Chapter 9
Nine
Spring was late coming to the Loire valley. An icy, rain-laden wind blustered outside the thick walls of the keep at Chinon, threatening to blow the new pale blossom from the cherry trees and spitefully assaulting the daffodils and celandines blooming tentatively in sheltered corners of the ward.
It wasn’t just the weather that was making the winter bitter and delaying the spring, William thought as he and Baldwin de Béthune exercised their horses, taking the opportunity to practise the fighting skills they might soon need.
The destriers’ hooves churned the tilting ground to mud as the knights pounded down the line to the quintain.
As usual, a crowd had gathered to watch, including Wigain, who was standing with Will Blund, the Young King’s usher and Richard Barre, the keeper of his seal.
William suspected that their presence here in the chilly March morning was an attempt to forget for a moment the storm that was brewing within the walls behind them.
William punched the shield on the quintain with his lance, causing the cross bar to whip round at speed.
Ducking to avoid the sandbag on the other end, he cantered on and drew rein to watch Baldwin do the same.
On a normal day, Prince Henry would have been out with them, training under William’s guidance, but this was not a normal day, and without a miracle, unlikely to turn into one.
William slapped Blancart’s neck and trotted the stallion back to the start of the tilt.
Baldwin joined him. “We shouldn’t tire the horses.” The neutrality of his tone was more eloquent than his words.
“One more time,” William said, “lest we need to be as sharp as our lances.”
As they ran a final tilt, more knights arrived on the field, plainly with the same intention as William and Baldwin, but these were King Henry’s men and suddenly the atmosphere was tense.
William relaxed his grip on the lance, but held it in such a way that it could be readied on the instant.
The tip was blunt for it was only a practice weapon, but he knew how to make it effective should the need arise.
The knights circled each other warily, but no one wanted to make the first move and Baldwin and William were able to leave the field unchallenged.
Nevertheless, the tension was like a thread strung tight and vibrating with strain.
“This is their last chance to resolve their dispute,” Baldwin said as they trotted into the stableyard and dismounted.
He was stating the obvious but William didn’t stop him for the same thought burdened his own mind.
“I pray that they do,” he said. “I do not want to see father and son at each other’s throats, nor do I want to fight men that I know and respect with weapons à outrance.
”He thought of the field they had just left; the looks exchanged; the wariness.
He didn’t want to, but he would, because he had given his oath.
He waved away Rhys when the small Welshman came to take Blancart’s bridle.
“I’ll see to him myself,” he said, leading the stallion towards his stall.
Baldwin hesitated for a moment, not quite as keen as William to stable his own horse when servants existed for that purpose, but then he shrugged and followed suit.
He suspected that William was deliberately eking out the time spent out of their young lord’s presence.
As matters stood, a warhorse was a deal more predictable.
“While the King refuses to give our lord the freedom to make his own decisions and rule his own lands, there’s bound to be trouble,” Baldwin said.
“His father will never give up those lands while he lives, and he’ll do with them as he chooses, even down to dividing them further and giving a portion to his youngest son. ”
William grunted as he unbuckled the girths and lifted the saddle on to a support tree.
What Baldwin said was true, but it wasn’t palatable.
After crossing the Narrow Sea in November, Henry and Marguerite had sojourned with her father, King Louis of France.
Louis had been only too glad to breathe on the glowing coals of his son-in-law’s discontent.
By the time Henry left the French court for his father’s Christmas gathering at Chinon, the fire was burning steadily.
It might have been damped down by a placation of additional funds to support the Young King’s extravagant ways and by giving him a few charters to authorise to make him feel as if he were involved in government, had not the issue of John’s inheritance suddenly fanned the flames to white heat.
Not only was Henry’s father refusing to give Henry any responsibility to accompany his crowned status, he was intending to remove chunks of his patrimony and bestow it on Prince John.
Enraged both by the manner in which her husband hoarded power to himself and his continued affair with Rosamund de Clifford, Queen Eleanor had encouraged the conflagration.
Let her husband keep their youngest son and the bastards begotten on his whores.
She had the sons that mattered: angry, fickle Henry; Richard, bright and sharp as a sword blade; Geoffrey, the deep thinker.
“How loyal are you?” she had asked William as he prepared to accompany the Young King to Chinon after the most recent argument between father and son. Her tawny eyes had been fierce as they sought his face.
“Madam, I swore my oath to your son,” he had answered. “And it will hold unto death. I know of no other way.”
“Then I love you for your chivalry. You must realise what is coming.”
He had nodded. “I hope that it can be avoided, but if it comes to sword upon sword, I will defend my lord to the last breath in my body.”
She had given him her hand to kiss, but as he bowed over it, she had angled his head with her other hand and instead, pressed her mouth to his—a hard, firm kiss, with lips closed, one of gratitude and salute, but bold nonetheless.
“May God reward you,” she said. “Certainly if it is ever within my gift, I will give you riches.”
As he had fought to recover his equilibrium in the wake of such a gesture, the young Queen Marguerite had emerged from the women’s chambers to bid him farewell too.
Aping her mother-in-law, she had kissed him, but on the cheek instead, and given him a piece of boiled loaf sugar for the journey, for she set much store by such small tokens and gifts and had a loving, generous heart.
“Everything is going to be all right?” she had asked, her soft brown eyes filled with anxiety.
“Yes, my Queen,” he had murmured, choosing platitude above uncertain truth. “Everything is going to be all right.”
Now “everything” hung in the balance and William knew which side the scales were weighted. Young Henry and his father might have different characters, but in stubbornness they were alike.
William set about currying his stallion and soon the teeth of the comb were clogged with harsh white hairs, for Blancart was beginning to moult his winter coat. As William was plucking them out on the side of his hand and casting them into the straw, Prince Henry strode into the stables.
“What are you doing?” Henry’s tone was high-pitched and incredulous. “Why are you skulking in here when you have squires and grooms to do such tasks?” He was breathing hard and flushed with temper.
“Sire, I would ask nothing of a squire or groom that I would not be prepared to do myself,” William replied in a level tone. “A knight should be able to turn his hand to anything.”
“Then turn it to your sword,” Henry snapped, “and resaddle your horse. We’re leaving.”
“Now, sire?”
“Now!” Henry snarled. “While the gates are still open. The talking is over. What happens next is on my father’s head, not mine.”
William’s heart sank but he received the news without surprise. The signs had been there to read since November. Sometimes the only way to cure a festering wound was to drain it, not lay on more bandages.
“Where are we going, sire?” asked Baldwin.
“To my father-by-marriage,” Henry said. “To Chartres.”
The stables flurried with activity as horses were swiftly harnessed.
Men grabbed their weapons and stuffed belongings into their baggage rolls.
William formed up the Young King’s conroi and they left Chinon at a rapid trot.
Only a few of Henry’s clerical servants rode among the party, Wigain one of them, his legs banging against the flanks of his fat dappled cob.
The others, including Henry’s chamberlain, usher, and chancellor, chose to remain in Chinon with the King, thus adding more hurt to Henry’s grievance with his father.
The administrative servants were all obviously in his pay and their loyalties had never been given to their young lord.
Tears of rage brightened Henry’s eyes. “He wouldn’t listen,” he fumed to William, his voice cracking with emotion as they rode. “He didn’t want to hear. Is what I’m asking so much?”
“No, sire, it is not,” William replied.
“My mother agrees with me.” He cuffed his eyes impatiently. “She says that she will do all in her power to thwart him. He’s not going to ride roughshod over us all.”
For a while, they concentrated on putting distance between themselves and Chinon, the knights grim, the servants who had chosen to come absorbed in their effort to keep up. William sent outriders to the front and rear, the space between his shoulder blades prickling.
“He won’t chase yet,” Henry said bitterly.
“He doesn’t believe that I will really leave him.
He thinks that this is just a fit of pique, that I’m a petulant boy who’ll come running back to him because it’s cold outside without my cloak.
He doesn’t realise that there are others ready and willing to offer me fur-lined mantles and all the comfort I want. He is the one who is out in the cold.”