THE EARL (A HAMMER FOR PRINCES)

by Cecelia Holland

  “Fire,” Fulk shouted. “Fire.” He had to struggle to remember the word in English. There were people in this house; he rode up to the door, bent double, and tugged at the latch, but it was fastened on the inside. It was a shop, no wider than six feet at the front, with living quarters above it. Through the door he could feel the heat of the fire.

  Inside, someone was screeching for help. He backed his horse up—Chester’s men were galloping down the street he had left, after his men, and he heard fighting. A woman and two children were climbing onto the wooden roof of the building from a second-story window. While he watched, another child scrambled out of the window and pulled himself nimbly over the eave. Shrieking for help, the woman ran up and down along the edge of the roof. Shingles broke off under her feet. In the next street, the fighting men ignored her.

  Fulk cast around, swearing in a monotone, and finally rode along the house until he was below the woman and her children.

  “Jump—I’ll catch you. Jump." He nearly forgot to speak English.

  One boy promptly leaped off the roof and landed on top of him. His weight struck Fulk on the shoulder and a stray foot landed in his crotch. He gasped with the pain; dropping the boy to the ground, he raised his arms just in time to catch a little girl. She giggled and slid warmly down into his arms. The woman and her last child clung to each other and prayed in high voices; the fire glowed in the windows of the second story, beneath them, and smoke curled from the roof, and the child lifted its feet off the roof, clutching its mother.

  “Jump,” Fulk shouted. He glanced behind him—Chester’s men and his own had gone off fighting down the next street. He held up his arms.

  “I can’t. I can’t!”

  “Let him down to me. Hurry up, damn you. It’s getting hot.”

  “I can’t. I—”

  “Do it,” Fulk roared.

  Sobbing, the woman took the child by the arms and lowered it down over the eave, kicking and screaming. Fulk could not quite reach it. “Let go. Drop him, I can—”

  She let go, and he caught the child around the waist. Its arms wrapped tightly around his neck, cutting off his breath. And before he could pry its fingers loose the woman landed on top of them. The child let out a screech, and all three of them fell off the horse into the garden.

  Fulk dragged himself out from under the woman and stood up. Men were running with buckets out of the buildings around them; they were wetting down the roofs of their own houses. He wiped his face on his sleeve. The two older children were squatting in the street, watching their house burn with merry eyes. The woman began to pray and sob and cross herself, and two other women from neighboring houses came up to her, threw their arms around her, and sobbed with her. Fulk walked to his horse, mounted, and rode off. Behind him, someone shouted, “Norman swine.”

  He came to a street where three knights were riding up and down, stopping everyone they saw. When they came up to him, he saw they were Chester’s men and reined in.

  “Hold,” one shouted. “Hold, there, who are you?”

  “Stafford,” Fulk called. “Let me by.”

  They spurred their horses, and he whirled and galloped off down the street. They chased him as far as the crossroads, where he turned north and rode at a hard lope toward the marketplace. Loose dogs were roaming in packs; he passed twenty of them growling and fighting over something in the street. Their backs hid it from him, so that he could not see what it was. He hoped it was a pig. He could see the smoke and red light of a dozen fires in the sky.

  When he reached the marketplace, it was full of townspeople, wagons of plunder, and his own men, and he rode across it looking for Roger.

  “Over here,” Roger called, and walked toward him. Fulk rounded a wagon and reined in.

  “What happened?” Roger said. “Three men came back wounded.”

  “Chester. I hope they killed some of his.”

  “We are putting people in the churches to spend the night. What shall I do with the booty?”

  “Guard it until the morning. I’m going back to the camp. Don’t let anybody leave this area—he has his men scattered through the town, and they’re after us.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Wake up our little prince. I’ll send you twenty knights. If anything happens, make sure that I know.” He turned his horse and jogged through the swarming marketplace toward the east gate.

  "He is asleep," the sentry said, shocked.

  “Wake him up.”

  “If you deem it necessary, my lord.” The sentry stuck his head through the door into Henry’s tent and whispered to someone there. Fulk stepped back a few paces, his hands clasped behind his back, and formed words in his mind.

  Voices sounded inside the tent, at first whispers, and finally a shout—the prince had lost his temper. The page came out.

  “My lord.” His face was white; he was only nine or ten years old. “He says he will see no one.”

  Fulk shoved him to one side and went into the tent. Wrapped in a brocaded dressing gown, Henry was going back toward his bed. He spun around; there was a candle burning in the front of the tent, and Fulk could see how his face contorted.

  “I said no one, Stafford,” Henry shouted.

  “Order Chester out of Stamford, my lord.”

  “Damn you—God damn you, bringing me these petty feuds of yours when I’m sleeping. Get out!”

  “No.”

  “No—you—who are you to—Are you defying me? You petty, puffed-up little lordling, are you—Do you think you can give me orders? Do you think me your servant?”

  “I’ll leave when you order Chester out.”

  Henry swore at him, kicked over a chair, and stuck his face down close to Fulk’s. “I am the king, not you.”

  Fulk looked him patiently in the eyes, and Henry drew back.

  “I will be the king.”

  “Chester is attacking my men, and when I stopped to help a family in a burning house, he set upon my men, and we barely saved the family. He is not seeking looters. His knights patrol some streets, but in others and especially in the Jewry the looters do what they will, and I can’t stop them because when I try I have to fight Chester. Withdraw both of us, and send Leicester in alone.”

  “I’ll send in Leicester and Pembroke.”

  “That won’t do. They’ll fight as well. You’ll have to use two men of the same party.”

  “There are no parties in my army—they are all faithful to me.”

  “That won’t do either.”

  “I’ll do it in the morning. Go away, you woke me up.”

  “Do it now,” Fulk said.

  Henry’s head flew up. “Who is master here, you or I?”

  “I am as angry as you are, my lord. The people of Stamford are under your power and so are the men looting them, and it is your doing that Chester thinks he can attack me.”

  “Get out.”

  “Withdraw Chester and his men.”

  “And leave yours there?”

  “We have people and plunder in the marketplace, I can’t leave them unguarded. I will turn them over to Leicester and no other, and only when Chester is gone.”

  Henry wrapped his dressing gown tighter around him. “I’ll withdraw Chester. Get out.”

  “By your leave, my lord.” Fulk bowed the way his sons did to irritate him and went outside. A page followed him after a moment and spoke to the sentry. Fulk lingered, being obvious. The sentry called to a nearby Angevin knight and in a voice Fulk could easily hear told him to go to Stamford and order Chester to leave.

  Fulk rode over to Leicester’s tent, between Henry’s camp and the city. Leicester was with his clerk, writing a message; when Fulk came in and they saw it was he, they both relaxed, and Leicester moved away from the table, which he had been shielding with his body.

  “I’m glad you came. I am writing to Winchester. I thought you were in Stamford—what happened?”

  “I had to come ask the prince to order Chester
out. Have you talked to Pembroke?”

  Leicester had met with Pembroke at dinner to try and talk over their differences. He shook his head. “To no end. He was afraid I was lying. Everybody is afraid of everyone else. I trust no one but you and Derby and I’m unsure of Derby. If I knew you less well I would be unsure of you.”

  “Oh,” Fulk said, sitting down, “I’m true as a blushing maid. What have you said to the bishop?”

  “Nothing. I’m afraid to say anything for fear the letter might be taken into the wrong places. What’s wrong with Chester?”

  “He attacked me. He is unsubtle.”

  Leicester walked up and down, punching the air with his fist. “Can we trust Derby?”

  “Yes.”

  “I saw him speaking with Hereford today, and they spoke for a long while.”

  “Slight evidence against him. You know he hates Chester, because Chester took Peverel’s lands and he and Peverel are cousins. My own son is Pembroke’s squire.”

  “Is he of use to us?”

  “Hugh? No. He is all Pembroke’s man.”

  “Rannulf?”

  “Rannulf will have nothing to do with any of us.”

  “He spends much of the day with Chester and Thierry.”

  “Not since we came to Stamford. Now he’s friends with the Angevins. I don’t know which is worse.”

  "How can we send this letter? Whom can we trust to carry it?”

  “Give it to me. Simon d’Ivry can carry it.” Simon had come that morning from Bruyère-le-Forêt.

  “Simon was Thierry’s man once, wasn’t he?”

  “Briefly. I believe in that, the contrast cannot but help me.” He went over to stand behind the clerk, who was writing out the fair copy. In terms veiled as prophecy, Leicester had sketched the situation in the prince’s camp; he mentioned no names at all. The clerk’s pen scraped over the parchment. Fulk said, “Let me add something when you are finished.”

  “I’m useless in this,” Leicester said. “An issue of law or a question of taxes I can deal with better than most men in this kingdom, but I have no heart for this.”

  Fulk said, “It is going now as the prince wishes it, he may wish it different soon enough.”

  “You think it is all his doing.”

  “Not all. He fosters it.”

  The clerk finished and left his seat, and Fulk sat down on the stool. Leicester said, “What are you doing?”

  “In a moment, Robert.”

  There was a fresh-cut pen on the table; Fulk took it, dipped it in the ink, and wrote, below the closing of the letter. The sentry put his head in the door, and Leicester jumped to guard the table.

  “Sir Richard de Lous, my lord.”

  Leicester said, in a tight voice, “Send him in.”

  Fulk stood up, his back to the table. De Lous was one of Henry’s Angevins; he came in, bowed, and said, “My lord Leicester, my lord the Count of Anjou requires you to take such of your men as you deem sufficient to it and clear Stamford city of those looting it. He asks that you leave at once.”

  “I shall,” Leicester said.

  “Thank you, my lord.” De Lous made an Angevin bow and went out.

  “That will look bad,” Leicester said. “To find you and me here, and the letter.”

  “Yes,” Fulk said. He sat down and finished writing. The clerk took it and scattered sand over it and shook the paper back and forth. “But there isn’t much we can do about that.”

  “You are so cool about all this, I envy you.”

  “If I weren’t angry enough at Chester to kill him, I’d be as unnerved as you.”

  “What did you write?” Leicester sent the clerk to get a page.

  “I spoke to Winchester about Chester, back at Wallingford. I was reminding him of it.”

  “What was it?”

  “Oh, something touching the Honor of Lancaster.”

  Leicester stared at him. The page came in, and he sent the boy off to wake up his son and his second-in-command.

  When the page had gone, he said, “It is not Chester who is at the root of this. We must win Pembroke.”

  “We can win Pembroke by breaking Chester.”

  “If Prince Henry wishes it.”

  Fulk watched the clerk seal the letter. “Or we can break Chester by winning Pembroke, perhaps.”

  “Take the letter when you go. I’ll take a hundred men into Stamford, and if Chester is mistaken for a looter—” He shouted for his squire and went into the back of the tent.

  “It would solve many of our problems,” Fulk said.

  The looting went on, although much lessened, all the next day, and Prince Henry spoke to the leaders of the Jews and they gave him seven hundred and fifty marks as a present. Henry wanted more, but Leicester convinced him that the Jews of Stamford could give no more. Henry promised the Jews to stop the looting in the Jewry by the next morning and sent them away. He needed the money to pay for supplies, which were coming in every day from the countryside.

  After the Jews had left, Rannulf came up to Fulk and drew him to one side of the prince’s tent. Fulk was pleased to find his son so much in the favor of the prince, but he said nothing for fear that Rannulf would be suspicious of his interest. All the prince’s servants were packing to move into a house in the city, and the tent was filled with busy people.

  Rannulf said, “My lord, Chester wants to talk to you.”

  “I don’t want to see Chester.”

  “My lord,” Rannulf said quietly, “the prince asks you to.”

  “Oh,” Fulk said. “Did he ask Derby to talk to Hereford, yesterday?”

  Rannulf said, “He asks, that’s all. If you don’t wish to, don’t.”

  “I’ll talk to him.” Fulk bit the inside of his cheek; a moment before, he remembered, he had been proud of Rannulf. “I’ll see him on the top of that hill, south of the town on the river. The one they call the Queen’s Hill, with all the birches. Tell him to come alone.”

  “Why there?” Rannulf gestured around him. “The prince will allow you to talk here, I’m sure.”

  “So no one will see us talking,” Fulk said.” Everybody is very suspicious of everybody else. I’m sorry if I insulted either you or the prince.”

  He went to the door. Rannulf did not follow. Fulk heard him talking to one of the Angevins, and he stepped outside and sent Morgan for his horse. He did not want to meet Chester, and Rannulf’s new attitude baffled him; he looked up into the clear sky and tried to think himself calm.

  From the Queen's Hill, the countryside spread out in tawny colors, the narrow strips of the fields tracing out the curves of the low hills and hollows, the walls of Stamford picked out in rose colors by the failing sun. The wind had lulled. Fulk sat crosslegged on the ground, watching the road from town, which ran around the foot of the hill. Behind him, his horse stamped at flies and ripped up the grass with its teeth.

  Fat and red in the unclouded sky, the sun lowered to the rim of the western hills. A soft, cool wind touched Fulk’s cheek. It had been blistering hot all day, and he turned his face into the wind and sighed. Down on the road, a sngle horse was coming. Fulk shut his eyes, and the wind cooled his eyelids.

  The sounds of the city and the camp reached him, muffled by distance, enclosed in the silence of the hill and the empty fields. He saw the sun against his eyelids, blood red. The sound of hoofs reached him and grew steadily stronger. Opening his eyes, he looked toward the road, but the curve of the hill hid Chester from him. A cricket was chirruping behind him; all down the slope before him, he saw them leaping, so many that the air low over the grass was filled with their flights. The hoofbeats drummed louder and dropped from a canter to the even beat of a trot, and he looked around and saw Chester riding toward him through the birch trees.

  Chester reined in and stared at him, his face all high color. “Well, Fulk.” He dismounted; he rode a black horse with a narrow white blaze and two white stockings behind, and he led it to a tree and knotted the reins around a b
ranch. Crickets sailed away from his feet when he walked toward Fulk.

  “It’s peaceful enough here,” he said warily.

  “Yes,” Fulk said. “If there were a stream I would be fishing. What do you want, Chester?”

  “Not I. What Prince Henry wants.” He swiped at the crickets in the air. “You could use them for bait.” When he sat down, one of his knees cracked, louder than the crickets. “By God, there are ants everywhere.”

  “You’re sitting on an anthill. Move over.”

  Chester straightened and moved around to Fulk’s other side. The sun was half gone, as if the hills were eating it. From their feet the shadows moved out over the level ground.

  “Prince Henry wishes us to talk out our differences,” Chester said. “Shall we?”

  The evening star shone in the sky, above the sun. Fulk stared at it, saying, “That night in Stamford you tried to conquer me. Since you didn’t, it’s easily forgotten. But you know how deep this goes, all of it, and how far back in our families.”

  “There is a treaty between you and me, remember?”

  “You broke it, that night in Stamford. You have broken every bond you ever made with any man.”

  “Oooh. But, Fulk, you sound like a monk, or a woman. Treaties have their use, but when the use is past—”

  “Then why bring it up?” Fulk said sharply.

  “Because—” Chester tore up clumps of grass and threw them down the hill. “If you joined me and Pembroke, all would be mended.”

  “You and Pembroke and Thierry?”

  “Oh. Something could be done about Thierry.”

  “You’re mad.”

  “Leicester and Derby and those others could not withstand the three of us, with Hereford and Wiltshire and the prince. What keeps you from joining us? What do you want?”

  “I have all I want.”

  “Nobody has all he wants. What can you find in those men—Leicester, Derby—”

  “They’re my friends.”

  “Of them all, only you has the wit and decision to contend with us. They will follow you."

  “You misjudge them. Or me.”

  “No.” Chester flung a flowering weed down among the crickets. “You misjudge them, and yourself. Some—gaudy idea of loyalty and friendship has blinded you—these men are to be used, like oxen, to draw whatever weight they can bear, in the service of men like us. How many men do you know with the power to make of their lives what they wish?”