‘So you will be going again. Do not expect the same luck next time.’

‘I shall wait for God to show me His will,’ said Gilbert solemnly, ‘and whatever it may be I shall accept it.’

‘Still, perhaps it is tempting Providence when you consider you have done it once and come safely through. Think of all those who are lost on the way.’

They were talking thus when Richard burst in upon them.

‘Master,’ he stammered, ‘I have seen … I have seen …’

‘Come, Richard, what have you seen?’ asked Gilbert.

‘A ghost it appears,’ put in Richer.

‘No, master. I have seen the Emir’s daughter.’

‘What?’ cried Gilbert.

‘I had heard that a strange woman was in the street. She was calling “Gilbert”. Just “Gilbert” again and again. I went to look at her. An apprentice told me she was close by and there she was.’

‘The Emir’s daughter, Richard. You are mistaken.’

‘Nay, master, I was not, for she saw me and she cried aloud with joy, for she knew me. She remembered me in her father’s palace.’

Gilbert had risen to his feet.

‘You must take me to her.’

‘She is here, master. She followed me.’

Gilbert hurried from the room and there standing in his doorway was Mahault. When she saw him she gave a cry of joy and fell on her knees before him.

He lifted her; he looked into her face and he spoke to her in her own tongue which she had not heard for so long.

‘You came … so far.’

‘God guided me,’ she said simply.

‘So … you hoped to find me.’

‘I knew I should, if it were His will and it is.’

Richer de L’Aigle looked on at the scene with amazement as Gilbert called for his servants to prepare hot food. She must be hungry, he said, and she was footsore and weary.

She laughed and wept with happiness. A miracle had brought her across terrifying land and sea to Gilbert.

He considered her. She was beautiful, young and ardent. She loved the Christian faith almost as much as she loved Gilbert. She was a living example of a soul that was saved.

He could not keep her in his house. That was something the proprieties would not allow and Gilbert did not know what he could do with her. There was a good and sober widow who lived close by and for whom he had been able to do some favour. He went to her, told her of his predicament and asked if she would take the strange young woman under her care until something could be settled. This she agreed to do, and Gilbert conducted her to the widow’s house where he told her she must wait awhile.

Gilbert had friends in the Church and he decided to ask the advice of some of its members as to what he could do. There was in London at the time a gathering of the bishops presided over by the Bishop of London, and since the Emir’s daughter was an infidel and would be so until she was baptised, the answer to his predicament could well come from the Church.

Before the bishops, Gilbert related his adventure, and the Bishop of Chichester rose suddenly and spoke as though he were in a dream. He said: ‘It is the hand of God and not of man which has brought this woman from so far a country. She will bear a son whose labours and sanctity will turn to the profit of the Church and the glory of God.’

These were strange words, for Gilbert had not mentioned the thought of marrying her - although it had entered his head. They sounded like a prophecy. Gilbert was then filled with a desire to marry the Emir’s daughter and have a son by her.

‘It would be necessary,’ said the Bishop of London, ‘for her to be baptised. If she agrees to this then you should marry her.’

Gilbert went to Mahault and told her this. Her eyes sparkled with happiness. Most joyfully would she be baptised. She had come to England for this - and to marry Gilbert.

So they were married and very soon she became pregnant. She was certain that she would bear a son who was destined for greatness.

Thus before Thomas was born he had made his impact on the world.


The daughter of the Emir, now baptised as Mahault, was the most devout of Christians. She was the happiest of women for God had shown her a miracle. She had asked and had been given. She was the wife of Gilbert, a fact which would have seemed impossible while she was in her father’s palace. Here it was the most natural thing in the world. Surely a miracle.

And when very soon after the marriage she was pregnant, she was certain that she was going to have a son. The Bishop of Chichester had prophesied this. God had brought her through great difficulties; she had made a journey which many would have said was impossible; she had come to a strange country knowing only two words: ‘London’ and ‘Gilbert’. The first was easy to find; and God had brought her to the second.

She began to have visions. Her son was going to be a great man. It was to bear this son that God had brought her here. She dreamed of him; always she saw him in those dreams surrounded by a soft light. He would be a Christian and his life would be dedicated to God. It seemed likely that he would be a man of the Church and the highest office in the Church was that of an archbishop.

‘I know my son will be an archbishop,’ she said.

Gilbert was uneasy. He was no longer a man who could go where he would. He had a wife and soon he would have a child.

She sensed his fears and asked him what ailed him. He told her then that he had made a vow to God that if he arrived home safely, he would visit the Holy Land again and he feared that now he had such responsibilities he would be unable to keep his promise to God.

She smiled at him. ‘You have made a promise to God,’ she said, ‘and that promise must be kept. Do not think of me. If Richard remains with me, as he speaks my tongue, I shall be well enough; and soon I shall speak English, for I must do so since I am to care for my son.’

In due course her child was born. It was a boy, as she had known it would be, and when the midwife held him in her arms, Mahault heard a voice say, ‘It is an archbishop we are holding.’

She could not ask the midwife what she meant by that because she could not make herself understood, but later she asked Gilbert to find out why the woman had made such a remark. The midwife’s answer was that she had said no such thing.


The boy was called Thomas and he was the delight of his mother’s life. She was sure that nothing was too good for him. His education must be of the best. In the meantime since Gilbert had made his promise to God he should keep it without delay for when the boy grew older he would need a father more than he did when he was too young to recognise him.

So Gilbert went off to the Holy Land once more and Mahault devoted herself to looking after her son and learning English.

Her premonitions as to his future greatness continued. One night she dreamed that the nurse had left the baby without a quilt in his cradle and when she reproved her, the nurse replied: ‘But my lady, he is covered with a beautiful quilt.’ ‘Bring it to me here,’ she had answered, thinking to prove that the nurse was deceiving her. The nurse came with a large quilt of a beautiful crimson cloth. She put it on her mistress’s bed and attempted to unfold it, but the more she unfolded the larger it grew, and they took it to the largest room in the house because it was too big to unfold in a smaller one. Nor could it be unfolded there so they took it into the street. But they could not unfold it because the more they tried to the bigger the quilt grew, and suddenly it began to unfold itself and covered the street and houses around them, and went on and on, and they knew it had reached the end of the land.

She awoke from this dream with the certainty that it had especial significance, which was that her son Thomas was destined for greatness.

Because she could not be thankful enough to the God of her new religion who had brought her safely to London that she might bear this son, she would have him weighed often and give to the poor a weight of clothes or food equal to that of the boy.

She would talk to him of the need to be good and serve God. and how this could best be done by caring for others.

‘Always help those poorer than yourself, my little one,’ she would say. ‘That is a good way to serve God.’

Gilbert returned after three and a half years to find that at the age of four, young Thomas was already showing signs of great intelligence. Gilbert was glad to be home; he would make no more vows. Two trips to the Holy Land should be enough to placate his Maker for he had never been guilty of anything but the most venial sins.

He soon became as certain as Mahault was that there was something special about their son.

In the next few years they had two more children. These were daughters, good bright pleasant girls, but Thomas was apart from them. Sir Richer de L’Aigle had become an even more frequent visitor than he had been in the past. He had been fascinated by the account of Mahault’s determination to find Gilbert; he declared he would not have believed it possible for a young woman to find her way with nothing more to guide her than two words. He was of the opinion that only Divine providence could have brought her to Gilbert and his interest in their unusual son grew.

As soon as Thomas was old enough his father put him in the care of the Canons of Merton to whom many well-born people sent the sons they hoped would enter the Church.

‘This would be but the beginning,’ Gilbert confided to his wife. ‘Afterwards Thomas must attend one of the great seats of learning, but Merton is a good beginning and it would mean that he was not too far from us.’