Just as he himself acted the part of a first-class Chancellor, so he was glad to recognize the energy with which young Henry threw himself into the part of a busy King and statesman. The boy was willing to work, that was the great thing. Even hunting took second place to his chosen task of bringing peace to England. He was never idle, and made up his mind without delay (if the decision were unwise, a trusted Chancellor might pursue the matter further before the binding document was sealed). He was not afraid of war, but, thank God, he was not eager for glory. Since he was big enough to ride he had ridden through sacked villages, the wrecks of his rightful inheritance; and the horrors he had seen had given him a passion for order. He was greedy and harsh, as was to be expected in a son of Rollo the pirate. But he did not take pleasure in inflicting pain, and the prosperity of his subjects was his greatest care. With enough patience and tact, which might be supplied by his trusted advisers, he would be a King worthy to rule the realm of Arthur.
If only his private life were a little more decorous! But though from his mother came the sound sense and practical ability that were the marks of Norman blood, his father had added the diabolic heritage of Anjou. A hot temper is often the companion of a quick intelligence, and Thomas knew that his own rage came suddenly and without warning; but all his life he had striven to subdue the outward manifestations of anger, while young Henry gloried in his passion. Thomas suspected that on occasion he deliberately threw himself into hysterics, either to get his own way or merely to give the bystanders something to talk about.
Then there was his silly behaviour with women, and for that Thomas almost despised his young ruler and friend. Henry was married to the most beautiful lady of her day (or at least the most beautiful reigning Duchess); if the stories of her conduct at Antioch were true she must be very attractive to normal sinful men. She was nine years older than her husband, and there had never been any pretence that they had married for love. It was also true that her temper, when it was roused, matched his. But he was free of her bed, which made him the envy of many knights and of all the best troubadours; she had given him a male heir, and the more children he begot on her the better. If anyone had a safe outlet for his passions, young Henry was that lucky man.
Yet he was always chasing young damsels. He would often take his pleasure among the trollops of Thames-side, asking Thomas, as a native Londoner, to show him the most amusing taverns; that did no great harm, for he left the trollops no worse than he had found them, and it was a sin most Kings committed. What might be dangerous was his habit of seducing young ladies of good family. It gave him, poor fool, the illusion that he was being loved for himself alone, since in theory the damsels might have repulsed him. As if any simple knight’s daughter would repulse the King of England! So far the parents had felt flattered, rather than insulted, at his attentions. Sir Roger de Akeny had accepted with gratitude the fat fief that came to him after his unmarried daughter made him the grandfather of two lusty boys. But one day some father would decide that honour demanded death for the girl and bloodfeud with her seducer, in accordance with the custom of his high-minded ancestors.
Thomas had drifted into a reverie; for he had cleared up current business, and work must pause while his clerks stitched fair copies to the Great Roll of the Pipe; that was the only way of keeping a file in a mobile office without shelves or cabinets. He was brought back to the present by a clatter of hooves.
The horse sounded as though it were inside the room. Thomas’s acute hearing seldom deceived him; the horse was inside the room.
Thomas saw first the neat alert head of a brisk little palfrey, his rider crouched flat over the withers to avoid the lintel of the door; then the pony collected his hind legs, and, from a stand, popped neatly over the table. There was just room for him by the inner wall; he stood like a statue, while the King straightened in his stirrups and waved to a clerk who crawled out from under the board.
‘Don’t panic, Master Eustace. Quicksilver could have cleared you seated upright at your desk. He never puts a foot wrong. He is interested in my Chancery and he wants to know why you all spend a fine day sitting here among the parchments. So I brought him in to have a look. What are you doing, by the way? It can’t be more important than flying my new gyrfalcon. She is a present from a Baltic shipmaster. I promised to excuse him toll for the rest of his life, but if his gift flies off home at the first cast I may change my mind. Come on, Thomas. You are better at luring a falcon than anyone else at court. We should find kites down by Barking. We can ride through the town, and call in at the Tower on our way back to visit the Queen. Anyway, come out and give me your opinion of Snow Maiden.’
‘A new gyrfalcon is a distinguished visitor, my lord, and I shall be honoured to meet her. That letter you bade me write to Count Geoffrey is also important, but it will not be engrossed until this evening. Give me half an hour to send for a horse and change into riding clothes.’
‘Half an hour? You would loiter for half an hour before trying a gyrfalcon straight from Iceland? Quicksilver will never allow that; he is already impatient. There is a good hackney outside, and you must ride as you are. That mantle and tunic are not too good for a first meeting with such a great lady.’
‘My dear Henry,’ answered Thomas with a smile, ‘if I am correctly dressed then certainly you are not. What will the minstrels say of a great King who goes hawking in grey fustian and a tattered mantle? Is that the way to make friends with a lady from Iceland, where even shepherds wear ermine?’
It was a nuisance to be interrupted in the drafting of that tricky letter to Count Geoffrey, the King’s younger brother who was claiming the whole County of Anjou as his price for not raising a sedition in England. They were trying to persuade him to withdraw without open war, though he spoke truth when he claimed that his father had intended the County to be his appanage. But all his life Thomas had been trained to fall in with the moods of his superiors. The clerks could finish drafting the letter, and if it was wrongly engrossed nothing was lost but a fair sheet of parchment. It would be pleasant to ride hawking in magnificent scarlet; it would show the burgesses of London, who still told stories about the obscure childhood of Thomas of Cheapside, that the great Chancellor recked nothing of splendid robes. He smiled as he walked behind the well-trained palfrey to join the group of horsemen in the street: the sergeants of the bodyguard, the chief falconer with the new treasure on his wrist, and a groom leading a smooth-paced hackney for the King’s friend to ride.
When she towered in pride of place and stooped to the kill the gyrfalcon was as wonderful as all her kind. But like all her kind she was self-willed and slow to the lure. Her recovery was a long business, the cause of hard gallops and hard swearing. Thomas reflected that his own peregrines really gave better sport; they were under the control of their master, and you felt that you shared in their hunting; to ride after a gyrfalcon was merely to be present when a wild bird hunted her prey. But gyrfalcons were an emblem of kingship. Kingship was still a novel experience to young Henry, and anything that reminded him of it gave him immense pleasure.
Of course they did not stop for dinner. Henry’s courtiers were used to that. Their eager young master grudged time for meals, especially when he was hunting or hawking. Presently he would feel hungry, and eat enormously of any coarse food they set before him; but first he must burn up the energy the Devil his ancestor had given to all the house of Anjou.
After a long chase over the Essex marshes the King turned for home. He himself was not tired, but his horse had done enough; and except in the stress of war he was careful of good horses. Since they were east of London they called at the Tower before passing through the city; and Thomas had his first private meeting with Henry’s Queen.
She had remained in the Tower during all the hard riding of her husband’s winter circuit; for her firstborn son had died in infancy and every care must be taken to ensure the continuance of the line of Anjou. Now little Henry, heir to England, Normandy and Aquitaine, was
in his third month, a sturdy infant who roared with something of his father’s rage. But the Queen had picked up a touch of some fever from the crowded city; she lay in the state marriage-bed in her chamber on the topmost storey of the Tower.
That was symbolical of her married life, as Thomas reflected. He knew, as the whole court knew, that there was little affection between husband and wife. While Henry lay at Westminster his Queen would prefer the Tower. Yet if she was not with him she must be within an hour’s ride of him; for the Duchess of Aquitaine was immensely valuable, a prize to be kept constantly under the royal eye. She had none of the comfort of marriage, and no freedom to console her for its absence. Well, she was still Duchess of Aquitaine, and this was part of the price she must pay for it.
She was thirty-three years old, which many would consider late middle-age. But as she lay among the fine-textured furs and silks of her bed she looked a damsel of sixteen. Though she had borne four children her breasts under the ermine bedgown were high and firm, and her waist slim; the light in her eye summoned all true knights to joust for her glory, and the curve of her wrist was an incitement to high adventure. Any man who looked on Queen Eleanor felt himself grow to the stature of Lancelot (with her husband in the part of King Arthur). Even if the stories about her conduct in Outremer were true, the kindness of such a lady would be rich payment for the wrecking of a great Crusade.
Hitherto Thomas had seen her only at state functions, glowing from afar, a fair face in a setting of smooth silk and massy jewels; the unattainable princess, as worshipful and as remote as the image of Our Lady behind the altar. Now, looking into her face, he saw resolution, courage and high ambition looking back from those sultry brown eyes. She was all woman, and yet she would have fared better as a man; every man of spirit must desire to possess her, but it was impossible to see her as a dutiful wife.
But that was none of his business. He was vowed to celibacy, and even in the eyes of this sinful world, which condoned many broken vows, she was the wife of his dearest friend. Temptations of this sort had been beaten down many times; if they stirred again he must tire his body further, by harder work, more strenuous hunting, longer prayers.
The lady spoke to him graciously. Her nature compelled her to draw any strange man into an intimacy directed against her husband. ‘I am pleased to know the King’s comrade and coadjutor, of whom all England is talking. But only Henry would have arranged such an introduction. Here I lie in my old bedgown in this gloomy keep, and you are hot and muddy, and, I expect, hungry. Have you dined? I thought not. I can offer you only bread and wine and honey. But that is more than some courtiers get, who ride with my impatient husband. Look at his mantle! When he put it on clean this morning it was unworthy of a beggar, and now he wears it wet and torn and filthy in the bedchamber of a lady. If you dress so meanly you will lose the respect of your subjects.’
‘My subjects respect the Chancellor, who dresses very splendidly. So long as they respect him they will obey me,’ answered Henry laughing. ‘But I can dress splendidly if the occasion demands it. You should have seen me yesterday, when I wore my crown for Pentecost. My vassals were most impressed.’
‘I suppose you sat smiling while the magnates of Aquitaine renewed their fealty. No man ever allows a woman the power that is rightly hers.’
Thomas spoke up, to avert a family quarrel. ‘The King did indeed look most kingly at the crownwearing, my lady. And he guards Aquitaine for you. Someone must wield the sword from which your sex debars you. Since your father is dead that is the task of your husband.’
‘Oh, but I can wield a sword, Master Thomas. At Antioch I led a troop of ladies, all mailed and mounted on destriers. If we had encountered the infidel we should have charged, but since Prince Raymond guards his border we could only joust with one another.’
‘All Christendom talks of your exploits in Outremer, madam,’ Henry said hastily. ‘Such tales grow in the telling, and it would be wise to allow them to be forgotten.’
The Queen shrugged her shoulders, with a conspiratorial glance at Thomas. Those tales were indeed well known, including the story that her uncle Prince Raymond of Antioch had been her lover, under the eyes of King Louis her husband. She was rash to remind her present husband of that episode.
A waiting-lady brought in bread and wine, and conversation ceased while Henry gulped down great mouthfuls standing. Thomas, like every clerk, was trained to long fasting; and though he was very hungry he ate daintily and slowly, talking easily to the Queen in the flippant gallant tone he remembered hearing at the high table in Pevensey. Then Henry announced that it was time to get back to Westminster, where the magnates assembled for Pentecost would expect to see him at supper. Thomas perceived that an hour ago Henry had been eager to visit the Queen, whom he still pictured as the beautiful and valuable princess who had fallen into his lap while he fought for his inheritance; but that as soon as he was actually in her presence he was as restless and ill-at-ease as a schoolboy in the presence of the novice-master. It was a great pity, and a danger to Henry’s soul. But the husband of such a masterful wife would be naturally tempted to seek consolation from ladies who were more easy to please.
They rode back through Cheapside, but nowadays that meant nothing to Thomas. After his father’s death the old house had been sold, and he did not know where at the moment his married sister was living. For more than ten years his only home had been the household of Archbishop Theobald; now it was the household of King Henry; in any case it was no longer Cheapside.
But as they rode up the familiar street, two happy and prosperous cavaliers, their attendants some distance behind, Thomas noticed an old man waiting to accost them. For a moment he feared embarrassment from some acquaintance who would remind him of old days together in Osbert’s counting-house; then he saw the man was only a beggar, a miserable waif leaning on a crutch; he was nearly naked, and as he scuttled up to the horsemen he complained, in good French, of the cold.
‘Hallo,’ said Henry, reining up, ‘here is one of my vassals in want, and a Frenchman by his speech. Where were you born, fellow?’
Of course the man came from Le Mans, and had been reduced to beggary by the plundering knights of Blois. Thomas proudly appreciated the quick wits of this Londoner, who had composed exactly the right story to appeal to the King. The man finished by asking for clothes, not money, which always sounds better from a beggar. A great lord would not know that the alehouses by the river would sell drink as readily for a mantle as for silver.
King Henry was less experienced in the wiles of beggars. But since he had been old enough to sit a horse he had led forays which must have ruined countless peasants; his Christian charity was under firm control. Thomas looked for him to ride on, perhaps with a curse.
Instead the King turned to his Chancellor. ‘Do you hear, Thomas? My vassal calls on his lord for aid, besides which a true knight cannot refuse the widow or the orphan. You are of course an orphan, my good man? And what you want is a mantle? Unfortunately you are begging from the wrong lord. Today both my Chancellor and my wife have told me that my mantle is not fit to give to a beggar. I am a little tired of the advice, but I must accept the opinion of my trusted counsellors. My mantle would be no use to you. However,’ he continued, as gravely as though giving judgment from his throne, ‘I know of a very good mantle, quite near at hand. In fact I have been admiring it all day. This is Master Thomas of London, a deacon of holy life. I wish to share in the merits of his almsdeeds, so I shall help him to give you his mantle.’
Leaning from the saddle, he strove to pull the great scarlet cloak from Thomas’s shoulders.
Thomas was at first taken unawares. His long training in obedience to lawful superiors and in the suppression of his own desires inclined him to do as his lord wished; but the voices of all his Norman ancestors clamoured in his brain that here was a lord encroaching on the rights of a vassal. If Henry had been in earnest this would have been tyranny; even as a joke it must not be allowed to pas
s without protest. He seized the thick hairy wrists at his neck, and struggled to pull Henry from the saddle.
While the beggar skipped to the shelter of the wall the two greatest men in England wrestled like unruly urchins; until the sergeants of the bodyguard arrived at full gallop, and Cheapside was blocked by excited horses.
Henry FitzEmpress, that thick-muscled warrior, easily overcame the tall and slender clerk. As the scarlet mantle flashed through the air, making the eager horses plunge and rear, the King called in the trumpet-shout of a knight victorious in the joust: ‘Here, beggar, take my alms, the spoil Thomas could not withhold from me. And don’t interfere, men. This is felonious assault all right – but by the King – on the person of the Chancellor.’
There was laughter all round, and they rode in good fellowship to Westminster. That night Thomas instructed his steward to order an even more splendid mantle from the best tailor in London, and to send the tally to the Wardrobe as a private debt of the King. If the Wardrobe would not honour the tally that did not matter very much. In addition to his salary as Chancellor (five shillings a day, sixty times the wage of a foot-sergeant) Thomas might use for his legitimate expenses as much as he liked of the royal income which passed through his hands. He lived in great state, as a Chancellor should; and he was not particularly accurate in keeping his accounts.
What was more interesting was this fresh demonstration of Henry’s affectionate intimacy. When they began to work together they had hit it off very well; but this was the first time the King had joked with him as if with an equal. He was accepted, not merely as a useful official but as a close friend. He need no longer guard his behaviour, as had been his custom for every moment of the day.
He resolved to increase his already splendid household. He could not be accused of gluttony or personal luxury; he still drank lime-water from choice, said most punctiliously the daily office of a deacon, and heard Mass every morning. But his mind held a clear picture of the perfect household for a dignified magnate, and his instinct as an artist, an artist at least in ceremonial, could now have free play.
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