Peg of Grantley put it more forcibly: “If beasts are brought to court, we’re bound to step in shit.”
* * *
On St. Stephen’s Day morning Peg told Matilda: “The king had secret visitors in the early hours.” She always knew what was going on.
“Who?”
“Three burghers from Lincoln. They want him to attack Lincoln and get rid of Ranulf Moustaches for them. Ranulf’s men have dispersed for Christmas and he’s unprotected.”
“Will he do it?”
“There’s an emergency council going on. Tell you later.”
* * *
By tradition war stopped for the Twelve Days of Christmas. Knights wanted to eat up their Christmas tithes, serfs wanted the blow-out provided by their lords before winter starvation set in. Long before Christmas Eve trails of men calling seasonal greetings wound away from the battle zones to their green-decked homes, leaving the tracks churned up behind them. It would take weeks to ferret them out.
“We’ll have to be in position before Twelfth Night.” Stephen was jovial. “We’ll need at least a thousand men. How many can we raise, eh, Waleran?”
The barons reckoned, oh, a thousand easily. But Richard de Luci’s thin, clean fingers ran over his tallies and jotted figures on a slate. “Four hundred, my lord.”
The barons guffawed.
“Don’t listen to him.”
“London’s stuffed with them.”
“We can send out riders for more.”
De Luci was a new man who had risen through the ranks merely because he was clever. He dealt in statistics, not red-blooded men.
“We can send out riders for more,” Stephen told him.
“My lord, you can’t depend on more than another three hundred at most. The roads are boggy and many will be incapacitated by too much feasting.” That was true. They made themselves ill; some, like Matilda de Risle’s Sigward, died of it.
“Have you counted the hostages’ men?” asked Waleran. “We still have some Scots. Matilda de Risle’s knights…”
“I have included them. In my view it would not be wise…”
“Wise?” Baldwin Fitz Gilbert’s roar lifted the leaves of bay on the walls. “If we waited for your wisdom, turtle-head, we wouldn’t move at all.”
“You would not,” said the turtle-head calmly. “I consider this enterprise foolhardy. We can treat with Ranulf more easily than fight him, but my place is to carry out the wishes of my anointed king.”
“Your place is on the end of my boot.”
“My lords, let us fight Ranulf and not each other.” The king’s voice was sweet. “It is St. Stephen’s Day. My day. God’s hand is in this request from Lincoln; I feel it. What must we do?”
“I’ll tell you what we must do, King of the English.” Fitz Payn stood in the full light of a window so that his complexion showed up like good, fresh bread. He moved to the dais and put one knee on it so that he half-knelt, half-stood, at once respectful and easy. “I’m an old campaigner and when other captains are letting their men slip away, I keep mine ready. My lord, I can offer you a force of two hundred and fifty…”
* * *
“He made them look like novices,” Peg told Matilda.
“Scum,” said Matilda. “There was a price, of course. These mercenaries only think of trade.”
“Yes. It was you.”
Matilda walked to the window and looked at the river. A breeze wobbled its surface making shiny, black ovoids between the wavelets, constantly moving and going nowhere.
“You mean, he mentioned my name in full council?” There was no indignation in her voice. “God’s teeth, I’m humiliated. I shall get my champion to challenge him. Or make the king banish him. Or…”
“The king needs those men. He showed shock for the look of the thing, but then went into private audience with Fitz Payn. He must have Lincoln. Giving you and your lands to that bastard might be worth it.”
Matilda turned round and clawed at her. “Mary, Mother of God, save me. Forgive my sins and protect me. What shall I do?”
“Oh, go.” Peg was almost distant, as if Matilda’s problem was an infection she didn’t want to catch. She took a gold ring off her fat finger. “Don’t fetch anything or tell anyone. Go to Normandy.”
“But I’ll lose the English estates.” Then Matilda panicked. She grabbed the ring and ran to the door. Fen looked up and galloped after her. Both skidded to a halt. De Luci and a page were standing outside.
“Madam, the king requires your presence.” His lizard eyes blinked at Matilda’s shout.
Shock stuffed her ears against the Tower’s uproar as they went through it to the king’s apartments. A royal army getting ready to move makes a lot of noise. Boots echoed on stairwells, courts rattled with mail, shields, spears and helmets being loaded into carts. Marshals shouted to men, barons to marshals. But to Matilda the air was sterile and silent. “You can stop it. Blessed Mother, just one twitch of your finger. Stop it.”
The king was alone in a tiny wedge of a chapel in the wall of his turret. He took Matilda’s hand and sat with her on one of the miniature choir stalls. “Dear daughter.”
On the gaudy walls blood gushed in thick radials from St. Alban’s neck. Hook-nosed men and women threw what looked like figs at a smiling St. Stephen. The king enquired of her health. He wiggled each of her fingers, as if he were playing “Piggy-go-to-market” with a child. His voice played the same game. “Dear, dear daughter, we care so much for your welfare… in these troubled times in the loving protection of a strong man… our devoted and beloved servant, Ralph Fitz Payn… noble in soul if not yet in status.”
Matilda barely heard him. She was praying too hard. “You can stop it. Just one twitch of your finger.”
Sweetly she thanked the king. She dwelt on her ancestry and the kings and queens in it. She conjured up bishops and friends in high places all over Europe. A king who stood for her before God would not bring shame on himself and her by marrying her to an excommunicate mercenary. As Matilda reached her peroration, Fen squatted and piddled in the rushes. Matilda ended on her knees, one little hand touching the king’s slipper, weeping as must, she knew, the angels who heard her.
The king beamed at her. “Above all, he is handsome.”
All the time she’d been a fish, opening and shutting her mouth to an alien species. “I will not marry him. I will not consent.”
“There will just be time for the ceremony before we ride to Lincoln, though none for the bedding, I fear. You must be patient.”
Not just soundless, invisible. He had conjured up some different being to kneel in front of him. He was a magician who made the world as he wanted. “I will not marry the bastard.” She pulled off his slipper as she stood up. If they wanted a fight they could have it; she had to say the words for the marriage to be legal and nothing they could do would make her say them.
The king’s figure blocked her view of the altar as he knelt for a moment and rose. “Don’t you hear me?” she shouted. “Are you deaf?” Fen got up on stiff legs and barked.
Stephen had gone and another man filled the doorway. The mercenary had been waiting outside. His blue eyes stared at her in wonder, as if the two of them had been carrying on an intimate correspondence and were meeting for the first time. “I am not worthy.”
“That you’re not.” She inhaled deeply to stop herself from shaking. “I told the king and I tell you that I shall never consent to this marriage.”
Not one jot of the wondering, silly love on Fitz Payn’s face disappeared. He knelt to press the hem of her gown with his lips. “My honoured lady. Queen now and for ever.” His tears were wetting her cloak and she jerked it away.
A snarling, brindled shape leaped from her side, punching Fitz Payn with its head, snapping at his hand. Fen had erupted through the surface of the sea they were drowning her in, speaking for her in yaps of hatred. Her only champion, her dog.
In one perfectly co-ordinated movement Fitz Payn stepp
ed backwards, drew his sword from its scabbard and sliced through the bitch’s throat.
Fen turned to Matilda as if expecting an order. Blood pumped out of her throat, her legs folded and she fell, with Matilda beside her. It takes forty-five seconds for a dog whose carotid artery has been cut, to die. All that long time Fen’s eyes were on Matilda’s face and her blood became a fenland river sliding shallowly over the chapel tiles, forming rivulets along the cracks and taking with it Edmund’s childhood and the day they had gone eel-glaiving and the day they had skated on the ice.
The bitch’s eyes blinked and grew tired but never left her. The disreputable head went down to rest in its own blood. A muscle twitched in the flank, and Matilda was alone with a mercenary and a furred carcase.
“Will you have a bridesmaid?” The man was smiling. She saw his backward-sloping teeth. “Shall we fetch the Lady Adeliza?” He would slit Adeliza’s throat. He would kill everything she loved, but she could not hand down to Edmund’s heirs an ancestress who had consented to a mercenary. She stood up and felt the weight of blood on the front of her gown drag it down. She said: “You are scum and your soul will turn on a spit in Hell.”
He went to the door. “Get rid of the dog.” He turned to Matilda to console her, as if they’d both suffered a loss. “Never mind.” A thin, pock-marked man dragged Fen’s body out into the corridor by its tail, making lines of blood to the door. He returned with a priest who swayed and giggled and smelled of wine and Hugh Bigod, stepping carefully: “What has been going on?”
“You, Bigod,” screamed Matilda. “Witness I do not consent to this filth. He’s killed my dog.”
Hugh settled his cloak in becoming folds and leaned against St. Alban’s execution. “Actually, lady, I am now the Earl of Norfolk. A minute ago, in fact. I’m here to witness your marriage, and only that.” His word that the marriage was legal would give Stephen the excuse to believe it, as it had given him the excuse to assume the throne.
Matilda put her head down and charged for the gap between the men at the door. The mercenary’s arm slammed against her chest.
He pinioned both her arms and his cloak muffled her as he brought over his right hand to clamp her mouth. She tasted blood on the palm where Fen’s teeth had gone in. She forced her own teeth apart and bit into the wound. She would have kicked as well, but the pock-marked man had crouched behind her and held her ankles.
Despite the pain from his hand – she was grinding his flesh – the mercenary’s voice was sober and proud. “I take you as mine.” The falchion at his waist was nearly breaking her ribs.
The priest giggled again: “She must say the words as well.”
Behind where the man was holding her feet came an exaggerated falsetto: “I take you as mine.” They would say: “I heard her woman’s voice accept him.”
“Felicitations,” said the Earl of Norfolk.
She slipped in her dog’s blood as the mercenary pulled her out of the chapel, past Fen’s body and down the corridors of the Tower, trailing her like a child, and all the way, like a child, she screamed: “I did not. I did not.” Only God heard her; everybody else was in the bailey watching the king and his barons mount up. The noise of shouted goodbyes, orders, creaking wheels, stamping horses, the flap of standards and the cheers of the Londoners was such that Matilda’s screams joined the cacophony with no more effect than one more bird in the dawn chorus.
Fitz Payn picked her up and held her head against his shoulder, as one would hold a baby, scratching her face on his brooch. He went to the king’s horse: “My lord. The Lady Matilda of Risle has accepted me as her husband. Father Oswald and the Earl of Norfolk were there and witnessed it.” Matilda kicked.
The king nodded vaguely, his sight already on Lincoln. “Are your men ready?”
The mercenary galloped her over to where Richard de Luci was standing and set her down. He put her hand in de Luci’s: “See you keep her safe. I want her here on my return with her seal and the charters to her lands. The king wishes it.”
De Luci nodded. Hand in hand they watched the mercenary mount and kiss his hand to Matilda. Baldwin gave the order and the cavalcade moved out of the gates.
“I did not. I did not,” whispered Matilda. “What shall I do?”
It was a rhetorical question because de Luci would have no answer for it; as the king’s loyal servant he would obey the king’s command and she would be closely guarded until the mercenary came back to rape her and her lands. Surprisingly she got an unclerkly reply.
“All you can do, my lady, is join me in praying that he dies in battle.”
Chapter 8
1141
The citizens of Lincoln opened their gates and applauded the entry of Stephen and his army, so relieved were they to be delivered from Ranulf Moustaches.
A day later, as Willem of Ghent rode up Steep Hill to his commander’s HQ, the bells of each parish were still ringing their welcome, drowned by the Great Bell of the cathedral which tolled Bishop Alexander’s forgiveness to his king.
Willem didn’t share in the general thanksgiving; he had heard the news of the marriage between Matilda de Risle and the mercenary, Fitz Payn.
The soldiers gathered outside Ypres’ headquarters weren’t overjoyed either. “We didn’t get here quick enough,” one of them told Willem, pointing up at the castle. “Ranulf got away before we could surround it. Sure as eggs he’s gone to his father-in-law, and sure as eggs he’ll be back.” Ranulf’s father-in-law was Earl Robert of Gloucester.
Willem pushed his way through to his commander. Ypres’ face showed strain. “We’ve advised the king to withdraw. We haven’t enough men for a full-scale battle. We’ll be caught here like rats in a trap. But you know what he is – he’s loving all this.” Ypres indicated the adoring bells. “Says it would be unchivalrous to leave when he’s just arrived. Unchivalrous. Anyway, welcome back to the ranks of the godly, Willem. Your men are billeted in Thornbridge. Thirty arbalists in good working order.”
Jacopo said the same. “Welcome back, captain. All present and correct.”
Willem regarded his men sourly. “Present,” he said, “but not correct. Have trouble fighting the food in Kent, did you? They’re fat.”
Jacopo hitched in his stomach and admitted the food had been good. “Creamy and luscious, like the women. We only saw service once, with Stephen’s queen at Dover. I have given my heart to that queen. Such a woman, such a consort. The spirit of a saint and the mind of a soldier. I tell you, Willem…”
“You can start earning your sixpence a day.” Willem turned to his command. “We’re in for a pitched battle any day now. You tub-bellies couldn’t fight cold the state you’re in. Tomorrow, let me tell you, we start training. I’ll give you creamy and luscious.”
His men grinned. Alain winked. “Good to be back, captain.”
* * *
Ranulf Moustaches came back, quicker than anyone could have expected, and with him came an army with Robert and Miles of Gloucester and Brien Fitz Count at its head, its ranks swelled by barons and knights and men whose lands had been forfeited through their loyalty to the Empress, and others whose estates had arbitrarily been given to Stephen’s favourites.
As a force it was very little bigger than Stephen’s own, but it had the ferocity of the disinherited.
It didn’t attempt to storm Lincoln but ranged itself on the plain outside and waited for Stephen to come out to do battle.
Inside there was argument. “Wait, my lord,” Ypres advised the king. “Wait for reinforcements.” The older barons supported him. But the younger barons, led by Hugh Bigod, Earl of Norfolk, set up a chant: “Battle-shy. Battle-shy.”
Ypres turned on them. “Don’t you battle-shy me, you buggers.” His thick, hairy fingers grabbed Bigod’s cloak. “Where are your men, eh?”
Bigod smiled. “Battle-shy. Battle-shy.” It wasn’t aimed at the mercenary. Its real target was the man whose childhood had been made painful by taunts against his father, the rope-tri
ck man, the coward of the Crusade. Stephen was afraid of being afraid. He said gently: “My lords, I am tired of skirmishing and sieges. Tomorrow we will go out and win this war once and for all.”
* * *
Apart from Ranulf’s men still sieged in the castle and the look-outs, almost the entire population of Lincoln that night attended the eve-of-battle service in the cathedral. It was also the eve of the Purification of the Virgin Mary, Lincoln’s patron saint, which, insisted the king, was a lucky omen.
Willem looked round the packed, noisy congregation. “Which one is Fitz Payn?” Jacopo pointed to the ranks of the barons at the chancel steps. “The good-looking one.” Willem nodded.
“But he’s not as good as he looks, captain. And his men aren’t nice at all. Hand-choppers, back-stabbers and stone-slingers.” It might have surprised the feudal knights with their chivalry to know that mercenaries had their own ethics which, while not exactly a code of honour, were a basic trading standard. Fitz Payn’s habit of cutting off his prisoners’ hands did not accord with it. “Not nice, captain,” went on Jacopo, “also short-sighted. One war’s enemy may be another war’s ally. And if the king was handing out great ladies in marriage to mercenaries, why not to you? Why Fitz Payn?”
“I’ll kill that mouthy bloody Fenchel.”
The cathedral fell silent. The moment had come for the king to make his offering for victory. They saw his figure from the back outlined against the light as he carried an offertory candle to the altar.
They saw him falter and flames appear at his feet as the rushes caught fire. The chanting stopped and for a moment nobody moved, then some choir monks stamped out the flames and drew back, leaving the king with half a broken candle in his hand.
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