Chapter 43 #2
“Does a brother come before a king?” William asked with a bitter, humourless smile. He looked down at his sons. His youngest one was gazing up at him out of wide, dark eyes. He remembered his own father, who had been willing to put his ambition and a would-be queen before his family.
“Is that the end of the story, Papa?” Will asked. “I didn’t like it.”
“Didn’t like it,” Richard echoed, beginning to pout.
“No, it’s not the end,” William answered, ruffling his heir’s hazel-brown hair. “Far from it, and for what it’s worth, I didn’t like it either.”
“You’ll like it even less when I tell you that William Longchamp is with the King,” Wigain said. “Richard’s revoked his banishment and welcomed him back to his side. He needs his money-grubbing skills and Longchamp has always been as slippery as an eel.”
William felt revulsion churn his stomach. His hand remained on his son’s head. “No need to ask who has been stirring the pot,” he said. “I had better make haste before I’m accused of full-blown treason.”
Riding hard, William met his brother’s funeral cortège on the outskirts of Cirencester as it progressed towards the cathedral.
Aline had hired a group of six professional mourners and they walked either side of the coffin, garbed in long dark-coloured mantles with voluminous hoods.
Periodically they wailed and struck their breasts.
Aline was as pale as a shroud and her eyes were smudged with exhaustion, but she had control of herself.
Whatever grief and difficulty had come from her marriage to John Marshal, she had gained stature and maturity too.
William dismounted from his courser to walk beside the bier.
John’s sword, their father’s sword, was laid atop the pall of red silk.
There was a grieving twist of regret in William’s soul that he and John had not been closer in life, and now it was too late.
Jack dismounted too and silently took his place among the mourners.
The rest of William’s knights followed suit.
“In the end he didn’t have to surrender,” Aline said to William and Jack as they walked.
She too wore a dark mantle and hood, but beneath it her gown of costly red wool showed as a bright border with each step.
“His body gave out and I am glad for him that it did—that he did not have to yield the keep and his pride.” She bit her lip, remembering.
“He came down from the wall walk to take a respite from commanding the men, and collapsed at the foot of the tower stairs. By the time I reached him, his soul had fled. There was nothing anyone could do.”
“I am glad for him too, that he was still lord of Marlborough when he died,” William said hoarsely, “although I would rather he had lived.”
They walked in sombre and contemplative silence for a long time, but at last William turned to the wan girl pacing at his side. “What will you do now?” he asked.
She gave a forlorn shrug. “Return to my family…serve them by making another match and hope that it is a good one.”
The grief and regret twisted a little tighter inside him. “I hope so too, my lady,” he said.
Following the vigil and mass in Cirencester, William left his nephew and the majority of his knights to escort the coffin the rest of the way to Bradenstoke Priory, and prepared to ride fast for Huntingdon.
In Cirencester too, he knighted young Jack Marshal.
“Since you are your father’s only son and a man, you should have the standing of knighthood,” William said as he belted Jack with his father’s sword.
“Besides, you have earned it, and your father should have a senior member of his family and a sworn knight to lead his cortège.” Guilt and grief bit at him.
He knew that it was his place to ride to Bradenstoke with them, but he couldn’t afford to.
Jack nodded, his jaw stiff with controlled emotion. William clasped his shoulder, man to man. “Join me in Nottingham when you have done your duty by your father,” he said. “I’ll have need of you.”
Leaving the cathedral, he breathed deeply of the bitter March air and gathered himself for the next ordeal.
It was late morning when William rode into Huntingdon, having set out from Bedford at dawn.
He and his three knights were stopped at the town gate and a messenger was sent running to inform the King of their arrival.
As William waited on his sweating palfrey, he was aware of the speculative glances cast in his direction and he did not have to imagine hard what men were wondering.
“You ride light, my lord,” said the captain of mercenaries who was in charge of the gate. He toyed with his sword hilt.
“The rest of my troop are following,” William answered in a neutral voice. “They’ll join us at Nottingham.”
The mercenary nodded and said nothing, but William could sense him questioning on whose side.
No one offered him hospitality, but William didn’t cavil.
He knew the game that was being played, and he was adept at it.
He dismounted from his horse and threw a blanket over its sweating back, gesturing his knights to follow suit.
He made soldiers’ small talk and waited with an outward show of aplomb, although within himself he was fidgeting like a man sitting on a nest of red ants.
The messenger eventually returned with the instruction that William was to be brought to King Richard’s pavilion.
William Longchamp had accompanied the messenger, and there was a supercilious smile parting his full black beard.
He was obviously bent on enjoying this moment and on paying back old scores.
“You’re hanging in the balance, Marshal,” Longchamp said, malice glittering. “I hope for your sake that you’re in an eloquent mood.”
William looked stonily at the Bishop. “I have hung in the balance before, and survived. Either the King knows me well enough by now, or he doesn’t. Words, no matter how eloquent, will not alter that.”
Longchamp’s upper lip curled. “No, they won’t,” he said in an insinuating voice. “And the King is waiting to hear them and make judgement.”
William gave his horse into the keeping of Roger D’Abernon. “I am ready,” he said impassively, “and I do not fear to be judged.”
“The garrison at Nottingham is still refusing to yield to the King,” Longchamp said as he limped at William’s side through the camp towards Richard’s pavilion.
“It’s strongly held but no match for us.
The pity is that the justiciars ever returned it to John in the first place.
” His voice was bland, but since William had been the justiciar responsible for Nottingham’s custody and subsequent handing over to John during peace negotiations, his words were neither innocent nor indifferent comment.
“I did as I deemed fit,” he said curtly.
Longchamp gave a nasty smile. “You’ll need to do better than that, Marshal,” he said.
“Oh, I don’t know,” William retorted. “Others seem to have escaped lightly enough, when you consider the abuses they perpetrated in the King’s absence, even down to forging documents and misusing his seal.”
Longchamp glittered him a narrow look. “I committed no acts of treason. I cannot say the same for your brother and yourself.”
William clenched his fists and held on to his temper by the finest of frayed threads. Mercifully they arrived at the King’s pavilion and Longchamp ran out of baiting time.
William hesitated as he gazed upon the billowing canvas, painted scarlet and gold and crowned with a great bronze finial.
Behind the guards, the tent flaps were drawn back to show an interior draped with hangings of Damascus silk.
A fur-covered bed was positioned on the left-hand side in the tent and a long trestle surrounded by stools and benches on the right.
In the centre was the King’s chair, surrounded by an assortment of weapons, including his hauberk on a stand of beechwood poles.
The floor was covered with a thick layer of green rushes, amid which spring flowers—cowslips and young daisies—gave splashes of colour.
William’s stomach turned over. Richard emerged from a curtained-off area at the far end of the tent, adjusting his hose.
There was a frosting of silver in his apricot-blond hair and harsh lines graven into his features by sun, wind, and the privation of captivity.
He was seven and thirty but looked ten years older.
His shirt and tunic, open at the throat, revealed wiry auburn curls, but despite the dishabille, he still had the presence of a king.
Swallowing, William entered the tent and knelt.
The green smell from the rushes rose around him and he clenched his fists.
It was more than forty years since he had played as a small boy in King Stephen’s tent, innocent, unknowing, his life in the balance.
If not for that long-ago day, he probably wouldn’t be here now.
“Leave us,” Richard commanded the servants and guards. “You too, my lord Bishop.” He waved his hand at Longchamp.
“But, sire, you need witnesses and I—” Longchamp began, plainly desperate to remain and watch as his rival was humiliated.
“I said leave us,” Richard said in a peremptory tone. “This is a private matter between myself and the Marshal.”
Longchamp hesitated for an instant, then bowed and swept out of the tent, his cloak creating a cold draught behind him.
“You are late to the meet, Marshal,” Richard said after a moment, gesturing him to his feet. “I had expected you sooner.”
“I travelled as fast as my horse would bear me, sire.” William resisted the urge to wipe his damp palms down his surcoat.
“But without your troop?”
William rose and faced Richard. His scalp was tingling. “My troop will come to Nottingham and be waiting. Currently they are under the command of my nephew and escorting my brother’s funeral cortège to Bradenstoke.”
Richard steepled his hands at his lips and paced the tent for a moment like a restless, hungry lion. “Your brother,” he said at length. “Yes, I heard that he had died, and I am sorry for it. The pity is that it was in rebellion against me.”
“He was loyal to your brother, sire.”
“Who is fickle and does not know the meaning of the word loyalty. Tell me, Marshal, were your own loyalties strained?”
“Not beyond breaking point, sire.”
Richard looked at him and William looked back without flinching. “I received letters in Cyprus, saying that you had betrayed me, that you had gone over to my brother’s side. And I heard the same again when I landed in England.”
“Whoever wrote them lied,” William said with a meaningful look over his shoulder towards the tent entrance from which Longchamp had so recently flurried out. “I have never revoked my allegiance, once given.”
“Yet you owe that allegiance to my brother for your Irish lands and your fief of Cartmel.”
“But not for Striguil and Longueville, sire, nor for my post of justiciar. Yes, I supported the lord John when the Bishop of Ely overstepped his authority, but that was on the instructions of your lady mother and the Archbishop of Rouen, who were in turn acting on your authority.” He made a throwing gesture with his right hand.
“Either you have trust in me, sire, or you do not, and it ends here.”
Richard grunted. Reluctant amusement curled his lips.
“I have heard plenty of persuasion on your behalf from my mother and Walter de Coutances,” he said.
“In truth, enough to burn my ears off. And you have been eloquent in your own way if your contributions to my ransom are any statement of intent.” Richard clicked his fingers and an attendant poured wine into two cups.
William’s glance flickered. For a moment it seemed as though there were two spectres in the tent with him and Richard: King Stephen, hollow-eyed and gaunt, beset by burdens but still finding a smile for a fair-haired little boy who looked not unlike William’s own four-year-old son.
The smell of the rushes under his feet rose in nauseating green waves.
Richard handed the brimming cup to William.
“There are few people in the world to whom I would give my trust, and my brother is certainly not amongst them, although he has his virtues nonetheless and I can still use him. Whatever you think of my chancellor—and I admit that Longchamp is part weasel and part snake—he is completely dedicated to my service and I find him valuable. But you, Marshal…” He paused for effect and William held his own breath.
“You could have taken my life and you held back,” Richard said.
“You could have set the South-west alight by joining in rebellion with my brother. You put me before your own kin. Some say that it is all in order to serve yourself, my chancellor especially; but then he lost his skirmishes with you and he doesn’t take kindly to being humiliated.
My mother says that you are the most loyal man she knows…
and that a king should value loyalty above all else. ”
William had known that the words were bound to emerge.
He had borne the remembrance of his meeting with King Stephen in dreams for almost all of his life, and as well as memory it had been premonition; he realised that now.
He waited to drink to loyalty in the wine trembling in his cup and hoped he would not be sick.
Richard nodded thoughtfully. “My mother is wrong,” he said. “Or wrong in her choice of word at least…”
William stiffened. This was not how the scene was supposed to play out.
“I do value loyalty, but I value your integrity more. There’s a difference of shade. It was integrity that kept you by my father and sent your lance through my stallion’s chest…and it is what brings you here today. You will do what is right and just.”
William wasn’t so sure of that. True integrity would have seen him at Bradenstoke, burying his brother with all due ceremony, rather than attending a mass at Cirencester and cutting off to ride here.
It was necessity and self-service that brought him to Huntingdon, but if Richard desired to give it a different word, then so be it.
Loyalty, integrity, necessity. All were valid; all had shaped his life, and in different concentrations would continue to do so.
Richard raised his cup. “To the future,” he said.
William forced a dark smile. “Whatever it may hold,” he replied, thinking he could manage to drink to that.