by H A CULLEY
Hugo sometimes envied his friend his brood. His own twin sons had long ago left home to become pages and were now squires. His reverie was interrupted by a shout from one of the huntsmen. The greyhounds had found their quarry and, their job done, they were called off and leashed. Now it was the turn of the two big aulants to chase the stag until it turned at bay. Hugo and Guillaume kicked their palfreys into a canter and followed the two dogs and the stag up onto the peat covered plateau that overlooked Edale and the valley in which it lay. Adelina followed more sedately after giving her merlin to the falconer. From up there they could see Castle Peverel, named after Guillaume whose fortress it was, on top of the steep sided hill above the village of Peak’s Cavern, another of Hugo’s manors. Not that they had time to admire the view. The peat bogs were treacherous in many places and the safest way of traversing the plateau was via the deep groughs: gravel bottomed channels cut into the peat by a myriad of little streams that criss-crossed the bleak terrain.
The problem was that the groughs could be quite deep and meandered somewhat, so it was difficult to choose those running in the right direction. Guided more by sound than sight, Hugo, Guillaume, Adelina and the huntsmen followed the excitedly barking dogs across the plateau. Suddenly they heard a pitiful wailing from one of the dogs. Either it had got itself trapped in a bare patch of the black morass and was slowly sinking into the peat bog or the stag had gored it. Hugo kicked his horse up one of the easier sloping exits from the grough he was in and emerged onto fairly firm ground, thanks to the heather growing in the peat and binding it together. He could see that, not only had one of the dogs sunk into a soft patch of peat, but so had the stag. It was up to its belly and futilely trying to gore the other aulant, which had the sense to stay out of harm’s way.
As the stag was trapped, there was no further sport to be had so one of the dog handlers leashed the dog which was still on firm ground whilst another lay down on the bog and began crawling towards the other aulant. A flat body exerted far less pressure per square inch than a man or animal standing and so he didn’t sink very far into the jelly-like mixture of decomposed wood and water. When he reached it, the dog tried to bite the handler in its panic and got a sharp rap on its muzzle to remind it of its place in the order of things. Once the huntsman had managed to get a rope around its body it didn’t take long to pull it out. It stood beside its mate, its filthy body still quivering in terror.
The stag was more of a problem. Even trapped, the points of its antlers were dangerous, so one of the huntsmen put a crossbow quarrel between its eyes. Then they secured a rope around the base of the antlers and pulled the carcase out to take back and hang in the castle’s pantry.
It had been a rather disappointing day. The only other game they had managed to kill were a couple of grouse brought down by Lady Adelina‘s merlin. Because it was early December, stocking the larder before the winter snows came was vital. As the hunting party made its way off the plateau and down into the valley below the sun began to sink behind the hills to the west and the already chilly wind became icy cold. They reached the small hall in Edale just as full dark descended and so Guillaume and his wife accepted Hugo’s invitation to stay the night as his guests before all three returned to the castle in the morning. Although Castle Peverel was Guillaume’s, he spent very little time there. He was Sheriff of both Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire and owned a hundred and forty manors scattered throughout the south east of England and the Midlands. This made Hugo, who was lord of only five manors, seem like a pauper, although in reality he was comparatively well off compared to most folk. Hugo had been the man who had actually built Castle Peverel for Guillaume and had been appointed its constable when it was completed, so it was his main home for most of the time.
That evening the three of them were joined for dinner by Hugo’s steward, Herbert FitzGilbert, the son of one of his boyhood friends. They had just started eating when the meal was interrupted by the arrival of a messenger; his mud-spattered clothes and face indicating that his mission was urgent. It was usual for messengers to rid themselves of the dirt from the road before presenting themselves.
‘My lords, my lady, please forgive the interruption but I have a message for you from the Archbishop of Canterbury, summoning you to the king’s coronation in Westminster Abbey.’
‘Coronation? What coronation? King William was crowned twenty one years ago!’
‘Not this King William, my lord. The news hasn’t reached you then? King William died in Rouen on the ninth of September of internal injuries caused when he was thrown from his horse during the siege of Mantes. In his will he left Normandy to his eldest son, Robert, and England to his third son, William Rufus.’
Hugo and Guillaume looked at each other in confusion. It was the Norman and French tradition for the eldest son to inherit. William had won the crown of England by right of conquest but, before that, Kings of England were elected by the Witan, the Anglo-Saxon council of nobles and senior churchmen, and it had been assumed by most that this tradition would be followed when the time came.
‘When is this coronation?’ Guillaume asked brusquely. He didn’t like the somewhat arrogant messenger and he liked the news he brought even less.
‘On the twenty sixth, my lord.’
‘Of October?’
‘No, my lord. This month; September.’
‘Good God, man, that’s only eight days from now!’
‘No doubt Rufus wants the throne of England to be a fait accompli before his brothers can interfere,’ Lady Adeline said dryly.
She was referring to Robert Curthose and Henry Beauclerc; the second son, Richard, had died in a hunting accident in the New Forest years before when he was only sixteen.
‘He has certainly moved quickly before the barons have had time to react,’ Guillaume muttered.
Then, conscious that the messenger was listening intently, he dismissed him so he could go and get cleaned up and have something to eat.
‘Well, I suppose William will make a better king than Robert, but that’s not saying much,’ he told Hugo after the messenger had left.
‘Um, I suppose so, but he’s volatile, flamboyant and reckless with little regard for either convention or the church.’
‘He’s a good soldier though,’ Guillaume pointed out. ‘Much better than his fool of an elder brother. I expect that Phillippe of France is rubbing his hands with glee. William the Bastard had enough trouble hanging onto his duchy; I doubt if Robert will prove a match for the Frenchman.’
‘What about the other son, Henry? Shouldn’t he be considered?’
Guillaume turned to his wife, who had asked the question, and frowned.
‘I don’t think so. He’s only nineteen and something of a scholar by all accounts. He has no land and no following amongst the barons. No, it’ll come down to a struggle between William and Robert. William has seized the initiative, but Robert would be the choice of many of the barons in England. William is too much of a boor and had offended too many people. I don’t suppose that his accession will be trouble free.’
It was to prove to be a prophetic observation.
-X-
Hugo’s son, Robert de Cuille, pulled his lanolin coated cloak closer around his neck as the unseasonal snow melted and trickled down his back inside his tunic and padded gambeson. Not unnaturally, Guillaume and his father, Hugo, had decided to travel to London together and had set out as soon as everything was ready for the journey the next morning. Adeline had elected to stay at the castle with Hugo’s mistress, Edith, who acted as the chatelaine. William Rufus had a reputation as a misogynist and ladies were not invited nor, knowing what was likely to happen at the feast after the service, did she want to go.
Robert had inherited his parents’ good looks and he was popular with the wenches. He had lost his virginity when he was thirteen and still a page. Nevertheless, he was surprisingly modest – most boys would have crowed about it and boasted to their fellows, but not Robert.
; He tried to think of other things to take his mind off the cold and damp which had chilled him to the bone. He tried to recall his mother, but he had been too young when she had died. However, he felt that he knew her well from the many times that his father had talked about her whilst he and his twin, Tristan, were growing up. When his mother, Rowena, had been thrown from her horse whilst out hawking fifteen years ago, his father had been grief stricken and he had never really got over her loss. She had been the love of his life and he couldn’t face marrying again. However, he needed someone to fulfil the role of chatelaine and look after the domestic side of running the castle. Someone also had to look after his two year old twin sons until they were old enough to be sent away as pages to another lord’s household.
At first Hugo had employed his steward’s wife in that role but the couple were elderly and, after seven years, they had retired to a smallholding Hugo had given them. Robert had fond memories of the woman but the two mischievous boys had run rings around her. Her leaving had coincided with the departure of Robert to serve as a page to Adeline de Lancaster at Nottingham Castle, Guillaume’s principal seat, and Tristan’s to Alnwick Castle in Northumberland to serve the wife of Yves de Vesci, the principal lord in the wilds of the English Borders with Scotland. Now he was Guillaume’s squire and his brother was Yves’s.
The replacement as Hugo’s steward had been Herbert, an eighteen year old clerk and the son of his old friend from his boyhood in Maine, Gilbert. Herbert was unmarried and so Hugo had looked around for someone else to appoint as chatelaine. Eventually his eye had lit upon Edith, the sixteen year old daughter of the bailiff of his manor of Hathersage at the far end of the Hope Valley from Edale. Hugo hadn’t been entirely celibate since Rowena’s death but none of his affairs had meant anything, other than satisfying his carnal cravings. Edith was different. He quickly became fond of her and they had shared a bed quite soon after she moved into the castle. He could never love her in the way that he’d loved Rowena, but nevertheless she had become an important part of his life.
Edith was fair haired, as Rowena had been, but her face was coarse whereas his wife had been extraordinarily pretty. However, it was her sweet nature coupled with her practical competency that had really attracted Hugo’s attention. Like his son Robert, he was serious by nature and had little time for those who were flippant and empty-headed, however pretty they might be.
He didn’t think of marriage with Edith; it would have been frowned on given the fact that he was a Norman noble and she was a Saxon peasant, even if she was the daughter of a bailiff. That was as far up the social ladder as Saxons could expect to climb unless they were very fortunate. It was true that Rowena had also been a Saxon, but she was the daughter of a thane – a minor noble – when they had met and fallen in love. Even if Edith had been acceptable socially, he wouldn’t have entertained the idea. He felt deep down that marrying anyone would somehow have been betraying Rowena and his love for her.
They might not have been legally man and wife but realistically Edith fulfilled the role in all but name. To Hugo’s disappointment, so far he hadn’t been able to make her pregnant. However, she was still young enough to conceive and he was virile for someone of his age. Life expectancy was in the mid-thirties for most people but life wasn’t nearly as hard for those who were nobly born. They were better fed and they weren’t subject to the incessant back-breaking work peasants had to endure just to survive. Knights and nobles could live twice as long as the average peasant but, against that, they were far more likely to die on the battlefield than in their beds.
For her part Edith was reasonably content. In an age when men were often brutish and regarded women as chattels or, at best, breeding machines, she was conscious that Hugo was different, as were his sons. In many little ways he showed that he cared for her and he treated her well. She sighed. She knew that she would always live in Rowena’s shadow. She tried not to resent this, but the fact that Hugo had never once considered marrying her, coupled with her failure to present him with children, sat heavily with her.
Robert thumped his frozen hands on his thighs to try and get some warmth back into them, but to no avail. It was therefore with more than a little relief that he saw the walls of the abbey where they would be spending the night appear out of the lightly falling snow.
Once he had got some warmth back into his frozen limbs and he had laid his and his master’s cloaks and other wet clothing in front of the fire in the guest dormitory to dry, he went in search of his father’s squire. He found Simon de Veaux unpacking his master’s clean clothes whilst being teased good-naturedly by the squires of some of Hugo’s household knights. Simon was a few months under fourteen and until the previous month he had been a page of Adeline of Lancaster’s. His father was the lord of one of Guillaume’s largest manors and had seen the placement of his son as squire to one of his lord’s closest friends as an honour. Being so new, he was the natural butt of his fellow squires’ humour. The hilarity stopped when Robert entered. As the oldest at eighteen and the son of their lord he was respected for his position; however, he was known to be fair and friendly, whilst maintaining an appropriate distance from his juniors and this earned him popularity as well as respect.
‘Are they ragging you, Simon? They should know better. Shame on you gentlemen!’ He grinned at them and they grinned back, albeit a little shamefacedly.
‘Are the baron’s clothes dry yet, Robert, can we spread our knights’ clothes out to dry?’
There was only the one fire and that did little to heat the large dormitory. The monks only allowed guests a modicum of logs and the squires were worried in case the fire went out before they got their turn. If their masters had to put on wet riding clothes on the morrow they would make their squires aware of their displeasure in no uncertain terms.
‘Why don’t you put them on benches behind ours? At least they’ll get some heat whilst the fire lasts. Simon, have you dried out Sir Hugo’s gear yet?’
‘No, the others told me I’d have to wait.’
He gave his fellow squires a disparaging look.
‘You know that Sir Hugo takes precedence after Lord Peverel, however junior his squire.’
He gave the boy an annoyed look; he really was going to have to assert himself more or he’d be looking for another knight to serve. His father was a tolerant man but he had exacting standards. Simon would be given time to get used to his new role, but not that long. However, Robert took pity on him and helped him to sort out his father’s wet clothing and put it in front of the flickering fire.
As was customary, the squires served their respective knights in the refectory immediately after the service of vespers in the abbey church. They ate the same food as the monks, namely bread, cheese, fish and eggs. Meat was scarce in winter unless, like Guillaume and Hugo, you had the right to hunt.
Simon knelt so that Hugo could take what he wanted from the serving platter and Robert did the same for Guillaume; then the two squires went and fetched a pitcher of wine each to fill their knight’s goblet. Once the knights had taken what they wanted the squires helped themselves to the remnants and sat at a table in the corner of the room to eat. The lay servants, who had served the monks, did the same. The cooks, pot boys, scullions and outside servants got what was left later, which often wasn’t much. However, the cooks always made sure that they tasted enough before the food was served so that they, at least, didn’t go hungry.
Robert lay down to sleep on his cloak, which was now reasonably dry, at the foot of Guillaume’s cot. The dormitory in the guest quarters was communal and the room was soon filled with the sound of snoring and the occasional fart. He shivered, despite the heat given off by all the bodies in the dormitory. Somehow the bare stone walls seemed to suck it from the room like a giant inhaling.
The following day dawned bright and cold. The muddy road, which had been forelock deep the previous day, had frozen hard and, with a covering of overnight snow, made the going easier except for the o
dd patch of slippery ice. The branches of the trees and the undergrowth had been painted white and everything was eerily quiet, except for the sound of the horses’ hooves and the odd snort. Both men and animals exhaled clearly visible breath until it was far enough from their noses to cool down to the frosty ambient temperature. If this was September, Hugo dreaded to think what this winter would be like.
The sun slowly thawed the snow and the surface became slushy as the day wore on. However, by the afternoon it had become a pleasant autumnal day and morale improved in consequence. The dry weather held until eventually they reached London. It had taken them a week to travel down from Derbyshire and they had only just made it in time as the coronation would take place the following day. Robert looked down in awe at the sprawling mass of the capital city laid out below him as they passed the grange at Hampstead, owned by the Abbey of Westminster. To the south he could see the mighty River Thames glistening in the sunshine, veiled somewhat by the thousands of houses belching out smoke on the north bank. On the far side of the mighty river lay the suburb of Southwark and a dozen or more villages.
The old Roman city had been abandoned and the Saxons had built a new one to the west of it. Now the two had been combined by the Normans. The dominant building in the east was the White Tower built by King William, now being called the Tower of London, and the great abbey church of St. Peter built by Edward the Confessor in the west. The Palace of Westminster, the king’s residence in London, lay next to the abbey, which surrounded the great church.
Soon they dropped down the slope and entered the gates of the city. Immediately Robert’s nose was assailed by a multitude of smells: the stench of rotting refuse, the stink of faeces and urine and the body odour of people who didn’t wash very often, mixed with the choking effect of the smoke given off by a plethora of hearths and the metallic whiff of animal blood emanating from the shambles as butchers offered their flyblown meat for sale.