“Are they rotten?”
“They’re not bad as mercenaries,” admitted Edmund, “and their captain has always been good to me. Fitzempress thinks the world of him, although he’s quite old, but it’s always dishonourable to fight for money.”
Matilda nodded. “Who is this captain?” She knew, but there was an adolescent thrill in hearing him given independent life.
“Willem of Ghent. But you know him, don’t you? He brought a message from you when he arrived. And Fitzempress says he rescued you from… well.”
Part of the reason for her visit to Normandy was to give Edmund her authorised version of the time with Fitz Payn and after. She had sent him messages through Turold, but she wanted to tell him herself. He was aware that the Empress’ treaty with Fitz Payn had involved his mother in a supposed marriage. The rumours must have hurt and embarrassed him. She gave him a bloodless description of her disparagement, first by Stephen and then the Empress, “but the marriage was never legal because I did not consent.”
He listened carefully, being not only her son, but her lord. She had to account to him. She added: “Nor was it consummated.” The mercenary, Willem of Ghent, she said, had come to her aid and escorted her to the safety of Dungesey.
Edmund nodded: “What happened to Fitz Payn? He’s disappeared.”
She crossed her fingers in the fold of her gown. “I don’t know.” Somebody must have found the corpse, but there were lots of unidentified bodies lying around England.
“He’s probably dead,” said Edmund. “These scum are always killing each other.” He got up to walk around the chamber. He was getting tall and his voice beginning to break. Like all the young knights and squires at Rouen he aped Fitzempress by dressing casually in hunting leathers but whereas Fitzempress looked always untidy, Edmund was helplessly neat. “We will get the Pope to recognise it as a non-marriage in case the man turns up again and claims our lands.”
He took her hands. “All that suffering is over and you shall live in comfort, as befits you.” He would grow into a pompous man. “Shall you go back to Risle? Or stay at court? Or you could retire into a convent, like Fontevrault.” He said the last wistfully. He would like her to be one of the rich, well-born pensioners who lived with nuns, mixing social life with contemplation and good works. It would tidy her up, restore her to the respectability she had lost.
It would also put her beyond danger of remarriage and leave Edmund to administer her estates free of stepfathers.
She was twenty-seven years old and her son wished her to decline into untroublesome old age. And he could command it. This child was the next master in a chain of masters – father, husband and now son. Legally she was his chattel. Thinking of him as her child to be safeguarded she had set up another male autocrat to rule her.
She took a deep breath to subdue her panic. She must be cunning. “My lord, I stay in England for your sake. By operating Fitzempress’ Postern for him I pile on him a debt which he must remember when he is king. He will be king, I think.”
Edmund had no doubt of it. “But it is not seemly that my mother should skulk in a marsh with a lot of peasants.”
“Don’t you see, my son?” Matilda looked deliberately crafty. “Already the Abbot of Ramsey has used the Postern and become our ally. When the day comes he will say to Fitzempress: ‘This lady and her son risked much for you in the bad time, reward them now in the good time.’ When the war is over we shall have many such allies.”
She could see he was impressed. The more friends at court, the better.
“And when this is over I shall stay quietly on my thirds, never marrying, building a church on Dungesey perhaps. I shan’t trouble you.”
“Very well, mother. But oh,” suddenly he was a small boy again, “you’re having all that fun doing your bit for the war, and Fitzempress is having all his fun, and I’m stuck here out of it all.”
Fun, thought Matilda.
“Never mind,” said Edmund, “Fitzempress has promised I can be knighted in a year or so when he is. He wants King David of Scotland to do the knighting, so perhaps we shall use the Postern when we sneak into England for the ceremony.” He sighed with pleasure. “Then he’ll have to let me fight in all his battles.”
Matilda sighed with less pleasure. “That’ll be nice.”
Now in accord, mother and son enjoyed themselves and went hunting together in the forest around the hills of Rouen which contained the best hunting in the world.
But the visit was not a success. Time had pushed Matilda away from her old life and companions. Father Alors had become involved in local church politics. Jodi was dead, killed in a tavern brawl. Berte was in charge of Edmund’s house by the Seine, holding it with the unofficial right of the old nurse. Edmund tolerated her with exasperated affection, but spent as much time as possible at the castle. She was thrilled to see Matilda, exclaimed over the state of her digger’s hands and spent the rest of the time talking about Edmund and Rouen.
Matilda went to visit Adeliza’s family. She had already sent them word the girl was dead, saying that she had died of marsh fever. She was prepared to spend time elaborating on Adeliza’s loyalty and purity, but Adeliza’s brother showed little interest. He hadn’t seen his sister in years and her death relieved him of the burden of finding her a marriage and a dowry. To herself Matilda swore that Adeliza should have a splendid memorial in her church when she built it.
But it was at court that Matilda felt most alienated. Fashions had changed for one thing. (They were doing delightful things with their hair and Matilda at once used some of her accumulated rent from Risle on a milliner who created her a small, round box of a hat to which was attached a crespin and a barbette.) The average age had gone down, putting her among the older women. The venal stodginess of the Norman court she remembered had been replaced with Plantagenet style. There was sophistication, enjoyment and, above all, learning. Philosophers, writers and poets took as important a place as barons. There were Arabs teaching mathematics and algebra. Newness, adventure was everything.
The heroine of the court ladies was Eleanor of Aquitaine, the young and reputedly naughty wife of Louis of France, who had insisted on going with him on Crusade, dressed as an Amazon.
“What’s an Amazon?” a bewildered Matilda asked of her former lady-in-waiting, Ghislaine, and Ghislaine who, much to her own disgust, was also regarded as the older generation, said: “I think it’s a sort of dancing girl. That would suit Eleanor.”
The source of all this modernity was the duke himself. Geoffrey had been away on a hunting trip when Matilda had arrived, but returned about a fortnight later to take the head of the table at the feast for St. Joseph’s day. Matilda’s mouth fell open when she saw him. Slowly she shut it. “Do you mean to tell me,” she muttered to Ghislaine, “that the Empress has been wasting all these years fighting a war when she could have been home with that?”
“Lovely, isn’t he?” muttered back Ghislaine. “And every time he looks at one, one is reminded of what one’s got it for.” It was crude, but true. Geoffrey le Bel, and he wasn’t nicknamed “Handsome” for nothing, had the warming knack of looking at every woman, young or old, as if she held interesting possibilities.
“What’s more,” said Ghislaine, “one has it on good authority that on a visit to Paris he and Eleanor of Aquitaine not only found what they’d got it for, but used it.”
“Really?” Goodness, how she’d missed gossip all these years. She enjoyed herself while Ghislaine made up for them.
Matilda bided her time until the conversation came round naturally to mercenaries, then found herself saying, casually: “I suppose they are as promiscuous as ever?”
“Not with us,” said Ghislaine, shocked. “They make do with the sluts of the town. The duke and Fitzempress may fawn on their mercenaries, but any lady of quality who liaised with one would be beyond the pale. She would have to be put away.”
“Tactful as ever.”
“Of course,” Ghislaine
remembered, “that doesn’t apply to you. Everyone knows how shamefully you were treated and it wasn’t your fault.”
Everyone did know it, that was the trouble. She was the Lady with the Past, the one who’d been sold to a mercenary. She was peculiar, set apart, and although she held her head up she knew that to the end of her days rumour would taint her. “Matilda of Risle?” they would ask, “wasn’t she the one who…?”
“Well,” she thought, “it’s all very interesting but soon I must go home.” Once she had owned a score of homes: now there was only one.
She found the Rouennais countryside peculiarly unsatisfying – hilly, primrosed, forested but somehow just pretty. She remembered Pampi remarking about his long trek across England: “They bloody hills kept getting in the way.” These Normandy hills got between her and God. Only the flat, clean lines of the Fens and their sky had significance for her now.
It was Berte who put her mind at rest. “Do you remember that nice lad, Willem of Ghent? Of course you do, of course you do, I forget. He comes and visits me a lot when he’s here.”
“Does he?”
“A lot. We talk about the old days in them marshes, and he tells me about that Fenchel – he’s working for the Plantagenets now.” Berte giggled. “He likes hearing about you, and wants to know how you’re getting on. But of course I can’t tell him much because I don’t know.”
“Will you tell him,” said Matilda, “that I remember him. Just that.”
It was a relief that they had not met. Some things were better left as they were. But she was glad he came and listened to Berte. “I’ll be gone by the time he gets back.”
The problem was: would he get back at all? The news of Fitzempress’ expedition was not good. It had landed at Wareham, swept through Wiltshire and very nearly captured Cricklade and Purton before Stephen, realising what a very small force it was, counter-attacked and drove it back to the coast. The mercenaries with Fitzempress had been hired on credit and now, cheated of victory and therefore loot, they began to demand their pay.
Letters, imploring monetary help, arrived at Rouen and at the Empress’ court, but neither responded. The boy had got himself into this mess against their wishes: let him get himself out of it. It would teach him not to be impulsive.
Matilda did not think of the expeditionary force as “he” but as “they”. Fitzempress might be treated well if he was captured, but would his captain of mercenaries?
She knew it was time to go on the day she bumped into Waleran of Meulan in the hall.
He greeted Matilda with charm, asked after her health and enquired where she was living. She did not enlighten him. Although Waleran had gone over to the Plantagenets while his twin, the Earl of Leicester, stayed on Stephen’s side, she did not trust him.
That very night she made her goodbyes. “Going back to England?” asked Ghislaine. “What for? Where will you go?” If Ghislaine, who absorbed gossip like a sponge, did not know of the Postern arrangement with the Plantagenets, then the secret was well kept.
Geoffrey of Anjou made a private occasion of his farewell to her. He kissed her hand as she curtsied. Near to, he was more breathtaking than ever. “Our son has told us of your courage in the service you perform for him.”
“Yes, well…” Matilda forced herself to concentrate. “It won’t be much of a service if he’s captured, my lord.”
The Plantagenet was even beautiful when he laughed. “Henry? He won’t be. He’ll think of something. You’ll see. He always thinks of something.”
* * *
Encircled on three sides in the encampment at Wareham, with the sea as his only escape route, Henry Fitzempress had thrown a temper so violent he’d rolled on the floor biting rushes and then come out of it. Now he sat on the hearth of the unlit fire, trembling, spitting out stalks and looking sidelong at his captain of mercenaries. “It’s still treachery.”
Willem of Ghent sighed. “You broke the contract. Loot or pay. They haven’t had either. I warned you. We shouldn’t have come in the first place.”
“Why did you, then?”
“Keep you out of trouble. Besides, I thought your lady mother’d pay up.”
Fitzempress wagged a rush at him. “That’s where we made our first mistake. So did I. You’d have thought the appeal I sent her would have melted even her flinty old bowels. It was touching, wasn’t it?”
“Tears to the eyes.”
“But she didn’t and she won’t.” He stood up and fetched a well-worn book out of his jacket. “Let’s see what Vegetius says about mutiny.”
“You go ahead and have a nice read,” said his captain bitterly. The boy was in real trouble. It wasn’t that he was in danger; Willem knew, as the Empress and Geoffrey Plantagenet knew, that he could get him away, smuggle him down to the boats and back to Normandy. But this nice little force Willem had gathered for him would melt away to go and find another war where it could get paid. It would leave Fitzempress a loser, discrediting him in the eyes of the English. Not good for his future prospects.
“‘In the event of mutiny,’” read Fitzempress, “‘it will be advisable after the manner of the ancients, to punish the ringleaders in order that, though few suffer, all may be terrified.’” He looked up. “I think he means decimation. Do you think those lads outside would stand still while we shot one in ten?”
“No.” Willem stopped worrying. The boy was play-acting: he had an idea.
“Nor do I.” He put the book away. “So much for Vegetius. Now then, who haven’t we asked for money? We’ve asked the mater and the pater and Uncle Robert of Gloucester…”
“There’s Uncle David of Scotland, but he’s a bloody long way away.”
“You know the trouble with you, Willem?” Fitzempress turned a cartwheel. “You’re a good captain. And for a mercenary, you’re a good man. But you think in ruts. You haven’t got” – he flung out his arms – “breadth. Expand your mercenary mind. We’ve asked mummies and daddies and uncles, but we haven’t asked our greatest ally.”
“Who’s that?”
Fitzempress pointed through the tent to the north and the besieging royal army. “Stephen. You must remember Stephen, captain. Chap who’s holding England for me just now.” He began striding up and down. “That’s what we’ll do. We’ll drop him a note. Something like: ‘Dear Cousin Stephen, please send me a hundred marks and I’ll go away.’ He’ll do it just to be rid of me. Want to bet he doesn’t?”
The revelation of genius evokes reflex homage in those privileged to witness it. Before he could stop himself, Willem’s hand had grasped the hem of Fitzempress’ cloak and pressed it to his forehead. “You clever little sod,” he said involuntarily.
“I know.” Fitzempress smirked. “I frighten myself sometimes.”
* * *
Stephen paid up and his fourteen-year-old cousin sailed back to Normandy with his mercenary force intact.
Perhaps by paying, Stephen wanted to demonstrate his shrewdness in getting rid of a nuisance without bloodshed. Perhaps he wanted admiration for his chivalry. Perhaps, as his chronicler, the Bishop of Bath, wrote: “he was moved so that by good well bestowed upon his enemy he might heap coals of repentance and reformation upon his mind.”
But there’s no justice. A people who had found no reason to smile at national events in years grinned at this one. The amusement spread through castle halls, into solars, down to servants’ undercrofts, into inns, into cells and out into the fields so that all England laughed.
The Normans, even Stephen’s Normans, wiped their eyes and said: “He’s a chip off the old block.” And the block they meant was Henry the First of England, and the chip was not Stephen, but Henry’s grandson, Fitzempress.
And the English wiped their eyes and said: “The cheeky young bugger.”
And even the Bishop of Bath in his eulogy of Stephen made a slip, or perhaps it wasn’t a slip, and referred to Henry Fitzempress as “the lawful heir” to England, which for the first time put into words what a
lot of people were beginning to think.
Chapter 15
1147–1149
In the October, Robert, Earl of Gloucester, died, tired out by his long war on behalf of his sister.
With the death of her brother much of the fight went out of Empress Matilda and in the first weeks of 1148 she set sail for Normandy and did not return.
The news filtered into the Fens and to Matilda, who received it without interest. “The war’s going on just the same, isn’t it?” It mattered much more to her that Maggi had just died.
As, one by one, Dungesey’s men escaped from the war and came back, Maggi had pined. Her own man would never come back. Lumps developed in her breast and, though Matilda risked a journey to Ely to take her to the cathedral for a cure by St. Etheldreda’s bones, it was no good. At the end there wasn’t enough cordial to stop her pain.
On the day of her lieutenant’s burial, Matilda sat in her hall staring at nothing, and Pampi came up to stand beside her and dropped a small hairless-bellied puppy into her lap. She didn’t touch it: “It’s not Fen.”
“That’s not,” said Pampi. “Wrong sex. But he’ll be a good dog. I call him Wine and Water.”
Matilda picked the puppy up and wiped her eyes on its ears. “That’s a ridiculous name for a dog.”
“Good un, I reckon. That’s all he do.”
* * *
Three sprigs of broom came by Turold and a month later, for one short night, Dungesey contained everything in the world Matilda loved.
Fitzempress was talking as he leaped out of the boat. “The other candidates for knighting went on, but I had to use my Postern, didn’t I?” He gestured back into the boat. “That monk there is a candidate called Edmund, a son of your acquaintance, and the other one is my captain of mercenaries because he thinks I’ll drop dead if he doesn’t watch me.”
The Morning Gift Page 26