Then I looked at the woman and realised it was Uda. Uda as a beautiful young woman.
My hand tightened about Hugh’s.
‘Don’t take my son,’ I said.
‘We will not,’ said Uda, ‘do not fear. We are merely making ourselves known to him.’
‘Why?’ I said, perhaps a little defensively.
‘Because he is the Falloway Man,’ said Stephen, and then suddenly I was alone in the meadow with my son and Stephen and Uda had vanished.
I stared about, but Stephen and Uda were nowhere to be seen. I crouched down by Hugh, taking him by the shoulders.
‘Hugh? Are you well?’
He smiled at me, so beautiful.
‘Of course, mama. Why should I not be well?’
Then he walked away from me, back toward the horses and cart, his sister and her guardians, and I had to hurry to keep up with him.
Whenever I tried to speak with Hugh about this day, and the meeting with Stephen and Uda, he always smiled at me and said he had totally forgot, and what day did I mean? After a few months I supposed he had totally forgot it, and thus I did, too.
I did not ever see my strange knight again, or Uda. Nor did I ever step onto a falloway again for the rest of my life.
It has not been until now, close to my death, that I realise that Hugh had never forgot that day and that the falloways had never forgot him.
Chapter Four
My world went to nothing when Edmond died. Some days it felt to me as if there was naught remaining of any worth or comfort. Edmond had been my lover, my confidant, my protector for almost thirty years. Even though many weeks, sometimes months, might pass when I did not see him and he was busy on his progress about the country, still I knew he was there, and messengers shuttled back and forth between us regularly. It was enough that I knew he lived, and thought of me, and our reunions were always sweet.
But now he was dead. Nothing filled the gap he left. My world now became one of complete emptiness. Always the passing of Stephen and Raife had hung about me like shadows, but Edmond had been there to lighten my days, and push the shadows away, and make me laugh.
Now I had lost three loves, those three brilliant men who had stood framed in the sun on the steps of the Oxeneford palace chapel so many years ago.
They were gone, and the shadows became heavy, horrid, menacing.
I felt utterly alone, and inconsolable in that loneliness. People surrounded me — my lady companions, the stewards and servants of my estates, minstrels and jugglers, priests and sundry visitors, even Owain who now writes these words — but none of them could console me, nor fill the terrible void that Edmond’s death created.
Gytha, still with me and my closest friend, could not even begin to fill that empty space.
My children tried. My son Geoffrey made the suggestion (from duty, nothing else) that I remove myself to Pengraic and was doubtless immensely relieved when I declined. I could not face Pengraic and all its memories yet, nor the cold regard of Geoffrey. My daughters offered their homes for their mother, but they also (as their husbands) appeared relieved at my decision to refuse their kindness.
Hugh abandoned his own wife and young family to return to me, but after some weeks I told him to go home. I loved Hugh with all my heart, but even he reminded me of loss, both of Raife’s and of Edmond’s. At thirty he was in the full bloom of his beauty and power, one of the distinguished nobles of England, and I admit that I was jealous of his youth and the future before him.
During my time by Edmond’s side we had lived either at Elesberie or at Westminster, with the occasional foray back to the Oxeneford palace where I’d seen the first imp, or to one of Edmond’s other royal manors. But now, with Richard on the throne, I was welcomed at none of these places and so I moved to my manor of Remany near Glowecestre.
Remany was an estate that Edmond had given me. It was large, had a big stone manor house, and was in a beautiful and peaceful part of the country. It was far from court — neither the new King Richard nor his younger brother John wanted me anywhere near the new court — and yet close to the Welsh Marches. I felt somehow connected to Pengraic, yet distant enough from it that its memories did not haunt me too intensely.
Here I thought I would rebuild my life in peace. Find something other than a husband or lover to focus on.
Try not to think of the past.
Gytha and I went for long walks, often accompanied by Gytha’s daughter, Guietta. (Guietta had been an unexpected addition to my household some fifteen years earlier, when Gytha’s swelling belly had announced that she was breeding. I did not know who Guietta’s father was, nor did I ever ask.) I was long past riding now, and in fact had largely given up when my lovely Dulcette had died years before.
I spent months with my steward, learning the rhythms of the seasons that I had known as a girl and largely forgotten during my adult life at court.
I began, slowly, to take pleasure in life once more.
And then … then …
A half year after Edmond died, close to Christmastide of my fifty-first year, I grew ill. It was a slow, insidious malaise, creeping up on me so silently that it took me weeks to become fully aware of it.
My fatigue increased with each day so that after some weeks my mind was so fogged with exhaustion I could not string two thoughts together. I could not sleep, even though I longed desperately for it, and my temper grew so short that now my ladies actively sought reason to avoid me (all save Gytha, who endured my ill temper with stoic goodwill). Increasingly, I could not keep any food down, save the sloppiest of gruels, such as you might feed a baby, and more often than not they, too, returned straight into the light of day. My limbs grew skeletal, but my belly grew large and uncomfortable, as if it was drawing into itself my remaining life force. I looked as though I was with child, although I knew I could not possibly be so.
All through winter, herbalists and physicians came and went. They bled me, they medicated me, and nothing helped. Even Owain’s ministrations did little other than allow me to snatch a few hours sleep at night.
By early spring I knew I was dying. I knew it, everyone knew it. No one mentioned it. False cheer swirled about me like the lies you feed an idiot child, while all the time Death’s fingers clawed deeper into me.
Then, twelve days ago, Hugh returned to see me. He breezed into my solar where I lay on a couch, and he bent down to me as if he could not see that I was wasted and dying and kissed my mouth.
‘Lady mama!’ he said, using his childish expression which I always loved, then sat down in the chair, smiling slowly at me.
Despite my general despondency and pain I smiled back. I was glad to see him, if only to say goodbye.
‘What do you here, Hugh?’ I said.
‘What do I here? Ah, madam, what a question to ask of the son who adores you. I had heard you sickened, and thus I am here.’
His expression sobered. ‘I came. I had to. And now I will stay with you until we part.’
My eyes filled with tears. How had I managed to birth such a wonderful child?
As quickly as his expression had sobered, now Hugh’s face once more lit up with humour.
‘And I have brought you a gift! Am I not the dutiful child?’
He snapped his fingers, and a servant hurried forth from the doorway. In his arms, the servant carried a large, rolled up, linen covered bundle.
‘Roll it out on the table under the window,’ Hugh said, and the man complied, carefully unknotting the ties holding the bundle, removing the linen, then rolling out what lay beneath.
It was a tapestry, very large. I struggled up on one elbow, thinking to rise and walk over to view it. Hugh assisted me to sit, but then he gestured me to stay where I was for the moment. He waved the servant out of the chamber, asking that he close the door.
There was just Hugh and myself in the chamber now.
‘I commissioned this tapestry two years ago,’ Hugh said, ‘when I knew your time was close.’
Two years ago? But then both Edmond and I were in full health. Who could have known that within two years one of us would be dead and the other dying?