Egelric receives an urgent message

The northwestern tower was long finished, and the workers rarely came into it any longer, which was why Egelric liked to use it for private conversations.

However, his private conversation with Aylmer had only just begun when he was surprised by the sound of a pair of boots hurrying up the stairs, carrying a breathless messenger who burst through the door an instant later.

“Oh! Squire!” he panted, apparently relieved to have found him at last. “A message to be read at once.”

He was not one of Alred’s men, and he wore red, so Egelric thought he must have come from the King. But a glance at the letter the man handed to him told him otherwise – the seal was his lord’s, but it was only the small seal of his ring, and not the great seal he kept in his study. And he thought he recognized the fine gray-​​white parchment the King favored.

“Will you excuse me?” he asked softly, staring down at the small bit of wax that could only be hiding a grave message. He dared not even pray that it not be about his daughter – he dared not even have the thought.

“Sure, sure.” Aylmer bowed and went out behind the messenger, but he heard the man whispering excitedly on the stairs, and he heard Aylmer’s gasp.

He cracked the seal and opened the letter.

Despite his lord’s apparent agitation, the lines were straight and even as ever, but the strokes of the letters tangled over them like trellised vines. He had written in a great hurry, and Egelric cursed his stupid self for being able to read only slowly.

“‘To Egelric our Squire, greetings in Christ,’” Egelric muttered as he read. Even his lord’s usually exuberant salutation was abbreviated!

“‘Be informed that Her Gracious Majesty the Queen died this day, the Ides of December, being fallen from the height of the tower wall. We beg you come at once, for His Majesty our King is in great need of your advice and comfort. Think as you come of what you wish one had said to you these five years ago. May God’s hand preserve you.’”

The letter covered but half of the page, and the rest was filled with a florid explosion of a signature that was nothing less than a written scream. Egelric thought that if Matilda was not with him, then Alred must have been in sore need of advice and comfort as well.

He folded the letter and slipped it into the pocket of his cloak.

So she had “fallen” from the tower wall. So the King needed his “advice and comfort.”

He did not know what sort of comfort such a man as he could provide.

And he would have only one word of advice: Do not allow them to bury her outside the wall like a dog.