He said loftily, ‘You speak as a child. Single combat is no way to settle the fate of a nation.’
‘Agreed,’ Henry nodded and laughed again. He had not meant the King to take him seriously. ‘It seems we must treat, cousin. Bishop Gilbert Foliot of Hereford will act for me, and Earl Baldwin.’
‘My brother of Winchester and Earl Simon for myself.’ But it was not what Stephen wanted.
His son Eustace, standing by his side said in a low voice vibrating with indignation, ‘My lord, you cannot do it, you will throw away my heritage. Nothing will satisfy Henry but the crown.’
Stephen set a hand on his shoulder. ‘There is nothing I can do. Have I not fought for you all these years? But the Pope will not recognise you, he is for the Empress and her son and when he tells Christendom I had no right to the crown I wear, what priest, let alone Archbishop, is going to anoint my son?’
Eustace scowled. ‘You have betrayed me.’
The nobles standing some way off from them heard nothing of this low exchange for Stephen’s interview with Henry was supposed to be ‘private’, but no one could misinterpret Eustace’s action as the prince flung away from his father and clambering up the bank seized his horse and rode headlong through the assembled army.
On the south bank Stephen’s men-at-arms were assembled in large numbers but the barons who commanded them had had enough and stood in a solid phalanx refusing to give battle. On the opposite bank in the lea of the great stone castle young Henry’s army was also prepared but neither did his leaders want to fight. Everyone was determined on peace and somehow acceptable terms must be found.
Henry of Blois, grey-haired now but still upright and vigorous, came down the bank to stand beside his brother. ‘You will not suffer,’ he said firmly. ‘Trust me, Stephen. We will have quiet for our latter years.’
Stephen scuffed at some stones with one foot. There was no other way, he supposed. Since the death of his beloved Queen last year the heart had gone out of him. He had tried to pursue the war with vigour but opinion was against him now from the Pope downwards. Worse still King David of Scotland had knighted young Henry FitzEmpress and at long last made a permanent and successful peace with Earl Ranulf. David had died last month but his work had united half the country against Stephen. And abroad Henry’s brilliant marriage to the divorced Queen of France, Eleanor of Aquitaine, had so enhanced his position that he was now lord of that country as well as of Anjou and Duke of Normandy in his dead father’s place. No one in Europe wanted to quarrel with the twenty-year-old Duke, nor did anyone underestimate his power and wealth. How, Stephen wondered glumly, could he hope to pit Eustace against that formidable young man?
‘Very well,’ he said at last, ‘we will treat.’ He sheathed his sword, turned his back on the Duke across the water, and went up the bank to his waiting lords. Earl Simon, sick and pale, held out a hand to him, while Count Alain of Richmond said, ‘Nobly spoken, sire,’ and stared across at the forbidding pile of Wallingford Castle. ‘Is my half-brother there still?’
Stephen shook his head. ‘I think not, though no one knows for certain where he is. His wife is in a nunnery.’
Alain gave a coarse laugh. ‘By God, Brien is slyer than I thought. I wish my wife would take herself to the holy habit and give me some peace from her clacking tongue.’
Stephen’s lips tightened. He had never liked Alain the Black, and wished the Earl had not bothered himself to ride south. He thought of his loved Matilda lying in her stone tomb in the abbey of Faversham that they had built together. He felt old and ill today and wondered how long it would be before he lay beside her. Once he would have repudiated the very thought of death, but today, with the knell sounding on all his hopes, it did not seem so much to be feared. Looking across the water at the far bank he saw the Duke surrounded by his leading men, saw Henry’s confident walk, one arm about someone – he could not see whom – and he remembered a day, twenty years ago, when in the retinue of King Henry he had gone to Rouen to see his cousin Maud’s child and how the old Lion had held the baby high and called him his legacy. Now he knew that when he lay in Faversham Abbey young Henry would be King and he himself would have lost the long fight that had begun when he had seized the crown of the Lion of Justice.
Some months later the Empress was sitting in the ducal solar of the palace at Rouen surrounded by her ladies and with her daughter-in-law for company. She had a piece of embroidery in her lap, part of an altar frontal, the other end in the dexterous hands of Eleanor, but Maud’s fingers were for the moment idle. It was warm by the fire and she felt drowsy; the wine at dinner had been a heavy Burgundy and she must remember to tell the server not to pour that for her again. Through half-closed eyes she studied her son’s wife. She found herself now slipping quietly into the role of mother and adviser to them both, letting go the reins she had held so tightly. Henry could manage his own affairs, had in fact managed them so successfully that he had returned from England accepted by all Christendom as Stephen’s heir, and Stephen, everyone said, was a sick man. How old was he now? In his middle fifties, Maud thought, thus the crown might be Henry’s in a year or so and then this woman who had already sat on one throne would sit beside her son on that of England. What had the saintly Louis of France made of this beautiful tempestuous creature in his bed? Little enough, by all accounts, and now he had gone back to his prayers and Eleanor had made Henry the richest man in Europe. The Empress could be satisfied with that and forget that she herself had wanted to wear her father’s crown.
She sighed and remembering herself as she had been in England retreated from the memory – what devil had driven her that she had been unable to control her manners or her temper? Was it fear or jealousy or just the fact that she was a woman? There was only one memory of England that she had kept warm and secure within her, a memory of white snow and biting cold and a man whose like she had not seen elsewhere.
A long time ago she had heard he had left Wallingford, that the lady Mata was with the nuns at Godstow, and for a while she had waited for further news, waited to hear of his return, even perhaps for him to walk up the hall of this palace and greet her once again. But there was no news, not even a rumour as to his whereabouts. The fires were quieter now and it would help neither of them to re-open that page in their lives, yet when she had heard of Henry’s meeting with Stephen at Wallingford she had felt a resurgence of the old emotions and she waited now for her son to tell her of that meeting, to tell her if there was a word, a sign from him.
Eleanor’s voice broke in on her thoughts. ‘I have finished this end, my lady. Shall I make a start on yours?’
With an effort Maud brought her thoughts back to the quiet room, away from the disturbing past. ‘Yes, yes, child, if you will.’
Eleanor took the embroidery. ‘I don’t suppose I shall get a great deal done for Henry will soon be back from hunting and shouting for his supper, I don’t doubt.’ She laughed. She had a low voice and a soft laugh that men found fascinating and her beautifully shaped eyes rested with some affection on her mother-in-law. ‘Henry has considerable appetites,’ she said frankly and yawned. ‘I did not sleep till near dawn.’
Maud pursed her lips. She thought Eleanor too out-spoken at times. She could never have brought herself to speak in such a manner of her intimacy with Brien even had he been her husband. And Eleanor had taken precedence over her own needs last night. Henry had returned late and at supper had talked of his treaty with Stephen, his hopes of the crown; then he had taken his wife’s hand and with a joke that his mother thought a little unseemly had lead Eleanor away to the privacy of the ducal bedchamber.
So she had no chance to ask him any details and this morning before she was dressed he had gone hunting. Sometimes his energy, his restlessness irritated her, but it was typical of the Norman princes and had been a trait of her own once. Yet Henry was not wholly Norman, he was Angevin as well and had adopted as his badge his father’s sprig of wild broom, earning for himself the name of
Plantagenet, as if he was founding a new royal house.
She gave a little sigh. Even if it were so it seemed to her now no betrayal. She wished he would come back, give her the attention of his ceaselessly busy mind – and at that moment a sudden influx of sound reached her from the courtyard below, a clattering of hooves and jangling of harness, men shouting for grooms, calling out to each other, and Eleanor raised her head from the embroidery.
‘He is back,’ she said, and a few minutes later the door opened and he came in. He had a swift stride, bringing with him as well as the mud on his boots an impression of fresh air, exhilaration, of absorbed purposeful youth.
He took Eleanor’s hand and pressed his lips to it and then to her mouth. ‘Wife,’ he said and a broad smile expressed his inner satisfaction. Then he turned to his mother. ‘Lady.’ He bowed and saluted her hand and her cheek more formally. ‘We have had a good day.’
‘Sit down.’ Maud said. ‘There is so much you have not told me.’
‘You know I am to have the crown.’ He flung himself on to a stool and thrust his legs towards the fire. ‘Is that not enough?’
‘Of course I know about the treaty,’ she answered impatiently, ‘but before that – in the summer when you met Stephen at Wallingford, you did not say – did you lodge at the castle?’
‘Aye, I was comfortably housed in the great chamber. It’s a fine fortress and certainly one the crown should hold. When I am King I shall keep it in my own hands.’
A spasm crossed her face. ‘It is true then – Brien FitzCount is no longer there.’ Even the mention of his name after so long sent the colour into her face, a long dead warmth flickering through her body, and she bent over the embroidery, seeming to inspect a flower.
‘They say he is dead.’ Henry answered casually and because he was looking into the fire and Eleanor was gazing at him neither saw Maud’s face nor her hand go to her throat.,
‘Are you sure?’ Her voice was low but she kept it steady.
‘Well, not as sure as if I’d seen his tomb, but Ingelric of Huntercombe has held the castle for five years and neither he nor the lady Mata at Godstow nunnery have heard a word from their lord. She signed a charter for him recently so she cannot look for his return.’ He glanced at his mother and, somewhat insensitive though he was, he could not fail to notice her strained expression. ‘I had forgotten he was so close to you,’ he said more gently.
Close? She wanted to cry out, ‘he and I were one flesh, one spirit,’ but she said nothing and into her mind came the memory of something he had said on that last night – ‘when I am dying you will be with me – ’ Was he dead and had it been so? Could he be dead without her having felt it in her own soul and body. She fought down the dangerous rise of emotion and merely said. ‘Go on – ’
‘There’s nothing more to tell. At Wallingford they believe he must have died abroad or he would have sent some message to them. Indeed I would have thought him too great a baron to resign his lands without some word unless,’ he frowned, ‘his steward de Beauprez said something that – ’
‘What?’ she broke in, anxiety sharpening her voice, her hands twisted in her long veil, ‘What did he say?’
‘Only that he thought Brien might have taken the habit.’ He paused and the room went momentarily black before her. She pressed her lips together and her eyes closed briefly. When she opened them he had poured out some wine and was holding the cup towards her.
She took it and drank gratefully. Was that the answer? Was his life hidden in some obscure holy house?
Had he thought their sin so great that he must expiate it thus? She had a sudden vision of him, black-robed, thin from fasting, his face wearing the look she had seen once or twice, that shut even her from his mind, and a sudden shudder shook her body. But whether he lived or lay in some lonely grave he was lost to her and with an effort she forced herself to finish her wine, to let the rich liquid remind her that she still lived, that she still had duties.
Henry was standing now, legs straddled, cup in hand, the young conqueror preening himself before his wife. ‘What Stephen holds now, he will keep until I succeed him – there is not a baron who has not agreed to that. Then it will all be mine.’
Eleanor laughed. ‘You will be the greatest prince in Christendom.’ Her eyes teased him and he reached for her hand.
‘Thank God I’ve not to wait as long for you.’ He was fondling her, kissing her mouth, while Maud sat unseeing, hearing only Henry’s words in her head – ‘I slept in the great chamber – I had forgotten he was so close to you. ’
Abruptly she got up and went to the window, turning her back on their light-hearted love-making. There she looked out on the familiar outline of Rouen, the towers, the churches, the houses crowded together, the silver line of the Seine winding away below. In this palace her grandfather had planned his conquest of England so long ago, and soon all he had fought for and more would be united under the strong hand of his great-grandson. In her own way she had helped to bring this about, to assert her son’s rights, but at the moment she was thinking not of the greater triumph, but of the smaller joy. She would never hear of Brien FitzCount again, she knew it at last. As she had looked in vain for him when she had brought Henry as a baby to this palace so now she would look in vain for him at Henry’s coronation.
Mother of God, she prayed, comfort my lonely years. Intolerably, grief held her once more – so much joy and so great a sorrow and all of it worth a lifetime of ordinariness.
Then, with that courage which had always been hers, she laid her grief to rest deep within her and went down to supper with her daughter-in-law and her son who was Duke and Count and would soon be King. The old Lion of Justice would, she thought, have rejoiced to see his seed justified, his hopes fulfilled in the person of young Henry Plantagenet.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
It is a curious fact that despite fairly plentiful documentation of the period there is no record of the death of Brien FitzCount. According to one doubtful chronicle he went on a crusade but modern historians have discounted the authenticity of this writer. He was certainly alive in the early part of 1148 and almost certainly dead before 1151.
THE FULL CONQUEST
AVAILABLE ON KINDLE NOW – £2.99 EACH
The Lion's Legacy (Conqueror Trilogy Book 3) Page 34