The Japanese Girl (17 page)

It was a long flight, and half-way down the boy clung to the side and wouldn't move at all. I peered past him and saw something lying at the bottom. I went down and pulled at a tweed-clad shoulder. A stranger, yet it was a familiar face: a fat man with small staring eyes and blood dried on his forehead.

I stepped back and nearly upset the lamp. The boy hadn't moved.

‘This – this is not Monsieur Lartrec!' I said.

‘Yes, signor, this is Monsieur Lartrec.'

There was silence in the cellar.

‘But,' I said, ‘this … all this … happened twelve months ago.'

‘No, signer,' said the boy. ‘Last evening. Before you came.'

Then, I suppose, the strength came back to his limbs, and with the echoes shaking among the wine vats he went swarming up the steps, and through the empty house out into the winter sunlight beyond.

The King was going: everyone knew that. The only question was when. The physicians said it might be a week yet; but William and Henry, watching each other across the sick bed, thought, what if he dies without sharing out, what if he sinks into a coma and slips away and nothing settled?

Twice they'd tried to get round to the subject, but they couldn't press too hard because the lion still lived and had a growl on him they recognized.

He'd repented of his errors on Sunday, repented like a stout sulky boy, with all his monks and his priests nodding their tonsured heads and whispering yes, yes, in unctuous sibilant approval; he'd agreed to the release of all those high-up people who had grown sallow in grim castles for more than twenty years.

But it had been grudging, a reluctant giving in to Christian impulses that came to him from outside. In many ways he was a pious God-fearing man but he'd never taken kindly to suggestions from other people. This morning for a while he was nearly his old self, sitting up for a few minutes, snapping at his chief prelates and barons, ordering up the barber to trim his moustache, sucking at a bowl of soup and watching the zealous attentions of his followers out of those small stern bloodshot eyes which for sixty years had done him well. He'd judged men with them, assessing which were his enemies and which his friends, deciding if he could cheat this one with promises or lure that one with gold. And he'd made few mistakes. It didn't pay to make mistakes.

Clear-sighted, people thought him. Well, he was clear-sighted enough to know this hint of recovery wasn't going to last; the lump in his side was no better, and he knew all his greatness, all his money, all his lands, couldn't save him now by so much as a day.

It was a pity, he thought, a crying cursing pity how he'd come to this state, for he was vigorous enough in other ways and might have lasted another ten years. Cousin Philip, might he rot, had been the cause of it all. It was that cheap joke that had started it. Yes, he was fat, sizable round the stomach like many a lusty man in his late prime. And because he'd been ill and forced to keep his bed a week or two Philip of France had cracked the Joke. He'd said that the King was a long time lying-in and no doubt there'd be a fine churching when he was delivered. Venom carries quickly on the tongue, and when the King heard it he went purple up to the ears and swore by the birth of God that he'd be churched in Philip's own cathedral. Philip's cathedral not being as yet in reach, he had fallen on Mantes to begin and had burnt and butchered until nothing was left except ashes and the spread-eagled corpses of the people who had lived there. It was not pretty but it was his way: it had always been his way. You couldn't expect a change at his time of life. But this time, just once, things hadn't gone right. Riding up to see for himself, as he always did, he had put his horse on to hot cinders and been thrown, So this rupture and slow mortification.

And on the whole he judged better than his surgeons how much time was left. That morning he thought a fortnight more and perhaps with an effort he'd see his sixtieth birthday, but in the night he had a terrible dream and woke in sweat knowing the worst. He said nothing to Peter the monk, nor anything to Gilbert the bishop who had stayed up to pray at his bedside and fallen asleep there. But next morning early he sent word that they were all to come.

They crowded into his chamber, the priests and the nobles, pushing each other, as they thought unnoticed, and edging for position about the bed. Then he sent for his two sons.

They came quickly enough. They'd not been out of arrow-shot for a week and they came solicitously, anxiously, submissively, saving their sharp looks for each other. The King stared at them, and then he glanced up at the rest. Already, he thought, while the breath's still in the body, they stand in little groups, one against another. What when my hand has gone, will it all be as before?

‘Yes. Father?' said Henry. ‘I hope you're no worse? Give us that assurance, I pray you.'

The King said: ‘I'm one day nearer death,' and raised his voice. ‘This is my last will. Hear you all.'

Instant silence fell, the whispering and scuffling died in a second, noise seemed to run away from the bed and escape at the door like wind from a balloon. The King knew the expectancy but did not hurry himself. He looked again at his two sons, at their bent heads beside the bed, at once separated and united by the bed. Was it the only link? The two youngest of four: Richard caught by a stag, its horn had come out of his back; Robert – Robert Short Legs – ill-disciplined, rowdy, rebellious, chivalrous, lazy Robert, curse him, absent as usual.

‘To my eldest son Robert,' he said, ‘though he's borne arms against me and has been unfilial to the end, I leave this Duchy of Normandy. It fulfils a promise long made.'

He stopped, and one of the apothecaries gave him a sip of cordial. No one spoke, though glances went about, minds quick to think how the succession would affect them.

‘My kingdom,' he went on. ‘My kingdom I give to no one, though I'll leave it to him who can hold it, as I held it, with my sword. If God wills, I think that that one should be William, who has campaigned with me and served me well and on the whole been dutiful to me all his life.'

His son took a deep slow breath and raised his close-cropped, wide-browed head, his truculent, sourly swelling face. Enough – it was enough. He could hold it as his father had done, and if blood ran on the floor it should not be his. His eyes met those of Henry, clashed a moment and then turned towards the old man. The King was lying back with closed eyes, a trickle of moisture at the corner of his mouth. The virtue had gone out of him.

‘And what,' said Henry, his voice cracking a little, ‘ and what do you leave to me, Father?'

The King irritably waved away the apothecary. With a grunt he turned on his side.

‘Five thousand pounds weight of silver, my son, which you can get from my treasury when I'm dead.'

Henry swallowed noisily. ‘A splendid gift, sire. But what shall I do with silver if I've neither lands nor a home.'

‘You can keep your soul in patience,' said the King. ‘You're by twelve years the youngest and your time will come.'

Again the eyes of the brothers met. Your time will come, Henry, thought William; but take care how you step or your time will come too soon. My time will come, thought Henry staring, when I am old and feeble; but strong men can take time by the hand.

He was off again, the tired old man, ordering that money and jewellery should be given to his half-dozen daughters, directing that this burnt abbey should be rebuilt, that church or monastery more richly endowed. He'd always been generous to God, since God had been generous to him. The monk at his side scratched it all down as he spoke. In the back of the room now were groups who clustered and whispered, having heard what they wanted to hear. It was hot in the room. It was going to be a hot day, and the flies were already troublesome. From somewhere outside came the flat musical echo of a goat bell.

At last it was over, and clergy and laity trooped out into the September sun. The two brothers walked together down the cloisters, their heavy spurred boots clinking on the ancient stone. They might not have been full brothers for they were unalike – children of the King's different moods, of his different lives, separated widely in time and circumstances: the tall handsome purposeful boy and the squat rufous-faced cynical seasoned veteran. They might have found common ground in the unfair benefits given to Robert if the greater issue had not divided them for ever.

So they came to the gates of the monastery unspeaking, and spurred off in opposite directions without a backward glance, William to take his kingdom and shut up again the men his father had just set free, Henry to weigh out his silver pound by pound.

The King had waited for them to come back; he had thought any minute they would be back; and it was the fall of night before he realized he must die alone. For he dies more lonely who is a king with all his servants and courtiers than a beggar with a son beside him.

All that night, though they thought him asleep, his mind was active and alert, turning this way and that – like a cat in a cage sensing it will soon be dropped in the river. Sometimes he thought of his life and was content. He'd seen much, done much, come far. Coming so young to the high estate seized by his wicked and fratricidal father, he'd shown what he was made of, his ruthless ability and military genius, right from the beginning. Whatever he had taken he held, and if there was opposition or revolt he met it with the sword. Where he ruled, the law – his law – prevailed. He'd been a good father – domineering perhaps, for you couldn't get out of the way of ruling; he'd been a faithful and a loving husband – and that was something with all those smooth-skinned pale-haired English women about; and – when the itch for revenge didn't clash with piety – he'd been a religious and a temperate man.

All things to stand with him at the Judgment Seat: he'd much to be thankful for. But now and then in the darkness old scenes, old faces floated through the night. The lying, the broken promises, the bad faith, the cruelties and the massacres; these would be with him too. In particular he thought of the slaughter following the Northumbrian affair. They'd deserved revenge and he'd planned revenge; that Christmas Day eighteen years ago he'd sat in York and planned it all. Perhaps it wasn't the right day for thinking such thoughts, but his mind then, full of its own vigour, had worked in its own way. You did what you pleased and built an abbey or said a Te Deum afterwards. So he'd sent out his troops to butcher every man, woman, child and beast for sixty miles round, and so well had they done it that even now after all this time the country was desolate and waste and barren, a dead land uninhabited by man.

Just after that, he remembered, he'd taken that nightmare march across the Pennines to Chester, and the winter and the countryside seemed against him. He'd chosen to walk with his tired and grumbling men, leading them back out of blind gulches hidden in deep snow, across gale-swept moorlands and through semi-frozen streams, cheering them and encouraging them while all the time inside his anger grew again, demanding new appeasement.

Generalship, numbers or luck, he'd always been on the winning side wherever he'd been, losing his horse, the man beside him, crossing the broken bridge just before it collapsed, beaten only once in personal fight and then, rolling in the dust, finding his life spared because Robert Short Legs recognized the voice of his father.

Well, it was all over now. Tonight for the last time the ghostly battles could be re-fought, the pitched battles and sieges, grey in the morning mist. The tramp of marching men, long lost, long forgotten except by their leader who lay now in the dark, stirring the ashes of his memory for the last faint glow …

There was a light drizzle next morning and day was late. More than usual had stayed with him through the night because some had caught him in the right mood last evening and wheedled concessions out of him, and hope was a powerful spur to devotion in the others.

As light grew they put out the guttering torches, and Hugh, Bishop of St Albans, opened the lattice window a few inches to let in the smell of the boxworm and the warm damp earth. A few birds cheeped and chattered in the herb garden. Then the monastery bell began to ring.

The King stirred and opened his eyes as from a deep sleep, and at once the watchers moved and yawned and stretched and gathered round, and the dozing servants were shaken or kicked. Montfort the physician took up a spoon and stirred the broth on the fire.

The King said: ‘ What's that bell?'

‘The monastery bell ringing for prime, sire.'

‘What day is it?' he asked.

‘The ninth of September, sire.'

He closed his eyes. ‘Holy Mary, Mother of God, receive my soul.'

They waited for more, dutifully, unexcitedly, knowing his long habit of praying to begin the day. But he didn't speak, only lay there, apparently considering his words. Montfort came forward with the broth and held it ready, close by. So it was he who first saw the change. He stared and put down the broth. Then he leaned and looked at the King, looked hard with puckered brows and tightened lips, then he slowly straightened up and crossed himself.

‘The King is dead.'

The light was growing, a grey ashy autumn light, not the warm butter-yellow sunshine of yesterday. No one spoke. They were so used to the iron authority that they couldn't believe it gone, and waited for a harsh contradiction from the great figure on the bed. But they looked uneasily, sidelong, doubting, and saw that somehow the great figure had shrunken.

It was a shock to them all. They'd been expecting something, but not this sudden leaving, this desertion, this abdication of power. They didn't know how to meet it.

The hush was broken by Peter the monk who began to mutter his prayers in a harsh voice, and one by one, almost shamefaced, the others joined in. But already something was spreading among them, a slow contagion of alarm. It was not death they disliked so much as the consequences of death – this death. Only a few had legacies to gather like William and Henry, but all had property to hold and protect. Until five minutes ago it had been safe, sheltered by the unseen ramparts of the King's law. Now, in a few seconds, there was no law; it had flickered out in the wind. No one knew it yet; no one except the men about the bed.