To Defy a King (38 page)

'How dare you,' he said, his voice husky with rage.

Longespee stared at him open-mouthed with astonishment. 'What have I done?' Laughing at the ridiculousness of Hugh's outburst, he spread his hands. 'I was only playing with the babe. Is he harmed in any way?'

Hugh glared at him. 'Pushing over a child just learning to walk and whom you have encouraged to come to you is no game,' he said with cold fury.

'You are no better than your royal brother. Even if your actions are less extreme, they still have the same intent.' He kissed the baby's tender, pale neck. 'I will not have you near my children again - ever, do you hear me?'

'Are you mad?' Longespee stared round at the others who were all watching the exchange with frozen faces. No one moved to intervene.

Hugh fixed him with a stare as blue as his son's. 'If you do not see, if you do not understand, then that is your madness, not mine.'

'Christ, man, you are making a fuss over nothing.'

'I do not call it nothing. I do not want you near my children - ever again.'

Longespee snorted with contempt. 'You are not lord here. You cannot prevent me from visiting when I choose.'

'But I can choose not to be in your company,' Hugh retorted. Turning on his heel, he strode from the chamber, calling his older son to him and carrying the baby on his shoulder.

Mahelt hesitated, started to follow, and then paused before her brother-in-law. 'You should think on this,' she said. 'Hugh is overset, but not without reason. Would you have done such a thing to your own child?'

'I do intend to think on this,' Longespee answered tightly, 'but I shall be pleased to do as my brother Bigod suggests - more than pleased.' His heart rammed against his chest as if he were fighting a battle. He was still astonished; he could not believe this was happening. He needed to return the strike and recover his balance, but there was nothing to hit.

Ida made a distressed sound. 'You mustn't quarrel with each other!' she cried. 'You must mend it, I implore you.'

Longespee bowed to her. 'Mother, when Hugh apologises to me for his words, I shall do so, but I will not be treated like this. He has ever hated me for being the firstborn and of royal blood. I was only playing with the babe.

In the name of Christ, he's my nephew. Does he think I would harm my own kin?' Hitching his cloak at the shoulder, adjusting the large round brooch, he strode from the room, feeling both guilty and aggrieved. It was always the same when he came to Framlingham. The pieces of the relationship were all there but somehow they either failed to fit, or else they broke into small sharp splinters that left someone bleeding.

Ida cried his name and extended her hand, but he was already gone. Ralph pinned his own cloak. 'I have to go.' He gave his mother a swift peck on the cheek. 'I'll do what I can.' He embraced Mahelt. 'My lord does not understand small children,' he said. 'What he did was from ignorance. Hugh shouldn't have taken such umbrage.' With a swift nod, he hurried after Longespee.

Ida sat down on the bench and rocked back and forth with tears in her eyes.

'I try and I try to bring them together,' she sniffed, 'but always they quarrel.

Why can't they befriend each other? Ralph has no trouble, nor do the other boys. They will be the death of me.'

'Don't say that,' Mahelt said sharply. 'It will blow over. You cannot live your life through them or you will indeed make yourself unwell.' She stayed to comfort Ida a moment longer, then went in search of Hugh and found him sitting in an embrasure off the hall, still holding their youngest son.

'I do not know why you let him bother you,' she said with exasperation.

'What he did was foolish and stupid, but there was no malice intended.'

Hugh curled his arm around his namesake. 'He thinks we are made of coarser stuff than he is,' he said with a curled lip. 'He thinks that pushing over my son is fair game because he's just another Bigod, to be put in his place and that means subordinate to him. I won't stand for it any more.

Enough is enough.'

Mahelt frowned at him. She knew he was on the defensive and behaving like this because he had had to swallow his rage at what John had tried to do to her. This was yet another threat to his family from the royal side - from a man who rode with the King and shared his blood. Longespee had been a fool, but surely not enough of one to cause this kind of rift.

'Your quarrel will break your mother,' she said.

Hugh kissed his son's fluffy curls. 'There is nothing to stop her having contact with him if that is her wish,' he said frostily. 'When he comes to Framlingham, I can arrange to be away in the North, or at Thetford or Ipswich. If we are not in each other's company, there can be no quarrel - and that is my last word.'

Mahelt sighed. She thought him too stiff-necked on the matter, but knew that if she pushed him now, she would only drive him further into a corner. Hugh was flexible, but he had a stubborn streak too and there were certain matters upon which he would not bend.

'You must go and bid farewell to the King for the sake of formality,' she said, taking the baby from him.

Hugh stood up and straightened his tunic. 'You are right.' His mouth twisted

'I shall do my duty and I shall see the hellspawn lot of them out of our gates

. . . and then I shall go and wash my hands.'

Riding out of Framlingham, Longespee felt a terrible sense of loss settle over him. His mother had handed up the stirrup cup with shaking hands and eyes full of anguish, but even for her he would not relent, especially with Hugh standing behind her, his posture and expression carved from stone.

'It'll be all right,' Ralph told him in a jocular voice, riding up beside him.

'Hugh's never angry for long.'

Longespee bestowed a withering look on his half-brother. 'I care not. Hugh is nothing to me. Even if he apologised now for his behaviour, I would not accept it. I have finished trying with him.'

'I am sorry.' Ralph's tone was curt.

Longespee grunted. 'If you want to ride back to Framlingham and join him, I will not stop you.'

Ralph hesitated and even glanced over his shoulder towards the towers coroneting the horizon; then he looked at the shield strapped to his packhorse. Not the red and yellow of Bigod, but the blue and gold of Salisbury. 'But you would mind,' he said. 'Wouldn't you?'

Longespee said nothing, but Ralph saw a muscle crease in his half-brother's cheek. He would mind, and dearly. 'You are my lord,' Ralph said. 'My fealty is to you, but I shall not cease speaking to Hugh because he is my brother too.'

'As you wish,' Longespee replied, but he relaxed in the saddle and Ralph saw him exhale the breath he had been holding. The young man shook his head and wondered why family ties had to be so bitter and complicated.

29

Canterbury, Kent, June 1213

Hugh rose from making his obeisance at the tomb of the martyr Thomas Becket, who, forty years ago, had been slain on the spot where Hugh and his brother-in-law Ranulf now worshipped, his brains spilled from his skull and spread abroad on the sword blade of King Henry's knight Reginald Fitzurse.

An archbishop, murdered on the order of the King. It had been unthinkable, but it had happened, and might do so again. Hugh had put his hand into the hole that gave access to Becket's coffin and touched the smooth wood as countless others had before him. He wondered how long it would take to wear through and if one day, someone would reach in and touch the saint's bones instead.

Hugh had not made the pilgrimage to Becket's tomb before. The shrine of Saint Edmund was closer to Framlingham and it was better to patronise a martyred king with a special interest in East Anglia than a former Archbishop of Canterbury but recently elevated to sainthood. Hugh's father said with a sardonic lift to his brow that Becket hadn't been much of a saint in his lifetime anyway - just a quarrelsome, proud and stubborn man, and in the end those qualities had killed him. However, his Church had made him a martyr, miracles had happened at his tomb and before King Henry knew it, he had a saint to deal with rather than a formerly contumacious and now deceased priest.

Hugh would not have made a special pilgrimage to the shrine, but since the court and the royal army were camped nearby and he had time to kill, he had undertaken to visit the cathedral, accompanied by his brother-in-law. Ranulf genuflected and rose too. 'They say that before he was archbishop, he went to France on a diplomatic mission, and so great was his display of wealth that the French mistook him for King Henry himself. I can well believe it.'

Ranulf's clear green eyes roved the bejewelled opulence of the shrine and the rainbow glitter of the painted windows. 'He may not have been able to take it with him, but he is certainly entombed in riches.'

'Even so, he is of greater value than anything surrounding him,' Hugh said.

'Without his martyrdom, none of this would be here. In the year before the interdict, he was worth more than three hundred and seventy pounds of silver a year in offerings from pilgrims.'

Ranulf pursed his lips in a silent whistle. 'They don't really need our offering of two marks and five pounds of wax then, do they?'

Hugh smiled. 'You are turning into a careful Yorkshireman.'

'I'm insulted,' Ranulf said loftily. 'I've never been anything else.'

The two men walked amiably up the nave, examining the painted columns, the gilded sconces, the hangings and decorations. Hugh immersed himself in the magnificence of the shapes, textures and colours. Ranulf's eye was not artistic and his interest less deep, but he was good-humoured and patient, content when he had looked his fill to wait for Hugh.

The outer part of the nave bustled with pedlars doing a roaring trade in votive candles, lead badges featuring the saint and ampullae containing holy water in which the garments Becket had been wearing at his martyrdom had been steeped. There were even some rock-crystal phials of Becket's blood, the latter purportedly collected at the time of the murder by some monk more enterprising than horrified, if one was gullible enough to believe the tale. As the men emerged through the west door into the early June sunshine, they were set upon by yet more tradesmen selling signed writs confirming that a pilgrimage had been undertaken. There were prayer beads in assorted stones, types of wood, ivory and bone to suit all pockets. Trinkets and tokens. Chaplets of flowers both real and artificial. Belts, horse mounts, brooches, buckles, crosses, reliquaries.

'I'll warrant that this trade continued throughout the interdict,' Ranulf said.

'They wouldn't want to lose all this, would they?' He paused to contemplate a coil of prayer beads at one of the stalls.

'It certainly carried on at Bury from what I saw, and at Norwich.' Hugh eyed him askance. 'You're not going to . . . Good God, Ranulf!'

Ranulf waved his hand. 'I have a wife who will give me a sweeter welcome home if I return from campaign bearing gifts as well as dirty laundry. If she discovers I have been to Canterbury and not brought her a token, there will be hell to pay at home rather than a few shillings here. What do you think of these blue ones? You're the one with a talent for colour.'

Hugh considered. The beads were attractive and looked as if they might be lapis. 'Do they match her eyes?'

Ranulf frowned; then he peered into Hugh's face. 'Well, they match yours, so that's close enough since she's your sister.'

Having negotiated a price, Ranulf tied the purchased beads through his belt.

Business accomplished, the men repaired to the nearest alehouse, ordered a jug of wine and sat beneath the shade of an oak tree.

Other men from the royal camp were taking the opportunity to visit the shrine and the crowds coming and going from the cathedral were peppered with soldiers and servants of varying ranks and stations. Ranulf stretched out his legs. 'If this is what it's like before the interdict's officially ended, how much custom will they have once it's been ratified?'

Hugh rubbed fingers and thumb together to show what he thought about the financial side of matters and drank his wine.

Ranulf shook his head. 'I still cannot believe what the King did. He certainly pulled the ground out from under everyone's feet . . . I thought John was finished . . .' His tone contained admiration without pleasure.

Hugh shrugged 'I suspect my father-in-law had a lot to do with persuading him to bow to the Pope's wishes and make peace.'

Ranulf exhaled down his nose, the sound expressing his thoughts on that notion. 'Why would he want to do that? After the way the King behaved towards him over Ireland, you would think he'd want to see him go down.'

Hugh gestured with his cup. 'My father-in-law plays the game with subtlety and balance. Besides, he gave his fealty to King John and his oath is his honour. It's the reason men follow him and trust him. If the French had invaded, how many would have gone over to Prince Louis?'

Without answering, Ranulf busied himself pouring a fresh cup of wine.

'There was no other choice but to make peace with the Pope.'

'Mayhap not, but there was no reason to give England to him as well. We're a papal state now - hah!' There was disgust in Ranulf's tone as he referred to the fact that, in a complete volte-face, John had knelt to the papal envoy, agreed to accept Stephen Langton as Archbishop of Canterbury, and in one fell swoop made England a vassal state of Rome. The hermit who had predicted John would no longer rule England by Ascension Day had been right, if not in the way folk expected. The hermit himself had been hanged.

'But at a distance, and since John has sworn fealty to the Pope, it protects us from France and it means Stephen Langton can set foot in England as Archbishop of Canterbury . . . and that in turn means we can begin the work of binding John through due process of law. We need both Church and barons for that.'

'You think John is going to tamely agree to be bound?' Ranulf's gaze was cynical.

'Not tamely, no, but he will have no choice when the Archbishop of Canterbury and the senior earls give it their backing.'