“The candle broke,” said a voice. The “Os” resonated up the pillars like sounding smoke-rings as the appalled congregation repeated it. “BrOke, brOke, brOke.” The king went on, quelling the silliness of the candle stump by his grace. Bishop Alexander lumbered forward to meet him.
There was a crack and behind Alexander the golden pyx which held the host crashed down on to the altar. The rings of the chain which had held it rattled to the floor. The echo seemed to last for minutes, before the smoke-rings sounded again. “Omen. OmenOmenOmen.”
* * *
As the congregation filed out of the cathedral in complete silence, Percy of Alleyn came up alongside Willem. “A word with you, old fellow.” They climbed the steps of East Gate and walked along the top of the wall to where the city’s roofs fell steeply away. Smoke from chimneys and louvres was an unhealthy white against the grey February sky.
“I’ve had a message from her,” Alleyn said. “As I thought, it was no marriage. She wouldn’t consent, brave little lady. He gagged her and somebody else spoke for her.”
He didn’t look at the mercenary nor the mercenary at him. “As her champion, I’ve challenged him, of course, but the king won’t allow it until the battle’s over. But after what we’ve just seen, well, I’m not sanguine about tomorrow. God’s no longer on our side.”
Brought up to believe in the infallibility of kings, Alleyn’s misery reached beyond grief for his lady. It weighted him so that standing beside that big, sad man was like being dwarfed by a monolith. He put his hand on Willem’s shoulder. “Well, not to beat about the bush; if I should fall in battle tomorrow and you survive…”
“I’ll kill him,” promised Willem.
The champion nodded. “Thank you. That’s what I wanted to know.”
* * *
After the final battle plans were made that night, Ypres took his crossbow captain to one side. “Contract rules tomorrow, Willem,” was all he said, but Willem understood. They were contracted to fight their best for the king – but not to lay down their lives in a lost cause.
As they walked down to their billet in Thornbridge, they pushed against a steady stream of citizens, their valuables piled on carts, making for the upper West Gate and the escape route to the north. Fenchel said: “Sometimes you fight a battle and win it and sometimes you fight a battle and lose it, but I’m buggered if we’ve ever lost a battle and then had to fight it.”
* * *
The Battle of Lincoln was among the shortest on record.
Whether it was because God had demonstrated that He was no longer on the king’s side, or whether they had made a secret alliance with the Empress, Stephen’s earls such as Waleran and Hugh Bigod deserted the moment the enemy charged them, without striking a blow.
When he saw their cavalry wing galloping off the field, Ypres knew the day was lost and called on his own men to run. The only ones who fought were the king, the household knights who surrounded him and the citizens of Lincoln who loyally came out to help and were slaughtered.
Among the chaos, the panic and the noise, Willem received indelible images; the shocking and empty space where the earls’ cavalry should have been protecting the king’s right flank, Ypres’ white face as he galloped past shouting: “It’s lost. Another day.” He saw Percy of Alleyn lurch off his horse, head downwards so that his helmet stuck in the mud and a passing horse stumble into his body, leaving him in a frozen somersault with a broken neck.
Not able to understand why Alleyn had toppled sideways rather than backwards, Willem looked back along the trajectory of the stone that had hit him to where one of Fitz Payn’s stone-slingers was capering. Fitz Payn was clapping the man on the back.
Maybe the only completely fulfilled man on the royalist side that day was Stephen himself. As his enemies encircled him he fought like a berserker. His sword broke, so he threw it away and took instead a two-headed axe thrown to him by a Lincoln citizen, wielding it with a ferocious and satisfied intensity. He might have lost his kingdom, but, by God, he’d prove he wasn’t a coward as his father had been.
* * *
When the news that the king had lost, that the Empress had won and the war was over, arrived at the Tower of London, there was joy for the hostages and panic among the king’s servants. Most of the court staff deserted at once, fearful that the Empress would be down on them any moment, red in tooth and claw.
Only Richard de Luci remained at his post. He was the new breed, a bureaucrat who served the throne, no matter who sat in it.
The ex-hostage Matilda de Risle stopped him as he crossed the Great Hall, preoccupied in reading a scroll.
“I wish your apology, de Luci, for having kept me here against my will.”
For a moment he couldn’t think who she was; there’d been a lot of hostages. Then he remembered. “My lady, I have here the list of the dead at Lincoln…”
Immediately she was transfigured. “Fitz Payn. I knew God would kill him. I prayed for it.”
“There’s no news of Fitz Payn. He’s missing – deserted, perhaps.” He proffered her the list and then remembered she was a woman and could not read. “Percy of Alleyn.”
She didn’t believe it. Alleyn had been her champion all her life. She didn’t believe it then nor for some time later, not until they brought the coffin to Hatfelde when, to the scandal of the local priest, she had Fen’s small coffin brought from the Tower and buried them side by side.
“You silly man, you’ve got the names mixed up. It’s Fitz Payn who’s dead.”
Busy as he was he found time to feel sorry for her. “He may be. He may not be. But, lady, if it was no marriage, establish the fact with the new order, with the Bishop of Winchester, with the Empress. Get it beyond doubt.”
He watched her walk back across the hall. He noticed that the other hostages withdrew from her as if she were contagious. Whether she had consented or not, she was tainted by alliance with a mercenary, especially a mercenary who had been on the losing side.
He shouted: “With the Pope if necessary,” and hurried off about his business.
* * *
In the keep in the Black Fens Brother Daniel, the glass-blower, whipped the boy who was his connection with the Devil for being faulty. “You got it wrong.”
The boy hiccuped from sobs and wiped his snotty nose. The smoke from the smouldering hemp weaved round his head and over the shine of the scrying glass. He breathed deeply to ease his way into the blessed, terrifying semiconsciousness. The pupils of his eyes dilated. His white little lips pursed as if in a kiss and through them came the voice of the demon.
“Wait.”
Chapter 9
1141–1142
It took time for Empress Matilda to get over her surprise at her victory. Not until she’d seen a calm and graceful Stephen actually in chains at Bristol did it become real.
Although Stephen’s queen was holding out in the South-East the Empress was, in effect, Lady of England. To become Queen she had to gain the support of the Church, which meant winning over Stephen’s brother, Henry of Blois. She must have access to the treasury at Winchester where the royal crown was. Last, she must persuade the Londoners to open their gates to her.
She found herself with new and surprising allies: Hugh Bigod, his manner suggesting that fighting for Stephen had been a minor hiatus in a career devoted to the Empress’ cause, Waleran of Meulan and others.
The Empress swore on oath to Bishop Henry all the promises to the Church which his brother had made – and broken. That gave her Church and treasury.
It took until June to get London. The delay was not just due to the Londoners’ reluctance but to garrisons still loyal to Stephen who opposed the Empress en route. The city gave way only because the Empress bought Geoffrey de Mandeville, castellan of the Tower of London, and it could hardly hold out with the Tower breathing down its neck.
De Mandeville’s price was enormous; he was confirmed as Earl of Middlesex, Essex and Hertfordshire with the right to bui
ld castles where and when he wanted. The Empress gave away power on a scale that would have enraged her father, Henry the First. But the market was de Mandeville’s and he squeezed it dry. The Empress entered London.
All that was necessary now was the coronation.
* * *
In the Great Hall of Westminster the Empress received petitioners. In the overlooking gallery her devoted supporter, Brien Fitz Count, banged his head against the balustrade with a violence likely to break one or the other. He turned to the Empress’ devoted half-brother, Earl of Gloucester: “You’ve got to stop the bitch.”
Earl Robert, whose calm was legendary, tore off his cap and stamped on it. “Didn’t I try? You saw. She didn’t even rise. I knelt before her and got bawled at like a butler who’d stolen the bloody spoons.”
“We’ll lose every ally we’ve got.”
For two days now the Empress had received petitioners as if they were dirt. Lords spiritual and lords temporal were treated with the same disdain as commoners. To her poor, ignored advisers it seemed she only granted a petition when doing so would offend somebody else. She was rude to her uncle, King David of Scotland. She was rude to her new ally, Henry of Blois.
Matilda de Risle was only one of the petitioners turned away with a sharp: “Attend on me until I consider the matter.”
The repelling calm which had distinguished the Empress when she’d fought for her throne was gone; she vibrated with a resentment that she’d had to fight for it at all.
“Is it a woman’s thing… you know, the Change?”
Hoping to find the answer to a mystery in a mystery they peered down for symptoms of the menopause, looking for a hot flush in the pale, beautiful face.
“Should we send for the Plantagenet?” Fitz Count was reluctant but desperate. No Norman liked ceding to an Angevin, but her husband might be able to control her.
“He won’t come. England’s her problem. His is Normandy.”
“It’s an error Stephen wouldn’t have made. He’d have been all things to all men by now.”
“Regretting your choice?”
“There was no choice.” In Fitz Count’s book the hereditary principle had to be established. He was an orderly man. The killing, the seizing of goods, all the things he’d had to do to hold Wallingford for the Empress had been done with disgust and in this belief.
Below them a deputation of Londoners moved to the foot of the dais. They were genuinely worried men wearing torn cloaks to indicate poverty. “Your demand for tallage, my lady… it’s not that we won’t pay it, but at the moment we can’t.” They’d given their last penny to Stephen some time ago, not that they mentioned it now.
The anger which had vibrated the Empress all day almost oscillated her now. She swayed as she stood up. “You crawling swine. You filth.”
The men in the gallery closed their eyes.
“You poured out your coffers to strengthen Stephen and weaken me. Do you think I’ll show kindness to conspirators? I’ll have justice from you traitors and I’ll have every penny.”
A voice from the crowd shouted: “You’re not queen yet.”
* * *
In Westminster Great Hall next day the servants prepared the tables for the Empress’ coronation banquet. The chamberlain knotted his belt and his brow in the effort to memorise the precedence in which he must seat the guests. In the kitchens cooks were dripping sweat as freely as the hundreds of carcases on spits were dripping lard.
Cursing as only he knew how, John the Marshal had personally kicked every human backside in the stables until the horses for the Coronation procession were groomed to his satisfaction. The exercise made him grumpy and reminded him that he still hadn’t been given all the estates the Empress had promised him. He stamped through the palace to her apartments, his boots dropping clumps of horse manure.
He found the Earl of Gloucester looking out at the river. “She’s in the chapel preparing her soul. Leave her alone, marshal.”
“She still owes me Newbury.”
“You’ll get it.” He was watching the far bank of the river for the return of the army. Last night Stephen’s queen had shown that she was still to be reckoned with by raiding Southwark. The earl had sent his main force to chase her back into Kent. He now wished he hadn’t. He was picking up vibrations of bad luck.
John the Marshal, never sensitive to vibrations, never sensitive to anything, returned to his grievance. “Bloody female. Stephen wouldn’t have made me wait for it. Say what you like about Stephen, he was a generous bastard.”
“Stephen’s in prison.”
“And serve him right.” The marshal was crude, vulgar and illogical, everything Brien Fitz Count and the earl were not. He believed a woman’s place was in her man’s bed. But in his belief that the rightful heir should inherit he was as unwavering as they were.
He nodded downriver. “They’re starting the celebrations early.”
“What?”
“The Londoners. Ringing the bells. Celebrating.”
The sound had crept up on him, first one solitary bell and then another; he’d dismissed it as a fire alarm. The city was always burning somewhere.
But the ringing spread. Some three hundred churches were crammed into the square mile of London and now each one was ringing, as if an earthquake had shaken it.
The earl had been in Flanders when the towns erupted against their lords. He said: “Commoners ring bells as a muster to arms. Oh Jesus.”
They pelted down to the palace yard and one of the earl’s squires came riding in, shaking. “The Londoners are coming, my lord, thousands of them. They’re armed.”
Butchers had grabbed cleavers, slaughterers had fetched their knives and woodmen their axes. Women whose hands could snap a goose’s neck picked up pokers, rolling pins and gridirons. After a night discussing its grievance, the corporate temper of the city had suddenly boiled. It was out for the Empress’ blood.
The earl felt sick with, of all things, embarrassment. He felt a fool not just because he had miscalculated in leaving the lady defenceless, but because, for an instant, he saw himself and all Normans as posturers who held their place only so long as the animal on which they pranced kept its eyes shut. Stephen was not his enemy: at root they were the same. The true enemy was at this moment streaming along the Strand.
“Well, for Christ’s sake, say something. Evacuate. We can’t hold them, but if they find this place empty they’ll stop and loot. They’re only cattle.” Good and noble marshal. They were only cattle.
He gave orders.
John the Marshal half-carried the Empress, who had not adjusted to the emergency, to the western postern. As he urged her to mount the waiting horse, she made a stand for dignity. “I’ll not ride like a man. Fetch a side-saddle.”
The marshal picked her up and threw her so that her legs scissored open and she landed astride. “Get up there, you silly bitch.”
* * *
An army headed by Ypres and Stephen’s queen pursued the Empress west. Her retreat became a rout.
King David of Scotland had an epic flight in which he was captured three times and three times bought off his captors.
John the Marshal hid in a barn and his pursuers set fire to it. Even so he escaped, though a flaming spar fell across his face and burned out one of his eyes.
The Empress got away, but only because her half-brother turned to delay the pursuit. The earl fought like a lion, but in the end was captured.
* * *
With Stephen in prison on the Empress’ side of the country and with the Earl of Gloucester in prison on Stephen’s side, it was stalemate. Each held the other’s ace.
So they exchanged. With elaborate safeguards, Stephen was returned to his throne at Westminster, and Earl Robert to his Empress at Oxford. The Battle of Lincoln might never have happened.
The reminder that anything had happened at all lay in account rolls all over England which had once shown a profit. Now on the right-hand side where the figu
res should have been, there was written against estate after estate the one word: “Waste”.
* * *
Because she didn’t know what else to do, Matilda de Risle followed the Empress’ court to Oxford. There could be no going back to Stephen who had betrayed her. She was committed to the Empress’ cause now, win or lose.
She put such knights as she had left at the Empress’ disposal.
With the money from the few estates remaining to her out of Stephen’s clutches, she hired lawyers in every court she could think of to establish that she had never been legally married to Fitz Payn. She laid out a vast sum on an emissary to the Pope to do the same thing.
Gervase of Holborn advised her against it. “It’s expensive and it could take years. Fitz Payn’s probably dead, anyway.”
“I know he’s dead,” said Matilda. “But everyone must realise I did not consent to him. I owe it to my son.”
It had become an obsession. She bored everybody with the story, repeating again and again: “I did not consent.”
Adeliza noticed that Matilda had begun to take a bath every day as if her skin had contracted some invisible infection from being enveloped in the mercenary’s cloak.
It did her no good. Ladies of the court, previously her friends, avoided her where possible not just because she had become boring but because, whether she had consented or not, she had been disgraced. The Empress ignored her, but then the Empress ignored practically everybody.
Adeliza suggested: “Why don’t we go to Wallingford and stay with Lady Maud? It’s not far away. Gervase can send a messenger every day to say what’s happening. You’d like to see Maud of Wallingford again.”
Matilda was tempted but hesitated. She felt instinctively that she should stay at the hub of her contracting world, keeping an eye on the Empress and keeping in the Empress’ eye. Sheer loneliness tipped the balance. It would be nice to see the jolly, friendly wife of Brien Fitz Count again. Gervase of Holborn could be trusted to watch events at Oxford on her behalf. She went.
The Morning Gift Page 16