The Irish Princess

by Elizabeth Chadwick

Genres: Historical Fiction; Medieval; Medieval Romance

Synopsis

Ireland, 1160 Aoife MacMurchada is just 14 years old when her father Diarmit, King of Leinster, is brutally deposed, and her family is forced to flee Southern Ireland into English exile. Diarmit seeks help from King Henry II, an alliance that leads him to the charismatic Richard de Clare, lord of Striguil, a man dissatisfied with his lot and open to new horizons. Diarmit promises Richard wealth, lands, and Aoife's hand in marriage in return for his aid, but Aoife, has her own thoughts on the matter. She may be a prize, but she is not a pawn and she will play the game to her own advantage. From the royal halls of scheming kings, to staunch Welsh border fortresses and across storm-tossed seas to the wild green kingdoms of Ireland, The Irish Princess is a sumptuous, journey of ambition and desire, love and loss, heartbreak and survival.

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 100000

Sample

Diarmait MacMurchada – King of Leinster

Enna – Diarmait’s son, Aoife’s half-brother

Domnall – Diarmait’s son, Aoife’s half-brother

Ainne – Aoife’s nurse

Aoife – Diarmait’s daughter

Maurice Regan – Diarmait’s bard and interpreter

Môr – Diarmait’s wife, Aoife’s mother

Connor – Diarmait’s son, Aoife’s full brother

Lorcan, Archbishop of Dublin – Môr’s brother and Aoife’s uncle

Bronagh – a woman of Môr’s chamber

Lugh – Diarmait’s messenger

Ruari ua Connor – High King of Ireland

Deirdre – Aoife’s serving maid

Tiernan ua Ruari – provincial king of Bréifne and Diarmait’s deadly enemy. Does not appear in the novel but has a strong off-stage impact

Richard de Clare – Earl of Striguil (and formerly of Pembroke)

Basilia de Clare – Richard’s sister

Isabelle de Clare née Beaumont – Richard’s mother

Alard – a groom/messenger

Hervey de Montmorency – Richard’s maternal uncle

Rohese – Richard’s mistress (existed but name unknown to history)

Matilda de Clare – Richard and Rohese’s daughter

Simon – Richard’s squire

Aline de Clare – Richard and Rohese’s daughter

Robert FitzHarding – a wealthy Bristol merchant with his fingers in many pies

Raymond FitzWilliam (le Gros) of Carew – one of Richard’s household knights and son of William FitzGerald lord of Carew, Constable of Pembroke

Henry, Abbot of Tintern Abbey – a former soldier and now a monk

Robert FitzStephen – a Cambro-Norman knight and adventurer, related to Raymond of Carew and the lord Rhys ap Gruffydd

Richard de la Roche – an adventuring knight of Flemish extraction living near Haverford, South Wales

Maurice of Prendergast – knight adventurer

Maurice FitzGerald – a Flemish Knight

Robert de Quency – Richard de Clare’s standard bearer, later married to Richard’s daughter Matilda

William Ferrand – a leper knight

Alice of Abergavenny – possibly did not exist, but detailed in one chronicle as a soldier’s woman

Gervase – Hervey’s squire

Nicolas – Richard’s scribe and chaplain

Miles Cogan – knight adventurer

Philip of Prendergast – Maurice’s son

Father Nicholas – a common soldiers’ chaplain

Meilyr FitzHenry – knight adventurer and grandson of Henry I down an illegitimate line

Isabelle de Clare – Richard and Aoife’s daughter

Hugh de Lacy – Richard’s ally and rival (but not enemy) in terms of influence over Irish territory

William FitzMaurice – husband to Richard’s daughter Aline

Gilbert de Clare – Richard and Aoife’s son

Osbert de Horlotera, Master de Genermes, Master de Bendignes and Master le Poer – King Henry’s investigative officers

The lord Rhys ap Gruffydd – ruler of Deheubarth, South Wales

Owen – the lord Rhys’s son (existed but name unknown to history)

Henry II – King of England, Duke of Normandy, Count of Anjou and Aquitaine (in right of his wife Alienor of Aquitaine)

Empress Matilda – Henry II’s mother

Rosamund de Clifford – Henry II’s mistress

Princess Matilda – King Henry’s daughter

Alienor of Aquitaine – Queen of England and Duchess of Aquitaine

Henry the Young King – Henry II’s heir, crowned to secure the succession during his father’s lifetime

John FitzJohn and William Marshal – knights and servants of the Angevin court

Ragnall – leader and warrior

Asculev – leader and warrior

A Quick Word on Pronunciation

Prologue: Palace of Fearns, Leinster, Ireland, spring 1152

   1: Pembroke Castle, South Wales, November 1154

   2: Castle of Striguil, Welsh Marches, July 1155

   3: Palace of Fearns, Leinster, Ireland, autumn 1157

   4: Palace of Fearns, Leinster, Ireland, summer 1159

   5: Castle of Striguil, Welsh Marches, summer 1164

   6: Palace of Fearns, Leinster, Ireland, summer 1166

   7: Bristol, England, summer 1166

   8: Bristol, England, summer 1166

   9: Saumur, Anjou, November 1166

 10: Bristol, England, February 1167

 11: Castle of Striguil, Welsh Marches, spring 1167

 12: Castle of Striguil, Welsh Marches, spring 1167

 13: Cardigan Castle, Wales, early summer 1167

 14: Fearns, Leinster, Ireland, summer/autumn 1167

 15: Rouen, August 1167

 16: Fearns, Leinster, Ireland, late spring 1168

 17: Fearns, Leinster, Ireland, spring 1169

 18: Fearns, Leinster, Ireland, summer 1169

 19: Tintern Abbey, Welsh Marches, winter 1169

 20: Fearns, Leinster, Ireland, early summer 1170

 21: Palace of Westminster, London, late June 1170

 22: Fearns, Leinster, Ireland, late August 1170

 23: Waterford, southern Ireland, September 1170

 24: Waterford, southern Ireland, September 1170

 25: Dublin, Ireland, December 1170

 26: Fearns, Leinster, Ireland, February 1171

 27: Fearns, Leinster, Ireland, March 1171

 28: Dublin, Ireland, summer 1171

 29: Southern Ireland, summer 1171

 30: Pembroke Castle, South Wales, October 1171

 31: Waterford, Southern Ireland, autumn 1171

 32: Dublin, Ireland, January 1172

 33: Fearns, Leinster, Ireland, spring 1172

 34: Fearns, Leinster, Ireland, winter 1172

 35: Dunamase, Leinster, Ireland, April 1173

 36: Verneuil, Normandy border, autumn 1173

 37: Castle of Striguil, Welsh Marches, autumn 1173

 38: Waterford, southern Ireland, spring 1174

 39: Windsor Castle, England, October 1175

 40: Palace of Westminster, London, March 1176

 41: Dublin, Ireland, spring 1176

 42: Dublin, Ireland, spring 1176

 43: Dublin, Ireland, spring 1176

 44: Clarendon Palace near Salisbury, Wiltshire, June 1176

Author’s Note

Bibliography

Acknowledgements



At dawn the women came to tell Diarmait his new wife had borne a daughter.

He grunted at the news for he had been hoping for another son to grow tall and strong and join the spears in his warband – although sons, like spears, could be dangerous. He knew how to handle both, but he was always watchful, never off his guard.

The youths were eyeing him now as they sat round the fire, drinking bowls of foamy fresh milk. He sensed their relief at the birth of a girl. Môr, their stepmother, was united in lawful Christian wedlock with him, but their mothers had been hand-fasted in the old way, and their own legitimacy was tenuous.

Diarmait studied them with knowing amusement and wiped milk from his beard. His two bear cubs. Enna and Domnall. Sturdy, strong lads of fourteen and eleven who, God willing, would make fine warriors and cleave to each other as he and his own brother had not. Love your kin to their very bones, but never trust them.

He turned to the women. ‘Bring me the child, I would see her.’

They curtseyed and hurried away.

‘Well now.’ Diarmait fixed his sons with a piercing stare, his voice harsh from a lifetime of bellowing commands and forcing others to his will. ‘You have a new sister to protect. See that you do for it is your duty, even as it is your duty to bind yourself to each other and to me.’

‘It shall be so, father, I swear it.’ Enna met Diarmait’s gaze squarely with his clear, light eyes, and Domnall swiftly followed his brother’s lead.

‘You shall so promise in church before all when she is baptised.’

‘What will you name her?’ Enna asked.

‘I will know when I see her.’ Môr had been chattering of names for weeks now, but most of it had swept clean through his ears because she changed her mind more often than he drank horns of wine at a feast.

The women returned, Môr’s own former nurse Ainne cradling a bundle of blue blanket. The sounds emerging from the folds reminded Diarmait of a little crow. Babies were women’s business. He had no interest except as proof of his virility, but still, the rituals must be observed and the child acknowledged. Although she had seen her mother’s eyes first, he would be her imprint, and she would belong to him for life.

He received the baby from Ainne and parted the blanket with his callused forefinger to look at her and make sure she was whole and perfect. Ten fingers, ten toes. A fluffy crown of dark hair. So tiny a scrap to hold a beating heart. She continued to snuffle and squeak as he rose and carried her from the smoky hall and stood on the threshold to examine her in the light of the rising sun.

Falling suddenly silent, she gazed into his eyes and his breathing snagged, for he saw in her a fathomless wisdom that knew everything he had forgotten. She was so small and delicate, so intricate and fine. Knowing he could crush her skull with one squeeze of his fist made him feel raw and vulnerable. He found himself smiling foolishly into her solemn little face, while a glow of protective love expanded his chest.

‘Well then, daughter,’ he rumbled softly, ‘what shall we name you?’

He watched the sun broach the horizon and hem the sky with gold. He was forty-two years old, battle-scarred, cynical, ruthless, but in this moment, holding his newborn daughter, he felt half that age – as though through her, he had drunk from a chalice of hope and renewal. His eyes prickled with the power of his emotions; and now he knew her name. Tenderly folding the blanket around her, he kissed her forehead. ‘Aoife,’ he said. ‘I name you Aoife.’ For it meant both radiance and beauty, and he could think of nothing more fitting.



The messenger arrived at noon when everyone was eating in the great hall. Already the light was fading as low rain clouds swept in from the Irish Sea, veiling the castle in a dull grey mizzle.

Richard de Clare, Earl of Pembroke and Striguil, listened with dull resignation to his mother and his sister Basilia discussing the cost of the candles, how many were left in the stores and what they could afford to order. Most of their funds were spent on maintaining the fabric and defences of their castles. What remained had to be husbanded against an uncertain future. There had been peace for a year now, but it was fragile.

In Richard’s childhood before the war, money had mattered less, but now it dominated his thoughts. He was twenty-four years old. His father had died when he was eighteen and the entire burden of an embattled earldom had landed on his shoulders, catapulting him from a youth under tutelage straight into manhood. It was like being hurled against a wall. He had picked himself up, stunned, disbelieving, but knowing there was no one else, and had set out to honour his father’s memory and to survive.

He knew and trusted every man sitting at this table eating his bread, drinking his wine and keeping warm at his hearth. Their clothes, their weapons, their wages. It was his responsibility to provide and provide well. To fail would be shameful, but it was often a struggle.

He dipped his spoon into the mutton pottage – a basic staple of the season, although the cooks had added pepper and cumin to make it more appetising. His hand was halfway to his mouth when he saw his usher escorting a mud-spattered messenger towards the dais – Alard, a groom from Striguil, who often carried news.

Alard stumbled as he reached the dais and folded to his knees, white with exhaustion. ‘Sire, King Stephen is dead – at Faversham of a belly gripe four days ago.’

The words stayed on the surface of Richard’s mind; if he let them sink in they would have to be true and their recent stability would be torn asunder again. He did not ask Alard to repeat the news. Once was enough. Once was too much. And four days ago meant everything had changed while he dwelt here unaware, enclosed in the sea-mist at Pembroke.

He dismissed the exhausted messenger, telling him to eat and find a bed for the night, and pushed his bowl aside, his appetite destroyed.

‘Dead,’ his mother said with a sniff. ‘He made a folly of his rule and now he cannot even end his life successfully.’ She too had stopped eating, but her jaw moved from side to side, chewing on what they had just heard. ‘What will this mean for us?’ She turned a gimlet stare on Richard, clearly expecting him to have an answer.

He didn’t have one. He hadn’t bargained on this. After fifteen years of battling over the English throne with his cousin Matilda, King Stephen had made peace last year with her upstart son, Henry. It had been agreed that the crown would pass to Henry on Stephen’s death. For those who had fought staunchly to uphold Stephen’s rule and been rewarded for it – in his father’s case with an earldom – the future was suddenly precarious. Richard suspected Henry would not be open-handed.

‘I do not know, mother, save that we should prepare ourselves and husband our resources. Henry FitzEmpress has a bold reputation, but who knows what he will decide to do?’ He recovered his bowl and forced himself to begin eating again to restore a semblance of normality. Henry would be king, and all they could do was stand firm and face whatever came at them.

He had met Henry FitzEmpress during the peace negotiations last year, but it had not been cordial. Henry saw him as someone to be put in his place, preferably with a foot over his neck. They were of a similar age, but Richard was slightly older and a full handspan taller; Henry had disliked having to look up at him.

‘The new King is in Normandy. He will have to cross the Narrow Sea first and then come to Westminster.’ Richard grimaced. He had been intending to spend Christmas at Pembroke, but this changed everything.

‘You must make sure our castles are fully provisioned and garrisoned,’ his mother said. ‘Recruit men if you must.’

He answered her with silence. She had little idea of the harsh truths beyond their domain. She wanted to believe they were more powerful than they were and commanded their own destiny. She would belabour Richard with tales of what a great man his father had been and how Richard must live up to his reputation, but it was easier said than accomplished and his father’s death had polished a reputation not always as bright in life. What also lay in the silence between them was that kings could give, and kings could take away. She was afraid, and so was he.

‘We will come through this,’ his uncle Hervey intervened in his rich, soothing voice, ever the peacemaker. ‘We can do nothing until we know more. It is fruitful to plan, but wasteful to worry.’ He picked up his spoon and deliberately attended to his mutton pottage.

Richard gave his uncle a grateful if slightly wry look. Hervey frequently peddled such wisdoms. He meant them sincerely even if they were sometimes trite or obvious, and Richard appreciated his calming influence in the household, especially where his mother was concerned. ‘Yes, uncle,’ he said. ‘A timely reminder for us all.’

* * *

Later Richard climbed to the battlements, but the sea-mist was as thick as wool and he could barely see a handspan beyond his face. It seemed like a reflection of his future. If he put his hand into the fog, it would disappear, and if he followed it, he might disappear too.

‘Richard?’

He turned at a gentle touch on his arm and faced his mistress. Two years ago, he had given Rohese refuge when her husband, a minor knight owing him service, had died in a skirmish with the Welsh. Matters had developed from there and they had become lovers. Five months ago, she had borne him a daughter, Matilda.

‘You are troubled, my love.’ Her breath was fine vapour twirling into the fog.

‘I cannot see my way forward,’ he said bleakly.

‘Will it make such a big difference, having Henry FitzEmpress as king?’

‘I fear so. I was hoping Stephen would live a while longer, but you should never put your trust in kings.’ He leaned against the hard, grey stone and sighed. ‘When I was a boy, I saw some enemy soldiers trapped in a castle ditch and slaughtered because there was no escape. Even though they meant me harm, I pitied them and I knew from that moment I never wanted to be the one in the ditch. And now I find myself scrabbling up the sides, trapped.’

She slipped her arm around his waist inside his cloak. ‘Come within and I will give you hot wine and rub your feet. It is pointless standing out in the cold, and there is nothing to see until this fog has cleared.’

Making an effort, he turned to her and seeing the anxiety in her soft hazel eyes managed a smile for her sake. ‘Where would I be without your wisdom and common sense?’

‘Lost in the mist?’ She kissed him, and he tasted the cold of her lips and the warmth of her mouth.

‘You do not know how close to the truth you are,’ he said and followed her down the steps through the biting grains of frozen cloud to his private chamber in the room above the hall. The central hearth sent out welcome streamers of charcoal heat and his face and hands began to tingle. A cradle stood near the fur-piled box bed, and he went to gaze at his daughter. She was awake, but content, cooing and gurgling to herself. He leaned over to chuck her under the chin and thanked God for such gifts in trying times.



Eight months later, waking in his bed at Striguil, Richard folded his hands behind his head and looked at the early sunlight spilling through the open shutters. He had ridden in from Worcester yesterday evening with bats flitting in the twilight and a sickle moon rising over the Wye. He had been exhausted, but grim determination had pushed him on. Whether he had done sufficient through the summer to win the new King’s approval he did not know. Henry had seen fit once the crown was on his head to remove the earldom of Pembroke from him and the castle.

At the court gathering in Westminster, Henry had sat in his great chair, one hand cupping his chin, his gaze watchful, and unpitying as a list was read out detailing the castles and lands that were either to be razed or returned to the crown without appeal. Richard was one of many barons thus deprived, including men close to Henry, but it had not lessened the humiliation. At least he knew where he stood. Skewered on the point of a pin and made to dance at the new King’s behest. He might still be lord of Striguil, Usk and Goodrich, but Pembroke, his father’s pride, was lost, and Richard could not help but feel he had let him down.

His gaze landed on Rohese who was combing her hair in the embrasure, creating silky ripples through the brown waves. She looked up as he spoke her name and her face lit with a smile. Leaving her grooming, she brought him a cup of watered wine. ‘You have slept a long time,’ she said, joining him on the bed.

He sat up and drank slowly. ‘We pushed the horses,’ he said. ‘We did not set out from Worcester until noon yesterday – after Mortimer surrendered. All the time we were besieging Wigmore and Bridgnorth I was thinking it could have been me had I refused to yield Pembroke. Instead I ran with the pack and brought Hugh Mortimer to bay.’ His expression contorted with disgust. ‘It was like drinking rich wine to have everyone’s friendship and to know I was obeying the King’s will, hoping he might restore my earldom, but realising in cold daylight that nothing had changed. Henry FitzEmpress is perhaps the most focused and ruthless man I have ever met.’

‘Apart from yourself,’ she said with a teasing smile.

He looked at her in astonishment. ‘You think that of me?’

She clasped her hands at her knees. ‘You focus on your desire like the centre of a target. Perhaps that is why the King wants to keep you in order. He strikes me as a man who dislikes being overshadowed.’

Richard snorted. ‘How would I overshadow him? If I rebelled, he would crush me as he has crushed Mortimer. The wounds of the long war are barely scabbed over. It would take little for my enemies to turn on me and tear me to pieces.’

‘Then perhaps he sees you as a personal threat. Perhaps he fears your ambition and what you would do if you still had Pembroke – what you might become. Even if you encounter setbacks, you always go forward.’

He sipped the wine and thought about her words. He often felt despair, but he never let it show in his dealings with others. A stoical façade was a means of survival, a refusal to be beaten that he gripped like a man clutching a piece of broken ship and hoping to find a safe shore before he drowned.

‘When you want something, you bend all your will to obtaining it.’ Changing the mood, she slanted him a provocative look and touched his thigh.

He set his empty cup aside. ‘Is that so?’ Turning, he cupped her breast through her chemise, feeling the firm, delicious weight under the cloth. ‘Perhaps you are right. I am bending all my intention now, and I shall let nothing hinder my way.’ He reached to the hem of her garment and pulled it up.

‘I am always right,’ she responded, laughing. ‘You should know that by now.’

In the aftermath of their lovemaking Richard lazed for a while. He knew he should rise and be about his work, but he wanted to savour these moments. Rohese donned her chemise again and left the bed, returning with their thirteen-month-old daughter. Matilda gripped her mother’s hand tightly and tottered along, precariously putting one foot in front of the other.

‘Walking!’ Richard exclaimed with delight. ‘And she has grown!’ He swung her into his arms and kissed her fluffy curls.

‘And talking,’ Rohese said proudly. ‘She already says “Mama” and “horse” and “bread”.’

He cuddled his daughter, enjoying the feel of her small body in his arms. He could be the pragmatic warlord, the impassive courtier and the able administrator, but when he sloughed off his armour, and his cares, the small things mattered the most, and those small things were here, in this chamber. Family, warmth, belonging. ‘We are told pride is a sin,’ he said, ‘but I cannot see it as that when my heart is bursting and my pride is also joy.’

‘What would you say if I told you I was with child again?’

He looked at her over the top of their daughter’s head.

A blush tinted her cheeks. ‘It was the night before you left to campaign with the King.’

A little over three months ago, then. He studied her with fresh appraisal and smiled. ‘That is even more good news to fill my heart.’ His daughter in one arm, he embraced her with the other. ‘When I feel I have nothing, you come to me and give me everything.’

* * *

Five months later, Richard leaned on his elbow and looked down at Rohese lying beside him on the bed. They were fully clothed. She was great with child and they had not made love, but it was enough to have her beside him.

‘It will not be long now the midwives say.’ She pressed the tip of his nose with her forefinger and smiled. ‘Wait until you have a healthy son to dandle in your arms.’

‘I am looking forward to it.’ He stroked her belly. She wanted so much to bear a son. He wanted it too, although God would dispose as He desired.

‘I wish . . .’ she said wistfully, and shook her head.

‘What do you wish?’

‘I will keep it to myself.’ She wove her fingers through his. ‘I know it cannot come true, but I can dream, and in my dream, I can have my wish.’

He suspected what that dream was, and that it could never be reality.

Beyond the door, Richard’s squire Simon cleared his throat loudly. ‘Sire, you are sought, your lady mother is here.’

Richard suppressed a groan. ‘Tell her I shall be with her soon.’ He kissed Rohese’s palm. ‘I have to go, we will talk later.’

He smiled at her over his shoulder as he opened the door and she blew a kiss to him on her fingers.

‘It is time you found a proper wife,’ his mother said as they sat by the fire. ‘It is all very well having a mistress to sate your appetite, but you cannot raise a dynasty with her.’

Richard eyed his mother. Her features were angular and austere but held a trace of the golden beauty that had captivated King Henry’s grandsire whose mistress she had been for a short time, albeit reluctantly in order to win favour for her brothers. His relationship with her was not close. In childhood his sustenance, love and affection had come from his nurse. But his mother always spoke her mind without falsehood or subterfuge and he respected her for it. She was immensely proud and living up to her expectations and often unrealistic standards was a burden.

‘I would take Rohese to wife if I could.’

‘That is impossible!’ She shot him a censorious look. ‘She is not of your rank. You have a duty to find a wife of your own status who will bring an illustrious name and fine lands to a marriage.’

‘Where will I find such a woman?’ he demanded irritably. ‘The King blocks me at every turn, and the men with daughters of the rank you crave for me have no desire to pursue an alliance with a man who does not have royal favour.’

‘That can be changed. I shall write to my brother at court. The King will listen to him. You must petition others to speak on your behalf. What would your father think to hear you now? He would not allow the King to treat him thus.’

She was like a dog with a bone. Abruptly Richard rose and went to the window. His father. Always his father. Always having to live up to his achievements and reputation. ‘Since he died before Henry came to the throne, we will never know,’ he said in a flat tone that gave no indication of the volatile emotions boiling inside him. ‘I do my best, and if it is not good enough, then it is not.’

She made no reply but he could sense her displeasure.

‘I take your advice and I shall put the matter in hand,’ he said with controlled courtesy, ‘but do not push me. I am not my father. I am my own man and I shall make my own way.’

His mother left three days later, returning to her dower lands in Essex, and Richard sighed with relief. He owed her his filial duty, and somewhere deep within a small boy craved her love and approval, but he kept that part locked away; it was better to leave the scab upon the wound than pick at it.

He was eating in the hall just before noon when Basilia came to tell him that Rohese had begun her labour and all was well.

‘Tell her I send my love and hope to rejoice with her soon,’ he said.

‘Of course.’

His sister’s practical disposition was like their mother’s. She dwelt with Richard as his chatelaine, running his domestic affairs with smooth efficiency. Familiarity meant he tended to take her for granted, treating her almost as an extension of himself – an extra pair of hands and a quick brain – rather than seeing her in her own light. Given their current standing in the King’s eyes, Basilia was unlikely to make a marriage and thus her position was permanent.

Having dined, Richard went to check on the chestnut colt foal belonging to his favourite brood mare. He was two months old with a fuzzy infant coat and long legs out of all proportion with his body. Richard had named him Ajax after the Greek hero and intended to train him as his next warhorse should he prove to have the mettle. Stroking the mare and rubbing the foal’s inquisitive nose, he pondered the matter of bloodlines. Mares and stallions, men and women. He was content with Rohese; she made him happy and he loved her. Even if he did eventually marry to further his dynasty, which he doubted given the state of his relations with the King, it would only be lip service.

Pretending to be startled the foal took off, bucking and kicking around the paddock, galloping flat out on his spindly legs. Amused, Richard watched him for a while before returning to his chamber where he sat down to play chess with his uncle Hervey and bide his time until the child was born.

His hand was poised over a knight when the door opened and he looked up to see the midwife, her apron drenched in blood, her expression taut and grim. She did not speak, but wordlessly shook her head.

He jerked to his feet, ice flowing down his spine, and pushed Hervey away as the latter sought to grab his arm. ‘Let me see her.’ He headed to the door. ‘I must see her.’

‘Sire, you should not . . .’

Unheeding, he pushed the woman aside and ran up the stairs. The ladies cried out in alarm as he burst into the chamber but he was oblivious as he strode to the bedside. Rohese lay under a blanket but her arms were outside the covers, folded on her breast. Her eyes were closed and her lips slightly parted, as though she slept, but her flesh was the bloodless colour of death. ‘Ah no,’ he gasped. ‘No!’ Leaning over her body, he put his lips on hers. They were still warm, still soft. She could not be dead, yet the rise and fall of breath was absent, and her face a slack mask.

Hearing a snuffling sound, he turned his head towards the crib by the fire. Basilia stood beside it, her gaze fixed on him, glassy with unshed tears. ‘You have a daughter.’ She stooped to pick up a swaddled baby. ‘We could not help her. The afterbirth came away too quickly; the midwives could not stop the bleeding. Do not blame them.’

He shook his head, too numb to think of blame, except perhaps on himself for begetting the child on her.

‘There is a wet nurse in the village; I have sent for her.’

Richard nodded wordless acknowledgement, grateful for Basilia’s practicality. Rohese had been so certain it was a boy. She had wanted to give him a son, and now she was dead. He took his daughter from Basilia and gazed into her puckered little face before gently kissing her brow and placing her upon her mother’s silent heart. Unfolding Rohese’s arms, he put them around the baby. ‘A child should know the touch of its mother,’ he said. ‘A child should know that it is loved.’

The wome