‘And I see Eustace has fixed on that large blue sapphire set in gold on the FitzEmpress’s middle finger,’ he continued.
A few of the older earls knew whose ring it had been, although none had seen it on the hand of its original owner. Prince Eustace stared in disbelief. William the Conqueror, the first Norman King of England, was his ancestor too. ‘How dare you wear stolen goods in my presence?’ he demanded.
Henry smiled slightly. ‘Stolen, cousin?’ He turned away.
He had a straight nose, the audience could see, and straight brows bleached fair by the sun; but he remained standing in front of the King, so mostly they saw his back. Guillaume stood slightly behind him but Eustace pointed to a wall, ordering him away. As he stepped back, women and some clerks remarked on Guillaume’s modesty and beauty. ‘An exemplar of knighthood,’ they whispered.
Stephen smoothed his silver hair. ‘You wrote this yourself?’ he asked Henry.
‘I did.’
‘Your Highness,’ Eustace hissed. ‘I wrote it, Your Highness.’
Henry ignored him.
Stephen felt his son’s rage as a rising tide of panic within himself. How do they see me, these wild young men, he wondered. Do they regard me as weak?
‘You’ve studied well.’
‘Thank you, uncle.’
‘Uncle!’ The Prince leaped to his feet. ‘How dare you address my father as “uncle” in the presence of his court!’ For a moment his eyes fastened on Henry’s hard blue stare, then he rushed from the audience chamber, his page dashing after him.
Courtiers stopped breathing. Even the bishops were disconcerted. Their fingers hovered motionless over their rosaries.
Henry glanced after Eustace as if at a curiosity one might see at a fair. His cool look was deceptive: he seethed with excitement. At last he had seen the face, and begun to take the measure of the man he must defeat to win the throne.
Now that Eustace had left, Stephen felt more at ease. ‘How old are you now?’ the King asked in French. They had been speaking formally, in Latin.
‘Fourteen, sire.’
Guffaws echoed around the hall. Fourteen. This was the invader who had emptied castles and households from Christchurch to Canterbury as citizens fled before him.
‘And you have the audacity to ask me to give you gold so you can pay off your mercenaries and buy your fare home?’
Henry gave the King a broad white grin. He has the grandfather, but he also has the father in him, Stephen thought. A solution to his embarrassing situation occurred to the King: he would ask the courtiers to decide. Like himself, almost all had owned estates in Normandy before this boy’s father, the Count of Anjou, had seized them for himself three years earlier.
‘My noble lords and ladies,’ he began. ‘Is this not the most brazen, audacious youth any of us has ever seen? He asks me for gold. And why? Because he has spent all his while attacking our kingdom in the south! His grandfather, the Great Henry, would weep for shame, would he not?’
‘Yes!’ the chamber cried.
Henry felt a surge of murderous anger to hear his hero’s name invoked against him.
‘He’s a monster!’ a voice shouted. It was Eustace. I strike fear into the heart of the Crown Prince, Henry thought. Abruptly an antic mood swept through him. He turned to the courtiers with a broad smile and wiggled his fingers above his head. The hall erupted in laughter. Even bishops smiled; the attentive deacon had a fit of giggles. Half turning from them, Henry said, ‘Your Highness, it seems I’ve won my wager.’
‘Your wager, boy?’
‘I wagered with my commander of mercenaries that if I came here this morning I’d bring the joy of laughter to the court of King Stephen Blois.’ He waited for the yells and cat-calls to fade. A few of the older heads thought: this is the mark of a prince; he lives not in service to our expectations, but to a power within him.
‘So, lord King. I’ve given you laughter. Do you give me gold?’
From the corner of his eye Stephen caught the quick movement of Eustace’s page in the doorway. Dissembling is the art of kings, and even those who are uncomfortable with it must practise it sometimes. Stephen practised it frequently, and effectively. He answered calmly, ‘I know who you are, Henry, for we, indeed, are kinsmen. But there are many in this hall today who know only rumours about you. Perhaps you would be so gracious as to explain to the court?’
‘Certainly,’ Henry replied. He turned to the courtiers and addressed them loudly and clearly in Latin, a tongue he spoke perfectly. ‘On my mother’s side I have no title but FitzEmpress and, as such, am the son of the legitimate heir to this throne,’ he began.
He declares war on Prince Eustace. The whisper slid from mouths like vipers slithering from holes. The chamber felt tight.
‘On my father’s side, I am son of the Count of Anjou and Maine and Duke of Normandy. My father has dispossessed many of you of your estates. You broke your sacred oath of fealty to the great King Henry. You vowed to him not once, but three times, to accept my mother as his heir.’ He stared at them, unflinching. Suddenly his face flared with anger and he burst into French, a language all of them understood. ‘Faithless vassals! Oath breakers!’ he shouted. ‘Dishonour on you! Nothing is sacred if vows to the King are overturned! You invite chaos. You’ve brought the disaster of civil war on your own heads!’
The uproar was so loud bishops and some elderly earls had to cover their ears. Stephen signalled to the palace guards who stood around the hall. They crashed halberds against their shields to call for silence.
‘So, my nobles: how do you vote on the request from this creature who brings such disgrace upon his ancestral house? Do we give him gold?’ the King asked.
‘Get him out of England!’ people shouted.
‘He’s from the devils of Anjou! It was prophesied!’
From the door Eustace called, ‘Ransom him! Make his parents pay to get him out of irons.’
Stephen beckoned to the prelates. Canterbury and Winchester rose and although they loathed each other, walked in a measured, brotherly pace towards the throne. ‘Your advice?’ Stephen murmured. The Bishop of Winchester was the King’s brother and the second-richest man in England. He had once supported his cousin Matilda – for despite her sex, she was the true heir and in some earlier times sex had been no bar to the throne. But he had turned against her when her domineering temperament revealed itself: she’d set up in Winchester a German court, with German formality. The Archbishop of Canterbury, however, was still firmly of the Matilda faction. Political differences aside, these princes of the Church were of one mind diplomatically.
‘He’s too young to punish or ransom without bringing dishonour on yourself, Highness,’ Winchester said. ‘I’m sure he calculated his risk in coming here today on that basis. He’s shrewd, it seems.’
‘Give him the gold,’ Canterbury urged. ‘You’ll appear magnanimous.’
‘My Crown Prince sees this as our opportunity for a final victory over Matilda. If we put the FitzEmpress in irons we can make the condition of his release surrender of her claim to the throne,’ Stephen whispered.
‘Harming the boy does not guarantee an end to the war, sire. Until now his father has declined to join Matilda in her struggle for England. But he may fight for his son,’ Canterbury said. ‘As we saw when he took Normandy, Geoffrey of Anjou is ruthless and skilled in the arts of war. And he is now very rich.’
Winchester noticed that the sceptre trembled in his brother’s hand. How heavy a stolen sceptre weighs, he mused. Stephen Blois was not even a count at his birth and virtually penniless, but he was a nephew of the Lion. King Henry had treated him with majestic generosity and given him an education and vast tracts of land. ‘I shall explain to Prince Eustace our reasoning,’ Winchester said.
They returned to their seats and stared at the rushes on the floor; their deacons followed their example. Henry noticed one elegant young man look at him with a slight smile, a courageous act, given the hostility
of the court.
‘Approach me,’ Stephen said.
As Henry stepped up to the throne, the King grasped the front of his dirty tunic and in a voice that only the two of them could hear said, ‘You’ll get your gold, Anjevin. But if you ever set foot in my realm again you’ll get more than a bloody eyebrow.’
Henry replied in the same quiet voice, ‘And if you think, Usurper, that Eustace will inherit your crown, think again.’ He gave a small, formal bow. ‘Thank you for the gold.’ He turned to the courtiers and lifted his voice. ‘Your monarch is both gracious and merciful,’ he said. ‘May God bless you all.’ He crossed himself, obliging everyone in the chamber to do the same.
‘The disingenuousness!’ Winchester hissed to a deacon. The whole world knew that Anjevins would as soon rob a cathedral as attend Mass in one.
A hubbub of jeering ushered the young men from the audience chamber. Courtiers jostled them. Henry felt an unseen hand slip something inside his belt. He looked around but so many pairs of eyes were fixed on him – bishops, deacons, knights, ladies – it was impossible to know from whom the something came. In the hot sunshine of the courtyard he fished inside his belt for whatever was there. It was a small, scented rectangle of parchment that said, For love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave. He sniffed it and handed it to Guillaume.
‘I’ve read this before,’ his brother said.
‘Catullus? Ovid?’
Guillaume shook his black curls.
‘Martial?’
They laughed. ‘Remember how we had to bribe that hypocrite of a Latin master we had for a few weeks? I gave him a white goshawk,’ Henry said.
‘I gave him a bitch hound in pup … Anyway, Martial’s bawdy and this is …’
Henry punched him on the shoulder. ‘Ha! It’s romantic. I’ve won a lady’s heart.’
Guillaume looked at him from the edge of his dark brown eyes and smiled. When it came to girls there was no competition between the brothers: Guillaume always won. He was two years older, taller, of unblemished beauty, and his singing was like an angel’s. At home he wore luxurious fabrics and fine jewels. He had no title but everyone addressed him as ‘lord’. Henry went about in a sheepskin cut so short it scarcely covered his backside. Sometimes strangers took him for a servant.
On Eustace’s orders, the guards had confiscated Henry’s destrier and put his saddle and bridle on a lop-eared palfrey mare. Henry checked the saddlebags. The gold was there.
‘Take my horse,’ Guillaume said. ‘I’ll ride a mare.’
Henry shook his head, and they trotted down to the charred and wretched town where people laughed at the sight of a man not from the clergy riding a mare. Inside a tavern they each drank four cups of ale, grimacing at the taste. The commander of the mercenaries Henry had assembled sat watching from a bench. His weapons and fighting kit, along with theirs, were hidden inside carpenters’ sacks. He, Henry and Guillaume had passed themselves off as artisans come to England to look for work rebuilding the war-shattered towns. It was their explanation as to why they could barely speak English.
When his thirst was quenched Henry strolled to the bench and took a seat beside the commander, who opened his sack for the bags of gold.
‘M’lord, you’ve got more hide than a herd of cows,’ he said. ‘We had a wager the King would put you in irons.’
‘You all wagered against me?’
‘Not me, of course, m’lord.’
Henry looked at him, nodding slowly, smiling. The commander had a lovely, flaxen-haired daughter. ‘So you owe me a share of your winnings?’
The mercenary grabbed him in a hug. ‘You’re a winner!’ He kissed Henry on both cheeks. ‘I’ll fight for you any day, FitzEmpress.’
‘Pay the men and let’s get drunk,’ Henry said.
That evening, after they had slept a few hours and sobered up, the brothers enticed two girls from the midsummer dance to come with them into a barn. As usual, the prettier one chose Guillaume. After a while Henry said in Catalan, ‘I want to swap. Tell yours I’m a famous French knight in disguise and I want her.’
‘You swine,’ Guillaume said. ‘
I’ll show her the sapphire ring to prove it.’
Next morning they pulled straws from each other’s hair and slipped into the bright summer light. They headed south for the coast. At length Henry asked, ‘Did you feel as humiliated as I did, begging Stephen for gold?’
‘Of course.’
‘The magnates and barons said terrible things about our family. Especially Papa.’
‘Where I was standing I heard even more than you. They spoke French, rather than English or Latin, to make sure they injured me.’
It had been an ignominious four months. For want of foresight and siege equipment, Henry’s army had not won a single battle. One by one his noble young companions had deserted him and sailed home until there were only he and Guillaume – and the mercenaries waiting for their pay. Henry lowered his forehead to the mare’s coarse black mane and wept. ‘I can’t do it,’ he said to his brother. ‘I’ll never be the leader my grandfather was. I’ll never be King.’
‘Eustace is terrified of you!’
‘But he’s Crown Prince, and he has the backing of France.’
And the backing of the people, it seemed.
Reaching the coast, Henry and Guillaume discovered the truth of the old saying: ‘The monarch has a long hand.’ A hostile crowd of labourers waited for them with curses and bags of rotten eggs and fruit. Henry leaped to the ground and, sword in hand, hair flying, rushed at the crowd. Guillaume protected his back.
The crowd spat at the brothers while backing away from their swords. Villeins took quick jabs at them with fingers and elbows, but no artisan dared strike with a sickle, a fist or a hammer: the young foreigners moved with the wild, wilful purpose of magnates determined to have their own way. Although not full-grown, they topped by half a head most of those harassing them. After a few minutes the villeins gave up.
Henry fixed his eyes on the blue water beyond the seawall and strode towards the boat that would sail them home. An old woman plucked at his sleeve then ran in front of him. She had once been handsome but now the flesh drooped on her bones. She thrust something bulky against his stomach, staring into his face. In perfect French she said, ‘In memory of the Beloved Lion,’ then darted back behind him, screeching in English. Whatever she said made the crowd hoot with derision. Fishermen waiting on the wharf stared down at their clogs.
Over the din, Guillaume picked out the sound of a silver voice more beautiful than any he had heard before. It was a song, in English, that mocked them, sung by a barefoot urchin who bowed graciously to the clapping crowd. How odd for an urchin to bow like a page, Guillaume thought. He memorised the melody.
Intent upon the red cloth bundle he was holding, Henry had not noticed the urchin or paid much attention to the song. He vaulted over the gunwale of the fishing smack, still clutching the woman’s odd gift. The fishermen, who spoke both English and French, turned their faces away. ‘What did she say?’ Henry asked.
‘I’d throw that rag away, sir,’ one answered. ‘Bad luck to have a filthy thing like that on the boat.’
Henry began to blush. He was at the point of tossing the thing overboard when he glanced up and saw the woman standing near the wharf staring after him. She had spoken of his grandfather with such respect he could not believe what the fisherman inferred. A white corona of gulls keened above them. The sea was a bright sparkle of blue and the wind so fine their sail drooped. The oarsmen began a shanty to keep the rhythm of their stroke. Henry turned his back on England and slowly unfolded the cloth, a rectangle of linen, dyed scarlet. At its centre thousands of stitches had created a golden lion. The body was in profile, the head turned to roar. Henry felt the tumult inside him rise to an unbearable pitch.
‘Stretch it out,’ he said to Guillaume.
His brother held it. At the distance of a yard, the creature’s fierce eyes pie
rced Henry so deeply he felt he was flying to another world. The Lion spoke to him. But its words were like pearls of light that shimmer on water then vanish, and after a moment he didn’t know what they had said – but he knew he had sailed to England, risked his life, suffered defeat, disgrace and humiliation for this instant, for this moment when a zephyr lifted the veil from his senses and somehow changed his life. But for what purpose? The change was at such a depth he did not know.
Shame ruled him. He had shamed the Lion by his military failure and his stupidity.
‘You keep it,’ he said to Guillaume.
His brother refolded the standard and stowed it in silence in his kit-bag.
CHAPTER TWO
In Rouen, a fisherman sailed upriver with a letter addressed to the Duchess of Normandy. When her husband saw the seal of King Stephen, he took the letter himself and walked off a few paces to read it. It was short:
Stephen, by the grace of God King of the English, to his cousin Matilda: bad news. Your son and his bastard brother came to beg me for gold. We have sent them away.
‘Is there a reply?’ the fisherman asked.
The Duke shook his head, gave the man a coin, and entered his apartment. He flung himself on his bed and wept. Geoffrey was not a man who valued time spent in church, but after weeping he went to the castle chapel and prayed. He did so in the old style, standing, arms raised to heaven. Tears streamed down his broad, high cheekbones. He loved his many children. He loved immoderately his most difficult and vulnerable child, Henry. Matilda had poured into this boy all the fear, rage and resentment she felt for her father – and a mute, yearning, tender devotion.
She and Henry lived with the lonely desperation of a parent and child whose love for each other is hidden beneath a mountain of anger.
The Duke knew all this, and knew there was nothing he could do about it. He prayed so long his tears dried and he sank to his knees. His wife found him kneeling on a cushion.
‘What’s happened to Henry?’ she demanded.
The Young Lion Page 3