Siren Song

by Roberta Gellis

  “William,” Elizabeth burst out, “this is madness! Let me go away. I can seek shelter in a convent.”

  He looked at her, and Elizabeth’s eyes dropped. She was not frightened for herself. She was very willing to die with William if that was necessary, but she could not bear to think of Alys and Raymond being sacrificed to protect her nor that Marlowe should be ravaged on her account. Still, she said no more, and William’s answer made any future objections hopeless.

  “It would not help, Elizabeth. Mauger must have his revenge on me whether you remain here or not. Do not forget that it was Alys who freed you and helped you escape. You say Mauger wants Marlowe. He must take Alys to gain that end. We are all in this together.”

  Elizabeth closed her eyes, and Raymond stiffened, but she did not weep or fall into hysterics any more than did Alys. William turned to Raymond, but only to see if he had a counter opinion.

  “I will start gathering the men tomorrow,” was all Raymond said, proud to be consulted and also that William no longer even thought of offering him the choice of leaving before they were attacked.

  Raymond had realized he could not go off to counter Mauger’s moves. He had not the faintest idea of where to go. In addition, Sir William was not yet strong enough to gather and train men for defense himself.

  William levered himself out of his chair. “I will go write to Richard now.” He bent over Elizabeth. “My love, come and lie down to rest until I am finished.”

  Raymond was somewhat shocked at the openness of this avowal, but he saw only amused resignation looked out of Elizabeth’s eyes. William was truthful to a fault, but that was not the cause of his declaration. He had said often that he had waited long enough. Plainly, he intended to enjoy her openly in whatever time they had. She rose without comment. Perhaps he was right. In Marlowe, no one would dare look askance at her. Why then should they suffer the discomfort of sneaking a kiss or a coupling, fearing to be discovered?

  Before Raymond could say anything after William and Elizabeth disappeared into his apartment, Alys said, “You need not think Papa and Elizabeth have ever wronged Sir Mauger. They could not help what they felt. They have been in love with each other since they were children. Now that she is free, they may do as they like.”

  “It is none of my business,” Raymond said quickly, hiding his amusement at what he believed to be Alys’s innocence.

  Sexual purity was not a matter of importance to him, except in his wife, of course, and Alys’s naïve remark pleased him. In any case, he was more concerned with the question of whether and how he could use his true status to protect her father. This captured her attention at once, although she was as quick as he to see that he could not go before they were ready to resist an attack.

  “If all is quiet when we are ready,” she said, after a thorough discussion of who would be most susceptible to Mauger, “perhaps we had best tell Papa who you are. Then you could go to London. Perhaps there you could find out to whom Mauger has appealed. And it is not so very far.”

  Raymond bit his lip. It was horrible to be torn between two necessities. If Marlowe should be attacked after he was gone, William would have to lead the defense, and Raymond did not think he would be strong enough. On the other hand, if it should take Mauger a long time to reach a major vassal’s ear, he might be able to get to the man and discredit Mauger before any attack was started. And what of Richard of Cornwall? Could he finish his business in Scotland in time to help?

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The next morning, as soon as it was light enough to see, Mauger left for London, reasoning that, if the king was not there or at his favorite palace in Westminster, one of the officials permanently established in London would know where he was. He left Hurley sealed shut in the care of his master-at-arms with orders that no one, especially not his wife, should be allowed to enter. Mauger intended to ask Theobald of Hurley to get him a private audience with the king.

  All the way to London, Mauger tried to devise a tale that could not be proved untrue and would make William out to be a sufficiently dangerous man for the king to send troops with Mauger to destroy him. The loss of Mauger’s wife would not induce Henry to act. That was merely the overt reason for Mauger to complain. The exercise was of value, for it fixed the “facts” into Mauger’s mind so that he could reel them off in any context, but the ground for his success had been laid in Scotland before Henry had brought his troops south again.

  In general, the Scottish affair had been a brilliant success in Henry’s opinion. There had been only one small unpleasantness. When it was clear that the danger of Alexander’s attacking was over, Richard had urged his brother to take his hired troops and clean out Wales once and for all. Henry said loftily that it would be an affront to the Earls of Hereford and Gloucester if he came with an army and took away the task he had given them, seeming to set their efforts at naught.

  Richard did not think so, and said it, pointing out that he had never scorned help from anyone when he was at war. Because Richard was tired from arguing with “unreasonable” Scots, he suggested a little sharply that Hereford and Gloucester would be the best judges of what would affront them. At least Henry should send a messenger to ask whether they desired his help. But Henry was celebrating his escape from fighting a war. He did not even wish to contemplate another. This, too, he refused to do.

  Henry was right, although neither he nor Richard knew it. What he should have said was that the Welsh would disappear into the hills and that the Flemish mercenaries, accustomed to fighting pitched battles in flat country, would be more nuisance than benefit. Moreover, a large army would be difficult to supply in such rough country. Richard might have been contented with a military reason for refusing even if he did not agree with it.

  Unfortunately Henry did not know a reasonable excuse for refusing existed. He had enjoyed his bloodless victory and was basking in the admiration of his northern vassals. He did not wish to risk his current status as victor in a contest with the unpredictable Welsh. This was not owing to personal cowardice. If Henry could have settled the war with a personal battle against David ap Llewelyn, he would have leapt at the chance. Such a thing was out of the question, and Henry’s memories of being a war leader in Gascony and France were bitter and full of the humiliation of defeat.

  It was those memories that had induced the king to go to the highly unnecessary expense of hiring the Flemish, which Richard had not approved but had understood and accepted without argument. Now that the money had been spent, however, Richard wanted to get some good out of it. Since there had been no war in Scotland, let the hired troops go to Wales and clean it out.

  Thus, when Henry refused even to consider using the men in what Richard believed was a sensible fashion, Richard lost his Angevin temper. There was some excuse. He was short on sleep from many late nights and had an aching head from drinking too much good Scottish usquebaugh. He told Henry he was an extravagant fool who did not know how to use the expensive tool he had purchased. He told him he was lazy and luxurious, which had only enough truth in it to hurt because neither fault was developed enough to be a vice. He said a few other immoderate things also, all at the top of his lungs, before stamping out of Henry’s presence without asking or receiving leave to go.

  The next day they made it up. Richard was contrite for his bad manners, and after talking to some of his older vassals, Henry had the right reasons to offer for refusing to lead the army to Wales. Richard did not agree, he would have liked to try to bring the Welsh to heel, but he conceded that Henry might be right and begged pardon handsomely. Henry forgave his brother and kissed him fondly.

  The trouble was that Henry knew Richard’s outburst was caused by disappointment in him rather than by any real fears of the Welsh or the Flemish mercenaries. As a small boy, Richard had seen his big brother, the powerful and glorious king of England, as a hero. He knew better now, at least, his head knew better. In his heart, however, that glowing hero lived. When the real Henry—weak
, vacillating, ineffective as a leader except for his disarming charm—appeared at the wrong moment, Richard’s childish heart overpowered his adult head, and he flew into a rage of disappointment.

  Henry did not understand enough, was not himself adult enough, to accept his own and his brother’s weaknesses. He made the mistake of trying to ignore them. Thus, when he saw the disappointment and hurt under Richard’s rages, when Richard tried to mold him by force into the hero he wanted him to be, the pain was greater than if his brother had wished to do him harm. Henry could not salve himself by believing Richard hated him and hating Richard in turn. He knew it was not true, and, besides, family ties were sacred to Henry. Thus, he sought a cause for Richard to hurt him.

  Although all was well on the surface, inside the king his brother’s outburst still rankled. He was made even more uncomfortable by receiving a letter from Hereford. The earl did not openly ask for help but suggested that the army could be used to wage a different kind of war in Wales than he had attempted with the limited forces at his disposal. They could, Hereford wrote, as Henry’s father John had once done successfully, capture all the cities and keeps. In the past that had often failed, but David did not have the kind of control over his people that Llewelyn had had. David needed his castles, and taking them could bring him down.

  By then, however, Henry was only a few miles from London, from the comforts and beauties of the castle at Westminster, from the arms of his beloved Eleanor and the totally undemanding worship of his adorable baby son. He did not want to go to Wales. There was no reason, he told himself, to rush off to another primitive wasteland. It was ridiculous that a king should need to attend to these minor disturbances. Henry dispatched Hubert Fitz Matthew with three hundred knights and their attendant footmen to Hereford’s aid and tried to put the matter out of his mind.

  He did not send the mercenaries—somehow that was connected in his mind with going himself. And he told himself that he had done all that was necessary. Certainly Richard would not want him to be miserable, therefore, someone had put the idea into Richard’s head. Henry could not see that Richard was not oppressed, as he was, with fear of failure and was not made miserable by going to war. Richard rather enjoyed war, Henry did not. But he did not think of that. He only wondered who was turning his brother against him again, and could find no answer to that question—not until a trusted clerk, Theobald of Hurley, begged an audience for the abbey’s knight in fee, Sir Mauger of Ilmer.

  The clerk could read Henry’s irritability in his sharp gestures and periodic inattentiveness. He had already delayed several days in asking for the audience. At last, more to be rid of Mauger than in any expectation that Henry would agree to see the man, Theobald made his attempt.

  “Sir Mauger has been sore injured by a treacherous neighbor,” Theobald hastened to explain, “by that same Sir William whom I once overheard—”

  “Richard’s favorite!” Henry exclaimed. The whole thing was now fresh and clear again in his mind, although events had obliterated it for months. Henry remembered sending Eleanor’s nephew to Sir William. Good God, they had never heard one word from him since he left! The king remembered also receiving a letter from Raymond’s father and replying that Raymond had been with them briefly but had left the court without saying where he next intended to go. The king’s face went pale with anxiety and then red with rage. Everything was falling into place. Richard had received a letter from Sir William, who was serving in Wales, just before he had begun to urge him to take the army there.

  “Certainly I will see Sir Mauger,” the king exclaimed. “I will see him now, if he can be fetched to me.”

  Since Theobald knew his master and was aware of Henry’s impulsive nature, Mauger was very close. He was in the small closet where Henry conducted private business almost as soon as the clerk was out of it. He began to speak of his gratitude that Henry was willing to listen to his troubles, but the king cut him off with a gesture to ask about Raymond and whether he had come home safe from the Welsh war.

  Henry had sent Raymond away with the thought of the joke they were playing on Raymond’s mother uppermost in his mind. It had all seemed a merry lark. They had agreed that Eleanor should not be told her nephew would probably be engaged in a war. Eleanor was almost as silly about war as Raymond’s mother and would not see the jest. Right now, Henry did not see the jest himself and wondered if he had been mad. How would he ever explain to his wife and to her sister-by-marriage if harm had come to Raymond?

  His relief when he learned that the young knight was home safe made him miss a great deal of the garbled story Mauger was telling him. He did not realize that once he had identified Raymond as his wife’s nephew, Mauger had hastily revised and twisted the business of the merchants and various threats against Raymond into an elaborate plot concocted by William. Although he was very ready to believe almost anything against his brother’s favorite, Henry was no fool and smelled something rotten somewhere.

  “But what for?” the king asked at last.

  “Because once William discovered who Raymond was, he believed he could use him—perhaps as a hostage, perhaps in some other way—to obtain a divorce for my wife and have her lands given to him instead of my holding them for my son to whom they belong by right.”

  That made sense. Henry could not believe that any minor knight, even Richard’s favorite, would dare harm the queen’s nephew. No, of course not. Raymond was Richard’s wife’s nephew also. Damn! No wonder the tale sounded idiotic, Henry thought, not knowing that Mauger had woven in all the threats of death to cover himself in case Egbert had been successful. Henry merely thought Mauger was a provincial fool, seeing things from his own petty point of view. Sir William was not any physical threat to Raymond. Sir William was trying to do to Raymond what he had already done to Richard—he was trying to turn Raymond against his own flesh and blood! Henry ground his teeth with rage. How could he have been such a fool as to send a young, impressionable man into the hands of one experienced in twisting and warping people to his own purpose?

  “My lord,” Mauger quavered, terrified by Henry’s expression, “I did not mean—”

  “Be still!” the king snapped, rising and starting to pace the small room. “Let me think.”

  First of all, Raymond was in no physical danger, that was certain. Doubtless Sir William was as tender of him as a father. Also doubtless, Raymond would come back to London singing Sir William’s praises. He would be no use at all in raising the incubus from Richard. Probably he and Richard would sit together and croon praises of the detestable man. It was useless trying to collect evidence to convince Richard that Sir William was a snake, a venomous worm like that which had tempted Eve to sin. Such a creature should be killed outright. There was no other way to stop him spreading his corruption further and further.

  Yet, if Richard heard his brother had any hand in… But Richard was in Scotland, and if the thing was done quickly enough, it would be all over by the time he returned. And here was this puling fool raving about his wife and a thimbleful of land. What better excuse could there be? A man whose wife is reft away has a right to avenge himself. So, if Sir Mauger led a force—which would actually be managed by experienced mercenary captains to avoid any mistakes—against Marlowe and killed the man who had cuckolded him, that could not be blamed on the king. Why should a king even have heard about such a minor disturbance?

  Of course, Raymond was there in Marlowe keep. No matter. Sir William would not allow such a precious person to be endangered, and the captains Henry sent would instruct their men to protect at all cost the knight who wore a shield painted with a faceless head. Henry stopped his pacing and looked consideringly at Mauger.

  “What is it you want of me?” the king asked.

  Mauger wanted desperately to say, “Nothing,” and run away, but he knew if he did that he would lose everything he had worked for all his life. He swallowed. “I want help—men or money to get the queen’s nephew safe out of Marlowe and to reveng
e the dishonor done me by the treacherous monster I thought to be my friend.”

  “Very well.”

  Mauger was so surprised by the flat agreement that he stood with open mouth.

  “I will give you five mercenary captains, and the troops they lead, of course. Together with your own men that should be enough to take a small keep. There are conditions, however. No one is to know that I have assisted you. If a rumor of my part in this comes out, I will accuse you of forging my order and taking the men without my knowledge. Do you understand?”

  “I will obey, my lord. But I do not understand,” Mauger got out.

  He did not like this. The king had a way of turning on those he helped from time to time but only, Mauger reminded himself, when he was blamed by others for what he had done. That made Mauger feel a little better. If no one knew, the king could not be blamed and would not grow angry. Also, Henry might well be inclined to look the other way when Mauger married Alys. He would not be afraid of Mauger—not that. He simply would prefer that Mauger did not confess how he came to have Alys in his power.

  “It is simple enough,” Henry replied blandly to Mauger’s assertion that he did not understand. “I feel for your hurts and wish to help you. However, I do not wish that every man in the kingdom whose wife runs away should come to me to settle his affairs. Also, I hope that those in Marlowe keep will not be free to tell this tale either.”

  “I see, my lord.”

  Yes, indeed, Mauger believed he saw a great deal. Again, after all his uncertainties and disappointments Mauger saw the flower of success opening under his eyes. The king would never say it, but he wanted Raymond dead. That was the reason for all his anxious inquiries. That was why he frowned so angrily when Mauger said he tried to warn Raymond against Sir William. That was why he asked so eagerly what Raymond had said. Of course, Mauger knew that he must not, even by a blink of the eye, show he understood.