Виктория Холт - The Revolt of the Eaglets

She could not excuse herself. She wept often; she sewed garments for the poor until there were deep shadows under her once beautiful eyes. And each day she grew more pale and wan.

Occasionally she heard news of what was happening in the world outside Godstow. It was said that there would soon be a royal wedding for Prince Richard and the Princess Alice of France.

Poor Alice! What would her life be? How could she go to her bridegroom when she had already borne the King a child? Few knew of that, and Rosamund hoped never would. One day would Alice feel the heavy weight of her sins as insupportable as Rosamund now found hers?

And the King? How would he feel about letting Alice go? Yet he had let Rosamund go and surely he had once loved her even as he now loved Alice.

It was a sad and sorry world and Rosamund was convinced that her sins were too great for heavenly forgiveness.

She was no longer a young woman so perhaps the King had tired of her for that reason. She would soon have seen forty winters. So many years it had been since the King had first sent for her. Yet she remembered that occasion in every detail and with her was the certain knowledge that if she were young again and the King was there, everything would have happened as it had before.

That was what made her feel so doomed.

The Abbess remonstrated with her. Should she not work a little in the gardens? That would give her a little fresh air, and she loved the plants.

‘I love the gardens,’ answered Rosamund. ‘To tend the flowers would give me the utmost pleasure. From now on I want to turn my back on everything that pleases me. I have had pleasure enough in my life. It is now time for me to endure the pain.’

Confined in her cell she would spend long hours on her knees, the hairy garment she wore tormenting her soft skin. And at length there came a day when the Abbess despaired of her life, so much had she neglected her health and so deeply enamoured did she seem of death.

She was unable to rise from her pallet and when the nuns brought certain comforts to her cell she scorned them. They sought to wrap her in warm covering but she spurned it; she had grown so thin that she was not recognisable as the beautiful penitent who had entered the convent only a year before.

‘Rest easy, my daughter,’ said the Abbess. ‘Your sins will be forgiven for you have truly repented.’

Rosamund shook her head and the tears fell down her sunken cheeks.

‘Nay,’ she said. ‘Do you know the big tree in the gardens … my favourite tree?’

The Abbess nodded.

‘When that turns to stone you will know that I have been received into Heaven.’

‘You have shown true repentance, and God is good.’

But Rosamund could not believe that her sins were forgiven, for she only had to think of Henry Plantagenet and she knew that were he to come to her and insist on her going to him she would be unable to prevent herself doing so. How could one be forgiven a sin when in one’s heart one knew that should the temptation occur again, there would be no resisting it?

The nuns wept for her when she was dead. She had been a good and gracious lady; and much good had come to Godstow because it had sheltered her.

The King came to the convent. He was deeply distressed. His dear Rosamund, dead! Fair Rosamund. The Rose of the World who through him had become the Rose of Unchastity.

‘She was a good woman,’ he said, ‘and dearly I loved her. If she sinned it was in loving me. She was my comfort when I needed comfort. She gave me solace which as King I needed. Because of her I was a better man than I would otherwise have been.’

He wished her to be buried with some pomp. Let her coffin be placed in the gardens of the convent she loved so well. The grave would not be closed. A tabernacle should be built above the coffin; then an altar should be created and the coffin placed on it. The coffin should be covered by a pall of silk; tapers should be kept constantly burning at either end and banners should wave above it.

Thus it would be seen that this was a shrine to one who had been highly valued by the King, and he had decided that one day a suitable monument should be built beneath which she would be buried.

Until that time let her lie in state and let the nuns of Godstow keep the tapers burning and pray constantly for the salvation of the soul of one whom the King had loved dearly.

Philip, son of the King of France, was leading a hunting party into the forest. He was not a very happy nor a very popular boy. From an early age he had been aware of his importance as the King’s only son and there had been much fussing over his health. Now that he was fourteen years of age – soon to be fifteen – he was spoilt, peevish and arrogant. He despised his father but naturally he must accept the fact that he was the King; his mother, who attempted to restrain his selfishness, often angered him and he had more than once warned her to take care, for one day he would be the King and then she would have to obey him.

He was sickly and caught cold easily and when he was not feeling well – which was often – he would be irritable. He had few real friends and his attendants counted themselves lucky when their duties did not bring them too close to him.

At this time he was more arrogant than ever because his father had told him that he was arranging for his coronation.

‘You see, my son, I am no longer a young man,’ Louis explained. ‘I waited a long time for a son and married three wives to get you.’

‘I know this,’ said Philip impatiently. ‘All know it.’

‘It meant great rejoicing when you came. I had the bells ringing throughout France.’

Philip inclined his head. He was not averse to hearing the often repeated tale of his much heralded arrival into the world.

The thought of the coronation delighted him. Then he would be King of France beside his father; and the old man was ageing fast. It could not be long before he was sole ruler of the country.

The more he thought of this the more impatient he became; and on this day when he rode out with his band of huntsmen he was thinking of the great day ahead in the Cathedral at Rheims. He was already putting on the airs of a king, seeing himself in his coronation robes, the crown on his head. King of France, what a glorious title!

They had sighted the deer and he wished his to be the arrow that killed it. There would be feasting that night and he would be at the head of the table. There was extra deference for him now that his coronation was in sight, and he was not so much the sickly boy to be cherished, as the future monarch to be placated. He liked the change.

He spurred his horse and immediately those knights whom his father had commanded to guard him came level with him.

He gave an angry glance to right and left.

‘Keep off my tail,’ he growled, and they immediately fell back; he spurred on his horse and took great delight in leaving them behind.

On and on he galloped. He was sure the deer had gone this way. He wanted to be the one who cornered the animal. When he had killed it he would shout to the others and they would come hurrying up at his command and compliment him on the finest buck that had ever fallen to arrow. It would have to be because the King-to-be had shot it and even if it was the veriest baby of a deer they would have to see it as the finest. That was the joy of being a king. His father was a foolish old man. He talked about honesty and turning from flattery, and how a king’s best and staunchest friends were often those who criticised him. No one was going to criticise Philip II of France.

He galloped on through the forest, leaving the others far behind. This was unfamiliar country to him, but he knew the direction in which he had come. Where was the deer? He drew up and looked about him. There was no sign of it.

He shouted and listened for an answer. None came. His attendants had obeyed his order to get off his tail, and he must have left the party far behind him.

He rode on. The forest had become more dense. He pulled up and called again. There was no answer. He listened for the sound of horses’ hoofs, but there was only the faint sighing of wind in the thick August leaves and the crackle of undergrowth as some small animal scuttled along.

There was something sinister about the forest when one was alone. The tall dignified trees implied they would bow to no one and that a king was of no more importance to them than a woodcutter. Overhead through their leaves he could see the hot summer sky.

He was a little tired and thirsty. His throat craved cool soothing liquid. Perhaps there was a woodcutter’s hut nearby where he could ask refreshment. He liked the idea. Those stories – and there were many of them – in which some great personage visited a humble cottage and was given refreshment and treated as an ordinary traveller and then suddenly announced, ‘I am your King’ – or some such phrase, greatly appealed to him.

He rode on. He was getting deeper and deeper into the forest and he was not sure what direction he should take. He tried calling again but when he raised his voice it cracked and the words were a mere croak.

He began to feel a little dizzy.

As he could not sit steadily on his horse, he dismounted, loosely tied it to a tree and lay down on the grass. He felt better lying down. He must have dozed a little for he awoke suddenly and his horse was no longer there.

Could someone have stolen it? Could it have broken loose? Or was he dreaming?