King of the Wood
Page 28
CHAPTER SEVEN
Stormclouds and Nightingales 1093-4
The great storm came in from the west that October, exacting payment in a single night for all the pleasant summer weather. A wind came ahead of it, whipping up the treetops of Andred like a sea, tearing at thatch, bringing down fences, loosening the roots of a pine tree behind Withysham Abbey so that it leaned and threatened the church window.
Then came the rain, in sheets. The low-lying swampland near Gloucester was flooded in an hour. The Thames, rising, spread itself over the land east of London, swallowing field and cottage, destroying the lives of man and animal alike through drowning and exposure.
In Chenna’s Tun, the stream overflowed and washed two feet deep through the cottages. Only Ralph’s house, on slightly higher ground, stayed dry. He was visiting his holding at the time and called his folk under his roof for shelter till the floods went down.
In Fallowdene too the river overran its banks and swept away two cornstacks which had been placed there, handy for the watermill. Richard lay long awake the following night, talking to Alice.
‘We shall manage. I’ve stores laid by. But there won’t be any surplus. I spent the last of your dowry replacing the cattle when the milk fever came and my plants aren’t ready for the market yet. The yield’s too low. Thank God the ground they’re growing in isn’t too low! They’re safe, at least.’
‘Yes, they increase very slowly. Tch,’ said Alice. ‘My father would help if I asked. But…’
‘No need. When that ship I have a share in comes back, there’ll be something coming in. It’s a pity Hammerfoot’s dead. I might have got stud fees for him. But I’ll have three more saleable, trained young horses ready next spring.’ He did not add that his mother would resent help from Alice’s father but Alice heard the unsaid words, and sighed.
She had not been forgiven for sending Sybil back to Withysham. Richard had upheld the decision but this had only sent Wulfhild’s rage into more devious channels.
Alice dealt with their frequent and often petty domestic arguments by basing all her opinions on what was best for Fallowdene, or for Richard, but never on any preference of her own.
‘Would it matter if we gave so and so permission to marry away from the manor? The goodwill of such and such a neighbour is useful to Fallowdene.’
‘We ought to have cornflower garlands at the harvest feast. Richard likes the colour of them.’
At times she yearned to stand in the middle of the hall and announce that she wanted cornflower garlands ‘because I like them and who’s mistress here now, I’d like to know?’
But for Richard’s sake, she restrained herself. Life was not unpleasant in other respects. She was on good terms now with both Gunnor and Bebbe, who were both by this time married but still helped in the hall. Maud was thriving and Alice herself felt well most of the time because Richard had been careful not to tax her strength with another baby yet. Wulfhild, unaware that this was deliberate, complained at times about Alice’s failure to conceive, and then Alice dropped her eyes and said sadly: ‘No doubt it’s the will of God,’ and enjoyed a secret sense of power.
Secret. It was a pleasure best concealed from Wulfhild who was easier to live with if not provoked. ‘What else could we do?’ she said to Richard.
‘The year we married, my mother thought of cutting some timber. I wouldn’t agree, then. But I think now’s the time. We have some drying sheds. I’ll get them repaired and the trees down and into them before the winter. They can be sold off for shipbuilding later. There’s quite a bit of timber that could go. It’ll represent money in hand and we’ll be on the way to some nearly cleared land. My flowers will soon want more than the border of one field.’
He was glad he had ordered the trees to be cut, when two weeks later the news came that the storm had wrecked the ship in which he had shares. There would be no dividends from that last voyage, or ever again.
‘Oh, Richard, I’m so sorry! You were relying on that ship.’
‘Fallowdene will manage. It’s always possible to think of something, if one tries hard enough.’
‘And the crew were all lost. That’s dreadful too. If you had been aboard…’
‘Well, I wasn’t. I’m here. As you may be noticing.’
‘Oh, no, Richard, not now, I couldn’t, not just after hearing about the crew being drowned ... no, we oughtn’t…. Richard'! I said no! I’ll bite!’
‘Oh, would you?’ said Richard with interest and commenced a struggle for supremacy. Alice, half-seriously, fought and twisted and carried out her threat to bite. Hot wet skin slid on hot wet skin, fermenting, blurring the distinctions of the two bodies. Then it seemed to Richard that a great engulfing pit had opened and swallowed him; as if he had been trying to dig a well and had accidentally penetrated a volcano.
He had begun to love Alice because she was kind. But now he knew that he loved her because below the kindness there was this, this seething, molten potential, and he desired to melt in it and be thus mysteriously forged anew.
Wulfhild, getting up in the night as she was often forced to do as she grew older, heard them laughing and in the morning saw them come late from their chamber with expressions, despite yesterday’s bad news, of the most idiotic content.
Chagrined, she grumbled the whole day long at everything the other women did.
Soon after this, at Withysham, Sybil achieved the first signs of womanhood and certain hitherto formless longings and excitements began to take shape for her.
When the abbess decided that the tree which now threatened to break the church windows must be removed, and imported a young woodsman into the grounds to see to it, Sybil found him interesting. She was discovered sitting on the convent handcart (provided so that he could convert the doomed tree to firewood and take it to the woodpile), chin in hands, asking him artless questions about how he proposed to make the tree fall this way instead of that.
‘She’s doing no harm,’ said the young man soothingly to the scandalised Sister Ermengarde.
‘She should be at her lessons,’ retorted Sister Ermengarde, and dragged Sybil away.
To the abbess, she said that she hoped Sybil would soon be sent for to marry her betrothed. ‘She’s a responsibility. Not to mention a liability to the abbey.’
‘The child’s still only twelve,’ said Abbess Edgiva. ‘Her family – my family, let me remind you – wish her to be fifteen before the marriage takes place. I’ve no quarrel with that. It’s wise. We have three years to wait.’
‘And so has she,’ said Sister Ermengarde, with meaning.
‘My lords,’ said Anselm patiently, giving a nod of acknowledgement along the Council table to the Norman envoys, ‘I fully recognise that there is an agreement between my Lord King and the Duke of Normandy, under which the king owes his brother help against the insurgents of Maine and the depredations of Count Henry. I see all this very well. But…’
Rufus rolled his eyes upwards and shot a brace yourselves glance at the envoys. Particularly, Anselm noticed miserably, at the one called Walter Tirel. Tirel was French, not Norman, but he was among the envoys because he was one of Curthose’s friends, and had English connections. He had married the sister of Gilbert Clare of Tonbridge. He was a soberly-dressed, strongly-made man, level of voice and balding early. Such hair as he had was short and the effect of the round head and hard, gleaming scalp was a curiously virile contrast to the moderation of his speech and dress.
But virile or not, married or not, he had what Anselm now privately called propensities. A few months in Rufus’ court had taught him to recognise men with propensities instantly, as though they went round with brands on their foreheads. And Rufus, he saw wearily, had identified Tirel’s potential too.
But he must keep to the business in hand. He let the silence last a moment or two before delivering his punchline. 'But,' he said at length, ‘such an expedition must be financed. Where is the money to come from?’
‘Flambard?’ sa
id the king.
Flambard, back in favour nowadays, was seated close to the king. ‘The king’s honour is involved,’ he said, ‘and with it, the honour of his vassals. A tax is to be raised from all those holding land directly of the king.’
‘Who will recoup by dunning their own tenants for money,’ said Anselm sharply. ‘How much more taxation can this land bear? Look out of the window if you don’t know what I mean.’
No one accepted the invitation. They knew quite well what was outside. The Christmas Council was being held at Gloucester Abbey and the abbey now stood amid fields which had been first flooded and then frozen. Out there were sheets of ice which had been meadows, and woods where leafless trees were apparently rooted in opaque grey glass.
Even in the council chamber, the cold was savage. The fire made little impression on the stone walls and the high ceiling. The king and Flambard were swathed in great velvet cloaks and the Count of Meulan in a quilted blue affair edged with fur. FitzHamon had gone for fur all the way; his enormous robe was made of beaverskins and in it he resembled some vast, sleek forest denizen. Tirel seemed to be wearing a blanket. They could see each other’s breath.
‘My lord Archbishop is right.’ Abbot Serlo was simply wearing three woollen mantles, one on top of the other. ‘Whole square miles of Somerset are under ice and will still be waterlogged at the spring sowing time unless a miracle happens. The winter wheat was never planted at all. It’s worse in the east. People are starving now.’
‘I am willing,’ said Anselm, ‘to donate five hundred pounds’ weight of silver from my own coffers. If other clergy follow my example…’
‘Five hundred pounds?’ Flambard’s dark, alive face was full of mischief. ‘Your resources would bear two thousand with ease, my lord Archbishop. Why stop at five hundred?’
‘Careful, Flambard,’ said Rufus, ‘he’ll bargain with you. He looks innocent but he’s been an abbot and we never knew an abbot that wouldn’t make a good merchant.’
‘My resources would only bear two thousand with ease, my lord Flambard, if I had taken advantage of your recent revaluation of the hide. But I have been raising my Canterbury revenues at the old rate. I dislike sharp practice.’
‘Sharp practice? Come now, Archbishop,’ said Flambard easily. ‘The revaluation was overdue. The work was too hastily done in the Great Survey of 1086 and needed revision.’
‘The work was done quite adequately in 1086 and you did not revise it, Messire Flambard, you merely reduced the number of acres to a hide so that landowners found themselves with more hides than before. Then you taxed the hides at the same rate as before. I call that sharp practice.’
‘All right, we’ll settle for one thousand,’ said Flambard cheerfully. FitzHamon let out a snort of laughter and Meulan softly applauded. Anselm looked away.
He had failed. He hadn’t wanted to try in the first place but Canterbury had been forced on him, so he had tried to act as an archbishop should. But it meant laying claim to authority, even over Rufus and Rufus would not acknowledge any man’s authority. He would not even acknowledge God’s.
Edith would have been God’s best advocate but the king had run away from her and it was unlikely that he would ever be brought so near the point of marriage again. And in any case… Edith was in England again, poor child. Her father had died in an abortive invasion of the north last November and her mother, who had been ailing for a year, had simply given up on hearing the news, and died also. Strange, thought Anselm in parenthesis; Margaret had never wanted to marry Malcolm in the first place but his going had left her as stricken as though her world had ended. Scotland was now in turmoil as Malcolm’s brother and his sons from two marriages fought over the succession and Edith had been sent south for safety. She was at the moment staying on a manor be-longing to the Bishop of Salisbury. It wouldn’t do. She ought to go back to Romsey. It had been reported that she had become a nun at Romsey earlier, and in that case she should not be out in the world; nor was she eligible as a wife for Rufus. Rufus ought to marry but it would have to be someone else…
At the moment, it was the projected campaign which was under consideration. Anselm looked at Flambard. ‘I shall donate my five hundred pounds, which you apparently don’t want, to the relief of the poor. As God is my witness, there are plenty in need in these terrible days. Not one silver penny of mine will go to the Norman expedition. How you finance the campaign in Normandy, Messire, is now your business entirely.’
The amusement was at the expense of Rufus and Flambard this time, which was something. But the campaign would still be at the expense of the cold and hungry peasants, Anselm thought.
‘I see,’ said Rufus. ‘Well, Ralph, if that’s what you want. You’ve done your share in the field these last few years, and a good many of my vassals have offered me men for Normandy this time; we can manage with one man less. You can have home leave.’
‘Well ... I need it.’ There was the Candlemas meeting in the Wood, for one thing. And other, practical matters. He had set work in hand to deepen the river channel at the Tun, to prevent future flooding, for instance. He wanted to see that it had been properly done. The place must yield a good living next year. He had been faced with the levy on the king’s direct tenants and paid it from his own meagre savings, protecting the Tun as best he could because he was the King of their Wood and they had knelt at his feet and one could not accept such homage and give nothing.
But he had not thought it would be so hard to say to Rufus that he did not want to come to Normandy. There was an excitement, almost a wind, that one could smell and feel, about campaign preparations. He had the right to step aside but it was difficult. And besides…
The nights with Rufus had become hateful. They pushed as much as Chenna’s Tun pulled. But for Rufus himself he still felt that protective friendship. It was a muddle.
He had chosen to speak to the king while they were on a deer shoot. It was cold, with frost crisping the old leaves underfoot and rimed twigs silver against a white winter sky. Rufus seemed very concerned with flexing chilled fingers and adjusting his bow. He showed no anger but there was a withdrawal in him, as if his personality had retreated from the inside of his skin. He had fallen silent.
Ralph made himself break that silence. ‘Will I have a chance to… say goodbye before you go, sir?’
Better the worst of those nights than to part estranged. God’s love, he didn’t want to hurt Rufus or to lose his own place at court, either. But he needed, badly, to rest from the king’s demands and concentrate for a while on the Tun. The Tun needed him, too. He had earned the right not to go on this expedition. It was the truth.
Rufus was watching the other hunters in the line strung out along the edge of the wood, as Ralph and Croc had placed them, after going out early in the morning to search for deer slots. The hounds and beaters were in the thicket opposite; a deer could break at any moment. Fifty yards off, the envoy Walter Tirel, who would be travelling to Normandy with the king, was drawing his bow. ‘Tirel’s a remarkably fine archer,’ Rufus remarked. ‘As good as you are, Ralph. Say goodbye? You’ve already said it, haven’t you?’ He turned his head and his pale eyes regarded Ralph dispassionately, as if from a distance. ‘You’ve been drifting away from me for a long time. Ever since you went to your holding. I suppose a bit of land was all you wanted, all the time. In fact, I suspected it. I was afraid to give you too much. But even a place like the Tun seems to have been enough. Well, it’s your choice. I shan’t try to hold you. I’ll be very much occupied from now on. You want to get away to the Tun, don’t you? You may set out tomorrow. You have our leave.’
Ralph, panic jabbing through him, thought: I should have known.
He should have known that Rufus would take it hard. It was difficult to believe that it could happen like this be-tween one moment and the next, as if a boulder which looked fixed for ever should topple at a push. But it had. It was over. He was out.
Panic was suddenly replaced by rage.
He had nothing left now but dignity.
‘Thank you, my lord. I’ll be off in the morning, then. But I wish you every good fortune in Normandy. I will rejoin my duty in three months.’
‘Oh, take all the time you like,’ said Rufus.
‘Mother Abbess, the Bishop of Salisbury is here, in person. He’s brought Edith back!’
‘Edith?’
‘Of Scotland, Mother. King Malcolm’s daughter. I’ve asked them to wait in the guest chamber.’
‘I’ll come,’ said Christina.
In the plain but beautifully proportioned stone room, Edith and the bishop were taking refreshment, Edith without appetite. They stood up at Christina’s entrance. Edith had grown since last August but paradoxically, in her dark travelling mantle, she looked somehow smaller than Christina remembered her, and very slight. Her face was pale.
Since last August, she had lost both parents and one brother, seen her family at each other’s throats and her country torn by war. ‘My poor girl,’ said Christina, with genuine compassion, ‘welcome home.’
‘I thought, and my superior of Canterbury thought, she should return to you,’ said the bishop. ‘She has been living under my care but I am not related to her and she should properly be with kinsfolk. Also, I understand that she may be under vows as a nun. She herself says this is not so. But since a doubt exists, I feel, and Archbishop Anselm feels, that she should not be out in the world.’
Christina glanced at her niece, half-expecting an out-burst. But Edith only said: ‘It isn’t true. I have never been a nun and never will be,’ in a tired, flat voice as though she had repeated the words so often that they had ceased to have any meaning.