‘In the name of Jesu.’ De Salignac crossed himself.
‘I would not send you but that I need a man to trust and you know the lie of the land hereabouts.’
‘Of course, Will, of course. I will take a bite to eat and leave before sundown.’
‘My thanks.’
‘One thing, Will.’
‘What is that?’
‘A pass, a letter from you?’
William shook his head. ‘You know I have no hand in these things and it will take too long for me to fashion the words for a letter and dictate it to a clerk…’
‘I am able to write,’ De Salignac put in.
‘And you can speak with greater eloquence than I can dictate. No, go at once. Tell the Old King that his heir… God, not his heir for Henry a-bed is no heir to any earthly thing,’ William said as the political import of what he was now central-to impinged upon his mind. ‘Tell him his son is contrite and would make his peace with his father and his God.’
‘Very well.’ Both men crossed themselves.
Good as his word, less than an hour later Robert de Salignac rode north with Harry the Northman, two knights and six men-at-arms, a string of remounts on long reins trailing behind them.
*
He was back in four days and his countenance told William he had failed in his mission.
‘He will not come, William,’ De Salignac reported as he dropped from his hard-breathing horse and eased his aching muscles.
‘What? Why? In God’s name…’ expostulated William.
‘He sends a ring,’ De Saliganc adopted his sardonic tone and patted his midriff, ‘a ring of peace. He says he fears treachery as he was exposed to at Limoges. Without a letter of accreditation…’
‘Ahh. Then I am at fault.’ William cast his eyes down.
‘No, no, William,’ De Salignac put a hand on his friend’s arm. ‘You are not to blame. These leopards are continually at each other’s throats, not content until they have, one way or another, torn themselves to pieces. While Henry Curtmantle showed every sign of mortification short of ordering his horses saddled and his escort readied, the Duke Richard was silently drinking to his good fortune. They say he was already in close contact with the Count of Brittany.’ De Salignac shrugged. ‘No, you are not to blame.’
‘Come, you must attend me,’ William ordered De Salignac and the two men ascended the stairs.
The Young King now lay in his death chamber, the floor of which was bestrewed with ashes. The smell of incense partially masked that of the dysenteric discharge that flowed from the sick and dying man, leaching fluid and life out of his body so that he seemed to shrink by the hour. What remained of the Young King’s spirit now inhabited the frail shell of a man far older than Henry’s twenty-eight years so that, to William and others, the soubriquet ‘Young King’ seemed a cruel irony.
When William knelt again at the King’s bed-side, Henry turned his head and smiled wanly. He seemed to have revived somewhat and it pained William to be the bearer of bad tidings.
‘You have heard…from my father?’
‘Aye Your Grace, he sends this ring of peace…’ William laid the ring brought by De Salignac upon the King’s breast as watched as Henry’s hand fluttered from the crucifix to clasp it, like a sparrow wounded by a cat.
‘But he…does not come…himself.’ It was a statement, not a question.
‘No, Your Grace.’
And Henry emitted a long and foul sigh of resignation.
The following day, the 7th June 1183, Henry was tenderly lifted out of bed and, stripped of his night-shirt, laid upon the floor of his chamber in the presence of the Bishop of Cahors. He was naked but for a soiled loin-cloth. The Bishop placed his crucifix before Henry’s prostrate body as all his attendants left the room so that the King might make his confession in private. After this he received the Holy Sacrament at the Mass.
Early on the 11th William and the other senior nobles and knights were summoned while, barely audible but recorded by a clerk-in-Holy-Orders, Henry repeated his confession, publicly threw over his pretensions to the Duchy of Aquitaine and dictated his last Testamentary statement.
He wished to be laid to rest in the Norman cathedral at Rouen; he begged his father to show mercy to his mother, Queen Eleanor, to his Queen, Marguerite of France, and to those who stood loyally in his mesnie.
William was singled out and called again to the royal bedside. Again the fluttering hand beckoned him close. ‘Wilt do…some…last service for me?’ Henry’s hand edged towards William, who took it. It was dry and thin as a sheet of parchment.
‘Anything,’ he breathed, half choking with emotion.
‘Take…my cloak…lay it…take it…Holy Sepulchre…Jerusalem…pay…debts…to God.’
William nodded, his voice catching in his throat. ‘Aye, my Most Gracious Lord King.’ And he felt the slightest pressure on his fingers, as though the parchment was being rolled carefully about them. Then all fell slack.
William stood, shaking his head. The Bishop of Cahors came forward and absolved Henry from all his sins, administering Holy Unction as the attending priests chanted. It was clear to all that Henry was giving up the ghost and the priests took over. The bed clothes were removed, the King’s night-shirt cut away and a hair shirt laid over his emaciated body. A rope halter of penitence was placed round the King’s neck and by this crude means he was eased to the floor and laid out, stone blocks at his head and feet. William, the attendant knights and priests kneeled about him.
For a long moment no-one moved. The priests chanted the Rite and then the King’s head fell slightly to one side, the mouth dropped open half open and death rattled in his throat. Again there was a long wait until the corpse vented air, revealing the sordes within. The Bishop of Cahors rose and, stepping forward to bend over the corpse, motioned for the priests to stop the seven orifices to prevent the ingress of the Devil while he opened the single casement to permit the escape of the soul.
A gust of fresh air blew into the stifling chamber and three of the candles went out.
*
‘To Jerusalem…’
‘Aye.’
‘You will need company.’
‘I do not go to fight, Robert, I go on a pilgrimage.’
‘But you will need company,’ De Salignac insisted.
‘I am pressed to pay his debts. It will ruin me. I must go alone but for a servant or two for I can no longer support the mesnie. His charge is an end to all ambition…’
‘But you cannot go alone and I can support you with a small following. We shall go together, you and I and cast off the dust of this accursed Aquitaine…’
‘But it is your country, Robert…’
‘Ach, I have no deep roots here. Truth to tell I despise the place since its nobles quarrel so. There is no peace to be had and as for ambition… poof! The wine is good but I hear the wine of the Lebanon is as fine…’ De Salignac paused, chuckling.
‘What?’
‘I hear that already they are saying miracles are being attributed to him and we have yet to get his corpse to Rouen…’
It was true. They had marched slowly north, a cortege draped in purple and black, banners furled, through towns and villages where even the peasants, who had privately cursed the House of Anjou, came out to watch them pass. Henry the Young King had never ruled an acre and was by this sanctified as an ideal King; the King who never was and now never could be, called to God before his old father and ruthless brothers Richard and Geoffrey. His own misdeeds, his plunderings of their lands and abbeys was set aside, lepers and scrofulants asked to touch the bier; cripples cried for mercy and new limbs. At night a shaft of light was said to fall upon the coffin where it rested; others claimed it glowed from a Holy light within.
They continued towards Normandy and such was the scrimmage at Le Mans that the incumbent Bishop ordered the body interred in the cathedral, next to the Young Henry’s grandfather Geoffrey. The Bishop claimed the near-riots in
the streets were unseemly, blasphemous and disrespectful.
‘Ha!’ laughed De Salignac, ‘the old fox would have Le Mans a centre of pilgrimage for the benefit of his own Bishopric!’
It was at Le Mans that the Old King made his presence felt. He was said to have fallen into a paroxysm of grief and rage at the news of his heir’s death, and later to be infuriated by the mystical cult that had grown so swiftly around the corpse of the dead monarch.
‘He is jealous,’ remarked De Salignac wryly.
Hearing of the action of the Bishop and Chapter of Le Mans, he ordered his son’s body disinterred and the progress to Rouen resumed. Now was heard a great lament for the dead Henry, written by the troubadour Bertrand de Born, and at last, after a great Requiem Mass, the Young King was finally laid to rest.
It was at Rouen that William finally agreed that Robert de Salignac should accompany him to carry Henry’s cloak to the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem.
‘When will you leave?’
‘With the King’s permission I shall go first into England. There is some need to order my affairs with my brother John…’
‘You are not thinking of quitting the field and taking up Holy Orders, are you? I have marked the effect this death has had upon you. You could join the mesnie of Count Philippe, or, should you wish, the service of our Lord Henry the Second; Baldwin de Béthune, among others, has transferred his allegiance… this,’ De Salignac gestured, ‘this need not be an end to all ambition…’
‘It is a sacred charge, Robert. Do you go where you will and I will meet you where? Limoges? In September?’ William held out his hand as Robert nodded and grasped it.
‘Until then.’
‘Until then.’
*
‘So FitzMarshal, you are for the Holy Land.’ The Old King held out his hand and William knelt and kissed the King’s ring. ‘I am charged to…’
‘So I hear.’
‘And seek my Liege’s permission to venture there in the company of Robert de Salignac.’
Henry sat back and stroked his beard. It was grey and ‘Old’ suited him even more now. He motioned William to rise and gazed upon him. ‘You shall take the cross?’
William nodded. ‘Aye, My Lord.’
‘And are determined upon this path?’
‘Sire, I am bound in honour to your late son.’
Henry grunted and made a gesture and a small leather pouch was brought forward. Taking it, he threw it casually at William who instinctively caught it, causing Henry to smile. ‘You were ever good at catching money, FitzMarshal.’
‘You judge me too harshly, my Lord King.’
‘Do I indeed?’
‘That for your expenses since you travel in my son’s name.’
William sought some manifestation of grief at mention of the Young King, but Henry had put mourning behind him. Death had claimed a troublesome heir for whom, by his own lights, he had done everything, and his mantle must now fall upon Richard, a man of proven ruthlessness like his father. All that was clear to William, though he laid it aside for the moment; this was no time for such speculations.
‘My Liege is most gracious,’ he said.
‘And what shall you do when, and if, you return from your pilgrimage?’
William had given the matter little thought. The immediate preoccupations of paying off the Basque mercenaries which the Young Henry had employed and who had importuned William for money the instant they knew of the death of their pay-master, and then the troublesome journey escorting the corpse north, had left him little opportunity to consider much else. The discharge of his final obligation to the Young King was all that loomed beyond this moment and it weighed heavily; that and the darker shadows of mortality that the death of the Young Henry had cast over him.
The King moved in his seat as though impatient to be done. ‘You have two fine destriers, have you not?’ he asked matter-of-factly. ‘You will have no need of them as a pilgrim. You may leave them in my care. If either lives upon your return, you may claim your place upon its back in my mesnie. Now go.’
William felt no gratitude, made his obeisance and left. Outside he opened the purse and counted the gold. It was half what his destriers were worth. He bit his lip, stung by the King’s accusation of cupidity only to find he had been cheated. De Salignac would appreciate the irony, but it was typical of the shifting morals of the House of Anjou. He stood stock still in the warm sunshine, slightly bemused, reflecting upon the reality of the loss of his great war-horses. Their training had taken weeks and they exemplified the chivalric preoccupations of almost his entire adult life. But now his obligation to the Young King made him nothing greater than any other pilgrim and he thought of how, long ago he had been nothing when he had been in imminent peril of being thrown as a missile from a catapult. Somehow the worldly glories of the tournament, his feats of arms, his prowess, his money, even the ensanguined banner that he had had carried so proudly as a mark of his presence in the field as a knight banneret, had all been a sham.
It struck him that, had he been shot against the walls of his father’s castle at Newbury castle as a child, his life would have been better spent. He stirred himself and headed for the stables where his destriers were quartered. The service of Kings, he concluded, was a thing that yielded little. Honour perhaps, perchance a name, but soon forgotten; and after that, as he had seen at Martel, death to end all ambition – King or Commoner.
He remembered the prophetic words of the old Welshman FitzHubert of Guent at the coronation feast of the Young King; and Angharad ap Gwyn who had the second sight, loved him and knew the Old Ways. He recalled too Nicholas de Sarum, and King Stephen who had advised him to cleave to the crown. Aye, but which crown? Which crown? William shook his head at the confusion of it all. He remembered, with a sharp twinge of reproach, the precocious pride that had caused him to confront his father and throw a noose over the beam in the hall of Hamstead Marshal. And it had been an over-weening pride that had compelled him to seek justice before Henry Curtmantle so conspicuously during the great Christmas Court at Caen.
But he thought most of the little boy who – had King Stephen not vacillated – would have been shot from a mangonel to briefly join the birds of the air before dashing his brains out against the wooden palisade of Newbury castle. Aye, it would indeed have been better to have died as a child, innocent of any sin. Had he done so there would not be this giving-up of his mesnie and his war-horses, nor the looming of this long and hazardous journey to the Holy Land, undertaken at the behest of a fickle Prince who laid a death-bed burden upon him like a cross.
Perhaps he might find some peace in Jerusalem, far from the turbulence of the Old Angevin King and his devilish brood. Perhaps.
THE KING’S KNIGHT
BOOK TWO OF A TRILOGY BASED UPON THE LIFE OF
WILLIAM MARSHAL
Richard Woodman
Copyright © Richard Woodman 2018
Richard Woodman has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
First published in 2018 by Sharpe Books.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
AUTHOR’S NOTE
PROLOGUE: THE WESTERN MEDITERRANEAN 1185
PART ONE: HENRY CURTMANTLE 1186 - 1189
CHAPTER ONE: THE LOYAL KNIGHT 1186 - 1187
CHAPTER TWO: AUDITA TREMENDI 1187 - 1188
CHAPTER THREE: THE BROKEN LANCE 1188 - 1189
PART TWO: RICHARD COEUR DE LION 1189 - 1199
CHAPTER FOUR: THE STENCH OF DEATH 1189
CHAPTER FIVE: RICHARD, COEUR DE LION 1189
CHAPTER SIX: THE LADY OF STRIGUIL 1189
CHAPTER SEVEN: RICHARD, BY THE GRACE OF GOD 1189 - 1190
CHAPTER EIGHT: JUSTICIAR OF ENGLAND 1190 - 1194
CHAPTER NINE: THE KING’S MARSHAL 1194
CHAPTER TEN: WAR WITH PHILIPPE AUGUSTUS 1194 – 1199
PART THREE: JOHN LACKLAND 1199 - 1205
CHAPTER ELEVEN: THE
KING’S CLOAK 1199 - 1202
CHAPTER TWELVE: EARL OF PEMBROKE 1202
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: ARTHUR OF BRITTANY 1201 - 1203
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: PHILIPPE AUGUSTUS 1203 – 1204
CHAPTER FIFTEEN: DOWNFALL 1204 - 1205
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AUTHOR’S NOTE
Readers familiar with the first volume of this trilogy - and the long Author’s Note with which I prefaced it - will recall that I make no claims for the work being one of historical fact. As with The Knight Banneret, The King’s Knight, is an attempt to tell a story of one remarkable man who lived through an age of incredible instability. To this end the torrent of historical events, all of which interplay and interrelate, have of necessity to be pared down and while I have passed over much of the detail outside the immediate purview of William Marshal, I have followed the causal chain in the interest of seeking out the extraordinary life he led.
I hope historical purists will forgive me this presumption, but a novelist has no business writing history unless he is prepared to wear a different hat, in which case he will not write a novel. The purpose of a novel is to entertain not to educate, though a historical novel – if well-done – may spark an interest in its subject such that the reader is led on to make enquiries of her or his own. To achieve this must be the historical novelist’s highest aspiration – but that is a matter beyond my control.
However, almost everything he accomplishes in the pages that follow – even his advice to King John to abandon his hereditary lands in France – seems to be backed-up by the original sources. What I can say with a degree of confidence is that William Marshal, who lies buried somewhere in the Temple Church, just off the Strand in central London, continues to fascinate. Like another hero of mine, George Monck, Duke of Albemarle, (see my Sword of State trilogy), he rose from relative obscurity to become a King-maker and a great peer, yet his dynasty did not last. Unlike Monck, however, although embodied in statuary both in the Temple Church and in the Palace of Westminster (neither of which image is more than a representation), we know even less about William Marshal himself, or what really formed the basis of his reputation as ‘the Perfect Knight,’ a man held to be peerless by his contemporaries in an age where such plaudits did not rule out the use of casual brutality when it served. Like Monck, Marshal not only lived in a time of constantly shifting politics, but he could be ruthless; like Monck he turned his coat, and the question I set out to answer in this series was: why – despite all this - he nevertheless left an enduring reputation for loyalty.
William Marshal Guardian of England- The Complete Series Page 28