Lady of the English - By Elizabeth Chadwick Page 0,62

her lids shut to blot out the sight. “Even so,” she whispered, “I must make my confession. If I should die, I wish to be buried at Bec. My father will try and insist on the cathedral, but do not let him have his way—not in this. Promise me.” Adeliza pressed her hand. “Do not speak so. God willing, you will recover.”

“Promise me,” Matilda repeated fiercely.

“Yes, I promise,” Adeliza said with obvious reluctance.

“I want to make my confession and my bequests while I am in my senses. Will you bring Father Herbert to me, and a scribe?” Adeliza kissed her and left the bedside to give instructions.

Was she dying? Matilda sought inside herself and could not tell beyond the sapping heat of the fever and the strange, vivid flashes of colour behind her lids. Was it all for nothing? Did it 154

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end here? She felt a spark of resentment. She was not ready to die, even if she had to make preparations in case.

Adeliza returned and tenderly wiped Matilda’s face and hands.

“Father Herbert and his scribe are coming,” she murmured.

“I want you to care for Geoffrey and Henry should the worst happen,” Matilda whispered. “You will love them, and make sure they become fine princes and good men.”

“Of course I will do whatever I can,” Adeliza said in a choked voice.

“Do not go all foolish and cry on me,” Matilda snapped.

“What good will that do?” She closed her eyes once more because the embroidery on the bed curtains had started to writhe and glow again.

Father Herbert arrived to hear Matilda’s confession and Adeliza chivvied everyone into the antechamber. Taking the replete baby from his wet nurse, she sat down and cradled him against her heart, feeling a great well of grief and longing.

Henry arrived from his business, stamping into the room with his usual vigour. He glanced at Adeliza cradling little Geoffrey. “I see that the infant thrives,” he remarked. “How is my daughter?” Adeliza’s chin wobbled. It was all very well for folk to tell her not to weep, but she could not help it. It did not mean she was a milksop just because tears came more easily to her than they did to others. “The priest is with her, giving her comfort and confessing her,” she said.

“Confessing her?” Henry’s gaze filled with outrage. “She cannot be as sick as all that! She has the best physicians and care.

I refuse to believe it!”

“She says she desires to be buried before the altar at Bec-Hellouin,” Adeliza said in a constricted voice. “She asked me to take care of the children.”

“Did she indeed?” Henry stood very still for a moment, and then he started to pace, tapping his hands behind his back.

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“She said you would want her buried in the cathedral.”

“Of course I want her buried there. It’s where all the dukes of Normandy have their tombs, and it befits her status. I’ll have none of this ridiculous Bec nonsense!”

“But if it is her dying wish…” Adeliza protested.

Henry swung round to her, his eyes glittering. “Are you truly so much of a fool, wife? Do you not know my daughter better than that?”

Adeliza flushed at the reproof.

“She is stubborn,” he said. “She will fight me all the way for the right to be buried at Bec. While I refuse her, she has a reason to live. If I give her what she wants now, she might succumb. Once she is on the mend, I may yield to her wishes, but by then, it will not be necessary.”

“And if she does succumb?”

His expression hardened again. “Then she will go to Rouen, because my will prevails. Do what you are best at, wife. Pray and petition God that she survives.” Adeliza bowed her head and thought that God did not always hear her prayers. She tried to obey His will and be a good wife to her husband, but sometimes it was so hard.

She decided, as she returned the baby to his nurse, that she would indeed make her petition and offer up gifts—but she would make that offering at Bec, not the cathedral, and she would ask for mercy from the Virgin Mary, a woman who knew the pain of labour and childbirth.

ttt

Matilda sat enjoying the sunshine in the garden at her father’s manor of Le Petit-Quevilly. It was two months since she had almost died giving birth to little Geoffrey and her recuperation was steady, but slow. This past week