King of the Wood

by Valerie Anand

  The actual business of the arrest proved difficult. No ordinary guard captain could be commanded to arrest a man of such eminence and when William looked at a group of senior barons, they looked at each other and at Odo and did not move. Odo was vindictive. He would not forget a man who had arrested him. And one day, he might be free again.

  ‘Splendour of God! The greatest men in my realm and you look like frightened hares,’ said the Conqueror furiously, shoved his heavy chair backwards so that it crashed into a pillar, strode round the table and grasped Odo’s meaty upper arm himself.

  ‘I would remind you,’ said Odo, ‘that I am an anointed bishop and as such have ecclesiastical immunity from arrest.’

  ‘You’re the Earl of Kent, my vassal, and it’s a treacherous vassal I’m arresting, not a bishop. You’re also,’ said the Conqueror, in a lower tone and through his teeth, ‘my brother. I knew you’d try to do me an injury one day and I was right. I knew you’d fail, as well. But it doesn’t make the offence less.

  Brothers of all people should be able to trust each other.’ With the formal arrest completed, the guards could be called. Odo, shouting threats and claiming ecclesiastical privilege at the top of his voice, was removed. William stared at his silent and embarrassed baronage, made an explosive and derogatory noise and stalked out of the hall. Only Rufus, who had been sitting beside him, ventured to follow and even he did so with caution, a few paces behind.

  Mantle swishing furiously round his calves, the Conqueror strode down a spiral stair to a small stone landing where brightness poured in from the sunlit outer world, through a narrow slit. A narrow segment of the English Channel glittered beyond. William stopped, slamming a hand flat on the deep ledge below the slit. ‘If you’re ever able to trust your closest kin, you’ll be lucky, my boy. There’s no end to the trouble I’m having with mine. Look at Curthose.’ As Meulan had pessimistically predicted, Curthose’s peace with his father hadn’t lasted long and Curthose was once more making a freebooting nuisance of himself in Normandy. ‘Now it’s your uncle. Can I trust you?

  Rufus, as always in moments of emotion, annoyed himself by turning pink and stammering as he tried to assure his father that he at least was reliable. He was relieved to be interrupted by rapid footsteps, as a young man came running up the stairs towards their landing. He checked at the sight of them. He was a tall, strongly-made individual, moving athletically inside a priest’s dark garb. His tonsure was dark brown, tinged with copper, and his eyes virtually matched his hair. His eyes caught their attention at once, for they were ablaze with an anger as magnificent as William’s own. The young man’s whole being was ablaze with it, in fact. He was a sight no wise farmer would want anywhere near his hayricks. ‘Ranulf!’ said William. ‘What’s the matter?’

  The young man tried to remove the scowl from his face and failed. ‘It’s nothing, sir. I beg your pardon.’

  ‘Nonsense. I said, what’s the matter?’

  ‘I’ve had a ... a disappointment, sir. That’s all.’

  ‘Personal or professional?’

  ‘Professional.’

  ‘Indeed? Come in here.’ William led them into a small room off the landing. It was an archive chamber, with rolls of vellum arranged on shelves, and nothing to sit on but a couple of chests. William rested a foot on one of the chests and turned to his son. ‘This is Ranulf. He’s a clerk in my secretariat. He was born in Bayeux and came to England in your uncle Odo’s household. Since then, he’s transferred to me but he kept up his contacts among your uncle’s followers. I’m indebted to him for the information he has given me about your uncle’s plans to travel to Rome.’

  ‘It sounds shocking,’ said Ranulf frankly to Rufus. ‘As if I were guilty of treachery. But I’m on your father’s payroll, not Bishop Odo’s. And what Bishop Odo tried to do – that was treachery.’

  ‘What the Earl of Kent has tried to do would be a better way of putting it,’ said William. ‘The arrest has just been carried out, by the way.’

  ‘Yes. I saw them taking him away.’ A bleak expression crossed Ranulfs face.

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Rufus. ‘My uncle broke one of the first rules of knighthood,’ he added stiffly, knowing that he sounded boyish and pompous but nevertheless meaning what he said. ‘Fidelity to one’s overlord. It matters.’

  ‘Quite,’ said William. ‘We all regret these necessities. But necessities is what they are. And now, Ranulf, what about this disappointment of yours?’

  The young man grimaced. ‘The Chancellor, Maurice, promised to obtain a promotion for me. I’m suitably qualified and I thought it was settled.’ The Conqueror nodded. ‘Now,’ said Ranulf bitterly, ‘it’s fallen through.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘My background isn’t good enough, that’s why! I’m a priest’s son to start with, though what that has to say to it, I can’t understand. My father was a village priest in Bayeux and when he was young it was the custom for priests to marry. I also have a ... a common law wife myself. The Chancellor went nosing into my business before he made my promotion final, and found out. He says I won’t do on either count. And on top of that, there’s my mother.’

  ‘Your mother? Even the most austere prelates I know,’ said the Conqueror, ‘including the Archbishop of Canterbury and my saintly old friend Abbot Anselm of Bee, admit that priests have to have mothers, though most people agree they shouldn’t have wives. What was the objection to your mother?’

  ‘The Chancellor had heard she was a witch, my lord.’

  ‘And is she?’

  ‘Of course not!’ said Ranulf violently. He recovered himself and added: ‘my lord.’

  ‘Never mind that,’ said William. ‘Go on. Why does Maurice think she’s a witch?’

  ‘Chancellor Maurice,’ said Ranulf, ‘couldn’t tell a witch from an archangel.’ William grinned for the first time that day. ‘My mother understands herb remedies and she can charm warts. That isn’t witchcraft! When I was small, we were very poor. She used to sell love potions and things to silly girls in the village, just to make ends meet. The girls used to bring her presents, honey and eggs. It helped us and as for the potions, they were just harmless concoctions brewed from flowers. But what with that and the warts, she gained a reputation. In fact,’ he added thoughtfully, ‘once or twice I have known her… guess at the future in advance. She’ll say she dreamed so and so that someone is coming home unexpectedly, for instance and she turns out to be right. But that isn’t witchcraft, either. There were seers in the Bible. It’s a gift from God. But the Chancellor…’ He bit off what was probably an outright criticism of Chancellor Maurice’s intelligence.

  William said: ‘You’ve served me well over today’s business. You may not be an ideal priest, perhaps. The Chancellor isn’t altogether wrong. Your parents are neither here nor there but I can’t approve your wife. I didn’t know about her and I would prefer not to hear of her again. But there are other, non-ecclesiastical posts in which you could be very valuable, which would be an equal promotion for you. Leave this with me, Ranulf.’ Recognising dismissal, Ranulf bowed and went.

  ‘I suggested that promotion to Maurice,’ William said to his son, ‘as a reward to Ranulf for services rendered. As I said, I didn’t know about the woman. I don’t wish to override Maurice on that. But I must find Ranulf something else. He’s too able to waste. They call him Ranulf Flambard, the Cresset, because of his vitality. Any suggestions, Rufus?’

  Rufus said thoughtfully: ‘The Keeper of the Seal has died lately, hasn’t he? Or would Ranulf be too young for that?’

  William considered him with a glint of appreciation in his hard dark eyes. ‘No, not with the ability he has. A very good suggestion, Rufus. My thanks.’

  Continuing downstairs with his father, Rufus said casually: ‘I wonder if Uncle Odo could ever have made himself Pope?’

  ‘I doubt it,’ said William over his shoulder. ‘And just as well. Popes tend to regard themselves as the High Kings of Christendom, you know. O
do as Pope would have gone about claiming that I was accountable to him. He would soon have learned otherwise but now there’s no risk at all that I’ll be put to the trouble of instructing him. I really am very grateful to Ranulf,’ he added thoughtfully.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Leaving Home 1083

  Odo was arrested on a day of clear weather, which in 1082 was unusual, for it was a wet, cold year. Sheltered Fallowdene, where Sybil had begun to toddle, did not fare too badly. But in Scotland the little Edith was scarcely allowed to step out of doors, and in Hampshire, Chenna’s Tun and its neighbours suffered a poor harvest, which brought hunger and sickness in its wake. The next summer was equally poor, the bad weather extending even to southern Normandy near the Maine border, where on the little holding of Aix with its two hundred acres of only moderately productive land, Peter Longshanks was at last brought to the point he had tried to delay. His younger son, Ralph, must leave the home which could no longer support him.

  It was not uncommon. The boy was fifteen now; many lads left home to enter other men’s service when they were much younger. But all the same, on the morning in the August of 1083 when Ralph and his father set out from Aix on the first stage of Ralph’s journey into the world, conversation was stilted.

  ‘I’ve done the best I could for you,’ Longshanks said earnestly as they went. ‘Better than I hoped at one time, in fact. If your mother’s cousin hadn’t been a chaplain on this estate you’re going to-in Maine, you might have ended up in some border fortress full of God knows what kind of riff-raff. But La Fleche has a good reputation and so has the Seigneur Helias. You’ll have chances to learn as well as serve. Not that he’ll take notice of you personally, mind. You’ll be just another trainee soldier, don’t forget.’

  ‘No, Father.’

  ‘Your bowmanship won’t disgrace you, but keep in practice with all kinds of weapon. Take care of your pony. Not that I need tell you that; you’ve always been good about looking after anything that’s yours. I wish I could send you off with more, but…‘No, Father, I know we’re not rich. It’s all right. Really.’ Ralph’s voice held a trace of a quiver.

  His father said heartily: ‘The man I came to Normandy with, he left home young, like you, because he was a second son. He made his way. The last I heard, he’d become a thane back in England. Serve your lord well and he may reward you with land one day. It’s what you should aim for, what every man really wants. You can marry and raise a family then. Fallowdene, Brand’s place was called,’ said Longshanks reminiscently. ‘Somewhere in southern England, in the county of Sussex, I think. I wonder if he came through ’66? There’ll be visitors at La Fleche, coming from everywhere. If ever you hear news of Brand of Fallowdene, let me know.’

  ‘Yes, Father. Of course.’ There was a fidgety pause and they broke into a trot to cover it.

  He was to travel under the protection of a bishop who was passing near Abe en route to visit La Fleche himself. In a few minutes they would be at the abbey where the bishop had lodged the night, where Peter Longshanks would hand his son finally into someone else’s care. There was no more to say, or at least no time for saying it.

  Longshanks would have liked to say: I’m sorry we haven’t been closer. I’m sorry there isn’t land enough for you as well as Reggie. I’m sorry your birth killed your mother.

  Ralph would have liked to say: I wish I didn’t hate Reggie for being older and luckier. I wish I didn’t think I’d be a better master for Aix one day than he will be. I like taking care of things and he doesn’t. And I’m sorry I was short when I said goodbye to him this morning. Inside my head I can still see the patterned paving in our downstairs rooms. I can’t believe that maybe I’ll never see it again. I can see Elise too. I know she’s sobbing her heart out because I’ve gone. I never knew my mother; Elise was my mother. I won’t forget you, Elise, or the things you taught me. I wish I were staying. I wish my home were mine…

  But none of it would go into speech. It was a time to damp feeling down, not to fan it. In another fifteen minutes, they had parted. Ralph des Aix (for so he was always known although Aix was never his) was on his way.

  He took with him the ability to speak English, a bundle of clothes, a somewhat scruffy pony, a yew-wood bow he had made for himself, and some arrows to go with it.

  With him also went an intangible donation from Elise, who had been his nurse and was now his stepmother. She had borne children of her own but none had lived long. She had given her love to her nursling and to him had passed on all the advice and guidance that she could, to protect and nourish him out in the perilous world.

  Some of Elise’s lore would have met with considerable disapproval from Ralph’s prospective lord, Helias of La Fleche, who was a pious man. And the man with whom Ralph travelled to La Fleche, the honest Bishop of St. Evreux, it would certainly have scandalised.

  In the castle of La Fleche in Maine, light and air penetrated the living quarters in unusual quantities. Helias’ father had decreed that they should, to the horror of the architect and the chief mason hired to change the original slits into windows with some width.

  ‘But, Seigneur!’ protested the architect. ‘The defences!’

  ‘Round this castle,’ said his employer, ‘is a moat. The moat encloses a steep mound and on top of that is a battlement wall seventy feet high. Inside that again is another ring of walls. The only approach, up the only adequately sloped part of the mound, is guarded by a gatehouse in the outer wall and two more towers in the inner one. No one capable of hammering his way through all that will be deflected by the mere width of a window. I am a cultured man, Messire. I am sick of living in quarters as dismal as my own dungeons. Les fenetres, Messire, s’il vous plait!

  And les fenetres there were and the young Helias (who now, at eighteen, so closely resembled his late, debonair sire that people who had known the older man often repressed an exclamation when first encountering the son) was glad. It pleased him to descend, brisk and lithe, from his tower chamber on a summer morning and not feel that he had left the exhilaration of the burgeoning day behind.

  Above all after such days of rain and cloud as they had just had, he liked to see the sun make golden patches on the hall rushes, and to smell the wind blowing in from the misty forest.

  And in August, the stags were in antler and when the day’s business was done, there would be hunting in prospect. ‘So please don’t present me with any major tasks,’ said Helias beguilingly to his steward. ‘The hounds are spoiling for a run after so much wild weather, and so am I.’

  ‘Michel wants to see you,’ said the steward. ‘He’s been here since cockcrow, in fact. Shall I fetch him?’

  ‘Did he say what it was about?’

  ‘No, sir. He was rather mysterious in his manner, to tell you the truth. He’s got a leather bag with him, full of something or other, and he keeps on, well, hugging it.’

  ‘You intrigue me. Bring him in,’ said Helias.

  Michel, the head huntsman, was lean and quiet-voiced, with the faded eyes of men who scan horizons. He was not given to wasting words. Without delay he opened the drawstring of the bag he was indeed carrying close under his arm, and tipped the contents on to a table. Helias gazed in surprise at two bundles of flat wooden tallies, ten inches by three, marked not with notches but by upright strokes in chalk.

  ‘What’s all this?’

  ‘They’re scores, sir,’ said Michel. ‘The boys in training had a shooting match yesterday. Those two new boys who arrived in the bishop’s train a few days ago were being tried out against the others of their age. I watched.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Look, sir.’ The huntsman sorted the tallies deftly. ‘This bundle is the scores for the last round. They were shooting at a still target, from sixty yards. With the bows the lads use, that’s the maximum for accuracy. Each boy shot six arrows and each had his own tally with his mark at the top. They got three points for a bull’s eye, two for a shaft in the ring nearest the centre, one
for the next ring to that. Eighteen points is the most anyone can score.’

  ‘I know. It’s not so long since I was training that way myself. Go on.’

  'Look, sir,’ said Michel, pulling one of the bundles apart. ‘No one scored more than two bull’s eyes – except for one of the new lads; this one. See? Four bulls and two near misses, sixteen points all told. And now look at this.’ He undid the second bundle. ‘These are the scores for when they used a moving target. Someone was throwing a board in the air for them. Some didn’t score at all. But this lad – it’s the same one – he hit the board every time and twice dead centre.’ Suddenly the faded eyes were bright and the huntsman’s calm deserted him. ‘Sir, I lost my apprentice in that outbreak of plague last month and you promised me I could take my pick of the lads, bar the ones destined for knighthood. I’d been looking at them, I’d almost made my mind up… then this boy came and he’s a marvel! Can I have him?’

  ‘My own personal force of retained archers would be none the worse for a marvel or two,’ Helias pointed out. He ran his fingers through his crisp dark hair. It was as springy as a bush and in frosty weather it crackled.

  ‘Sir,’ said the huntsman pleadingly, ‘when an archer goes to war, he has to be able to shoot a long distance, so that he can keep himself well back from the enemy. But he need not be that accurate. If he’s shooting into massed ranks what does it matter which man he hits? He’s bound to hit someone. But in my business we have to bring down wounded deer, we have to shoot wolves and suchlike vermin. Accuracy matters. Their instructor knows I’m here. He gave me the tallies. He says the boy isn’t one of the future knights.’

  ‘I’d like to see this prodigy for myself. Where would he be at this hour, I wonder?’

  ‘They ride after Mass on this day of the week, sir. Practise with lances at straw targets. All of them, future knights or no.’