The Anarchy, page 29
‘And King Stephen will be displaced in due course?’ Gruffudd asked. ‘I hear the Norman lords are grumbling mightily that Stephen has not settled matters in Normandy yet, that the Angevins threaten to take control there.’
‘King Stephen intended to cross to Normandy this year to claim the duchy,’ Haith answered, ‘but he was delayed by events in England. He has appointed Waleran de Meulan as his lieutenant in Normandy, and Walter de Clare fights alongside him. Geoffrey d’Anjou invaded Normandy and Empress Maud rose from childbed and came to his support, but he was wounded with a javelin in the foot. The Angevin army had dysentery and had to withdraw, so there is still a stalemate in Normandy.’
‘Stephen’s wife is a descendent of the English royal family,’ Nest told her brother. ‘Her mother was the sister of King Henry’s first wife, Matilda of Scotland. And she brings King Stephen control of a major Norman port and gateway to the English shores from Normandy.’
Haith smiled at her but felt uncomfortable at the discussion. The official Norman line was Stephen was the anointed king and that was an end to it, but many remembered they had sworn an oath to Henry and his daughter, the empress. She and her husband contended with Stephen for control of Normandy and might turn their claims to England itself in time. Strife between King Stephen and Empress Maud could only be to the advantage of Gruffudd and the other Welsh kings. The Norman hold on Wales was loosed more and more every day as many of the Norman lords were summoned to England to support Stephen against the rebels there and in Normandy. Haith decided it might be best to turn the conversation to another topic. ‘I stay out of court matters nowadays, with King Henry gone,’ he said.
He tried some of his rough Welsh as a courtesy on Gruffudd, admiring his sons, but his host answered him in French. From the corner of his eye, Haith saw Nest suppress a smile, but, perhaps, he thought, it was a smile in his favour rather than mockery of him. Ida was seated to his other side and took his attention. There was a great deal she wanted to say, to catch up with what was happening in his life and hers.
At last the sumptuous feasting was done with and they rose from the table to the loud scrape of benches as all went about their business and servants began to clear the trestles. Haith counted a good hundred men. How was Nest’s brother managing to feed so many? There must be some truth in the rumours that Nest had assisted Gruffudd to run a secret gold-mining operation. As the only Norman-allied man here and as a sheriff responsible in the eyes of these Welsh for past harsh taxes, he felt resentment pressing on him as he moved through the courtyard to check back on his horse and the fewterer with the puppies. Dyfnwal and Robert were standing near the well with a group of men. ‘May I take Robert to see the puppies in the stable?’ Haith asked, pointing.
‘Of course,’ Dyfnwal replied. ‘Go with Haith, Robert. He is a great friend of your Aunt Ida and of Lady Nest.’ The young man nodded shyly and followed Haith. He was soon deep in discussion on the various merits of the puppies with the fewterer. Robert carefully helped the boy to tip milk into the puppies’ mouths.
‘Their mother won’t give ‘em milk, you see.’ The fewterer had suddenly become the most loquacious person Haith had ever encountered.
‘You are good with the dogs, Robert,’ Haith told him. Little by little Haith got Robert to tell him something about himself when he could get a word in edgeways past the fewterer’s gabble. ‘Brilliant with the bow, he is,’ the fewterer told Haith, pointing at Robert.
‘We should return to the hall now, sir, for supper,’ Robert said, and Haith nodded his agreement. ‘I’ll bring you something out,’ Robert told the boy who was all smiles at that news.
Haith resumed his seat between Gruffudd and Ida. He looked around again at the Welsh soldiers he was seated among, and then back to Gruffudd and the young princes seated with him on the high table. He was in the midst of a fierce enemy. Nest’s family was steeped in blood and vengeance. Cadwallon, brother to Gruffudd’s wife Gwenllian, had ruled in Gwynedd and killed three of his uncles, and then been killed himself in revenge by his wife’s brother, the son of one of the slain uncles. Gwenllian had famously ridden out at the head of an army against Maurice de Londres and been beheaded, dying with two of her sons. Her other brother Owain was king of Gwynedd and her sister Susann was married to Madog, king of Powys. Nest’s brother and his sons were never going to live out their lives as peaceable farmers. There was no use hoping for that.
The conversation was stilted, and Nest cast anxious glances in Haith’s direction. This was a Christmas feast, and antagonism could not breach the bounds of hospitality. And yet, there had been occasions on both sides when exactly that had happened, when someone was invited to a feast and then been betrayed to murder or imprisonment.
* * *
Carrying a guttering candle, Amelina led Haith down a very long passage, to a small, comfortable room at the end with a view out over the darkening moat.
‘Am I in exile here?’ Haith asked, making a joking reference to how far away from the rest of the household he seemed to be.
‘Best place for noise,’ Amelina announced in a deliberately mysterious tone.
‘Noise?’ Haith felt a little concerned. Was there a plot to murder him in his bed? He fondled the hilt of his sword.
Amelina tapped her nose. ‘You’ll see.’
The fire was lit in the hearth, and the bed was comfortable. Haith looked at the door, worry knitting his brow. Noise? He wasn’t sure he could disrobe and climb into bed with some threat hanging over him. But Amelina had smiled and seemed happy about whatever it was she hinted at. She wouldn’t be happy to see him murdered. Perhaps it was something to do with the children – singing Christmas carols or hanging stockings on doorknobs or the like. What would be the point in murdering him? There would only be a meagre symbolic value in assaulting the sheriff of Pembroke. And whatever the degree of estrangement between them, Nest would surely not conspire at his death.
Haith bent and slowly untied his boots, padded across the cold tiles in his stockinged feet and placed his boots neatly near the door. He unbuckled his sword belt and leant it against the bed, close to the pillow. He looked at the door for a few more minutes, swirling the wine in his mouth and swallowing it. There was no sound. Only an owl outside, beyond the moat.
Feeling foolish, he looked under the bed. Nothing there, of course, except clumps of dust. He removed his breeches. He was bone-tired from his long ride, from the wine, from the heat of the fire, and from the strain of being polite in the midst of tense hostility. Yet he was reluctant to close his eyes in sleep. He removed his shirt and lay on the bed naked, one hand on his sword. He turned his head to look at the candle on the table next to him that Amelina had lit from her own. There wasn’t much of it left. The fire, too, was starting to burn low and the room would soon grow chilled without it. He could see no more wood in the room. No servant would hear him call down the length of the dim passageway beyond the door. He watched the candle burn down into a misshapen lump of pooled and cooling wax. It spluttered for a while and then died, plunging him into near-darkness, but there was still a dim, red glow from the fire. He thought he heard a sound in the passageway beyond the door. The door-latch scraped as it lifted. Haith lay on the bed as if asleep and gripped the handle of his sword. If there were many of them, he would not stand much chance.
‘Ow! God’s bollocks!’ She stumbled over his boots at the door.
‘Nest?’ He released his grip on the sword and raised himself on one elbow.
‘Haith? I can’t see a thing.’
‘Me neither.’
In the gloom, he glimpsed a long, white chemise as she lifted it over her head and dropped it to the floor. She moved onto the bed and slid the silk of her naked skin against his, saying nothing more. The warmth of her body seared his flesh, hardened his cock. ‘I’m sorry, Haith,’ she whispered. ‘About the king. It was always you that I loved. He … he needed comfort, and I gave it to him as an old friend. Can you forgive me?’
‘It doesn’t matter now,’ he said. ‘We’re too old for jealousies, I reckon. I always loved you too, through everything.’
‘Are we too old for this?’ Nest asked, sliding her hand down his stomach.
‘I reckon not.’ They made love in silence, with only groans and panting. He stroked her hair and swept his hand along the curve of her body, down her flank, returning it to the perfect round of one buttock. ‘I would you were my wife, Nest. Is that presumption, given your rank? Perhaps your brother thinks to give you to one of the Welsh lords?’
‘My brother may think all he likes, but he will do no such thing. I have had enough of being given and will only give myself, if at all. May I think on it, Haith? I do not want to embroil you in the dangers and rigours of the Welsh resistance here against the Normans. You have standing among the Norman community that you should retain.’
‘I care less for all that, Nest, with Henry gone. My loyalty was to him. Please do think on it, my sweet Nest. Or will you send me packing when you have had your fill of me, as you did de Marais?’
‘I will never have my fill of you and don’t compare yourself to him.’ He could not see her face, but he could hear her smile. She gripped her fingers deep into his hair and he hugged her fiercely to him. ‘We live. We flare. We do our best. We make mistakes. We die.’ Nest’s mouth murmured against the skin of his neck. ‘We must keep trying to flare until we are dust. I had to take the chance that you still cared for me.’
* * *
Haith sat his horse in the courtyard preparing to say his goodbyes to Nest and her family, who were arrayed before the hall door. He wore the bearskin he had reclaimed from the fewterer, and Robert was sitting astride a horse beside him with one of the mastiff puppies snuggled inside his jerkin. Haith and Nest had gently told Robert of his parentage. ‘I knew it wasn’t Amelina and Dyfnwal,’ he said stoically. ‘They’ve always been kind and loved me, yet I knew I wasn’t theirs. I had a vague idea of something, but I didn’t know what. I have always loved you, Mother,’ he had reached a shy hand to Nest’s, ‘and Ida, and now, I have found you too, Father.’ Haith enjoyed the sound of the word ‘father’ in Robert’s mouth. Haith had told Nest that Henry’s will gifted him a small fort with a little land and tithes at Saint Clair’s. The fort was close to Llansteffan, and he had lately taken possession of it. Nest and Robert had agreed to Haith’s proposal to give his son a home and office as his deputy there.
Haith opened his mouth to speak the formal words of farewell that would sever him once again from Nest, but his speech was prevented by the sight and sound of Amelina pursuing a squawking brown hen across the courtyard.
‘If persons knew how good a hen is in January, none would be left on the roost!’ she shouted in riposte to the laughter raised by her pursuit. Rhys made a lucky feint for the hen and caught her, pinioning her wings, before handing her over to a puffing and red-faced Amelina. She took the hen and looked at Haith and Robert with tears in her eyes. ‘Do not take your coats off before Ascension Day,’ she admonished them, ‘and remember that it is more wholesome to smell warm bread than to eat it.’
‘We will heed your wise advice, dear Amelina,’ Haith said, and he and Robert turned their horses toward the barbican.
38
The Norman Exodus
I had not seen Haith since Christmas and clung to my horse’s mane as she trotted across the drawbridge into Pembroke Castle, feeling queasy at the thought of how I would encounter him. I smiled at myself. I was too old a woman to be bashful about bedding a man or to worry about what he would think of me in daylight as opposed to the pitch-black room at Dinefwr. ‘Smiling, Mother?’ asked Maurice, beside me. ‘Are you remembering when you lived here with Father?’
‘Yes,’ I lied. ‘So I am.’ I rarely thought of Gerald these days, except of course, when I looked at Maurice or William.
In the aftermath of Crug Mawr and King Stephen’s failures in Normandy, the landscape of power in Deheubarth reformed around me. Many Normans had vacated Ceredigion and Dyfed after the Welsh victory, leaving only the garrisons at Cardigan, Pembroke, and Carmarthen holding out. My brother and the princes of Gwynedd were wasting no time in stepping into the voids. Gilbert FitzRichard de Clare had inherited the lordship of Cardigan after his father was killed and his mother, Alice of Chester, had fled with Miles of Gloucester, but he was with the king in England or on his estates in Kent and unlikely to return to Wales for a long time. Robert FitzMartin commanded at Cardigan on Gilbert’s behalf, and my son Robert FitzStephen was with FitzMartin. I was in hopes I would see him here today, for the wedding, which had been relocated, away from the battle-bruised Cardigan Castle to Pembroke.
Haith was the first person I saw in the crowded courtyard. He handed me down from my horse and I looked around at a confusion of arriving and packing, readying to depart. Carts stood loaded with goods and servants were bringing out a mattress wrestled between them to throw on top of the pile. There was unrest and rebellion in England and many of the Cambro-Norman lords were being summoned to aid the king and abandon their footholds in Wales.
‘Yes,’ Haith told me. ‘It is both arriving and leaving that you see. The guests are arriving for Lady Alice’s marriage feast at the same time as her uncle and aunt are preparing to leave. Lord Gilbert de Clare has been summoned to attend King Stephen.’
‘And Isabel goes with him.’
‘Yes, the whole household.’
‘Come on,’ said Haith, taking my hand, ‘I will steer you through the melee to a beaker of wine.’ My body thrilled at his touch. Maurice followed us into the hall, unaware of the invisible frisson between Haith and me.
My son FitzStephen broke from a group of men standing before the hearth to greet us. ‘Mother!’ He stepped back from his first effusive embrace, mindful that he was a man now and his peers stood watching him. I beamed at him. ‘I am so glad to see you.’ FitzStephen turned to greet Maurice. Haith nodded to me, leaving me in my sons’ care and returned to his duties supervising the chaos in the courtyard. It had not been so awkward after all, encountering him. FitzStephen led me to the group of men and made introductions to some I already knew, and others I did not. My other son, William, was there, and would be in charge of Pembroke when Gilbert de Clare and Isabel de Beaumont left for England. There was an informal truce between my brother and his ‘Norman’ nephews, my son Henry at Arberth, William at Carew, and Maurice at Llansteffan. They agreed to give him no trouble, and he gave none to them. I was delighted that my kin had found their own way to accord.
‘Robert FitzMartin, steward at Cardigan,’ FitzStephen introduced me. ‘Maurice de Londres, steward at Kidwelly and Ogmore.’ Suddenly encountering de Londres like this, I looked down at my boots and did not wish to return his greeting. He had given the order to behead Gwenllian and her sons, and I could find no way to navigate my anger at that. ‘Lady Nest,’ I heard him say, and he moved tactfully away to another group of guests, mindful of my feelings.
Isabel came and took my hand. ‘Nest, I would be grateful if you might come and talk with the bride, my niece, with me?’
‘Of course.’ She led me up the stairwell to a top chamber that had once been a bedroom occupied by myself and Gerald in the days of my first marriage. As we pushed through the chamber door, a young girl, sixteen or so, turned to us, her face streaked with tears, her maids tutting and fussing, trying to dress her in wedding finery. ‘Aunt! How can you do this to me? And mother and father! I won’t marry him! He is a Welsh brute!’
Isabel glanced at me, embarrassed. ‘Now, Alice. He is nothing of the sort. This is Lady Nest of Llansteffan. Robert FitzStephen’s mother.’
Alice looked at me with a frankly unimpressed gaze. ‘Lady,’ she muttered.
Isabel took a soft cloth from one of the maids and wiped the tears from Alice’s face. ‘Prince Cadwaladr is the brother of a king, Alice. His blood is royal.’
‘A Welsh king,’ the girl said sullenly.
‘Prince Cadwaladr is an ally of your uncle, Ranulf, earl of Chester. This is a splendid marriage for you.’
Alice stared at us, unmoved by Isabel’s argument. Isabel looked in despair at me but I had few words of comfort to offer, knowing what it was like to be foist into a marriage that was none of your choosing. The girl was already a widow. She had been married first at thirteen to a minor English Norman and now at sixteen she was the peace offering from the de Clares to the royal family of Gwynedd that had bettered them in battle at Crug Mawr. Cadwaladr’s elderly father, Gruffudd ap Cynan had died earlier in the year, formalising Owain’s succession to the throne of Gwynedd that he and his brothers had occupied in all but name for the last ten years. Owain had decided that his formal crowning as king of Gwynedd was a fitting time to also make a show with this Norman marriage alliance for his brother Cadwaladr.
‘Your children will be royalty,’ Isabel stated.
‘Welsh royalty,’ Alice rejoined with distaste.
What I knew of her bridegroom, Cadwaladr, was not to his advantage. I knew he was a traitor to my brother and was working to take Gruffudd’s lands in Ceredigion. King Owain had recently pronounced Ceredigion would be divided between Cadwaladr and Owain’s son Hywel. My brother would contest it, but they had, as we expected all along, reneged on their alliance with him. I suspected Cadwaladr was in league with Breri, who had very likely caused Ida’s arrest, the attempted poisoning of Haith, and the murder of Einon. Still, it was my job to bolster this girl in her job.
‘Your husband is a great man,’ I said with conviction. ‘Cadwaladr ap Gruffudd ap Cynan, son of King Gruffudd of Gwynedd, brother of King Owain of Gwynedd, the great kingdom of the north of Wales. His deeds and the deeds of your sons will resound with glory in the chronicles.’
