Stephen constantly complained the exercise was harsh, but their father gently reminded him of the cruel months their grandfather had endured in a filthy cell in the bowels of Caen Castle. “The whole point is we suffer a little.”
For several years they’d been able to visit the oubliette, but that section of the castle had been bricked up when Barr was about fifteen. The stench of the place was still in his nostrils whenever he thought of it.
December 23rd, 1170
Traditionally, the sisters organized a farewell meal on the second night of the Montbryces’ visit. The food was plain, probably no different from what was served in the refectory every day, but Barr suspected the rank and file nuns looked forward to a chance to entertain male visitors.
This year, the gathering was especially convivial, everyone’s hopes buoyed by news of Archbishop Becket’s return to England after he and the king reconciled in the summer. The optimism even prompted the abbesse to authorize opening the cask of apple brandy brought from Montbryce every year as a token of appreciation.
Even the unusually heavy snow hadn’t dampened spirits, though it had forced the Montbryces to postpone their return home. What had begun as a light dusting at the outset of their journey had turned into a blizzard. Barr wasn’t overly worried. A day’s delay wouldn’t prevent them celebrating Christmas Day at Montbryce. He had no children of his own, but loved to watch his nieces and nephews enjoy the merriment. His belly rumbled at the thought of the sumptuous Yuletide feast the cooks at Montbryce took great pride in serving.
Everyone was on the point of retiring to their respective cells when the novice assigned to the abbey gate hurried into the refectory. She bowed reverently. “Forgive me, ma mère, a messenger seeks entry.”
“Who can be sending me a message at this time of night and in such frigid weather?” the abbesse asked.
“He wishes to speak to the comte,” she replied.
The worried frown on his father’s face mirrored Barr’s disquiet. Messengers bearing glad tidings didn’t travel through blizzards and arrive in the dark. “I’ll go, Papa,” he said as he stood.
In the portico, he discovered the stern-faced, shivering messenger with water dripping off his hair was none other than Sir Damien Beauvilliers, castellan of Caen Castle. “Sir Damien,” he exclaimed, knowing in his gut such a high ranking official wouldn’t venture out even in fair weather to deliver a message unless it was extremely urgent.
“Dire tidings, milord Montbryce,” Beauvilliers said, confirming Barr’s fears. “We hoped you were still in Caen. Someone must take word to the king in Bures.”
“Word of what?” he asked, eyeing the leather-clad document the visitor held out.
“Archbishop Becket has returned to England.”
Barr raked an impatient hand through his hair. “His Majesty is aware of this.”
The castellan shook his head vehemently, sending water droplets flying. “Becket has excommunicated the Archbishop of York.”
Barr gritted his teeth. His family’s worst fear had come to fruition. He accepted the parchment in its protective red leather sleeve with a nod, bracing himself against the chill when Beauvilliers opened the outer door and bade him adieu. It was tempting to hurl the poisonous missive into the drifts, but it had been entrusted to him. Honor demanded he deliver it. He’d ridden the road south from Caen many times, but never in a blizzard. He didn’t look forward to the perilous ride, nor to telling his unpredictable king of Becket’s betrayal.
Meddlesome Priest
Christmas Day, 1170
A journey that could be accomplished in a day of hard riding turned into a two-day nightmare of slogging through drifts and losing his way too many times on a road Barr knew like the back of his hand.
He had no choice but to spend Christmas Eve at Montbryce; carrying on overnight in the current conditions was out of the question. He and his horse were exhausted.
His castle home seemed empty without the men of his family. His mother and sisters were dismayed by the news from England and the mission he’d been saddled with.
He set off again at dawn on Christmas morn, assuring his mother her husband was no doubt on his way back from Caen. He wished he was staying home to enjoy a hearty Yuletide feast and his warm, if lonely, bed. The snow that had eased overnight began again with a vengeance.
By the time he reached Bures Castle, his beloved roan had turned white. He was covered in snow from head to toe and frozen to the bone.
It took a good while to convince the guards on the gate to admit him. The Archbishop of York’s seal on the leather sleeve finally convinced them of the urgency of his errand. He was informed the festivities were just getting underway in the Great Hall.
Reluctantly, he left Trogen with an ostler in the stables who complained loudly about the number of steeds he had to house. Barr gave him more than enough coin to make sure his horse was well taken care of.
He stamped his boots at the door to the Keep and brushed off as much snow as he could with his frozen hands.
His belly churned when he entered the noisy hall and set eyes on Henry regaling his audience with a bawdy jest.
A hush fell as he approached the high table and fell to his knees, head bowed, the terrible message held to his heart.
Looking puzzled, Henry came down from the dais. “Montbryce! You look like a snowman. I scarcely recognized you.”
Barr held out the sleeve. “I have ridden from Caen, Sire.”
He held his breath when Henry tore the parchment from the leather and unfurled it.
It was mid-afternoon when Hollis surveyed the monumental mess her brother and his friends had left behind in the dining hall. They’d gorged their way through all the roast goose—greasy as it was—and drunk every last drop of wine in the house. All that remained was a goodly portion of the Figgy Pudding she’d taught the sullen cook to make, and a few boiled parsnips and carrots.
She cleared a space at the table for the boys and divided the leftovers between them. They ate the vegetables under protest, but she was pleased when they wolfed down the sweet.
Hugh had pecked a Christmas kiss on John and Arthur’s foreheads shortly before his friends’ arrival and pressed a long-cross penny into their palms, clearly having forgotten to procure gifts.
Hollis herself hadn’t merited even that small gesture of kinship. The children clutched the meager coins as if they were gold, bringing tears to her eyes.
The cook left as soon as the luncheon was served, so it fell to Hollis to prepare something for herself if she wasn’t to go to bed hungry.
With uncharacteristic magnanimity, Hugh had given the few servants the day off, leaving his sister to clean up. She’d been excluded from attending the king’s banquet, thanks to the responsibility of caring for her nephews since their mother’s untimely death.
The boys followed her into the kitchen where she found greasy pots, pans and platters strewn hither and yon. It was a sharp contrast to the spotlessly clean kitchens of Burgh Castle, her childhood home in Cumbria. “But Matty takes pride in her domain,” she muttered.
“Who’s Matty?” John asked.
She hunkered down in front of him and his brother, ashamed of the uncaring way her brother treated his two bright lads. She’d give anything for sons of her own. “Do you not remember Matty? The cook at Burgh?” she asked, wiping pudding from Arthur’s cheek.
The boy shook his head, and she acknowledged he was probably too young to remember.
“I do,” John declared, “but I thought her name was Cook.”
She smiled, enjoying the glimpse of humor in an otherwise bleak day.
“When will Papa be back from the banquet?” Arthur asked.
She was too tired and disheartened to curb her tongue. “When he tires of toadying to the king or Henry gets tired of him.”
“What does toading mean?” Arthur asked.
She was spared having to answer when John began leaping around the kitchen like a frog, chirpin
g ribbit, ribbit. Arthur immediately copied him, leaving Hollis free to set about finding something to eat.
The noisy merriment in the Great Hall of Bures Castle gradually ceased as the crowd celebrating the yuletide feast became aware their red-faced king was simmering like a volcano about to erupt. They cringed, wide-eyed with shock when his anger exploded.
“What miserable traitors have I nourished and brought up in my household,” Henry bellowed, “who let their Lord be treated with such shameful contempt by a low-born cleric?”
On his knees before his furious king, Barr struggled to keep his balance when Henry flung back the parchment he’d delivered. “Sire,” he murmured, hesitant to pick up the scroll that had bounced off his hauberk and now lay on the tiled floor like a coiled adder.
Henry’s outburst had stunned the assembly into silence. They clearly hadn’t anticipated the arrival of dire tidings on this day of feasting. They glared at Barr as if it was his fault their fun had been ruined.
The king paced, his eyes bulging even more than usual, the veins prominent on his thick neck. “I arranged for the Archbishop of York to crown my son as my successor because the prideful Archbishop of Canterbury refused to end his exile in France,” he shouted. “Now, feigning acquiescence to my conditions for his return to England, Becket has deigned to cross the Narrow Sea. And what is the first thing he does?” He snarled at the confused faces of his courtiers. “He excommunicates the Archbishop of York and every cleric who assisted with the coronation. Vindictive sod. Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?”
His outrage quickly spread to his audience. Becket’s decision to return to Canterbury had brought hope the long and bitter disagreement between the king and his one-time friend was ending. Barr wasn’t surprised the always-volatile king had flown into a rage upon receiving the news he’d brought.
Cries of I am your man, Highness, echoed to the rafters in response to the monarch’s rallying cry. When a king calls his subjects’ loyalty into question and accuses them of treason…
Fairly certain the pacing Henry had forgotten him, Barr picked up the missive with frozen fingers and stood, dismayed when a droplet of melting ice dripped from his hair.
Joining the Templars suddenly seemed a more attractive proposition than being tossed about in the cauldron of intrigue and dissent that characterized the Anglo-Norman realm of King Henry II.
He delivered the parchment into the hands of the scowling royal secretary, who eyed the water stains as if they were beetles. Satisfied he’d fulfilled his duty, he backed away into the crowd, eyes down. The king was in a mood to lop off heads and Barr wanted to keep his.
By now, all the knights in the hall were on their feet, shouting at the tops of their voices in an effort to assure the king of their willingness to put an end to this troublesome cleric’s meddling. Most of the women had fled, apparently resigned to the inevitable cancellation of the festivities in the hall that reeked of too many angry men.
Hasty Departures
As Christmas Day drew to a close, John and Arthur laughed gleefully when Hollis’ attempts to get the fire going in Hugh’s solar resulted in smoke billowing into the room. Coughing, she rubbed watery eyes and sat back on her haunches when the flue finally drew flames to life.
“I just wanted us to sit round the fire and tell Yuletide tales,” she explained hoarsely. “Like in Cumbria.”
Their reaction was unexpected. Both boys threw themselves to the carpet, rolling around with laughter.
“Your face is so dirty, Aunty Hollis,” John finally spluttered.
Feeling foolish, she blew a wayward strand of hair out of her eyes and smiled weakly. There was no point scolding them. Indeed, she was relieved to see them happy. They were good boys at heart, more like their mother than their father.
And thank goodness for small mercies, she muttered under her breath.
“All right,” she said. “Why don’t we all get cleaned up and ready for bed, then I’ll tell you some of the stories your grandfather told me when I was little.”
“Papa never tells us stories,” Arthur whined as she was pulling his nightshirt over his head in the cramped chamber she shared with her nephews. Hugh had dismissed as selfish her objections to the lack of privacy this caused, claiming it was the only house available in Bures.
She’d since discovered this wasn’t true. Rather, it was the only house he could afford.
“You must remember your father’s duties for the king fill much of his time,” she replied, biting back the bitter truth that Hugh wasn’t interested in his sons.
“What does he do for the king?” John asked.
“All kinds of things,” she replied, since there was no other answer to give. “Now, why don’t we get into bed and I’ll tell you tales from Cumbria?”
“I thought we were going to sit by the fire,” Arthur said.
“This is cozier,” she retorted, chivvying them into bed. The prospect of enjoying quiet time alone after they fell asleep was appealing. She could sit by the fire and soak in the warmth of the flames.
Dressed in nightgown and bed-robe, she perched on the end of the bed and recounted tales of Jesus, Mary and Joseph, of shepherds, of the Three Wise Men and the Star of Bethlehem.
The boys bombarded her with questions.
“Why was Jesus born in a stable?”
“What’s a Magi?”
“Were they kings like King Henry or wise men?”
Out of the mouths of babes.
“What’s franksense?”
“What’s a wise man?”
“Is Papa a wise man?”
“How did the shepherds know…?”
Her eyes were drooping whereas they seemed to have found their second wind.
She switched to stories of the Oak Men of Cumbria, of fairies and ghosts, relieved when they finally drifted into sleep.
Her eyes wandered to her own tiny bed, but the lure of the comforting flames was too strong. She kissed her nephews’ foreheads, then dragged her feet back to the solar, beyond disappointed to discover the fire had gone out.
Among the throng in Bures’ Great Hall, Barr espied his cousin’s twin sons. It was impossible to tell Bronson’s red-haired boys apart. Both beckoned him to their table. One of them, either William or Martin—he wasn’t sure which—stood on tiptoe and cupped a hand to Barr’s ear. “We made a place for you.”
At least, he thought that’s what the lad said, so he nodded, wondering what the bewildered-looking seventeen-year-olds thought of the king’s outburst. Raised in Northumbria, the FitzRam twins barely spoke a word of Norman-French, and it was well known Henry couldn’t speak English—the language of a country he ruled.
Grace and Bronson deemed it a good idea for their sons to serve as squires in Cumbria. Barr had his doubts and wished they’d been fostered at Montbryce instead of in Hugh de Moreville’s household, especially now Hugh had brought them to Normandie. His FitzRam cousins might trust the Lord of Westmorland, the so-called Forester of Cumbria, a fellow northerner, but Barr didn’t like the arrogant man.
He loved Normandie and would one day become Comte de Montbryce when his aging father passed on, but he was weary of the constant political upheavals. He had a sinking feeling it would only get worse when Henry’s rapacious sons turned their attentions to dividing up the kingdom. The recently crowned king-in-waiting was already showing signs of chafing at his father’s unwillingness to share power.
Barr remained on his feet like everyone else, occasionally thrusting his fist in the air lest anyone accuse him of a lack of enthusiasm for the king’s dangerous rage. He supposed he should take off his heavy cloak, but his body still felt chilled, despite the heat in the hall.
The hubbub subsided when the glowering king pulled on leather gloves. It was a sure signal he’d soon be off enjoying his all-consuming passion—the hunt. Barr wondered if Henry even knew it was snowing, or that it was Christmas Day. He pitied any wild animal that had ventured forth in the scant hour
of daylight that remained.
It was a relief he wouldn’t be expected to join the hunt; his extremities were just beginning to thaw. He blew on his fingertips, only now noticing, as everyone sat, that de Moreville wasn’t at the table with the FitzRam boys. He smiled inwardly at the prospect of the man being obliged to freeze his balls off trying to keep up with King Henry the Hunter who’d already stalked out of the hall. “Where is Lord Westmorland, William?” he asked.
“I’m Martin. He’s yonder, speaking with Richard le Breton and his friends.”
Disappointed, Barr looked to where Martin pointed. Hugh was indeed embroiled in an animated conversation with a knight Barr had seen on a couple of occasions.
He did, however, recognise Reginald FitzUrse and William de Tracy. “Agitated as usual,” he remarked, immediately wishing he’d been more circumspect. His relatives were, after all, being fostered by Hugh de Moreville.
The smile left Martin’s face as his master strode towards him.
“We’re leaving,” de Moreville announced, without so much as a glance at Barr.
“That’s a pity,” Barr replied, deciding to ignore the atrocious manners. “I was looking forward to spending time with my cousin’s boys.”
He lifted his chin, refusing to wilt under the resulting steely glare, though he suspected his nose was still red and his hair beaded with ice. He wondered for a brief moment if Hugh even remembered who he was.
“Montbryce!”
Dread knotted in Barr’s belly when De Moreville narrowed his eyes and stared at him. He had no wish to be party to whatever was in the man’s mind.
“I must heed my king’s rallying cry,” Hugh finally exclaimed before stalking off with the twins in tow.
Evidently, the Lord of Westmorland hadn’t deemed Barr worthy of inclusion in whatever plan was afoot.
Alarm bells sounded in his head when Richard le Breton and his two friends left the hall with equal haste.
Finale (The Montbryce Legacy Anniversary Edition Book 12) Page 3