The Anarchy, page 3
3
The Inky Clerk
Time passes, and things happen. The view from my window casement at Cardigan Castle was doing nothing to improve my disconsolate mood. I, Princess Nest of Deheubarth, was married to him. And that was that. A thick, grey fret swirled and shifted above the river, mirroring the lowering grey of the sky. I had tried to shake my depressed feelings for several days, but this morning I resolved to indulge them for one whole day and then rise tomorrow and put them behind me. It could be worse. He was not bad-natured or violent. On occasion, he was, in fact, quite kind. Nevertheless, Stephen de Marais was an idiot. Two months after my flight from Cardigan to Llansteffan, my sons William and Maurice had remonstrated with me to return to this unwanted marriage. My behaviour was detrimental to their standing in the Norman community, they told me. Never mind my feelings and my standing. My argument with my sons still resounded in my memory. William and Maurice had come to Llansteffan and pleaded with me to cease shaming them in the matter of my marriage. ‘We are already slighted by our peers, Mother,’ William complained, ‘for our part-Welsh heritage.’
‘And why would I have sympathy with that,’ I said angrily, ‘being entirely Welsh!’
Now that I had calmed down, I tried to understand their position. They were trying to be Norman but were regarded as half-Welsh mongrels by their fellows. William had just been appointed steward at Pembroke Castle by Gilbert de Clare, a position his father held before him, and I was glad for him, proud of him. Since there was no out from my marriage, it seemed I should do my best to protect my sons from the contempt of the Norman lords in Wales, to maintain their positions.
My face and my body betrayed me. My hair gleamed, my dratted dimples came and went and there were no outward signs of my grief and frustration. The ends of my two long, black plaits lay curled in my lap. I picked up first one, and then the other, squeezing them hard as if it were my hair’s fault that it showed no signs of my distress, as if I would wish it to turn white in protest at finding myself married in my forties to a man in his twenties who I could not care for and whose station was far below my own. Richard de Clare, the lord of Cardigan Castle, had complete faith in de Marais as his constable. I could see that de Marais’ management of the garrison was more than competent, but in matters of conversation… I closed my eyes and threw my hands up in despair, in pantomime conversation with myself.
Embarrassed, I looked around the chamber quickly to see if anyone had witnessed me talking to myself. Amelina had just retrieved the bed canopy from the laundress and was standing on a stool, refixing it above the bed to ward off spiders and flies. Would that it could ward off my husband too. I looked at my companion, Ida, who had been a nun and known as Benedicta. She was Haith’s sister and resembled him, so I was reminded of my loss of him every time I looked at her. She was bareheaded, always flinging off her head-veil the moment she entered the privacy of my chambers. This was a practice, she told me, she had acquired as a nun. She was absorbed in the book held open on her lap, her fair head bent over it, her hair the exact same colour as Haith’s. My small son, Robert, was playing on the floor with his wooden horse. He did not notice my odd behaviour. I smiled. At him, at myself, but then my mouth curved down again at the return of thoughts on my husband. The man was a nitwit. He had no interest whatsoever in literature or music. He had no sense of humour. There was no malice in him, but, often, I found I could hardly hold my seat and keep my face in a semblance of politeness when he spoke such drivel.
I watched Amelina humming her way around my chamber. She stopped suddenly in her track and sniffed dramatically at the scents rising from the kitchen. ‘Cabbage! If thou desirest to die, eat cabbage in August! We’ll have none of it.’ Ida and I exchanged an amused glance. Amelina’s head was stuffed with adages that she insisted were all true and we must abide by them. She set out my hairbrush in front of the burnished mirror. I looked on sourly as she splayed out a handful of long blue ribbons. ‘I’ll brush your hair now, Nest?’
I moved to sit before the mirror. Around the patchy burnishments of the mirror, if I shifted my head to and fro, I could find my dark blue eyes staring gloomily back at me. ‘Tch! Keep your head still, my lady!’ Amelina first loosed and unwove my plaits, and then began her rhythmic brushing. My face was not greatly lined but it was the face of a woman, not a girl. Amelina reached for a ribbon to weave through my hair.
I caught her arm. ‘No ribbons.’
‘But they can cover up the grey threads, my lady.’
She was skilled at weaving the ribbons so that the grey in my hair was near-invisible. ‘I am not a girl to be trinketed out.’
‘For your boy-husband?’ she wheedled.
‘The boy can please himself. I have no cause to do so.’
She clucked her tongue but dropped a hand briefly to caress my shoulder in sympathy, holding my gaze in the mirror.
De Marais had driven away my children. None of them liked him and rarely visited because of it. My daughter, Angharad, had gone early to live in the household of her betrothed husband at Manorbier. She could have stayed with me a while longer, but she begged to go, unhappy to see me unhappy and grieved at the changes in our lives. My eldest son, Henry, told me he could not stand de Marais’ company and that I must visit him in Arberth in the future. ‘Mother, come and live with me. He might not even notice!’ he declared on his last visit, which had been some six months ago.
I missed my eldest son, but unfortunately de Marais would notice. If I were gone, he would notice that he could not boast to anyone who would listen that his wife was a royal princess. He would notice I was not in my bed for his weekly visits to get himself an heir. Since I am a Welsh woman, he believes me primitive and uncultured. He made it clear Prince Owain ap Cadwgan’s rape makes me tainted in his eyes. ‘I was rather surprised Gerald FitzWalter took you back as his wife after that sordid episode,’ he told me, his small mouth pursed in distaste. On the other hand, he is proud of my former association with the king and that my eldest son is the king’s son. My royalty and the king’s stroke his snobbery.
Robert moved to sit at my feet, dragging with him a heavy book that Ida had found in the castle library. She looked up and grinned at him as he turned the pages of the bestiary, which was filled with exotic, colourful images. I reached my hand to Robert’s fair head. ‘What have you there, Robert?’
My son turned enthusiastic, pale blue eyes – Haith’s eyes – to me to tell me all about the fabulous animals in the book.
‘Have you written to your brother yet, Ida?’ I asked, when Robert returned to his quiet study of the book. I found it difficult to say Haith’s name out loud, although I voiced it over and over in my head whenever I had a private moment to myself.
Ida was shamefaced. ‘I can’t find the words to tell him.’ She had not yet told Haith she had left her nunnery in Anjou and was hiding in plain sight in my household. Very few people in Wales or England would recognise her and she should be safe from exposure in my service.
I frowned. ‘You must tell him. Perhaps it would be easier in person? I could invite Haith to visit us here.’ I heard the reluctance in my own voice. Sooner or later, I would have to face him. It was a wonder, with his work as sheriff of Pembroke, we had not encountered each other before now. I struggled not to remember him, not to remember his hands on my body, his mouth on mine.
There is no joy in my coupling with my husband. I am fifteen years his senior and know he has a young mistress in the town. Sixteen and buxom, Amelina says. Our sexual congress is solely about getting an heir for him. I made a fool of him by abandoning him on the day of our wedding and he has not forgiven me for it. He makes no attempt to suggest he finds me beautiful or irresistible. Why should he when I am near old enough to be his mother and have a body that has undergone pregnancy and childbirth seven times? I am no nubile virgin for him. And I make no pretence that the marriage is palatable to me. He is all business-like in his visits to my bedchamber. He arrives, plants his seed, thanks me and leaves. The first few times, I wept bitterly, thinking of the men who had loved me, who had touched me in love and passion: King Henry; then my first husband, Gerald; and then Haith, Robert’s father. But now, I am simply grateful that de Marais’ visits are quick, infrequent and he does not stay or ask me for words of love that would be wormwood on my tongue. And, I remind myself, since this is my day of wallowing in misery, this marriage is nowhere near as bad as my time as the hostage of Prince Owain.
‘Ida, would you help me lay the cloth in the hall below?’ Amelina asked.
‘Of course.’ Ida marked the place in her book and rose to accompany Amelina from the room.
When they were gone, I reached inside my small casket for my journal and stylus. I ran my hands over the dark crimson leather of the journal’s cover and traced its decorations with my finger. Interlacing patterns in bright yellow, pale yellow and blue-grey twisted inside two narrow, rectangular frames at the top and bottom of the cover. In the middle of the cover, there was a drawing of a chalice with projecting stems that sprouted leaves and fruits. I turned the book over and traced the bright yellow and blue-grey crosses that decorated its back. King Henry had given the book to me years ago, calling me his ‘inky clerk’ because I liked to scribble down the occasional note on the events of my life. I felt I had reached such a plateau. After the initial trauma of my forced marriage last year, it was time to commune with myself. Sometimes, I found I did not truly know what I felt until I had committed it to writing.
I have been displaced at Pembroke Castle by Isabel de Beaumont and Gilbert de Clare. Richard de Clare and his young wife, Alice of Chester, command Cardigan Castle, which is now my home. The de Clare family are preeminent in my father’s former kingdom, and their uncle Walter holds Striguil on the Gower. Through their wives, Gilbert and Richard de Clare are connected to the two strongest earldoms in England: to Robert de Beaumont, earl of Warwick, who is Isabel’s brother and to Ranulf Le Meschin, earl of Chester, who is Alice’s father. When Isabel was delivered of the king’s child, a daughter, I visited her, and it was harsh for me to see her mistress in Pembroke, in the hall that had belonged to Gerald and me, and before that, to my father.
Richard de Clare and Alice of Chester are frequently away from Cardigan. Richard attends on the king or travels to oversee his estates in England, and Alice always travels with him. At those times, de Clare works through written instructions to my husband, and it has been some mercy to me that de Marais has been kept very busy managing the castle and estate. Here, I am merely the wife of the castle’s constable. That I am a princess of the Welsh royal house of Deheubarth is no longer of any significance in these days of Norman rule. In my father’s former kingdom, I am the only Welsh landowner remaining, and what I own is little enough. In mid and north Wales, the Welsh rulers continue to stand their ground against Norman incursions, with Madog king in Powys and the ageing Gruffudd ap Cynan king in Gwynedd, but here, in Deheubarth, my brother, who should be king, is reduced to poverty and lives under threat of execution.
I remind myself that my miserable marriage to de Marais does not compare with the time when my father and brothers were massacred, and I was first taken into a Norman household at Cardiff Castle. Yet, I have loathed the stifling of myself that I have had to exercise to survive this first year with de Marais.
I looked up abruptly from my scribbling at the unmistakable sound of glass shattering on the stone floor of the hall below. Robert held his toy horse in mid-air and gaped at me. ‘Broken?’ he said. ‘Need mended?’
‘Yes, sweet. Something is broken. Let’s go and see.’ I took his little hand and helped him, laboriously, one step at a time, down the big steps and bends of the stone staircase.
In the hall, de Marais was standing, hands on hips, hovering over Amelina as she crouched to sweep up shards of pale glass. I saw a fragment of incised griffin tail. ‘My goblet from Sybil?’ I tried to keep the tone of my voice neutral, but it sounded somewhere between whine and wail, nonetheless.
Amelina glanced up. I looked from her rueful face to de Marais’ flushed features. ‘You broke it, husband?’
‘Yes. I apologise dear. I believe you have another, no?’
‘They were a pair. A gift from my foster-mother, Sybil de Montgomery. I have had them since I was a child.’
‘I do apologise, dear. But it is simply a goblet, after all. I will get you a new pair at the next market.’
I turned my face from him and moved toward the fire with Robert still clinging to my hand, but now more to give me comfort than for me to aid him. When I sat by the fire to make that the new object of my gaze, Robert climbed into my lap and put his arms about my neck, sensing my dismay. I did not glance at Ida, who took a seat opposite me, but I felt her sympathetic eyes upon me.
There was no point in telling the fool that I had carried the goblets with me through all the tribulations of my life for so many years without so much as a slight crack; that I had first used them to drink with King Henry, my first love; that they carried my heart. And as for his offer of buying new ones next market day; he would not find such fine work anywhere. Sybil had sent for them from Normandy. He would not spend the silver that such fine craftsmanship required. Whatever he did buy would be cheap and shoddy and no replacement. And he would forget his promise in a blink of an eye, in any case. My emotions, I, I mean nothing to him. Nothing, except the unlikely promise of an heir. I am likely past childbearing and do not quicken. Perhaps a child can only come in love, not in such loathing.
Amelina straightened up from her task and moved toward the doorway where she encountered Lady Alice. ‘Did I hear something break?’ Alice glared at Amelina. I swivelled in my chair, readying to defend my maid, but Amelina needed no defence.
‘The constable clumsily broke one of his wife’s precious goblets, Lady Alice,’ she told her.
‘Ah.’ It was of no further interest to Alice. It was not one of her possessions that had been shattered. ‘Take your child with you, Amelina,’ she commanded. ‘The boy should not be about Lady Nest’s skirts all the time like this.’
‘Yes, my lady.’ Amelina reached out a hand to Robert, who reluctantly let go his embrace of my neck. Amelina and I exchanged a covert look. Everyone believed Robert to be Amelina’s son and not mine. Since Haith and I had not wed, Amelina was the cover for our child. I wondered what Robert himself thought. Was he confused? Perhaps he just thought he had two mothers, or three even, since Ida was Haith’s sister, Robert’s aunt, and loved him to distraction too. He had no shortage of love.
‘Constable, Lady Nest,’ Alice said in a declarative tone, intending that her voice should ring command, but she was an inexperienced teenager, without a great deal of wit about her, and her voice quavered rather than rang. ‘My husband and I leave for court tomorrow and all here is left in your custody. We trust you will serve us well in our absence.’
‘Indeed, we shall, my lady,’ declared de Marais loudly, performing an unctuous bow, to compensate for the fact that I made no response. It was near impossible for me to accept that my status was less than this chit of a girl. I, a royal princess, was subordinate to this Norman child-bride in Cardigan Castle, which had once been another of the strongholds belonging to my father and a long line of my ancestors stretching back into the mists of memory and legends.
‘Godspeed on your journey, Lady Alice,’ I murmured, at last reaching for something to say.
‘Perhaps you would like to send your good wishes to the king,’ de Marais remarked.
I looked away to conceal my furious expression from them both. My husband loved to bruit how I was the king’s former mistress. This was too much. It was in poor taste. I did not trade on my former life with King Henry. I did not bray of it. In any case, I was furious with Henry for marrying me to this idiot.
‘I will gladly send your good wishes to the king, Lady Nest,’ Lady Alice said uncertainly. Everyone knew I had been the king’s mistress, that my eldest son Henry was the king’s son, but even this girl knew it was in poor taste to refer to it openly.
I kept my face turned from both of them. Ida had been sitting silently reading, and intervened to mitigate the embarrassment that my husband’s thoughtless words had created. ‘We all send our kind regards to the king,’ she declared, ‘and thank you, Lady Alice, for bearing them.’
‘Do you know the king yourself then, Mistress Ida?’ Alice asked rudely.
Ida coloured and put her head down. ‘Oh no. Only by repute, of course.’
Ida did, indeed, know King Henry. Her brother was the king’s best friend and Ida had nursed the king through a serious crisis of madness over the maiming of his granddaughters and she was there at his side when Henry learned of the drowning of his heir, but she could not admit to these facts. King Henry had known her as Sister Benedicta, a nun from Fontevraud Abbey in Anjou. She had run away from the religious life and it was impossible to reveal anything of her former life or she would be dragged back to the abbey and horribly punished.
Ida’s well-intentioned remark had made matters worse. ‘Is there… is there, in fact, a message I should convey to the king on your behalf, Lady Nest?’ Alice asked. I relented at last, in the face of her discomfort. It could not be easy for her, a young girl far from her home in England, married to a man considerably older than herself, forced to give space in her household to a notorious woman like myself and all the baggage I came trailing from my affair with the king, my Welsh royalty, and the scandal of my abduction by a Welsh prince. The odour of good opinion did not waft in my wake.
‘Thank you. You are kind,’ I reassured her. ‘But there is no special message from me. If I have a message for the king, I will write to him direct.’ I stood. I was a full foot taller than Lady Alice and several inches taller, too, than my idiot husband. In my head, I composed all manner of messages for Henry: damn you for putting me in this position! For not allowing me to marry Haith! Damn you, Henry, for being you! I stalked from the hall, before my ‘messages’ should be blazoned across my face or escape from my mouth. Behind me, I heard Ida gather her pile of books in haste and follow me up to my chamber, to the consolations of Amelina and Robert, and the view of the bleak, rushing river.
