Читать книгу Child of the Phoenix - Barbara Erskine - Страница 84

The chapel had been filled to overflowing for the requiem mass and the congregation had spilled out on to the hillside around the small square building with its squat Norman tower, built by the first William de Braose two hundred years before outside the walls of his castle.

Eleyne, swathed in black mourning veil like her sister and John’s mother, had sobbed uncontrollably throughout the service.

It was my fault. She repeated the words again and again. It was my fault. I could have stopped it. I could have seen what was going to happen.

But she hadn’t seen it and when the lady in the shadows had tried to warn her, she had not understood.

‘Oh, my dear.’ Mattie had taken her into her arms. ‘You mustn’t blame yourself, you mustn’t. You did everything you could. You begged him not to ride the horse.’

It was Mattie who had countermanded Margaret’s hysterical command that the stallion be destroyed. ‘It could have happened at any time. John was a careless rider. He was too confident, too uncaring. He hurt the creature. Several people told me so.’

‘She tried to warn me. She tried to tell me to go away.’ Clinging to Mattie, Eleyne turned a tear-stained face to her. ‘She knew!’

‘So it seems.’ Mattie held her close. ‘My dear, we cannot change what is to be. We have to accept God’s will. It is He who decides these things, not us. One thing at least is sure. John is with his beloved grandmama now. I have seen so much death, my dear, so much sorrow, so much suffering in my life. There has to be a reason for it. God must have a reason.’ She steadied her voice with difficulty. ‘At least John did not suffer. He died instantly.’

She did not speak out loud the cry in her heart. Why? Why when he was young and strong and healthy? Why could he not have outlived her? She, who had borne so many deaths, so many sorrows. Could not God have spared this one more? Why had he sent Eleyne, grandchild of King John, to take away her son, as the child’s grandfather had taken away her husband?

Eleyne stood up restlessly and walked over to the window. For a long time she stood, staring into the courtyard below. ‘Thank you for saving Invictus,’ she said hesitantly.

‘There was nothing to be served by slaughtering the animal.’ Mattie swiftly regained control of herself.

‘What will Margaret do now?’ Her sister had refused to see Eleyne since the accident. Only Mattie and young Will, tearful and bewildered by the death of his father before his eyes, and not a little guilty that his noisy pleas to ride Invictus could have had such a dreadful outcome, had been allowed near the inconsolable widow.

‘She will stay here with me and Will. She has the king’s assurance that she will not be forced to remarry against her wishes.’ Not for the first time, Mattie found herself wondering if Margaret too, in this family of the royal line of Wales, had a touch of the second sight. Why else would she have insisted on such an assurance from the king only months before the accident which had left her a widow?