Knight's Honor (2 page)

On the shore, some little time later, Lord Hereford set his jaws to keep his teeth from chattering and reached impatiently for his long indigo-blue cloak lined with the finest squirrel pelts, the silvery-gray hair. He had just about succeeded in controlling his shivering when the group on the beach reached him.

"Greetings, Roger. How was your trip?"

"Very calm, very cold. For all that you wrote to watch for trouble, we did not sight another ship in the entire passage. They are waiting for larger game, I suppose, or your informant was shying at shadows, How goes it with you, my lord?"

The Earl of Gaunt removed a gauntlet to extend a hand to be kissed. He was an old man now, having passed threescore years, but was still hard and vigorous, his eyes keen and clear, and his mouth, though sunken with toothlessness, held firm and hard.

"I will tell you on the way. Mount up. My aged bones feel the cold."

At a lifted hand, five extra horses were moved forward for Hereford, his three squires, and his body servant, and they got under way for a nearby keep belonging to the friendly Earl of Devonshire.

"The news of importance I will keep until we can sit and drink to it in comfort. For the rest, it is quickly told. We are all well."

"I thought to see Lord Radnor here to greet me. Is he still so tied to the Lady Leah's skirts that he could not tear himself away?"

Gaunt laughed coarsely. "Ay and nay. He still thinks that if she sheds a tear or he misses a night in her bed the heavens will fall, but he does his duty properly. I must say to my daughter-by-law's credit that she interferes in no way with that. Cain is in Scotland, and has been these four months. We look for him any day at home now. He went to confirm the plans for the knighting of Henry of Anjou according to what you last wrote us about that, and he was delayed to help stave off more Norse incursions. By God, you would think those devils could not feel the cold the way they continue to fight in the dead of winter."

"And will he ride north with us again in the spring to the knighting?"

"That I cannot answer, Hereford. It depends on many things. Ah, here we are. Let us get warm and comfortable and I win tell you what I can."

They clattered over the drawbridge of the moated keep, the two destriers' iron-shod hoofs ringing sharply, the lighter palfreys making a duller echo. Under the portcullis they rode, Hereford keeping his eyes straight ahead with a slight effort. Although he gave no evidence of it at all, he could not totally repress the inner qualm that riding under that heavy iron gate with its sharp pointed base gave him. Once the portcullis of a keep he had previously thought was friendly had come down. It had missed him so nearly that it tore the surcoat from his back and split his horse in two, giving evidence of what his fate might have been. This one stayed put, however, screaming and groaning its way down to rest position only after they were well inside.

Across the outer bailey they rode and through the dark passage under the inner wall where Hereford knew the ceiling was pierced with murder holes through which boiling water or scalding oil could be poured down on intruders. A few moments later they were out into the inner bailey where grooms came running to take their horses. Dismounted they entered the forebuilding to mount the outer stair. One flight up on the outside, Hereford's shoes, frozen hard, crackled and caught on the rough-hewn wooden boards. The tree-trunk thick, iron-bound door was already open and they went into the great hall lit by the windows in their deep embrasures and the two great blazes of fire, one at each end.

Both men gave their furred cloaks to attentive servants but stopped at a respectable distance from the fire because the heat, although pleasant in one respect, was agonizing as their chilblained hands and feet thawed out. They were too accustomed to this form of discomfort, however, to comment upon it, and as soon as more servants had brought hot spiced wine to drink, Hereford spoke a trifle impatiently.

"Well, my lord, now that we are private, what news? What word you sent to France was so ambiguous that we could not make head nor tail of it. I was hard put to keep Henry quiet—harder since I must admit that I was not overhappy myself."

"What did you want me to say?” Gaunt growled. “You know how everything has gone against us. Robert of Gloucester died two months after you left England, and with him the organized resistance in the south died. In the beginning we had some hope that William might come into his own with both his father and his brother Philip gone. He did win that brilliant battle at Castle Cary against Henry de Tracy, as you heard, but that hope did not live long." The old man spat contemptuously on the floor. "He found the effort too great. He is back among his women, his boys, his perfumes, and his jewels."

"No surprise to me. I never liked that family for all your trust in them, my lord. I grant you Robert was a great man, but the sons—and William was worst of all. A man who could stomach the de Caldoets as vassals—"

"Nay, Roger, do not put that on William. Hugh was hanged and Ralph driven out as soon as an excuse could be found to be rid of them. No man may drive a vassal off his land without reason, no matter how foul that vassal is, and you know it. Philip was all right too. A man cannot help dying. Besides, this discussion is neither here nor there. If Gloucester is done, they are done. William. I must say, has not turned against us. He will do what he can in the old way; he only will not fight. The troops of Gloucester lie still for want of a leader. I was almost tempted to tell Cain—I even approached him on leading them—but you know how he is about his oath of homage. He will keep it to the letter, and before I forced him to something so much against his heart and will, I bethought me that there was one among us almost as well suited to the task and who had never given a personal oath of fealty to King Stephen."

"Who?” Hereford snapped. “Who would the troops of Gloucester obey besides yourself or Lord Radnor? Chester is no man for a task with a steady purpose; Lincoln would use them only for personal gain; Norfolk—"

"What of Hereford?"

"Me?" The one word exploded out of the young man and was followed by a dead silence.

Gaunt rubbed his itching, burning hands against each other wishing vaguely that he was at home, where his daughter-by-marriage would hasten to make him comfortable. He pulled his mind back to the work in hand, his keen eyes following the young earl who had turned his back and paced away. Would he jump at it, Gaunt wondered? Hereford was so young, and this was a tremendous responsibility.

Then Gaunt's eyes narrowed; it was not Hereford who was young, it was he who was old. Hereford had been earl since sixteen, when his father had died in a hunting accident in 1143. He had later won his right to his position by staying alive and free at the disastrous battle of Faringdon. Hereford had won his name as a fighting man there too, helping to hold the walls as long as practical and, when the men of the castle decided to surrender, he and a small band of faithful troops had hacked their way through the entire opposing army so that he might bring his name at least out of that catastrophe uncaptured and unransomed. Nonetheless, Gaunt mistrusted Hereford's ability to maintain a fixed purpose over a long period, for his eyes, old in the experience of men, saw something haunted behind the usual madcap gaiety of his young friend.

Hereford had returned to where Gaunt stood, his eyes dark and his fine brows drawn together in a worried frown. "My lord, I cannot do it."

Gaunt prevented his mouth from dropping open with an effort and allowed an expression of contempt to creep over his usually wooden face. "Does that mean you are afraid to undertake the work, that you are incapable of doing so, or that you are unwilling to do so?"

Flushing bright red and biting at his mouth, Hereford swallowed hard. He had learned most painfully to repress the hot retorts that rose to his lips. "It means exactly what I said, no more, no less. I cannot undertake that burden." Hereford threw out an appealing hand. "Nay, Lord Gaunt, do not torture me. You know I would give the eyes out of my head and the soul out of my body to lead that force, but my lands cannot support the charges of such an army. I would be beggared and they would be starving in one short moon, and you know how that would end. They would take to raiding and I—I would be one more outlaw baron tearing the body of the land that gave him birth for no purpose. Radnor might do it if you allowed him to draw on your purse as well as his own, but I—" he swallowed his disappointment. "—I cannot do it."

Gaunt's face cleared as though by magic, and he began to laugh. "The boy grows into a man and considers before he leaps. Well done, Roger. But what sort of people have you been consorting with who would ask you to bear the burden of leading an army and in addition expect you to pay the costs of the force."

Hereford's eyes came alive with excitement. "People!" He gesticulated an impatient dismissal of the dealings he had had in the past two years. "But who—?"

"William of Gloucester is perfectly willing to bear the major cost so long as he is awarded the major portion of the spoils. To a limited extent Cain and I will help—not with the revenues from our own lands, that is not consistent with our oath to Stephen, and although I have come very close of late to being forsworn, I will not yet go so far. But Cain has three wardships now and what we do with the income from those lands, so long as it is to the eventual benefit of the child, is our own affair. If you provide for those men you yourself bring, no more will be asked of you—except to win the battles you engage in."

Forgotten were chilblained feet, cold, and discomfort. Roger of Hereford, poised in the quivering alertness so characteristic of him, laughed without merriment. "At least you may be sure I will not be there to be reproached if I do not. A man who does not win when given such a chance deserves to die."

Shaking his head, Gaunt replied, "I should not have said that. You will not always be a free agent, you know, Hereford. This early action will be part of a larger plan and there will be times when it will be necessary to take a calculated defeat."

"A larger plan? What plan can there be but to defeat Stephen and wrest the throne from him?"

Gaunt raised a hand. "Curb your tongue, Roger. Servants are not deaf-mutes. Can you not see
they are setting up for dinner?"

Hereford’s eyes widened and he lowered his voice. "Are we not safe here? Devonshire is surely with us."

"Ay and nay. Personally, yes, but he has great interests and wide connections. Which is why he is not here to speak to you. Anyway it is never safe to trust another man's servants and not too safe to trust your own with everything. Just keep your voice down and watch carefully for any man who lingers overlong in our vicinity."

"Very well," Hereford replied impatiently, but in a still lower tone. "But what plan? Are we not to seat Henry on the throne?"

"Ay, in the long run, but to depose Stephen is not enough. All we will have is the same trouble over again except that we of the west will fight for the king and the south and east against him. That is senseless."

"I suppose worse might happen to Stephen than deposition."

"So you kill him. Eustace is a man now and has showed himself a fine fighter. Maud is no weaker or stupider than two years since. There is even a second son approaching manhood, and Constance may well give Eustace an heir. Will you slay them all?"

"If needful."

Gaunt laughed harshly. "Nay, Roger, your words are hard but I know you well. I might bring myself to it, but you and even my own son could not. The women would weep and thereby save themselves, and neither of you could bring yourselves to touch a hair on a babe's head. Men are soft these days."

Lord Hereford moved restlessly, kicking pettishly at a stool nearby. "Then what do we do, wait longer? Two long years have already—"

"No. Would I ask you to lead Gloucester's army if we planned to do nothing but wait? In the spring we will begin what was planned long ago. You will prick Stephen here, Hugh Bigod will raise Norfolk against him, Arundel in the south, King David in the north. Between this and that, he will have neither rest nor peace, and all our efforts together will be bent on taking Eustace."

"Eustace? Why not Stephen?"

"Because Stephen is the king.
 
You know he is a brave man, no fear for himself could make him renounce the throne and, even if we could force him to do so, or if we stooped to infamy and killed him, Eustace might succeed him. Stephen, however, is brave only for himself.
 
He is a man first and a king later—and that is why he is of no worth as a king. If we take the son and threaten him with that—the cub is precious to him as I have seen myself—then I think we will have him.
 
Between the pain of constant fighting, rushing now north, now south, now east, now west, and the agony of losing that child, dearer than life to him, I think he will be glad to give us the crown for Henry and return to Blois. We will pay him well to leave us in peace. I do not think he has had much pleasure in his kingship. It will be worth his while to forswear the throne. The rest will be up to Henry."

Gaunt signed suddenly, remembering he was tired. He was always tired now, even in the morning, when he woke from a good night’s sleep.
 
Damn Stephen and burn him. If only the plague would take that entire family, Gaunt thought with half his mind, he could lie down and rest.
 
Threescore years and one was too old for these hard times. That was an age for peace, for sitting by the fire and watching your grandchildren—although as yet he had only one. The other half of the duke's brain considered Hereford, who had not yet replied to his reasoning.

The young man had walked toward the immense fire and held his hands out toward it, unconscious of the pain the heat caused him.
 
The Earl of Gaunt's proposal had thrown him off balance and he had accepted it on the crest of an imaginative wave of enthusiasm in which he had envisioned himself at the head of Gloucester's armies sweeping Henry to the throne. The subsequent conversation had brought him back to earth with a thud. But Roger of Hereford, in the stage of flux between early manhood and full maturity, knew that he was still too excited to think clearly.