The Morning Gift

by The Morning Gift (retail) (epub)

  That night Dungesey’s kitchens excelled themselves. “Is this a floater?” Fitzempress crammed a dumpling into his mouth. Down the table Epona was fascinating Turold, and the captain of mercenaries was almost hidden by his crossbow apprentices while Edmund, to Pampi’s delight, had sat himself between him and Wilberta.

  Matilda knew she was happy rather than felt it. She had not thought anything could disconcert her again, but the emotions and embarrassments caused by having her future king, her son and the mercenary she’d once slept with under one roof, flustered her. She’d greeted the mercenary with no less and no more politeness than was due to a guest, and since then had not looked at him.

  Fitzempress was enough to fluster anyone. Since his arrival he’d been all over the island, climbing the motte, examining the foxes’ ears on the village’s thatch, bursting into Wealyham, wading Nightlairs, prowling Hogwood, insisting on meeting every living soul and asking them questions about fenland economy, farming and warfare and listening to replies – he seemed to understand English even though he didn’t speak it – and generally driving her mad by ignoring all the plans she’d made for his reception. The islanders approved of him.

  “What did that man call me?” He pointed a dumpling-laden knife at Pampi.

  “A slodger. He thinks it’s a compliment.”

  “Isn’t it?” He loved everybody; he loved Stephen for making this knighting into a dangerous adventure. He could have cured Maggi.

  “But I’ll look after Edmund,” he assured her, “and my captain of mercenaries will look after me.” He seemed aware that Matilda and the mercenary had not looked at each other since the meal began. “You remember Willem of Ghent, don’t you, madam? We understood he was of use to you once?”

  Yes, Matilda said, she remembered the mercenary. She could have sworn she said it with no change of expression, but the young Plantagenet picked up something from the air. He gave out a long “Ah Haaa”. The look on the boy’s round face belonged to one who has made a move at chess which has greater possibilities than at first thought. He watched the mercenary, then Edmund, then her. He put his arms behind his head: “He served you, madam, did he?”

  “Yes,” snapped Matilda.

  The boy nodded and raised his voice. “Edmund, Willem of Ghent served your mother well. How will you reward him?” And the little sod put his tongue into his cheek.

  Edmund looked up from his plate, still chewing. “What? Well, my lord, he can have whatever he wants, within reason, of course.”

  Her son, Matilda was glad to see, had a careful soul. She wondered what the penalty was for giving a prince of the blood a clout round the ear. She said, “The man has been useful to you too, my lord. I am sure he will not be forgotten when you are king.”

  “When I’m king,” said Fitzempress, “he won’t be, but in the meantime what have you got that he’d fancy?” With an accuracy which left Matilda gasping, he ran through her entire list of estates. “All escheated of course, except for the fenland. Now didn’t Robert of Dunwich get killed at Lincoln and leave no heir? And didn’t he hold Stuntney of you?”

  Stuntney was an unexploited, run-to-seed manor in the silt fens.

  “Yes.”

  “There you are, then.”

  Edmund said: “May he have it, mother? It’s in your gift, and we have reason to be grateful.”

  “If he wants it.”

  “Oh, he’ll want it all right,” said Fitzempress. “Let’s hope it’s all he wants. Well, he can’t take seisin yet, but we can witness the gift.”

  Matilda watched her feast disintegrate as the guests were brought to the top table for witnesses and a search begun for parchment, ink and pen. Fitzempress, the only person present who could write, began scratching out the deed. “What’s the rent?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Yes, you do, mother,” said her son, the fool, “it’s a goose-feather mattress every Lady Day.”

  Fitzempress stood up, walked over to a hall pillar as if to examine its carving, slammed his fist against it, and turned, his face expressionless, to resume writing.

  At last the hubbub quietened and two calloused hands were placed within her own, and the mercenary was kneeling before her, looking to see how she was taking it. He too, she saw, was amused. “God blast all men,” she thought. She wanted to ask: “How’s your back?” but felt the question might be misconstrued by the dirty-minded young Plantagenet.

  His Flemish voice spoke the fealty: “I am your man, lady, body and soul to serve you my life long…” and she was in a flutter in case everybody heard the truth in it. She wanted to release his hands, she didn’t want to let them go. Her neck felt hot. She wished the whole boiling lot of them had never come.

  The rest of the evening was torture with Fitzempress trying embarrassing and elaborate ploys to create a situation where Matilda and the mercenary could be alone. To her relief Edmund didn’t understand any of them, and stayed stolidly by his mother’s side.

  The breeze the next morning was joking; it kicked and scattered clouds off to the west, flapping the leaves of the willows white side up and generally making the Fens laugh. No countryside laughed like the Fens; rushes, reeds and water responded to breeze like a baby to tickling.

  Matilda stood at the entrance to the hall and her men lined up to say goodbye. “Edmund,” said Fitzempress, “I must have dropped my knife somewhere, be a good chap…” Edmund turned obediently and the prince hissed: “Quick. You’ve got a minute.”

  The mercenary used all of it kissing Matilda and she so far forgot herself as to kiss him back. Edmund returned to bid his flushed mother goodbye and join the captain of the mercenaries at the foot of the steps. The Plantagenet grinned at her: “I’m a wonderful young man, aren’t I?”

  “Any more wonderful, my lord, and I’ll kick your shins.” She could hear him still laughing as they went down the Causeway and out of sight.

  She heard the sound in her head for the rest of that year, every time news of his exploits came to her.

  The knighting was a success, especially as Ranulf Moustaches turned up to make alliance with David of Scotland and give his allegiance to the Plantagenets.

  Afterwards Fitzempress and his band zig-zagged south through England, making for the small army which awaited him in the West Country. Stephen sent a force to waylay him. He knew his true and lethal enemy now. If his own son, Eustace, was to succeed him Henry Fitzempress must be eliminated.

  The Plantagenet eluded Stephen so the king alerted Eustace, who was now in charge of the royal army in the south.

  Eustace had grown into a forceful young man, intent on kingship. Unlike his father, he didn’t give a damn for a chivalrous image. He belonged to the scorched earth school of warfare. Churches, houses, crops were fired as he moved in Fitzempress’ wake until large stretches of the West Country were dead ground.

  Fitzempress returned to Normandy to gather a bigger army. Again his retreat was not defeat. His fighting had shown leadership and caught the English imagination. In Normandy they welcomed him like a hero. He was sixteen but his father now made him Duke of Normandy, handing the duchy over as if he himself had merely been its guardian.

  Stephen’s opponent was no longer a woman but a grandson, a worthy grandson, of Henry the First. And one who had the backing of the Pope. If the magnates were ever to administer their estates on both sides of the Channel in peace, their only hope lay with the young Plantagenet.

  The war went on, but it was a waiting war. Everybody in England was waiting for Fitzempress to come back and claim it.

  Chapter 16

  1150–1154

  Somebody was killing the great as well as the lowly. God, or a human assassin, was wanting a speedy peace. For the people who now dropped dead were among the war’s proponents.

  The Earl of Gloucester was dead. Now Prince Henry of Scotland died, followed a year later by the Empress’ uncle, David of Scotland.

  Brien Fitz Count of Wallingford died, impoveris
hed.

  Stephen’s best ally, his wife Matilda, died – even her enemies grieved.

  Ranulf Moustaches died, it was believed from poisoning.

  Baldwin de Redvers, who’d started the insurrection when he seized Exeter, died. So did the Earls of Hereford and Warwick.

  All these people would have stood in the way of a negotiated peace if they had lived. One by one they were being eliminated, leaving more malleable successors who might be persuaded to compromise.

  Public opinion, already hysterical, decided there was a peace-loving assassin on the loose. William Fitz Herbert, whose election as Archbishop of York had lost Stephen the support of the Pope, died from drinking a poisoned chalice at mass. Terrified nobles began employing food-tasters.

  Some answered the call of Bernard of Clairvaux for a Second Crusade. Waleran of Meulan took the cross temporarily and went to the Holy Land. Lesser men who had struggled to keep the administration of the country going through the war tired of it and went to capture Lisbon from the Saracens.

  At home grew a consensus, that Stephen should rule for his lifetime but that, on his death, the throne should go to Fitzempress.

  One person didn’t see it that way: Eustace, Stephen’s son.

  * * *

  Every month Matilda and the Abbot of Ramsey met at the Stun where Driftway became Monks’ Bank to exchange news and to discuss Postern business since they were both now involved in passing agents through it.

  Every month Matilda expected to see in the stout, dull man something of the abbot she had once known; each time she was disappointed. She was only glad that he did not seem to notice that the Stun had moved to his detriment.

  The marshes were noisy with the courtship calls of snipe and ruff.

  “I’m planting hemp this year,” said Matilda. “It should fetch a good price if building starts again. Any news?”

  “Fitzempress is married. Eleanor of Aquitaine, God forgive him. No sooner is she divorced from Louis of France than our young prince has whipped to Poitiers and married her himself.”

  “Dear Lord, he’ll have an empire.” Eleanor’s land was all south-west France.

  Abbot Walter said: “And a wife of dubious morals eleven years older than he is. To say nothing of her former husband who is furious at the alliance and has invaded Normandy once more because of it.”

  Matilda sighed. “So Fitzempress won’t be coming back yet.”

  Pampi, propped against an osier truncheon, was weaving the special trap for the two-inch elvers which would soon be wriggling up the lodes, shaping it to the flow of water and the way of eels.

  “No,” said the abbot. He thought: “I have married a wife and therefore I cannot come.”

  Matilda thought: “Lucky old Eleanor.”

  * * *

  In 1152 Stephen summoned Archbishop Theobald and the other bishops to London to demand that they anoint his son, Eustace, as king and successor. They refused. Stephen imprisoned the bishops but Theobald’s supporters managed to get him away. Stephen’s men watched the ports in order to capture him, but the archbishop left England by a secret route.

  “More lampreys, my lord archbishop?” asked Matilda.

  “I am tempted, but refuse, my lady. We must remember the fate of our late and excellent King Henry. ‘No,’ I told Stephen, ‘the Pope has forbidden the anointing of Prince Eustace on the grounds that you obtained the throne by perjury.’” The old man had more animation now than in his whole life.

  “But when will it end? When will Fitzempress come?”

  * * *

  1152 ended with wicked weather on land and at sea, and everybody knew Fitzempress would not be arriving that year. But he did. He was always able to persuade seamen to risk their lives and his, and always he made safe landfall. But the army he brought wasn’t as large as it should have been; he’d had to leave Normandy protected against France. It included a large number of mercenaries…

  * * *

  The pennant they lowered to half-mast on the flagpole of Wallingford Castle was so heavy with rain it hung straight down like a stick and resisted the wind’s efforts to wave it.

  Rain they would have given their eye-teeth for in East Anglia, where crops were withering in the fields for lack of it, was unjustly lashing the Thames basin where there were no crops because there’d been no peasants left alive to plant them.

  The wicket in the door of the bridgehouse creaked open – lack of use had nearly rusted it shut – and a herald stepped out on to the bridge, his trumpet displayed, but downwards, to keep out the wet.

  Below and on either side raindrops hit the river so hard they formed depressions and bounced up again, as if the Thames was boiling. They thundered on to the bridge planking.

  By the time he had reached the other side and stood before the gatehouse of Stephen’s Crowmarsh outworks, the herald was soaked, and his cloak dragged behind him, like a little boy’s nightshirt.

  He blew a call, then shouted: “A truce. The Lady of Wallingford is dead. A truce for the passing of her cortège.”

  In the ugly, utilitarian bailey of the outworks Eustace bellowed: “It’s a trick.” Though the hood of his cloak and his hair were plastered to his head he seemed impervious to the rain. He was already mounted as if he could not wait for the battle to start. The other lords stood around the side of the bailey sheltering under its eaves, using their horses as shields. Water-spouts jetted streams out and down on to the cobbles.

  Ypres raised his voice: “How can it be a trick? We’ve known the poor lady over there was dying.”

  Robert, Earl of Leicester, nodded to Stephen’s herald on the bailey allure. “Allow the truce.”

  “I say it’s a trick.” Eustace’s shouting made his stallion circle and the others stamp in the puddles. “Fitzempress has been trying to draw us away from here all year. He wants the river crossing.”

  “So?”

  “So I say it’s a trick.” He rode to the portcullis passage and leaned down to peer across the bridge. “Look. Look, the gate’s opening. Now’s our chance. We can attack.”

  Sheltering in the passage, his father looked slowly up at him: “Prince Eustace, we must show chivalry.”

  The prince’s voice echoed through the tunnel. “Chivalry, my arse.”

  Across the bridge the candles of the monks who were to accompany the bier to Westminster dispelled something of the bridgehouse’s gloom, but even the incense of their censors couldn’t overcome its smell of fungus and urine. As Fitzempress strode in to pay his last respects he brought with him wet, fresh air. His sopping cloak had dragged open, across the chest of his tunic were the three leopards which had been his father’s device. His carroty hair was dark with rain.

  He knelt briefly: “God save and reward you, lady.” But the Prior of Wallingford’s Holy Trinity wanted more reward for the lady’s – and his – sufferings than that. He drew back the bier cloth and opened the coffin so that the prince could gaze on the mortal remains of the woman who had held Wallingford for him through three sieges. Another monk lowered the candle to throw light on the wizened little face which peered out of the shroud like a monkey’s.

  “She’s old.” Fitzempress was startled. “Are you sure this is her? How old was she?”

  The prior shrugged. “Thirty-five, perhaps.”

  The coffin closed, the cortège moved out on to the bridge and Maud of Wallingford was allowed to leave her castle now that she was dead.

  Fitzempress had his helmet on before they had reached the other side of the bridge. “And now let’s get on with the battle.”

  A quarter of a mile north where the river curved two armies stood in the meadows facing each other across the Thames. Mud squeezed over their boots and the men had formed tortoises covered by sacking to keep out the wet. Rain hit the sullen backs of Stephen’s men and the sullen fronts of Fitzempress’ men as if it hated them equally. The magnates’ banners of both sides hung in anonymous rags. Both armies were hungry, but there was nothing to eat.<
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  The battle speeches had been made ineffective by the noise of the rain but now the trumpets, shawms and drums cut through it. Each army undulated as its soldiers threw off the sacks and stood to attention.

  Out of a total of four thousand men – Stephen’s army was slightly the larger – only two had vitality, Eustace and Fitzempress. They rode to the front, forced their horses down the banks, turned back, shouting, cajoling, persuading, boasting, and finally swearing.

  A small band formed obediently behind each but after that initial move forward they did not stir.

  “A Plantagenet,” howled Fitzempress. “On to victory.”

  “Stephen, Stephen,” roared Eustace. “England.”

  The armies stood still in the rain and the river boiled between them.

  On the Crowmarsh side men like de Warenne and de Ferrers had wet on their faces that was not only rain. They had served Stephen since his coronation, but they did not move.

  On the Wallingford side tears dripped out of John the Marshal’s only good eye; not to fight when the trumpets sounded and this young Plantagenet called was like asking him not to breathe. But he did not move.

  From his position by the king, Robert, Earl of Leicester, stared straight ahead and by projection into the eyes of his twin brother Waleran of Meulan on the Plantagenet bank. Neither moved.

  Their knights and men endured the rain, watched their lords and did not move.

  Fitzempress’ captain of mercenaries rode up to his employer and took the bridle of his horse. He leaned over and wiped froth from Fitzempress’ mouth. “Not now. Dear Jesus, don’t throw one now.” He led the boy and the horse away to a clump of beeches where carts had been parked under shelter. He helped Fitzempress dismount and held his head while he vomited. Edmund followed and took up station to keep everyone else away.

  Fitzempress’ face was so rigid he had difficulty in enunciating. “They’re s-standing s-still enough to decimate now-now.”