Falls the Shadow (77 page)

“You said there were others found alive, too?”

“Yes, my lady, but pitifully few, most of them close to death…like Sir Humphrey de Bohun. It is a miracle that he survived this long, but a cruel one; those who love him can only pray that God soon frees him from his pain.” He saw Nell’s mouth tighten, remembered, too late, that Humphrey was a friend. “But my news is not all dismal, Madame. Peter de Montfort’s sons survived the battle, and I think their wounds will heal in time. So, too, will Sir Henry de Hastings, Sir Nicholas Segrave, and Sir John Fitz John recover.”

“And that is all?” Amaury sounded bewildered. “Why so few?”

“Evesham was not like other battles. Even after your father’s men fell, their enemies kept hacking at them. Sir Guy Baliol, your lord father’s standard bearer, was so mangled that we could not even strip off his armor, had to bury him in his bloodied, broken chain-mail.”

Damian fumbled within the scrip at his belt, drawing out a crumpled scrap of parchment. “We kept count of the bodies, my lady. With your lord husband died one hundred eighty knights, two hundred twenty young squires, and two thousand men-at-arms. And then there were the Welsh. They fled the field at the onset of the battle, but that did not save them. Large numbers drowned trying to cross the Avon; local folk have begun to call one ford ‘Dead Man’s Ait,’ so many bodies were found there. And those who got across the river still had to escape Roger de Mortimer’s men, for he hunted them down without mercy. We cannot ever be sure how many died, but we think several thousand Welsh perished ere that bloody day was done, mayhap even more.”

Ellen broke her silence at that, with a soft sound, almost like a whimper, quickly stifled. Damian wondered why the Welsh deaths should so distress her; his heart went out to this troubled child, and he was racking his brain for some comfort to offer when Nell said, “Tell us of the battle.”

He did, haltingly at first. Simon’s arrival at the abbey. The coming storm. The false banners. Reliving it in the retelling, he tore open an unhealed wound, and when he at last concluded, tears were running freely down his face. “Men will not forget how Earl Simon died. They will not forget his courage, and they will not forget his faith.”

“Faith,” Nell said slowly. “Do you think that my husband’s faith faltered once he realized he was doomed?”

“Oh, no, my lady! I know it did not, for I heard him speak to his men ere the battle began. Their cause was just, he said, and would prevail. Indeed, never did his faith burn so brightly as in the last hour of his life!”

Nell turned away abruptly, moved to the window. “He was lucky, then,” she said, and if there was irony in that, there was also envy. Ah, Simon, how did you do it? How could you hold fast in the face of certain defeat? You should have taught me how, my love, should…She was perilously close to tears, but she would not give in to them. What good would tears do now? “My husband and son…where are they buried, Brother Damian? At the abbey?”

She heard him gasp, a sound so full of pain that she spun around, caught upon his face a look of sheer horror. “My lady, I…I thought you knew!”

“Knew what? Tell me!”

“I…I cannot,” he stammered, “not before the little lass…”

Ellen’s eyes darkened, pupils dilating in sudden fright. But she said resolutely, “If it concerns my father, I have a right to know!”

“What are you keeping from us?” Amaury reached Damian first, with Richard just a step behind, and the young monk gave way before the intensity of the onslaught.

“I will tell you,” he agreed wretchedly, knowing no other way, for obedience was as essential to his calling as it was inbred in his soul. “Lord Simon’s body was shamefully abused after his death. A man called Mautravers chopped off his head, impaled it upon a pike, and then—”

Ellen’s cry would long echo in his ears. Clasping a hand to her mouth, she whirled, fled the chamber. Nell followed at once, and Damian sank down weakly upon a nearby stool, fervently thanking God for his reprieve; his was not a tale for female ears. Amaury and Richard looked as if they, too, yearned to flee the chamber, but pride was a powerful snare. They would not fail their father, would not shirk a man’s burden, and they waited mutely for Damian to tell them what they dreaded to know.

He tried, clumsily, to soften the impact, but without much success. He was only half-way through his grisly narrative when Richard blanched, choked, and bolted for the privy tucked away in the south chamber wall. Amaury, looking scarcely less sickened himself, hastened after his brother, leaving a guilt-stricken Damian in sole possession of the chamber.

He could hear sounds of retching, Amaury’s murmurings of comfort. Never had his throat felt so parched, and he looked wistfully at a wine flagon on Nell’s bedside table, but he was not about to drink—unbidden—the Countess of Leicester’s wine. He was earnestly wishing himself a thousand miles away from Dover Castle, from the havoc he’d so innocently wrought, when the door opened, and Nell reentered the chamber. He saw her eyebrows shoot upward, and said miserably, “Your younger lad…he took sick.”

Nell glanced toward the privy, back at Damian. As the implications of his words sank in, she lost color as rapidly as Richard had. “You told them, then,” she said. “Now you may tell me.”

“My lady…you do not want to know,” he entreated, to no avail. She regarded him steadily, and he found that he was no more capable of defying her than he would have been of gainsaying Simon.

“After they beheaded him, my lady, they hacked off his arms, his legs, his…his private male parts.” Damian swallowed with difficulty. No matter what, he’d not tell her of the vile acts committed upon the Earl’s body; nor would he tell her about the dogs. “I was told that the Marcher lords sent the Earl’s severed limbs to various towns in the realm. I do know for a fact that Roger de Mortimer sent Lord Simon’s head to Wigmore Castle, as a…a gift to his wife!”

He wasn’t sure what reaction he’d been expecting, mayhap that she would weep or faint, what he imagined to be woman’s natural response to man’s cruelty. He found her utter silence far more unnerving than screams or tears. Only once did she make any sound at all, a hissed intake of breath when he told her of Maude de Mortimer’s ghastly trophy. Her eyes had narrowed upon his face, too hot to hold tears, a blue-white blaze of such fury that he shrank back, remembering all the stories he’d heard of Plantagenet rages, tales that carried the scent of sulphur and smoke. His life had been a sheltered one; until now he’d never known that a woman, too, could burn with a killing fever.

Nell was trembling. She brushed past Damian as if he were not there, crossed to her bedside table. The flagon was fashioned of fine Venetian glass; hers had been a life of luxury and privilege, for was she not the King’s sister? Beside the flagon lay a psalter, bound in Spanish leather, engraved with a Latin cross. She reached first for the psalter. As Damian watched, uncomprehending, she flung it from her, into the ashes of the hearth. Damian gave a scandalized cry, was bending to retrieve the prayer book when Nell sent the flagon crashing into the hearthstones above his head. It shattered in a spray of glass; flying splinters shivered the air. Damian cried out as one cut into his neck. He scrambled to safety just as Amaury and Richard came rushing out of the privy.

Nell seemed as oblivious of her sons as she was of Damian. She was staring blindly at the wine staining the white-washed wall of her bedchamber. Her cheek was bleeding, but she was no longer trembling. The psalter lay, half-opened, in the ashes, and Amaury snatched it up. Nell continued to watch the wine drip down the hearthstones. “I suppose,” she said, “that I should count myself lucky. After all, they could have sent his head to me!”

Damian flinched, surreptitiously crossed himself. Nell saw and laughed, a laugh to haunt his dreams no less than her daughter’s tears. Richard looked at the frightened monk, at his brother, kneeling by the hearth, clutching the psalter to his chest, and then at this white-faced stranger who was his mother. “Mama?” he said, and the fear in his voice reached her. Nell turned, caught him to her in an embrace both fierce and tender, not letting him go until they both were breathless and the blood from her cheek smeared his, too.

“Madame…” Damian hovered by the door, afraid to stay, unwilling to go. “God forgive me, for in seeking to comfort, I brought only pain. At least I can offer this small measure of solace. We claimed your husband’s body, mangled and maimed as it was. We dared not give him the funeral he deserved, but we buried him before the High Altar in our church, sent his soul on to Paradise on the wings of our prayers.” Even so simple an interment had not satisfied Simon’s enemies. Damian had heard talk of exhuming his body, had heard the Marcher lords arguing that a man dying excommunicate was not entitled to lie in consecrated ground. But nothing could have compelled him to share this new threat with Simon’s widow.

“What of my son?”

“He received an honorable burial, my lady…at the behest of the Lord Edward.”

At mention of Edward’s name, Simon’s sons froze. Richard’s hand closed convulsively about the hilt of his dagger, and Amaury spat out a most unpriestly oath. Only Nell did not react. Exhaustion was now claiming her. She felt suddenly weak in the knees, sat down on the edge of the bed, and Damian was overcome by remorse. She looked ravaged, and he’d done his part, wittingly or not.

“My lady, if only I could have brought you something of your husband’s! But those scavengers stripped him of his armor, stole his crucifix, his rings. We did retrieve a few scraps of his clothing, and part of his hair shirt, but then they disappeared.” Stumbling across the chamber, he dropped to his knees before Nell. “I’ve done naught but fail you, my lady. I should have realized how much men would crave such relics, but I was not thinking clearly. Had I only hid them away as I ought—”

“What are you talking about? What relics?”

“Lord Simon’s bloodied hair shirt, my lady! I only hope the thief was moved by piety, not greed, for in truth, he could easily sell bits of it to those coming to pray at Lord Simon’s grave—”

“ ‘Pray at Lord Simon’s grave?’ ” Nell echoed, and Damian nodded eagerly. She did not know! His mission was not in vain, after all; he was to be the one to tell her.

“People began coming to the church within a day or two of the battle, my lady. It took no longer than that for word to spread that we’d buried him there. Afterwards, they’d slip away to the battlefield. Your lord husband died beside a small spring, and people have been coming to it every day since the battle. They pray, and then they take away a vial of the water. When the Lord Edward learned of this, he was enraged, posted a guard. So now they come at night. Not just from Evesham, either, but from neighboring villages, some even as far away as Gloucester.”

“But why?”

The monk looked at her solemnly. “He died for them, my lady, just like St Thomas à Becket. Already I have heard of miraculous cures. There was a village lass burning with fever, sure to die, until her mother bathed her in water from the Earl’s spring. And then there was—my lady? You look at me so strangely. Have I offended you in some way?”

“No, you have not offended me,” Nell said wearily, not knowing whether she wanted to laugh or cry. “My husband was an honorable man, mayhap even a great one. But he was a man, Brother Damian, not a saint. He was very much a man.” The young face upturned to hers reflected disappointment, but not doubt, and Nell realized that Brother Damian, too, was a believer. Well, Jesus had His disciples; why not Simon? The thought was so blasphemous that she shivered, appalled by her own irreverence. But in a world gone mad, why should she be the only one still of sound mind?

A fire had been lit in the hearth, and the shards of broken glass swept up. But the wall had not been scrubbed clean; Nell had said to let it be. They gathered together now by firelight, a circle broken beyond repair. The thought was Nell’s, one she did not share with her children. Reaching out, she brushed the hair back from Ellen’s face. “We need to talk of the future,” she said. “Amaury, I am making arrangements to send you and your brother to France as soon as—”

Both youths broke into heated protests, Amaury insisting that he’d not leave her and Ellen, and Richard vowing that he would go only to Kenilworth Castle to fight with Bran.

“Fi
ht? We’ve nothing left to fight for!” Nell caught herself, said more calmly, “We can do naught for the dead. It is the living who must concern me. We are not entirely without resources, hold the two most formidable castles in England, Kenilworth and Dover. I mean to make use of them, to strike the best bargain I can. But first I must see to your safety. My life is not in danger; nor is Ellen’s. For you, though—”

“Mama, all know I study to be a priest, and Richard is but sixteen,” Amaury interrupted, giving his brother an apologetic look. “Why should we be in danger?”

“And would you trust your lives to men who would so dishonor the dead?”

That silenced them both. They looked away, unable to meet their mother’s eyes. Nell had been warned that Henry had ordered ships to patrol the Channel, with the specific intent of stopping her from sailing for France. Now she leaned forward, began to explain her plan for smuggling them out of England. But within moments, they were interrupted by Richard Gobion.