The Villains of the Piece

by The Villains of the Piece (retail) (epub)

  ‘Yes,’ she soothed, ‘yes. Now, tell me, who were the others?’

  ‘Others?’

  ‘You said, they all did. All of whom?’

  ‘The bishops… the clergy… Aah, let’s go back to sleep, it was just a dream…’ He slid down in the bed, rolled on his side and mouthed his good nights into the swansdown pillow. Her mind on other things, Queen Matilda murmured, ‘God bless you, husband,’ then lay, staring at the torches.

  While Stephen slept, his wife composed a list of the senior prelates of England. So, she mused, the church are against us, are they? His own brother. And no doubt the wine-supping Roger of Salisbury and his brood; his son, Chancellor of England; his nephews, Alexander and Nigel, bishops of Lincoln and Ely. Yes, it’s plausible. I’ve suspected that family for some time. They’re more barons than bishops, the lot of them. So now they invade his sleep, and dare to mutilate the crown…

  She was a sensible woman, Stephen’s queen, but even the most clear-minded grow tired and allow themselves to be misled by the flickering of pitch-flame.

  * * *

  The weather was not so warm at Northallerton in Yorkshire. Here, towards the end of August, the royal army, strengthened by local contingents, faced a Scottish force under the command of the hard-spoken King David. The Scots were supported by a large detachment of near-barbarian Picts from the fastnesses of Galloway, mountainous eyrie of the golden eagle. These savage men boasted that no English spear could pierce them, nor arrow find its mark, and they claimed the right to lead the attack. Impressed only with results, King David waved them forward into the misty dawn.

  With King Stephen otherwise occupied in the south, the English army was led by the frail Thurstan, Archbishop of York, though the mass of knights and infantry were under the individual command of the northern magnates – with the conspicuous exception of Ranulf of Chester. More than three years had elapsed since Stephen had denied Ranulf the inheritance of Carlisle, but the earl had neither forgiven nor forgotten. He remained in his castle, and offered prayers for a Scottish victory. King David was more his type than the hither-and-thither King of England. He could talk to David, and he would, when the Scots took possession of the north.

  The rallying point of the English army was a tall tree trunk, from which flew the triple banners of York, Ripon and Beverley. The stripped tree was mounted on a specially-constructed cart, drawn by fourteen dray horses, and was known as The Standard, from which the battle would take its name.

  After a heated discussion, in which Archbishop Thurstan convinced his commanders that the Scottish battlecries would stampede their horses, the English knights abandoned their destriers and prepared to fight on foot. As they moved into line, the sky lightened over the moor. The knights felt awkward, almost embarrassed, as though they had been caught naked on the field. Damn the priest, why had they listened to him? What did he know about the battle tactics of the Picts? And what good were English knights, weighed down with armour, playing at foot-soldiers? What was a knight, for God’s sake, if not armed and mounted?

  But early reports on the condition of the field soon stilled their anger. Where there was no marsh, there were stumbling-blocks of rock, and whatever firm ground there was, petered out and became deadly quagmire.

  Daylight seeped over the moor. In the distance they heard a moan, a blood-curdling chant, a rise and fall of unnumbered voices, shrieking like the newest inmates of hell. Then the massive Galwegians charged out of the mist, their mouths stretched wide, as though to swallow or spit out the puny sticks the English called arrows.

  Thurstan’s archers let fly, while the knights raised their two-handed swords…

  Within the first hour of the battle, the half-naked barbarians learned that their pagan gods were powerless. They were not invulnerable, and their long-learned battlecries meant nothing to those who did not understand their tongue. Arrows and crossbow quarrels ripped through their unprotected bodies, and the most terrifying curse they could devise did nothing to deflect them. They came on in waves, each man believing he was safe, until the instant he was hit. Then they fell, some killed outright, others floundering in the marshes, where they drowned in disbelief.

  King David’s regular troops fared little better, for they stumbled upon the Galwegians before they ever saw the enemy. Arrows hissed without warning from the mist banks, and the Scots hesitated, then fell back, pursued by the iron flails of the English knights.

  By full light it was over. As the sun burned the mist from the ground the Scots broke and ran, leaving eleven thousand of their people on the field. Thurstan’s foot-soldiers went among them, enjoying their work, while the archbishop knelt beside the horse-drawn Standard, his face wet with piety.

  One of the great myths of the time had been exposed. The men of Scotland could be defeated, had been defeated. The lion had reached up and caught the golden eagle. The border-line had held.

  * * *

  The English victory at the Battle of the Standard sent a frisson of fear through all those who had declared for Matilda. Her uncle, King David, had been vanquished. But more than that, his army had been utterly routed, and he had suffered as grave a reversal as any since the Norman conquest of England. Never again would he attempt an all-out invasion of England. Next time, Stephen’s supporters said, the eagle would learn to fly higher, to avoid the lion’s claws.

  The tide turned. Stephen captured Shrewsbury, whilst his wife, who had placed herself in command of a second royal army, unhinged the gates of Dover Castle, one of Robert of Gloucester’s southernmost strongholds.

  At Wallingford, Brien Fitz Count waited for the first arrow, the first catapulted missile. Lady Alyse awaited an answer to her letter.

  * * *

  Stephen’s queen had not forgotten the nightmares. Dipping into her private purse, she bribed a number of household servants to spy on their masters – Bishop Henry, Bishop Roger, Bishop Alexander, Bishop Nigel. She thus learned that Henry was about to sail for Normandy, ostensibly on the first leg of a journey that would take him to Rome. According to the spy, Stephen’s brother sought an audience with Pope Innocent II, at which he would try to obtain the Pope’s consent to his election as Archbishop of Canterbury. The aged William of Corbeil had died two years earlier, and since then the see of Canterbury had remained vacant. With good reason, Henry expected to get the job, but as Stephen had done nothing about it, his brother had decided to take the matter into his own hands. He would go to Rome, win the Pope’s support, then ask Stephen to append the royal seal. He would be back in England by December.

  That, anyway, was the story the spy told. The queen nodded and dismissed him, and did not believe a word of it. She preferred to see the bland, thick-girthed bishop as a potential traitor, detouring through Normandy to plot and scheme with the Angevins. It had a much more realistic ring to it, for why else would Bishop Henry choose this time to leave the country?

  He’d had two years in which to make his trip, but he’d left it until now, when England was coming to the boil. An audience with the Pope? No, not unless grass turned blue. But a war council with the Angevins; ah, yes, that she could believe.

  She shared her suspicions with Stephen, and received the answer she expected.

  ‘If you’re right, we must stop him. I, too, have noticed a cooling of affection on his part, though I must say I never saw him as a traitor.’

  ‘I think you did, husband, though you refused to recognise it. Do you recollect your dreams? Who was it who broke your crown? Whose face loomed largest in your nightmares? You were seeing the truth with your eyes closed. The future was being paraded before you, but you chose to ignore it.’

  ‘Yes, it could be. Shall I arrest him then? I’ll pen him up with his damned ostriches and peacocks. Let him plot with them for a while.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Leave him be. Pretend ignorance. He can do little outside the country. Oh, he can scrawl victories on paper, and huddle together with Matilda and Geoffrey, but he can achieve nothin
g. We’re better off without him at present. But there is one thing you can do.’

  More comfortable with practice than theory, Stephen nodded. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Fill the gap at Canterbury.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he demurred. ‘I’ve all but promised it to him. I suppose I could delay things, but—’

  ‘But nothing,’ the queen snapped. ‘If you make him archbishop, why not throw the crown in with it! He’ll be the most influential churchman outside Rome. You might as well take off your shoes and stand on a snake. Why not? You’ll have built its nest.’

  ‘Don’t say that. You know I hate serpents. You know I’ve never visited that part of his menagerie.’ He shuddered, then fiddled with his moustache and said, ‘Very well. I’ll find another candidate. Who do you suggest?’

  * * *

  Far removed from palace politics, the Saxon maidservant had problems of her own. Her affair with Sergeant Morcar had blossomed. She thought of him as a latter-day Hercules, and throughout the changing seasons of 1138 she had come to know every leaf on the alder trees beside the Thames, whilst he became a breathless authority on grasses and insects.

  Now, when the castle had been in a state of preparedness for almost a year, they continued their outings, braving the early winter snows. The visits to the riverbank failed to produce a death chill, but instead put new life into her. Exactly that, for by the end of October Edgiva realised she was pregnant.

  It came as no surprise. Indeed, she had begun to wonder if her sergeant-lover deserved his heroic nickname, though she could not remember whether or not Hercules had fathered any children. No matter, Morcar would, and had to be told.

  She chose her moment wisely, a prelude to love-making in the snow, and, in the circumstances, he took it well. His breath hissed out as steam, and it was the coldness of the day that made his smile seem forced – or so she chose to believe. His voice was thick with emotion – pride, she decided – as he gasped, ‘A child? You’re having a child?’

  ‘Not that,’ she smiled upward. ‘Our child.’ Then in an innocent voice that hinted at barrel-hoops and leg-irons, ‘Your child, Morcar. Tell me you’re pleased.’

  ‘Mine? You’re sure it’s—’

  ‘So jealousy does suit you. I never knew you were jealous. Yes, of course it’s—’

  ‘Who spoke of jealousy?’

  ‘—yours, how can you think otherwise? I have been faithful—’

  ‘No one said I was jealous.’

  ‘—to you from the first. That is – well, you must know what I mean.’

  ‘When did this happen?’

  Edgiva rolled on her side and drew patterns in the snow. ‘Not even the future mother can give the future father so precise a date. But it was here, a few weeks ago. With you.’

  His mouth smoked in the cold air. He plucked at a comer of the cowhide and managed, ‘I suppose we will—’ Then, with desperate nonchalance, ‘Have you mentioned this, uh, blessing to anyone?’

  ‘No,’ she smiled, ‘no one save Lady Alyse and Constable Varan.’

  Morcar’s skull rang with the slamming of gates. He wondered how long one would survive beneath the thin ice of the Thames. Woman, or man.

  Edgiva murmured, ‘You supposed what, sweet? You said, I suppose, and then I didn’t hear the rest.’

  ‘I-suppose-we-should-marry.’

  ‘Aah, love.’ She lay back again and smiled up at him. She saw his head framed, some would think pinioned, by the branches. ‘Love, I did not think you would find me worthy— yes, we should. I am at a loss for words— yes, since it is what you want. You are the strongest and most handsome creature, Morcar— yes, as you say.’

  He searched the snow, but there was not a single insect, not one he could pound to powder on the stone-hard ground. Instead, a voice borrowed his tongue to croak, ‘I’ll speak to Lord Fitz Count. I’ll ask for your hand. We’ll marry when he says we may.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said obediently, having never before realised the full power of the word.

  * * *

  Alyse shared Edgiva’s pleasure. It was all she could share, for she was resigned to the fact that she and Brien would not have children. It was God’s will, she accepted, though she could never quite see why.

  * * *

  The undeclared war continued. The royal troops re-took a number of minor castles, whilst the rival faction sent a constant stream of messages to Matilda, Geoffrey and Earl Robert, asking them when they would invade. The messages went unanswered, as did Alyse’s letter to the empress. The year dragged its feet through the snow, and paused for breath on Christmas Eve.

  By then, Bishop Henry was back in place. He had ridden straight through Normandy, then south to the coast and along it to Italy. He had obtained his audience with Pope Innocent and come away with papal consent for his election to Canterbury. He thought Stephen and the queen rather chilly in their reception, but so was the weather. One was rarely ebullient in December.

  On the 24th of the month, Bishop Henry was at St Paul’s Cathedral in London, ordaining a young deacon.

  A few miles away, at Westminster, the king and queen attended a secret council of churchmen and barons, and witnessed the election to the see of Canterbury of the partially- deaf Theobald, Abbot of Bee. When the service was over, and the king addressed him by his new title, the archbishop looked round, then cupped a hand to his ear. ‘Hmm? Eh? Is your majesty speaking to me?’

  When one of Henry’s servants brought him the news, he abandoned the ordination, snarled for his horse and rode to his fortified palace at Winchester. There, another servant told him his prized peacock had died. He had been well enough that morning. It must have been the cold. The distraught peahen was running about in the snow, beside herself with sorrow.

  ‘What should we do, Lord Bishop?’ the servant inquired anxiously. ‘She runs blindly into the fence. The keepers fear she will injure herself.’

  ‘Bring her into the palace,’ Henry said. ‘Into my bedchamber. We’ll comfort one another.’ He glanced at the astonished servant. ‘It’s all right, man. I plan nothing unnatural. She has lost her mate, and I have lost a brother. We’ll have much in common.’ He crossed the room and leaned down to study a time candle, a thick column of wax, ringed with lines to mark the hour. ‘If the table’s level,’ he murmured, ‘it’s Christmas Day, God forgive us.’

  * * *

  The new year brought more skirmishes, more minor victories for both sides. Edgiva and Morcar were married in February, and in June the maidservant gave birth to a son. She named him Alder, which drew a few smirks from Morcar’s soldiers, though they made sure their faces were straight when the sergeant was present. They had heard that Lord Fitz Count was grooming him to take over the constableship from Varan; not yet, for at sixty, the flat-nosed Saxon was still the most formidable man in the castle, but at some future date, when Varan told his master he was tired.

  So the men-at-arms studied their sergeant with renewed respect and marvelled at the change that was overtaking him. At first they had put it down to the fact that he was a married man, but that only explained a part of it. He had been thinner before, certainly, and more inclined to shout than growl. But he was not merely putting on weight, or growing mellow with marriage; he was changing, both in shape and manner, changing into a facsimile of Constable Varan.

  Morcar spent much of his time with the constable, grunting where formerly he would have made some comment, standing still and flat-footed, where he would once have scratched and shifted. His nose remained unbroken, but in other things, in the muscled thickness of his body and the stoop of his shoulders, Edgiva’s husband became indistinguishable from Brien’s watchdog. Even his voice deepened, so that, if he was heard before he was seen, the garrison troops whirled round, thinking they had been surprised by old Stonehead. When they saw who it was, they grinned and relaxed a little – until they recognised the same chipped-out expression, the same unwavering gaze. Satan’s sting, they moaned, one was bad enough.
And we’ve been cursed with two.

  In her years at Wallingford, Edgiva had never before been treated to so many polite nods and murmured greetings. She was enchanted. Coarse soldiers though they were, they were obviously gratified to see a young bride about the place.

  * * *

  Already knowing the answer, Ernard debated whether to go or stay. Stay, he decided, just long enough to enjoy a mug of mead, and eye the serving-girls, and overhear a few conversations. Then he’d collect the cart and be on his way, a successful day’s work completed.

  He headed east through the narrow streets, emerged beside the Thames and glanced at the row of waterfront taverns. His horse and cart were where he’d left them, and the boy was still seated against one of the wheels. Ernard changed direction and walked over to the horse-rail. The boy scrambled to his feet, gabbling the usual mixture of justification and sales-talk. ‘I never left ’ere, master, not since you went off. I got ’ungry, and one of my friends brought me some bread, but I never left off watchin’. Everythin’s safe, I swear to God.’

  ‘So I see. We agreed on one penny, right?’

  ‘That’s what you said, one ’ole penny.’

  Ernard nodded, took two coins from his purse, then drew his knife and halved one. He handed the boy one and a half coins, and dropped the remaining half into the leather pouch. ‘The extra half’s for your honesty, and to pay for the bread.’

  The boy grinned and snatched the money. ‘If you’re in Oxford again, master, you’ll find me ’ere. I’ll look after things for you, you can trust me.’ He trotted away, then turned as Ernard called after him. ‘Anyone of interest in the taverns tonight?’

  The boy came back, making a show of sucking his lip. ‘Well, depends what you mean by interestin’. There’s some what’ll buy and sell things, or if it’s a woman you want – ’ Ernard fished out the cut coin and tossed it in his hand. ‘Anyone from the court, for example?’