The Leopards of Normandy: Duke: Leopards of Normandy 2

by David Churchill

  Edward cast his eyes back and forth along the line of dignitaries, and each time they came to rest in the centre of the line. ‘William,’ he said. ‘It’s that little bastard William.’

  ‘Remarkable, isn’t it? The boy is what, fourteen, maybe fifteen now?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘He has nothing but bad blood in his veins, and yet, just look at him. He’s already as big and strong-looking as any other man there. And though he’s not handsome exactly, there’s just something about him, an air of leadership, of dominance. I hate to say this, but it’s really quite attractive. I mean, in the sense that men will follow him and women will want to bed him.’

  ‘Oh yes, I understand exactly what you mean,’ said Edward. ‘You wouldn’t want to cross him either, would you?’ A memory came to him of a conversation with William years earlier: of his unbroken voice calmly, but with an undercurrent of genuine relish, describing how, if Harold Harefoot had blinded his brother, he would have ripped out Harefoot’s eyes in return.

  ‘He’s always had a vengeful nature,’ Edward said. ‘In fact, the more I look at him, the more I’m inclined to think that it’s not a matter of when Ralph, Mauger and Talou will get rid of William, but when he will dispose of them.’

  As Edward and Champart had been talking, another man had been making his way through the mass of litigants, supplicants, courtiers and servants thronging the hall. From time to time he had stopped to ask a question, but no one had given him an answer until at last someone pointed him in Edward’s direction. Now he pushed his way through the last few people until he came to his quarry, whereupon he bowed low and said, ‘Your Majesty, I bring news from your mother in England.’

  Edward was suitably gratified by the show of obeisance, but less impressed by the reason for it. He gave an irritable sigh as he took the rolled parchment and broke open the wax seal. His eyes scanned the message, carelessly at first and then with increasing absorption, and as he read, his mood visibly changed. He stood taller, with his shoulders square and his sullen pout transformed into a beaming smile.

  ‘My,’ said Champart, ‘someone’s had good news.’

  ‘Indeed I have, my dearest bishop, indeed I have!’ Edward enthused. ‘You know, this is truly an extraordinary moment, one that I’ve waited for all my life. I always knew it would come, but I’ll admit there were times when doubts crept in. But now . . . now . . .’

  ‘Oh Edward,’ said Champart. ‘Have they . . . ?’

  ‘Yes, old friend, my people have called for me. And I am bound for England.’

  4

  Alençon, in the county of Bellême

  ‘You can’t do this!’ William Talvas of Bellême screamed at his son. ‘You can’t kick me out of my own property. I’m your father, damn you. Show me some respect!’

  Arnulf of Bellême laughed. ‘Show you respect? What have you ever done to deserve that? When have you ever respected anyone in your whole rotten, poisonous life?’

  ‘By God, I’ll not let you get away with this. I’ll . . . I’ll . . .’

  ‘You’ll what?’ asked Arnulf, and Bellême was uncomfortably aware that though his son had barely a hair on his chin, he was now a head taller than him. ‘If you had a sword and I just picked up a knife from the dinner table, I’d still beat you. But you wouldn’t pick up a sword, would you? You’re too much of a stinking coward. You showed the whole world that. And why should any man fight for you when you won’t fight for yourself?’

  Talvas cursed the fates that had led him to this humiliation. He cursed his second wife, Rohais, who now stood beside his son, urging him on, supporting that rebellious brat against his own father. It was her fault, all of this, Talvas now realised. If she hadn’t been such a Jezebel, seducing him with female trickery and witchcraft, he never would have wanted to marry her and none of this would have happened. Or maybe William Fitzgiroie was to blame. If he hadn’t let those men hang Walter Sors and his ill-begotten sons, or refused a perfectly reasonable request to kill that pathetic slut Hildeburg, everything would have turned out perfectly.

  What people never seemed to understand, Talvas now realised, was that he had a right to expect things to work out as he wished. He deserved that. So, for example, the problem with his brother Robert’s death was not that he had died. As that oaf Giroie had pointed out all those years ago, that had been to Talvas’s advantage. The point was that he had not died in a way that Talvas had controlled. Things had not been done properly.

  The same with Hildeburg. What damn right did William Fitzgiroie have to place the needs of his immortal soul – which was surely going to burn anyway – ahead of Talvas’s desire to see his wife killed in a location and manner of his choosing? All Fitzgiroie had to do was say yes, and then there would have been no need to punish him. And Talvas’s wedding could have gone ahead in peace, and nothing would have happened . . .

  ‘Don’t go to Talvas’s wedding,’ Ralph Fitzgiroie had said. The fifth-born Giroie son had been the one sent to make the family’s peace with God. He was a monk, complete with shaven pate, or tonsure, and plain brown habit, and was known for two characteristics above all. The first was his fondness for strapping chain mail over his monk’s robes and joining in any fight he could find. This had led to his somewhat cumbersome nickname of Ralph the Ill-Tonsured, the point being that he really wasn’t cut out for a life of contemplative religious devotion.

  He was also known as Ralph the Clerk, for he possessed remarkable intelligence, in both the intellectual and military sense. Brother Ralph seemed to know everything, be it about theology, philosophy or history on the one hand, or everyday gossip and rumour – who was doing what to whom and why – on the other. And now he had information he wanted to share.

  ‘I’m telling you, William, Talvas is after you. He still blames you for his brother’s death, and he’s never forgiven you for refusing to kill Hildeburg, either.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Ralph,’ said his brother, laughing at the very idea. ‘I don’t know where you got this from, but for once in your life you’re wrong. Talvas hardly objected at all when I said I wouldn’t do it. He just nodded and went off to find someone else.’

  ‘He didn’t scream or shout, you mean? He just stood there quietly?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Well then, it must have been really serious. He was putting a little note against your name, marking you down for vengeance.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, that’s just absurd!’

  ‘No it isn’t. You’re in danger. Don’t go to the wedding. I mean it.’

  William went anyway. He took a dozen armed men with him to Alençon, but he attended the wedding itself and the celebrations afterwards alone and unarmed. So he had no way of defending himself when Talvas had him seized and locked away. The day after the wedding, Talvas went out hunting. While he was gone, his men, acting on his orders, blinded William Fitzgiroie with a red-hot poker, then cut off his ears and his nose.

  Somehow he survived his ordeal, though he was left horribly mutilated. Luckily for Talvas, Giroie himself was now dead, for the retribution he would have exacted for his son’s ordeal would have involved Talvas being chopped, very slowly, into little pieces amidst the corpses of his family and the charred ruins of his lands. There were, however, still enough Giroie brothers alive to take immediate and only marginally less savage revenge. They rode through the county of Bellême sacking, looting and razing Talvas’s farms, manors, granaries and storehouses. Finally they came to Alençon itself, where they stood outside the castle gates and taunted Talvas, mocking him and challenging him to take on any one of them in combat to the death.

  Talvas refused. In his mind, he was, as always, playing the long game. He could always rebuild anything the Giroie clan had burned down and replace what they had stolen. But he could not get another life. The whole point about castles was th
at one was safe inside them. Only an idiot would voluntarily leave that protection and risk his neck in a fight.

  That, though, was not the way the rest of the world saw it. By maiming William Fitzgiroie, an entirely blameless wedding guest who had served him loyally and accepted his hospitality in good faith, Talvas had finally gone too far. The fearsome reputation that he had spent a lifetime building up was instantly and irrevocably destroyed. He had brought shame on himself and, by extension, on the House of Bellême and all who served in it.

  Arnulf was his father’s son. He had been taught from earliest childhood that the only thing to do when confronted by weakness was to exploit it and crush it. He had watched as his father, knowing that Hildeburg was both physically and emotionally fragile, had beaten her down and eventually killed her. Why? Because he could.

  And now that Talvas was weak and there for the taking, Arnulf had turned on him and had him expelled from his own castle, thrown out on to the streets of Alençon like a common vagrant, condemned to spend the rest of his days wandering through Normandy begging for shelter and a bite to eat wherever he could find it.

  Arnulf had, however, bargained without one surprise. He had thought that his sister Mabel, a girl who loved nothing more than to see cruelty being done to others, would relish her father’s downfall. Instead, she told her maid to pack one trunk with her finest robes and another with blankets and furs, and send them both down to the stables to be mounted on a donkey’s back. She gathered up the jewels and money she had inherited from her mother and put them in a chest that she hugged to her body like a mother with a newborn babe.

  Then she went to Talvas as he stood hunched and shivering in the cold air of the castle yard. ‘Don’t worry, Papa. I am coming with you. I’ll make sure you’re all right. As for you, Arnulf, I will never forget what you did here today.’

  Her voice rose and her cold, beautiful eyes looked around at the soldiers, servants, priests and townspeople who had been drawn to witness the spectacle of Talvas’s expulsion. ‘I curse you, Arnulf,’ she cried, ‘here and now, before everyone present. You will never know another day’s peace, nor a night’s good rest. For you will know that your doom is approaching and that of the three of us, it is you who will die first. And die in screaming agony, too.’

  So saying, she grabbed the rope attached to the donkey’s halter and led it out of the castle, her eyes flashing, her head held high and her father following meekly in her wake.

  A league or two down the road, she turned to Talvas and said, ‘Papa?’

  ‘Yes, my dear,’ he replied, oddly conscious that his daughter seemed somehow to have taken charge of events.

  ‘Do you remember the stories you used to tell me about the Viper, that man who was a deadly poisoner?’

  ‘Yes . . .’ Talvas paused, wondering if he dared go on. Ralph de Gacé had told him something once, in strictest confidence, insisting that he should never tell anyone. But that had been many years ago, and besides, having been so publicly humiliated, he wanted to impress his daughter. So he added, ‘Except that the Viper was not a man.’

  Mabel stopped dead in her tracks, eyes alive with curiosity. ‘What do you mean?’

  Talvas was delighted. ‘The Viper was a woman,’ he said, relishing the look of wonderment and delight suffusing Mabel’s face. ‘Ralph de Gacé found her and assured me that she was extraordinarily beautiful, and that her skill as a poisoner was worthy of a sorceress.’

  ‘Where did he find her?’

  ‘I don’t know for sure. But I do remember him asking me all about her, years ago. I told him that there was only one way to get in touch with her, and that was to go to an inn by the docks at Vaudreuil.’

  ‘Then that is where we are going!’ said Mabel.

  ‘But dearest, Vaudreuil is several days’ walk from here. And there’s no guarantee that the inn will still be there, or that she is even alive any more. I haven’t heard anything about her in years.’

  ‘I don’t care. We are going to Vaudreuil. Someone there will know something. They will lead us to someone else. No matter how long it takes, or how far we have to go, we are going to find the Viper!’ With that, Mabel strode away.

  Talvas stood where he was for a while, wondering what to do next. It didn’t take him long to realise that he had no choice. He was penniless, homeless and entirely dependent upon his daughter. ‘Wait for me!’ he cried, and set off down the road after her.

  5

  Lambeth, England

  Edward had been back in England for nine months, accompanied by a number of Norman knights who hoped that by showing loyalty to him, they might be able to acquire land and titles, and also by Champart, to whom he had promised the bishopric of London once the current incumbent died. Harthacnut was not troubled by Edward’s presence, for he simply did not see him as a threat. One look at his half-brother told him that he would have a hard time seizing a bread roll from a hungry child, let alone a kingdom from its king.

  It actually suited Edward to be thought of as harmless, because it meant he had no need to make a secret of his intentions. It delighted him to know how angry his very public support for Champart’s cause made Godwin, who wanted to strengthen his own position by putting supporters into key positions in the Church. Patronage was the key to maintaining control of England. The greater a man’s capacity to dole out favours to his friends, the more friends he acquired, the more loyal they became and the greater the influence he could exert on them and through them.

  No one, of course, could exert more power than the king, yet Edward saw no need to usurp the throne, even had he been capable of doing so. He knew that if anything ever happened to Harthacnut, he’d be the most obvious successor. Even so, he could not guarantee his ascension to the throne, and there lay Godwin’s great strength, as he had reminded Edward on more than one occasion.

  The crown of England could not be bestowed upon a monarch without the approval of a gathering of nobles known as the Witenagemot. Godwin had more influence over the Witenagemot than anyone else in the land, and thus Edward would never be crowned without his help. Or perhaps he would never be crowned at all. Harthacnut was fifteen years his junior after all, and frequently boasted of his iron constitution. Edward was disgusted by the king’s gluttony and limitless thirst, and could see the toll his lifestyle was taking as Harthacnut became fatter and meaner. But he was not convinced by Godwin’s belief that the king was putting his life in danger. A lot more time and overindulgence would surely have to pass before that . . . wouldn’t it?

  But then, thought Edward, just look at the boorish pig right now. It was a glorious early summer’s day, and the court had assembled at a manor house in Lambeth, a marshy stretch of land that lay along the south bank of the River Thames, across the water from London. There they were celebrating the marriage of two of the horde of Danish immigrants who had come to England when Canute became king. The groom, Tofi the Proud, had been Canute’s standard-bearer, and had therefore stood alongside the king in battle, a fact that had been brought up again and again throughout the day, much to Edward’s chagrin, since some of those battles had been fought, victoriously, against his father Ethelred. Tofi’s bride, Gytha, was the daughter of an East Anglian landowner, Osgod Clapa, who had, Edward presumed, either stolen the land from its rightful Saxon owners or been given it by Canute after he had seized it. In either case, it just added to the general bitterness of the day, so far as Edward was concerned. But he was the king’s half-brother and second only to him in all the land, so it was beholden on him to attend the marriage of two of his more important subjects.

  The service had taken place and the wedding feast was almost over when Harthacnut rose, unsteadily and with considerable difficulty, to make a speech in honour of the bride and groom. He had, of course, stuffed himself with the richest foods on the table, washed down by flagons of wine.

  ‘My lords, l
adies, friends . . . enemies,’ he grinned as he got his first laugh, ‘it is time to charge your vessels and drink a toast to the bride and groom. Oh, wait . . . I can’t charge my vessel. It’s already full . . . Huh! That won’t do. Better empty it so I can fill it up again.’

  There were a few laughs and incoherent shouts from around the hall, and then a single voice, very clear, called out from the back, ‘Go on, Your Majesty, down it in one!’

  That set off a round of applause and more shouts of encouragement. Swaying a little, so that he had to reach out and grab the top of his gilded chair for support, Harthacnut raised a pewter tankard that looked big enough to hold an entire bottle of wine. ‘Drink this?’ he asked.

  The revellers cheered.

  ‘In one, single draught?’

  They cheered again, even more loudly.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  Now the entire hall echoed to the sound of shouts and applause.

  ‘Very well then.’ Harthacnut held the tankard up in front of his face, so everyone could see it, and called out, ‘Are you ready?’

  Someone started banging the table in a steady beat, like a drummer setting times for a warship’s oarsmen, chanting, ‘Drink! Drink! Drink! Drink!’ All around the other guests joined in the banging and chanting.

  Harthacnut took a deep breath, then put the tankard to his mouth and started drinking. His thick throat vibrated with every swallow. Rivulets of purple wine stained his red-gold beard as it dribbled down from the tankard.

  ‘Drink! Drink! Drink! Drink!’

  Harthacnut threw his head back further, tilting the tankard ever more steeply to his face. Edward, sitting in a place of honour at the top table, looked on in disgusted fascination as sweat poured off the king’s forehead. It seemed to be taking forever, as though the vessel were enchanted, constantly refilling no matter how hard Harthacnut tried to empty it. But then, quite suddenly, he stopped, took the tankard from his mouth and held it out upside down, so that everyone could see it was empty.