The Anarchy, page 26
Ida poured one, then another beaker of water for him and he gulped them down, nodding to her, gasping for breath, and leaning back against the pillows. His colour was still high, and his breathing was stressed and rapid. Grimbald, the surgeon, arrived before the return of the hunting party and went into the bedchamber to examine the king.
Ida sat outside waiting impatiently for the surgeon’s prognosis. Amelina had said, ‘An ague or fever at the fall of the leaf is always of long continuance or else is fatal.’ Ida was terribly afraid Amelina’s words might come true today. She latched on to another of Amelina’s sayings and tumbled it over and over in her head, hoping to ensure its truth through repetition: ‘while the urine is clear, let the physician beg’.
By the time the doctor emerged from the king’s chamber, the huntsmen had returned, and Ida had informed her brother of the doctor’s visit. The other lords of the king’s entourage, William de Warenne, Rotrou de Mortagne, Robert of Leicester, and his twin Waleran de Meulan, had also been informed. Grimbald’s expression was serious. ‘I am sorry to say the king’s situation is grave. Despite a great thirst, he is passing very little urine and his whole body is inflamed. I have seen such symptoms before, and they do not auger well.’
The men looked around at each other. ‘Should we send word to Thibaud and Stephen de Blois?’ Waleran asked. Waleran’s estates were principally in Normandy, and he belonged to Stephen’s faction at court rather than to Maud’s.
‘The king has sent for his son, Robert of Gloucester,’ Ida ventured to tell them. Waleran frowned at her as if she herself had thwarted his intentions.
The earl of Gloucester and the archbishop arrived the following day, together with Bishop Audoin of Evreux, who had always been a good friend of the king’s. The king’s condition had worsened overnight, and he grew less and less responsive. They waited for five more days in a state of decreasing hope of the king’s recovery. Robert told the assembled lords he had written to his sister Empress Maud in Angers to inform her that her father was gravely ill. As the days passed and the king’s condition worsened, no reply came from the empress. She was with child again and it was possible she was unable to travel, or perhaps it was the recent disagreements and petulance between herself and her father that kept her away.
On the sixth day of his illness, Ida sat wringing wet cloths in a bowl and applied them to the king’s forehead. She tipped small quantities of water at his mouth as she had been instructed by the doctors. The king’s breathing was laboured, and he was often confused and wandering in his speech with occasional bursts of his old lucidity that made Ida’s heart ache. Ida had told Haith about the king’s words concerning Nest, but there had been no good opportunity to discuss them with him. The king beckoned to Robert, who knelt at the bedside, his face close to his father’s. ‘Take 60,000 pounds of silver from the treasury at Falaise to pay the wages of my household and soldiers.’
‘Father!’ Robert remonstrated, tears on his cheeks.
‘I’m going, no use denying it,’ the king mumbled. There were long pauses between each phrase as he struggled to find the breath and energy for words. ‘Call them all, the barons here. I want to talk to them.’ Robert rose and soon the barons shuffled in behind him and circled the bed. Henry waited for them all to be still, to train their eyes on his face and to prick their ears to reach for his strained, hoarse whisper. Even near death, he could command the room. ‘When my father died,’ Henry said, ‘that great king, his body was abandoned and maltreated. I will have you swear you will not abandon me at my death but will carry me to Reading Abbey in England for burial, which is my wish.’
‘Sire, you will recover,’ pleaded Rotrou.
‘Swear it,’ Henry insisted. And each one of them did so swear. The king closed his eyes, exhausted.
Ida watched Robert look around at the ring of faces. ‘You have to ask him, Robert,’ Waleran whispered.
Robert took his father’s hand, so suddenly white and frail. ‘Father,’ he asked gently, ‘won’t you name your successor to us?’
Henry opened angry black eyes upon them all again. ‘You have made your oaths to her.’ He subsided back into the pillows.
‘Which oath does he mean?’ hissed Waleran to his twin. ‘The oath concerning staying with his body?’
Robert frowned. Waleran and everyone there had heard Henry’s words as he had. He meant the oath to his daughter, to the Empress Maud. But Robert’s father was dying, and Ida saw he could not, at this moment, in his great grief, argue over the king’s still breathing body.
IV
1135–1139
‘The whole aspect of England presented a scene of calamity and sorrow, misery and oppression…. These unhappy spectacles, these lamentable tragedies, were common throughout England…. The kingdom, which was once the abode of joy, tranquillity and peace, was everywhere changed into a seat of war and slaughter, devastation and woe.’
33
High Tide
Ida and Haith travelled through stormy weather with King Henry’s funeral entourage to Rouen and then on to the abbey at Le Bec Hellouin. The king had wanted to be buried at Reading Abbey, but December was the worst time of year to attempt a crossing of the British Sea. They could not pause in Rouen since the repairs to the cathedral after the lightning strike were still going on, and the place was full of masons and stone dust. Henry’s body was laid out in Le Bec Hellouin Abbey instead, where hundreds of candles lit the dead king’s temporary resting place.
Haith had been down at the harbour to assess the weather and water and found no change. He entered the abbey library, where he knew he would find Ida, stamped his frozen feet and shook the rain from his cloak and hat.
‘How do things look?’ asked Ida.
Haith gestured at the window where his sister could see the boughs of the nearby trees being battered by the storm. ‘Not sailing weather for some time yet. The ships’ captains all say we could be waiting for weeks. A council has been called in Neubourg to discuss the succession, so I will travel there tomorrow with Robert. Will you stay here?’
‘Yes. I will stay with Henry.’
* * *
While Haith was at the barons’ council in Neubourg, Ida and the funeral entourage moved on to Caen and were still waiting there for sailing weather. Haith rode into Caen feeling as glum as the wet, grey weather. He went first to Saint Etienne Abbey, where Henry was laid out in an open coffin beneath huge candelabrums suspended from chains and surrounded by monks chanting sonorously. Haith still could not believe that Henry was actually dead. He looked at the altar, desperate to find another lighting place for his eyes than the grim view of Henry, his skin pale greenish, his forcefulness emptied out from the corpse. The sleek, silver curves of two small cruets on the altar held the water and wine. ‘A’ was incised in the lid of one for aqua and ‘V’ on the other, for vinum. A nauseated-looking monk flapped a fine flabellum to keep the flies away from the body. The fan had a carved ivory handle and a decorated parchment fan. All around them, colourful saints painted on the walls looked down in pity. Haith could no longer resist the urge and raised a hand to pinch his nose and cover his mouth. He was forced to step back from the palpable stench of the coffin. Haith took one last glance at Henry and had to leave, his eyes watering with grief and dismay.
In the cloister, on his way to find Ida, Haith encountered another of the monks. ‘With our loss of the good duke, Normandy is become a forest of wild beasts, a brood of vipers, of ravening wolves!’ the monk declared, distress writ across his pale, round face.
Haith bleakly nodded his assent to the assessment, feeling aggrieved on Henry’s behalf at the chaos. King Henry, his friend Henry, had deserved so much better from his nobles than the treachery he had found at every turn. The barons’ council had achieved little to calm the situation in Normandy, and now there was the news from England.
Ida was sitting waiting for him in his chamber and rose swiftly at his entry. ‘What’s happened, Haith? There are crazed rumours flying that Stephen de Blois has taken the English throne.’
‘It’s true,’ he said bluntly.
‘How could this have happened?’
‘The assembly at Neubourg offered the duchy and the English crown to Stephen’s older brother, Count Thibaud, but the following day news arrived from England of Stephen’s imminent coronation and Thibaud acquiesced and withdrew from both.’
‘He did not wish to retain Normandy, at least? He acquiesced easily?’
‘The barons did not want their lands torn between two masters and Stephen sent a substantial financial compensation for Thibaud, who has no stomach for war with his brother.’
‘But what of the Norman barons’ oath to Empress Maud? How could this move to crown Stephen be accomplished so swiftly?’
‘Stephen had news of Henry’s death and was in Boulogne.’
Haith and Ida exchanged a meaningful look and Ida could not resist voicing their mutual thought. ‘He had the news from Waleran?’
Haith nodded. ‘Stephen was able to sail immediately for England despite the storms. He was refused entry at Dover by Robert of Gloucester’s men but managed a landing further down coast.’
‘What then?’
‘Stephen reached his own estates in London and gained the support of the Londoners as the new king.’
‘I suppose he is well known in London and England.’
‘Yes, and Thibaud is not, has rarely set foot there. And many men made their oaths to Henry for Maud but never truly wanted a woman on the throne.’
‘Even Bishop Roger, who was regent and held the keys to the royal treasury?’
‘Especially him. He and the empress were never allies. Quite the opposite. I suppose Roger hopes Stephen will give him preferment, where it is likely that Maud would not have done so. Stephen went from London to Winchester and his brother, Bishop Henry, of course, supported him. Hugh Bigod swore Henry had changed his mind about Maud on his deathbed and Bishop Roger handed over the treasury keys to Stephen.’
‘But Henry did not change his mind on his deathbed!’ gasped Ida.
‘No,’ Haith said. ‘Yet Stephen was consecrated and crowned at Westminster the day after Christmas. He is king now.’ He smiled wryly. ‘At least Henry would have been impressed by such swift, decisive manoeuvring.’ Henry would have done this, thought this, was a constant refrain between Haith and his sister. It was so hard to go forward in consciousness of the hole in the entire fabric of the life around them left by Henry’s absence, by his absolute goneness. Everything felt unmoored.
‘I spent some time in Stephen’s company when he was a young man,’ Ida said. ‘I do not see him as good king material.’
Haith shook his head, agreeing.
‘But what of the empress and the count d’Anjou? What of Henry’s grandson? Will the count mount an assault on England to take his wife’s crown back from her cousin?’
Haith shook his head again. ‘The empress is ill and with child, and Geoffrey will not commit Angevin forces and resources to the attempt. Earl Robert is assessing if he can assemble the money and men another way, but I am not too hopeful of his success. I suspect his concerns will soon turn to his estates in England and Wales and he may have to make his peace with King Stephen.’
‘King Stephen,’ echoed Ida in disbelief.
A few days later, the storms abated, and the monks sewed Henry’s body into an ox-hide in preparation for his last journey across the British Sea.
34
Food for Wolves
I sat in the cold hall at Cardigan Castle, my breath clouding white around my face, listening to Breri practising his songs for the evening.
Month of January – smoky is the vale;
Weary the wine-bearer; strolling the minstrel;
Lean the cow; seldom the hum of the bee;
Empty the milk fold; void of meat the kiln;
Slender the horse; very silent the bird;
Long to the early dawn; short the afternoon.
The new year dawned grim for me at Cardigan where Richard de Clare compelled me to live again with my husband, Stephen de Marais, because he suspected I was aiding the Welsh rebels. And the cold new tide of 1136 brought with it news of the death of the king in Normandy. Despite everything, I had loved Henry. In a different way to Haith and to Gerald. Henry was not a good man as they were, but he was a great one. Brief and, afterwards, bitter as our affair had been, it had resonated through my whole life.
Breri looked up at me and took a sip of wine. He set his wine down again and returned to retuning his instrument. His well-fleshed fingers looked too big to pick out such delicate notes from the lute.
I heard a crane that cried out on a pond
far from dwelling places.
That which may not be listened to fell silent.
‘Your song is exquisite,’ I told Breri, wondering how beauty and brutality could be so combined in one man. I wanted to tell him he would do better to stick to song and stay out of the vicious politics around us, but perhaps murder and treachery were at least as, or more, part of who he was as the beautiful melody of his poetry.
My son Maurice visited at Cardigan each week and brought news of the goings on at Llansteffan. Through Maurice, I heard of Henry’s body waiting for a month in Caen to cross the British Sea and then progressing to Reading Abbey. And we heard Stephen de Blois had taken the throne. ‘Better that than the empress,’ Maurice said.
‘Why do you say so?’
‘A king must needs be a warrior.’
‘And you do not think a woman can be a warrior?’ I thought of everything I had fought through since my father had been slain.
Maurice smiled and shook his head.
* * *
I sat over my needlework, sighing. My husband had instructed I must keep to my chambers and the hall and, with the exception of Maurice’s occasional visits and news, I was bored with inaction and confinement.
‘Any news from Westminster?’ Amelina asked anxiously for the umpteenth time.
I shook my head. ‘Nothing yet.’ Amelina picked up a pile of linens to take downstairs. Richard de Clare had gone to Westminster to speak with King Stephen. He had a signed confession from one of the men belonging to my brother, who had been captured and tortured. The confession asserted I was involved in the gold-mining operation at Dolaucothi on behalf of my brother and had committed treason against the crown. I told de Clare the confession was false witness, but he did not believe me. He would be in Westminster now, showing the confession to the new king, discussing what to do with me and my brother. With Henry gone, I had no protection. Before de Clare went to court, his men had taken me under armed escort from Llansteffan to Cardigan, where de Clare handed me over to the custody of my husband. When we arrived in the hall at Cardigan, I was miserable to see my youngest son, FitzStephen, sitting among his friends, staring at me. I regretted that he, that any of my sons, must witness my disgrace. But, I reminded myself, lifting my chin, I was a princess of royal blood fighting for the rights of my disinherited brother, King Gruffudd. With Henry gone, any ambiguity I had felt on naming Gruffudd king in my own mind was evaporated.
As we entered, de Marais stood and looked me up and down. My hands had been tied by the soldiers with a leather strap, and I had no choice but to hold them before me. ‘Lady Nest is accused of acts of treason,’ de Clare stated in a loud voice and the hubbub of chatter and clattering around the hall stilled and silenced. I tried to look reassurance in the direction of my son’s white face. ‘De Marais, you will take charge of her while I travel to court and speak on the matter with the king.’
De Marais looked appalled. ‘But I have no wish to take her up again as wife,’ he exclaimed.
‘I’m not asking you to bed the woman,’ de Clare retorted, ‘just to keep her in custody until I return with the king’s decision on her punishment.’
‘Ah, that I can do,’ de Marais declared. Despite being kept in close confinement at Cardigan, I knew my older sons, Henry and William, were working on my behalf with their lawyers, and that was my only hope. I was glad, at least, to have the company of FitzStephen.
I looked up from the needlework in my lap and smiled at Maurice’s arrival on the threshold. He stepped aside to allow Amelina to pass on her way out, her arms full of linens. ‘Mother! Are you well today?’ He came forward into the room.
I smiled and lied, and he took a seat beside me. We had not been talking long when we heard Amelina’s steps as she ran back up the stairs. It was rare these days for her to engage in such a burst of action and I swallowed at the thought of what might have occasioned it. Was it the news come at last from Westminster? Might I suffer now a much worse incarceration as a consequence of my treason, or might this usurper king have ordered my execution? Amelina burst into the chamber. ‘There’s been a big battle fought and the Welsh have won it!’
‘What are you talking about?’ demanded Maurice.
‘It’s all over the castle. You should come down, my lady, to hear it. Can she?’ she asked Maurice.
He nodded, shamefaced to be my gaoler. ‘It seems an extraordinary occasion,’ he said.
In the hall, I curled my lip at the sight of Breri but listened intently, nevertheless, with everyone else to the news he carried and was reporting to de Marais. ‘The Battle of Llychwr was fought between Loughor and Swansea on the Common of Carn Coch. Hywel ap Maredudd led a Welsh army against five hundred Normans.’ This Hywel was a prince of Powys and a cousin of Owain who had abducted me years before. ‘All five hundred of those Normans are food for wolves now. Left on the field to rot and be torn at. And the Welsh are victorious.’ The Normans in the room exchanged looks and words of disbelief. Maurice suggested they send out a scout to verify the facts of this report and de Marais saw to it that a man was dispatched.
