The Anarchy, page 7
Haith broke his journey near Tours, staying in the guesthouse of Marmoutier Abbey. The ride to Fontevraud was uneventful aside from driving rain on the first day, followed by brilliant sunshine in the Loire Valley on the second day. The wet leaves sparkled in the sun like washed jewels. Haith’s arrival at the abbey, on the other hand, was far from uneventful.
Haith sat in the office of the abbess and gaped at her. Growing aware that he was staring foolishly, rudely, he closed his mouth and shifted his gaze to the floor where his own hound lay next to the abbess’ dog and tentatively licked the other’s haunch in friendly fashion.
‘I assure you that both things are true, Sir Haith,’ Abbess Petronilla told him. ‘Your sister is not here, and she is safe.’
Recovering from his initial surprise, Haith began to feel angry. His journey had been a wild goose chase. ‘Well, where the … (he bit back the blasphemy) is she?’
‘I cannot tell you that. I can only say that your sister was a small child given as a gift to God before she was old enough to make that choice herself and, nowadays, the Church begins to frown on such practices, although they are not so nimble in making changes. Here at Fontevraud, we strive always to be at the forefront of Christian thinking.’
Haith stared at the serene, quietly spoken woman. ‘Are you telling me, Lady Abbess, that Benedicta has abandoned the cloister? For good?’
‘I regard her as being on an extended pilgrimage,’ the abbess suggested, smiling gently. ‘I told her I could collude in her decision and that, perhaps, so would you, but there was still the matter of her soul and her word to God. The only remedy there was to make a confession to a priest and soon, but any priest would return her to the retribution of the Church and, in that case, things would not go gently with her. I advised her of all that.’ Defensiveness crept into the voice of the abbess, and she averted her eyes.
‘But she went, nonetheless?’ Haith asked. ‘When did this happen?’
‘Perhaps two years ago,’ Petronilla remembered, casting her eyes to the ceiling in an effort to calculate the time.
Haith’s control over his surprise deserted him, and he openly gawked at the abbess. Benedicta had written to him many times in the last two years. She had deceived him, or at least allowed him to think that she was here all that time. ‘Well, where is she? Give me a clue, Lady Abbess. I need to be assured of her safety.’
‘Will you return her to the Church?’ the abbess asked, suddenly holding his gaze.
‘No,’ he asserted. ‘What my sister wills, there my support will follow, whatever her reasoning. I am simply anxious for her.’
‘Well, then, I think you could do worse than seek news of her in the household of a Welsh noblewoman named Nest ferch Rhys. I do not know a great deal about this lady, but perhaps you …’
Haith ceased to hear the words the abbess was speaking. His astonishment reached its apex. What, in God’s name, could any connection be between Benedicta and Nest?
‘I have been forwarding your letters to Benedicta in Wales,’ the abbess continued, ‘but I suppose there is a lapse of quite some time before she receives them. Your sister, as I am sure you are well aware, knows her own mind. She will make her own peace and find her own way to God, I have no doubt. Please give her my affectionate wishes when you find her.’
‘Thank you for your candour, Lady Abbess. And for your great kindness to my sister. I must make haste to return to my post in Wales and find her there, it seems.’
The abbess smiled. ‘Tell me, Sir Haith,’ she said, ‘has the duke made an announcement on the succession yet?’
Haith gave the abbess the same unsatisfactory answer he had made in Tiron. ‘The duke has recently taken Adelisa de Louvain as his new queen and they pray that their marriage might be blessed before long with a child and heir to England, Wales, and Normandy.’
The abbess nodded.
‘Before I leave, I have another kindness to ask,’ Haith said.
The abbess raised one eyebrow and inclined her head. ‘How else may I help you, sir?’
‘I would make confession,’ Haith said. He had been feeling the burden of guilt at his torture of the butcher in Pont Audemer, but had not made confession for a long time, and there was a great deal more besides that he needed to unburden.
The abbess directed Haith to the abbey priest, who had just finished hearing the confessions of the nuns in the great abbey church. The nuns looked sidelong and curious at Haith as they filed out. When they were gone, Haith took his place beside the priest and, first, listed the men that he could remember or was aware of having killed in battle.
The priest shook his head dolefully and gave Haith a stern penance. ‘The path of the warrior is your duty, my son, but it stains your soul and does not lead you to God’s grace.’
Haith cleared his throat. ‘Well, there’s more, I’m afraid, Father. Recently I … well, tortured a man.’ The priest blanched and looked askance at Haith. The small man fought to regain his composure. No doubt Haith’s litany of violence was out of the ordinary from the confessions he heard from the nuns of Fontevraud. The priest increased the terms of Haith’s penance and was about to conclude the confession. Haith took a breath. ‘There is more that I must confess.’
The priest glanced up. ‘More?’ He looked away from Haith’s face again quickly, studying the rosary sliding between his fingers. No doubt, he judged Haith to be the usual brutal Flemish mercenary. Haith itched to justify his actions, but that was hardly showing penitence or remorse, so he resolved to stick to the bald facts.
‘Yes, my son?’
‘I love another man’s wife.’
‘That is a grave sin…’ the priest began.
‘I have always loved her,’ Haith blurted. ‘When she was the mistress of the … (he could not name the king) my master, when she was married to her first husband, and now that she is wed to a second.’
‘You must put all such longings aside,’ the priest told him sternly. ‘Else you will go to your maker steeped in mortal sin.’
Haith baulked at the idea that loving Nest was somehow more heinous a sin than torturing Berold or killing men in war. Could love, the kind of love he felt for her, be sin?
It was only as Haith heard the gates of Fontevraud Abbey clang shut behind him and his horse began her steady walk back along the long road they had travelled together that he realised he still had the gift from Count Amaury de Montfort in his saddlebag. The small, wrapped book was addressed to ‘Benedicta’ in the count’s elegant hand, and so that was where Haith would carry it, together with his questions. Was Amaury de Montfort the reason Benedicta had left the convent?
As a long stretch of road opened up before him, suppressed emotion began to well up in Haith at the thought of Benedicta free of the cloister. It was the first time since Nest’s marriage to de Marais that he had felt anything resembling joy and he savoured it for several minutes and then startled his horse by slapping his thigh and laughing out loud at his delightful sister.
7
Desperate Measures
I looked down onto another river – the river Avon – lapping its serene curve around the foot of the curtain wall at Bristol Castle and caressed my rounding stomach. I could be sure now. I was with child and could leave my husband.
I had been visiting with my foster-sister, Mabel FitzRobert, countess of Gloucester, at Cardiff Castle, where we had grown up together. I planned to stay for a few weeks’ respite from de Marais, but news that the king would be passing nearby at Bristol galvanised me to action. Desperate measures were necessary if I were to escape my marriage.
The journey from Cardiff to Bristol was harsh at this time of year, with autumn seas, rains and mired roads to contend with. Mabel, Amelina and Ida accompanied me on the journey, together with an escort of Mabel’s armed men. We rode first toward Striguil and crossed the Severn near there by ferry. I was drenched to the bone and nauseous with the child I carried. ‘This reminds me of my first journey out of Wales,’ I shouted at Mabel above the bluster of wind and waves. Her round face, framed by a dark wimple, glistened white and shiny with the drenchings from the salt water.
‘Yes?’ she yelled back.
‘I travelled with your parents, crossing this channel on our way to Glastonbury where your mother asked the saint to intercede and give her a son.’
The boat rocked furiously, and Amelina kept her eyes tight shut. The sudden swoops of the ship as it fell down tall waves were unkind to us all and we reached dry land in a state of disbelief that we were still alive.
To get down-country to Bristol from our place of landing, we were obliged to traverse a landscape criss-crossed with rushing waters loaded with rain. The roads were foundrous everywhere. Crossing several fords and quagmires, we teetered on improvised planks of wood. At one fast watercourse, all the ford could offer us was a guide-rope slung across the river between trees that we must cling to, hand over hand, to reach the other side. ‘We can’t do that, Nest!’ Amelina declared. ‘We have to turn back.’
‘It’s not so deep,’ Mabel said. ‘I’ve crossed it before.’
‘In spate? Like this?’ exclaimed Amelina.
‘We have no choice,’ I declared. I pulled my horse’s reins over his head and led him toward the edge of the river.
‘Nest!’ Amelina cried out behind me, but I did not turn back. With my free hand I gripped tightly onto the guide-rope. At the river’s edge, my horse and I sunk into soft mud knee deep and the freezing water tugged hard and fast at us, longing to carry us downstream in its headlong tumble. I knew I must not pull in terror on the bridle and transmit my fear to my horse. I kept my grip on the bridle soft and my grasp on the guide-rope fierce and was glad that Amelina had laced my boots so tightly this morning. I felt with my foot for something other than mud, knowing that the riverbed itself would likely be more stony. I found something harder beneath my foot and advanced, hoping to find more stones and rocks mid-stream. My sodden gown and cloak weighed heavy on me.
I heard splashes and screeches behind me and glanced back to see some men of the guard, then Ida, Amelina, Mabel and the rest of the men following me into the churning, brown waters. At mid-stream, we were wading up to our necks. We had to evade the panicked kicks and thrashing of the horses as the men struggled to lead them through the water. We had to keep an eye out for broken trees and tangled mats of vegetation carried by the flood that might knock us from our hold on the rope. The river dragged at me. My teeth chattered. I struggled on, and my horse pulled me in its keenness to emerge from the river. I felt the water swilling around my knees and saw that I had made it. There was more mud at this bank, making a last attempt to haul me under, but I tugged my leg from its grip and clambered up the bank where I watched the men assist Ida, Amelina, and Mabel reach the land. We stood gasping and shivering, waiting for the whole party to assemble on the bank, astonished to be free of the river and to see each other grimed as golems.
On our arrival at Bristol Castle, Mabel had the servants show us to a fine room with a good fire blazing. Mabel’s husband, Earl Robert of Gloucester, King Henry’s oldest illegitimate son, held Bristol and Cardiff. The castle at Bristol stood on a narrow strip of land between the Avon and Frome rivers and had very stout defences.
‘No more water, please! Ever!’ declared Amelina as she stripped us of our sodden, muddied clothes. ‘If thou wilt become unwell, wash thy head and go to sleep,’ she muttered.
‘We will soon be warm and dry,’ I tried to reassure her. We squirmed into clean shifts, pulling them unevenly down over our resistant damp skin with chapped fingers. Ida held her chilled hands toward the fire to help the blood flow again to her fingertips.
When we were fed and warmed, Ida sat with stylus poised, ready to write my letter. I was capable of writing my own letters, but I did what I could to make her feel necessary in my household. And besides, not to write to my husband in my own hand put yet more welcome distance between us. I dictated the letter:
To Stephen de Marais, Constable of Cardigan Castle. From Nest ferch Rhys.
Greetings. I have happy news that I am carrying a child. I would not risk myself to a winter journey …
Amelina snorted and she and Ida trained accusatory glances upon me.
‘… journey,’ I carried on firmly,
and will remain in the care of my foster-sister, the countess of Gloucester, at Bristol Castle. I will send you word when the child is born. It will be sometime in the spring of next year. I have all the help and care that I need here. I know your duties are heavy in Cardigan and you must remain at your post.
Stay in health, husband.
‘No further embellishment?’ asked Ida, looking up from the scroll and blotting her work.
‘No. That’s it.’
‘Double delight!’ declared Amelina. I shook my head at her, warning her to stop talking, but she continued, nevertheless. ‘A baby! And an unwanted husband held at bay!’
‘Amelina!’ exclaimed Ida. ‘You may think such things, but you should not say them aloud.’
‘That has never been Amelina’s strong point,’ I said.
Mabel entered in a hurry. ‘I’ve found out that the king holds court now, Nest, and will only stay here this one night. You had best seek audience with him immediately.’
Ida and I considered each other with anxious expressions. Apart from her brother Haith, the king was the only person in England and Wales who would recognise her as a runaway nun. ‘Stay here and do not show yourself,’ I told her calmly. I looked down at myself. Amelina had just swapped my mud-smeared travelling clothes for an old, plain dress.
‘That won’t do,’ Amelina exclaimed, finding a new burst of energy that enabled her to jump up from the pallet to tackle her area of expertise. ‘But all your dresses have been drenched on the journey and need to be aired. They are damp at best and sodden on the whole. What to do?’ She turned a stricken face to Mabel, who smiled her amusement at Amelina’s dramatics. Amelina had been my maid since I’d grown up in Mabel’s family and Mabel was as familiar with her manipulations as I was. ‘Come and look through my wardrobe, Amelina, and see if you can find a gown that will not look too short on Nest.’
‘And ribbons I’ll be needing too,’ Amelina emphasised, shooting a determined glance at me over her shoulder as they hurried out.
In a surprisingly short time, Amelina had me looking like a fine court lady who had taken all day preparing for her audience with the king. She tricked me out in one of Mabel’s best floor-length, long-sleeved undertunics of pale green wool and covered part of that with a richly embroidered sleeveless tunic. My shoes were embroidered with gold thread and pearls, my borrowed mantel was light brown with a high ermine collar that caressed my neck and chin. As Amelina fussed around me, I wondered whether I would find Haith travelling with the king’s court. I had heard nothing of him in Wales. Amelina stepped back from threading bright green ribbons through my dark plaits and pinning a short, delicate veil onto my head. She moved the beaded girdle so that it was slung more alluringly across my hips. My pregnancy was visible but not yet far advanced. Amelina’s expression was smug.
‘What I look like is one thing,’ I said, ‘and I thank you, Amelina, for your trouble and Mabel, for your loans, but it is what I can find to say that really matters.’
‘Nonsense,’ announced Amelina. ‘You could talk gibberish Welsh for half an hour straight and the king would not notice what it was that you said at all.’
I could not feel so confident. I was twenty years older than when Henry had first loved me and though he had aged himself, of course, his current mistresses and his wife were more than half his age.
I sidled in at the back of the hall where the king was holding court, intending to first assess the situation, see who was present, judge the mood of the king. However, I had only been standing looking about me for five minutes when the drone of the clerk’s voice suddenly stopped. The king called out, ‘Lady Nest? Is that you there?’
I looked up, embarrassed, as the crowd all turned to see where the king was enquiring. ‘I … yes, sire.’ Henry was on his feet and beaming at me.
‘Well, let the lady forward, do!’ exclaimed the king, waving his hands toward himself. The people jostled me forward, pushing me where I was not moving fast enough for their liking in their efforts to obey the king with alacrity and avoid his anger.
I found myself at the front of the hall, facing Henry far sooner than I had expected or wanted. A few hours ago, I was wading a river. I was not ready yet to venture all my future and happiness on this moment. The king smiled broadly at me. I was not inclined to return his smile. I was still angry with him. But I supposed I must smile and smile, if I were to win my way here. I tried to inject some sincerity into the movements of my facial muscles.
‘Lady Nest! This is a surprise. You are a delight for my sad eyes.’
I saw from his expression that his words were not mere formula. I reminded myself that he had recently lost three children in the wreck of The White Ship and softened a little. This must have been an unspeakably hard year for him.
‘You wished to speak with me, Lady Nest? What brings you so far?’
‘You were not so keen to speak with me last year,’ I said frostily, referring to the occasion when he had decided, with no warning, to marry me to de Marais and would not hear my desperate pleas to negotiate with him.
He leant forward and responded in a low voice. ‘No quarter for me, then, Nest?’
