The Anarchy, page 4
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Richard de Clare and Lady Alice left this morning and de Marais assiduously set about his task of overseeing the garrison and the work of the steward. At mid-morning he sent a boy to ask that I attend him in the hall.
‘Husband?’ I asked, standing before him as he pored over the accounts ledger.
‘You have ordered the feed for the horses from Merewald,’ he stated without looking up at me.
‘I have.’ As the constable’s wife, it was my duty to run the household in the absence of Lady Alice.
‘I always order it from Borgred. It is cheaper by far for such quantity,’ he asserted, his tone disapproving.
‘Cheaper in price and quality,’ I maintained. ‘At Pembroke, I judged that Merewald’s was the better value. It lasted longer, and the horses were fitter for it.’
He regarded me. ‘You are not at Pembroke now. You are no longer the chatelaine of Pembroke. You will not countermand me.’
‘I had not thought to do so. Only to carry out my responsibilities to the best of my ability. And,’ I added, ‘knowledge.’
‘You will keep things as I have arranged them. You will not introduce your own innovations. I do hope we will not argue on such matters,’ he smiled unagreeably at me.
‘As you wish,’ I said angrily.
‘Furthermore, you will put a bridle on your maid’s tongue. I know it is in women’s nature to banter aimlessly and you cannot help it, but your Breton woman steps too often over the boundaries of her place.’
I nodded brusquely, not trusting myself to open my mouth and allow the words to fall out that were brimming behind my lips. I feared that I would only endanger Amelina’s tenure with me by arguing with him. I turned on my heel.
In my chamber, I told Ida that she should undertake all the household management on my behalf and not change any of de Marais’ habits, even if they were stupid.
She stared at me. ‘My lady?’
‘Can you do that?’
‘Of course, I can, but …’ She looked at Amelina, who shrugged sympathetically at her.
‘There is no point in me doing it,’ I complained. ‘He wants nothing of me except a royal-blooded heir and the start of his line. He scorns my abilities and experience. What if I should bear an idiot? Or bear no child.’
‘I expect you will bear one soon enough and no idiot,’ Amelina remarked. ‘They’ve dropped from you easy enough with all the rest of your men.’
‘Don’t be impertinent,’ I snapped, though that was like commanding the incoming tide to stay back.
Within a few hours, we had forgotten our cross words with each other. Ida had been down to the hall and swiftly organised all the household orders to my husband’s liking. Now, she was singing quietly as she stitched, and Amelina was making out a puzzle picture with Robert. A long hank of Ida’s pale blonde hair hung down across the front of her tunic. Like Haith’s, her hair was thick and straight. When she had first come to me, a renegade nun, her head had been shaven and was a soft burr of blonde stubble.
I mused to myself that, if I could conceive a child, I could find a way to then live apart from my husband, but if I proved to be past childbearing, I must find another pretence. At least with the de Clares gone, I did not have to be constantly reminded of my diminished status, and my husband’s additional duties during their absence would keep him busy and out of my way.
Bored with the child’s puzzle, Amelina stood and began pacing up and down, sighing to herself and casting her eyes at the ceiling each time she turned at the limit of her pacing. Evidently, I was required to ask: ‘What’s wrong with you?’
‘I can’t bear it is what,’ she grumbled.
‘You can’t bear what?’
‘I can’t bear that you can sit here still calmly married to that de Marais, when Haith is just down the road, when he is alive after all, and you could be with him.’ Ida looked at her in surprise. ‘Don’t look at me like that,’ Amelina retorted. ‘Look at what you’ve done! Running away from a nunnery.’ Ida coloured.
I deflected Amelina from her assault on Ida. ‘You know how hard won my calm is,’ I told her, ‘and you’ve changed your tune since I was first wed to de Marais.’
Amelina nodded, admitting that she had.
‘I dream of riding to Haith,’ I declared, ‘but if I did that, he would lose everything. I’m not sure he would welcome such a rash action from me, anyway.’
Amelina came to a halt in front of me and put her hands on her hips. ‘I think he would.’
‘I would be shaming my sons and daughter, my brother. Haith and I would lose the king’s love. I would be shunned and have no standing in Wales. I know I do little enough but I think my existence, my presence here is something for the people, something to give them hope that the old order is not gone entirely, that we, the Welsh inhabitants and the Deheubarth royal family, might come back from this Norman occupation and resume our place.’
‘Do you think that is any more realistic than running away with Haith?’
‘Perhaps not, but my brother Gruffudd and his wife, Gwenllian, have not given up. I cannot either, even if all I do is simply be. If we were gone, if their children were gone, there would be no trace of what went before, of my father’s kingdom and all the family that I have lost. It would be as if the sea had closed over the heads of the whole Deheubarth royal family.’ I turned to Ida. ‘Do you find it detrimental to be of Flemish origin here?’
‘Some Welsh and Normans that I encounter in the market have remarked on my accent, some in neutral fashion, and others with disapproval in their tone,’ she responded. ‘It does not concern me greatly. There are many Flemings hereabouts, but I do not speak with them much. I cannot invite curiosity about myself from anyone.’
That, I thought, amounted to a lonely existence. I must take more care of Ida’s welfare.
‘And you, Nest,’ Ida asked, ‘how do you reconcile your Welsh heritage with your Norman surroundings?’
‘With great difficulty,’ I replied. ‘When my brother Gruffudd returned from Ireland to make a bid to win back his kingdom from the Normans, my loyalties were torn between my Norman husband, Gerald, and my brother.’
‘I can’t imagine how I could react if there were a conflict between my affections and loyalties toward my brother and toward a lover,’ Ida said.
‘Nuns, on the whole, do not have lovers,’ remarked Amelina, and raised her eyebrows in curiosity to Ida, who turned her face back to me.
‘My brother Gruffudd had some successes before being captured and humiliated by the Normans,’ I told Ida. ‘He was not always reduced to nothing as he is now. My brother is the rightful king of the whole of south-west Wales, but he subsists these days in the barren commote of Caeo. I admire the uncompromising stance of my sister-in-law Gwenllian, and wish that my own position could be as pure and simple. In her view, my brother is king of Deheubarth and the Normans are parasites to be purged. But I know enough to recognise the Normans will not easily be dislodged from Wales. I have counselled integration to my brother and Gwenllian, but they ignore my advice.’
‘What will your brother and his wife do?’ Ida asked. ‘What can they do?’
I shook my head. ‘Gruffudd has no resources to mount another campaign to win his kingdom back. And if he tries and fails again, King Henry will execute him.’
‘You Welsh are an occupied people,’ Ida said.
I sighed. ‘Yes. But I cannot hate the Normans. Not all of them. My sons consider themselves to be Normans. I cannot take the stance of Agnes of Wales, the Welsh princess who was the wife of Bernard de Neufmarché, the murderer of my father. She hated her Norman husband so bitterly that she disinherited her own son to revenge herself.’
‘That man deserved everything he got,’ Amelina announced with relish, ‘including the piles.’ She followed up her pronouncement with a heavy sigh.
‘Yes?’ I asked her, responding to the cue she was surely giving to me.
‘Couldn’t you do more than just be a symbol?’
‘Yes. I have been circumspect, playing safe, but my older children are grown now – they are taking their own ways. You are right, Amelina. I could do more to assist Gruffudd and Gwenllian.’
Amelina was alarmed. ‘But, I did not mean … you must be careful! You would put yourself at great risk if you helped them commit treason against the king!’
‘Of course. Yet Gruffudd should be acknowledged by Henry as king of Deheubarth, as the Welsh king is acknowledged in Gwynedd and Madog is acknowledged as king of Powys.’
‘You mean to lobby King Henry?’
‘No, that would be pointless. There is no reason for Henry to cede what he has. But his hold here is tenuous. There are a handful of Norman lords and a handful of Welsh. The balance is finely tuned. It could be tipped. I am of a mind to pay a visit to my kin, Amelina. You will organise the packing and I will go tomorrow.’
‘I did not mean to prick you to grave danger, my lady,’ said Amelina, alarmed.
‘Visiting my brother and his family is hardly grave danger. In any case, I have braved much worse dangers in my life and I can skirt this one too.’
Amelina wrung her hands dramatically. ‘Oh, I hope so. I do hope so. Would be best to do nothing perhaps, after all.’
I smiled grimly at her. Was there anything, I wondered, that I could do to support the efforts of my brother to regain his kingdom.
Amelina frowned mightily at how her prompting about Haith had led me to this decision, but she moved to the chest at the foot of my bed to begin the packing. I started to rehearse in my head the words I would use at the meal to inform my husband of my decision to travel to Caeo.
4
Butchery
Haith did not have to wait long to attempt an exit from the castle. Most of the men laying on the floor of the hall were more unconscious with drink than sleep after the wedding feast, but there would be a few who were not unconscious, who were coming to despatch him. It was not easy to be surreptitious when you were over six feet tall, but Haith stood quietly, extricating himself and his cloak from his snoring neighbours. He pulled his black felt hat down over his blond hair to avoid catching the light of any torch stumps still flickering and gestured to his hound. Together, they moved toward the buttery. His sword would have to lay abandoned in the pile on the threshold of the main hall door. Extracting it from the other weapons would create too much noise, and it was very likely that du Pin had stationed men at the door to intercept him. Haith did not know the layout of this stronghold, but most castles had some kind of back route for the servants. He looked around the buttery. Casks were stacked on their sides from floor to ceiling along two walls and haphazard piles of barrels were ranged against the other walls. Red wine that had leaked from the taps in some of the casks pooled in depressions in the uneven stone flags of the floor. There was no other door from here.
Haith and the mastiff moved on to the pantry, where loaves of bread and bread knives were laid out on a wide table in the centre of the room. A threadbare tapestry covered the far wall, its bottom edge wavering in a draught. Haith lifted the edge of the tapestry and found an unlocked door. He slipped through, latched the door closed again behind him, and waited for a moment in the stagnant dark. He could sense nobody. His dog would alert him to any lurking presence. His eyes became accustomed to the blackness, and he could dimly discern the shape of the passageway ahead. Haith and his dog moved on silent feet down the dim tunnel to another door that led out onto an exterior stone staircase. At the top of the stairs, Haith crouched behind his dog and rested his cheek against his warm flank, allowing his eyes to adjust again to the gloomy evening light so that he could observe the courtyard. As he suspected, du Pin had stationed four men at the hall door, but he could see no others between himself and the stables. He and the dog moved down the steps. He took care not to release any loose stones on the stairway that might alert the watchers to his presence. He sidled around the walls toward the stables. It was likely that more men would be posted there. Haith gave his mastiff the command to lay and wait in long grass close to the stables. The dog might spook the horses and give away Haith’s presence.
He moved closer to the stables, hearing muffled voices coming from inside. Perhaps two or three men. Avoiding the main door, he found a gap in a side wall at ground level and rolled himself inside one of the horses’ stalls. His nostrils encountered the familiar stench of horse urine, the familiar waft of horse heat. He pulled a handful of hay from a net hanging on the wall and held it out to the warm occupant, who nuzzled him in gratitude. In the darkness, Haith was disorientated and unsure where his own horse might be tethered. A spade had been thrust into a pile of muck just outside this stall. He slid the spade from its excrement sheath and moved toward the voices. If he stumbled around looking for his horse, they would hear him. Better to use the element of surprise against them.
Two men had their backs to him, watching the stable door. Haith slammed the spade against the head of the first one and, then, against the surprised and turning other. He took the swords from their inert bodies and did not have far to look for his horse and gear. Haith was swiftly reunited with his hound. He had to find a way out of the castle that was not through the guarded drawbridge, and quickly, before his absence from the hall was noticed or the men sprawled in the stables regained consciousness and raised the alarm.
Leading his horse, he moved toward where he would expect the postern gate to be. Surely, this too would be guarded. The snoring was audible before the dark form slumped next to the gate could be discerned. Two emptied bladders of strong ale from the wedding feast pillowed the head of the sleeping man. Gingerly, Haith lifted the gate latch and let his horse and dog amble through before him while he kept an eye on the unconscious guard.
Haith took his horse at a slow pace down into the dark town, with the hound padding alongside, and found his way to the deserted marketplace. He rode through and found a small copse of trees adjacent to the market square, where he rolled himself in his cloak for a few hours’ sleep.
The cock crowing woke him, and he mounted and rode back toward the marketplace where the traders were setting up stalls. Coloured awnings fluttered in a slight breeze and masters shouted at sleepy apprentices. Haith rode past the booths of leather and textile merchants, past bakers and cobblers, straight through the centre of the market, making his way toward the river, where four butchers’ stalls stood in a row. The butchers and their boys were laying out slabs of meat and suspending skinned carcasses from hooks. The air was grimly stodgy with the stench of dead flesh.
A market was not the most private place to corner his quarry, but Haith did not know what the butcher Berold looked like, and it was very likely he would be at this market. Haith did not want to ask around for a man named Berold and give the butcher the opportunity to flee from him. He rode a little way along the river’s edge and looked back over his shoulder to check that he was no longer visible from the market stalls. Haith veered from the path to a stand of trees and pushed into the greening gloom, urging his horse to step carefully over fallen logs. He swiped low-hanging vegetation from before his face or leant in the saddle to avoid it. Deep in the wood, he came to a clearing where he dismounted, tethered his horse and told his hound to stay. Haith took a thick sack with a heavy coil of rope inside it from his saddle. He slung the sack over his shoulder and moved back nonchalantly along the river path. One of the bakers’ boys sold him a hunk of fresh bread and he sat on a log, just behind the butchers and within earshot of their banter, breaking fast, feigning an interest in the view of the fishermen on the Risle.
A butcher’s boy fumbled a bucket at the edge of a table to catch the ooze of dark brown blood as his master swung a thudding chopper into a side of beef, dividing it into smaller joints.
‘That’s as fresh as my wife’s mother,’ laughed another of the butchers, gesturing at his neighbour’s display of a spreadeagled sheep’s carcass. He had a point, thought Haith. The mutton flesh was a darkening purple, shot with green. It looked stripped and exposed.
‘And your pig’s head appears to be one of your relations,’ returned the competitor, pointing at a shrivelling snout.
‘Have a care, Berold,’ laughed the first butcher, good-humouredly. ‘I have a knife in my hand!’
Haith scoped the area. The four butcher’s stalls were next to the river, so that their slops could easily be disposed of in the water at the end of the day’s trading. Behind the stalls, a stand of thorny bushes quickly developed into the small copse where his horse and hound were waiting. It would be best to take the man named Berold before more people arrived at the market. Haith moved round to the back of the stall, inching closer to the butcher, noting that the man was built like an ox and was wielding a vicious-looking butcher’s hook. Haith assessed the positions of the other butchers and their apprentices.
Berold leant forward to set the hook down and carefully wiped his bloodied hands on his apron, swiping the cloth between his fingers where bits of flesh had snagged. He moved back into the recess of the stall to reach for a mug of ale. Swiftly, Haith stepped close behind the butcher, slipped the long sack over the man’s head and torso, yanked the rope tight, pinioning Berold’s arms, and dragged him backwards with his hand over the butcher’s mouth. Berold was a massive weight to manoeuvre unwillingly and he grunted and floundered in the sack. Sweating heavily, Haith dragged his captive toward the bushes, with the man’s feet scuffling vainly to gain some purchase and break their backwards progress. Haith’s head was covered with a leather cap tied under his chin and he was protected by his jerkin and gambeson as he crashed through the thicket. The butcher’s arms, however, were bare inside the sack and his clothes were thin for hot work. Berold was cruelly pierced and scraped by the thorns, which reduced his struggle temporarily. His cries of pain were adequately muffled by the sack.
