Here Be Dragons - 1 by Sharon Penman (best inspirational books txt) 📕

made him laugh all the more, until he could not laugh and breathe at the same time, began to choke.Thoroughly alarmed, the Abbot propped him up with pillows, hastened to give him wine. As the spasm passed, he lay back, closed his eyes. "I think I always knew . . .""Knew what, my liege?"John turned his head, looked at him for a long time without answering. "Ialways knew," he said, "that I'd die alone . . ."JOANNA reached the Benedictine priory of St Mary at Worcester sho .^ after dark on Friday, November 18. The hospitaller was awaiting "<** the priory gateway; so, too, was her brother. Richard helped her to mount, kissed her cheek. The hospitaller was looking askance a anna's Welsh guards, but when she asked if he could accomrnoda e men, he nodded. "But of course, Madame. It is an honor to serve the sister ofKing Henry/- Joanna said nothing, but Richard saw her flinch. He took her arm as the hospitaller assured her that all was in readiness to commemorate the late King's month-mind with a solemn Requiem Mass. "Joanna, do you want to go to your chambers now?" he asked, and she shook her head. "I want to go to him first. Will you take me, Richard?" They walked in silence for a while. It had been snowing sporadically throughout the day, began again as they crossed the courtyard, foanna's hood fell back; she seemed not to notice as droplets of snow dusted her hair, melted upon her mantle. As they entered the south walkway of the cloisters, she said, "Tell me," and Richard did, told her all he'd learned of their father's final days."A violent windstorm struck Newark ere he died. That's not uncommon for the season, but the fool servants took fright. Word spread that the Devil was coming to claim Papa's soul, and some even fled." They'd stopped by the church door. He saw the anguished question in her eyes and shook his head. "No, Papa never knew. The Abbot who tended him wrote to Isabelle, said that by the time the storm reached its height, Papa was no longer conscious. He died soon after midnight."

"And did they strip his body of his clothes and rings? Did they take all of value, as they did when his father died at Chinon?"Her bleak insistence upon knowing the worst troubled Richard, but he did not lie. "Yes. But his soldiers kept faith, the routiers whom men scorned as base mercenaries, paid hirelings. They alone did not forsake him, Joanna, escorted his body to Worcester. Bishop Silvester officiated at the burial, but it was done without much ceremony, and in haste. The main concern was with gettingHenry crowned as quickly as possible." "I heard it was done at Gloucester.Were you there, Richard?" He nodded. "On the twenty-eighth. The Bishop ofWinchester crowned him, since the Archbishop of Canterbury is still in Rome, under suspension. But then, even were he not, Westminster is in rebel f|ands.They did not even have a crown, Joanna, had to use a gold circlet Provided byIsabelle.""Where are they now?"The younger children are still at Corfe. Henry and Isabelle are at s'°' with Pembroke. They reissued Papa's Runnymede charter last furday, with some of the more objectionable provisions deleted, that mittee of twenty-five being the first to go. It is a shrewd concession, ws the barons to save face, and I think all but the very proud and the de ypem':)ittered will come to terms with Pembroke and Chester. Peter°ches told me that during Papa's three days at Newark more than

500ITforty couriers arrived from rebels seeking to make peace with Papa. Bm by then it was too late ..."They were still standing in the cloisters. Joanna's face looked chalkv in the lantern light; nor had Richard liked the flat, brittle tone of he voice."Joanna . . ." He sighed, not knowing what to say. "I am truly sorry you had to come alone like this to Worcester.""I had no choice. My husband is at war with England." Joanna drew an audible breath. "Nor do I think I would have wanted him with me . . . not here."He started to speak, but she'd turned away, was moving ahead of him into the nave of the church. Vespers was done, and the monks were now at supper in the refectory; Joanna and Richard found themselves quite alone. Torches flared in the choir, and a dark object before the High Altar was ringed with white syze candles, with flickering light. Joanna moved up the aisle, until she was close enough to touch her father's stone coffin."But he wanted to be buried with St Wulfstan," she whispered. "He often told me so ...""Bishop Silvester and the Prior assured me that his wishes will be honored.They plan to move the shrines of St Wulfstan and St Oswald from the crypt, to place them on either side of Papa's tomb." Richard smiled sadly. "Papa would have liked thatsleeping with saints."Joanna was still staring at the tomb. "Richard, would you mind leaving me alone for a time?"He started to object, thought better of it. "I'll await you back at thePrior's lodgings." He turned toward the shadowed nave, then stopped. "Peter des Roches told me something I think you'd want to know, Joanna. He said that whilst Papa was at Lynn, he made a grant to Margaret de Lacy, Maude deBraose's daughter. He gave her one hundred eighty acres of land in the royal forest of Acornbury, to found a religious house in memory of Maude, her husband, and her son."The candles encircling John's tomb wavered, swimming before Joanna's eyes in a dizzying blur of brightness. She stood very still, listening as Richard's footsteps faded. And then she moved forward. She knelt in the coffin's shadow for an endless time, until her knees ached and she trembled from the cold. But she could find no comfort in prayer."You're proving to be a merciless ghost, Papa. I should have expected it,