Maud’s hands closed about the old man’s ankles and her head dropped to his knees. Then she stood up and snarled at Osmund: “He goes with an armed escort and his woolly underclothes or he doesn’t go at all.”
In all this time Matilda had been standing, comprehending events only as they affected her. As the bishop with Maud supporting him went past she stepped forward: “Since you are to see the king, my lord, you can raise the subject of my marriage. Then you can have Tatton.”
His rheumy eyes regarded her with amazement that she could still believe in his power. He nodded.
The castle was fully garrisoned so Matilda and her ladies, baby and dog had to sleep in a guest room which was no more than a wedge in an upper floor of the tower, while the men of her household squeezed into barracks and hall bays. The overcrowding was offset for the ladies by the two-seater garderobe in the outer wall. A warm, polished, wooden seat with two holes overlaid a drop to a gutter thirty feet below. There were exclamations of delight at the convenience but Matilda, though she filed away the idea for future reference, could not be diverted from her anxiety.
She lay awake while the others slept, nursing it. She did not want to marry again. She did not want to marry again. Only now when she was faced with another wedding did she realise how nerve-wracking had been the first in a new country with strange people and experiences. She had been lucky with Sigward – now he was dead she invested him with all the virtues – but she didn’t want to go through it all again. Having one baby had nearly killed her; another might finish the job. Alice of Vendôme had been given five husbands and died giving birth to her sixth child.
“They want to kill me,” she said out loud. “If one husband doesn’t do it they’ll give me another who will.”
The sound of her voice brought a pattering on the floor and the bitch Fen jumped up on the bed with her. She was not a demonstrative dog but she was always there when she was needed. Ghislaine, next to Matilda, shifted and complained but Matilda allowed the dog to stay.
Just before she’d left Dungesey Pampi had asked for an audience. He’d been ushered into the hall muttering sentences in a voice so truculent that Matilda, still tired from the birth and shocked by Sigward’s death, had snapped: “What’s he complaining of now?”
Steward Peter had explained. “He’s not complaining. He’s trying to say, if you’ll forgive the impertinence, that he’s pleased with you and offers you the gift of this dog.”
“He’s pleased with me?” But she had been gracious and accepted the unedifying animal. Her lymerer had been appalled and refused to accept it into the kennels. Adeliza had been afraid of it and Ghislaine had drawled: “Not something to enhance the prestige, my dear.”
Fen’s face with the frill of her inner lip hanging out of her grinning mouth was indeed a shock, as were her large ears, her long body and almost hairless legs and tail. But Matilda’s confidence in her own prestige could not be altered by a dog. Besides, Fen had a ridiculous idea of her own prestige. She hated the lymerer back, she ignored the ladies and extended only to Matilda a respect which Matilda found disarming. When it came to hunting the bitch was mustard. Even the lymerer said he’d never encountered her equal over wet ground for speed and nerve, let alone ferocity.
She was also prepared to kill in Matilda’s defence. On their first day back in Hatfelde a page, who was being chased by another in fun, had not looked where he was going and crashed into Matilda. Fen, misinterpreting the accident as assault, had leaped straight for his throat. That she had missed the jugular had only been because the page was looking behind him. As it was she took a large chunk from the area where neck meets shoulder.
After that Matilda took her everywhere. At nights she lay across the bedchamber door, despite Ghislaine’s objection to her farts and fleas.
Comforted by her dog, Matilda now fell asleep and woke to find that the bishop and his entourage had just left for Oxford. Annoyed that she’d missed him, she went up to the keep roof where Maud of Ramsbury was watching the long procession of men, horses and wagons taking the road north. Matilda joined her in the crenel. “Will he remember to stop my marriage?”
Maud ignored her.
Up here it was impossible not to feel in command of the Salisbury Plain, the giants that strode it, even life itself. From up here one could see the order of things. Foreshortened humans below made patterns of efficiency as they scurried about their work. The penned sheep waiting to be sheared were neat, white squares against the green. The wind brought their bleating in pleasant tenor and baritone.
“See that crow following them?” Maud pointed at a speck flapping northwards. “Saints preserve the poor little devil. I don’t like it.”
“He’ll remember to stop my marriage, won’t he?”
“Look, my lady.” Maud turned wearily towards her. “He’s held England together for over thirty years and now he’s going to face stoats who are jealous of him because they can’t. He has bad dreams, he’s poorly and bad luck is following him. Your marriage is the least of his problems.”
“It’s not the least of mine,” said Matilda, sulking. “Do you mean he can’t stop it?”
Maud hammered her fists on the crenel parapet. A man-at-arms who was doing sentry duty round the allure stopped and asked if she was all right. “Piss off,” she told him. She took Matilda’s arm and sat her down so that they perched with their backs to the ninety-foot drop. “My duck, I don’t know what’s going to happen but it will be bad. We’ll have to suffer it like women always do.”
Matilda shifted. She could smell Maud’s flesh and the pennyroyal on her clothes. She did not care to be bracketed with what was, bishop or no bishop, a fallen woman. Maud pulled her closer. “A word to the wise,” she hissed. “If I were you I’d put that lad of yours somewhere safe. Serlo of Luard’s not a bad man but he wants what he wants, and if you marry his son he’ll want an heir of his own blood. Your babby’ll be in the way.” She patted Matilda’s clenched jaw and stood up. “I’m not saying anything, but I know men. If the times are good, they’re good. If times are bad they’re as trustworthy as the Devil’s arse.”
Having eased her own worry by adding to someone else’s, she lumbered off.
The man-at-arms was alone on the roof with a tall, dark-haired young woman who seemed to observe his every move as if determined to report any sign of slackness to his constable. He wished she’d go away: he wanted a sitdown.
Matilda had no idea she was watching him, had no idea Maud had gone. She’d known really. The old trollop had only put into words the fear that had been over her like a miasma since she’d been told she must marry. Though she knew Edmund was asleep and well only a couple of floors beneath her feet she suddenly wanted him here, under her eye.
Serlo would not kill the child: he’d be too afraid of God and public opinion for that, but it was in his own son’s interest that it did not prosper. He could stack the chances against its survival.
Matilda stared into a future in which young Edmund struggled to keep breathing in the charge of a careless nurse, against too-strict discipline and punishment, through over-enthusiastic military training, on a vicious horse, in a battle for which he was too young.
Impotent with terror, she called on the one person she knew who had suffered through a son. She cricked her neck back so she could see the clouds. “You’ve got to listen. Blessed Mother, everything else I’ve wanted is nothing. I’ll never ask you for anything again. You shall have Dungesey Church, you shall have two churches. If you can’t stop this marriage, accept it as a sacrifice. But show me how to keep my son safe.”
A minute tangle of wings launched itself off a pot of marigolds in the roof’s herbary and landed on Matilda’s hand. She felt the fringe of its legs tickle her skin and watched it crawl off the back of her fingers on to the stone as fixedly as she’d watched the man-at-arms and with no more attention.
She stood up and gazed over the landscape, waiting for her answer. There was a raincloud slant
ing its way west, but there was no Marian significance in a shower, nor in the rooks which infested the elms along the road like fleas. Mary might answer her in a pigeon; pigeons were Mary’s birds, so were doves, so were… the Mary beetle.
She jumped back and went on to her knees searching the face of the stone for the ladybird. It was typically humorous of Mary to send a portent in so minuscule a creature. Then she spotted it, like a dot of red wax paddling determinedly downwards. “What should I do? Escape? Fly to the Empress? But that will mean losing the English lands.”
As the ladybird progressed down the wall so did Matilda’s nose following it. The man-at-arms wondered if he ought to call Maud.
Growing from a crack between the stones and flags of the allure was a bunch of red valerian. Matilda’s nose wrinkled at the smell of it. The ladybird crawled up a stem, on to one of the leaves and stopped.
“Well?” demanded Matilda. The ladybird opened and shut its wings and stayed where it was. Matilda slanted her head and gently pushed the leaf upwards until she could see underneath a cluster of tiny, yellow, skittle-shaped things.
Her memory evoked Berte’s voice teaching herbal lore in the walled garden of Risle. “No, we’ll let those be. They’re Mary beetle eggs and the Mary beetle helps good gardeners.”
She let the leaf fall back and the black circles on the ladybird’s back stared up at her like eyes. “I see,” she said slowly. “Blast.”
* * *
At Oxford Stephen laid a trap which was to become his speciality. He received his viceroy, his chancellor and the Bishops of Ely and Lincoln with honour, and then arrested them.
Bishop Nigel of Ely managed to escape. He hoisted up his robes, nipped through a window and got away on a horse.
But Bishop Roger of Salisbury and his other two sons were caught by surprise. Even as the chains were loaded on them they could not believe that this was happening, to them who had ruled England for the throne for so long. They knew England. Until now Bishop Roger’s spy network had informed him who was plotting what even before the plotters themselves had known it.
The king’s brother, Henry of Blois, fighting down his own resentment at having been passed over for the Primacy of Canterbury, intervened for them. “Stephen. My dear. You are breaking the vow you made at your coronation to us bishops to uphold the Church in all things. And you have broken the laws of hospitality. The old king, God knows, lost his temper, but he never lifted a finger against a guest in his palace. You’ve proved yourself untrustworthy.”
It was a terrible charge. The laws of Christ had a certain variability, but the laws of hospitality were rigid.
But even as he spoke Waleran of Meulan, smiling, whispered in the king’s ear, and Bishop Roger and his chancellor son saw who would be running England in their place and who, with the king, would benefit from the castles they had built and the treasure that was in them.
And Henry of Blois, Bishop of Winchester, saw that England was no longer safe in his brother’s hands and left his brother’s court for his own palace at Winchester and sent a messenger to the Empress Matilda in Normandy.
* * *
A week later Willem of Ghent and his arbalists arrived at Devizes Castle where their commander was still supervising the transfer of its gold and silver to the king’s treasury.
“God Almighty,” said Jacopo when he saw the dimensions of the walls. “A bishop built it? Some bishop. How did the king get it to surrender?”
“Maud of Ramsbury surrendered it,” said Ypres shortly, “when we threatened to hang her son. Willem, I want a word with you.”
They went to the great autumn chamber where, nine days before, Matilda de Risle had pleaded with Bishop Roger to save her from remarriage.
His commander poured Willem a cup of wine. “How’s the West Country?”
Willem sat down straight on a stool; his back was no longer in spasm but had reverted to its everyday ache. “A dyke,” he said, “with holes in it. Why did you recall us?”
Ypres was striding around the room, touching its hangings and its carvings to assure himself of their quality. “The whole country’s springing leaks. Bigod in East Anglia. King David in Scotland. Lesser men everywhere. And they call us mercenaries.”
Willem became uneasy at the evasion of his question. Ypres lifted the top off a porcelain pot and sniffed its contents. “There’s been a Lateran Council edict. Innocent II has banned the crossbow.”
“Eh?” For a moment he thought the Pope was criticising the crossbow’s weakness in being able to let off only three quarrels a minute.
Ypres quoted: “‘The deadly art of crossbowmen, hated of God, should not be used against Christians on pain of anathema.’”
Bloody amateur, thought Willem. “Why?”
“Because of the way it kills, I suppose…”
“Efficiently?”
“…it reminds people of St. Sebastian.”
“St. Sebastian didn’t die by the crossbow. He didn’t die by arrows at all. And if he did? Are they going to ban all archers? Who’s to stop a cavalry charge?” Now he knew why he’d been recalled. “Good King Stephen’s not renewing his contract with us, is that it? Well, that’s all right by me.” His arm sent a flagon on to its side. He didn’t notice. “There’s others won’t be so squeamish, I can tell you. My men can fetch their own price anywhere…”
Ypres closed his eyes. “Willem, Willem, I never suspected this naughty temper of you. Sit down. Sit down. Now then, the king is not renewing your contract. Sit down, will you? Look at it from his side. He daren’t offend the Pope any more. He needs his good opinion and God’s.” He looked around and lowered his voice. “The trouble with righteousness in war as you and I know, Willem, is that it isn’t effective. If he’d hanged those buggers at Exeter we shouldn’t be knee-deep in rebels like we are. Now then, the king may not be renewing your contract, but I am.”
He dipped a finger in the spilt wine and drew on the polished tabletop. “If insurrection continues we’ll need castles to contain it. We’ll need them in East Anglia around the Fens. I’ve consulted with Stephen and he agrees; we want you to build them.”
“I’m not a builder.”
“No, Willem, you’re an arbalist and the Pope doesn’t love you. Damn it, I’m not asking for this” – his arms indicated Devizes – “I want these.” Little phalluses were drawn in the wine. “You’ve kept your men alive and together for two years. You’re a good organiser.”
Willem thought. “I can’t see my band in the Fens.”
“Neither can I. You go alone. With Fenchel. And the king’s warrant.”
“I’m not disbanding.” His men were his only asset, his sons, a beautiful machine. The Pope could say they were abhorrent to God till he was black in the face but Willem knew God found acceptable a thing as perfect as his band of crossbowmen.
“I know,” said Ypres gently. “I’ll keep them together. I’ll wipe their noses and tuck them up at nights. It won’t be for long. Even the Pope can’t uninvent you. Let Stephen make his gesture; in a year, maybe less, he’ll need you again. Give him his righteous time.”
* * *
On a July morning Matilda kissed her son goodbye and handed him over to Epona, the Wealy woman. The procession of carts and horses set off down Hatfelde Hill and turned north. It was before dawn. Only Matilda saw them off and only Matilda knew where they were going. Percy of Alleyn was to see it to its destination and then return.
A small but complete household was going and would stay with Edmund with Berte and Father Alors in charge of it. Father Alors hadn’t wanted to go. He had taken a dislike to the Fens. “Unhealthy for the child’s body and soul,” he’d said, “a godless place.”
“How come there are so many abbeys there, then?” Matilda had snapped. “And anyway, the Blessed Mother told me to put him there.” She could think of no more leafy, secret hiding-place which fitted the Virgin’s portent than her morning gift of Dungesey. Father Alors had given in; he couldn’t argue wi
th the Virgin Mary.
“And anyway,” thought Matilda miserably as she watched them go, “it’s a damned sight healthier than the household of Serlo de Luard will be.”
* * *
Robert, Earl of Gloucester, finally made up his mind. He sent a formal renunciation of his fealty to Stephen and joined his half-sister, the Empress, in Normandy. Now she could invade any day.
* * *
In a windowless chamber in the tower he had built for himself in the blackest of the Black Fens, Brother Daniel, former glassblower, former witch’s son, and now the power behind the throne at Ramsey Abbey, was consulting demons on the question which exercised everybody else in England.
On a table in the chamber a circle of glass had been set in sand and a boy was looking into it. The smoke which curled about the boy’s ragged head smelled of hemp. The cowled figure of the monk leaned forward to kiss the boy’s neck and run his hand down the child’s knobbly spine to his buttocks and up again. “Scry for me,” he said softly.
Because the boy was stupid the monk had reduced his question to essentials and made two crude drawings in the sand. Both were human figures with crowns on their heads. One had large breasts and a cleft between its legs, the other had male genitals.
“Who’ll win? The lady? The lord? Empress? King? Scry.”
The demons entered the boy. His rolling eyes became fixed and saliva bubbled down his chin. His hand trembled and the monk took it to his own breast and then held it over the shapes in the sand.
“Who’ll win? Her? Him?”
Her-him, coughed back the walls bronchially.
The demons took the boy’s soul down his arm into his hand so that its black-nailed fingers clenched and stretched and the vein to the wrist throbbed blue. It became a raptor’s talon. It hovered then stopped and the forefinger stabbed a deep navel into the figure of the man. “Him.”
The Morning Gift Page 8