‘Good girl,’ Lady Juliana approved, briskly. She shook herself free of Alan’s grip, faltering only when she saw the impotent rage in his eyes. ‘I...I’ll see a priest is sent, so he doesn’t die unshriven.’ Lady Juliana picked up her skirts and fled.
She kept her word, and soon one of Duke Geoffrey’s chaplains arrived at Sir Raoul’s pavilion. He took one look at Ned and efficiently administered the last rites. This done, he hovered near the entrance, unwilling to leave until Sir Raoul’s squire had gone to God.
The pain in Ned’s chest had expanded and taken over the whole of his body. He couldn’t move. He could barely see for the black shapes which floated like dark wraiths across his sight. But he could hear. He could hear a sawing noise. It was very loud. He could also hear voices – Gwenn and Alan and someone else.
Ned wanted to speak to his wife. The sawing noise faded. He managed a pathetic gasp. ‘Gwenn?’ Was that him? He tried again. ‘Gwenn?’ When he had done, he was desperate for air, and as he laboured to drag in a breath the sawing noise recommenced, and he made the chilling discovery that the sawing noise wasn’t sawing at all – it was his lungs fighting for air.
‘Hush, Ned.’ Gwenn’s voice had a break in it, as though she were forcing back tears. ‘Try to rest. Try to regain your strength.’
Something light brushed across Ned’s brow. Her hand? A cloth? His senses were disordered and it was difficult to make the distinction. He couldn’t even tell whether he was lying on a palliasse or the bare earth.
‘Gwenn?’ He coughed, and pain shrieked along every nerve. Immediately that soft something feathered across his lips. He heard a sob, a smothered gasp, and dimly made out what she said.
‘Look, Alan, more blood. Ned, don’t leave me.’ Her voice dropped. ‘You’re all I’ve got. Without you...’
Ned tried to sit up, but his limbs were sleeping. He tried to make his lips give Gwenn the reassurance that she was asking for, but they would not work either. He gave up the struggle, resolving to rest as she had suggested, for then he would be able to tell her. In a moment he would have conserved the strength to remind her that he would never leave her. Never. Had he not sworn it?
For a time, the only sound in the tent was the harsh rasping of his breathing.
‘I don’t understand it,’ the priest murmured in an undertone to Alan, whom he recognised. ‘By rights your countryman should be dead already. He’s suffering greatly. If only we could ease his passage.’
Numb with grief, Alan watched Gwenn kneeling by his cousin’s bed, grasping those solid, waxen hands. He knew what was holding Ned from the brink of death. Gwenn was, with the tears in her eyes, and the catch in her voice, and the loving touch of her hand. It was Gwenn who was making Ned cling to life, and in so doing she was prolonging his agony, for Ned would never leave this earth while she was at his side, pleading for him to stay. Ned’s face had been blue when they had brought him here. Now it was like a death-mask, and yet he lived. It was cruel that his last moments should be tortured ones. Ned had never in all his young life tormented anyone. Alan thought he knew how he could ease his cousin’s passage to death. Yet he hesitated. ‘You swear there’s no hope?’ he whispered.
‘None. God is waiting for him.’
Alan nodded. He walked to the bed and held out his hand. ‘Gwenn? Come with me.’
Gwenn looked at him from a world of sorrow, eyelids swollen and red.
A cold stone lay in Alan’s belly. ‘Come.’ He bent, and taking her hand from Ned’s, enfolded it in his own. Ruthlessly ignoring her reluctance, he drew her into dazzling sunlight. ‘We’ll walk awhile.’
‘But, Alan, I want to be with him.’
‘No. It’s better for Ned if you come with me.’
In the shadowy pavilion, Ned stirred, and stretched his hand after his wife, while sooty flakes swirled in his vision. Weakly, his hand sank back. The pain was unendurable. God help me, Ned thought. Where’s Gwenn? He strained to see her, but impenetrable grey veils screened her from his sight. Ned’s search was not completely fruitless, for in a small recess of his fragmented consciousness he found a space, a heavenly space that was not all pain.
Gwenn? Gwenn?
The space was dark, but welcoming, because it contained no pain. Ned reached towards it, but his body and the pain he was enduring were weighing him down. Tentatively, he pushed his pain aside.
The Duke’s chaplain had taken Gwenn’s place at Ned’s bedside. Scenting release, he made the sign of the cross and smiled.
Gwenn? Where was Gwenn? Lurching back into himself, Ned discovered there was nothing where Gwenn had been except unendurable agony. Floundering, he sought that blissful, pain-free space. It had grown larger. It was almost big enough for him to walk into, and it was expanding. Soon it would be large enough to swallow up the whole of the earth, the sky, and all of God’s creation. But there was one thing missing, one vital thing. It did not hold Gwenn. Ned jerked himself back, back towards pain... His hand lifted, stretching to the afternoon sunlight pouring through the door slit. The chaplain caught his hand. Ned focused on him. The chaplain had brown eyes like Gwenn’s, and in them Ned saw warm and abiding love, and great understanding. It occurred to him that if he died, he would be leaving Gwenn with his cousin. Simultaneous with that thought, came a crucifying convulsion. ‘Gwenn...’ he moaned.
‘Relax, my son,’ the priest murmured. ‘You cannot fight the inevitable. Relax, and trust to God that your souls will meet in the eternal. Let go.’
‘But, Gwenn...’
His groan was weak, but the priest heard. ‘Your friend will care for her.’
Ned tried to shake his head. Tried to say that that would not do, but he had no power to explain to a priest, even one with compassionate eyes.
‘Put yourself and Gwenn into God’s hands, my son. Trust in His infinite wisdom.’
Ned’s mouth wouldn’t move. He wanted to admit that he did not think he could do that. What if he let go, and Gwenn never came? An eternity without her was unthinkable, but he was bone-tired. ‘Tell Alan... Tell my cousin...’
‘Aye?’
‘Tell him to see her safe to Plou–’ he coughed, ‘Ploumanach.’
‘I will.’
Ned drew a rattling, agonised breath. ‘Father?’
‘My son?’
‘Ask him...ask Alan to tell my mother...to give her my love, and...’ Ned wasn’t able to finish. He was past talking. He was past worrying. His eyes closed. The great darkness was in front of him; the darkness where there was no pain. It seemed to beckon him. Slowly, Ned let go, and left his broken body behind him. He was not confident he would see Gwenn again, and could only hope that perhaps, out there, in those vast uncharted reaches, that would not matter. Bathed in peace, Ned breathed a blissful sigh. His last.
‘Requiescat in pace,’ the Duke’s chaplain muttered, and solemnly he reached out and folded Ned’s capable, farmer’s hands over the wound in the shattered, bloody chest.
***
Having escaped one death-bed, Lady Juliana had found herself standing at another, for minutes after the accident in which her fiancé’s squire had been hurt, the Duke of Brittany had fallen.
Head bowed, Lady Juliana left the ermine pavilion. Her proud features wore a stunned, incredulous look.
Sir Raoul was waiting for her. He pushed past the guards. ‘What news?’ he demanded, eyeing the closed tent flap.
Lady Juliana shook her head. It was a struggle to find any words. ‘He’s gone, Raoul,’ she said. ‘The Duke is gone.’
Sir Raoul crossed himself. ‘Mother of God, not Brittany too! He was twenty-eight – only a year older than I. How did he die? One reckless gesture too many, I suppose? He was ever a showman.’
‘He was crushed and... Please, Raoul, I don’t want to talk about it.’
‘My apologies, my dear. And Duchess Constance? How is she taking it?’
‘Composedly. She’s not shed a tear. But King Philip’s weeping would cause the Seine to burst its banks.’