Alice turned aside again to pick up the fallen veil. “It seems to me that the most important thing is what you learned from the Lady Luned about these secret meetings of men who are enemies of the High King’s policies. Even if you don’t know anything of their plans, you know some of their names, and one of them, certainly, will interest my father. So – ah, listen! I think they’re coming out of the chapel now. Don’t you think that the first thing to do, and the best, is to go and talk to him?”

32

It was some days, however, before Alexander managed to have speech with the duke. When Alice, parting from him at the door of the men’s refectory, went to join Abbot Theodore and her father at breakfast, she found the place in what would have been, in less quiet and determinedly peaceful surroundings, an uproar. The abbot himself hurried to meet her with disquieting news.

Her father had been taken ill, quite suddenly, in the chapel, at the end of the service. It seemed that he had felt tired that morning, and slightly giddy, but had brushed his people’s concern aside, and insisted on going to the morning office. When he saw that Alice was not in chapel, he forbade anyone to give her news that might alarm her. And indeed to his servants’ watching eyes all seemed well. But at the end of the service, when the duke came to get up from his knees, he half rose, then staggered suddenly as if losing strength in his right leg, and fell across his chair. Nor could he move again. When Alice had heard the chapel doors opening and the folk coming out, it was an anxious little procession bearing the duke, conscious but helpless, towards his bedchamber.

The magical moments in the orchard, Alexander himself, were forgotten. Alice did not wait to hear more, but picked up her skirts and ran upstairs to see her father.

He was in his bed in the abbot’s guest-chamber, a grandly comfortable apartment, with the hospitaller, assisted by one of the nuns and by Alice’s own woman Mariamne, in attendance.

Alice flew to the bedside. “Father? What is it? How are you? What happened?”

The duke, flat on his pillows, and looking grey and tired, managed a smile, but did not speak. One thin hand stirred on the coverlet, and she bent over him, taking it in both of hers.

“Father –”

The abbot, who had followed her, but more decorously, came forward to lay a kindly hand on her shoulder. “Quietly, dear child, be calm. Your father has had a slight seizure, but he will recover very soon. He’s a strong man, and he’s where he will have every care. Brother Luke will tell you that there is no danger. Come away now, leave him to rest.”

The hospitaller, at the other side of the bed, with a hand to the duke’s wrist, nodded cheerfully, and in a while he and the abbot were able to persuade Alice to leave the bedchamber. Once outside on the stair, and with the door closed, they hurried to give her what assurance they could. It was a kind of seizure, they said, they had seen such things before, and it was not easy to predict their course, but it seemed mild of its kind. Already the feeling was returning to the duke’s side, and he could move the fingers of the affected hand – his right. His heart was strong, and though he was tired and a little confused in mind, he had spoken. The words were slow and blurred, but that would come right with time. Best not to let him talk yet, said the hospitaller; let him stay quietly for a few days in bed. What he needed now was sleep and a tranquil mind. If Lady Alice would speak with the messenger herself, she would be able to reassure her father later. It was important for his mind to be at peace.