‘My lord,’ Roger protested angrily, ‘look at me! Can you deny – ’
‘I know,’ Brien interrupted, ‘but would you commit sacrilege?’
Roger was silent, and Brien turned back to Philip. With an effort he said, ‘I must give you hospitality as I would give it to Our Blessed Lord. You are welcome to eat at my table.’
Philip shook his head. ‘I will not ask that,’ he said in his old sardonic tone, ‘I cannot imagine it would make the food sit easily on your stomachs. I and my men will go to the guest house at the Priory, but before I leave – ’ he looked closely at the castellan, ‘You have been ill, Brien FitzCount?’
‘I have,’ Brien answered shortly.
‘And so have I, but with a sickness no doctor could cure nor even name. I think I was smitten by God’s Hand. When I lay near to death I saw my sins lined up before me like demons from hell – ’ he broke off, his eyes sombre.
Brien thought of his own sick bed and the thoughts that had tormented him there. ‘Go,’ he said, ‘we will not hold you.’
Philip looked from Brien to Roger’s angry face, to Bernard’s blank with disappointment that his high-born captive was to be freed with no ransom paid, and he laughed. ‘By God, you all look as though a snared coney had eluded you,’ he said sarcastically. ‘If you think I am turned into a soft man who will end his days a monk you are mistaken. I will die fighting.’
‘But this time without treachery,’ Brien said. ‘Philip, you turned your back on everything I taught you – if now you go to redeem yourself I cannot but bid you go with God. Have you made your peace with your father?’
Philip did not meet his eyes. ‘No. I go to London to meet Count Waleran – he came for his marriage to Stephen’s daughter but the Princess is dead. He goes to the Holy Land and so does William of Warenne. But you may tell my father I ask his pardon.’ He paused, searching for words. Curtly he said, ‘I have sent my wife and the boy to Bristol – I do not need to ask him to care for them. He will do it because he is as he is. There is nothing else for me to say.’
A silence fell in the hall, men wondering whether Brien would indeed let him walk from the place unharmed. Then they saw their lord turn and look at the knight Roger and the stillness was broken by a metallic sound as Roger slid his sword back into the sheath. ‘Go,’ Brien repeated. ‘No man from Wallingford will harm you or your men.’ And without further words Philip turned and with his mantle over his arm, that all might see his white surcoat and cross, he left the hall with his two companions.
A knight half way down the raftered building called out scornfully, ‘Holy Virgin, God chooses odd companions to fight for him.’ He encountered a withering glance from his lord and subsided. Brien went back to the high seat and signalled to the ushers to continue serving the meal, but for him the food had lost its taste.
In the spring of the following year young Henry FitzEmpress was fourteen years old and considered himself a man. Encouraged by his father’s ambition but without his permission the boy hired himself a troop of mercenaries – on credit for he had little money – and promising them riches across the sea set sail for Wareham. There he marched inland and laid siege to Cricklade to discover how little he knew of warfare. The defenders of that strong fortress laughed at him from the walls and Stephen set an army between him and any relief from Wallingford and joined in the amusement.
The mercenaries, without pay or plunder, demanded some recompense for their labours. Henry did not have it and sent a messenger to his mother, asking for money, supplies and men. His answer was a curt message from his uncle Robert ordering him to return to Normandy and leave warfare to those who knew what they were about. Mortified, Henry wrote a letter to the King and this was delivered to Stephen when he was at dinner in Winchester where he had, this Easter, worn his crown. He did not recognise the seal and ordered his clerk to read the letter. ‘I appeal to you,’ Henry had written, ‘as my cousin and a fair man to lend me silver to pay my soldiers. You are a fighting man and would not see those starve who live by their swords. God will decide,’ he finished pompously, ‘between my mother’s cause and yours.’
Stephen laughed until the tears came. ‘What a boy! By God, Eustace, I wish you had your cousin’s wit.’
Eustace, older by some eight years, did not appreciate this remark. ‘Henry is a fool,’ he said shortly. ‘Will you send an army to take him?’
‘Aye.’ The Bishop of Winchester leaned forward from his place at his brother’s right hand. ‘Take Henry FitzEmpress, Stephen, and hold him hostage. God has given into your hands an instrument with which to bring the Empress to heel.’
Earl Simon nodded agreement and Martel said, ‘If you hold her son you can force any concession from her, drive her from the country.’
‘You would be rid of the she-wolf once and for all,’ de Mohun put in and envisaged the restoration of his earldom. ‘The Angevin pup must set a high price as a bargain.’
Martel rose, ‘Shall I order it, sire?’ And half a dozen voices called out their agreement.
Stephen banged his hand on the table. ‘Be silent, all of you. This calls for more thought.’ He leaned his chin on his hand, his mind playing with the possibilities. It was an appealing proposition, to hold Maud’s son, play with the boy’s life – though he wished him no harm – dangle threats before her, bring her, at last, to submit to him. He indulged in a brief but wholly satisfying picture of Maud, unbelievably, kneeling before him. Yet something held him back. Last year he had acted foolishly, even treacherously, over the affair of Earl Ranulf so that other men who might have been considering leaving the Empress for himself must now doubt his treatment of them. Something must be done to set that score straight. If he was magnanimous to Henry the world would see him as a man of chivalry, a man who would fight a war justly with honour. A smile played over his face as he saw himself in this heroic light. He looked up at his curious, expectant court. ‘Let the boy go,’ he said, ‘send him money on one condition – that he returns at once to Normandy.’
He ignored the outcry, the protest, the advice of his brother and barons, and later in his chamber said to his Queen. ‘I will be known for my chivalry. Men will remember that I was gracious to a foolish young cousin and forget Earl Ranulf, will they not, my Mald?’
Matilda of Boulogne sighed. ‘I do not know that the one will be worse than the other for our cause,’ she said, and Stephen looked at her in astonishment.
The news caused considerable amusement at Wallingford though Brien felt that her son’s escapade and ignominious return to Normandy were hardly likely to be the cause of mirth to the Empress. But Henry was gone and the two sides continued their desultory business of siege and sortie and castle-holding. Life grew more normal in most parts of England – the justices continued their itinerant work, sheriffs and reeves collected what taxes they could and men hopefully sowed their fields again.
At Wallingford Brien walked his battlements or rode out with his-man and chafed at the utter futility of the war which no one won, the ‘endless discord in the pact of things’ to which he saw no end. Now that he was strong again and back to the business of living he turned his mind to immediate problems and put behind him the feverish self-questionings of his sick bed. He took some of his finest gold and silver cups and plates and at the little mint in the town had them turned into coin; he paid his men, gave according to their need to the widows and children of those who had died in his service and the rest he sent by a lay-brother from the Priory to Maud in Bristol. It was little enough to do but it was something.
And then on an October evening when a heavy mist was rising from the water of the river, obscuring the obnoxious castle on the far bank, a man came riding urgently into Wallingford and clattered up to the drawbridge, demanding to see the castellan immediately. Ingelric brought him to the hall where he fell on one knee before Brien and cried out that he had come from Gloucester.
Seeing his pale, exhausted face, the state of his clothes, a cold fear sett
led on Brien’s stomach. ‘What is it? For God’s sake, man, tell me. The Empress – ’
‘She sent me,’ the fellow gasped out and relief flooded through Brien’s body, setting every nerve throbbing. The messenger went on, ‘It is the Earl Robert, my lord. He is sick, dying, they say. The Empress begs you come.’ He had barely finished the sentence before Brien was on his feet, issuing orders, preparing for immediate departure, only one thought in his mind – to reach Gloucester in time.
He took only three men with him beside Thurstin and leaving Ingelric in command rode out of the castle within the hour. Without sleep, pausing only to rest their horses and changing these at Marlborough, they went by the main highway for the sake of speed, trusting to Providence that they would not meet a large force of Stephen’s men. Once they saw a party of soldiers and evaded them, hiding in a wood, their hands quietening their breathless horses, but nothing else delayed them and by sunset the next day they had reached Gloucester.
The Earl lay surrounded by his family and his household, the great chamber crowded with men. The Abbot of Gloucester and his chaplain were reading the prayers for the dying as Brien entered and it was obvious that the sick man was near to death. He looked at once at the Empress standing on the far side of the bed to see how she was taking this awful loss. She was very pale, her eyes larger and darker with the strain of watching, and when she saw him, her immediate relief at his presence was of some little comfort to him. By her side stood the lady Mabel in tears, supported by her eldest son William and one of her daughters, the Abbess Cecily.
The Earl, grey-faced and with a cold sweat standing on his forehead, lay in the great bed, covered by silken sheets and woollen blankets and over all a black bearskin, his active body still. His eyes had been closed but he opened them now and turned his head a little as Reginald and Baldwin fell back to make way for the newcomer on the near side of the bed.
‘Brien,’ he said faintly, ‘I hoped you would come.’
Brien knelt and took one of Robert’s hands, slack and lifeless now, into his. ‘My dear friend – ’
Robert smiled faintly. ‘It is hard, is it not, that I shall not see our victory?’
‘It will come,’ Brien said. ‘I promise you that.’ The sight of the Earl lying thus stricken was a worse blow than he could have imagined. .
Robert gave his hand a slight pressure. ‘I think so. I leave my sister in your hands, and Reginald’s. Yet I did wish –’ The effort of speaking was too much and his voice faded, his lids dropping wearily.
Brien looked up at the Lady. She shook her head and there was a long silence broken only by the murmur of prayers. Presently the Earl opened his eyes again and looked at Brien.
‘So many years,’ he said and then, surprisingly, ‘I loved my father. I never minded that I was a bastard – only once when they would not let me carry his train at his coronation – so long ago.’ He gave a long deep sigh and turning his head again searched until his gaze rested on his sister. ‘I have done what he wanted – ’
She knelt beside him, opposite Brien, and took his other hand. ‘Dear Robert, forgive me my ill-temper, my impatience – I have been a sad trial to you and no one ever had a better commander, nor a more faithful brother.’
He smiled. ‘Aaliz – ’ and the name on his lips, used so seldom, somehow sent a shock through Brien for it had become so intimately his own. ‘Aaliz,’ the dying man repeated. ‘I wanted only your welfare. Now it is for others – ’ A little strength came back into his voice and he struggled to raise himself. ‘I charge you, all of you, never to abandon my sister until her rights have triumphed, until the Lion’s grandson is King. ’
Men crowded towards the bed, promising their loyalty, bidding him to be at peace and he subsided against the pillows. Maud took a cloth and sponged his face and it seemed significant that it should be she who did this and not the half-fainting Mabel.
After that Robert did not speak again. He had already made his last confession and now Abbot Gilbert Foliot anointed him and administered Viaticum. Brien knelt listening to the Miserere. ‘Have mercy on me, O God…my sin is always before me…Cast me not away from Thy face…restore unto me the joy of thy salvation…’ and the words struck him, each one finding its mark. He closed his eyes over his clasped hands, certain that Robert would know that joy and not be cast from God’s face as he was. He saw the Abbot lay the Host on Robert’s tongue and prayed for the Earl as he had not prayed for himself for a long time.
As the room darkened and the candles were lit they all knelt on, waiting. Brien felt himself swaying with fatigue after his headlong ride and this second night from his bed until he could scarcely keep upright on his knees. At one point Baldwin, his cheerful face a mask of grief, came to kneel beside him and set a hand under his arm.
What would they do without Robert’s strength, he wondered, without that wisdom, the guiding hand that had kept them all together, healed the divisions? Once he looked over his hands towards Maud and as if sensing it she raised her head. It was brief, that exchange of glances, but into it he poured every ounce of his sustaining strength.
In the early hours of the following morning Robert died quietly, without more than a last fluttering sigh. The Abbot rose, making the sign of the Cross and the room was filled with weeping, William of Gloucester sobbing unrestrainedly, holding his mother in his arms, Reginald crying out that there had been no man nobler than his brother. Only the Empress made no sound, her tears silent. After the final prayers they all dispersed. Brien watched Maud go with the lady Mabel and the other women and then, half dead with fatigue, he went down the spiral stair, swaying like a drunken man, to fall into an exhausted sleep on the nearest pallet.
Earl Robert was buried in the great Abbey church at Gloucester with all the ceremony due to the senior Earl and a great benefactor of the Church. It was, by a strangely apt coincidence, the second of November, All Souls’ Day, when all the Masses would be said for the dead, for souls in purgatory, and the sombre tones of the day added to the weight of grief, the heavy loss. Even the sky was dark, a chill wind blowing from the north with a promise of early snow and men’s thoughts were filled with foreboding both of what might be coming to them now in this life and in that other world beyond the grave yet so closely set before them as the young choristers sang the De Profundis.
In the days that followed Brien sat with Reginald and Baldwin discussing the future, trying to make plans, all determined that nothing should change their final purpose. Only as they talked in the Earl’s solar, the Empress joined their councils less than she was used to do; and when she did she seemed strangely withdrawn, abstracted, hardly able to concentrate on what they said. Gone was the strident Maud who demanded action and Brien told his companions that it might be better to leave such talk for a while, for it seemed that grief had driven all other considerations from her.
In the meantime he assisted William, the new Earl of Gloucester, with his father’s will, listing the bequests, watching the clerks make an inventory of the chests of money and plate. Robert had once been the richest man in the kingdom, but there was little enough of that wealth left now. William shouldered his responsibilities in a commendable manner and though he was not the man his father had been, nevertheless his fellow barons could rejoice that it was not Philip who occupied the dead Earl’s place.
Brien waited for an opportunity to talk to Maud and once on their way to the morning’s Mass he said in a low voice, ‘Send for me any time – when you need me,’ and she had not answered but given him a long unhappy look.
And then, four days after the burial, accompanied by her brother Reginald she came down the spiral stair at the supper hour. The hall was still crowded with men who had come from all over the west to honour their dead commander and as his sister stepped on to the dais and stood before the high seat they all turned towards her, bowing deferentially. When she did not sit but stood waiting for complete silence it was clear she had something of importance to say to them all.
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‘My lords,’ her voice was resonant and harsh, carrying to the far corners of the hall, ‘you have all given your loyalty to me without stint and I thank you for it. While my brother lived he commanded my armies and furthered my cause, but now – now it is time for the younger men. My son is your future king and although he is still only a boy and indulges in boyish pranks you have all seen that he does not lack courage. In a year or two he will be a man, a prince worthy of your loyalty, and it is my will and the will of my father that you should give it to him. I – ’ she paused, seeming to find difficulty in speaking, ‘I am going back to Normandy, to my husband the Duke.’
There was immediate pandemonium, men protesting, calling out to her, pressing forward to the high table, all talking at once.
She held up her hand. ‘I thank you all. Your affection for me touches me but my mind is made up. I will send you men and supplies from Normandy, in due course I will send my son and that will be better than my own presence here. In the morning we will hold counsel, every man may speak, give his opinion on our future plans, but I cannot remain here without my brother.’ Glancing neither to right nor left she turned towards the stair and disappeared up it without answering the lords who had crowded towards her.
The Lion's Legacy (Conqueror Trilogy Book 3) Page 31