The Prior said gently, ‘You too must come to terms with yourself – as I think you know.’
‘I? I am of no consequence.’
‘You are, both to God and to yourself, my friend, and to the Lady Maud. You are also a leader. You cannot escape that.’
Brien sighed. ‘I suppose you are right. Only it makes me see, Waltheof, that we have all the more need of men like you. And if God wills it, you will be the next Archbishop.’
A look of intense pain crossed the Prior’s face. ‘I will prostrate myself before Him, beseech Him fasting that it may not be so.’
He went away down the dark gallery and Brien thought remorsefully that he had sent him, not to sleep, but to spend the night on his knees imploring Heaven not to fling him into the archiepiscopal seat in York.
CHAPTER 2
‘How long are we to do nothing?’ The voice of the Empress rang round the chamber, her eyes bright with annoyance. ‘I have been here a year and still we achieve nothing.’
‘We are here,’ her brother emphasised the last word. ‘Do you think we are not a thorn in Stephen’s side?’
‘A thorn?’ she retorted mockingly. ‘I would be more than that, by Our Lady. I would be as a sword set in his bowels and have his rebels under my foot.’ She sat in a carved chair, her fingers gripping the arms, her purple gown trailing, facing her two brothers, her nephew Philip leaning against the back of the chair. Baldwin and Brien stood by the closed door and on the other side of it two small pages waited in attendance, ready if they were summoned. They grinned at each other now, for even through the thick wood they could hear the Lady’s familiar ringing tone.
Robert was watching with a grave face, his keen mind grappling with the problems that faced them all while Reginald was looking troubled. Since the King had marched into Cornwall and seized Exeter, Reginald had left de Mohun holding Dunster, FitzRichard at Bridgwater, and brought his young wife to safety here at Bristol, but he wanted to get back to the fight. Count Alain of Richmond, now Earl of Cornwall, had laid waste a large part of his lands and he had not enough men to retaliate. ‘I did what I could,’ he said at last in a disgruntled voice.
His sister slewed round in her chair. ‘I do not blame you, Reginald. At least you fought while we sit here – ’
‘We do not sit here, as you put it,’ Robert said patiently. He was pacing slowly, his long gown disturbing the rushes, his face grave. ‘I am preparing, my sister, to meet the King in pitched battle, but you must give me time.’
‘Time! Is a year not enough? Those wild Welshmen of yours are spoiling for a fight – God knows they do enough damage here with their feuding and plundering among our own men.’
‘Many of them are gone to get the harvest in,’ Brien commented. ‘When they return – ’
‘When!’
The Earl stopped his pacing and stood before her. ‘Will you not listen? If the harvest is not brought in we shall all starve and it was I who sent the men who needed to go. Another week and – ’
‘But we have waited all summer. ’
Robert sighed. ‘Only because the King’s brother wished to make peace and we listened to his proposals. If those talks at Bath had been successful, perhaps further slaughter would have been avoided. ’
‘Oh,’ she broke in irritably, ‘I would have accepted reasonable terms and my rights, but Stephen would not.’
‘Lady,’ Baldwin said, ‘we have stung the King since then like bees about the edge of a hive. He does not know where to turn next and has lost men and stores in plenty.’
‘What are a few sorties?’ she queried, deep in the grip of her irritation. ‘I tell you we did things differently in Germany. There we did not wait for the enemy to come to us.’
‘He has not dared and will not,’ Robert answered shortly.
She laughed angrily. ‘If we stay here long enough he will be outside our gates before Christmas.’
‘You are right, my aunt,’ Philip said casually. ‘We who are younger and less careful would have met him long ago.’
‘We will be better served without your comments,’ his father said tersely, but the Empress nodded.
‘The boy is right. The lords in Germany were of that mettle.’
It was Robert who was angry now. ‘For God’s sake, leave talking of Germany, I am sick to death of it.’
She raised her arm in an infuriated gesture but he caught and held it hard by the wrist. ‘Strike me, Lady, and by St. Joseph I will have you on the next boat for Normandy.’
She struggled vainly. ‘You would not dare! I am your Queen.’
‘Not yet,’ he retorted grimly.
For a moment no one spoke. Baldwin and Brien, used to her high-handed talk, waited for the scene to play itself out. Baldwin wore a half smile, unperturbed, for he liked a woman of spirit and the more impetuous she became the more he applauded her, but Brien cared too much for her dignity to have her quarrelling with the Earl and it annoyed him to see Philip stirring up trouble between them.
She regained her composure, aware that there were some spheres in which she could not match her brother. ‘Robert – you would not desert me?’
‘My sister,’ he released her wrist, ‘when have I ever done other than to serve you? What eats at you that you cannot trust me to manage your affairs?’
‘God knows,’ she answered sombrely and then gave a sudden harsh laugh. ‘Perhaps it is just the plain fact that I am a woman. If I were a blasphemer like my uncle Rufus I would shake my fist at God for making me female.’
Baldwin came to stand before her, smiling. ‘Lady, do you not know that a Queen arouses emotions in men that a King cannot?’
This time her laugh was gentler. ‘Oh, I know, lord of Redvers, that you see it so. But I am not made in that mould. Come, to business. Are there no plans in your heads?’
‘Of course,’ Robert said with commendable patience. ‘All summer we have had Stephen scurrying from east to west of the country trying to scotch our rebels. God’s death, if I were in his place I would finish one piece of business before I tackled another. But I think the time has come to strike a heavier blow in the midlands. Wallingford holds in the east and will keep watch there – no doubt of that, Brien?’
‘None. I had news yesterday from my wife. All is well.’
‘Then if we march here – ’ Robert unrolled a map on the table and laid a finger almost in the centre of England, ‘at Nottingham we shall be on the fringe of my son-in-law’s lands and perhaps he will show his hand.’
‘My lord of Chester has but one thought in his head,’ the Empress put in sharply, ‘to regain Carlisle and his Northumbrian lands. That is the only way we shall win him to us. ’
‘King David favours you,’ Robert said, ‘above his other niece the Queen, and we can, we must make peace between him and Ranulf. We will march against Stephen’s stronghold at Nottingham. With a victory behind us we shall be better able to effect this.’
‘You are right,’ she agreed and looked from one to the other, her eyes alight at the prospect. ‘Who will go?’
He rolled up the map. ‘I will take Baldwin and my sons and the bulk of my army within the week to meet Miles and his men at Hereford. Reginald, you must hold Bristol in case of a divergent attack.’
‘And I?’ Brien queried.
‘Will you stay here in Gloucester and watch over my sister? One of us must be responsible at the heart of our cause.’
‘Willingly.’ He glanced at Maud and then at Robert and wondered if the Earl guessed that was the part he would have chosen.
As they dispersed, each man to begin his own preparations, he lingered behind the others and was about to ask the Empress if she had any particular instructions for him when she said abruptly, ‘You think me ill-tempered?’
He shook his head, smiling. ‘Not ill-tempered – intolerant perhaps. You would go straight to your goal while we take the slower way.’
She said honestly, ‘No, I am ill-tempered, but it is because I am impa
tient. I cannot bear delay.’
‘You would be well advised, Domina, to listen to Robert even though he seems over-cautious.’
She shifted restlessly in her chair. ‘It is all talk. I wish I could ride out with the soldiers like that English Queen – what was her name?’
‘Boadicea.’
‘If I could drive out as she did in a chariot with spiked wheels – ’
He laughed. ‘You have your men enough in awe of you as it is.’
‘Then that is as it should be. I am their Queen and I have acquired the habit of command.’
‘You may command me as you will and I’ll not call you ill-tempered,’ he said lightly, ‘but there are others whom it would be better not to offend.’
The dark eyes flashed momentarily. ‘I will bring them under my heel as my grandfather would have done. ’
Brien picked up a silver cup from the table and turned it in his hand, his fingers tracing the design. ‘Those days are past, Domina. The barons will not be held as they were then. You must bind them to you in a different manner – by your beauty and your wit.’
She leaned back in the chair and then glanced up at him, a faint smile returning to her face, and her hands closed strongly on the arms of her chair. ‘One way or another, I will hold them.’
When the Earl and his men had gone the castle seemed strangely quiet despite the normal garrison there. All the men of Wallingford, under the command of Gilbert Basset were with the army except for Brien’s immediate household and on the first day after dinner three of them sat on a long bench in the hall, considerably disgruntled. The trestles had been cleared since the meal but Bernard the staller still held a flagon in his hand and was filling their cups.
‘Others did the fighting for us at Wallingford,’ he said sourly, ‘and now the Earl takes the army to sack a city rich with plunder and we are left here like old women, guarding a castle that is in no danger.’
‘If you are thinking of plunder,’ Ingelric said prosaically, ‘no doubt there will be plenty more to be had, and anyway I don’t know that I want to rob my own countrymen. My mother came from Nottingham.’
Bernard scratched his chin. ‘Plunder is plunder, and I’ve four children to feed.’
Ingelric laughed. ‘Then go and tell our lord so – perhaps he’ll let you ride after them. But I can imagine the sort of answer he’d give you.’
Bernard gave him a sulky grin. ‘Oh, I know he doesn’t allow any other man to care for Maclou, let alone his other horses. And I’m not one to argue with Brien FitzCount.’
Roger looked at him in surprise. ‘I always thought our lord was better-natured than any other. I’ve never seen him beat his pages nor ill-treat any man.’
Ingelric shrugged. ‘That’s just because he knows how to use men, and so they obey him. But go contrary to his orders and you will see his hot Breton blood.’
‘I’ve no mind to do that,’ Roger shook his head. ‘I only want to fight.’
‘If the Earl sacks Nottingham the King must fight us,’ Ingelric told him and yawned. ‘And the sooner it is done the sooner we can ride back to Wallingford.’
‘We all know you’ve only one thought in your head,’ Bernard retorted, ‘but we’re not all so wench-ridden that we cannot turn our minds to other things.’
‘I am not wench-ridden,’ Ingelric said amiably and aimed a blow at Bernard’s head. ‘I am caught by one only and would wed her as soon as may be, that is all.’
Roger raised his cup mockingly. ‘Then she’s a brave girl to think she can tame so great an ox. I’ll wager before the year’s out she’ll have you out to grass at Huntercombe and fighting only when our master commands your fee.’
‘You would lose your money,’ the object of his teasing told him. ‘I’ll keep her where I want her – I’m told I’m a rare man in bed.’
Bernard gave a throaty chuckle and glanced up as young Thurstin, thin and coltish, came over to them from the far end of the hall. ‘My lord says he will hawk this afternoon, Messire Bernard, and bids you have Maclou saddled and ready by noon, and he will take the large peregrine and the new hawk.’
‘Well, at least we go hunting,’ Bernard said and got to his feet. ‘Come, boy, and I’ll show you how to hood the birds without having your finger bitten off. ’
The lord of Wallingford himself, had Ingelric been able to read his mind, had no sense of impatience at all-in fact these days at Gloucester became a halcyon time for him. The lady Mabel, Robert’s wife, and her daughters were there, and Abbot Gilbert dined with them most days, but he spent his waking hours with the Empress, riding, hawking, hunting by day and in the evening reading with her. He borrowed books from the Abbot’s library and read from Plato and Socrates, from the early fathers, from Boethius and Beowulf and from his favourite Bede. He found her mind as sharp as his own, her intelligence quick to grasp always the deeper meaning, and it was the first time since he was a boy that he had enjoyed a companionship that satisfied his intellect. One evening when they were reading from Prudentius,
‘Once again the shining road
Leads to ample paradise,
Open are the woods again
That the serpent lost for men…’
she gave a sudden laugh and said, ‘It is a man’s world – only a man would blame a woman for the loss of paradise.’
He shook his head, smiling. ‘I have always thought paradise one thing for one man, something different for another. ’
‘And what is it for you, Brien FitzCount?’
He spoke lightly, ‘I could give you an easy answer, Domina, but I do not think I yet truly know. My friend, Prior Waltheof, would say that it is to flee all vanity, all beauty, but I doubt it. The world was once the Garden of Eden, was it not? ’
She said crisply, ‘I would better applaud a man who serves the world than one who runs from it.’
‘Well, at least Waltheof has his paradise. King Stephen did not know how well he served the Prior when he refused his nomination to the Archbishopric.’
‘Maybe not,’ she said, momentarily diverted. ‘But Stephen’s choice of his nephew, William FitzHerbert, did not please the Holy Father.’
‘You mean it has not pleased Abbot Bernard,’ Brien corrected amusedly. ‘His choice would have been Henry Murdac of Fountains. Abbot Gilbert says Bernard calls the new Archbishop “that idolator.”’ He was silent for a moment, his smile fading. Not long since, the man he admired above all as a teacher, a thinker, the great Master Abelard himself, had been condemned as a heretic at Sens and what books of his that could be found burned. He found it hard to forgive the Abbot of Clairvaux for his part in that – narrow, he thought, Bernard was saintly but narrow – and from what he had heard the thing had been a farce, half the bishops in the court befuddled by wine and dozing off in the hot afternoon. Now his friend Waltheof, following Bernard’s teaching, had left Kirkham and gone to the small Cistercian house at Wardon to the apparent annoyance of his family. Waltheof had fled the world as he wished to do, and perhaps, viewed from eternity, he had chosen the better part, but looking at Maud now, Brien did not think so. Life was for living and paradise for him was to be in her company, as the culmination of his manhood would be to hold her in his arms, to take her to himself.
His sequence of thought halted abruptly. Jesu! What was he thinking? Was it thus that a subject should think of his Queen?
He sat silent, staring blindly at her, yet seeing her as he had not seen her before until she glanced up from the book, her copper brown eyes, her most lovely feature, fixed on his face. ‘My lord, you look as if you had seen a ghost. Has our talk of paradise made you regret Adam’s loss?’
He recovered himself magnificently. ‘Why, no,’ he answered and kept his voice light. ‘To regain paradise gives us the desire that makes us men.’ But he wondered how much she had read in his face. He took the book from her, and closing it with a snap that woke the lady Mabel who was nodding over her embroidery, took the opportunity to excuse himself because of
the lateness of the hour.
Outside he stood in the gallery above the hall. The lights were dowsed, men lying on their pallets, the fire dying. He stood there shivering, yet he was not cold for he felt the sweat standing on his forehead and he leaned his face against the stone wall to cool it. Mother of God, what had come to him? An emotion so powerful that he knew alternate joy that it should be so and grief as, hard on the heels of that heady exaltation, came the knowledge that there could never be a happy consummation.
The Lion's Legacy (Conqueror Trilogy Book 3) Page 11