by Nancy Gebel
Chapter 6
June, 1172
Avranches, Normandy
Hugh observed the negotiations between the king and the papal legates with a curious sense of detachment. Of course Henry was his king and he and all his property were sworn to him, but if the Church refused to find him innocent…well, then, that would virtually mean the disintegration of his empire, wouldn’t it? It would mean all oaths made to him were null. And it could mean that his son, the Young King, would be the successor to whom the barons looked for leadership. In return for his support, Hugh might finally be able to get the earldoms which Henry continued to deny to him. He conceded it was a long shot, but life had certainly brightened for him since his acquaintanceship with Robert Bolsover, and who could tell what other surprises might lay in store?
But at the end of May, King Henry II was formally absolved of complicity in the murder of Archbishop Thomas Becket by the papal legates. And fewer than three weeks later, Bolsover was dead.
The sun had been strong in their eyes. Everyone involved agreed afterward that had been a large contributor to the accident. They’d been racing like madmen after a phantom stag. And they had spent the afternoon drinking—really, it was a miracle no one else had been killed.
Without war, there was little for a knight to do. He wasn’t an administrator; he had stewards to take care of the day to day maintenance of his property, and he wasn’t a businessman—that was a role for lowly burgesses and trades people. He could sit on his court and listen to the petty disputes among the men of his holdings, but there was no excitement in it. From a young age, the knight had been trained for only one purpose: to serve his master with arms. Perhaps when a man grew older and had a wife and children and his own bit of land, he began to look distastefully on rushing off to besiege one or another of the king’s recalcitrant vassals, but Hugh, Bolsover, Haworth and all the men with them were young and still a little careless of their mortality. If there was no war, then they spent every waking hour practicing for one. Or they went hunting.
At Avranches, someone suggested a hunt to break the monotony of a hot afternoon, and after dinner a small party consisting of the earl, Sir Robert, Sir Roger and half a dozen other knights and their squires set out on horseback into the forest. It wasn’t a serious-minded group, however; there were no huntsmen along to sight the game and no dogs to flush it out, and starting in the middle of the day after a heavy meal meant the pursuit of anything over a long distance was out of the question. It was merely an easy diversion, not to mention a comfortable one—in the shadowy forest, the temperature was pleasantly cool.
Several men had brought skins of wine along and these were immoderately enjoyed. The wine loosened their tongues. Lewd stories were related. Obscene jokes exchanged. Soon the woods reverberated with the sound of hearty laughter which effectively chased away even the stupidest prey. When the sun began its descent, the men turned back, empty-handed, towards the castle, which lay west of them.
No one could remember exactly what happened next. They had drunk too much and each man was trying to outdo the others in displaying his prowess on horseback. One moment they were galloping their mounts at breakneck speed through the tangled forest in an insane race against each other and the next someone had called out that he’d caught sight of a massive stag, and suddenly they were in pursuit. They became separated, they shouted to one another, the sinking sun glared into their eyes, there was a flash of brown, bows were drawn, arrows flew…and Robert Bolsover tumbled from his horse and crashed to the ground, dead.
It was a bizarre accident. Fortunately, all of them had used clean arrows, unnotched or otherwise marked to denote ownership, and therefore they were all equally guilty and equally innocent. There was no way of knowing precisely who had shot the fatal missile, which had struck Bolsover directly in the chest.