William had sat-up half the previous night talking to Angharad, leaving Rolf only a few hours to take his own leave of the woman.
*
De Tancarville was Chamberlain of Normandy and his stronghold was a great castle of stone that commanded a bend of the Seine within the walls of which Guillaume’s household knights – his mesnie - lodged in great numbers and whose readiness for war was kept upon a permanent footing by their employment in sundry tournaments.
Man-hood came to William quickly at Tancarville and he was far better prepared for his new life than his father could ever have imagined. From Angharad he had learned patience and, after he had returned from Stephen’s entourage, the art not of insolence, but of holding his tongue. From her too he had learned that mysterious sense of self denied him by his parents. Nicholas de Sarum had taught him to love God, obey his commandments, and cleave loyally to the right. King Stephen, in whose train he had for so long occupied his ambivalent position, had sharpened his wits, given him a ready word but tempered it further with diplomatic reflection. Such skill had been necessary even then, for a hostage must needs watch himself in his isolation among the squires in whose company he spent most of his time. They had largely quietly shunned him, knowing he was the King’s favourite, jealous of him, but giving him no cause for complaint and including him in their exercises and using him as their servant, just he was the King’s. Being so young and coming from such parental indifference, William had slipped as easily into being King Stephen’s toy as accepting his odd position amid his fellows, but he had learned to be wary of entrapment and was, by default, a fair way to becoming a good judge of character.
Thus prepared and after making his initial obeisance to the Lord of Tancarville and receiving a warm welcome from Guillaume, he eased comfortably into life at Tancarville, as did Rolf, who had been charged with the lad’s care. For William it was not unlike being part of Stephen’s entourage, though much more congenial. Here, however, his growing body demanded more than a modest sustenance and he was quickly noted as much for his preternatural talents with his weapons as for his gargantuan appetite. ‘Gaste-viande!’ his peers called him, ‘Greedy-guts!’ And even the faithful Rolf was bound to agree with them. William developed a love of roast crane, a meat entirely new to him, circumstances that drew further mockery from the other lads, chief among them a young Norman named Adam d’Yquebeuf.
When he was not at table, exercising, cleaning weapons or attending one or other of the knights attached to the man all called ‘the Good Master,’ William slept as young men of his age do. But he did it prodigiously, growing by inches, they said, every week. His voice broke early and he learned to sing with a fine voice of which Angharad would have been proud, singing then being considered an accomplishment of a gentle-man. And if he failed to read Latin and missed Angharad’s Welsh legends, such intellectual diversions found ready substitutes in the epics of Roland and Oliver and their Twelve Peers. While the Welsh mists swirled round the Arthurian myths and he associated them with childhood, the sound of Roland’s horn blown at the moment of death in the Pass of Roncesvalles could still be heard in the echoing chambers of the mighty square stone dongeon of Tancarville and imbued him and his fellows with the singular nature of their military craft.
Here too there was a greater and more magnificent celebration of the Mass and the other Christian Mysteries than he had ever yet been exposed to, and they made a profound impression on William. That he had been close to an anointed King in his boyhood – for he now thought of himself as a man – seemed a great privilege which, far from inducing pride, engendered a profound, almost mystical sense of awe. He forgot that Stephen had often drunk more than was good for him, or that he too often vacillated, but he remembered something of the King standing apart from his nobles, all of whom seemed in retrospect ambitious and greedy men, just like his father.
But not even Stephen, King of England, in all his splendour could command a retinue as magnificent as Guillaume de Tancarville. Or so it seemed to William, who kept Stephen’s girding of himself a knight, a secret to nurture his soul. Yet this secret knowledge proved the foundation of his prowess in practice, his ability to sit his palfrey upright and to bear a brightly be-pennoned lance, all of which assured him a place riding as shield-bearer to one or other of the lesser knights in Guillaume’s mesnie, trailing amid the assorted squires as the Lord of Tancarville went out to tourney like a blazing comet.
*
Though William had witnessed a tournament in England it had been a poor show compared with the great events held in Northern France. Carried out over large tracts of where the lands of one magnate bordered his neighbour, tourneying was a tremendous enterprise involving the entire retinues of the contenders and many of their tenants and villeins. Besides the close agreements of the principals, news of the event was first broadcast by the heralds who rode about the countryside announcing the location of the encounter and the adjacent towns or villages which the challengers would make their head-quarters and take up their posts at the lists. Such advertisement drew every species of trader and opportunist, from those specialising in the martial arts to hawkers, vendors, money-lenders, pedlars, pick-pockets and common whores who swelled the populations of small towns for a few days of feasting and disorder until the famine of reaction set-in after the event.
Prior to such a tourney Tancarville was a hive of preparation and lads like William were to be found industriously preparing weapons, tending horses and their harness and running errands for their respective masters. A few were allowed to accompany the hiraults, or heralds, as horse-holders. On such an occasion William rode with one of Guillaume’s heralds whom he knew only as Gerard, a stunted and ill-favoured man of some thirty summers and few words who led the younger horseman in a wild dash across miles of countryside only to pull-up sharply and sit his horse for perhaps a quarter of an hour. At first William thought this was to give his mount time to get its breath until he realised Gerard was engaged in something else.
‘Here, hold him,’ Gerard commanded, slipping from the saddle some yards short of the summit of a low rise and walking forward with, William thought, a sort of furtiveness. William could not be sure, for Gerard’s gait was hampered by being a cripple, his left leg being shorter than its fellow and twisted it was said from birth. He was thus ill-suited to advancement, being easily bested on foot, though he defended himself manfully enough in the yard at Tancarville. But what Gerard lacked in stature and comeliness he more than made-up for as a horseman. It was said he could make a horse do anything and that he knew their language and could talk to them, healing them when they were sick or injured and cozening them in such a way that, had he not lived under the protection of my Lord of Tancarville and proved himself most useful, would have attracted the notice of the Church.
His mare snickered anxiously as her master hobbled with obvious difficulty up to the ridge, stooping so as not to break the skyline. William watched with a mixture of pity and interest. Gerard’s obvious caution was unnecessary, for they were not at war. Then the lad caught Gerard’s intention: he was teaching William some sort of lesson, a realisation that so focussed William’s attention so that he forgot his pity.
Having satisfied himself Gerard returned to the horses and William caught his eye. The inquisitiveness must have been obvious to Gerard who, in mounting and recovering his own reins from the youth asked: ‘You are wondering what it is I am doing, eh?’
‘Indeed sir.’
‘Can you not guess,’ Gerard said, kicking his horse into an uncharacteristic walk.
‘I cannot, sir, unless you were espying…’
‘Good. Good. I am seeking the lie of the land, William, learning it for our master and his mesnie so that full advantage may be taken of the countryside in the coming encounter. See,’ he said as they all too obviously crested the rise and began a descent which Gerard halted again soon after they had dropped below the skyline, ‘how this ridge falls away into a long and shallow co
untry of rolling hills.’ He swept his right hand across the vista before them. ‘You may see the woodland and mark the two villages from the rising smoke and, since it is a clear day, see the distant town. But see also the patch of green pasture being grazed and through it, like a line of a different green, the willows flanking a river. Look over there,’ he pointed, a steeper eminence crowned with some rocky outcrop. ‘Now, suppose upon the day of our encounter the weather is not so fine as it is today; say there is mist, or rain. Our Lord will have pledged his word that we shall be in the field, yet we shall not have the advantage of such a view…’
‘Unless of course you have made this reconnaissance,’ William broke in with comprehending enthusiasm.
‘Exactly my young friend. And where do you find our Lord’s heralds riding when we go a-tourneying?’
William was less certain of this answer and responded hesitantly, ‘close to his Lordship that you may acquaint him thereof?’
‘You learn quickly,’ Gerard replied with a grin and was about to dig his heels into his mare’s flank when William asked:
‘But Master Gerard, how do you recall it all?’
Gerard shrugged. ‘One does, through practice, though ’tis a skill…’ He kicked his horse into motion and, over his shoulder as William followed suit, shouted, ‘but one easily learnt’.
After another fierce ride, by which time they had reached dense woodland and slowed their progress, Gerard allowed William up alongside him and asked, ‘now, what lay to the right of that vista we surveyed from the ridge?’
‘A rocky outcrop,’ William responded promptly.
‘And if you had been confronted by a thick mist and had headed directly down from the ridge, instead of obliquely as we in fact did, what would you have encountered?’
‘A narrow river, sir, with trees – willows - running along it and which we should have come across suddenly after descending from open country?’
‘And could we have ridden hard over that open country?’
William thought for a moment. It was not terrain they had actually traversed and he sensed Gerard’s question was loaded. They had moved obliquely, following the track which had led them into the extensive woodland through which their horses now walked. ‘I think not,’ he said, making a leap of imagination, ‘the ground was likely spoiled by rabbit warrens and for fear of the horses stumbling one would have to proceed with some caution.’
Gerard said nothing, but smiled and kicked his horse on ahead, leaving William to trail behind a little. ‘Especially after rain,’ he called, urging his own horse to catch-up with the herald.
That evening, when they had found lodgings in the town which that afternoon had been a smudge on the horizon and had finished their evening meat, Gerard leaned back on the wooden back-board against the inn-wall and asked, ‘Now, before we sleep, tell me of the countryside through which we have ridden these last two days.’
‘Was I right about the broken ground?’ he asked first.
‘You were. But now I require the whole of our traverse.’
William stared at him for a moment, then called into his mind’s eye their departure from Tancarville and the ride up the northern bank of the Seine until they had branched off to the north-east. He began to describe it, as it unrolled before him, answering the occasional question with which Gerard interrupted him and concluding, somewhat sleepily, with the conclusion: ‘and so we rode into this place, the name of which I am quite ignorant.’
Gerard leaned forward and ruffled William’s hair. ‘You must learn the names of such places but you have done very well for tonight. Do you not forget what you have learned this day but before you go there is one other thing to consider, lest your cleverness overwhelms you with conceit and it is this: once you have mastered the lie of the land to be a truly accomplished knight, you must know the more difficult art of le coup d’oeil.’
‘And what is that, sir?’
‘A trickier matter which raises your knowledge of the countryside to an art,’ said Gerard, leaning forward, tapping the table with a crooked finger and speaking with greater intensity. He stared directly into William’s tired eyes and held his attention despite the youth’s weariness. ‘It is the means by which you lead your men to great success through that very tourney-ground so that you turn a flank of your enemy unseen and take him unawares, or see an ideal place for an ambush, or even a hidden spot from where you can observe his motions unseen yourself. By such cunning and stratagems can you win and hold hostages and from them, of course,’ Gerard concluded leaning backwards, ‘you redeem them with ransoms enriching to yourself and your master.’ He paused for a moment to see his words had sunk in and added: ‘Now get you to bed!’
*
Gerard’s lesson was well learned and everywhere he rode thereafter William laid down in his memory to the very best of his ability the lie of the land. When on tourney it was the last thing he thought about as he sought sleep and, during the winter months, after hours of exercise, he lay awaiting sleep, his mind ranging over the various landscapes across which they had roamed that summer past. That other, trickier matter – le coup d’oeil – he found more difficult until, unable to sleep one night for having partaken of excessive cheese at supper and with his gut twisting him so that he was obliged to rise and shit from the garde de robe, he realised that the knight banneret in whose service Lord Guillaume had enrolled him, a man of brutal strength and little wit called by his retinue Guilbert the Stupid but who possessed a grander name, had twice led them into ambushes from which they had only escaped by such hard fighting that several men had been injured and one, a poor squire, had afterwards died of his wounds. Since they fought with blunted weapons the poor man was unlucky but, as the squires murmured to each other, had Guilbert proved a proper knight he would have surrendered, as was expected of un gentilhomme, and paid his and all their ransoms. This, after all, was the point of the tournament, that the victor should make money and the vanquished, whilst resolving to fight and win another day, should willingly pay for his and his men’s liberty. By such means were both prowess and knightly conduct encouraged, a code of conduct sanctioned by His Holiness the Pope and blessed by the Holy Church.
In considering this simultaneously with easing the trouble in his bowels, William realised that Guilbert could easily have taken a different line of march. The comprehending thought made him aware that it was just this very aspect of their tourneying that Gerard had been encouraging in William, and that it was to be used all the time, in both defence and attack. And once that example had come to mind there were others; moments when in an excess of gallant zeal Guilbert had launched his small retinue at a well-placed enemy and been flung back for their pains; when they might have detached a part of their force, feinted to their front and allowed the detachment to move behind a low hill and catch their opponents in flank. Or when, in entering a thick wood, they had all been surprised when confronted by fallen trees and set-upon by the opposition. That Guilbert’s retinue generally survived by hard fighting, earning itself a reputation among my Lord of Tancarville’s mesnie for their endurance in the field – an attribute celebrated afterwards in copious quaffings of ale and wine - was one thing. But it often came at the cost of lost horses, bloodied bodies and broken bones. Whilst the last two were of little importance, the loss of an expensive horse was another matter. Unknown to William, after several remonstrations with Guilbert, Guillaume de Tancarville had refused to recompense him for his losses, giving Guilbert the alternative of doing so himself or leaving the mesnie and wandering, a knight errant. After three summers Guilbert was obliged to take the latter course but the young William Marshal had by this time long since imbibed the entirety of the lesson of Gerard the crippled herald.
CHAPTER FOUR: LE COUP D’OEIL 1160 - 1165
‘My Lord desires that you wait upon him, Greedy-guts,’ Guillaume de Tancarville’s cup-bearer said genially, arousing the curiosity of the squires who dined below the salt.
‘What
new favour have you plucked from my Lord’s arse, English William?’ sneered Adam d’Yquebeuf with far less cordiality. ‘Or has your big belly incurred my Lord’s displeasure. You must be eating him out of his treasure.’
They made way for William on the bench as he lifted first one and then the other long leg over the wooden bench, kicked aside a hound and followed his summoner up towards the dais. He ignored D’Yquebeuf’s jibe, having bested him that day in their exercises. William had been two years in De Tancarville’s service and left behind him a now familiar muttering that this surely meant some new favour being granted the fifteen-year-old English lad. It was put about that, possibly through reasons of witch-craft, the interloper had beguiled their Lordship and addled his wits to their own detriment. Most of them had seen the Devil’s mark upon his shoulder and some even went so far as to assert the existence of a tail, real enough, coiled within the compass of his breeches. William’s great appetite had already confirmed one growing prejudice the Norman French increasingly believed of their uncouth, greedy English cousins, so it seemed likely enough that he had this other attribute.
Despite this personal bitterness amongst his peers, an air of expectation filled the great hall of the castle for it was late April and on the following day the entire household was to ride out to tourney, opening the season with a long awaited meeting with the Henneyers. As William approached the high table De Tancarville was deep in conversation with an elderly knight, into whose retinue there had been rumours that William was about to be appointed. That he had become the apple of his distant cousin’s eye was all-too-obvious to the score or so of young men vying for advancement, but they would display more than the green-eye the following morning when they learned what Guillaume de Tancarville actually had in mind for his young relative.
William Marshal Guardian of England- The Complete Series Page 8