With one agonised cry Roger doubled up, swaying in pain, his arms clasped about his body. Then, losing his balance he fell forward through the arch, crashing down into the crowded hall. He landed on his back across one of the trestles, his right leg folded awkwardly beneath him. The trestle collapsed, dishes and cups for the evening meal scattering over the floor, wine spilling; a child cried out and men ran towards him. Others, glancing up, saw Philip leaning against the stone wall, his arm dripping blood, his face ashen.
By some miracle Roger lived. The hastily summoned physician said that both his back and his leg were broken and gave it as his opinion that the knight would not survive such a fall. Somehow they got him on to the pallet though he screamed with pain when they lifted him; he had fainted before they had accomplished this and was unconscious when they carried him to the abbey where the monks, who had great skill in such things, would nurse him.
Between Brien’s men and Philip’s there was now such antagonism that the Earl requested Brien to take his back to Wallingford. ‘We do not want further bloodshed and quarrelling among ourselves,’ he said abruptly, ‘and anyway your place is in Wallingford Castle – with Stephen occupied in the fens you may have an opportunity to deal a blow for us. ’
There was nothing Brien could do, no adequate reason that he could give for staying at Gloucester. The Empress said that there was much to discuss in the council and Brien’s advice and experience were needed, but Robert was adamant. They could rely on the lord of Wallingford, he said, to support them in any future plans and there the matter had to rest.
Brien visited Roger but the latter had a high fever and knew no one. The infirmarian promised, though without much hope, to do all he could for the sick man and Brien left a large purse as a gift to the abbey. Now he had only to take his leave and ride away. There would no longer be any chance of a stolen hour alone with his love, no chance even to speak with her in private. Utterly wretched he knelt to kiss her hand. She bade him God speed, begged him to hold Wallingford for her and prayed they would all soon be reunited in a victory. More she could not say, her face expressionless, her dark eyes shadowed.
When he had gone Robert said heavily, ‘Sometimes I wonder how I sired such a son as Philip. Wherever he is there is trouble – it is as if he is the Devil of Bellême born again.’
Suddenly Maud’s eyes blazed. ‘Philip!’ she hissed. ‘By the Splendour of God, I would have him whipped.’ She stood, surveying her brothers. ‘Leave me,’ she commanded, ‘I wish to be alone.’
They looked from one to the other in surprise, Reginald with a slight lift of his shoulders and a half smile on his face, Robert wearied by the whole business. When they bowed and left-her she turned on her women. ‘You too, stupid girls. Go. Go! ’
They hurried away, scurrying for the archway and drawing the heavy curtain across it as they left, and when she was alone she remained standing by her chair, her mouth drawn tight, her body shaken by the intensity of her rage and frustration. Then as if she could not breathe she wrenched the silk veil from her head and neck and with her strong hands tore it across and across until it was in shreds at her feet.
Two days later Brien and his small company were within a few miles of Wallingford. He rode slowly by little known tracks, looking with added grief at the abandoned farmland, at the many empty burned villages. The leafless trees added to the gaunt look of the desecrated countryside and the cheerless scene matched his own mood. They crossed the river at Hurley, mercifully untouched, pausing for a meal at the Priory there, and then rode up and over the Chiltern hills. Coming down the wooded slopes on the far side they became aware of an acrid tang in the air. ‘A peasant burning dead leaves,’ Gilbert Basset said uneasily and without much conviction for there was a heaviness about the smell that suggested something more sinister.
Brien said nothing but urged his horse forward down the track, a suspicion forming in his mind, and when they came out into the open there was no longer any doubt.
‘Oh Lord Christ,’ Bernard the staller muttered under his breath, ‘it is Huntercombe.’
They galloped the last half mile, only drawing rein when they reached the wooden palisade that had once protected the manor. It was all burning now, the house also built of wood was one scarlet sheet of flame and even as they held in the frightened horses the roof fell with a crash that sent the sparks flying upwards, cinders and chips of wood landing all round them so that the horses reared. The gates had been battered in and there was no sign of any living person.
‘Mother of God! ’ Gilbert Basset said and crossed himself. They were all staring, horrified, at what had been the pleasantest manor on Brien’s lands. Bernard, who had known Ingelric since birth, was grim-faced, his hands gripped on the reins while Thurstin, pale and aghast, sat trembling in the saddle.
It was he who spoke first. ‘Are they all dead? Who can have done it?’
‘I do not know,’ Brien answered. He too had been gazing at the flaming buildings, seeing them beyond rescue, but now he urged Puissance closer despite the animal’s reluctance. In the courtyard he could see between collapsed buildings abandoned tools and pots, all the gear of living and one or two corpses – servants from their clothing – but there was no hope of getting nearer to the house. It must have been a surprise attack by Stephen’s men, but Huntercombe was so hidden away it was hard to see why, having survived so long, it was the object of attack now. He threw his reins to Bernard and tried to enter the courtyard, but the flames and heat were so intense that he could go no more than a few steps.
‘No one can live in there,’ he said at last, ‘but spread out, see if you can find anyone outside.’ They obeyed him, encircling the place, searching through the trees, the immediate fields, the outlying huts.
It was Thurstin who, riding with Brien into a clump of alders close by the stockade, called out, ‘Here, my lord, two fellows – ’
Brien turned and saw them crouching in terror by the largest bush. They were roughly dressed in brown garments, hoods about their faces. ‘Don’t be afraid,’ he called out, ‘I am Brien FitzCount of Wallingford. Who did this deed and where is your master?’ Dismounting he began to walk towards them but one waved a hand and cried out to him to halt.
He stopped in surprise and then as the other pushed back his hood he saw that they were lepers. He took an involuntary step backwards, revulsion seizing his stomach, instinct urging him to turn and set as much distance as possible between himself and them. Beside him Thurstin gave a gasp, hands clapped over his mouth. Brien motioned him back and mastering his own revulsion he came closer, looking with horror and pity at the diseased faces, the rotting limbs.
‘Tell me,’ he said hoarsely, ‘do you know what happened?’
One man peered at him through bloodshot eyes. ‘Aye, lord of Wallingford. We were here when the men attacked the manor. We were lost and had come to ask our way to the lazar house near Oxford and to beg for food and alms. The knight who owned the manor was an old man and kind.’
‘Ingelric of Huntercombe,’ Brien said automatically. He had to force himself to look at the speaker, to endure the stench of decay.
‘Aye,’ the man said again, ‘he gave us what we asked and was telling us how to reach the Oxford road when some knights and men-at-arms came galloping down that way – ’ he pointed a shaking skeletal finger to the north. ‘The men here had no time even to close the gates. We ran to these bushes.’
‘No one would have touched us.’ The other leper spoke for the first time, barely above a whisper. ‘We saw the knight run to his hall and after that the leader of the strangers ordered his men to fire the place. Some tried to fight their way out but no one escaped.’
Brien had both hands gripped across his forearms. He thought of old Ingelric, and his pride in his son and his son’s sons, and of his gentle wife.
‘No one?’ he asked. ‘Are you sure?’
‘An old woman ran from the house but one of the men threw a spear at her and killed her. No
one else came out.’
‘Holy Jesu!’ Brien turned from the thought that Ingelric himself and maybe Beatrice and the children might have been here – these men would not know – but one question, one vital thing, they might be able to tell him. ‘Who did it?’ he asked. ‘Who did it?’
The man who had told the story scratched his head. His nails were broken and black, his hand a mass of sores and Brien felt nausea rising in him.
The leper said, ‘There was so much noise and shouting, but they were the King’s men, that I know, for they were your enemies. They said that this burning would avenge them.’
The other leper looked up from a ravaged face. In the same hoarse whisper he said, ‘Martel – one man called the leader Martel.’
Brien stood rigid, so shaken by rage that he did not know how to control his body. He trembled with it, loathing Martel as he had loathed no man in his life, a blind hatred mingling with anguish for those who had died. ‘Are they long gone?’
‘An hour or more,’ one leper said, ‘they’d done their work well enough.’
Too long for pursuit, he thought. Somehow he managed to find money, to throw it to the lepers, and then he turned back to Thurstin and his horse. To his men now returned from a fruitless search for survivors he said, ‘We can do no more here. We will go back to Wallingford.’
‘Ingelric?’ Bernard asked in a low gruff voice.
Brien shook his head. ‘I do not know. His mother and father are dead.’
They covered the last miles to Wallingford at a speed that caused their horses to approach the drawbridge sweating and flecked with foam. It was lowered at once for them to clatter over it. One of his men-at-arms ran to take Brien’s horse and as he swung himself down he asked harshly if his commander was in the castle.
The man looked surprised. ‘Aye, my lord. He went with his wife and his children yesterday to Huntercombe but they returned before nightfall.’
Brien let out a deep sigh. ‘Thank God.’ For a moment desperately weary he leaned against Puissance’s grey flanks. Then he straightened his shoulders. He must go now to tell Ingelric that his parents had been murdered in an act of revenge against himself. As he crossed the courtyard he saw ‘Brien’s Close’ where he had thrown Martel and he paused momentarily, looking through the grid into the black hole. By the Rood, the man had taken a vicious and brutal revenge for that deed – but why could he not have taken it on him, the author of it, and not upon the innocent?
Long after darkness had come and the castle settled into sleep, only the sentries awake and pacing the walls, a light still burned in the great chamber. He paced restlessly, too wretched to sleep, too weary to think.
Once Mata appeared in the entrance to the bower. ‘My dear lord, you must not reproach yourself,’ she said, her face creased with anxiety. ‘You could not guess that – ’
With his back to her he said, ‘What do you know of my guilt?’ She took an uncertain step towards him. ‘I beg you to rest. No one blames you, least of all Ingelric.’
He turned on her. ‘Sleep in the bower tonight,’ he said and his expression so frightened her that she obeyed without another word, creeping into bed beside one of her ladies and shaken with silent weeping as she heard him shut and bolt the door. She knew by some instinct beyond questioning that he would never again let her into the room they had shared and which now saw some private agony beyond her understanding.
On the other side of the door he was standing with his back to it, his hands spread against it as if to reinforce the bolts that ensured his privacy. No one should see this moment of suffocating remorse, of glaring self-knowledge that was facing him. The evil stemmed from within himself, of which Martel was only a symbol, and looking at the sum of what he had done, gazing unseeingly at the grey wall opposite, he did not recognise himself in this man of blood and passion.
Suddenly he pushed himself from the wall, crossed the room to the stone cross on the shelf and there fell to his knees. ‘Christ,’ he whispered, ‘Christ, was it my sin that did all this?’ He pressed both hands to his face, feeling all about him the terrifying world of demons, of haunting spirits, of Satan himself, all the things that fought against God for the souls of men and which now were tearing him from his better past, from the protection of Holy Church which he had known all his life – and it was he who had opened the door to them.
He picked up the stone cross and held it, as if he must draw some strength from it. ‘Oh Mary, Christ, have mercy on your man.’ So he had prayed once and discovered himself to be Maud’s man. Now he did not dare to ask that mercy. With a shaking hand he set the cross back on its shelf.
He could expect nothing for himself, only condemnation, but at least he could keep from his bed, spend this night in vigil for those who had died at Huntercombe. He took a rush dip, lit it from the fire and went silently down the stairs, across the hall, stepping over sleeping men, and out into the darkness. The little chapel adjoined the hall and he went in, setting the dip in a sconce. The shadows were deep against the whitewashed walls with their paintings of St. Lawrence on his grid iron, of St. Christopher carrying the Christ child, but he knew this place well enough to direct his gaze towards the Blessed Sacrament.
And as the dark hours wore on the horror that had settled on his soul plunged him into such blackness that he could no longer drive his mind to pray, nor even raise his eyes towards the enshrined Host. At last, when the January dawn came, late and grey and cold, he emerged into the waking courtyard, haggard-eyed, calm again, but with the grim knowledge that he must now live out the remainder of his life in a grey limbo shorn of hope.
CHAPTER 3
Prior Waltheof was not a man with any capacity for happiness but insofar as he was able he knew a reasonable contentment as he rode away from the Cistercian monastery at Wardon. He had not liked the place. The order to return to his beloved Rievaulx, instigated though he did not know it by his stepfather, King David, and where his friend Aelred was novice master, had come as a welcome relief. Only one anxiety, born of certain rumours that had reached him, nagged at the edge of his mind and because of it, acting on rare impulse, he turned his horse’s head to the west. The detour would take him many miles out of his way, but with near two hundred to travel the delay seemed of less importance than turning to help, if he could, his other close friend. To the lay brother, Thomas, who accompanied him he did not offer an explanation.
It was a warm July day and allowing his horse to lead him quietly along the road he opened his breviary and began to read the introit for the feast of St. Irenaeus. ‘The law of truth was in his mouth and iniquity was not found on his lips…’ He paused, frowning, and stared at the wild roses climbing among the hawthorns at the edge of the track. Where now, he wondered, did one find men who cared for the truth? England had become a hunting ground for ravening wolves and even the man whom he was on his way to see seemed to have lost his integrity. Waltheof pursed his lips, a frown of anxiety on his forehead. He read on, the gospel for the day – ‘Fear not them that kill the body and cannot kill the soul, but rather fear Him that can destroy both body and soul.’
It was that very fear that had caused him to change direction, fear for one whose salvation mattered to him. Even at Wardon, living the hidden life of a Cistercian monk news had reached him. Travellers came to the guest house and as guest master he had been forced to hear what was happening in the world he had abandoned.
One party of pilgrims bound for London and the shrine of the saintly King Edward had told him how they and their families had been persecuted by Geoffrey of Mandeville, and how none had mourned when last summer an arrow had struck that ravager on the forehead. The wound had turned poisoned and killed him, so the pilgrims said, unshriven and excommunicated, barely half a dozen of his mercenaries following his body to its unhallowed grave. Waltheof thought de Mandeville had got his desserts and was relieved to hear the fighting in the fens had ceased and the monks had been able to return to Ely.
The war dragge
d on. He believed the Empress’s cause strengthened by the fact that her husband had fought his way to Rouen and taken that city and with it the title of Duke of Normandy. Many barons who held lands on both sides of the channel felt they must support or at least make peace with the Angevins. Yet neither side was victorious. The death of de Mandeville had freed Stephen’s troops in East Anglia to carry the war west again. Waltheof was thankful that there was at least no fighting around York, where Alain of Richmond and William of Aumale were hand in glove and for King Stephen. Much as he disliked Alain and his predatory instincts, the Prior gave him credit for not disturbing the monks of Rievaulx and Fountains.
He sighed, turning the pages of his breviary. ‘Fear not them who can kill the body…’ but men seemed to him to care more for warfare than for their immortal souls. Even his friend stood in that peril.
The Lion's Legacy (Conqueror Trilogy Book 3) Page 27