King of the Wood

by Valerie Anand

  Father Bruno, who approved of Alice’s piety and deplored Wulfhild’s lack of it with all a new broom’s energy, suggested that Wulfhild should light candles in the church, for the fulfilment of their hopes, and Wulfhild actually did so. Richard lit candles too, and said: ‘She’s not being sick this time as she was before. Is that a good sign?’

  In June Alice miscarried again and between one hour and the next, all the ground she had gained was lost. Richard was obliged to forbid his mother the sick-chamber. He ordered Gunnor to do the nursing instead. But Wulfhild’s smouldering rage still pervaded the air and Alice became tearful if she even heard the tapping of her mother-in-law’s stick pass by outside. ‘I didn’t make it happen!’ she wept in Richard’s arms. ‘I was careful. I did everything she told me! She called me nithing -I couldn’t help it, Richard, it just happened, I couldn’t help it!’

  It had certainly been no pleasure for her. Lying with her feet propped higher than her head, white with exhaustion and loss of blood, Alice was a frightening sight. But when he remonstrated with her, Wulfhild was unrepentant.

  ‘If there’s no child and something happens to you, where am I? That’s what I want to know.’

  ‘Here where you’ve always been. You would always have the right to live at Fallowdene.’

  ‘Yes, as a pensioner, with a right to bed and food and a seat by the fire! Like that man of your father’s, Goscelin – remember him? – who got ill and couldn’t work but was looked after till he died. I made this place, my son. I’ve given my heart and my body for it. I want something better than that. Under the laws we had before the Normans came,’ said Wulfhild, ‘your land would revert to me for my lifetime if you died childless, but these Normans do as they please. Young de Warenne will treat Fallowdene as hers if he feels like it. Then it’ll go to her next husband and his kin. I’ll be here, oh yes, but what as? An old woman by the fire, that people talk across and push out of the way!’

  ‘It might go to Blanche and Sybil.’

  ‘And the land be divided, half to Withysham, and half to Sybil’s husband? To young Brian of Little Dene? No! said Wulfhild with passion. She banged her stick on the floor. ‘I want to see a child of you, my son.’

  ‘I’ll call Bruno and make a will in your favour,’ snapped Richard. ‘Will that content you? Fallowdene to you unless I have issue. And now, please, will you leave Alice alone? You’ve always put the manor where you ought to put God,’ he added. Wulfhild went away grumbling.

  He made the will. Calm descended once more. Wulfhild at least desisted from open unpleasantness. Alice was ill for many weeks and for a long time after that, because he was afraid of what another pregnancy might do to her, he did not venture to approach her. When the deprivation at last became too much for either of them, he remembered a piece of advice his mother had given him in her outspoken fashion, in the days before Alice came – in fact as soon as he reached an age to profit from it. For a further length of time, therefore, he defended them both from frustration and danger by withdrawing himself at the crucial moment.

  He did not expect that the Christmas feast of 1090 would overturn his good resolutions. It was a very modest affair.

  There had been another poor harvest and an outbreak of milk fever among the cows. They had lost three of their eight milch cows, just when the sales of Alice’s excellent cheese at the markets in Chichester and the nearer com-munity of Beechtrees was beginning to bring in a useful contribution to their finances.

  But if the manor was short of cheese, the bees still made honey and Wulfhild had been able to brew plenty of mead. There were ample supplies at the feast. It promoted sensuality. Unfortunately, it promoted woolly-mindedness, too.

  ‘I wasn’t quick enough,’ he said apologetically afterwards, his head against Alice’s breasts. ‘I’m sorry. I wasn’t quick enough.’

  ‘Don’t mind so much. It was only once. I don’t expect anything will happen,’ said Alice kindly, caressing his head. Alice was kind. The very first time he had walked into her father’s hall and seen her, he had known that. With Alice there was no mockery, no leading on, no eleventh-hour evasions. If he gave his heart to this girl, he had known instantly, she would treat it gently. He wished his mother did not dislike her so.

  Three weeks later, when it became clear that Alice’s optimism was misplaced, she was terrified. ‘Not for myself, Richard, don’t think that. But if it all goes wrong again, what will your mother say to me? I’m frightened of her.’

  The summons from de Warenne, calling Richard to arms because King Rufus and Duke Curthose had made a treaty in which each was the other’s heir, and Count Henry was going to war about it, could not have been more malevolently timed.

  Wulfhild, brushing Alice aside – ‘I’ll see to it, I’m used to it’ – took over the packing of Richard’s gear, conveying the task to her own room, where he found her methodically filling his leather sack, with the items still to be stowed laid out in a row along a bench: spare cloak, some shirts, cleaning things for armour and saddlery.

  ‘Alice should be doing that,’ he said sharply. ‘She’s upset because she’s not, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘Better she doesn’t lift and bend just now,’ said Wulfhild. Her shawled head bobbed up and down as she put away sandbox and oil pot. ‘I must leave Alice in your care,’ Richard said. ‘And it may be a long business. But if when I come home I hear that you’ve said one, just one, harsh word to her for any reason – even if she loses this baby too – I’ll tear up that will and bundle you on a pony and take you to Withysham to be boarded with the nuns and keep Sybil company.’

  ‘You can’t,’ said Wulfhild. ‘I’ve my rights, by law, even these days. You’ve said it yourself. I’ve a right to a place in this house.’

  ‘If there’s no other way to protect Alice, I’ll override your rights. Don’t go to law about them. The king sells his justice these days and you haven’t got the wherewithal. You’ve nothing to complain about. If I’m killed, Fallowdene’s yours and Alice goes home to her father, with her dowry.’

  ‘And that on its own’d make a tidy hole in our coffers!’ Wulfhild snapped.

  Richard looked at her. The intense blue of her eyes was fading now and the eyes themselves had sunk a little; one needed to look hard to read them. But now that he did, he saw misery there as well as anger.

  ‘Don’t talk of dying, my son,’ said Wulfhild. ‘You’re all the world to me, for all you’ve got so hard with your mother and your little sister since you married.’

  The money isn’t the point, he thought. Even Fallowdene’s only half the point. The rest of the point is me. She doesn’t want to share either Fallowdene or me with Alice.

  She would have to. ‘Take care of Alice,’ he said again, ‘or else. Remember this. Fallowdene won’t fall apart without you.’

  Wulfhild compressed her mouth and went back to her packing. Richard, shrugging, left the resthouse. It was a blessing that Sybil was out of the way, he decided. He had done right there. That was one weapon, at least, knocked out of his mother’s hand.

  PART III

  IN WHICH AN ARCHBISHOP UNSUCCESSFULLY ATTEMPTS TO START A FOREST FIRE

  1090-1094 AD

  One Private Crosses 1090-1

  Two Secret Terrors 1091

  Three Female Children 1091

  Four Admitted Fear 1091-3

  Five Chenna’s Tun Spring 1093

  Six Interview in a Rose Garden July 1093

  Seven Stormclouds and Nightingales 1093-4

  CHAPTER ONE

  Private Crosses 1090-1

  The monk who had answered Abbot Anselm’s jangling handbell had to flatten himself against the wall as the abbot’s departing guest strode out of his host’s office. The guest was a well-dressed young man with fiercely rowelled spurs on his boots, and a fiercely set expression on his face. He didn’t even see the cowled figure which effaced itself so hurriedly from his path.

  The monk, having let him go by, tapped at the door, receive
d the Deo Gratias, and went in. Anselm was sitting pensively at his desk. ‘Ah, Brother Bernhard. Did you see him?’

  ‘Benedicite, Father. The man who has just gone? Yes.’

  ‘You could hardly have missed him, I daresay. You may have noticed, Brother Bernhard, that it’s very difficult to be a Christian. One falls short often enough oneself and when it comes to preaching perfection to other men – how does one not sound patronising? Or hypocritical? I wanted to help that young man but the only advice I could possibly give him merely made him angry.’

  Brother Bernhard refrained from committing the sin of curiosity verbally and hoped the abbot wouldn’t see that he was committing it with his eyes. He looked at the desk top, as a precaution.

  Anselm however took pity on him. ‘He’s a devout youth, of a devout family. He and his sister recently made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. On the way, his sister was kidnapped. Her brother and the friends who were in the party found that she had been sold into slavery and man-aged to learn to whom – a Moorish noble in Spain. He refused to sell her back to them and her brother wants me to make representations to the Moorish authorities, or try to intercede with her buyer myself. He overestimates my influence, poor fellow. It really can’t be done. I tried to offer him comfort by pointing out that there are other aspects to these things. It has long been agreed within the church that Christians should not repine too much if they suffer enslavement for where better can a Christian soul cultivate humility? It is a way of taking up one’s cross. But he resented it.’

  Brother Bernhard wanted to say: ‘I’m not surprised!’ but restrained himself.

  ‘He said some harsh things,’ Anselm admitted. His face, worn thin by abstemiousness and continual sentry- duty against his own human faults, rarely showed colour but there were two crimson spots on it now. They were already fading, however. Anselm had convicted himself of clumsiness but not of giving bad advice. ‘But I didn’t call you in simply to break off an unpleasant interview. I have a letter to dictate. It’s to that English earl who has invited me to England.’ Bernhard at once went over to the writing desk, which was always in readiness. ‘The usual salutations,’ said Anselm.

  When the dictation was finished, Anselm glanced at his scribe, now putting the stopper back in his ink bottle, and rising, moved to the window. Beyond it were the hills which bordered this lonely Norman valley of Bee, far away from Normandy’s raucous and competitive heart in Rouen. ‘One of the disadvantages of knowing you all so well, my son, is that I can hear you thinking. Say it.’

  ‘My lord, I… we…’

  ‘We. You discuss such matters among yourselves, I know. You shouldn’t, but you do. You, plural, think…?

  ‘My lord, if this English earl wants your help so much in founding this monastery he speaks of, would it not be, well…?’

  ‘Courteous at the least to go?’ Anselm turned his back on the window. ‘Is that it? My son, there are plenty of prelates, even in England where the king seems determined to reduce their numbers, who can advise this ageing nobleman with the bloodthirsty past and the desire for repentance, on how to save his soul. He does not need me. One of the king’s friends, Robert FitzHamon, is at this moment planning to found a monastery too and has asked my advice, but found an exchange of letters sufficient. No. It is the English bishops who want me in England, for their own reasons. It is they who have urged this invitation. Listen to me, Brother Bernhard, and report what I say back to your brethren. The fact is that certain good but misguided people in England and, I fear, here in Bee, are campaigning to have me nominated as ... I find it difficult even to put this into words... as the new Archbishop of Canterbury.’ Colour reappeared in Anselm’s face. ‘It is improper even to admit that I know of the suggestion. But the time has come to stop these attempts to manoeuvre me into position, as it were. You know, Brother Bernhard – because you’ve taken the dictation – that I have written repeatedly to King Rufus telling him that it is his duty to appoint a new Archbishop. But you also know that I didn’t volunteer myself. I should be a disastrous choice. Archbishop of Canterbury? Archbishop of Catastrophe would be more accurate. It would be my duty to instruct the king in his moral obligations. I should shortly be even more unpopular with him than I was with that unhappy young man. King Rufus’ character being what it is, it wouldn’t be long, I feel sure, before he disliked me so much that I wouldn’t be able to function at all.

  ‘I could have worked with his father. Old King William committed many terrible deeds, but he knew they were terrible; he desired virtue even if he couldn’t attain it. But King Rufus, from all accounts, enjoys his sins. There is this about the practice of humility, Brother Bernhard. It is difficult but it can save you from still graver difficulties. It stops your eyes from ever getting bigger than your stomach.’

  When Brother Bernhard had gone, Anselm turned back to the window. It was summer and above the window arch was the busy flicker of wings as the house martins came and went from their nestholes under the monastery’s eaves. Across the valley were the dense green woods full of shy wild creatures, living lives that were hard and- dangerous but innocent, Anselm thought, untroubled by mankind’s dreadful privilege of the knowledge of good and evil. Untroubled by guilt.

  He hadn’t told Bernhard everything about the interview with the angry youth. He should not, he castigated himself now, no, really he should not have said to that poor boy, who would certainly never see his sister again, that she was to be envied in one respect, since she had seen the land where the feet of Christ had trodden.

  ‘Envied?’ the boy had said scornfully. ‘She’s beautiful. She’s trodden land herself by now. Trodden as in cock and hen and an infidel’s doing the treading. And please don’t offer me any more pious cant about taking up crosses,’ he added viciously. That was the point at which Anselm, shaking his head sadly, had rung for his scribe, whereupon the youth had spun round, with a swish of his cloak, and marched out.

  And the boy had been right. For who was Anselm to talk of crosses, who had never been asked to carry one? He had entered his monastery in the hope of following his lord to Calvary but where had he found himself instead? Here in this serene valley, this orderly house of prayer and study and the mind-cleansing singing of the Office. It offered all that he desired. Where, in all this, was his cross? Did he want to refuse Canterbury truly out of humility, or because for him it would be the end of his life in Bee?

  Watching the busy house martins, it seemed to him that their innocent domesticity and that of all creatures like them, birds, beasts or people, could only be defended by huge and secret sacrifices. Christ had shown the way and those who chose to follow Him must expect at His bidding to make their own.

  What if this unwanted honour were His bidding to His servant, Anselm?

  The first time that Ralph des Aix, lying in the darkness on his crackly straw pallet, saw a shaded taper move across the hall towards him and felt the furred, thickset body invade the privacy of his rugs, he was terrified.

  He lay with pounding heart, conscious of the heat of the human furnace beside him, and wondered why he had been so blind, so naive. He should have expected this. Now that it was too late, he thought that some part of him had expected it. But Rufus’ extraordinary court with its mix of hardheaded political giants and decorative hangers-on had both bemused and excited him. So too had the unlooked for favour of a king. His instincts had warned him but he hadn’t listened.

  Confusingly, he liked Rufus. Quite apart from the fact that of all men, a king was the one with the most land in his gift, Rufus was fun. De Warenne had been amiably dull. Helias was stimulating but he was pious, prone to preface remarks with phrases like: ‘With God’s help.’ On his first day as Rufus’ employee, Ralph had heard the king tell an abbot: ‘Leave God’s will out of it. Our will is the one that matters here.’ It was exhilarating.

  Rufus’ gruff whisper spoke in his ear. ‘Don’t be afraid. I mean you no harm.’ The very words, thought Ralph wildly, that he himsel
f had used when coaxing a nervous girl at La Fleche to leave her haymaking and let him repeat the delightful experience he had had for the first time just before he left home. Had he not been nearly paralysed between the dread of what was about to happen and the equal dread of what would happen instead if he sat up and shouted for help, he could have laughed. Then Rufus’ hand was on him. ‘Don’t be alarmed. Give me your hand. Ah. That’s nice. Is this nice too? Are these three moles that I can feel on your chest? They’re in a straight line, on a slant, like the belt of Orion. Oh my dear boy, you’re so finely made…’

  In the event, there was less to fear that he had thought. If he could once accustom himself to the sheer unnaturalness of it all, he could manage. Discomfort could be borne, caresses made a technical skill. He could learn to receive them in turn, to throw his head back, close his eyes and shudder with pretended delight. Could learn to shut out of his mind the fact that the enquiring hand belonged to a man. Could learn to whisper answers to the lovetalk.

  Could construct in his mind a barrier between the day and the night. Again and again, when morning came, he would look back on the events of the night with amazement and disbelief that the young man who figured in those amorous passages with King Rufus was himself. At the beginning, the amazement and disbelief were compounded by shame. On the very first morning, when they were all breaking their fast in the hall, Rufus having left him and gone to join his nobles, Ralph found himself scarcely able to meet the eyes of his fellows.

  De Warenne was still at the court then and with him, among his knights, was Richard. They had been glad to meet again when Richard came to de Warenne’s household for his annual knight service, and had formed the habit of talking together during the informal breakfast hour. At dinner, Richard, as a knight, was always higher up the table but in the morning, people ate standing up, wandered about and spoke to whom they would.