3. The Young Knight
In 1149 the garrison of Bristol was wary and experienced; for this was the twelfth year of the everlasting civil war, and since 1138 Bristol had been the headquarters of the Angevin party. When the gate commander saw knights riding over the down towards the city he gave the alarm, and saw the portcullis lowered and the gate closed. But he did not bother Count William in the castle; the whole southwest, from Wallingford to Land’s End, was a solid block of Angevin territory. That had been the achievement of Count Robert of Gloucester, brother to the Empress; and since his death his son Count William ruled this Angevin half of the realm. Strange knights, though they should be received with caution, were not likely to be raiding adherents of Blois.
As the knights drew nearer the gate commander raised his portcullis. He ordered the guard to turn out, and sent word to the castle that distinguished visitors were on the way. The leader bore on his red shield the golden leopards of Anjou, and that could only mean he was an envoy from Count Geoffrey himself. He need not be, for the design on a shield was not yet strictly personal. Leopards stood for Anjou, and the leaders of the party mostly wore them in some form.
Then the guard saluted, while trumpets blew. For the youth at the head of the cavalcade proved to be Count Henry, son and heir of Count Geoffrey. The guard commander congratulated himself that his men were clean and well armed, and evidently alert; a good report from the young Count might get him another command, nearer than Bristol to the fighting and the plunder.
The men gazed curiously at the youth riding under the gate; they were faithful followers of Count William, and if he decided for King Stephen they would change sides without demur. But the Count of Gloucester was the mainstay of the Angevins, as his father had been; in all probability this young man would be their lord all his life.
They saw a short pink-and-white boy of sixteen, with grey eyes and sandy hair, and freckles on his nose. Though short he did not look small, for his shoulders were very broad and his frame muscular. He sat well down in the saddle of his grey destrier, with the firm seat of one trained to the joust; but his horsemanship was not perfect, since his destrier looked more jaded than its companions. Here was one of those strong riders with heavy hands, who tired a horse by too much checking. He carried shield and sword, but was otherwise unarmed; his grey tunic and chausses were thick and serviceable, but too shabby for such a great lord.
As the young man rode under the gate he looked keenly at the guard. When he spoke to the commander it was in the forced friendly tone of a great man who is actually in a bad temper but thinks it profitable to be gracious to his inferiors. ‘Your sergeants are smart and well-armed, as I shall tell Count William. But I recognize some faces from my last visit, five years ago. Do the same men remain in this garrison, without taking their turn in the exposed castles beyond Cotswold?’
The guard dismissed, feeling that this new lord would be a good leader to follow. All had noted, watching with the concentration with which all soldiers observe a new commander, how carefully he had avoided direct criticism of Count William, at the same time offering them the chance of plunder in the future.
Inside the castle, alone in the solar with Count William, young Henry spoke in a different tone. Since he was old enough to stand he had been the figure-head of his mother’s cause, and whenever he saw soldiers he tried to make a good impression. But now he was taking charge of affairs. A little straight speaking would show Count William who was master; and by voicing his dissatisfaction he would relieve the appalling strain of controlling his temper.
‘I have ridden from Wareham on the coast,’ he began. ‘When you have gathered a force for my escort I shall continue through the March of Wales right up to the border of Scotland. By the end of my ride I should have recruited an army, and then I march south to seek out Count Stephen of Blois. I shall bring him to battle, and finish this war on one decisive field.’
Count William made a gesture of interest and assent. He could not see this stripling winning a pitched battle against Count Stephen, one of the best knights in Christendom, and he had no intention of risking the mesnie of Gloucester in such a desperate enterprise. A decisive battle would be difficult to bring about; in the eleven years of the war there had been only two battles, at Northallerton with the Scots invaders, and at Lincoln where King Stephen was captured. Stephen would not run such a risk again. But there was no point in disagreeing with the boy; he would be cheated of his battle without unpleasant truth-telling here in Bristol.
‘If we fight a battle we shall win it, I am sure,’ the boy continued. ‘But even if we are beaten that will make an end. We hold Normandy and Anjou, and we can manage without England. But we must end the war, one way or the other. I saw my father conquer Normandy, and since I was old enough to ride I have ridden over battlefields; but between Wareham and Bristol I have seen worse horrors than even in the ever-harried Vexin. We must bring peace, before the peasants eat one another.’
‘They don’t often do that, my lord,’ Count William answered soothingly. ‘You think you have harried a village quite bare, but some of them hide on the waste; then they dig up their hidden seedcorn, and scratch the ground again. If you ride, there next year the place needs harrying again.’
‘In the last three days I have ridden through villages whose life will never return. When the dead are left unburied it means there are no survivors. That is what we have done, and we must do it no longer.’
‘Some places have been unlucky, but it isn’t like that all over the country. At Tewkesbury, not far from here, they are building one of the finest Abbeys in the world; and in other parts they build fine churches. The lords north of Trent obey neither Blois nor Anjou, and get on better with no taxes to pay.’
It was a mistake to argue with Count Henry, though William of Gloucester was not to know it. He was only standing up for his native land, but the boy saw himself contradicted.
His whole aspect changed. His fists clenched on the arms of his chair, and inside his shabby brown leather shoes his toes curled; his freckled brow drew together in a frown, and red lights glowed in his grey eyes. As his answer tumbled out of him his voice jumped from a child’s squeaky treble to an adult growl.
‘You want the war to continue, don’t you, Count of Gloucester? Things suit you very well as they are. You need not manage your lands, or foster good husbandry, while you can ride east and take anything you want from the miserable vassals of Stephen. It’s less trouble to loot the seedcorn of your enemies than to make your own tenants plough. You won’t conquer Stephen, and he can’t conquer you. That’s why I see the same faces in Bristol gate that I saw five years ago. At Wallingford they are fighting. If you would fight with them Stephen must be driven back to Blois.’
‘My dear lord and cousin,’ began Count William, taken aback at such a sudden storm of fury.
‘I am your cousin,’ the other cut in, still shouting, ‘but your father was base-born!’ My grandfather made him a Count, and what has been granted may be taken away. Do not say ‘cousin’ as though to an equal. My grandfathers were the King of England and the King of Jerusalem, and my mother is Empress of the Romans. One day I shall rule England and Normandy and Maine and Anjou. Compared to that, what is Gloucester?’
‘You have omitted one of your ancestral titles, my lord,’ said Count William, also losing his temper. ‘Perhaps one day you will inherit Hell from your forefather.’
‘Yes, I am descended from the Devil himself, and you do well to remember it. I have come here to destroy Stephen the usurper. I shall summon all my vassals, and my mother’s. If you neglect the summons even the demons of Hell will punish you. Oh, you tail-wearing English, never constant in any quarrel! I come to finish the war, and you thwart me to my face! Here in your castle I can do nothing, but one day you will be disciplined as you deserve.’
‘The Empress is my lord, and I am her man,’ answered the other. ‘If she summons me I shall follow. But never did I swear to follow a bo
y who is not yet a knight, a child unfit to bear arms. Come back, my lord, when you are a man and a knight. Then you may give orders and I shall obey them.’
That was the last straw. Henry threw himself on the floor, where he lay drumming his heels and screaming incoherently. His face was purple, and foam gathered on his mouth; but there was nothing childish in his rage. Count William took fright.
He knelt on the floor beside the writhing figure. ‘My lord, I shall follow your banner, as soon as you are knighted. Truly, I am a loyal servant of Anjou and the Empress. Now let me conduct you to your chamber. When you ride out my mesnie will go with you.’
Henry continued to scream. But deep inside him a great expanding cloud of wrath had burst like a bubble, and he was beginning to feel better. Whenever he was crossed it was the same. First rage would fill his breast until he could scarcely breathe; then someone would remind him that the first Fulke of Anjou, Black Fulke, had married a daughter of Satan; and the memory of his diabolic ancestry would inflate his wrath beyond all bearing. He would abandon control, shrieking, kicking, writhing on the floor. Then … then his adversary would give in and apologize.
That was the method of self-expression he had perfected in early childhood, in the hate-filled castles where his father and mother bickered and screamed. If ordinary children shrieked themselves into hysterics they were slapped; but ordinary children were not descended from the Devil. His rage was noble, worthy of his ancestry. And the most important point of all, more important even than the deep relief of yielding to his passion, was that rage always got him his own way. It had worked in the nursery, and now it was working in Bristol castle.
Presently he came to himself, and walked quietly after his host to the chamber allotted to him. But he did not apologize. It was all to the good that Count William was frightened of his temper. Though now that he felt better he would have enjoyed a festive supper in hall, that would have spoiled the effect of his outburst.
For a few days, while the escort assembled for his hazardous ride to the far north, he wandered through the remembered streets of Bristol. He had known the town since he was old enough to tell one place from another, and his memories of it were chiefly pleasant.
In Bristol, when he was nine years old, he had first realized that learning could bring pleasure. Master Adelard of Bath, who had travelled the known world from the hot enclosed courtyards of Spain, tinkling with fountains under the fierce sun, to the mighty cities of Asia, where carved monuments marked the graves of rulers so ancient that their memory was forgotten – this Master Adelard had felt honoured to teach all his lore to the son of the Empress, the great-grandson of the Conqueror. Before ever he came to England, in friendly Le Mans where merchants from Flanders bargained with merchants from Andalusia before the open gates, the poet Pierre de Saintes had sung to him of chivalry, honour, self-sacrifice, the service of God against the infidels of Outremer and the service of fair ladies in the castles of the West. But in Bristol Master Adelard had taught him to read Latin, the key to all the great deeds of the past. To this descendant of mighty rulers he had spoken of statecraft, immutable law, the duty of protection and justice which the lord owed to his helpless peasantry. He had told of empires and kingdoms destroyed by weak rulers, and of republics overthrown by internal faction. Whatever example he chose, the lesson was always the same: Man is distinguished from the brutes because he lives in a State, and the State is only as strong as its ruler.
In Bristol, in that happy year 1142, when he was nine years old, he had been allowed to seal a charter as ‘rightful heir to England and Normandy’. The charter was issued by his mother, and his seal was only a confirmation; but he had never forgotten the thrill of that first act of kingship.
When he was fourteen he saw Bristol again; but that was an unpleasant memory, over which he did not linger. The first campaign in which he had been nominal commander (though no one listened to him) had ended in a shameful defeat. That was not his fault. He had led every man who would follow straight against the army of the usurper, the knightly way of fighting a civil war; and if at Cricklade his sergeants refused to charge against odds of ten to one the shame was theirs, not his. He had done his duty, to the admiration even of his foes. Why else should Count Stephen send him money for his return to Normandy? Base cynics said he had done it to get a tiresome rival out of the country; but the usurper had exacted no promise of peace in return for his silver, and Stephen, though he seized a realm which was his cousin’s birthright, was acknowledged to be one of the most chivalrous knights in Christendom.
Two years ago he had been unworthy of victory, a child striving against dubbed knights. But for his next campaign everything would be different; next time he led his men against the usurper he would be a true knight himself, and then victory must favour the righteous cause.
Meanwhile here he was in Bristol, the scene of happy memories (though it could not compare with Le Mans). For these few days he might enjoy himself.
Since his last visit he had discovered a new field of enjoyment. Two years ago he still thought that all this fuss about fair ladies was a sad mistake, the only blemish on the code of chivalry. Now he had altered his opinion. His mother, the awe-inspiring Empress, was no longer in England to supervise his amusements, and Count William, anxious to keep him in a good temper, did not inquire how he filled in the time between supper and bed. There were ladies in the castle willing to complete the education of such a great lord, but some of the taverns by the harbour were really more amusing … Most of his elders approved, on the theory that a little debauchery would help to make a man of him.
By Easter he was riding north, through the close-set castles of the March of Wales. This was the land of war, more often ravaged even than the Vexin. But here war had a pleasant face; every man was a warrior, and the castles could shelter the women and children. When you rode past burned huts the peasants were not corpses rotting in the rain; they had taken their spears to drive the cattle of their neighbours. In such country, where all life was based on cattle-raiding, even a good King need not impose perpetual peace.
By Pentecost he had reached the Scottish border, riding all the way through the lands of magnates who followed the Angevin leopards. While such a great belt of country defied him it was absurd to call Stephen King of England. The Empress might have given up the struggle, retiring in despair to the comforts of Maine; but she had despaired too soon. Even while his opponent was a boy, unknighted, Count Stephen could not control the realm whose holy crown had been placed unlawfully on his brow.
The despair of the Empress had wrought great harm to the Angevin cause; but then he had never had proper support from his parents, whose quarrels had formed the constant background of his childhood. When he was four he had heard his father, a little drunk after supper, remind the great Empress, as she sat disapproving in the stiff hieratic posture of the Imperial court, that after their wedding he had sent her home to her father, as too proud and overbearing to make a fitting wife for a Count of Anjou. His mother had answered coldly that she remembered very well; she also remembered that when her father, the mighty King of England and Duke of Normandy, recalled Count Geoffrey to his duty he had come to heel like the half-trained puppy he was. His father had then wondered audibly whether there could be any truth in the rumour that the Emperor was still alive; men whispered that Henry V had staged a mock funeral, to go off and live as a holy hermit in the forest. If that were true, and there were men in Germany who believed it, then the Empress had been incapable of contracting a second marriage: ‘and that squalling brat is a bastard, heir to nothing.’ But he had never heard the end of that particular quarrel, for the Devil’s rage had come on him for the first time, and he had been carried, kicking and struggling, from the hall.
His mother was so haughty that no deference was low enough for her; when great lords kissed her foot in the stirrup she received the greeting with a frown; the joke among jongleurs was that she expected them to kiss the tail of her dest
rier. Mother was brave, of course, brave to foolhardiness; she had clung to her exposed position in Winchester until she must flee at full gallop, hitching up her imperial robes to sit astride her destrier like a knight. At Oxford she had maintained a hopeless defence until she must escape alone and on foot through snow-covered fields. But her courage was to be expected; she was heir to Duke Rollo the pirate and to Duke William the conqueror of England; on her mother’s side she could trace her descent through old English Kings to Woden the heathen god. (Perhaps this was a reinforcement of his demonic ancestry; but Edward the Confessor shared the same descent, so the infusion of evil could not be very strong.) In his line courage could be taken for granted; he himself had never been afraid in his life. But his mother had thrown away all her advantages and his. With the best hereditary claim in England, with the backing of the English Bishops and most of the magnates, with Count Stephen fettered as her captive, she had been driven to flee through the rain, on a man’s saddle, alone.
It was most unfair, and his father was not much better. Count Geoffrey also was brave, and rather more likeable than his wife; but he thought first of being Duke of Normandy, and Henry dreaded one day to hear that the family claim to England, his rightful inheritance, had been bartered for a guarantee of undisturbed possession of the Duchy. That was because his father was not sprung from a genuine kingly stock; there was a King in the lineage of Anjou, but the King of Jerusalem was chosen by his peers, and he enjoyed little power and less state.
Young Henry must battle alone for his rights, without help from his parents; and in England, whose men had been cursed with tails as an emblem of faithlessness, he could never count on true loyalty. He must do everything himself. But he felt in his bones that one day he would be a great King; and he had one asset, his devilish rage, the rage that scared waverers and convinced the doubtful. When things looked black he need only give way to the red mist that flooded his brain; he would make a remarkable exhibition of himself, but when he was calm again affairs would have altered for the better. It was a distinction to be descended from the Devil, a distinction to be cherished.
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