Stephen and the bishop had been offended by Ypres’s cynical suggestion, and they were taking turns berating him for his murderous advice. He listened in silence, not looking in the least contrite. As soon as she could interrupt the castigating flow, Matilda urged them to “Let it be. Willem erred, you were understandably affronted, and told him so. Now can we get back to the problem at hand? I agree with Henry. I think we must set Chester free.”
There was an unusual asperity to her tone and all three men looked at her in surprise. Stephen felt remorse stirring anew; she may have been far more tactful than his acid-tongued brother, but he knew how dismayed she’d been by Chester’s arrest. He’d repeatedly tried to explain that it was not his fault, and she’d professed to believe him, but he still fretted that she blamed him for the debacle.
Sometimes so did he, usually late at night as he sought to convince himself that Chester was the one at fault; it was then that he heard the insidious inner voices, insisting that his uncle the old king would never have gotten himself into such a bind. These voices sounded depressingly like his brother’s, for Henry was still reproaching him for not taking command of the situation before it got out of control. He never tired of pointing out that a private confrontation would have posed few risks; if Chester had balked at proving his good faith, Stephen need only have refused to go into Wales, and that would have been the end of it.
Now there seemed no end in sight. But how could he admit that he’d blundered when he did not know what he could have done differently? Even if he were given a chance to relive that scene in Northampton’s great hall, the outcome would likely be the same, and that realization was the most troubling of all.
“I botched it,” he said abruptly. “I know that. Chester will bear me a lifelong grudge. I know that, too. But I cannot change what is already done. I can put a high price on Chester’s freedom, though, high enough to make him think twice about incurring the wrath of the Crown again.”
He sounded as if he truly believed what he said, that it was possible to intimidate Chester into submission. For his sake, Matilda tried to believe it, too. Even the bishop held his peace. Ypres reached for his wine cup and drained it, in an unspoken sardonic salute to the phantom presence in their midst, the man they were at such pains not to mention, the late, unlamented lord and rebel, Geoffrey de Mandeville.
BY the time the negotiations for Chester’s release were completed, winter was upon them. It had not yet snowed, but the fields were bleak and the ground frozen as Chester and his brother rode west. William de Roumare had brought Chester’s favorite white palfrey and an impressive armed escort so that he could return to Cheshire in the style befitting an earl. But he knew it would take more than resplendent trappings to blot out the memories of the past few months.
Roumare kept glancing uneasily at his brother’s profile, as hard and unyielding as the barren countryside around them. Chester had been publicly shamed, clapped in irons, treated like a common felon. To gain his freedom, he’d been forced to swear a holy oath that he’d not bear arms against the king. He’d had to offer up a number of highborn hostages as pledges for his future loyalty, among them his nephew Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Hertford. And most galling of all, he’d had to surrender his castles at Lincoln and Coventry.
Roumare had expected Chester to be wild, afire with homicidal intent. The brother he knew ought to have been raging and raving and cursing, making threats and vowing vengeance with every breath he drew. That sort of frenzied fury would not have disturbed him unduly; it was just Chester’s way, and he was prepared for it.
Instead, he’d encountered a stony silence, so unlike Chester that he was becoming genuinely alarmed. Like William de Ypres, he, too, was haunted by memories of Geoffrey de Mandeville, the rebel earl who’d died an outlaw, accursed by all. Looking again at Chester, Roumare shifted in the saddle. He was not a fanciful man, but he seemed to feel the rage radiating from his brother, hot enough to scorch. Hot enough, too, to consume all common sense? Was Randolph so hate-maddened that he’d follow Mandeville’s bloody road to his doom?
“Randolph…” He cleared his throat, nudged his stallion closer to his brother’s mount. “You must tell me,” he urged, “what you mean to do.”
Chester’s eyes flicked toward him, opaque and unblinking and blacker than pitch. “I mean to do all in my power,” he said, “to gain the throne for Maude’s son.”
Stephen celebrated Christmas that year in his newly recovered castle at Lincoln. The citizens, freed from six years under Chester’s yoke, welcomed Stephen joyfully, as their liberator, and he rewarded them with lavish pageantries, festivities that heralded his victory over Chester as much as they did the Nativity of the Christ Child. The people were so bedazzled by the royal revelries that they accepted with aplomb Stephen’s decision to defy local superstition and wear his crown within the city, even though that was traditionally held to be bad luck.
The high point of the Christmas court was the elaborate ceremony in which Stephen knighted his eldest son and invested him as Count of Boulogne. Eustace would be seventeen in the spring, and he made a favorable impression upon Lincoln, for he was as tall and tawny-haired as Stephen, and looked like a fine young king in the making-from a distance. That heretical thought was Matilda’s. It had come unbidden, casting a shadow over the pleasure she’d been taking in the evening. It was an unbearably lonely feeling, for she could not confide her qualms to another living soul. How could she ever admit that she harbored such doubts about her own son?
The Christmas fete had been over for hours, but Matilda was still clad in her elegant court gown with its long, hanging sleeves and decorative silk belt that reached below her knees. A fur-trimmed mantle trailed from her shoulders, shielding her from the cold as she made her way to the small chapel in the east tower of the keep. She’d promised Stephen that she’d not be long, but she needed time alone with the Almighty, needed the peace of mind that could come only from entrusting her troubles to a Higher Power.
The chapel was in the upper story of the tower. Wall sconces still burned, and the scent of incense lingered on the air. She was not expecting to find anyone there, for the priest had retired for the night. But a man was standing before the altar. He spun around at sound of her footsteps, almost as if he were fearing an ambush, and she saw that it was William de Ypres.
“Willem!”
“I suppose I am the last man you thought to find here.”
“Well…” She did not know how to answer, for he was right, but to admit that seemed insulting.
“You never speak ill of people if you can help it, do you? We both know that if I turned up missing, you’d mount a search in the town’s alehouses, taverns, and whorehouses. You’d expect,” he said, “to find me in the gutter, not in church.”
His words were slurred, his eyes swollen, and she shivered, realizing that he was drunk. But he was also in pain. “Your need brought you to church tonight,” she said softly. “He is there for all of us, Willem. He loves the sinner as much as He hates the sin.”
To her consternation, he laughed, a harsh, grating sound that caused her to shiver again. “If that is a suggestion that I mend my ways,” he said, “I have already started down that road. I got as far as Boxley, too, for all the good it did me…”
Matilda was not comfortable being alone with him in this dimly lit chapel, for she was timid around drunkards; they tended to be loud and often quarrelsome and alarmingly unpredictable. His last words were so garbled that she was not sure she’d heard him correctly. “Boxley?” she echoed uncertainly. Forcing a smile when he did not respond, she repeated, “Boxley? Where is that, Willem?”
“In Kent.” He moved toward her, steady on his feet but with a telltale stiffness in his carriage, the rigid posture of a man concentrating carefully upon the commands his brain was sending his body. “I just founded a Cistercian abbey there,” he said, and laughed again, mirthlessly, at her dumbfounded expression.
Matilda’s initia
l amazement gave way almost at once to delight. She and Stephen had rewarded Ypres lavishly for his loyalty; he had been given such vast holdings in Kent that his enemies complained he was its earl in all but name. Even so, founding an abbey was an incredibly generous gesture, one which went well beyond the usual largesse bestowed upon the Church by its more pious or repentant sons.
“Willem, how wonderful! You seem so…so worldly sometimes that I feared you’d not given sufficient thought to your immortal soul. This is a worthy thing you’ve done, and I admire you for-”
“Do not!” At her startled recoil, he said again, more calmly this time, “Do not, my lady. There is nothing admirable about a bribe, especially one that failed.”
Matilda blinked. “I do not understand.”
“It is simple enough. I sought to make a deal with God. I’d give Him a House for His monks if He would give me back-” He bit off the rest of his words, would have turned away had she not caught his arm.
“Give you back what? Willem, tell me! Give you back what?”
He looked at her for a moment that seemed endless before saying hoarsely, “My sight. I am going blind.”
“Sweet Jesus,” Matilda breathed. “I did not know…”
“I did not want you to know.” His voice was flat, almost hostile. “I did not want your pity.”
“It is not pity! Willem…Willem, listen to me. I know it seems like meagre comfort, but the Almighty does not give us burdens too heavy to bear. Let Him help you carry it. And let us. Stephen and I will do all we can-”
“Will you?” His mouth contorted, in a bitter parody of a smile. “Even after I’m of no more use to you?”
Matilda understood, then, the true source of his fear; it was rooted in his turbulent and bloody past. His father had been the Count of Ypres, his grandsire Count of Flanders, but he was tainted by the Bar Sinister, not his father’s heir, just his bastard. He’d been unwilling to accept so limited a destiny, though, had fought for Flanders, lost, and been forced into English exile. At fifty-six years old, all that he had, he’d won by the sword, by his ruthless will and superior skills as a battle commander. No wonder he was so afraid now, she thought. It was not Death he dreaded, not even the loss of light; it was being helpless, unable to defend himself in a world that had never been anything but hostile.
“You are a wealthy man, Willem. Surely you did not fear that your estates would be forfeit if you were no longer able to fight for Stephen?” she said, although she well knew that was precisely what he’d feared. “You’ve earned whatever we’ve given you. Speaking for myself, I could lavish royal favors upon you from now till Judgment Day and I would still be in your debt. You gave me back my husband!”
As she spoke, he’d retreated into the shadows. No longer able to see his face, she reached out, took his hand between her own, and held tight.
But later that night, she lay awake and fretful in Stephen’s bed. Her husband slept peacefully beside her, snoring slightly, for he’d turned onto his back. She’d told him nothing of her conversation with Ypres; the Fleming was not yet ready to reveal his secret, even to one as sure to be sympathetic as Stephen. Matilda tucked the covers more securely about Stephen’s chest, then gently smoothed his hair; it was well streaked with silver. Her own hair was beginning to go grey, too, for she was forty-one now. Tonight, though, she felt as if she were much older, burdened with more troubles than she could even count.
Lying next to Stephen, she closed her eyes tightly, but the images would not go away. Ypres in the chapel. Eustace as he knelt to receive knighthood, his face upturned and eager. And Chester, a dark presence in the shadows, malevolent and unforgiving. Surely Chester could not be indifferent to the fate of his hostages, one of them his own kinsman? Would he truly risk his nephew’s life by rebelling? Stephen insisted that not even Chester could be so reckless, so ruthless. But what if he was?
AS soon as Stephen withdrew, the Earl of Chester launched a fierce attack upon the city of Lincoln. But Stephen had left a strong garrison behind, and with the help of the citizens, they were able to beat back the earl’s assault.
Thwarted at Lincoln, Chester then attempted to recapture Coventry. Stephen hastened to break the siege, was wounded in the fighting that followed, and had to withdraw. But he soon returned and put Chester to flight, the earl narrowly escaping with his life. Although hard pressed by Stephen, Chester continued his rebellion, and was accused by the chronicle Gesta Stephani of exercising “the tyranny of a Herod and the savagery of a Nero.”
34
Devizes, England
May 1147
Stephen gave Chester’s chief hostage a choice: gain his freedom by surrendering his castles. The Earl of Hertford reluctantly yielded the strongholds and once free, joined his uncle’s rebellion. Chester was the young man’s maternal uncle; his paternal uncle, the Earl of Pembroke, argued that his nephew’s forfeit castles should have gone to him. When his claim was denied, he withdrew from court and made plans to seize the disputed castles. Stephen struck faster than the disaffected earl, captured his castles at Leeds and Tonbridge, then laid siege to the earl himself in his seacoast fortress at Pevensey. Once again Stephen had demonstrated his abilities as a soldier, but his political skills were less impressive: by alienating the influential Clare family, he threw more logs onto the fires set by Chester.
Chester’s rebellion was to have far-reaching consequences for a number of people, Ranulf and Annora among them. Now that Chester was an outright enemy of the king, Annora’s husband refused to allow her to continue her visits to the Countess Maud. Ranulf and Annora were still able to use Maud as a conduit for their letters, but there were no more trysts; that well had dried up. They would need to find another reliable go between. So far, though, Ranulf’s ruminations had yielded no candidates. When Rainald asked for his help in Cornwall, he was quite willing to join his brother’s Cornish campaign, if only to take his mind off his trouble with Annora. He was gone more than two months, would have remained longer, but a messenger caught up with him after Easter, bearing an urgent summons from his sister. Maude needed him back at Devizes as soon as possible-if not sooner.
AS Ranulf dismounted in the inner bailey of Devizes Castle, Hugh de Plucknet hurried out to greet him. “Thank God you’ve come! The empress has been as fretful as a wet cat, awaiting your return. In all the years I’ve known her, never have I seen her so disquieted, not even when we were trapped at Oxford.”
“What has Stephen done?”
“Not Stephen-Lady Maude’s son.”
“ Maude? Hugh had some cock-and-bull story about Harry coming over here to fight Stephen! Surely that cannot be true?”
“I would to God it were not!” Maude said fervently. “But alas, it is. Henry got it into his head that it was time for him to play a more active part in our efforts to overthrow Stephen. So he found a few young Norman and Angevin lords eager for adventure, hired some Breton mercenaries, and set sail for England-”
“Geoffrey let him do this?” Ranulf interrupted incredulously, and Maude shook her head.
“Geoffrey knew nothing of it, no more than Robert or I did. No, this mad escapade was Henry’s doing and his alone. He landed at Wareham, sent a messenger to Devizes with his greetings, and then began his war.”
“Good God Almighty,” Ranulf murmured. His nephew was all of fourteen.
“They attacked Cricklade first, were easily driven off. They then tried to lay siege to a castle at Purton, again failed. It was only to be expected: a raw lad, not enough men, no siege weapons. But it quickly got worse, for he’d paid his soldiers with promises, and they were growing impatient. What money he had was soon spent, and he had no choice but to appeal to Robert and me for aid. It was then that I fear I made a greivous mistake, Ranulf.”
“Why? What did you do?”
“We ordered Henry to cease this foolishness and return to Normandy. That affronted his newfound manhood and he balked like a mule, flatly refusing to go home. Robert was furio
us and persuaded me that we dared not indulge him, that he must be brought to heel straightaway. We would not give him so much as a farthing, but instead of bringing him to his senses, we only goaded him into further defiance. Off he went in a prideful rage, and there was nothing I could do to stop him. I could not very well hold him prisoner here. He’d never have forgiven me.”
“No, probably not,” Ranulf agreed. “What happened then?”
“That is just it, Ranulf-I do not know what is happening! We heard that Henry’s men had begun to abandon him, that his mercenaries were clamoring for payment. What if they all forsake him? Or even worse, if he is betrayed and turned over to Stephen? What if-”
“Maude, stop scaring yourself. This serves for naught. You and Robert did only what you thought was best for the lad, what would get him safely back to Normandy. And with most fourteen-year-olds, it would have worked.” Honesty compelling him to add, “Of course most fourteen-year-olds would not be out hiring mercenaries or assaulting castles. I assume you want me to go after him?”
She swallowed, nodded, then swallowed again. He found it astonishing that a woman so indifferent to her own safety, whose bravery had so often bordered upon recklessness, was coming undone now at the mere thought of danger to her son. “Do you know where he is?”
“He went back to Wareham. He has always been fond of you, Ranulf. I think he’ll listen to you-he must! Tell him that I will get the money he needs to pay off his men, but he must sail for Normandy straightaway.”
“I’ll leave at first light,” he promised. “Now you must stop blaming yourself, Maude. You were just trying to teach the lad a lesson, one he badly needed to learn.”
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