As they went north-west and entered the castellan’s own lands, Ingelric said to Bernard the staller, ‘I did not know there had been so much fighting here while we’ve been away. Please God Huntercombe stands.’
The town of Wallingford welcomed her lord as he rode through the streets but though it was market day there were few stalls set up, little merchandise and only some half dozen merchants there. The mint, which was normally busy, was closed and Brien passed it with tightened lips.
The lady of Wallingford saw their approach and on this last evening of May she was on the steps of the hall as her lord dismounted and came across the courtyard. She bent her knee dutifully and held up her face for his kiss, but received only the briefest salutation on her cheek.
‘You are well?’ he asked formally.
‘As you see,’ she answered, ‘though we had anxious weeks until we heard of your victory at Lincoln and your own welfare.’
‘I have survived,’ he said drily and glanced round the bailey, ‘but we passed through many burned manors on our way. Greetings, Amauri,’ he added as his cousin came down the steps. ‘I can see you have kept all in order here.’
They went together into the hall, the garrison gathering to welcome their lord, the men who had ridden in with him hurrying to meet wives and children. John of Ramsay, the garrison commander, stood awaiting his lord’s attention, and Ingelric with the freedom of a man back from the battlefield, took Beatrice by the hand and drew her to a corner where he might talk with her. Roger Foliot and Thurstin, now grown into a leggy youth, sought out their friends to boast of their experiences, and Gilbert Basset began to tell John of the discomforts of the campaign without being able to hide his satisfaction at having been in it instead of at home.
To Brien the homecoming was a somewhat grim affair. Where he had had rich fields and thriving crops in many places there was only wild scrub and couch grass, no men left to till the land; where villages survived the peasants were afraid, hungry and sullen even towards him who had always been a good lord to them. The rich fought the wars, he reflected, and the poor paid for them.
To Amauri he said, ‘You must give me an accounting of the land – what tithes have come in, what we have lost.’
Amauri looked grave. ‘All winter we were hemmed in by my lord of Leicester’s troops but he is fled now after his brother Count Waleran and his men are gone. I have done what I could, Brien, but I fear there will be barely half the corn we had last year. A dozen of your manors are burned and we have lost the labour to restore the fields at Pyrton and Chalgrove. Britwell is burned and the dues from Swyncombe for the Abbot of Bec must be met from elsewhere or not paid at all.
’
‘Let me have it all in detail later,’ Brien said frowning, ‘then we can see what must be done. We will have to build again what has been destroyed – and now that the Empress is victorious it should not be too hard. Are there many dead?’
‘It is hard to say who is dead and who is fled. Old Edward of Ewelme was burned in his house. I suppose about two score men are gone from your lands.’
It was bad enough but it could, he thought, have been worse. He ordered supper to be served and suggested to John that as they were only home for a few days Beatrice might be wed to Ingelric in the morning.
‘I’ve no objection,’ John agreed. ‘I’m no longer young, my lord, and old wounds pain me. With your permission I’ve a mind to go back and end my days in Ramsay, so the lad can have my daughter and my place as well if it serves you.’
‘It serves me,’ Brien said and glanced, smiling, at the girl, her cheeks pink, and at Ingelric’s pleased expression. Huntercombe had escaped the attentions of Stephen’s men and despite the lateness of the hour Ingelric said he would ride out at once to fetch his father and mother for the nuptials.
‘They are well suited,’ Brien said later to Mata in their chamber, ‘and they have love before marriage, which is a rare thing.’
‘They are fortunate,’ Mata said in a low voice. ‘Even if love comes afterwards it does not bring joy unless it is fruitful.’
He felt a sudden flare of exasperation. Why must she always harp on the old grievance? After this separation of more than eighteen months she must needs dig and probe into their relationship instead of accepting what could not be mended. He glanced at her where she sat on a stool unplaiting her hair. She had been plain as a girl and was growing plainer with the years – yet she was a good woman and did her duty by him and by the poor and the sick, and he would have felt nothing but kindness for her if she would only let well alone.
‘I am tired,’ he said with an elaborate yawn and got into bed. When she came he had closed his eyes and pretended to be already asleep.
In the morning Ingelric was wedded to his Beatrice in the castle chapel. There was feasting that lasted the best part of the day, and though there had been no time to provide much entertainment, Brien’s own minstrel sang to them, two of his men who were excellent tumblers performed feats that set them all clapping, and a dancing bear was brought in to amuse them with his antics.
Many of the men, released from the tensions of war, got drunk on Brien’s good wine and he watched them with tolerant amusement. The hall grew hotter and noisier, the songs more ribald, the servant girls squealing as the soldiers pinched them or chased them out into the warm summer night.
At last Mata took Beatrice by the hand and led her away and shortly afterwards Brien escorted the bridegroom to the guest chamber which he had put at their disposal for the wedding night. There the couple were bedded together; there were the usual lewd jokes that did not spare the bride’s blushes, the toasts to be drunk, the throwing of posies, the fertility emblems that lingered despite the Church’s ban, the final blessing of the bed by the chaplain Walter, and then the couple were left alone in the darkness, Brien taking the last torch with him as he left the chamber.
The light flickered for a moment on Ingelric’s face and as he closed the door Brien, who had seen many of his men to their marriage beds, felt for the first time a deep and bitter sorrow that he had never known the joy written so clearly on Ingelric’s open features. This was that unusual thing, a love-match, and as he mounted the stair to his own chamber he thought of them, of the girl lying in her lover’s arms, of Ingelric taking the woman he desired, of the happiness such a union must bring. He had never known it, would never know it now, for his love was doomed. He had thought he could love from a distance and be content but tonight he recognised that fallacy for what it was, for every sense was on fire, every pulse alive, a terrible yearning, born of Ingelric’s consummation, tearing at him.
He shut his door, thankful that Mata was still busy with her ladies in the bower. He could hear a child crying and guessed Mata would be soothing it with her gentle hands, breaking her own heart perhaps.
He pulled himself together. He was a scholar, and surely all the years of study, of philosophic thought must stand him in good stead. He would find a book and read, turn his thoughts from love into the cooler channels of the spirit before he went to bed. He meant to look for Plato or Juvenal perhaps but instead found a book lying on the top of his chest, one he had lent some time ago to Robert D’Oyley and which the lady Edith must have returned recently.
Because it was to hand he picked it up and turned the pages and there a poem that he had once read with abstract interest now leapt from the page to add to the fire that tormented him.
If she whom I desire would stoop to love me,
I should look down on Jove;
If for one night my lady would lie by me
And I kiss the mouth I love,
Then come Death unrelenting
With quiet breath consenting,
I go forth unrepenting,
Content, content, content,
That such delight were ever to me lent.
Dear God, if for one night his Lady would lie by him, would he not go forth unrepenting! It would be worth a lifetime of penance thereafter if he could hol
d her once, kiss her mouth – she who was like no other woman.
He stood rigid, the book in his hand. Was he mad to contemplate it even in his own mind, to picture himself and her as Ingelric and Beatrice were now? The thing was impossible. Even were she to desire him as he desired her, she had behind her a tradition of holy Queens – her mother, Eadgyth-Matilda, her grandmothers, the Conqueror’s Queen and Queen Margaret of Scotland, venerated as a saint, and before them the chaste wife of Edward called the Confessor. The Lady’s father might have lain with half the women in his kingdom, but the Conqueror’s strict moral tenets still lingered in men’s minds and Henry after all had been a man. She would be judged very differently.
He closed the book and laid it in the chest. Of what use to torment himself? His love could exist nowhere but in his own mind. Sometimes he thought she cared for him – a few weeks ago she had been so obviously glad he was safely returned from Lincoln – but that it was more than an affection of long standing he doubted. In any case he must not hope for it. Did he want her to suffer as he suffered now?
‘If for one night my lady would lie by me…’
He swung away to the window and looked out into the moonlit darkness. A silvery light touched the bank below and the dark waters of the river and it was so rich in calm beauty that it was an added pain to the passion he was struggling to suppress. ‘If for one night – ’ Ah, would he not go to Death unrepenting if he had such a memory, content to be lent such delight? He thought of her, of those brown eyes that proclaimed the intelligence within, that smile sometimes directed towards him as never to anyone else, the beautiful olive skin that must be smooth to the touch and as velvet on her breasts, the mouth that he would kiss as he had never kissed any other woman.
He leaned his hot face against the stone. There was only one way to cool this fire and that he would not find in books.
He thought suddenly of the man whom he had looked upon with more admiration than any other he had ever known, and it seemed strange now that he should be following upon the same path. Yet it had led Abelard, and might lead him too, to ruin. Since that damnable trial at Sens, the condemnation for heresy, Abelard had been allowed – they said his health was failing – to live quietly at Cluny with his friend Abbot Peter. He had found port after the storm – or so Brien prayed. Was that restless brilliant spirit calm now? Or did Master Peter dream sometimes of Heloise, her beauty hidden in the dress of a nun, Abbess of the Paraclete?
He shifted restlessly, folding his arms on his chest. His situation was as untenable in its way as Abelard’s had been. It was his misfortune to love a Queen and self-repression and disinterested service were all that he could expect to give her. That was nothing new – only now the demands would be wholly different and the price high, so high that he wondered if he could pay it.
‘God,’ he said aloud, ‘for what am I thus punished?’
And it seemed to him that it would only be tolerable if he had had some compensating happiness to make up for the present pain. That it might conceivably be the other way about he did not think at this moment – only of Maud and his desire and the words that throbbed in his head, ‘if for one night…’
He looked up at the brilliant moon, and not until the door was closed did he realise Mata had entered the room. Her hair was unbound and she wore a mantle over her white shift. As she began to turn back the bedclothes a revulsion seized him and he knew he could not lie beside her tonight. Hating himself for it, yet unable to do anything else, he said, ‘I must see the watch set.’
She answered, ‘John will have done that.’
‘Nevertheless I want to settle the disposition of the guards myself. I’ll lie in the hall with the men when I’ve done. I want to be up by dawn – there’s much to do before I go back to the Empress.’
He saw the hurt in her face, the reddening of her eyes as he left the room but he could do nothing about it. If she was hurt, so by the Saints was he!
He did not go directly to the gatehouse nor to the towers but taking a rush dip crossed the bailey and by its dim light found the latch and opened the door of the chapel. There he threw himself on his knees where the tiny sanctuary lamp proclaimed the living Presence of Christ. But words, that he had loved all his life, would not aid him. How to ask for what he might not have? Or for a release he did not want?
CHAPTER 5
By the third week of June the Empress and her train were at the palace of Westminster and a few days later the Londoners, persuaded by Geoffrey of Mandeville, opened the gates of their city. She dined with Geoffrey in the Tower where he still held the Princess Constance of France, wife of the King’s son Eustace. Maud received the Princess imperiously and sent the girl to stand behind her chair.
Robert of Gloucester said in a low voice, ‘She is a princess of France, not a maid in waiting.’
To which Maud replied, ‘She is the wife of the usurper’s son,’ and turned to Geoffrey, offering him the charter ratifying their agreement. Robert said no more but Brien glancing at him saw that he was angry.
Four leading citizens of London were approaching her now as she sat on the small dais and all knelt before her.
‘Lady,’ their spokesman said, ‘we are come to ask you, now that we have welcomed you here, to respect our ancient rights and privileges. Our city has always held particular honours that were given to us in old King Edward’s time and we beg you to continue them as your noble father did.’
Maud’s expression was cool and hard to read. ‘I shall make my own laws for this city and for England. ’
‘Lady,’ he began again, ‘you must surely remember that you sit in a hall your grandfather built in our midst and he, great conqueror that he was, conceded these laws to us.’
‘I am not my grandfather,’ she answered and began to drum her fingers on the arm of her chair. ‘And at the moment I am not concerned with your wishes but my need – and that is for money. You have sent me none.’
They looked uneasily at each other. ‘We will do what we can,’ one said awkwardly and was sharply interrupted.
‘I have spent a great deal in regaining my kingdom from the usurper and I have no money to pay my soldiers. Now I will have five thousand pounds as tallage and at once.’
They all stared at her, aghast.
‘We cannot,’ the leader began and the man beside him broke in, ‘We have given more than we could afford to the King’s cause and now – ’
‘Now our coffers are empty,’ the fourth man said in a wailing tone. He was small and elderly and clearly very much afraid of this fierce lady. ‘There is no such sum available in the city.’
She held up her hand. ‘Then raise it. You have enough fat merchants within your walls – make them bring out their treasure. I am your Lady and will have it. Go now and see to it.’
They all rose. Their leader opened his mouth to speak but thought better of it and they withdrew, backing from her presence, but there was nothing subservient in their attitude, only a sullen anger.
On one side of her, her brother leaned forward and said in a low anxious voice, ‘Maud, I entreat you to think what you are doing. For God’s sake, deal carefully with the citizens.’
Henry of Blois, fingering his pectoral cross, his eyes narrowing as if he were already doubting the wisdom of his change of allegiance, advised her. ‘You must keep this city, Lady. You dare not antagonise the Londoners.’
‘Dare not?’ She gave him a look of the utmost scorn. ‘I am their Queen.’
‘You have yet to be anointed,’ her uncle David told her frankly. ‘I know as a King that there are times when a ruler must be firm and others when it is politic to yield a little.’
‘I will have what I need,’ she retorted. ‘Are you all cowards that you are frightened by a pack of greasy merchants?’
The castellan of the Tower came to stand beside her, his bulky figure encased in clothes as costly as any there. ‘Well said, Domina. I’ll chasten them for you.’
‘We cannot start
a war with the Londoners,’ the Earl of Gloucester retorted sharply.
Bishop Henry nodded. ‘Listen to your brother, Lady, for he is right. You must wield the kingdom into one, heal the wounds. There are envoys outside from the Queen – ’
‘The Queen?’ she interrupted in a hard angry voice. ‘There is only one Queen here.’
He bowed slightly. ‘I beg your pardon,’ he said in an ironic voice. ‘I did not mean to offend. I should have said from my sister-in-law. She asks only that you should concede to Prince Eustace his father’s county of Boulogne and the lands his family held in your father’s time. If you do this you will gain support from past enemies.’
Maud leaned back in her chair and surveyed him. ‘Upon my soul, Bishop, you are cool. Am I to give honours to the usurper’s son? By Our Lady, no! ’
Henry stiffened. ‘Cousin, I am his kin and yours and I have given you my allegiance. It is for my nephew I ask – and only for that which is his inheritance and naught to do with the present situation.’
The Lion's Legacy (Conqueror Trilogy Book 3) Page 15