When Christ and His Saints Slept (134 page)

Trestle tables had already been brought in, and men began to wander over, claiming their seats for dinner. But before Henry reached the dais, Jordan de Foxley, Malmesbury’s castellan, was ushered into the hall. Henry greeted him amiably, for he had no personal animosity toward the man, who’d only been doing his duty as a soldier. “You’re welcome to join us for dinner, Sir Jordan. Afterward, we can discuss your plans for razing the castle.”

Kneeling before Henry, the castellan said, low and urgent, “Thank you, my lord duke. But I have need to speak with you now. If you spare me a few moments, I can assure you that you’ll not regret it.”

It was deftly done, and many in the hall did not even notice Henry’s discreet departure, although they did wonder why dinner was being delayed. They were not kept long in suspense. Less than half an hour had elapsed before Henry returned to the hall, strode up onto the dais, and called for silence.

“I have just met with the castellan of Malmesbury Castle,” he announced, “and I am pleased to inform you that he has offered to turn the castle over to me, intact and whole—”

Henry got no further; whatever else he’d been about to say was drowned out by a burst of cheering. Dinner was forgotten. For some time afterward, the hall was in tumult, a scene of triumphant and raucous celebration.

Ranulf watched from the dais as the castellan was escorted back into the hall, this time to be greeted as a hero by Henry’s elated barons. In the course of this war, there had been many defections; some men had switched sides more than once. Ranulf sensed that this defection was different, though, that the Malmesbury castellan’s action was a straw in the wind. He dearly loved his nephew and wanted very much to see Henry as England’s king. But he could not help the words that came unbidden now to his lips, too softly to be overheard. “Poor Stephen…”

HENRY
celebrated his twentieth birthday at Bristol, planning the next stage of his campaign. Soon after Easter, he was joined by Robert Beaumont. The earl’s holdings included more than thirty fortified castles scattered throughout the Midlands, strongholds now put at Henry’s disposal as this powerful and cautious lord publicly allied himself with the Angevin cause, formally acknowledging Maude’s son as the rightful heir to the English throne.

56

Siege Of Wallingford

July 1153

H
ENRY
resumed his campaign after the spring thaw. He suffered a loss in May—the death of an ally and kinsman, the Scots king—but he experienced no setbacks upon the field. He captured Berkeley Castle, then laid siege to the Earl of Derby’s stronghold at Tutbury, and once that castle fell, the earl renounced his allegiance to Stephen. Henry then gained control of Warwick Castle, having reached an understanding with the countess, a half-sister of Henry’s new ally, Robert Beaumont. The Earl of Warwick was so distressed by his wife’s action that when he died soon afterward, it was commonly believed that his sudden demise was due to “shame and grief.” After occupying Coventry and visiting Leicester and sacking Bedford, Henry then headed toward Wallingford—and a final reckoning with Stephen.

Stephen had built a countercastle across the river from Wallingford at Crowmarsh. Henry’s first assault upon Crowmarsh won the outer bailey, but the garrison rallied and drove his men back. Henry and his army then settled down to lay siege to the castle, waiting for Stephen.

ONCE
again two enemy armies were confronting each other across a river; this time it was the Thames. At Stephen’s approach, Henry issued a challenge to do battle, one Stephen had every intention of accepting. With his eldest son at his side, he rode out to inspect his troops. His was the larger army, and although he knew that was no guarantee of victory, he felt a reassuring surge of optimism as he looked upon his men. “We’ll fight at dawn,” he told Eustace, “and you’ll command the vanguard.”

That was an honour Eustace felt he deserved, but it pleased him that his father thought so, too. “All I’ve ever wanted,” he said earnestly, “is to meet Maude’s whelp on the field, and teach him a lethal lesson in what manhood is all about. By this time tomorrow—Papa!”

It happened without warning, seemingly without reason. Stephen’s horse reared up suddenly, forelegs flailing at the sky, and then began to buck wildly. Caught off balance, Stephen was pitched over the stallion’s head.

WHEN
the Bishop of Winchester and the Earl of Arundel were ushered into William de Ypres’s tent, he dismissed his attendants so they could confer in private. Not that there were any secrets left to guard; there was not a man in the camp still unaware of what had happened that afternoon. Stephen had been thrown from his horse, not just once, but three times in succession. As Stephen was known to be a skilled rider and his mount was a well-trained and battle-seasoned stallion, those who’d witnessed the king’s mishap were at a loss to explain it—except as an ominous portent of disaster.

What the bishop and the earl had come to tell Ypres, he already knew, for his men had been canvassing the camp for hours, seeking to gauge the level of unease. And so when the bishop said that Stephen’s odd accident had spooked his soldiers fully as much as the stallion, Ypres interrupted impatiently.

“Let’s get to the heart of the matter. That skittish horse is not the reason why our men are balking. It is merely an excuse. The king’s men were already loath to fight for him.”

He’d half expected the bishop to argue with him, but Stephen’s brother surprised him, showed that he could hear the truth without flinching. “What you mean,” he said, “is that they are loath to fight against Henry Fitz Empress, against the man they want as their next king.”

And there it was, out in the open at last. His shoulders slumping, the bishop sat down wearily on Ypres’s coffer. The Earl of Arundel hovered by the tent’s entrance, fidgeting with the hilt of his sword. Ypres did not need to see his face to envision his discomfort, for he knew William d’Aubigny to be an essentially decent man, but one without imagination or initiative, caught up, like so many others, in a civil war not of his making. A war that had bled England white for far too many years. It was time to put an end to it. Ypres knew that was what Matilda would have wanted. But would she have understood that peace could not come without sacrificing her son?

The bishop roused himself at last, glancing first at the edgy Arundel, and then at the impassive Fleming. “How are we going to convince Stephen?”

STEPHEN
had retired to his tent to nurse his bruises, puzzled and embarrassed by his stallion’s erratic behavior, but not alarmed, for it had not occurred to him that men might find dire significance in his triple fall. He was utterly unprepared, therefore, for the message his brother and William de Ypres were attempting to deliver—that there could be no battle on the morrow.

“I dare not fight because a horse threw me?” he said incredulously. “You cannot be serious!”

“I am hardly noted for my humor, now am I?” Bishop Henry said irritably. “Stephen, I assure you that never have I been more serious. I am going to be brutally blunt about this, for I know no other way to do it. You’ve always liked your truth and your wine sweetened, but all the sugar in Christendom could not make this easier for you to swallow. Your barons do not want to fight Henry Fitz Empress, and if you force them to follow you into the field, I very much fear you’ll have reason to regret it.”

Stephen stared at his brother, stunned by what he was hearing. “They think I have been such a bad king?”

For all of the bishop’s bold talk of “brutal bluntness,” he could not bring himself to give Stephen an honest answer to that question. He chose to dodge the blow, deferring to Ypres. The Fleming displayed a soldier’s skill at deflection, for he did not answer Stephen’s plaintive query, either. Instead, he said, “My liege, do you not see? You won your war against Maude. The fight is now over the succession. In the past, your barons have fought and bled and died to keep you on the throne. But they are not willing to risk death for Eustace. They fear the sort of king he would be…and in truth, so do I.”

That was a truth, though, that Stephen could not accept. He immediately launched into an impassioned defense of his son, with such vehemence that they suspected he was attempting to quell his own inner doubts about Eustace’s fitness to rule.

But neither the bishop nor the Fleming would relent, not with so much at stake. They took turns pointing out to Stephen just how precarious his position was. Henry enjoyed the support of the Church; the Archbishop of Canterbury was even now in his siege encampment. Unlike Stephen, he had the wholehearted support of his barons and vassals, including the Earls of Chester, Leicester, Gloucester, Hereford, Salisbury, and Cornwall. And more and more, public opinion was shifting in his favor. People had heard about the Epiphany Day prophecy. Men claimed that at Malmesbury, even the wind had been Henry’s ally. Was it surprising, then, that soldiers would react with superstitious dread when Stephen was unhorsed three times before doing battle with his rival? Need they remind him that men who expected to be defeated usually were? Need they remind him of Lincoln?

When they’d exhausted all their other arguments, Ypres and the bishop were forced to make the most painful one of all. Men did not yet know Henry Fitz Empress all that well, but what they’d so far seen of him, they liked. They did know Eustace, and liked him not. Throughout England, he’d earned himself a reputation for courage, but also for cruelty and arrogance and vengefulness. Men might have accepted him as king had they been given no choice. But they would not fight to make him king.

Eventually, Stephen stopped arguing with them. No matter what they said, though, he kept repeating stubbornly, “I will not betray my son.” And nothing seemed likely to break the impasse, for Stephen’s paternal instincts were stronger than those for self-preservation.

Surprisingly, it was the Earl of Arundel who found a solution. He and the Earl of Northampton had entered the tent in answer to the bishop’s summons; he’d hoped that Stephen would be swayed by the realization that even the steadfast Northampton would rather negotiate than fight. But Northampton’s gruff plea had fallen on deaf ears. It was Arundel who saw what these men more clever than he had not, that Stephen would grasp at any alternative which avoided an outright repudiation of his son.

“We are not asking you to make peace with Henry Fitz Empress, my liege. We seek only a truce, no more than that. So many lives have already been lost. Would it not be better to talk rather than bleed—just this once? If the talks come to naught, what have we lost?”

It was a disingenuous argument, for to seek a truce would be a damaging admission of weakness on Stephen’s part. But it offered Stephen what he so desperately needed—a reprieve, however brief, time in which to try to find a way to save his son’s kingship.

“So be it,” he said dully. “But what makes you think Henry will agree to a truce?”

His brother was not about to give Stephen a chance to change his mind. “Let’s find out.”