Daughter of the Last King, page 6
part #1 of Conquest I Series
One day the sun was shining, and I asked Amelina, ‘Will you come with me to look at the view from the keep?’
‘Oh no, Lady Nest. Don’t ask me that. I’m terrified of being up heights and besides, I can’t go in there with those soldiers.’
‘Why not?’
‘They wouldn’t lay a finger on you. They know they’d lose those fingers soon as, if they did, but they won’t be so particular about me. I’m not going in there.’
‘Very well, I will go alone.’ She looked at me doubtfully but I walked out into the bailey and moved with determination toward the causeway, wondering how I might gain access to the keep towering above my head, perched on its grassed mound. There was shouting and a commotion behind me and I turned to see the main gates opening to admit a train of carts and loaded packhorses to the lower bailey. I stepped aside as they made straight up the path toward the causeway. As the last of them moved past me, I slipped in behind them, my hand on the bundle slung from a donkey. We climbed slowly up the steep incline, and I had to use the thick rope fixed to solid posts along the side to help haul me along. The small train of packhorses and carts stopped at the end of the causeway where I peered down with some anxiety at the long drop to the murky moat below and back up at the tall wooden keep. Soldiers looked down on us from the high gallery walk circling the very top of the keep.
For a few moments nothing happened, but then there was a creaking and the drawbridge bounced down onto the lip of the causeway, sending wood dust jumping up all around into the air. The small procession moved forward and I with it. Two soldiers stood on the other side regarding me and clearly knew who I was. ‘What’s your business here, little lady?’ one of them asked.
‘I wondered if I might take a look from the top of this fine keep,’ I said. ‘Lady Sybil has told me I may explore where I will.’
‘Be my guest,’ the soldier said. ‘It’s quite a climb.’
The keep had three storeys and no way in from the ground floor. I climbed up the exterior stairway to the first floor and entered. Inside there was a small hall with a hearth and trestles and soldiers who stilled the click of their dice and paused with their pottage and conversation to stare curiously at me. Perhaps I should not have ventured here alone, should have insisted that Amelina come with me after all, but I was here now. I would persist. In one corner of the square hall, there was a hole in the floor and a ladder going down to the storage space on the ground floor. In another corner, I saw a ladder going up and crossed to it. I could see the sky above my head. The ladder was steep but solid and I emerged into the sunlight on the walkway at the top of the keep. The soldiers up here could see everything for miles around, beyond the castle, and everything happening below inside the castle. They would spot any escape attempt in no time, certainly during the hours of daylight.
I looked at the path down to the postern gate that led from behind the high grassy motte and let out through the castle’s main wall to the moat. It was also guarded and there was no bridge to cross the moat there, but two small row-boats were drawn up on the bank, outside the gate. Even if I somehow got beyond the wall and over the moat, there was little cover to conceal an escape. Unlike some places I had seen, this garrison consisted of men with their wits about them who were well drilled and conscientious in their duties. After my explorations, I could see no likely means of gaining freedom, but I was glad at least to have roamed and seen the extent of my prison and spoken with many people who in time would grow used to me and forget I was a prisoner.
When I woke, I often crossed early to the causeway. The soldiers, growing accustomed to my habits, would see me coming and lower the drawbridge. ‘Being invaded by the Welsh again,’ they joked. As Amelina had suggested, they made the most of every opportunity of looking me over, but no one dared to touch me or offer me insult. I would climb to the top of the keep and look across to the silvery black morning light on the river. I loved to see the countryside laid out for miles and miles, and just glimpse the rising sun on the distant sea. It gave me a sense of somewhere beyond the walls of this fortress.
My lessons with Master Richard gave shape, and sometimes interest, to my life, but many days I woke feeling helpless and hopeless and could not concentrate to his satisfaction. He tried kindness, and he tried punishment. I wanted to please him, but often my torpor overcame that intention. Eventually, exasperated, he took me before Sybil to answer for my failures. ‘The girl will not apply herself consistently. I am at a loss how to proceed with her.’
‘You, Master Richard, at a loss? Surely not,’ Sybil said, regarding me intently, so that I grew uncomfortable under her gaze. ‘What encouragements have you tried?’ she said, eventually.
‘For a short while she progressed well, and I congratulated her, but lately she stares into space and will not work, answering me with vagueness or silence. Perhaps she is a hopeless case, Lady Sybil, more or less a simpleton. Perhaps it is her Welsh blood, and she is simply not capable of the learning we might expect from a Norman lady.’
I bridled at this insult, but kept my eyes down. I expected Sybil to mete out more punishment. My hands throbbed with the lashings Master Richard had applied with a thick strap he kept hanging on a hook in the locusts’ room. When I returned after my lessons to Amelina she frowned, ran to fetch butter from the pantry and delicately touched it to my tender, reddened palms so that I had to bite my lip hard not to cry. My lip was near as swollen as my paddled hands.
‘Leave us,’ Sybil said, and I looked up, thinking she spoke to me but saw Master Richard was bowing and leaving the room. ‘Sit down here, child.’ She indicated the space beside her on the bench. It was covered in soft green cushions and gold drapings cascading to the floor. Sybil was more or less immobilised now by her huge belly. I sat next to her and was surprised when she touched my hair and tucked one stray lock from my plait behind my ear. I looked up at her face. ‘I know how hard it is to lose your family, child, to feel yourself alone in the world.’ I was bewildered by this softness from her. Perhaps it was a trick, a lulling of me that would end in a beating. ‘You are safe here now, with me. I have a small gift for you, Nest, since you arrived with nothing of your own.’ She handed me a wooden box carved with an intricate design of vines and flowers weaving around each other. It was the length of my forearm in every direction and filled my lap. There was some weight to it but not so much that I could not lift it.
I gawped at the box. It had a fine metal lock and key. ‘Thank you, my lady.’
‘Look inside.’
I lifted the lid. The box was lined with blue fabric and on it sat two pale glass beakers, a knife and spoon.
‘My lady! They are beautiful.’ Carefully, I lifted up one of the beakers. It was the shape of a miniature bucket and the glass was incised with a lion, an eagle and a griffin. I ran my finger around the pattern and then placed the beaker back on its fabric nest. The knife was small, with a straight blade for the dinner table and other domestic uses. It had a wooden handle decorated with a narrow engraved band of silver. The spoon was made of the same pale wood with a matching silver band.
‘It’s nothing, Nest. You are a noblewoman and must have some equipment. Amelina is adjusting some dresses for you too, which she will bring to your room. And you would do me a kindness if you could try to concentrate on your lessons. Will you do that?’
I swallowed, searching for my voice. ‘I will try,’ I said.
She smiled. ‘Thank you, Nest. I know you are no fool and can do well. Take your box to your room, then run back to Master Richard.’
I did as she said, placing the box on the shelf of the aumbry in my room, next to my shrivelling claw. Amelina had already laid out the dresses that Sybil spoke of on my bed. One dress was a dark blue, and the other was grey, both made from fine wool with embroidered cuffs and necklines. They joined with the fine dark red dress I had worn since my arrival and was wearing still. I smiled at the sight of the dresses, but caught myself up suddenly. Was I so easily seduced by dresses and cups then? I had to remember that Sybil and these Normans were my enemies and had ruthlessly killed my family.
Lady Sybil must have instructed Master Richard to use kindness and not strapping on me. Kindness came more awkwardly to him, but he did his best. He had a mountain of his own work that stood on either side of him on our desk, like two squat cream pillars of parchments. While I studied, he got on with his clerking.
He was the leading scribe for the whole Montgomery family, he told me proudly. ‘Lady Sybil’s father, Roger the earl of Shrewsbury, was one of William the Conqueror’s most important men when the Normans first invaded England and he was richly rewarded. The Montgomerys are at the very tip of the Norman elite. They are the wealthiest, the most powerful family and yet, pride may come before a fall …’ He tapped the side of his nose as if there was more he could say, but he would not. ‘At any rate,’ he went on, ‘Lady Sybil’s husband Robert FitzHamon, he is well in with King William Rufus.’
I considered it might be in my interest to learn the lie of the land with the enemy, so I listened carefully to Master Richard’s remarks. He managed an enormous workload, with letters, reckonings and instructions coming from Shrewsbury, from the earl and two of Sybil’s brothers there, Hugh and Philippe; from Sybil’s husband, FitzHamon who was away at the king’s court; from her two brothers in France, Robert de Bellême and Roger the Poitevin; and finally also from Arnulf in Pembroke. I gleaned that Sybil’s father and her oldest brother, Bellême, were in disfavour with King William because they had rebelled against him.
Master Richard was like a spider at the centre of his web of papers that came in and out from all sides, and he told me cheerfully about it. ‘Ah, Nest, today, we have a letter from …’ he would say, liking an audience for his labours. To my relief, Master Richard read out one letter from the king’s procurator, Ranulf Flambard, telling Arnulf that King William was uncertain as yet that he would give permission for Arnulf to marry me. ‘You are the king’s ward now, Nest,’ Master Richard told me, ‘and he is looking out for a good husband for you.’ Sybil had informed me the king would not recognise my betrothal to Owain ap Cadwgan and I should forget about that, and I had informed myself that I would do no such thing.
One morning, Master Richard had to leave me alone with the locusts to go on an errand. To still my nervousness at his insects, I got up and went to look at his paperwork, sifting through the letters there carefully so that he would not know. I was surprised when I slowly deciphered a letter from Master Richard to Ranulf Flambard informing on the Montgomerys’ comings and goings, their sayings and doings at Cardiff Castle. He was spying on the family that employed him, selling away their secrets. ‘The Montgomerys are confident that Duke Robert will take England if our King William dies,’ I read. It seemed Lady Sybil had a cuckoo in her nest. The sound of Master Richard’s imminent return came from the passageway and I knew I would not have time to get around the huge table and regain my seat, so instead I stepped swiftly to the small arched opening next to the locusts’ vitrine, looking down the wooden steps there curiously.
‘Be careful there, Nest,’ Master Richard’s voice came behind me. ‘That old staircase is badly broken and Lady Sybil has closed it off from use until she can find the money to get it repaired.’
I turned back to face him brightly. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘My father told me curiosity killed the cat, and I was the nosiest kitten he knew.’ Master Richard turned his face away to look at his papers as my eyes filled with tears at the memory of my father. I moved slowly around the table, keeping as far away from the locusts as possible, their hundreds of bulbous yellow-green eyes swivelling to watch me, and I sat down again with my books.
In the afternoons, I sat in Sybil’s chamber sewing or learning the table manners of Norman ladies. ‘Always wash your hands before a meal and wipe your mouth before drinking. You must cut your bread, rather than tearing it. Do not lean on the table, dip your food in the salt, or speak to someone when they are drinking. Never wriggle your shoulders or allow your hands to be touched by a man who is not of the family.’
I nodded, keeping my opinion to myself that I already knew all this, as I had been schooled to be the wife of a Welsh king since I could speak my own name.
‘A wife should possess wisdom, modesty, generosity, fertility, and give good advice to her husband. Your behaviour should be decorous, your speech genial and elegant, your bearing regal and composed. I expect you to start behaving in this way from now on. Do you understand?’
I could rarely get a word in amidst Sybil’s, in any case. She was garrulous in the extreme and I often felt her speech was like a waterfall washing relentlessly over me, dashing down on my head. If she momentarily left the room, the sudden hush was a shock.
In my chamber, Amelina and I amused ourselves with ‘anti-manners’: strutting around the room indecorously, wriggling our shoulders in the extreme, tearing up bread and dipping it in a salt-cellar, our elbows plonked on the table. We took it in turns speaking, unforgivably, at the other, who was drinking from a beaker. Amelina, eventually sobering from our game, showed me how to curtsey to the king when he came visiting, which in her case involved revealing a great deal of bosom as she bobbed down low.
‘Will he come?’ I asked.
‘Oh yes,’ she said, ‘Lady Sybil’s husband, Lord Robert FitzHamon is the king’s greatest friend. And entrusted with the task of subduing the Welsh.’
I wondered how FitzHamon could achieve that task, since he was rarely here. I did not meet him for the whole first year of my stay in Cardiff. ‘We have large estates in Normandy, also,’ Sybil told me, and sometimes her husband was away there too, taking care of their interests.
‘We don’t see the lord from one end of the year to the next,’ Amelina said, ‘so it’s a wonder how my lady can get a chance to get an heir. Let’s hope it’s a boy in her belly right now.’
Most of the household were Normans, speaking French, but a few of the lesser servants were Welsh and I could snatch some moments in my own language, although they were cowed by my status and shy to talk at first. One of the stableboys, Bryn, told me with certainty that Owain and Cadwgan would come to rescue me. ‘For sure, lady,’ he whispered.
I found I could converse easily enough with Amelina, and she was keen to gossip about Sybil. ‘Lot younger than her husband, she is.’
‘What is he like?’
She shrugged. ‘Old. Not bad. But rotten ugly. Terrible teeth.’ She made a face like a rat, making me laugh. ‘Not as harsh as she is sometimes.’
The castle was well garrisoned and the surrounding plains and castles beyond had been parcelled out to FitzHamon’s leading men: Robert de Haie at Newport, Winebald de Ballon at Caerleon and his brother Hamelin at Abergavenny. These Normans had driven the local Welsh people up into the hills and kept them there with constant patrols and skirmishes. My father had killed the king of this region, Caradog, in battle, and they had no strong leader now. Sybil had spies at work everywhere in Morgannwg. They came from the Welsh settlements in the hills and told her of the vaunting and threats of the Welshmen, which she laughed at, especially when they told her old King Caradog’s son was known as Owain the Weak. These people, I learned from Bryn, were reduced to hiding in the thickly wooded valleys, in caves and on the hill-tops and yet a number of other Welsh lords I heard mentioned – Iestyn ap Gwrgant and Senghenydd – were holding out against the Normans and seemed to be offering a greater challenge.
I spoke with Amelina about my surprise at Sybil’s rule. ‘The wife of a Welsh king or noble does not concern herself overmuch with such matters.’
‘Things are different with these great Norman ladies. They can inherit land if there is no male heir. They can act as regent if their husband is away, as Sybil does, or if their son is too young to rule.’
‘A woman does not inherit land under Welsh law. Why doesn’t a brother or an uncle or a cousin grasp power if a son is too young to assert his rule?’
‘That is the Welsh way, but Norman law and expectations are different. A woman has the right if she has the bloodline and the capability, of course, as Sybil surely does.’
Sybil’s spies and messengers came from the English king’s entourage, and they came from Normandy. Slowly I grew to know the complex geographies and eddies of the Montgomerys’ world, although I knew, too, there were matters not discussed in front of me, mostly relating to Duke Robert of Normandy. They showed less discretion when they spoke of the Welsh because they saw us as vanquished. When Sybil or her visiting Norman allies spoke of their contestation with my countrymen, it was mostly Cadwgan’s name I heard. If the plan to marry me to her brother Arnulf came about, how could I live my life? I was Welsh, and I did not want to be this Norman wife they were trying to mould me into. I longed for my father’s llys – his court with the bards, the boasting and jokes of his men. I ached for sight of his wise face and the gentle touch of his hand on my head.
* * *
from The Copybook of Sister Benedicta
* * *
Westminster, October 1093
Greetings, Benedicta, oh great venerable mistress of the scriptorium. Henry and I continued in England this year. You mention the Montgomery family that your abbess belongs to at the end of your last letter. I fear they are not on the same side of things as my Lord Henry, so pray do be circumspect in what you discuss with your abbess. Nothing of me and Henry, I beg you, for they might use it against him. I hesitate to ask it, Benedicta, and insist that you run no risks, but it would be greatly beneficial to us if you do let me know anything of the movements and minds of Bellême and his brother Roger the Poitevin that you might learn, or anything on the other Montgomerys. Do not tell me anything your abbess speaks of regarding her family unless you are content that I should pass it on to Henry. I am his man through and through, Benedicta.
