William Marshal Guardian of England- The Complete Series

by Richard Woodman

Just as FitzPeter rose to leave William, John de Earley arrived with news of the King’s landing. ‘You should go at once, my Lord,’ FitzPeter advised, ‘and join His Grace without delay, he will expect nothing less.’

  William gave orders for De Earley to prepare for his departure and went at once to Isabelle. He found her in the little solar, a charming chamber in the borrowed house, deep in conversation with her hand-maid, Susannah.

  ‘My Lady it is necessary that I briefly take my leave of you to meet the King. We shall meet again in London whither His Grace will go directly to be crowned at Westminster. John de Earley shall escort you thither…’ It was only then that he realised that he had interrupted them in some matter of importance. Isabelle’s eyes looked uncommonly bright, as if she had been weeping. ‘Is something amiss? Forgive me if I should have blundered into some private matter.’

  Isabelle smiled and stood. ‘My Lord…’ She ran her hands over her belly. ‘William…I am with child.’

  CHAPTER SEVEN: RICHARD, BY THE GRACE OF GOD 1189 - 1190

  Not for the first time William stood in the great abbey church of Westminster and was transported by the colour, majesty and music of his surroundings. Only once in his life before had he felt so secure and so content: the hour he had stood humbly within the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. But this was different because, whereas his experience in the Holy Land had been purely numinous, this was a commingling of the spiritual and the temporal. As he felt his spirits soar with the cadences of the choir, his eyes bedazzled by the splendour of the Archbishops coped and mitred in gold, and the vast number of nobles and their ladies in their coloured robes, he was, nevertheless, mindful of the warning of Geoffrey FitzPeter that he should not overreach himself.

  But that bright September morning it was difficult not to feel some sense of personal vindication at all this. Besides his private and quite unexpected joy in his wife and her unborn infant, he had been all-but a nobody for so long that to have been selected to carry the King’s sceptre before him into the Abbey was an honour beyond purchase. The sceptre betokened the power to rule and in being chosen to bear it before its recipient as rightful King was a prominent mark of Richard’s favour and William’s surrogacy in this regard; it marked him as among the few chosen as Justiciars. And as he waited in silence among the great men of the Kingdom for the Holy Moment of Richard’s Anointing by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, William caught the eye of his elder brother John, a man from whom he had been long estranged but who now bore the new King’s golden spurs in his capacity as the King’s official Marshal in England.

  The brothers had met for the first time in many years when greeting and joining the King at Winchester as he moved towards London after landing from his installation as Duke of Normandy at Rouen. The encounter had been cool; too many years lay between them and they had not parted as friends. Their father’s death had left property to John and his and William’s younger brothers, but William had been excluded from his father’s will. Nor had John made any provision of his own for his sibling.

  Moreover John, though now present at Richard’s coronation, had held no proper office under Henry Curtmantle and had all but rusticated in Wiltshire, except for a foray into France in the train of the enigmatic and difficult Count John who had made him his seneschal.

  As their eyes met, the brothers exchanged no mark of joy, merely recognition and then the moment was past as the ceremony proceeded and, amid the heightened pomp of Richard’s splendid Court, the investiture and crowning of the monarch culminated. Stripped to an under-shirt and breech-clout, his barrel of a breast bared, Richard was anointed with the sacramental chrism upon his head and chest by Archbishop Baldwin of Canterbury. Then, having robed the new monarch in cloth-of-gold, endowed him with sceptre and orb and finally crowned him, the two Archbishops drew back and, in a symbolic touching of Richard’s elbows, lifted him from his throne and presented him as God’s anointed to the assembled Lords of England.

  Richard rose, resplendent in his robes, his ceremonial sword and bejewelled belt about his waist, his orb and sceptre in his hands and his crown upon his head. With his father’s powerful physique and his mother’s height he assumed the dignity of Kingship and he seemed to William – as to most others witnessing this Holy Moment of transformation – to be enlarged by it.

  The abbey rang to the cries of ‘Vivat! Vivat!’ and then began the long process of the nobles each doing fealty to the new King. In his turn William went down upon his knees to kiss the King’s ring and pledge himself, body and soul, to Richard, by the Grace of God, King of England.

  ***

  In the closing four months of the year John and William were inexorably drawn together by the King’s will as he sought to construct a party within England whose power rested entirely upon himself. John was appointed Richard’s Chief Escheator in England, responsible for recovering for the King land grants to those men who died intestate and for which he was confirmed in perpetuity his own lordship of the Hundreds of Bedwyn in Wiltshire and Bosham in Sussex.

  Another member of the family was drawn into this faction, a younger brother, Henry FitzMarshal who, despite initial opposition from the Archbishop-elect of York, was made Dean of York Minster, the King’s will prevailing. Only by this means could Richard leave for the Holy Land in some expectation of his Kingdom remaining quiet during his absence. This was all the more important for there were serious signs of not just intrigue at Court, or rebellion amongst the barons in the shires, but deeper fractures in the social fabric of the realm. Even as they bore gifts to the new King on the day of his coronation, a large party of Jewish merchants were set upon by a large mob, stripped, and whipped through the streets. Nor was this incident isolated. In the months that followed, as Richard’s officials implemented his decree to raise money for the Third Crusade, to be exacted by the so-called ‘Saracen Tax,’ by some perverse popular logic Jewish communities throughout the land were subject to similar humiliations. There would be wholesale slaughter in York and Bury St Edmund’s and, in the following spring John Marshal would lose his office as Sheriff of Yorkshire following the murders in March 1190.

  But this sudden elevation of the Marshal family, widely regarded by the nobility as parvenus and by the intellectual power-brokers of the Church as men of doubtful worth and self-seeking ambition, began to attract enemies. Henry’s appointment as Dean of York had attracted the deep animosity of Geoffrey, Archbishop of York, while a greater enemy had been made of William de Longchamp, Bishop of Ely and the King’s Chancellor, a man much experienced in government and the making of the Law under Henry Curtmantle. It would be De Longchamp who led the Government of England Richard was in the process of establishing to rule England during his absence on crusade.

  The brothers were thus drawn inexorably together as Richard ordered his new Kingdom. While William was the more cautious and circumspect of the two older siblings, John was more triumphalist. When he was made Chief Escheator William growled at him that ‘it was a most appropriate office for a man who had cut his teeth upon dispossession.’

  ‘It was not my decision to cut you out of our father’s estate,’ responded John.

  ‘No,’ riposted William, a hard and bitter edge to his voice, ‘but you took scant notice of my fortune. It is not unknown for an heir to make provision for his brother.’

  ‘But you brought your exclusion upon yourself. It was not my duty to disobey my father’s intention…’

  ‘Or no doubt our mother’s,’ William cut in. ‘You are not so certain that I bear Satan’s mark now that you enjoy office under my patronage.’

  ‘Your patronage?’ retorted John angrily, ‘by the Rood, you set yourself too high! You needed no money from me, since Tancarville set you on the road to riches in the tournament, an indulgence forbidden here in England, and now you are all but an Earl in name with lands that exceed mine!’

  ‘Oh,’ scoffed William, ‘blame that on being Satan’s imp,’ he added with heavy sarcasm. ‘It wa
s not your money that I wanted, brother John, but my mother’s affection which I learned to live without. Do you take some advice from one who has seen something of life, do not crow when you are raised up. The smiles of Kings can prove fickle and when they die the world changes, the wolves who never cease to circle are eternally hungry. I warn you of this now, for your conduct, whatever it shall be, shall not bring me down in any ruin you achieve by your own folly.’

  ‘By God, William, must I remind you who is the elder…’

  ‘You do not have to do that. I shall allow you the privilege of precedence but never forget that wherever you tread you do so in my footsteps and take my good name with you.’

  Discomfitted, John sneered. ‘By the Christ, but you speak like a mealy-mouthed and canting priest.

  ‘Aye,’ nodded William, taking up a goblet of wine, ‘I learned the art in debate with King Stephen when I was what..? D’you remember? A hostage at five, six years of age? But what would you know of that, content at Marlborough or Hampstead Marshal, curled-up in the hearth among our father’s hounds? Eh?’

  Bereft of a reply and breathing hard John stared at William, his only reaction being a shake of the head.

  ‘Well,’ said William, passing a goblet of wine to his older brother. ‘The matter is past now. Our father tends the Devil’s grindstone in Hell and doubtless our sainted mother, God rest her soul, finds some employment in the many mansions of Heaven.’

  To William’s gratification, John’s mouth fell open at the extent of the impropriety and he crossed himself, half in fear of William and half in respect for his late parents.

  ‘May God forgive you,’ he breathed at last. ‘Perhaps our mother was right regarding your marking,’ he added, referring to the red naevus that disfigured William’s back and resembled - at least according to the Lady Sybil, their mother – the shape of Satan.

  ‘Perhaps she was,’ William responded lightly, ‘though Henry Curtmantle decreed it more closely resembled a lion rampant, an interpretation I favoured myself. The Lady Isabelle is of like opinion and whether she brings forth a boy or a girl I should not send either as hostage until they were of such an age as to understand why.’

  He made no mention of the canons of Cartmel and their instructions to say mass for the soul of their father. That was a matter between William and God, and no affair of his elder brother.

  ***

  The two siblings travelled in King Richard’s retinue when he left England for Vezelay in the early summer of 1190. To John’s discomfiture William rode at the head of his mesnie, with William Waleran, Geoffrey FitzRobert, John de Earley and Robert de Salignac at his side and some thirty knights in his train. Without bombast William thereby put John firmly in his subordinate place, realising William’s condescension in giving him precedence in the witnessing of several of the King’s charters as a mere matter of form.

  ‘You should be watchful of your brother, William,’ De Salignac said to him one evening during the march through Normandy towards Vezelay and their rendezvous with King Philippe Augustus of France. ‘Do not make an enemy of him. Remember the mischief wrought by Adam D’Yquebeuf.’

  William nodded. He recalled the consequences following the false accusations of that wretched man. ‘You are a true friend, Robert.’

  ‘It may be the last service that I can render you, William. I do not see our fortunes prospering in Outremer.’

  ‘Why so gloomy?’ William asked in some astonishment. ‘You have Richard at your head and Philippe’s knights at your back.’

  ‘I have an uneasy feeling…’ De Salignac said awkwardly.

  ‘Have you consulted a necromancer? I hear there are many such in the Cathar country.’

  De Salignac played the matter lightly, laughing off William’s ignorance. ‘I do not come from the Cathar country, William, but yes, I have consulted one whose advice I valued, though chiefly on my own account.’

  ‘Your estates, you mean?’

  ‘Well, my future, certainly, and yes, my lands such as they are, and they are inferior to yours now.’

  ‘And…?’

  ‘He saw a shadow over me.’ De Salignac crossed himself and William did likewise.

  ‘I shall pray for you, Robert,’ he said simply, ‘be assured of that.’

  ***

  During the march towards Vezelay William received a summons from Richard who ordered him to go ‘with your brother John, who has seen service in Count John’s retinue,’ and convey certain papers to the King’s brother. ‘This shall serve as a form of introduction,’ Richard had concluded. The diversion took a few days, for John lay at Rouen and while William had been in the Count’s presence before, they had never previously spoken.

  Ushered into John’s ante-chamber where several clerks attended him, they were kept waiting for an hour or two until joined by the Count, who gave precedence to his seneschal, making John Marshal welcome, before acknowledging William’s presence. William watched the exchange with interest. He had heard much about the youngest Angevin Prince, little of which redounded to John’s credit, and it had always surprised him that of all his sons John had been the apple of his father’s eye, endlessly forgiven for his infidelities, except for the last which had killed Henry Curtmantle. To be sure the young man enjoyed good looks, reminding William somewhat of his eldest brother, Henry, the so-called Young King who had predeceased their father and had been regarded by the credulous as possessing the looks of an angel. Count John lacked this, but he had his father’s stocky frame, and the red-gold hair of his house. However, there was something about John that William had not seen in either of his parents, or Richard, though he may have taken after his middle brother, Geoffrey of Brittany who was reputed to have been the cleverest of the three. There was a craftiness about him, William thought, a fox-like cunning that ran deeper than the evidence of changing sides and oath-breaking suggested. Richard had done enough of that, when it suited his perverse purposes and harried his father. Nor had Richard any reputation for chivalry, unless it be among equals; Richard would burn a city to its foundations should it stand in his way, and woe-betide such of its citizens as might escape, for Richard would indulge himself in rape and worse, before letting his soldiery loose on a terrified townsfolk. But if John did not seem to possess that uninhibited violence that could be cloaked under the excuse of military necessity, his was a face that softened about the mouth, hinting at sensuality, a grosser appetite and a capacity for intrigue.

  When at last he did address William it was to hold out his hand for the documents entrusted to him by Richard. Handing these to one of his clerks he looked from older to younger brother and revealed he knew a great deal more about them than either would have liked.

  ‘So, William FitzMarshal,’ he said, finally addressing William, ‘you were once like I once was, lacking land, were you not? Neither father nor brother made provision for you, eh’

  William could almost hear his brother wince at the jibe. Whether or not Count John meant a joke to ease the company, or whether his levity was a form of dissembling, William did not trouble himself to conjecture. He knew where his duty lay and times had moved on.

  ‘Happily, my Lord, I owe you fealty for my lands in Leinster for which I have yet to do you homage.’

  ‘You may do so now,’ said John lightly, ‘come.’

  And William knelt and placed his hands together between those of Count John of Anjou, long nick-named ‘Lack-land,’ but now Lord of Ireland.

  ‘There, William Fitzmarshal, you are a great man for the time being,’ John remarked ominously when William had sworn the oath and he had called for wine to mark the moment. ‘Perhaps our fortunes will rise together, eh? You go to England as my brother’s Justiciar, I understand?’

  ‘As a co-Justiciar, my Lord.’

  John chuckled. ‘Ah yes, as co-Justiciar.’ He paused, then looked William squarely in the eye and added: ‘mayhap we shall meet there.’

  Although mindful of Richard’s injunction that John
should remain in the Angevin heartlands, exercising only titular influence in England, William refused to be drawn.

  ‘Or in Leinster, my Lord. Much lies in God’s hands.’

  ‘Indeed,’ John remarked, taking a draught of his wine. ‘Or so the priests tell us.’

  ***

  If Richard’s coronation in Westminster Abbey had been a splendid occasion, a meeting of the temporal and the spiritual, the rendezvous at Vezelay was a glittering affair of purely martial magnificence. A forest of pennons and standards, coloured pavilions and tents, a riot of heraldic devices, men and horses in profusion: knights, mounted sergeants, men-at-arms, foot-soldiers, bowmen, armourers, smiths, farriers and sutlers, besides whores and camp-followers of every trick and persuasion. The air was thick with noise: shouted commands, the chink of harness and mail, the whinnies and neighing of horses, the barking of hounds, the cries of vendors, the hammer blows of the artisans, the whirr of grind-stones. It was full too of smoke which rose from bivouac fires, the camp-kitchens of the nobility, smithies; and of steamy smells, from cooking food to horse-dung, and the sharper odours of dog-shit and human excrement.

  William pitched his own pavilion close to King Richard’s and was among the Lionheart’s retinue as Richard and Philippe, their body-attendants clerks and barons, mingled in the great encampment wherein the two Kings gathered their war-hosts. This was intended to accompany them to the Holy Land. It was high summer and the feasting took place out of doors, the participants conducting themselves in high good humour at the prospect of the coming campaign. At a great Mass on mid-summer’s eve the entire company took the sacrament from a Papal Legate supported by a bevy of bishops, orders being passed for the entire army to begin the march south on the morrow.

  Shortly before dawn William was roused from his camp-bed by one of Richard’s knights. ‘My Lord, the King desires you attend him without delay.’

  William had been expecting some such summons for several days and was soon in the King’s pavilion where Richard was preparing to ride, dressed in a light hauberk and surtout, just as he had been in their encounter under the walls of Le Mans. William made his obeisance as Richard shook off his attendant pages, like a great shaggy dog shakes off water after crossing a river.