The Pilgram of Hate (4 page)

“Nor,
as I guess, declared. It would not come to a numbering of heads or hands.” Too
easy, then, to start a counter-count of one’s own, and confound the reckoning.

“He
continued,” said Radulfus coolly and drily, “by saying that we had chosen as
Lady of England the late king’s daughter, the inheritor of his nobility and his
will to peace. As the sire was unequalled in merit in our times, so might his
daughter flourish and bring peace, as he did, to this troubled country, where
we now offer her—he said!—our whole-hearted fealty.”

So
the legate had extricated himself as adroitly as possible from his predicament.
But for all that, so resolute, courageous and vindictive a lady as the empress
was going to look somewhat sidewise at a whole-hearted fealty which had already
once been pledged to her, and turned its back nimbly under pressure, and might
as nimbly do so again. If she was wise she would curb her resentment and take
care to keep on the right side of the legate, as he was cautiously feeling his
way to the right side of her; but she would not forget or forgive.

“And
there was no man raised a word against it?” asked Hugh mildly.

“None.
There was small opportunity, and even less inducement. And with that the bishop
announced that he had invited a deputation from the city of London, and
expected them to arrive that day, so that it was expedient we should adjourn
our discussion until the morrow. Even so, the Londoners did not come until next
day, and we met again somewhat later than on the days previous. Howbeit, they
did come. With somewhat dour faces and stiff necks. They said that they represented
the whole commune of London, into which many barons had also entered as members
after Lincoln, and that they all, with no wish to challenge the legitimacy of
our assembly, yet desired to put forward with one voice the request that the
lord king should be set at liberty.”

“That
was bold,” said Hugh with raised brows. “How did his lordship counter it? Was
he put out of countenance?”

“I
think he was shaken, but not disastrously, not then. He made a long speech—it
is a way of keeping others silent, at least for a time—reproving the city for
taking into its membership men who had abandoned their king in war, after
leading him astray by their evil advice, so grossly that he forsook God and
right, and was brought to the judgement of defeat and captivity, from which the
prayers of those same false friends could not now reprieve him. These men do
but flatter and favour you now, he said, for their own advantage.”

“If
he meant the Flemings who ran from Lincoln,” Hugh allowed, “he told no more
than truth there. But for what other end is the city ever flattered and wooed?
What then? Had they the hardihood to stand their ground against him?”

“They
were in some disarray as to what they should reply, and went apart to confer.
And while there was quiet, a man suddenly stepped forward from among the
clerks, and held out a parchment to Bishop Henry, asking him to read it aloud,
so confidently that I wonder still he did not at once comply. Instead, he
opened and began to read it in silence, and in a moment more he was thundering
in a great rage that the thing was an insult to the reverend company present,
its matter disgraceful, its witnesses attainted enemies of Holy Church, and not
a word of it would he read aloud to us in so sacred a place as his chapter
house. “Whereupon,” said the abbot grimly, “the clerk snatched it back from
him, and himself read it aloud in a great voice, riding above the bishop when
he tried to silence him. It was a plea from Stephen’s queen to all present, and
to the legate in especial, own brother to the king, to return to fealty and
restore the king to his own again from the base captivity into which traitors
had betrayed him. And I, said the brave man who read, am a clerk in the service
of Queen Matilda, and if any ask my name, it is Christian, and true Christian I
am as any here, and true to my salt.”

“Brave,
indeed!” said Hugh, and whistled softly. “But I doubt it did him little good.”

“The
legate replied to him in a tirade, much as he had spoken already to us the day
before, but in a great passion, and so intimidated the men from London that
they drew in their horns, and grudgingly agreed to report the council’s
election to their citizens, and support it as best they could. As for the man
Christian, who had so angered Bishop Henry, he was attacked that same evening
in the street, as he set out to return to the queen empty-handed. Four or five
ruffians set on him in the dark, no one knows who, for they fled when one of
the empress’s knights and his men came to the rescue and beat them off, crying
shame to use murder as argument in any cause, and against an honest man who had
done his part fearlessly in the open. The clerk got no worse than a few
bruises. It was the knight who got the knife between his ribs from behind and
into the heart. He died in the gutter of a Winchester street. A shame to us
all, who claim to be making peace and bringing enemies into amity.”

By
the shadowed anger of his face it had gone deep with him, the single wanton act
that denied all pretences of good will and justice and conciliation. To strike
at a man for being honestly of the opposite persuasion, and then to strike
again at the fair-minded and chivalrous who sought to prevent the outrage—very
ill omens, these, for the future of the legate’s peace.

“And
no man taken for the killing?” demanded Hugh, frowning.

“No.
They fled in the dark. If any creature knows name or hiding-place, he has
spoken no word. Death is so common a matter now, even by stealth and treachery
in the darkness, this will be forgotten with the rest. And the next day our
council closed with sentence of excommunication against a great number of
Stephen’s men, and the legate pronounced all men blessed who would bless the
empress, and accursed those who cursed her. And so dismissed us,” said
Radulfus. “But that we monastics were not dismissed, but kept to attend on him
some weeks longer.”

“And
the empress?”

“Withdrew
to Oxford, while these long negotiations with the city of London went on, how
and when she should be admitted within the gates, on what terms, what numbers
she might bring in with her to Westminster. On all which points they have
wrangled every step of the way. But in nine or ten days now she will be
installed there, and soon thereafter crowned.” He lifted a long, muscular hand,
and again let it fall into the lap of his habit. “So, at least, it seems. What
more can I tell you of her?”

“I
meant, rather,” said Hugh, “how is she bearing this slow recognition? How is
she dealing with her newly converted barons? And how do they rub, one with
another? It’s no easy matter to hold together the old and the new liegemen, and
keep them from each other’s throats. A manor in dispute here and there, a few
fields taken from one and given to another… I think you know the way of it,
Father, as well as I.”

“I
would not say she is a wise woman,” said Radulfus carefully. “She is all too
well aware how many swore allegiance to her at her father’s order, and then
swung to King Stephen, and now as nimbly skip back to her because she is in the
ascendant. I can well understand she might take pleasure in pricking into the
quick where she can, among these. It is not wise, but it is human. But that she
should become lofty and cold to those who never wavered—for there are some,”
said the abbot with respectful wonder, “who have been faithful throughout at
their own great loss, and will not waver even now, whatever she may do. Great
folly and great injustice to use them so highhandedly, who have been her right
hand and her left all this while.”

You
comfort me, thought Hugh, watching the lean, quiet face intently. The woman is
out of her wits if she flouts even the like of Robert of Gloucester, now she
feels herself so near the throne.

“She
has greatly offended the bishop-legate,” said the abbot, “by refusing to allow
Stephen’s son to receive the rights and titles of his father’s honours of
Boulogne and Mortain, now that his father is a prisoner. It would have been
only justice. But no, she would not suffer it. Bishop Henry quit her court for
some while, it took her considerable pains to lure him back again.”

Better
and better, thought Hugh, assessing his position with care. If she is stubborn
enough to drive away even Henry, she can undo everything he and others do for
her. Put the crown in her hands and she may, not so much drop it, as hurl it at
someone against whom she has a score to settle. He set himself to extract every
detail of her subsequent behaviour, and was cautiously encouraged. She had
taken land from some who held it and given it to others. She had received her
naturally bashful new adherents with arrogance, and reminded them ominously of
their past hostility. Some she had even repulsed with anger, recalling old
injuries. Candidates for a disputed crown should be more accommodatingly
forgetful. Let her alone, and pray! She, if anyone, could bring about her own
ruin.

At
the end of a long hour he rose to take his leave, with a very fair picture in
his mind of the possibilities he had to face. Even empresses may learn, and she
might yet inveigle herself safely into Westminster and assume the crown. It
would not do to underestimate William of Normandy’s grand-daughter and Henry
the First’s daughter. Yet that very stock might come to wreck on its own
unforgiving strength.

He
was never afterwards sure why he turned back at the last moment to ask: “Father
Abbot, this man Rainald Bossard, who died… A knight of the empress, you said.
In whose following?”

All
that he had learned he confided to Brother Cadfael in the hut in the
herb-garden, trying out upon his friend’s unexcitable solidity his own
impressions and doubts, like a man sharpening a scythe on a good memorial
stone. Cadfael was fussing over a too-exuberant wine, and seemed not to be
listening, but Hugh remained undeceived. His friend had a sharp ear cocked for
every intonation, even turned a swift glance occasionally to confirm what his
ear heard, and reckon up the double account.

“You’d
best lean back, then,” said Cadfael finally, “and watch what will follow. You
might also, I suppose, have a good man take a look at Bristol? He is the only
hostage she has. With the king loosed, or Robert, or Brian Fitz-Count, or some
other of sufficient note made prisoner to match him, you’d be on secure ground.
God forgive me, why am I advising you, who have no prince in this world!” But
he was none too sure about the truth of that, having had brief, remembered
dealings with Stephen himself, and liked the man, even at his ill-advised
worst, when he had slaughtered the garrison of Shrewsbury castle, to regret it
as long as his ebullient memory kept nudging him with the outrage. By now, in
his dungeon in Bristol, he might well have forgotten the uncharacteristic
savagery.

“And
do you know,” asked Hugh with deliberation, “whose man was this knight Rainald
Bossard, left bleeding to death in the lanes of Winchester? He for whom your
prayers have been demanded?”

Cadfael
turned from his boisterously bubbling jar to narrow his eyes on his friend’s
face. “The empress’s man is all we’ve been told. But I see you’re about to tell
me more.”

“He
was in the following of Laurence d’Angers.”

Cadfael
straightened up with incautious haste, and grunted at the jolt to his ageing
back. It was the name of a man neither of them had ever set eyes on, yet it
started vivid memories for them both.

“Yes,
that Laurence! A baron of Gloucestershire, and liegeman to the empress. One of
the few who has not once turned his coat yet in this to-ing and fro-ing, and
uncle to those two children you helped away from Bromfield to join him, when
they went astray after the sack of Worcester. Do you still remember the cold of
that winter? And the wind that scoured away hills of snow overnight and laid
them down in fresh places before morning? I still feel it, clean through flesh
and bone…”

There
was nothing about that winter journey that Cadfael would ever forget. It was
hardly a year and a half past, the attack on the city of Worcester, the flight
of brother and sister northwards towards Shrewsbury, through the worst weather
for many a year. Laurence d’Angers had been but a name in the business, as he
was now in this. An adherent of the Empress Maud, he had been denied leave to
enter King Stephen’s territory to search for his young kin, but he had sent a
squire in secret to find and fetch them away. To have borne a hand in the
escape of those three was something to remember lifelong. All three arose
living before Cadfael’s mind’s eye, the boy Yves, thirteen years old then,
ingenuous and gallant and endearing, jutting a stubborn Norman chin at danger,
his elder sister Ermina, newly shaken into womanhood and resolutely shouldering
the consequences of her own follies. And the third…

“I
have often wondered,” said Hugh thoughtfully, “how they fared afterwards. I
knew you would get them off safely, if I left it to you, but it was still a
perilous road before them. I wonder if we shall ever get word. Some day the
world will surely hear of Yves Hugonin.” At the thought of the boy he smiled
with affectionate amusement. “And that dark lad who fetched them away, he who
dressed like a woodsman and fought like a paladin… I fancy you knew more of him
than ever I got to know.”