Should I not have stood my ground with the King? I was in love with Maud and she with me; was it not my duty to stay by her side and protect her? In my head, I knew that discretion was vital, but my heart screamed at me to burst in on the feast and declare my abiding love.
Would I ever see her again? It seemed unlikely.
We had only been in the tavern for an hour when the door burst open, and at least a dozen of the King’s men set upon us with a vengeance. They wielded maces and staves and began raining blows on us.
Eadmer and I both managed to get to our feet and hurl ourselves at two of our assailants, knocking them to the floor. This reduced the odds a little, as we both managed to draw blood with our seaxes and relieve our opponents of their clubs.
A vicious exchange of blows ensued. Eadmer and I stood our ground amidst the confusion of a large group of men rapidly fleeing the tavern. But the sheer weight of numbers was too great for us to endure for long.
I saw Eadmer take a blow to the back of his neck before I suffered what I assumed was a similar fate. I felt a sickening crack to the side of my head and then nothing.
I did not even remember hitting the floor.
When I awoke, there was only a small speck of light high in the ceiling. I was sitting upright, devoid of clothes, with my arms chained to an iron ring in the wall above my head. I was confined in a small dungeon not much wider or longer than my own frame. I was in unbearable pain: the side of my head throbbed, my arms ached from being stretched upwards, and I was sitting in my own filth, which made my skin itch and burn.
I had no idea how long I had been there, but from my parched mouth and lips, and the severe pangs of my hunger, I assumed it had been several days. I could hear almost no noise – just the occasional sound of a door being slammed, or the faintest hint of human voices. I assumed I was in an oubliette, in the depths of Rouen’s palace.
Horrifyingly, I knew that Norman custom meant that oubliettes were reserved for those who would never again see the light of day.
22. Hell on Earth
It was soon obvious in my stone tomb that I was not going to be fed, or even given water. I was enduring a long, painful and suffocating death sentence.
I thought of my beloved, the Empress Matilda, who had become my Maud of St Cirq Lapopie, and of Eadmer, who had always been at my side and had stayed in Rouen, knowing his fate was unlikely to be any better than mine. I thought of my family heritage and how my forebears would have dealt with such adversity.
Death can only have been a day or two away. As I slowly descended into delirium, whatever clarity of thought I could muster focused on how much I had achieved and whether I had made any contribution to my family’s heritage.
To my shame, although I had enjoyed a brief but magical period of personal bliss with Maud – an adventure more enchanting than most men could dream of – I had fallen a long way short of continuing my family’s struggle. That was an ambition that could only be achieved by ensuring Maud’s succession – a hope that currently lay in ruins. Her succession required an heir – Geoffrey’s child, not mine! My worst fears had become a terrifying reality.
The walls of my oppressive space seemed to close in on me; I was constantly on the brink of the terrifying panic of claustrophobia. My chest heaved against the confined space, but it was a futile struggle. I prayed for death to end the agony. I reached for the Talisman, but it was not there – even in my role as its guardian, I had failed. Not only was I about to suffer an excruciating death, it was also going to be an ignominious one. When my breathless terror finally subsided into unconsciousness, it was a relief. My pain and my shame were over.
But the Angel of Death did not come – or, if he did, he took pity on me and gave me a reprieve. Consciousness suddenly returned and I sensed that I was being hauled upwards. My arms felt as if they were being pulled from their sockets. I could hear voices, but they were muffled; I could see people, but they were only dark shapes. Then I was being dragged along a hard floor and up stone steps.
I heard a series of barked orders.
‘Sluice him down! Feed him and get him dressed! He’s to see the King – make sure he doesn’t stink!’
The next time I opened my eyes, I felt less pain. I was no longer fettered, and I was lying on straw, fully clothed. The Talisman and my Venetian medallion were around my neck. I assumed water had been poured down my throat as the thirst that was previously unbearable was now tolerable. I could not move my arms, but the pain had been replaced by numbness. My head still throbbed – but no longer as if being smashed by a blacksmith’s hammer, but rather as if held firmly in a mason’s vice.
I was not in the oubliette any more. I was in a cell, in one of the castle’s many dungeons, but at least I was one level above the forgotten place. I was in a room that was not much larger than my stone coffin, but at least I could turn around. I was in Purgatory, rather than in Hell. Later that day, nourishment appeared through a small flap in the door: a bowl of thin stew that was more a watery grease than a broth of solid meat and vegetables, a piece of hard stale bread and a jug of filthy water. To my ravenous eyes, the stew looked like the finest chef’s soup. I ate as slowly as I could in an attempt to savour every mouthful and left not the smallest morsel. It gave me bucketing diarrhoea within minutes, but at least it was sustenance of sorts.
Two days later, I was dragged out of my cell, plunged into a butt of icy water and rubbed with vinegar, which burned my skin like the fires of Hades. I was covered in sores and assumed the vinegar was intended to remedy the infection, or kill whatever was biting me. These treatments continued for some time until my skin improved. I began to feel a little more comfortable, and the stew – although hardly a hearty diet – was at least putting a little flesh back on my bones.
The worst part of my captivity was the lack of human contact. When my skin improved, the vinegar regime stopped – and, with it, my only interaction with other people. The isolation gnawed at me, turning hours into years and weeks into an eternity. Although they were painful, I prayed for the vinegar treatments to return – at least then I saw my fellow man. Now my only glimpse of humanity was the fleeting digits of a right hand that slid my food into my cell every evening.
I had managed to create a pile of my own waste and keep it to a corner of my tiny world. But it loomed there like an ever-growing icon of my ultimate degradation, and it became a monument to my slowly decomposing existence.
The only thing that kept me alive was the thought that Matilda still needed me and that I could yet help guide England’s future. I assumed that Eadmer had met a dreadful end, and I shed tears for him every day. He had always been with me, and the fact that he was no longer by my side could mean only one thing. I was to blame of course – as he always said, I was constantly getting him into trouble.
I lost track of time. Using the buckle of my belt, I started to scratch the passing of the days on a tally on the wall of my cell – but as I had not begun doing so at the beginning of my confinement, I had no accurate idea how long I had been there. The one thing I was sure of was that I had gone into confinement at the end of 1129 and that I had experienced one more winter since. After many hours of calculating, which I turned into a giant chronological riddle in my imagination, I estimated that it was the spring of 1131 by the time the door of my cell opened for the first time in many months.
When it did, I was reluctant to move. I had become a part of the room; everything else beyond my cramped space had become alien to me, and I was petrified of facing the outside world. Inexplicably, I feared the warmth of sunlight, the glare of vibrant colours. I dreaded the thought of smells other than the stench of my own putrefaction and I feared tactile experiences beyond the feel of
the cold stone slabs of my harsh domain.
An hour later, barely recognizable as a human being, I was prostrate on the floor of King Henry’s Great Hall. I felt like a prone midden rat, plucked from the cesspits of the city, displayed as one of the weekly count trapped by the vermin-catcher. The King, oblivious to my condition, cleared the room before addressing me as if I had just arrived at his court from a jolly hunt in the forest.
‘Harold of Hereford, it has been a while since I last had the pleasure of your company.’
I was unable to respond coherently. The King continued, as if nothing was amiss.
‘I think the last time was in Foxley Wood, when your duplicity was first revealed to me. Then you killed one of my men in Southwark, before abducting my daughter in Beauvais.’
I was able to lift myself on to my elbows only momentarily and then glance at the King before collapsing back to the floor.
‘You are a subversive, like the rest of your family. Your clan seduced my brother Robert, with its oaths about freedom and righteousness, and he is still paying the price for his calumny. But all your family are now dead – or locked in dungeons, like you and Robert. Your dreams about the rebirth of a Saxon England are gone forever. I will see to that, you have my word.’
The King then bellowed at the top of his voice.
‘Bring Lady Matilda!’
He looked at me and spat his command.
‘Get to your feet! Your mistress approaches.’
I could not raise myself beyond my elbows, but I tried to respect her entrance as best I could, which I managed with no more than a lowering of my head. It was a weak gesture, little better than the ungainly nod of a drunk in a tavern.
Matilda walked in with her face hidden by a veil. I could not see her expression, but I could hear her heartfelt sobs. The King motioned to her to sit next to him.
‘Hail the next Queen of England. Bow to her! You, a filthy yard dog, who has the gall to fuck an empress!’
Matilda cowered, convulsed with spasms of grief.
‘The child of your foul coupling is no more. You came to her like a fiend in the night, for which you ought to have died. But she has pleaded that you be shown mercy.’
The King extended his hand to Matilda in a gesture of warmth.
‘I have consulted my seers here in Rouen and spoken to the Archbishop. All agree that the fecund seed of this rampant goat may have been the spur your fertility needed. Their wise judgement and your pleadings for him have saved his life.’
He turned back to me.
‘Your bestial tupping of my daughter has done me a great service. She told me about that strange amulet around your neck and all those ancient English legends about the Wodewose. She says you and your family have the powers of soothsayers. When I told my seers about you and showed them the amulet, they said that you have been able to conjure powerful forces to make Matilda fertile.
‘God help me for doubting my seers, but for my part, I think you just fucked the blockage out of her! The child is no more. But thanks to your little amulet and your big magician’s wand of a prick, Matilda is fertile after all. Her husband will soon arrive in Rouen to seed the furrow you have ploughed for him. Then I will have my heir.’
Still delirious from my ordeal, I was only half aware of what was being said. Matilda abandoned her place by her father and, despite my appalling condition, sat beside me, cradling my head in her arms to reassure me. She began to repeat the gist of the King’s diatribe, but with less invective, before he cut her short.
‘Enough! Harold of Hereford, I am about to make you an offer no man could refuse – especially one in your current predicament. I assumed, entombed in my oubliette, you would die. Matilda begged me every day to release you, and eventually I relented and had you put in a dungeon. When you still didn’t die, I took it as an omen that I should think again, and I consulted the seers.
‘Matilda’s husband returns within the week. The resumption of the marriage must continue in the eyes of the world. The recent hiatus must be seen as no more than that – the succession to my throne depends on it. I have given you a vacant title and some landholdings. I have many illegitimate children; you will become one of them and be quoted in the registers as the Earl of Huntingdon. In the first instance, you will stay in your home in Aquitaine until the time is right for you to return to Normandy. By then, young Geoffrey should have given me a legitimate heir of the royal blood. If, in the meantime, there is any hint that your seed has come within a mile of my daughter’s loins, you will be a dead man. Once Geoffrey’s task has been performed, I care not in the slightest if my daughter takes you to her chamber as often as she likes – as long as no ill-begotten child results. And remember this, as my acknowledged bastard child, Matilda becomes your half-sister and any offspring you produce would be seen as the rotten progeny of an incestuous coupling.’
The King pushed back his chair and stood. In my disordered state, he seemed to have twice the dimensions of his earthly form.
‘You can have five minutes together now. After that, you may not see one another until Geoffrey of Anjou’s pips are firmly planted in my daughter’s belly.’
The King began to leave, but with one parting comment.
‘You are a lucky man, Harold of Hereford, now Earl of Huntingdon. The planets must have been in a rare alignment when you were born! Hold tight to that amulet – it has saved your life.’
The King left with a flourish and I heard the door of the Great Hall slam shut behind him. I tried to speak but was incoherent.
Maud embraced me.
‘My darling Hal, I’ve missed you so much. But you’re alive! That’s the most important thing. You will be safe now. My father will give you an escort to take you to St Cirq Lapopie, and I have arranged for Eadmer to meet you a few miles south of the city.’
I shook my head in disbelief.
‘Eadmer is fine; they didn’t guard him as closely as you. He escaped not long after you were captured. He’s been living in the forest ever since, but he’s well. Greta takes messages to him. When you are better, send word to me and I will arrange for you to come back to Rouen. I’m sure to be pregnant by then –’
I shook my head again, this time as violently as I could manage, and croaked a strangled, ‘No!’
‘We have no choice. It was your life in exchange for an heir. But more importantly, we can be together for the rest of our lives. It’s a small price to pay – and England’s future depends on it.’
Tears started to run down my cheeks.
‘Don’t cry, my beloved. He was going to banish you forever. Then he realized that he would do better to retain my loyalty by allowing me to see you. Not only that, but I suggested that if you happened to be one of his many bastard children, he could keep a close eye on you. I remembered the story about Estrith being your real mother, after all, and thought how easy it would have been for her to have been one of his secret conquests. He needs me and he knows he has to keep me content. He’s sixty-three years old and his grandson isn’t born yet; I will be Queen Regent for many years before the child is old enough to succeed.’
Maud was smiling, trying to muster my strength with her determination. I began to realize that she had created a very shrewd resolution to an apparently insoluble dilemma. I managed one brief question.
‘The baby?’
‘They took it. Oh, Hal … I fought with all my strength, but they took it away from me. They tried pennyroyal and all sorts of potions. But it was strong like you, and wouldn’t die.’
Maud started to sob.
‘Eventually, they used the instruments on me and pulled the little mite from my body. They hurt me so dreadfully, Hal … but not as much as they hurt you.’
S
he kissed me. I could taste her tears and feel her chest heave. But she soon recovered her composure.
‘Now we know what we have to do, and then we can be together. Soon I will be the first Queen of England and Duchess of Normandy – and you will be a noble earl and my secret lover. It’s worth waiting for! Go home to St Cirq Lapopie, get well and thank God for that prodigious seed of yours – it has solved all our problems.’
Despite all that had happened, and the fact that her duty would now force her to produce children with a man she did not care for, she appeared to be resigned to her fate. Although I hated the thought of another man in her bed trying to impregnate her, I realized that she expected me to have as much resolve as she had and to join her in thanking God for the only salvation that circumstances permitted.
Our five minutes together had passed and the King’s Constable appeared with several men to take me to a chamber in the royal apartments. My weapons and armour were there waiting for me, together with the coronet and ermine of an earl of the realm.
I had become a bastard to earn them, but a lucky bastard all the same.
After several days of recovery, I was able to begin yet another journey to the south. I was given a small escort of cavalry, a steward and a groom. The life of an earl had some obvious advantages!
As promised by Maud, Eadmer was waiting some fifteen miles south of the city, at the ancient Pont de l’Arche on the Seine. He was a sight for sore eyes, and his first remark brought a smile to my face.
‘You’ve looked better, Hal. Let’s get you home to the Lot and see if we can make you resemble a human being again.’
‘Thank you, Eadmer, it’s good to see you. Remember, you’re addressing an earl now – so show due deference.’
‘Yes, Your Earlship! How did you swing that one? One minute you’re a dead man. The next, you’re the Earl of Huntingdon! But you were better looking as plain Harold than you are now!’
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