Chapter 8
Eight
Rhys ap Madoc, a mercenary archer from Gwent, drew the string of his longbow back to the ear, marking a point of reference with his knuckle to the last molar in his upper jaw, his gaze never wavering from the target of stuffed straw.
When he loosed the arrow, it flew as straight as a saint’s word to God into the target centre.
Before William could draw breath to speak, a second arrow was winging to split the first. The archer swore at the damage done to the flight, but there was a satisfied gleam in his dark brown eyes.
“You’ll do.” William strove to sound nonchalant, as if he saw such talent every day.
He was actually in search of a new groom, but he wasn’t going to cavil if that groom also happened to be deadly with a bow and a handy soldier into the bargain.
“Go and find yourself a billet in the guardroom for now. Tell Master Ailward that I sent you.”
“Yes, sir.” The man touched the tip of his greasy leather cap and would have departed, had not William called him back, for his curiosity had been whetted.
“You say you were with Richard de Clare of Striguil?” William thought of the red-haired lord to whom he had briefly spoken in the Southwark bathhouse two years ago.
De Clare had made good on his promise; had carved his fortune out of the green Irish turf and taken to wife Aoife, daughter of Dermot MacMurrough, King of Leinster.
“Yes, sir, I was, but my wife’s Norman and she was homesick.
She’s not one to complain but I could tell she was miserable, and a man doesn’t need misery at his hearth.
Besides, I’m not a man to baulk at a fight, but there was never any respite.
I knew sooner or later I’d wind up dead in a bog or bleaching my bones on some riverbank. ”
“And what makes you think that you won’t bleach your bones in my service?” William asked with a grim smile.
The Welshman gave a philosophical shrug. “I might do that, sir, but I reckon there’s more chance of surviving in your retinue long enough to enjoy my married state.”
William dismissed Rhys and watched him jog towards the guardroom.
He wished Richard de Clare well of his marriage to the Princess Aoife.
Men who had not been to Ireland listened to tales of its green-grey mistiness, its savage bearded chieftains, its place at the edge of the world and shuddered into their wine.
William, though, had always felt drawn towards the country by his natural sense of adventure.
Had he been a penniless younger son without prospects, he might have accepted a taste of life in de Clare’s service—and perhaps an Irish wife.
From what he had heard, de Clare had already had a child out of Princess Aoife, a daughter, and the lady was breeding again.
His smile was ironic as he thought of what the archer had said about living a strife-torn life in Ireland.
William’s existence might not be as fraught with daily danger, but that did not mean it was peaceful.
Then again, such storms as beset Prince Henry’s household would probably pass over the head of a groom.
As William entered Southampton Castle’s great hall, Adam, one of the clerks, scuttled past him, pieces of a broken wax tablet in his hand.
The look he cast at William glittered with venom.
Glancing back at him in speculation, William continued into the room.
Plainly spoiling for a fight, the Young King was pacing the rush-strewn floor, his grey eyes stormy and his chin, with its new sprouting of beard, belligerent.
His fourteen-year-old wife was sitting over her needlework frame but she wasn’t sewing and her lips were pressed firmly together.
She was a queen now, having finally been given her own coronation three months ago at Winchester: nowhere near as grand as her husband’s, but it served its purpose, which was to mollify her father.
“Is there trouble, my lord?” William enquired. He noticed that a trestle had been set up to one side of the room. The London merchant Richard FitzReinier, who supplied many of the Prince’s requirements, was rolling up assorted bolts of fine cloth, aided by a nervous-looking assistant.
“Not of my making,” Henry snapped.
William wandered over to the mercer’s trestle, noting that the fabrics were mostly wool, softly teased and napped, and in muted jewel colours—the most expensive sort.
There was some silk too, including a small bolt of the staggeringly costly imperial purple.
FitzReinier flicked William a swift look from under his brows and gave an infinitesimal shake of his head.
“My father gives me a crown like tossing a bauble to a little child, and expects it to be enough,” Henry snapped. He picked up the inkhorn that the clerk had left behind in his eagerness to be out of the room and ran his thumb over the ridges.
William marked the presence of Adam Yqueboeuf and the brothers Thomas and Hugh de Coulances, whose strategy was to agree with everything that Henry said and butter him with flattery.
The Young King was no fool, but his head was easily turned by praise and other men’s visions of the status he ought to command.
“Your father thought long and hard about your coronation,” William remarked in a tone that was deliberately mild and conversational.
“He only did it because he was afraid of the country falling into anarchy if he should die suddenly. He wanted to secure the succession.”
William cocked an eyebrow. “Surely it is to your benefit as well as his?”
Henry scowled. “What use is a crown without the power behind it? He says I have to learn how to govern before he’ll slacken the reins, but how can I do that when he won’t give me the responsibility? When he was my age, he was leading armies!”
Henry had a point, William thought. The King desired him to be recognised as his heir, but refused to relinquish one iota of control to let him test his wings. At seventeen years old, Henry stood on the verge of manhood and it was dangerous to continue treating him as a juvenile.
“It’s humiliating to have to answer to him for every penny I spend,” Henry complained.
“Am I supposed to clad myself in rags and freeze in the winter cold?” He gestured toward FitzReinier and his lad.
“That idiot clerk Adam was beside me checking every ell of cloth I ordered, and now he’ll tell my father who will complain that I spend too much.
I am a crowned king, a duke, and a count, and it’s all dross!
” He hurled the inkhorn at the wall. It broke upon the plasterwork, splattering the limewash with blots and drips of oakgall brown.
“You are attending his Christmas court,” William said. “Speak to him and tell him of your discontent.”
“He won’t listen. He never listens,” Henry flashed.
“Why do you think my mother no longer dwells with him? She hates him. Everyone hates him except his English whore and that’s only because her brains are between her legs.
Everyone knows that he was to blame for Becket’s murder.
It doesn’t matter that the Pope has absolved him and he’s done penance and promised money for a crusade.
He’ll always be stained by the shame of the blood spilled on Canterbury’s altar. ”
William winced. The memory of that time was one he would rather put behind him.
The King had grown furious at Becket’s stubborn refusal to come to terms over the matter of clerical reform.
A royal tirade against the Archbishop had been misinterpreted and four knights eager to secure the royal favour had ridden to Canterbury and murdered Thomas Becket on the steps of the altar.
The dead Archbishop had become more popular and revered than the living one had ever been.
His bloodied clothing, his hair shirt, his soiled, filthy braies were stored in a locked chest by the monks of the cathedral and periodically brought out to be soused in Holy Water.
The cloudy results were then sold to an increasing number of pilgrims as a cure-all.
Becket had been truculent when alive but dead he was more successful by far and had perhaps created more ills than his diluted essence would ever alleviate.
There was a growing feeling of unease and discontent among the people of England, and here was a smooth-browed young man with fine looks and charm and a crown on his head.
William knew how volatile the situation could become.
“You could govern better than him, sir,” said Adam Yqueboeuf. “The magnates and barons love you, and so do the people. You should make your father listen to you, not just ‘speak’ to him.”
William sent Yqueboeuf a quelling look to which the latter responded with a sneer. “And how would he do that? Threaten his father with force? Bring about the strife that the coronation was supposed to avoid?”
“Anyone would think you were on my father’s side,” Henry said irritably. “You’re like an old woman sometimes.”
“And does chivalry not tell you to respect old women, sire?”
Henry’s scowl slowly gave way to reluctant humour. “That depends on whether or not they are senile,” he retorted. “Are you senile, William?”
“I hope that I still have some reason left in my skull, sire. I am in your service, not your father’s, and my loyalty first and foremost is to you.”
Henry chewed his thumbnail. “I do respect my father—I have a care for old men as well as old women.” He paused to give his sycophants time to guffaw their appreciation.
“But he must respect me too. I am no longer a child and I won’t be treated like one.
” His lips thinned mulishly. “I will speak to him at the Christmas feast, but he had better listen.”