew of, which perhaps King John had known
but Henry did not, which led quite directly to the priest’s hole in the chapel from nearby, through the walls. It had been.
Eleanor who
had shown it to him, for it debouched into her most private chamber, disguised as the monstrous black oak door of a wardrobe;
and he took the route at once, shutting his Héloïse manquiee out first (and not without a shudder) with, ‘I will wait here.’

She was waiting for him as he settled into the stone-cold niche. Though the chapel was dark except for two tapers burning
before the altar, that was enough to figure for him the marvellous bent head in profile through the confessional window–once,
no doubt, a full door to be used in passage to whispers and confessions in composition, not absolution, of sin.
Dona nobis pacem,
Héloïse-and-Abelard ….

‘Father … I was waiting. You said …?’

‘I was catching my breath, my lady. It’s a long clamber here. And we’ll needs be quick; I’ve a scholar above, promising, but
too green in the vintage to leave abroad among so many Latins; and thy brother will call on me ere this work of his be done.
And very ill it is, too.’

‘Certes, but rest thee a moment, Father, all the same,’ she said in a low voice – hardly more than a whisper but for the music
in it. ‘Please, my need is greater. I’m afraid, I am most afraid’

He saw her head turn toward him with this, and even in the two-starred darkness, he was momentarily riven of all his good
advice by such fairness, less than half seen though it was. Judging both by images and by such members of the line as Adam
had seen, the Plantagenets had always been notable for personal beauty – at least from Coeur-de-lion on – but Eleanor, of
the high brow and wide green eyes, was to Adam that trial of his vocation which is greater than all the trials to which the
princes of the world are subject, since to them it need be no trial at all.

‘You have more reason to fear in this cubby than you would in the hall,’ he said. ‘In seclusion, you appear most pointedly
to be taking Hubert’s part. Your brother will be all the less likely to privilege you at Pembroke if you so humiliate him
– as all will see it, not just the King.’

‘Then, shall I stay and weep in their very faces, while they
cast my uncle down? I have infuriated Henry with far smaller shows.’

‘But that’s a woman’s role,’ Adam said patiently. ‘To weep shows the kindness in your heart, even toward a miscreant. But
to be absent – that might mean complicity. Besides, my lady, Henry’s mind will dwell not long on Hubert now, for he’ll find
matters far more quick to spark his tinder than your uncle is, before this feast is over. Therefore, I pray you, be present
at the Hubert part, so’s not to be marked partisan while that runs its course; and should you weep, it will yet be forgotten
when Henry weeps, as he’s sure to do, aye, and gnash teeth, too.’

‘You choose odd words to calm me, Father,’ she said; but there was a slight trace of amusement in her voice. ‘Must you be
so ominous?’

‘By no means, my lady. That was not my purport. I mean only that the defiance of the barons is a greater thing to the King
than his sudden hatred of Hubert, and will so seem to him when he thinks on it a little further. And if you follow me, my
lady, your brother’s every outcry against these rebel earls may yet be a golden note in the ladders of your ears, and of your
fortunes, too; for there’s one with us in Beaumont tonight who cannot but rise in the pan as the barons go down – and would,
I doubt not, count it his deepest desire to bear you with him.’

She laughed suddenly in the dark chapel, setting echoes afire. ‘Father, how secular the errands that you scurry on! Has this
unknown sent you with this Cupid’s message? Or hope you to be my brother’s Vulcan, to catch the unknown and Eleanor in the
same net?’

‘Neither, my lady,’ Adam said, his throat a little thickened. ‘I come on my own recognisance; and depart the same
as
I
came in.’

‘Swef, swef, douce Pere. I was mocking. I know not how I’d have lived without you since my noble lord went thither. I will
go now, borne on as much as bearing your advice. Bless me.’

He did so; and with a rustle, she was gone, leaving him
staring at the two far-away candles, now guttering so low that the images in the chapel no longer seemed to have any heads,
and nothing was left of the Christ above the altar but two feet and a nail. Still he waited, until she should have time to
pass around her apartment by the long route and resume her place near her brother’s chair. As he waited, he slowly turned
cold again, and one of the tapers burned blue and went out.

Thanks to this necessary wait, even the short route back through the walls and the wardrobe did not bring him back to the
hall until much of the fury there had worn itself thin. He arrived only just in time to hear, but too late to prevent, Roger
Bacon giving advice to the King.

Which had been no intention of Roger’s, ne as he would have seen it earlier even the part of sanity; nor could he have said
afterwards which of many small steps might have taken him otherwhere than to that brink, however he might have turned (but
did not turn) each one. The hubbub after the sennets died soon under the King’s ophidian eyes. In the smoky silence the white-faced
Henry curled his hands around the lion-paws of his chair and said:

‘Sound again for my servant Hubert de Burgh.’

The heralds lifted their pennoned instruments and sounded, the hoarse Plantagenet battle-view halloo which, the singers said,
had been Blondel’s first notes to Coeur-de-Lion imprisoned: but nothing happened. The dark hall became deathly quiet. A white-lipped
look from Henry set the heralds to sounding once more, and then again, but no one appeared, no one even stirred. At long last,
Peter des Roches leaned in his rich bishop’s brocade to the King’s ear, his ringed fingers shielding his mouth. Henry, very
pale, listened without expression, and finally nodded once, sitting back in his chair.

‘I have treason all about me, gentleman and ladies,’ the King said quietly. ‘My justiciar that was answers me not, and no
one stands forth in his stead. My barons and my earls that I called to this feast are not here. They say they
fear treachery, that sit in their fastnesses and treason plot against their King.’

He snatched up his goblet suddenly and drank with a kind of desperate greediness quite unrelated to thirst. Then the goblet
hit the table with a noise like the fall of a hammer, and Henry’s eyes were roving over his audience like the eyes of an executioner.

‘Where are my earls, where are the barons of England?’ he said hoarsely. ‘Let us have passed here a decree which will tell
them who is their King. Here we have a sufficient gathering of nobles, as the Great Charter insists. Give me that order –
an order to compel, by England and St. George.’

He swung on the Bishop.

‘Be better advised, an it please you, my lord King,’ Peter des Roches said softly, folding his plump white hands together.
‘These barons have defied you already, and by special messengers. No new demand will win aught more for the Crown. Seek to
summon them instead; sound for them, as you sounded for Hubert de Burgh, and prove will they respond.’

‘There’s none of them here to hear,’ Henry said. ‘Why sound sennets to absent ears? They fear me, and that’s the end of it.
I want an instrument that brings obedience, not a noise that won’t be heard outside Beaumont.’

His eyes lit on Simon de Montfort. ‘Montfort, what say you? Is the throne of England to woo those rebels back with music?
Or shall we have our decree as we have demanded it? Advise me; I am weary of these counsels of caution from all these mitred
heads.’

‘Sound, my lord King,’ Simon said. ‘Indeed, sound thrice, for the hearing of these the barons’ messengers. And let them bear
back your summons. If your nobles fail to answer your triple summons, they will be as little likely to honour a decree passed
for you by the Frenchmen they hate and mistrust.’

‘Guard thy tongue, Montfort. Thou’rt in my court by sufferance. If your next word is in praise of Hubert—’

‘And so it would have been, my lord King,’ Simon said
steadily from his place below the Bishop. ‘The barons trust Hubert; they do not trust me. They do not know even who I am.
Nor do they trust any Poitevin.’

‘You bewray your suit for Leicester, Montfort—’

‘You asked me to speak, my lord King,’ Simon said. ‘Had I told you only what you wished to hear, I’d better been silent. If
that only’s what you will from me, then away Leicester; I’ll not so traduce my Crown to win a fief, nay, not now nor ever;
my head’s thy forfeit for it, my lord King – today, tomorrow, forever.’

‘Stop, that’s more promise than I’ve asked thee for,’ the King said. ‘Press me not so closely, Montfort; when I want your
head, I’ll ask it. Why can nobody advise me without throwing his life at me? When did I ever ask that for the price of oats?
Witness all here that I am not, not, not my bloody father!’

No one answered. Henry calmed himself with a deep draught of the green wine. Then he began looking through the press again,
his shoulders hunched; but was distracted by the return to his table of the lady who had been pointed out to Roger as the
King’s sister, with several of her household. The King stared at her, frowning, and looking for a moment a little confused,
and then back at the lower tables.

‘Is there no one here to profess the word of God?’ the King said, beginning suddenly to smile. ‘Who reads for England at the
King’s feast? Where is the Church in this my hour of extremity? A word, a word! Where are my Oxford scholars? Where’s the
great Grosseteste? Where is my sister’s confessor; where’s that subtle boy Adam de Marisco?’ He was standing now, his hand
rolling back and forth on its knuckles on the table before him, like a battering-ball encrusted with jewels.

And then he saw Roger. ‘Now there’s one,’ he said. ‘Rise, scholar of Oxenford, and profess the word of God. Read to your King,
as you were summoned to do. Your head is safe; I swear, I am not blood-thirsty. Rise, and rede me.’

Everyone turned to look. There was no way out. Roger
rose, his shanks as shaky as reeds.

‘Good, he rises,’ the King said. ‘Now speak. What says my English church? Has it anything to say to me? Speak.’

‘My lord King,’ Roger said.

‘I hear you, friar. Say on.’

‘My lord King … I am not in orders. I am only a poor student.’

‘Speak,’ Henry said. ‘Advise me.’

‘My lord King …. Then I will ask you: What is most dangerous to sailors? What fear they most?’

‘A riddle?’ Henry the Sailor said, smiling. ‘Very well. I know not. Those whose business is on the wide waters know best,
not I. What’s the answer, sweet scholar?’

‘My lord King, I will tell thee,’ Roger said. ‘The answer is: Stones and rocks.’

The King frowned. ‘Oh? Dost thou make game of thy King, friar? Or …. Aha
Petrae et rapes!
Your Grace, he means you; what think you of that? Shall then be quit of you again?’

It was plain that Henry was joking, after his fashion, but Peter des Roches, who obviously had read Roger’s meaning instantly
and had been staring at the tonsured clerk like a man attempting to memorize a text, could manage only a rather grim smile.
The moment the Bishop’s gaze turned, Roger sat down.

‘Henry is King,’ the Bishop said, ‘and will do what he will do. Meanwhiles, my lord, I judge Montfort’s words not ill advice.’

‘What Satan’s imp made thee say that Adam Marsh’s voice hissed suddenly in Roger’s ear, making him jump in his chair. ‘Dost
not know Henry’s calling “the Sailor” only on de Burgh’s account, since the sinking of Eustace in the straits?’

‘He called on me,’ Roger said sullenly. ‘He called you first, and you not here to hear it.’

‘Couldst not praise piety, or say aught else equally harmless? The giving of advice to this King is a career likely to end
suddenly.’

‘Then example me, Adam,’ Roger said, a little grimly. ‘He’s looking at thee now.’

‘What say you, Marisco?’ Henry said. ‘Reserve not thy wisdom for women and clerks. Shall we follow Montfort in this?’

‘My lord King,’ Adam said steadily, ‘I was not here when Montfort spoke, and know not the import of his proposal. But well
I know him to be wiser for his years than was even his father; I can say no more to the point.’