The Anarchy, page 6
He grinned at me. ‘Ah, yes,’ I smoothed down his spiked blond hair. ‘I recall you, indeed. You visited me and my husband Gerald when you were very young. I am your aunt.’ This Cadell was around eleven years of age and was one of my brother’s sons from his first marriage to a Danish woman when he lived in Dublin. He was Gwenllian’s stepson.
‘Nest!’
My brother stepped from the doorway of the large house, and I rushed to embrace him. He, Gwenllian, and Cadell led me inside. It was a mean home for a ‘king’. Two younger boys stood there waiting to be introduced to their aunt: Morgan, who was six, and Maelgwyn, a lively three-year-old. The oldest brother, Anarawd, they told me, was out gathering firewood. ‘And where are your sisters?’ I asked them. They glanced shyly to their mother.
‘Gwladus and Nest are betrothed and gone to live in the households of their prospective husbands,’ Gwenllian said. Gwladus and Nest were also the children of my brother’s first marriage, and it made good sense, in the family’s impoverished circumstances, to send them from home as soon as possible.
‘Who are they betrothed to?’
‘Gwladus to Caradog ap Iestyn in Morgannwg and Nest, your namesake, to Ifor ap Meurug of Senghenydd.’
‘They are good matches.’
‘And why not?’ Gwenllian demanded. ‘They are daughters of the king of Deheubarth.’
‘Indeed,’ I placated, seeking to mollify her with the gestures of my hands and my expression. I bit back my question concerning the daughter that I had helped her to birth at Llansteffan when she and Gruffudd were on the run. I did not see that child about the place but could ask that question later. Instead, I produced my gifts of silver, food and a fine quilt. They were received gracefully by Gwenllian. My brother’s circumstances here were, indeed, straitened, and I was puzzled. ‘At a village on the way here, a man and his wife told me you had saved them from starvation, but now you have fallen on hard times yourselves?’
Gwenllian and Gruffudd glanced at each other. ‘We have always had hard times here,’ Gruffudd said, ‘but we find ways to help the local populace who are much oppressed by the Norman occupiers. All the good grazing land has been taken from the Welsh and they are taxed overhard besides.’
I waited to be enlightened further, but Gruffudd said nothing more. He went out a little later with Cadell to check that my men were adequately billeted, and I took the opportunity to press for more information. ‘But, Gwenllian, how do you help the villagers when you have nothing yourselves?’
‘We rob rich foreigners passing on the roads hereabouts and redistribute their greedy wealth.’
I gaped at her. ‘You rob?’
‘Yes. I am not ashamed of it. It is they who should be ashamed of their gluttony and cruelty.’
‘But you mean you rob them at sword point? By violence?’
‘Yes.’
‘You and Gruffudd and your followers.’
‘Yes.’
‘And by foreigners, you mean?’
‘Normans. Yes.’
‘But, Gwenllian, if the king or his justiciars should hear of it they would hang you all!’
‘Everything they have is stolen from us.’ She stared at me hard to see if I would disagree, but I could not. ‘We cover our faces. There is no evidence that it is us.’
‘But you run the risk.’
‘We have to. My own daughter died when we arrived here and I’ll not watch other Welsh children die of privation and illness with no money to aid them.’
‘Your daughter. I am so very sorry, Gwenllian.’ She kept her face turned away from me, the set of her mouth hard and fragile. I recalled that child’s birth, her first child. ‘Do you keep some of the proceeds of these robberies yourselves?’
‘Nothing,’ she declared. ‘Only what is needed to feed those here. The bare minimum.’
It was an astute action, as well as a charitable one, on the part of my brother and his wife. It garnered the inhabitants’ love and gratitude to Gruffudd, allowed him to give alms and gifts as a king should, kept his fame alive, despite the constraints that had been foist upon him.
* * *
Cadell slipped through the hole in the compound fence and ran up to the den in the woods above the village to find his older brother, Anarawd. ‘A black-haired princess is come to visit us,’ he told him.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Our aunt, it is. Our Aunt Nest.’
‘The one that’s fucked all the Normans?’
A guffaw burst from Cadell and he slapped his hand over Anarawd’s mouth, withdrawing it quickly again when Anarawd licked his palm. ‘Yuck!’ they exclaimed together. Cadell wiped his palm against his jerkin. ‘Don’t speak ill of her. Father would whip you. Besides, she’s nice.’
‘I’m sure she’s nice.’
‘She’s beautiful.’
‘You think all females are beautiful, including the backward girl who shovels the horseshit.’
‘Come and see for yourself, then. She has long, thick, black hair.’ He gestured at its length to his waist. ‘Great blue eyes like the dark pools of a bottomless sea. Dimples.’ Cadell poked two indentations into his own cheeks and opened his eyes as wide as they would go. ‘Truly, she is the most beautiful woman you have ever seen.’
‘More beautiful than Gwenllian?’
Cadell paused and considered. ‘They are both beautiful, but one red and one black. Her skin…’
‘Oh, stop, you bard! I don’t want to hear any more of your ecstasies. I shall come and see the Normans’ whore for myself.’
‘Anarawd, please don’t!’ Cadell screwed his face up in distress at his brother’s words. He scrubbed his sleeve across his nose. Hefting himself up, he ran in pursuit of his brother, hoping that Anarawd would not offend the beautiful princess.
* * *
At dinner, Cadell stared open-mouthed at me until Gwenllian frowned and he glanced away briefly, but then looked back again. ‘We have gold here, Aunt Nest,’ he blurted.
‘Gold, Cadell?’
‘He means the old Roman mines,’ Gruffudd told me. ‘They haven’t been worked for many years.’
‘Still gold there, though,’ Cadell asserted and winced. I guessed Anarawd had kicked him under the table.
‘Have you seen it, Cadell?’ I asked.
He nodded enthusiastically. ‘There’s great white streaks on the surface of the rock and flowing down and down the tunnels all the way into the centre of the world.’
I smiled with delight at his description, and Cadell squirmed in his seat and blushed.
‘Well white isn’t gold is it?’ Anarawd scoffed. Anarawd was thirteen and looked very like my black-haired brother, while Cadell had the blond colouring of his Cambro-Danish mother.
‘No, white isn’t gold,’ Cadell countered. ‘It’s quartz, but the gold glitters inside that vein. That’s where it is.’ He was clearly pleased to display his knowledge to me.
Gruffudd raised an eyebrow to me. ‘It’s true enough. I found a gold hoard, Nest,’ he told me, ‘from the Roman times. But no one has the art now to know how to release the gold from the rock’s grasp.’
‘No one?’ I queried. ‘I heard there are master miners in the north of England working the silver mines there and the Norman king, Henry, plans to visit them. I believe they are from Germany.’
Gruffudd shrugged.
‘I have told you before, Cadell, you must not play near the mines,’ Gwenllian complained. ‘Do you want to be sucked in by Gwen and never return to the land of the living?’
Cadell hung his head.
‘Gwen?’ I asked.
‘It’s the legend of the mines,’ Gwenllian responded. ‘There is a standing stone there, Carreg Pumsaint, where five saints rested during a great storm. They lay down on the stone and left their magical imprints – five ovals where they slept. It is said that they sleep for ever in the mine. A woman named Gwen, who was too curious for her own good,’ Gwenllian elbowed Cadell, who looked chagrined, ‘ventured in to take a peek at the sleeping saints. But she lost her way and she too sleeps there for ever, except on the nights of the full moon and a storm.’
‘What happens then?’ I asked, gripping Cadell’s hand.
Gwenllian waved her arms ghost-like in the air. ‘She emerges sobbing and yowling as a white vapour and may drag you down into the mine with her forever!’
We all laughed at the tale. ‘You tell a good story, Gwenllian!’ I declared.
‘To bed, boys,’ Gwenllian told Cadell and Anarawd. The younger children had retired before dinner with their nurse.
As Cadell passed me, I reached out and took his hand again, which caused him to flush hot and red-faced. Anarawd was of an age to feel he was a man and he sniggered at his brother’s embarrassment. ‘I have a request,’ I declared, looking at Gruffudd. ‘Would you send Anarawd and Cadell to come and stay with me for a while at Llansteffan?’ It had occurred to me that I could alleviate some of the financial strain on my brother’s family by taking some of his children under my wing. I could also arrange schooling for them and teach them how to comport themselves as princes, which Gwenllian and Gruffudd were hard-pressed to achieve here in Caeo. I glanced at Cadell’s face. A slow smile budded, and then became full blown at his father’s enthusiastic response.
6
Missing
Haith made a brief stop at the bishop’s palace in Lisieux to perform a search of the papers at the clerk Gisulf’s former lodgings. Lisieux was the seat of the king’s main administration in Normandy. Standing on the threshold of the palace, Haith watched a messenger gallop from the courtyard. The rider was bearing Haith’s news to King Henry in England of Waleran’s involvement in rebellion with Amaury de Montfort and William Clito. Haith’s letter described the marriages of Waleran’s sisters and the gathering of lords aligned with William Clito, which he had witnessed. There was nothing in Haith’s letter concerning his investigation into the wreck of The White Ship. When the messenger was out of sight, Haith ducked his head to avoid the lintel and stepped back into the lobby, heading toward the stairway up to Gisulf’s small room.
The clerk’s office was stuffed with papers of all kinds, from laundry lists to rough drafts of charters, but nothing that explained why Ranulf de Gernon might have ordered the murder of the king’s clerk on The White Ship with all its terrible consequences. Haith sat back hard in the flimsy chair he was perched upon, and it protested at his sudden movement. Why would Ranulf de Gernon murder Gisulf? Or had Ranulf perhaps intended the whole thing – the sinking, the deaths? Surely no man could countenance that massacre, could have no reason for it? He had suspected Stephen de Blois because the heir’s death brought him nearer to the throne. What did Ranulf gain? Richard, earl of Chester, had also died on the ship and de Gernon’s father had been made earl of Chester in his place, but that was hardly such a great gain. The earldom of Chester was not overly rich and was troublesome, due to the forays of the Welsh across the border. De Gernon’s father was better off before his elevation to the earldom, when he had commanded the rich lands of Carlisle and Cumberland instead. King Henry had obliged de Gernon’s father to give up those lands in exchange for the earldom, lest he become too all-powerful in the north. Perhaps the earl had not expected that, had expected to become a veritable king of the north? Haith was wearying himself with the ceaseless speculations whirring in his head. He tidied the papers up into a neat stack.
Frustrated in his search, Haith refused the offer of a comfortable bed for the night and pushed on instead toward Tiron Abbey. His road wound through valleys where the trees were starting to turn toward autumn. A few yellowing leaves stood among the green or fluttered softly to the ground. An incised stone marked the turnoff to the abbey, which took him on through dense woods. Many had beaten a broad track to the abbey gate, and Haith had no difficulty in finding his way. Once inside the courtyard, he led his tired horse to the stables and sat for a while watching the boys from the abbey school chase each other around the green quad, laughing and calling out taunts. He and the king had once been like these boys during their own schooling together. How much heavier were their responsibilities and the weight of their years and experiences now. When they were children, Henry had three older brothers and no expectations of ever becoming king. He and Haith thought their course was to become priests and court chaplains, with Henry, no doubt, rising to bishop and perhaps archbishop. How different a life that would have been for them both. On balance, Haith considered he preferred the active soldier’s life he had led and his current posting as sheriff. He felt an anxious twinge of guilt that he was not at his post right now, but he knew that the deputy he had left behind him in Pembroke was an able man.
The abbey porter who had admitted Haith ambled toward him. ‘Are you looking for a bed for the night, sir?’
‘Yes, many thanks,’ Haith told him, ‘and a word with your abbot.’
The porter’s face expressed his query and also conveyed that he was far too lazy to be made to actually voice it.
‘My name is Haith de Bruges, sheriff of Pembroke, in service to Duke Henry,’ Haith announced. ‘My business with your abbot is brief, but necessary.’
The porter nodded and strolled off again. Haith considered that if the porter’s speed was anything to go by, he might hear nothing back in response to his request until the morning. However, ten minutes later, an altogether brisker-looking man approached Haith. ‘Sheriff Haith, is it?’
Haith rose to his considerable height and tried not to give the abbot the impression that he was looming over him. ‘Yes, Lord Abbot. Thank you for speaking with me.’
The abbot indicated the stone bench that Haith had risen from, and they both subsided onto it.
‘I am here on a delicate matter,’ Haith opened. ‘It concerns the awful tragedy of The White Ship.’
‘Ah, yes. Awful indeed.’
‘I was on that ship myself,’ Haith ventured, hastening to add in response to the abbot’s raised eyebrows, ‘but disembarked shortly before she sailed. I watched several others disembark before me. Stephen, count de Blois and two monks of your order.’
‘Yes.’ The abbot’s voice and face were animated with the relief that the monks had disembarked.
That much was true then. Haith was relieved to have gotten this far. He had feared that the ‘monks’ might simply have been disguised in the voluminous grey habits of the Tironesian order, and in that case, he would have had very little hope of ever identifying them.
‘You know who they were, Lord Abbot?’
‘Certainly. There was talk of nothing else in the abbey for many weeks. The tragedy, and their lucky escape from the cruel sea. Brother Paul and Brother Bernard.’
‘Might I speak with them?’
‘To what purpose?’
‘I am hoping to bring some peace to my lord, Duke Henry, with any further details I can glean for him.’
‘Poor, poor man,’ replied the abbot. ‘To lose three children and so many members of his court in one cruel blow. His grief is beyond imagining. Very well. Of course, if there is any consolation we can offer … I will have you seated with these two brothers at the meal.’
Haith soon found that Brothers Paul and Bernard did not have much in the way of new information for him, except to confirm that they, like Count Stephen, had disembarked because of the rowdy drunkenness of the crew and the passengers. ‘Did Count Stephen appear ill to you?’ Haith asked.
They exchanged glances and Paul spoke. ‘In truth, no. He appeared hale and hearty. We were surprised later when we heard the rumours that he had disembarked due to illness since we saw the count head straight to The Trader with another lord, William de Roumare.’ He named a tavern in Barfleur where Haith had heard more or less the same tale from a friendly barmaid.
‘Sir Haith,’ the abbot called his attention with a question. ‘Has the duke indicated who he will name as heir?’ It was the question everyone was asking, in Normandy and in England, after the drowning of Prince William.
‘No,’ Haith replied. ‘Duke Henry has made no announcement on the succession yet. As you know, he is lately married to Adelisa de Louvain, and they hope that their marriage will soon be blessed with a child.’
The abbot nodded. ‘Of course, of course.’
There was a moment’s silence as the monks around him contemplated the question and kept their thoughts to themselves. An uncertain succession bred instability, created vulnerability, and presaged war. When the queen gave Henry a new heir, the insecurity of the succession would still remain. Though in good health and as robust as ever, Henry was undeniably hurtling toward old age and it would be many years before any child born now could step into his shoes. There would need to be a regent appointed to keep control of the kingdom of England and Wales and the duchy of Normandy on behalf of a child heir. Henry’s senior lords were already gearing up to contend with one another for that role, and Haith, along with everyone else sitting at the refectory table, knew those lords might be wondering why they should not simply take the crown or the duchy for themselves, rather than waiting out the time while a child grew to manhood. And then there was William Clito. Until Henry had a son, William Clito had the strongest claim to the duchy, but the king would never acknowledge that. Henry’s oldest, illegitimate son, Earl Robert of Gloucester, was certainly a contender to be appointed regent of a new heir, as was Henry’s nephew by his sister, Count Stephen de Blois. Robert was the more solid man, while Stephen was mercurial and ambitious. Haith knew these questions would be haunting Henry’s thoughts, just as they worried in the minds of his subjects.
After the meal, Haith made his way to the abbey’s guest dormitory and stretched his long frame on one of their beds, which, inevitably, was a good foot too short for him. He stared at the ceiling, but there was no relief for his frustration up there in the dusty cobwebs hanging from the beams. His interrogation of Berold had garnered valuable information on what had happened on the ship and how the murder of Gisulf had been the instigating incident, but he was no nearer to being sure who had commissioned that murder or why. Should he put Stephen de Blois back on his suspect list, along with Ranulf de Gernon? Stephen’s tale of illness might have been a deception, yet there could have been many innocent reasons for his decision to leave the ship. Haith’s diversion to Tiron had gained him little, and now he was anxious to reach Fontevraud and Benedicta as soon as he could. The ride from Tiron would take him two days.
‘Nest!’
My brother stepped from the doorway of the large house, and I rushed to embrace him. He, Gwenllian, and Cadell led me inside. It was a mean home for a ‘king’. Two younger boys stood there waiting to be introduced to their aunt: Morgan, who was six, and Maelgwyn, a lively three-year-old. The oldest brother, Anarawd, they told me, was out gathering firewood. ‘And where are your sisters?’ I asked them. They glanced shyly to their mother.
‘Gwladus and Nest are betrothed and gone to live in the households of their prospective husbands,’ Gwenllian said. Gwladus and Nest were also the children of my brother’s first marriage, and it made good sense, in the family’s impoverished circumstances, to send them from home as soon as possible.
‘Who are they betrothed to?’
‘Gwladus to Caradog ap Iestyn in Morgannwg and Nest, your namesake, to Ifor ap Meurug of Senghenydd.’
‘They are good matches.’
‘And why not?’ Gwenllian demanded. ‘They are daughters of the king of Deheubarth.’
‘Indeed,’ I placated, seeking to mollify her with the gestures of my hands and my expression. I bit back my question concerning the daughter that I had helped her to birth at Llansteffan when she and Gruffudd were on the run. I did not see that child about the place but could ask that question later. Instead, I produced my gifts of silver, food and a fine quilt. They were received gracefully by Gwenllian. My brother’s circumstances here were, indeed, straitened, and I was puzzled. ‘At a village on the way here, a man and his wife told me you had saved them from starvation, but now you have fallen on hard times yourselves?’
Gwenllian and Gruffudd glanced at each other. ‘We have always had hard times here,’ Gruffudd said, ‘but we find ways to help the local populace who are much oppressed by the Norman occupiers. All the good grazing land has been taken from the Welsh and they are taxed overhard besides.’
I waited to be enlightened further, but Gruffudd said nothing more. He went out a little later with Cadell to check that my men were adequately billeted, and I took the opportunity to press for more information. ‘But, Gwenllian, how do you help the villagers when you have nothing yourselves?’
‘We rob rich foreigners passing on the roads hereabouts and redistribute their greedy wealth.’
I gaped at her. ‘You rob?’
‘Yes. I am not ashamed of it. It is they who should be ashamed of their gluttony and cruelty.’
‘But you mean you rob them at sword point? By violence?’
‘Yes.’
‘You and Gruffudd and your followers.’
‘Yes.’
‘And by foreigners, you mean?’
‘Normans. Yes.’
‘But, Gwenllian, if the king or his justiciars should hear of it they would hang you all!’
‘Everything they have is stolen from us.’ She stared at me hard to see if I would disagree, but I could not. ‘We cover our faces. There is no evidence that it is us.’
‘But you run the risk.’
‘We have to. My own daughter died when we arrived here and I’ll not watch other Welsh children die of privation and illness with no money to aid them.’
‘Your daughter. I am so very sorry, Gwenllian.’ She kept her face turned away from me, the set of her mouth hard and fragile. I recalled that child’s birth, her first child. ‘Do you keep some of the proceeds of these robberies yourselves?’
‘Nothing,’ she declared. ‘Only what is needed to feed those here. The bare minimum.’
It was an astute action, as well as a charitable one, on the part of my brother and his wife. It garnered the inhabitants’ love and gratitude to Gruffudd, allowed him to give alms and gifts as a king should, kept his fame alive, despite the constraints that had been foist upon him.
* * *
Cadell slipped through the hole in the compound fence and ran up to the den in the woods above the village to find his older brother, Anarawd. ‘A black-haired princess is come to visit us,’ he told him.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Our aunt, it is. Our Aunt Nest.’
‘The one that’s fucked all the Normans?’
A guffaw burst from Cadell and he slapped his hand over Anarawd’s mouth, withdrawing it quickly again when Anarawd licked his palm. ‘Yuck!’ they exclaimed together. Cadell wiped his palm against his jerkin. ‘Don’t speak ill of her. Father would whip you. Besides, she’s nice.’
‘I’m sure she’s nice.’
‘She’s beautiful.’
‘You think all females are beautiful, including the backward girl who shovels the horseshit.’
‘Come and see for yourself, then. She has long, thick, black hair.’ He gestured at its length to his waist. ‘Great blue eyes like the dark pools of a bottomless sea. Dimples.’ Cadell poked two indentations into his own cheeks and opened his eyes as wide as they would go. ‘Truly, she is the most beautiful woman you have ever seen.’
‘More beautiful than Gwenllian?’
Cadell paused and considered. ‘They are both beautiful, but one red and one black. Her skin…’
‘Oh, stop, you bard! I don’t want to hear any more of your ecstasies. I shall come and see the Normans’ whore for myself.’
‘Anarawd, please don’t!’ Cadell screwed his face up in distress at his brother’s words. He scrubbed his sleeve across his nose. Hefting himself up, he ran in pursuit of his brother, hoping that Anarawd would not offend the beautiful princess.
* * *
At dinner, Cadell stared open-mouthed at me until Gwenllian frowned and he glanced away briefly, but then looked back again. ‘We have gold here, Aunt Nest,’ he blurted.
‘Gold, Cadell?’
‘He means the old Roman mines,’ Gruffudd told me. ‘They haven’t been worked for many years.’
‘Still gold there, though,’ Cadell asserted and winced. I guessed Anarawd had kicked him under the table.
‘Have you seen it, Cadell?’ I asked.
He nodded enthusiastically. ‘There’s great white streaks on the surface of the rock and flowing down and down the tunnels all the way into the centre of the world.’
I smiled with delight at his description, and Cadell squirmed in his seat and blushed.
‘Well white isn’t gold is it?’ Anarawd scoffed. Anarawd was thirteen and looked very like my black-haired brother, while Cadell had the blond colouring of his Cambro-Danish mother.
‘No, white isn’t gold,’ Cadell countered. ‘It’s quartz, but the gold glitters inside that vein. That’s where it is.’ He was clearly pleased to display his knowledge to me.
Gruffudd raised an eyebrow to me. ‘It’s true enough. I found a gold hoard, Nest,’ he told me, ‘from the Roman times. But no one has the art now to know how to release the gold from the rock’s grasp.’
‘No one?’ I queried. ‘I heard there are master miners in the north of England working the silver mines there and the Norman king, Henry, plans to visit them. I believe they are from Germany.’
Gruffudd shrugged.
‘I have told you before, Cadell, you must not play near the mines,’ Gwenllian complained. ‘Do you want to be sucked in by Gwen and never return to the land of the living?’
Cadell hung his head.
‘Gwen?’ I asked.
‘It’s the legend of the mines,’ Gwenllian responded. ‘There is a standing stone there, Carreg Pumsaint, where five saints rested during a great storm. They lay down on the stone and left their magical imprints – five ovals where they slept. It is said that they sleep for ever in the mine. A woman named Gwen, who was too curious for her own good,’ Gwenllian elbowed Cadell, who looked chagrined, ‘ventured in to take a peek at the sleeping saints. But she lost her way and she too sleeps there for ever, except on the nights of the full moon and a storm.’
‘What happens then?’ I asked, gripping Cadell’s hand.
Gwenllian waved her arms ghost-like in the air. ‘She emerges sobbing and yowling as a white vapour and may drag you down into the mine with her forever!’
We all laughed at the tale. ‘You tell a good story, Gwenllian!’ I declared.
‘To bed, boys,’ Gwenllian told Cadell and Anarawd. The younger children had retired before dinner with their nurse.
As Cadell passed me, I reached out and took his hand again, which caused him to flush hot and red-faced. Anarawd was of an age to feel he was a man and he sniggered at his brother’s embarrassment. ‘I have a request,’ I declared, looking at Gruffudd. ‘Would you send Anarawd and Cadell to come and stay with me for a while at Llansteffan?’ It had occurred to me that I could alleviate some of the financial strain on my brother’s family by taking some of his children under my wing. I could also arrange schooling for them and teach them how to comport themselves as princes, which Gwenllian and Gruffudd were hard-pressed to achieve here in Caeo. I glanced at Cadell’s face. A slow smile budded, and then became full blown at his father’s enthusiastic response.
6
Missing
Haith made a brief stop at the bishop’s palace in Lisieux to perform a search of the papers at the clerk Gisulf’s former lodgings. Lisieux was the seat of the king’s main administration in Normandy. Standing on the threshold of the palace, Haith watched a messenger gallop from the courtyard. The rider was bearing Haith’s news to King Henry in England of Waleran’s involvement in rebellion with Amaury de Montfort and William Clito. Haith’s letter described the marriages of Waleran’s sisters and the gathering of lords aligned with William Clito, which he had witnessed. There was nothing in Haith’s letter concerning his investigation into the wreck of The White Ship. When the messenger was out of sight, Haith ducked his head to avoid the lintel and stepped back into the lobby, heading toward the stairway up to Gisulf’s small room.
The clerk’s office was stuffed with papers of all kinds, from laundry lists to rough drafts of charters, but nothing that explained why Ranulf de Gernon might have ordered the murder of the king’s clerk on The White Ship with all its terrible consequences. Haith sat back hard in the flimsy chair he was perched upon, and it protested at his sudden movement. Why would Ranulf de Gernon murder Gisulf? Or had Ranulf perhaps intended the whole thing – the sinking, the deaths? Surely no man could countenance that massacre, could have no reason for it? He had suspected Stephen de Blois because the heir’s death brought him nearer to the throne. What did Ranulf gain? Richard, earl of Chester, had also died on the ship and de Gernon’s father had been made earl of Chester in his place, but that was hardly such a great gain. The earldom of Chester was not overly rich and was troublesome, due to the forays of the Welsh across the border. De Gernon’s father was better off before his elevation to the earldom, when he had commanded the rich lands of Carlisle and Cumberland instead. King Henry had obliged de Gernon’s father to give up those lands in exchange for the earldom, lest he become too all-powerful in the north. Perhaps the earl had not expected that, had expected to become a veritable king of the north? Haith was wearying himself with the ceaseless speculations whirring in his head. He tidied the papers up into a neat stack.
Frustrated in his search, Haith refused the offer of a comfortable bed for the night and pushed on instead toward Tiron Abbey. His road wound through valleys where the trees were starting to turn toward autumn. A few yellowing leaves stood among the green or fluttered softly to the ground. An incised stone marked the turnoff to the abbey, which took him on through dense woods. Many had beaten a broad track to the abbey gate, and Haith had no difficulty in finding his way. Once inside the courtyard, he led his tired horse to the stables and sat for a while watching the boys from the abbey school chase each other around the green quad, laughing and calling out taunts. He and the king had once been like these boys during their own schooling together. How much heavier were their responsibilities and the weight of their years and experiences now. When they were children, Henry had three older brothers and no expectations of ever becoming king. He and Haith thought their course was to become priests and court chaplains, with Henry, no doubt, rising to bishop and perhaps archbishop. How different a life that would have been for them both. On balance, Haith considered he preferred the active soldier’s life he had led and his current posting as sheriff. He felt an anxious twinge of guilt that he was not at his post right now, but he knew that the deputy he had left behind him in Pembroke was an able man.
The abbey porter who had admitted Haith ambled toward him. ‘Are you looking for a bed for the night, sir?’
‘Yes, many thanks,’ Haith told him, ‘and a word with your abbot.’
The porter’s face expressed his query and also conveyed that he was far too lazy to be made to actually voice it.
‘My name is Haith de Bruges, sheriff of Pembroke, in service to Duke Henry,’ Haith announced. ‘My business with your abbot is brief, but necessary.’
The porter nodded and strolled off again. Haith considered that if the porter’s speed was anything to go by, he might hear nothing back in response to his request until the morning. However, ten minutes later, an altogether brisker-looking man approached Haith. ‘Sheriff Haith, is it?’
Haith rose to his considerable height and tried not to give the abbot the impression that he was looming over him. ‘Yes, Lord Abbot. Thank you for speaking with me.’
The abbot indicated the stone bench that Haith had risen from, and they both subsided onto it.
‘I am here on a delicate matter,’ Haith opened. ‘It concerns the awful tragedy of The White Ship.’
‘Ah, yes. Awful indeed.’
‘I was on that ship myself,’ Haith ventured, hastening to add in response to the abbot’s raised eyebrows, ‘but disembarked shortly before she sailed. I watched several others disembark before me. Stephen, count de Blois and two monks of your order.’
‘Yes.’ The abbot’s voice and face were animated with the relief that the monks had disembarked.
That much was true then. Haith was relieved to have gotten this far. He had feared that the ‘monks’ might simply have been disguised in the voluminous grey habits of the Tironesian order, and in that case, he would have had very little hope of ever identifying them.
‘You know who they were, Lord Abbot?’
‘Certainly. There was talk of nothing else in the abbey for many weeks. The tragedy, and their lucky escape from the cruel sea. Brother Paul and Brother Bernard.’
‘Might I speak with them?’
‘To what purpose?’
‘I am hoping to bring some peace to my lord, Duke Henry, with any further details I can glean for him.’
‘Poor, poor man,’ replied the abbot. ‘To lose three children and so many members of his court in one cruel blow. His grief is beyond imagining. Very well. Of course, if there is any consolation we can offer … I will have you seated with these two brothers at the meal.’
Haith soon found that Brothers Paul and Bernard did not have much in the way of new information for him, except to confirm that they, like Count Stephen, had disembarked because of the rowdy drunkenness of the crew and the passengers. ‘Did Count Stephen appear ill to you?’ Haith asked.
They exchanged glances and Paul spoke. ‘In truth, no. He appeared hale and hearty. We were surprised later when we heard the rumours that he had disembarked due to illness since we saw the count head straight to The Trader with another lord, William de Roumare.’ He named a tavern in Barfleur where Haith had heard more or less the same tale from a friendly barmaid.
‘Sir Haith,’ the abbot called his attention with a question. ‘Has the duke indicated who he will name as heir?’ It was the question everyone was asking, in Normandy and in England, after the drowning of Prince William.
‘No,’ Haith replied. ‘Duke Henry has made no announcement on the succession yet. As you know, he is lately married to Adelisa de Louvain, and they hope that their marriage will soon be blessed with a child.’
The abbot nodded. ‘Of course, of course.’
There was a moment’s silence as the monks around him contemplated the question and kept their thoughts to themselves. An uncertain succession bred instability, created vulnerability, and presaged war. When the queen gave Henry a new heir, the insecurity of the succession would still remain. Though in good health and as robust as ever, Henry was undeniably hurtling toward old age and it would be many years before any child born now could step into his shoes. There would need to be a regent appointed to keep control of the kingdom of England and Wales and the duchy of Normandy on behalf of a child heir. Henry’s senior lords were already gearing up to contend with one another for that role, and Haith, along with everyone else sitting at the refectory table, knew those lords might be wondering why they should not simply take the crown or the duchy for themselves, rather than waiting out the time while a child grew to manhood. And then there was William Clito. Until Henry had a son, William Clito had the strongest claim to the duchy, but the king would never acknowledge that. Henry’s oldest, illegitimate son, Earl Robert of Gloucester, was certainly a contender to be appointed regent of a new heir, as was Henry’s nephew by his sister, Count Stephen de Blois. Robert was the more solid man, while Stephen was mercurial and ambitious. Haith knew these questions would be haunting Henry’s thoughts, just as they worried in the minds of his subjects.
After the meal, Haith made his way to the abbey’s guest dormitory and stretched his long frame on one of their beds, which, inevitably, was a good foot too short for him. He stared at the ceiling, but there was no relief for his frustration up there in the dusty cobwebs hanging from the beams. His interrogation of Berold had garnered valuable information on what had happened on the ship and how the murder of Gisulf had been the instigating incident, but he was no nearer to being sure who had commissioned that murder or why. Should he put Stephen de Blois back on his suspect list, along with Ranulf de Gernon? Stephen’s tale of illness might have been a deception, yet there could have been many innocent reasons for his decision to leave the ship. Haith’s diversion to Tiron had gained him little, and now he was anxious to reach Fontevraud and Benedicta as soon as he could. The ride from Tiron would take him two days.
