A Gift Of Sanctuary

Twenty-seven

Leaving Burley and the alewife to their lust, Owen and Geoffrey walked out among the vicars’ houses. Light from lamps and hearth fires showed through the chinks round the doors and shutters. From one house came such a snoring that the two laughed. The night was clear, with bright stars. Tonight, the cemetery seemed to Owen a peaceful place, the rich scent of the earth comforting. A willow beckoned them towards the river, where the stars shimmered and danced.

‘Will Sir Robert lie here?’ Geoffrey asked, leaning against the willow.

‘He asks to be buried in the cathedral.’

‘You will commission a monument?’

‘Aye. Martin told me of a stonecutter who does fine work.’

‘Martin. You should be more careful about your loyalties.’

‘He is a good man.’

‘He is an enemy of our King.’

‘Now and then, and sometimes his ally. Did you mention Martin to the archdeacon?’ For all Owen knew, Baldwin, too, might be a Lawgoch supporter.

‘No.’ Geoffrey glanced over at Owen. ‘I could not think how I might do so without betraying you. I was vague about who had befriended Rhys.’

‘Martin served us well.’

‘Have a care you do not return the favour.’ Geoffrey straightened. ‘After Easter I shall leave with Brother Michaelo.’

‘You are satisfied with the garrisons?’

‘They will hold against the French. You will stay with Sir Robert, then return to Cydweli?’

‘Do you doubt me?’

‘I think that in this country you have found that which you had lost, a sense of your own honour. Mayhap it is enough to have it rekindled. I pray that is so.’

Is that what Owen had found here?

‘What of this monument?’ Geoffrey said in a heartier tone. ‘Will Sir Robert be a knight or a pilgrim?’

‘A knight. But with a pilgrim’s hat at his feet.’

‘A truly perfect, courteous knight. It is fitting. You are sending Brother Michaelo away with a letter for Lucie, telling her all that has come to pass here?’

‘Several letters. I have carried her with me.’

‘You are fortunate in your marriage. Come. It has been a long day.’

In the morning, Sir Robert rallied a little, and used the time to talk to Owen of the things that had worried him as he lay there.

‘What of my sister Phillippa?’ As a widow she had returned to Sir Robert’s household years before. ‘She will be lonesome at Freythorpe.’ The manor was within a day’s ride of York, but the road was often impassable in winter storms.

‘We shall bring her to live with us. She will enjoy the children, and they her.’

‘What of Freythorpe Hadden? Lucie will not give up her work to live there. Who will live there and keep it for your son Hugh?’

‘I shall find a steward I trust to live there. And Lucie will insist on a good accounting.’

Sir Robert was satisfied. ‘Then I can rest.’

Shortly after the angelus bells, Sir Robert fell into a pleasant dream of Lucie and Amélie in the garden at Freythorpe. He was awakened by an unfamiliar sound, a delicate jingling. He found a white-haired man at his bedside, sipping wine in an elegant mazer. A most amazing man, with rings and combs in his white hair. He wore a white gown embroidered in silver and gold thread. Was this St Peter?

‘Ah, you waken, Sir Robert.’

‘Am I at Heaven’s gate?’

‘St David would be gratified to hear his church called that.’

‘You are not St Peter?’

The man tilted his face to the ceiling and laughed like a madman. When he was quiet, wiping the tears from his eyes, he said, ‘I have been called many things, Sir Robert, but never a saint.’

‘Who are you?’ Sir Robert asked.

‘Dafydd ap Gwilym Gam ap Gwilym ab Einion Fawr, Chief of Song and Master of the Flowing Verse.’

And a delightful braggart, Sir Robert thought. ‘It was you who took Rhys off to sanctuary?’

‘It was. But I came to honour you, not boast of my goodness. It is said that God granted you a vision at St Non’s Well. I pray you, tell me all.’

Sir Robert talked of Amélie until he was exhausted. The bard was a most attentive audience. As was Geoffrey Chaucer, who joined them halfway through the tale.

When Brother Michaelo discovered Sir Robert hoarse from talking, he asked the two poets to leave. Geoffrey and Dafydd departed the chamber together.

‘A God-fearing, gentle knight,’ said Geoffrey.

‘God-fearing? Gentle? He was a soldier,’ said Dafydd. ‘I lost many a sweet mistress to a soldier’s arms. And each time I mourned them, knowing how ungentle their new lover would be. You heard his tale. By the Trinity, how I would have loved the fair Amélie.’

‘But Sir Robert did love her. I wept to hear his tale. What he lost! It is no wonder he spent so much of his life thereafter on pilgrimage.’

Dafydd considered the short-legged man walking beside him. His eyes did show traces of tears. He had a heart then, but had he the soul of a poet? ‘Are you married, Master Chaucer?’

‘I am. To one of our late Queen’s ladies of the chamber.’

Death to a poet, marriage. The match had helped the man’s career, no doubt. ‘What does she think of your poetry?’

‘She despairs of the ink stains.’

In the late afternoon, Owen returned from his audience with Bishop Houghton, just arrived in the city for the remainder of Passiontide, to find Brother Michaelo kneeling at the foot of Sir Robert’s bed, praying the rosary. The maid Rhonwen knelt there, hands folded, head bowed.

Dear God, was Sir Robert already gone? Owen hurried to the side of the bed, said a prayer of thanks as he heard the dying man’s uneven breaths.

Noticing Owen standing there, Michaelo and Rhonwen rose.

‘God prepares to take him,’ Michaelo said. His eyes were red with weeping. ‘He has not complained, not once in all-’ The monk’s voice broke. He ducked his head and turned away to blot his eyes.

‘Does he know we are here?’ Owen asked.

‘I do not think so.’ Tucking his beads and his cloth up a sleeve, Michaelo turned back to Owen. ‘You must have some time alone with him.’ He made the sign of the cross over Sir Robert, then withdrew.

Rhonwen had already slipped away.

Owen knelt down, took Sir Robert’s cool, dry hands in his, and bowed his head over them. He thought of his daughter Gwenllian, who was so fond of her grandfather, so captivated by his tales of soldiering. He must tell her how even in his last illness Sir Robert had courageously spied for the Duke of Lancaster.

Suddenly Sir Robert moved his hands in Owen’s. Lifting his head, Owen caught a faint smile on the old soldier’s face. Sir Robert opened his eyes wide, parted his lips as if about to speak. But no sound escaped, not even the laboured breaths that had marked his last moments. His hands went limp.

Owen felt for a pulse. When he found none, he took a silvered glass, held it to Sir Robert’s lips. No breath fogged it.

‘May Amélie be waiting for you with open arms,’ Owen whispered.

He placed coins on Sir Robert’s eyes, then bowed his head to pray.

But first he wept.