by H A CULLEY
An hour later they had rounded up nearly all the cattle and hanged the raiders, both the wounded and the dead, from nearby trees as a warning to others. Then they set off on the long journey back with Ademar’s body tied over the back of his jennet. Thankfully the rain had eased to a light drizzle but, realising that night was drawing on, Humphrey decided to head for a nearby village.
The priest lived in a tower which served as a place of refuge for the villagers when the Scots came over the border. This was newly constructed from stone and, once Ademar’s body had been laid out in the tiny wattle and daub church, the horses had been cared for and the cattle penned, Humphrey was glad of its shelter and welcoming fire, in front of which his clothes gently steamed as he dried out. The priest was honoured to have the baron’s elder son and his men as guests and, after a simple meal of pottage and bread, he offered to give up his bed to the knight. But Humphrey declined and settled down to sleep on the floor of beaten earth with his men. He would normally have enjoyed a warm glow of satisfaction at having recovered the cattle and at dealing with the raiders but the death of his father’s squire left him feeling depressed instead.
~#~
The party of horsemen appeared like ghosts out of the twilight. The snow was falling hard making them almost indistinguishable from the white landscape as they approached the gatehouse of Peverel Castle. Originally Hugo de Cuille had built a timber castle on the orders of Guillaume Peverel. He had chosen an impressive location. Steep sides fell away in every direction. The only approach was from the north where a zig zag track wound its way up the hillside to the east gate. Now the timber buildings and defences had been replaced in stone, except for the bastion that guarded the western side: not that you could see much of the castle through the blizzard.
The gates had been locked for the night but, after the long ride south from Northumberland, Sir Richard FitzRobert was in no mood to be kept waiting to enter his home. Although he was the son of Robert de Cuille, he was more usually known by the sobriquet FitzRobert, meaning the son of Robert, than he was by his family name.
‘Open this gate and be damned quick about it.’ The soldiers on duty were huddled over the brazier in the guardhouse playing a game of chance. The sound of the mounted party’s approach had been muffled by the snow and both men were startled by the shouted command. One of the soldiers peered out of the arrow slit that commanded the approach to the gate and through the falling snow he could just make out the black banner with a white chevron born aloft by one of the escort.
‘Oh hell, it’s Sir Richard!’ He grabbed his fellow guard and they quickly unbarred the gates and swung them open. Then one of them raced over to wake the stable boys to take care of the horses.
Sir Richard threw back his hood and shook most of the snow from his cloak as he stomped up the steps leading up to the entrance to the newly completed stone keep and thence into the great hall. This served as meeting place, refectory and dormitory for the servants, most of whom were clearing away the trestle tables used for dinner as the space doubled up as the dormitory for most of the castle’s inhabitants. His wife came out of the solar, where the constable’s family lived, and greeted him with a kiss and an embrace before recoiling.
‘Richard, you’re wet through and freezing cold. Come over to the fire and get warm. We didn’t expect you until tomorrow.’ There was still a good blaze in the large fireplace set into one wall of the hall but she poked it and put on another log.
He threw his sodden cloak over a chair. ‘I decided I couldn’t face another night in a gloomy monastery and, in any case, I didn’t want to risk getting snowed in. The roads are nigh on impassable as it is.’ He gratefully took the goblet of wine and plate of cold meats that one of the servants had brought him and started eating.
The door opened to admit his squire who was carrying his lord’s travelling chest. It was the squire’s duty to care for his master’s horse and baggage before he could attend to his own needs. Richard nodded his thanks and the lad headed down to the kitchen to get something to eat and dry his clothes.
Richard looked across at his wife and worried about what he would have to tell her. She was a somewhat sensitive soul and never in the most robust of health. He knew that she would take the news he had for her badly. He just hoped that she wouldn’t get ill with fretting; something that had happened more than once in the past.
Then a 13 year old boy entered and rushed across the room to greet his father. Guy was their only son and tended to be somewhat spoiled by his mother. He was a good looking boy with fair hair, like his father, and was already attracting the interest of every girl he came in contact with. At the moment he had become rather gangly, having just had a growth spurt, and hadn’t quite got used to his enlarged body. As a result he was proving to be rather clumsy, to the concern of his mother and amusement of his father.
Richard had only recently inherited the four manors and been appointed to the position of constable of Peverel Castle, the seat of William Peverel, the sheriff of both Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire. This was a post that William had inherited, along with over a hundred manors, from his father, Giullaume Peverel. Guillaume and Hugo de Cuille, Richard’s grandfather, had both taken part in the battle of Senlac Ridge, now being called the battle of Hastings by the chroniclers, and both had been granted lands in England by William the Conqueror. Guillaume’s share had been far more generous than Hugo’s; no doubt because he was generally thought to be the king’s bastard.
In Hugo’s case he had been given the manor of Burneham in Buckinghamshire and a large estate in Northumberland in addition to his manors in the High Peak of Derbyshire. Hugo had lost Burneham during the reign of William Rufus, who had given it to a favourite of his instead and, as this was the first manor Hugo had been granted and had been the home of his wife, Rowena, he had never forgiven the king.
William Rufus’ brother and successor, Henry Beauclerc, had created a barony out of the de Cuille estate in Northumberland in addition to twenty other baronies in the county. Instead of keeping the whole of his property together, as was normal, Hugo had decided to give the barony of the Cheviot to Tristan de Cuille, one of his twin sons. The other, Robert, Richard’s late father, had received the estate in Derbyshire when Hugo died.
Both twins were happy with their father’s decision and had remained on good terms in their adult life. Tristan had fallen from his horse and broken his leg while out hunting the previous year and hadn’t been able to attend his twin’s funeral, so Richard had decided to travel north the following September to take his uncle Tristan the few personal items his brother Robert had bequeathed to him. It also provided the opportunity for Richard to visit his younger sister, Margaret, who had wed Robert de Muschamp, baron of Wooler and Tristan’s neighbour, ten years ago. Richard and Margaret had been close as children, especially after the death of their brother, Edward, on the White Ship, and Richard had enjoyed seeing her again.
Margaret and Robert lived in a small wooden motte and bailey castle in the township of Wooler on the lower slopes of the Cheviot Hills. Richard had found it very cold, exposed as it was to the winds that whipped along the base of the Cheviot Hills, but they seemed happy enough. He has also thoroughly enjoyed playing with his five year old nephew, also called Robert, his sister’s only child. However, he found the much larger castle at Harbottle, where his uncle Tristan lived, much more comfortable, sheltered as it was on the southern side of the Cheviots.
He had thoroughly enjoyed his visit but needed to get back to Derbyshire before the weather deteriorated too much. On his last night at Harbottle Tristan raised something with him that he had already begun to think about – placing his son Guy as a squire. The boy was nearly at an age when he should start training for knighthood as a squire, as was the case for most sons of the nobility unless they were destined for the Church..
‘You know that my squire was killed recently in a raid by the blasted Scots?’ Richard’s uncle began without preamble. ‘I was think
ing about Guy as his replacement. Our families have always been close and I have a feeling that a change of scenery would be good for him.’
Richard thought to himself that the old man was right. Guy’s mother was far too protective of her only son and he needed to be exposed to the rough and tumble of life as a squire away from home.
‘That’s very good of you. I would be honoured to place him with you, uncle’ Richard replied smiling, but inside he was dreading telling his wife.
‘I think that you too will be looking for a squire soon.’ Tristan’s son, Humphrey joined in the conversation.
‘Yes, my squire will be knighted soon. I had intended to seek a replacement for him when I got back to Derbyshire. Why do you ask?’
‘Have you forgotten that Hugh is only a few months younger than Guy?’ Humphrey smiled, referring to his son who was serving as a page at another of the baronial families locally.
‘No, but I didn’t think that you would want him serving as squire so far from home?’
‘Why not? Guy will be.’
So it was settled that Richard would send Guy north in the spring and his escort would take Hugh back with them. Richard was pleased by the arrangement but still dreading telling his wife. It was probably this dread that made him set a slow pace on the way home. It was late November but he wasn’t too worried about the weather as it was cold but fine when Richard and his escort set out. However, that changed as they journeyed south. The weather turned colder and then the blue skies had been replaced by ones of steel grey. On the third day they had been subjected to icy rain but it turned to sleet then the snow started as they entered southern Yorkshire. By the time Richard reached Peverel Castle at the end of November he had never been so glad to see anywhere in all his life.
~#~
The icy wind that blew around Peverel Castle also gusted through the slushy streets of London on the third of December in the year of our Lord 1135. People hurried home to get out of the biting cold as soon as possible. Even the stench which normally pervaded the air seemed more muted.
‘Have you heard?’ one merchant asked his neighbour ‘Henry Beauclerc has died in Normandy. I’m really worried about what’s going to happen now.’
His neighbour nodded. ‘Yes, my brother told me. Do you think the barons will accept the Empress as our queen?’
‘They promised to, didn’t they?’ He was well aware that when William Adelin drowned the Empress Maud became the king’s only legitimate child. ‘They knelt and swore fealty to her as her father’s successor, not once but twice.’
‘Yes, but barons are a proud bunch. I bet you two marks that few of them will willingly accept being ruled by a woman. Would you?’
The merchant looked glum. He was worried that the decades of prosperity that had characterised King Henry’s reign were about to be replaced by uncertainty and strife.
Two days later the news of Henry’s demise reached Derbyshire. Despite the wintery conditions William Peverel had left his main residence in Nottingham to visit the castle that bore his name. He was a tall, broad shouldered man who stood a head taller than most of his contemporaries but, at the age of fifty five, he was beginning to put on a little weight. In contrast Richard FitzRobert, his constable and deputy sheriff in Derbyshire, was very fit for a man of forty and could still hold his own on the tourney field.
‘Of course, it wasn’t so bad when she was married to the Emperor but it would be impossible to accept a queen married to an Angevin.’ William sat in front of a roaring fire in the solar playing shatranj with Richard.
‘But I thought that Maud had separated from Geoffrey?’ Richard was referring to the Count of Anjou whom Maud had married after the death of the Holy Roman Emperor, her first husband.
‘Huh, they were for a time but they must have become reconciled because Maud bore him a son two years ago.’
‘So much for the rumours that she was barren when she was married to the Emperor then.’
‘It did seem as if she might be though when he had no trouble producing bastards.’
‘Nevertheless, it doesn’t alter the fact that her husband is count of Anjou and there is nothing that we Normans detest more than an Angevin.’ William was speaking of the enmity between Normandy and Anjou which dated back to well before the conquest of England.
A fortnight later Richard stood in a corner of the bailey watching Guy training with several other boys. His son was getting quite adept at fighting with sword and shield. Richard still hadn’t faced up to telling his wife that he had agreed to place Guy with Tristan in distant Northumberland. In some ways Richard regretted not following the practice of some noble houses that had started sending their sons away at the age of eight or nine to serve as pages before they became squires. He thought that the break might have been easier for his wife at the younger age. He sighed; but then again it might not have been.
Before he had been offered Hugh as his new squire, his wife had suggested that Guy should take his present squire’s place but that rarely worked. Squires needed to serve somewhere away from home where they wouldn’t be treated with any favour and, in Guy’s case, the further away from his mother the better. Much as Richard loved his wife he had no illusions about her.
He finally plucked up courage and went to break the news. He had just done so and tried to comfort his wife who, as expected, was in floods of tears. Whilst she may have abandoned the hope that her husband would make Guy his squire, she was quite unprepared to lose her son to the wild Northumberland moors where Tristan’s previous squire had been killed at the tender age of fifteen. Richard was starting to get somewhat exasperated with his wife’s histrionics and was wondering how he could get away when William Peverel walked in.
‘Oh. Apologies for bursting in unannounced. I, um well...’ He was taken aback and more than a little embarrassed at the seemingly touching scene he had intruded upon. He didn’t have a close relationship with his own wife, Avicia de Lancaster, daughter of Roger Montgomery, Earl of Shrewsbury. Richard had married for love whereas William’s marriage was to forge an alliance with one of the most powerful magnates in England. This might be why they had a somewhat tempestuous relationship which had only produced one child, Margaret. She was now married to the Earl of Derby, again to further her father’s ambition. Richard, on the other hand, had fathered five children; it was just so tragic that four had died in infancy.
Richard thankfully left his weeping wife in the care of her maid and followed William into the great hall.
‘Sorry about that’ William muttered and then became animated. ‘Have you heard? Stephen of Blois has landed and, with his brother’s help, he has secured the royal treasury. He has been accepted by the people of London as king.’ Stephen’s brother, Henry of Blois, was bishop of Winchester, where the royal treasury was kept.
‘When was this?’
‘Apparently he landed a week ago and has usurped the throne before Maud could act.’
‘But what about the fealty he swore to her as Henry’s successor, not once but twice?’
‘So did we all’ William paced up and down for a few minutes. ‘What I haven’t told you is that the coronation is in ten days’ time, on the twenty sixth. I am commanded to attend and so will you be as you hold your manors directly from the king.’
‘My wife was so looking forward to this Christmas too. I haven’t told you but Guy is leaving for the Cheviots to become Tristan’s squire after the festivities. She isn’t too happy about it, to put it mildly, and the thought of celebrating the festival together was all I could think of to comfort her. Now…’
‘At least he will have an aunt nearby’ William said somewhat brusquely, referring to Richard’s sister. He had little patience with the emotional feelings of women and felt that boy should have been removed from his mother’s influence years ago.
‘That’s true. I suppose I can’t avoid going to London.’
‘Not if you plan to swear allegiance to Stephen, no.’
�
�I take it you are?’
‘I can hardly continue as sheriff of the two shires if I don’t. It’s a royal appointment.’
‘What do you think Maud will do?’
William shrugged. ‘What can she do? It will take time and money for her to organise an army and a fleet if she wants to oppose Stephen and by that time he will be crowned. I would have thought that the best she can do is to try and seize Normandy.’
‘As neither of us have lands there the choice would seem fairly straightforward; we pay homage to Stephen.’
William nodded in agreement, not knowing what a fateful decision that would prove to be.