The Prince of Poison

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The Prince of Poison Page 23

by Pamela Kaufman


  Enoch came home late with a large elk, enough to feed us for a month. I told him of my missive about King Henry’s charter; he seemed relieved. I also told him about Bonel. Enoch was happy and claimed he liked the Jew in spite of his noxious behavior in stealing me; he wished him well.

  As for my honest feelings? Enoch and England. I’d thought I’d found an escape from shattered dreams in Bonel. Now that the escape had ended, the dream of Bonel was just that, a dream. I tried to be happy for him—aye, I was happy. Wasn’t I?

  Yet how could I be merry when I thought of my own future? Once this charter was settled, I would lose Wanthwaite, Leith, and—aye—Enoch, in a single day. Bonel had prepared me for such a future; I should have been satisfied.

  Alone in my dark closet, I fumbled under my mat for the letters Bonel had given me of his contacts in London. Tomorrow I would study my jewels again.

  I prepared to leave. I cultivated Thorketil, who was obviously of Danish descent though he’d been born in Scotland, a thin, blond giant with a long saturnine face, an intelligent man, though he spoke rarely. Next to Enoch himself, Thorketil had the most knowledge and had the most authority concerning Wanthwaite. His wife, Edwina, was my surrogate when I had to be away. Tall and slender, she made tunics for herself, which she pretended didn’t fit, then passed them on to me. She and Thorketil had three boys; the youngest, who played with Leith, was only two.

  Though I felt most compatible with Edwina, Gruoth was my best friend. Tubby and sweaty and toothless, she still had the wonder and enthusiasm of a young girl. She served me, adored me, sacrificed herself at every opportunity, so it was Gruoth I began to prepare for my exit. I asked her to guard Leith every day; I taught her my best recipes and my herbal medicines.

  “Ich doona want to knaw more,” she said one day. “I doona want to tak your place.”

  “What an idea! Have you told anyone?”

  “Aye, Ich tald Enoch.”

  Enoch watched me as if I were about to steal our buried treasure; he was worried that I would steal Leith, that was the truth.

  One of Edwina’s nieces, Nicola, came to live with us. An exceedingly pretty and lively girl, she soon reformed the male habits, so they washed and refrained from spitting on the floor just to be in her presence. She was wonderful with Leith, which gave me a second nurse for my little girl.

  I examined the jewels and concluded they might be less valuable than I’d first thought, especially my rubies. Though blinding in full sun, they looked pink instead of red, and they were small. My diamonds, though even smaller, sparkled prodigiously because of their excellent cut. Mayhap the same hand had cut my rubies. My pearls were faintly pink and exceedingly large and smooth, better than the gray pearls Bonel had bought in Brugge. Mine were probably from the Mediterranean.

  Enoch read Henry I’s charter with great interest, then with disdain. Filled with generalities, it addressed none of our concerns.

  I didn’t take it to our next baronial meeting at Carlisle, close to Scotland. The small Carlisle castle was claimed by both King Alexander and King John in a bitter quarrel. Archbishop Langton would not be in attendance. The barons who did attend, including Lord Robert and Lord Eustace, were deadly serious. Still, without the archbishop, we accomplished little.

  Archbishop Langton summoned me to Durham to deliver my translation of the old charter, to Enoch’s delight.

  “’Tis a beautiful city to shaw Leith!”

  “Neither of you is coming!”

  “Ich war gang there anyway! Thorketil lined op a team of oxen we mane to buy!”

  “Send Thorketil then!”

  Two days later, Enoch, Leith, Gruoth, and I set out. We arrived at Durham in good time and, once he saw me established in a monk’s dorter, Enoch took Leith and Gruoth to a church inn.

  The archbishop was leading a prayer service for the monks when I found him; tapers shed little light into the low, arched sanctuary. Since women were strictly forbidden, I remained quietly in the shadows until he was finished. When the other monks had departed, the archbishop removed his miter.

  “Lady Alix, are you there? I thought I saw you.”

  He led me to a small office at the back of the sanctuary, where I saw my familiar vellum and ink. He had great difficulty even recognizing the original of King Henry’s charter when I laid it before him.

  “Could you see it?” he asked anxiously.

  “Aye, though it’s in terrible condition, Your Eminence.”

  At least the charter was short, a brief coronation speech filled with vacuous generalities and not much else. Yet Henry I was said to be a good king, though he had no real charter.

  “Sometimes I can make out three letters, and I need a good Latinist to suggest the fourth. The first chapter, published August 5, 1100, reads: ‘In Christi nomine promitto haec tria populo Christiani mihi subdito. In primis me praecepturum en opem pro vribus impersurum ut ecclesia Dei et omnis Christianus veram pacem nostro arbitrio in omni tempori servet—’”

  Langton interupted. “I recognize the exact words—it goes back to Ethelred. That’s only the introduction—read me from the charter itself.”

  “Yes, I will,” I said, humiliated. “‘Sciatis me Dei misericordia . . .’”

  When I finished this, the archbishop was smiling. “Do you understand what you just read?”

  “The English Church is free.”

  He laughed gently. “Meaning that Rome controls all appointments and legal matters concerning Church governance and property. Didn’t I tell you?”

  “Wanthwaite is not Church property.”

  “Are you certain?”

  I was.

  That was my only meeting with the archbishop. Within a week, I was finished. Archbishop Langton assured me he would write me where and when the next meeting might be.

  Enoch and Leith and Gruoth were waiting outside the walls with a team of oxen; we began our jouney southward that same afternoon.

  Enoch was happy with his purchase; I was thoughtful.

  15

  Sixteen castles burned that summer. Though most were in the south, we were terrified. Enoch built a tower atop our highest fell as a lookout; we couldn’t see approaching armies, but we could see smoke.

  Nicola had a friend in Oxenford who sent word that the tower of Oxenford had burned. Lord Guy de Mandeville was killed, and the money he’d paid the king for the Duchess of Gloucester was not returned to his family.

  “We’re in civil war!” Lord Robert cried as he galloped into our courtyard—we didn’t need to be told.

  Yet wasn’t a civil war waged by rebels against the authority? What did you call a war of a king against subjects? Enoch claimed that the barons were fighting back, albeit unsuccessfully. But they never attacked the king’s castles or his men first. Had I forgotten that we believed in the law? Our charter was our rebellion, not the sword.

  Yet someone was fighting; wounded knights arrived at Wanthwaite all the way from Wessex or Essex. Knights usually cared for each other in the field, but these wounds were deep, some near fatal, and I’d developed a reputation afar for my healing arts. Edwina and I transformed the schoolroom and chapel into medical hospices. I sent women and children into the woods to gather aloe and lemon balm.

  Our meetings about our charter accelerated as often as we could muster nobles who were not fighting. Archbishop Langton could rarely attend, but we all referred to him as our leader. Yet—hadn’t he been instrumental in making England a papal state? On the other hand, that very fact gave him access to the king, which we would soon need.

  Our new oxen fell to their knees, rolled over, and died. This could not be King John’s fault, but Enoch blamed him nonetheless. Thorketil and Dugan and Enoch and I all worked throughout the night, bleeding the sick beasts, even forcing Pliny’s famous concoction of Comeleon mixed with pepper boiled in wormwood and drunk with hot honey, which had saved the lives of two knights. Though we may have slowed the oxen’s deaths somewhat, they still died. Enoch was besi
de himself. He sent Scots in all directions searching for other oxen; while he was waiting, he borrowed a pair from Eustace de Vesci. Thorketil returned with ten young healthy beasts who’d escaped into the king’s forest when a castle had burned, close to the castle of Lord Robert de Ros, which had been attacked.

  The new beasts were put to work at once to plow fields too long fallow, while we women dug into the wet black soil of our vegetable garden with sticks. When Enoch and I were summoned to Nottingham for a few days by the archbishop, I left the other women to plant for me.

  Archbishop Langton had begun to outline our charter to conform to others, for our emphasis on precedent and custom must be proved by other documents. That was not the law, but it was the accepted tradition.

  “The king luiks on our charter as a peace treaty,” Enoch said. “Mayhap that’s quhy he’s tryin’ to get the upper hand in the field.”

  Both the pope and the king wanted peace, or so they said.

  Langton referred to England as the “patrimony of St. Peter,” which must obey the holy law; yet he took our complaints about John’s brutal methods seriously. And so would Pope Innocent, he assured us. Langton promised to send his first draft of our charter to Rome—a journey of six weeks there, then another six weeks back—a long time, he granted, but perhaps God had a secret purpose.

  Which meant twelve weeks before my marriage must finally be resolved. Twelve weeks with Leith, at Wanthwaite.

  And, finally, with Enoch.

  When I showed my jewels in London, must I include my pink pearls in my application? Was I not permitted one memento of Bonel? Or of King Richard? In any case, the jewels must be preserved in case of attack. I hollowed a round of cheese as my hiding place, then placed the cheese inside a barrel.

  I didn’t know I’d dreamed of the Carpathian Mountains, until I stopped dreaming.

  In January, Archbishop Langton summoned the Brotherhood to the castle of Lord Robert de Ros in Yorkshire, where we’d met before, though now the castle was half in ruins. Langton was visiting Archbishop Geoffrey of York, however, so it seemed the best place to rendezvous. Enoch and I agreed for once to leave Leith with Gruoth, for the wind was blowing a blizzard. We wrapped our faces in woolen scarves, but our eyelashes froze.

  I cried aloud when I saw the castle from a distance, only a high smoking chimney still intact, the tower gone, the walls, the moat bridge. We labored toward the bleak treeless ruin with the wind at our backs. When we crossed planks to a wooden wall that had been erected on one side of the Great Hall, I looked back on moors and shallow valleys. Opalescent, shadowed, mysterious, and dangerous, the other lure of England.

  Lady Fiona met us with royal dignity, despite her rough long Scottish kilts. Inside the Great Hall, barons shouted and toasted in high glee. Never mind that the makeshift thatch above leaked small snowdrifts in the corners, never mind that huge snarling hounds occupied the only warm places by the fire, spirits were high—made more so by hot mead. Lord Robert de Ros came forward to meet us accompanied by three young daughters, all wrapped in fur: Mary Alice, Mary Angela, and Mary Margaret, Scottish princesses all.

  Lord Robert fitzWalter thrust methiers into our hands. “Where’s that little pink pearl?”

  I started. My pearls were not little!

  “Leith be at home,” Enoch answered, “becas o’ the weddir.”

  Lord Robert punched my stomach. “Another one on the way? You make beautiful heiresses, Lady Alix!”

  “Nocht wi’out me!” Enoch cried.

  Lord Robert laughed. “You want me to punch you as well?”

  The de Ros daughters now lay on top of the hounds. Two were quite young, but the one called Mary Margaret was fast turning into a beauty.

  Another round of hot mead was passed; my feet began to thaw. At least the weather guaranteed a good turnout, since knights weren’t fighting and lords weren’t overseeing their planting. Therefore the meeting was attended by twice the number of barons as we’d had at Dunmow, which now seemed long ago.

  Archbishop Langton staggered into the Hall through the kitchen court, carrying a stack of leather folders, which he placed on a small table.

  These were documents of laws and precedents he thought we should know.

  I read the charter of Henry I first. When I stopped, the barons waited, as if not believing that this was the entire document. Langton beckoned Lord Robert fitzWalter to read another charter of Henry I, concerning London. The charter declared London a free city for all time, with its own rule and its own trade and franchises.

  “Hear! Hear!” cried William de Mowbray, who was London’s mayor.

  “You see what long life a charter can have,” Langton said, “and yet how little effect on everyday lives at the time it’s written.” King Henry I had been a brutal despot, especially in London, efficient and clever, but nonetheless a tyrant.

  “Boot he left a legacy,” Enoch pointed out. “London be free, fer example. Ond we can use his words and fergit qhuat he did.”

  Yet Henry—or even the present king—shrank in villainy when compared to the despotism of King Stephen. And King Stephen had nevertheless listed the rights of his subjects in a charter. Enoch opined sotto voce that Stephen had become king only because the English so hated the Angevins. Other charters were read. Robert de Ros took exception to a common theme: that the forests of England were a personal and peculiar possession of the king’s.

  “The point is,” Langton suggested, “that charters may be signed and proclaimed, only to be followed by anarchy. Are you certain of your approach?”

  When no one spoke, he continued. Tacitus of Rome had written a learned treatise on the law (though, Enoch whispered, the great law of the Roman system had been its strong central government). He also mentioned German law, and the laws of Wessex, of Alfred the Great, of Athelstan, of Edgar. And London wasn’t the only city with a record of independence: Newcastle upon Tyne also had an ancient charter granted by the parliament of Scotland, much to Enoch’s satisfaction.

  “You have just heard the precedents you sought,” said Langton. “Are you ready to proceed?”

  There followed a melee of shouted accusations against John, King Philip, even the Holy Roman Emperor. The air was cloudy with sour breaths. Yet our cause remained opaque.

  We stopped for Haute Tierce.

  In the afternoon session, Lord Richard de Percy urged greater focus on our purpose. “Haven’t we already written a list of categories on which we agree? Shouldn’t those be our basis?”

  “Indeed, we have,” Langton replied. “Lady Alix, would you read them in English, then French?”

  I read our short list.

  After a long silence, Lord Robert rose. “Where we differ from King John is only in application. We should make that clear.”

  Langton sighed in relief. “You’re right. We should look forward to modern application. Though the eternal verities don’t change, the circumstances wherein they’re applied do change. As St. Augustine teaches us: ‘The human mind needs Divine Illumination to know the truth.’ The sun illuminates the earth.”

  Enoch had gradually become a deeper and deeper red. “This shell of a castle be illumination enow!”

  “All governance depends on holy inspiration.”

  “So you think we shuould forget the charter and pray?” Enoch stammered in French.

  “All law stems from God, who gave us a tablet of commandments. Divine wisdom provides the design whereby we shall create the artifact, which is our uniquely human gift. We make tangible that which the Holy Spirit suggests. Surely you want to know that your artifact contains truth.”

  I doubt if a single baron could follow his reasoning except Enoch, who could hardly speak. “A pox on your St. Augustine! Didn’t he write about two cities, one of light, one of darkness, where the devil lives? King John is the devil, and yet the pope will deal with him! We’ll contain his evil with a charter if we can, but we won’t stop at prayer! Do you understand my French?”

  He
slumped to the floor and leaned against my knees, but he wasn’t finished.

  “We willna fight the king’s foreign wars. Poot it in!”

  Lord Robert nodded; Langton just stared.

  “Yif we want to fight abroad, we’d better follow Caesar.”

  Most of the barons had never heard of Caesar. They would have known King Richard as a military hero, but Enoch wouldn’t evoke his name.

  It took most of the day to get beyond the foreign-war issue. Lady Fiona asked, Did widows have to remarry just because the king wanted money? Her husband hastily interrupted: What about the bailiffs’ behavior when a man died with debts? Sir Hubert asked, Could a knight’s service be inherited?

  Gradually, our first draft of a charter was formed. Added to my original eight points, we had twenty-five more. Now very sober despite the mead, the barons each signed their names.

  As we rode through heavy drifts again, I said to Enoch, “How dare you lean against my knees! I will not tolerate such intimacies!”

  He pretended not to hear.

  “You behaved as if I were your wife!”

  “Which ye air until the Church says ye’re nocht!” He turned a very red face with very blue eyes. “Besides, ye’re my sister.”

  “Aye, sister.” I was near tears.

  “I lean agin my real sister so.”

  “Did you also rape her?”

  I galloped ahead through the snow.

  In April, King John sent his reply to our charter: He refused to even read it.

  In May, Langton suggested that Enoch and I, plus twenty-five other barons, retire to Staines on the Thames, close to Windsor, and stay there until the king had to give in. I must again act as scribe to make necessary additions and deletions. Langton would reside at Windsor with the king; he would ride back and forth to Staines as need be.

 

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