When Christ and His Saints Slept (136 page)

After occupying the town, Stephen had found lodgings at Holy Trinity, a small priory of Augustinian canons. He’d returned this Monday at dusk, after another long, tiring day at the siege site. Although he knew the others were waiting for him in the guest hall, he slumped down in a chair by the window; at times he found it hard to remember why it mattered whether he took this castle or not. He’d been told that Henry had gone north, that he was now laying siege to William Peverel’s castle at Stanford, apparently as a favor to the Earl of Chester. He wondered if it ever occurred to Henry that they were playing a peculiar form of chess. A castle taken here, another lost there, and the game went on.

He was turning away when several men raced past the window, running flat-out on a hot August evening, when even a brisk walk would work up a sweat. He leaned out, saw nothing in the gathering dusk, but the oddness of it lingered and when William Martel entered a few moments later, he commented upon it, half humorously, to the seneschal. “I just saw two of the Black Canons sprinting across the garth. They’re usually so protective of their dignity, but these lads were kicking up so much dust you’d swear Satan had come calling!”

William Martel did not return his smile. “It is Eustace.”

Stephen froze. “What of him?”

“He is here, my liege. He just rode into the priory.”

THEIR
shouting had carried beyond the chamber, out into the garth where men gathered to listen. When Stephen and Eustace finally emerged, their covert audience scattered in haste, but neither man noticed, so caught up were they in their private war. Stephen kept staring at this stranger who was his son, unable to admit that there was nothing left to be said. He’d raged and cursed and then pleaded, but he’d gotten no answers from Eustace, only angry abuse. Eustace had offered neither explanations nor apology for what he’d done. He’d come back, he said defiantly, because if he were not here to defend his rights, no one else would. And for Stephen, that was the most painful of his wounds, that Eustace had been so quick to believe in his betrayal.

Eustace stumbled as they entered the hall, jostling his father, and only then did Stephen realize how much his son had been drinking. But he found a small measure of comfort in that; if Eustace had not dared to face him sober, how could he be as unrepentant as he claimed?

Their entrance killed all conversation. Several of the Augustinian canons were present, but not for long, for as soon as Eustace came through the door, they made a hasty exit. Stephen’s men seemed no less hostile than the canons, although they at least attempted—however poorly—to hide their antipathy. Eustace raked the hall with a bold, challenging stare, as if defying anyone to speak out. None did, yet there was no thaw in the air, no easing of the tension.

“Come, take a seat,” Stephen insisted. Eustace’s arm was rigid under his hand, but Stephen’s grip was too tight to shake off, and he reluctantly allowed his father to steer him toward the high table. Familiar faces were all about him. Arundel. That Judas Fleming. His milksop of a little brother. To his fury, none of them seemed willing to meet his eyes. Did they think they could make him disappear by pretending not to see him? If they hoped he’d slink away in the night, they would be sorely disappointed. He’d never make it easy for them. They’d have to confront him openly from now on, if they dared.

It enraged him, though, to be shunned like this, as if he were a foul, stinking leper instead of the rightful heir to the English throne. Draining his wine cup, much too fast, he signaled for a refill. The food on his trencher was a favorite dish of his, a lamprey-eel pie, but he was too angry to savor it and ate quickly, without tasting what he swallowed, brooding upon the injustice of it all, silently cursing Henry Fitz Empress and his weak-willed father with every bite.

It was proving to be a miserable meal for Stephen, too; the food on his trencher went untouched, even unnoticed. What was he going to do? If he punished his son as he deserved, he’d risk pushing Eustace into open rebellion. But the monks of St Edmunds had been grievously wronged, and how could he ignore that? Eustace could not have served Henry better than he had at Bury St Edmunds; why could he not see that? If only Tilda were here to counsel the lad; mayhap she could have made him see reason. Each time Stephen glanced up, he saw men warily watching Eustace. How long would they remain loyal if he continued to force Eustace upon them? And yet how could he ever abandon his own son?

So unnaturally quiet was it that the sound of an overturning chair was shockingly loud, startling them all. Seeing his son on his feet, Stephen felt a throb of despair. What sort of mischief was Eustace up to now? Could he not even get through a single meal without shaming them both?

But once he got his first clear look at his son’s face, he cried out sharply. Something was wrong. Eustace was clutching at his throat, his eyes cutting frantically toward Stephen. When he lurched into the table, knocking a wine flagon over onto the other diners, there were curses and even a few audible mutterings about “drunken sots.”

Stephen knew better. “Eustace, what is wrong? Tell me!”

Eustace seemed to be trying to do just that. His mouth was working, but no words were emerging. By now they’d all realized that he was having some sort of seizure. Chairs were shoved aside and men scrambled away from the table, away from Eustace, for the same thought was in most of their minds: a plundered abbey and a saint’s curse.

Eustace’s face was suffused with blood. He sank to his knees, one hand still clawing at his throat, the other reaching out toward his father.

“He is choking!” Time seemed to have slowed, even to have stopped, as Stephen struggled to get to his son. Eustace was convulsing; there was spittle and blood on his lips and his skin had taken on a bluish hue. Stephen began to pound him desperately upon the back and shoulders. Someone was shouting for a doctor. There were a few cries, too, for a priest. But most of the men just stood there, watching. Eustace’s eyes were rolling back. His body jerked in several uncontrollable spasms and then went limp. Those who’d ventured closer now caught the smell of urine. Death was no stranger to any of them. But few had ever witnessed a death like this one, so sudden and swift and divinely ordained. For surely it could not be mere happenchance that Eustace would be struck down in all his youthful arrogance just days after defiling a holy shrine?

As Stephen cradled his son and wept, men glanced at one another, and then crossed themselves. Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, and St Edmund was not to be mocked, for he tended to his own. And as the shock began to subside, more than a few of the witnesses gave silent thanks to this vengeful saint, even as they looked with pity upon their stricken king.

Stephen’s younger son still stood, rooted, at the end of the table. He did not seem capable of movement, so chalky-white that he appeared likely to keel over himself at any moment. When someone shoved a wine cup into his hand, though, he drank obediently. As color slowly came back into the boy’s face, William de Ypres said, “Go to your father, lad. He has need of you.”

The youth blinked, then did as he was bade, moving as if in a daze. He did not have it in him to take charge, but fortunately there would be others to do what must be done. William Martel was already at Stephen’s side, gently seeking to coax him away from his son’s body.

Ypres was more than willing to let others shoulder the burdens for a change. Surprised by how tired he suddenly felt, he fumbled for a chair, sat down wearily midst the wreckage of Eustace’s last meal. He’d choked on a mouthful of lamprey eel, the same dish that had supposedly caused the old king’s death, too. Ypres’s mouth twitched in a grim and private smile, for the eerie aptness of it appealed to his sense of irony. If Henry Fitz Empress were prudent, he’d ban eels from the royal table in future. Why tempt Providence, after all?

IT
had been a hot summer for England, an even hotter one for Aquitaine. By midmorning, Eleanor’s lying-in chamber was already sweltering and the windows were opened as wide as they could get. Insects soon invaded the room, and as her ladies fanned Eleanor and wiped the sweat from her face, they also had to swat away flies. In late afternoon, thunder rumbled in the distance, a promise of relief that never came. The air remained utterly still, stifling. Eleanor refused to cry out, too proud to lay bare her pain for the world, listening under those unshuttered windows. She held on to her sister’s hand, so tightly that her nails left scratches on Petronilla’s wrist, but the other woman did not complain. Theirs was a sisterhood not just of blood, but of the birthing chamber, too, for Petronilla knew firsthand—as Colette and Yolande did not—what Eleanor was enduring.

Childbirth was the Curse of Eve, but Eleanor’s curses were directed at her absent husband, at a world in which women must reap what men had sown. The midwife was shocked, but Petronilla grinned and confided that during the most difficult of her three deliveries, she’d vowed to live as chastely as a nun from then on, whether Raoul liked it or not. “But fortunately for the future of mankind,” she quipped, “God has given women flawed memories!”

Eleanor laughed, to the midwife’s amazement. But then she groaned, biting down on her fist. When the contraction passed, she muttered that if the folklore was true that sons were birthed more easily than daughters, it must be because girls knew what awaited them outside the womb. And again the midwife marveled, for it had been her experience that the birthing chamber was a setting for hope and fear and joy and, too often, peril, but rarely for humor.

Not until dark did the heat begin to abate. From her bed, Eleanor could see a starlit, ebony sky. When Yolande tilted a cup to her swollen, bitten lips, she swallowed thirstily, too tired even to identify what she was drinking. Deep shadows lurked under her eyes, hollowed her cheekbones, and for the first time, she looked her age to Yolande, a woman of thirty-one, a woman past her first flush of youth, all the glamor and glitter stripped away by her twelve-hour ordeal. But as Eleanor smiled down at the infant in her arms, Yolande felt tears sting her eyes, so great was her regret that her lady’s husband would never see that smile.

“Ah, madame, if only you could be there when Lord Harry hears!”

“I wish so, too, Yolande,” Eleanor admitted, “but it was not to be.” Fighting her fatigue, she looked again at her baby, and then up at the women hovering by the bed. “Nor would I have minded being there when Louis and Abbot Bernard hear,” she murmured, and this time her smile was irrepressible, wickedly triumphant.

RANULF
had been to the Lincolnshire market town of Stanford once before, on his odyssey with the Fenland orphans; he’d had to seek out a barber in St Peter’s Street to yank Simon’s infected tooth. The barber was still there, older and grayer and understandably alarmed by the siege under way up the road, barely a stone’s throw from his small, cramped shop.

The castle of William Peverel boasted a newly constructed circular stone keep, rising above the meadows of the River Weland. It had held out for the past fortnight under heavy bombardment, the local quarries providing ample ammunition for Henry’s mangonels. But September got off to a promising start; the garrison was offering to talk.

The Benedictine priory of St Leonard’s, just east of the town, had become Henry’s headquarters, and the Black Monks were making heroic efforts to accommodate not only the Duke of Normandy and his entourage, but a handful of demanding lords, including the notorious Earl of Chester, long the bane of Lincolnshire. On this ominously overcast morning, Ranulf had lingered at the priory to tend to a personal matter; he was sending one of his Welshmen home with a letter for Rhiannon. He’d thought that their separation would get easier with time; the opposite seemed to be occurring. Without even realizing what was happening, he’d given his heart away, and England was now the alien land.

Padarn was waiting out in the priory garth with their horses, and they headed into the town. By the time they reached the siege, rain had begun to fall. The marketplace adjoined the castle, and would normally have been crowded with stalls and booths, had the siege not utterly disrupted town life. Instead of customers, it was occupied by soldiers, and it was here that Ranulf found his nephew, conferring bareheaded in the rain with Rainald and a visibly irate Earl of Chester.

Catching sight of Ranulf, Henry beckoned to him, just as the clouds split asunder and a torrent engulfed the marketplace. Men scattered for cover, Ranulf following Henry toward the closest shelter, the alcove of All Saints’ Church. As they waited for the rain to subside, Henry revealed why Chester was so disgruntled, even though the garrison had agreed to surrender.

“We discovered that William Peverel was never in the castle. It seems he is holed up at Nottingham, so of course that is where Chester wants us to go next. I told him that I’d have to think about it. Helping Chester settle scores with all his enemies could well turn into a lifetime’s occupation!” Henry said and laughed.

Ranulf laughed, too, pleased to see his nephew in such high spirits. August had not been a good month for Henry, not at first, for he was waiting impatiently for word from his wife, finding it hard to focus all his energies upon the Stanford siege, still vexed that he’d been cheated of a battlefield confrontation with Stephen and Eustace at Wallingford.

But that had all changed dramatically once they learned of the events at Ipswich on August 17th. Most people seemed convinced that Eustace’s death was divine retribution for his sins, and even more impressive proof that the Almighty favored the Angevin cause. Naturally, Henry did nothing to contradict this view, remarking privately to Ranulf that God could hardly be improved upon as an ally. But whether he owed a debt of gratitude to an unforgiving saint or a lamprey eel, the result was the same: the removal of the last obstacle in his march to the throne.

Roger Fitz Miles was holding forth on that very subject a few feet away, assuring all within hearing that peace was at hand, it was just a matter now of working out the details.