A Pride of Kings (The Plantagenets Book 1)

by Juliet Dymoke

  William bent down and helped the man with the bleeding mouth to his feet.

  ‘Ask him if he believes in our Lord Christ,’ a butcher yelled. He had a meat knife in his hand. ‘Ask him, my lord, ask him!’ And he flourished his knife.

  ‘I do – I swear it,’ the Jew cried in terror and there was a howl of disbelief from the crowd. By now, however, more men-at-arms had come up and John Marshal ordered them to disperse the crowd while William and some others got the wounded and beaten men away.

  Back in the hall the feast was still in progress, but on being told what had happened the King demanded to see the Jew who was leading the deputation.

  Walter hauled him in front of the dais and William said, ‘The crowd is out of hand, your grace, and what they are doing now in the city, God knows, but they were out for blood.’

  ‘So I see.’ Richard looked at the Jews one after the other and then back to the man who was trying to staunch the bleeding from his broken teeth. ‘Did you plot to kill me?’

  ‘No, sire – only to bring you gifts, to wish you well on this great day,’ the Jew whispered. He was elderly and still shaking from the blows he had received.

  Richard regarded him sternly. ‘And do you believe Christ is the Messiah?’

  The trembling ceased and the old man drew himself up. ‘May the God of my fathers forgive me for saying it. No, sire, I hold the faith of my race.’

  There was an ominous growl in the hall and the Earl of Chester called out, ‘Hang him, sire, for such blasphemy. God’s teeth, aren’t we all going to fight to rid the world of such infidels?’

  Richard paused, his wine cup halfway to his lips. Then he said. ‘Release the fellow. He’s had punishment enough and I may have need of him and his kind.’

  The Jew and his companions were hustled away through a back door but when at last they dared to return to Jewry under cover of darkness they found nothing but dying fires and fallen roofs, and the charred bodies of their wives and children and they sat and wept amid the wreckage as their ancestors had once wept by the waters of Babylon.

  ‘A bloody beginning,’ John Marshal said. ‘I like it not,’ and for once William was in agreement with him.

  He went and asked Richard what was to be done.

  ‘Done?’ the King queried and laughed. He was in a pleasant mood sitting among his courtiers with a lute on his knee, plucking at the strings. ‘Why, nothing, Marshal, but to make them yield up their treasure for my enterprise. All England must yield up its treasure for me.’ He glanced at William and his smile widened. ‘I’ll sell London itself if I can find anyone to buy it!’

  CHAPTER TEN

  The heat was beyond anything young John Marshal had ever encountered. The sweat rolled down his face and body, soaking his shirt and drawers, for he was wearing nothing else, and despite the wound in his arm, tied about with a bloody rag, he was swinging a pick with the rest of the men, regardless of the pain it caused.

  Here in Ascalon on the coast of Syria, some forty miles from Jerusalem, the crusading army had marched last night, hot, tired and somewhat discouraged. The nights were as bitterly cold as the days were hot and John and his particular cronies, Robert de Beaumont, Leicester’s son, Richard d’Abernon and his cousin William le Gras had built a fire and cooked the meagre portion of a kid that they shared with several others, eating hungrily and wrapped in their cloaks. This morning the herald had wakened them all at first light with his familiar cry of ‘Help! Help for the Holy Sepulchre!’ and now they laboured in the broiling sun to rebuild the walls of Ascalon which had fallen into disrepair.

  At first the King rode round the defences. ‘Everyone is to work,’ he ordered, ‘cooks and farriers and priests, all of you.’ And shortly after he dismounted, stripped off his shirt and seizing a pick set about breaking stone to build up a breach. The sight of this giant King with the red-gold hair glistening in the sun labouring with his own hands cheered the men on and John thought, no wonder they follow him, no wonder they would all die here for him, which is what they might well do. He brought his pick down on a great rock and split it. It was his pride that he had something of his uncle William’s great strength. His uncle had wanted to come on this tremendous expedition but the King had said firmly that he needed men he could trust at home and had made William one of his justiciars. John began to wonder what it would be like in England now, the meadows deep in buttercups, great pools of shade under the beeches, fields of green corn standing in the sunlight, cool streams meandering through the valleys. Sickness here had decimated the army, Baldwin, the Archbishop of Canterbury and Ranulf de Glanville among its first victims, and they all longed for a cool English breeze. Last winter there had been little to eat, but it was better now, even their enemy the great Sallah-ed-din sending baskets of fruit to his opponent, but none of that altered the fact that nothing was going to plan.

  The English knights quarrelled with the French. ‘When we have spent our lives fighting them,’ de Beaumont said, ‘it is not easy to find them on our side.’

  One such quarrel had reverberated to the highest authority and Richard and Leopold of Austria had had a fierce altercation, so that when Conrad of Montferrat had been assassinated Leopold had gone so far as to hint that it might have been done not by Moslems but by two of Richard’s men in disguise, and it was Leopold’s minstrel who began circulating a vile and scurrilous song about Richard of England. To be slyly accused of sodomy was not amusing, particularly as it was whispered that Richard had done penance in Cyprus for ‘grievous sin’. His minstrel Ambroise retaliated with equal mockery and the ill-feeling grew.

  The English army as a whole loathed Leopold and his Austrians from that moment and now, pausing to lean on his pick and wipe the sweat from his face, John saw the Duke himself riding along to inspect the work. He paused where the King was heaving a broken stone into a gap. He said nothing, a supercilious look on his face, and Richard, turning to seize his pick again, saw him.

  ‘In God’s name, my lord Duke,’ he said sharply, ‘get down off your horse and help us.’

  Leopold glared at him. ‘I am neither carpenter nor stonemason, Richard of England – nor are you. This is no work for such as us.’

  ‘Our Lord was a carpenter and it is for His sake we are here,’ Richard retorted. ‘Will you get down or do I pull you down?’

  ‘Neither.’ Leopold swore at him, flinging an obscenity at the man who stood tall enough to carry out his threat. ‘You go beyond all, my lord. It is your arrogance that has undone us.’

  ‘If anything has done that it is your cowardice and Philip’s and Burgundy’s’ Richard retorted with truth. He raised his hand as if to carry out his threat. The contrast between himself, dirty and sweating, and the Duke in silks and jewels, was such that no one doubted the outcome, but Richard did not strike. Instead he brought his hand down hard on the horse’s rump. ‘Get you gone then – we want no man of your kidney with us.’

  The horse, startled, reared and then went off at a gallop so that the angry Duke nearly came out of the saddle, swaying like a sack before catching hard at the reins to bring the horse under control again. The English labouring at the walls roared with laughter, but the next morning Leopold of Austria and his troops were gone.

  ‘Good riddance,’ Richard d’Abernon said cheerfully. ‘The Austrians were worse than the French and God knows we’ve been better off without King Philip.’

  ‘That bladder of lard!’ John exclaimed. ‘He’s no soldier. A few months here soon sent him scurrying back to France, and Burgundy after him, but will he keep the truce there? He’s always sworn to take back the lands old King Henry took from him.’

  ‘If he tries all Christendom will condemn him,’ de Beaumont put in. ‘Everyone is sworn by the Pope’s order to protect Crusaders’ lands.’

  John gave an expressive shrug. ‘I wonder if Prince John will remember that?’

  ‘He wouldn’t dare to challenge the King’s authority, surely?’ d’Abernon asked. ‘He must ha
ve heard more than the bad news. Someone will have told him how we won at Arsouf, that the dead were piled like corn-swathes before the King. No one ever fought as he did then.’

  ‘No.’ The three of them began to walk towards the walls, the sun only just coming up, the heat not yet intense, the empty spaces where the Austrian tents had been littered with abandoned rubbish. John was thinking how far they had come since last year when they had feasted in Cyprus at the wedding of King Richard to Berengaria of Navarre, the last of comfort and luxury they had known. Though the new Queen and the King’s sister Joanna, the widowed Queen of Sicily, had struck up a great friendship and followed them to the Holy Land, it was certain the King’s mind was more on the war than on his bride. It was he who had persisted in the siege of Acre, reducing the garrison briskly enough and taking near three thousand prisoners.

  ‘But men will remember Acre,’ John said suddenly, and de Beaumont demanded to know why.

  ‘Because we slew the prisoners? That was because Saladin did not keep his word to us about the exchange. And didn’t we come here to slay unbelievers.’

  ‘Of course,’ John agreed. ‘I don’t care for the heathen –’ yet it would be a long time before he forgot that day and the orders to kill and kill until not one of all that number lived, nor the screams and cries for mercy of those dark, terrified men. ‘– but I do care for Richard’s honour, and because he would not wait Saladin slew all his Christian prisoners. We gained nothing.’

  ‘Except that men learned to fear our King.’

  They had reached the walls now, the Holy City lying so few miles away beyond those brown hills. ‘Aye,’ John said slowly, ‘they do that.’ The King’s fighting strength, his skill in handling his men, in keeping this large army in the field so long, put heart into the meanest soldier. He was always in the forefront of any battle, flinging himself into every dangerous gap, so that his appearance anywhere was met with frenzied cheering. No wonder the other less capable leaders were jealous. Now Leopold too was gone and England faced the enemy alone.

  All through the hot day they toiled and then Richard, considering the walls strong enough, called Hubert Walter to him. Walter, now Bishop of Salisbury, was as cool and careful as an army commander as he was as a cleric, a man very much after Richard’s own heart and together they decided on the march towards Jerusalem.

  ‘We will be there in three days,’ Richard declared in ringing tones to his assembled troops, and the Bishop prayed in a loud voice, all men baring their heads, consecrating their efforts to God. It was a pity, John thought, that the army had to be followed by such a collection of pimps and prostitutes and such scum as were after any pickings that might be had. He was not above getting drunk himself and for most of them any woman was better than none, but the vice in the camp was at war with its ideals and he wished that Richard would forbid this mean and filthy tail to follow them. But Richard had his eyes on the road to the east and was oblivious of all else.

  They halted at Emmaus where once Christ had revealed Himself and there the army waited as their leader and his chief officers conferred.

  John and Richard d’Abernon were idly rolling dice when William le Gras joined them in the small tent they all shared, his face dark with distress.

  ‘What is it?’ John asked. ‘God in heaven, what’s happened?’

  ‘We are to go back,’ his cousin said and flung himself down on his pallet. ‘They say we cannot besiege the Holy City. Now that the Austrians have gone we have not enough men and Richard says that the lie of the city makes it impossible as well as the disposition of Saladin’s men.’ He looked up at the two thunderstruck and disbelieving faces. ‘Oh, it is true enough. We march back to Jaffa in the morning.’

  John swept the dice aside in one impatient gesture. ‘What have we come all this way for, then, if not to take Jerusalem?’

  D’Abernon said slowly, ‘Perhaps God is not with us. Our men fall sick and die every day, our allies desert us, and perhaps the King has offended –’

  ‘Did we ever expect it would be easy?’ John countered. ‘The fewer the men the greater the glory and Richard has earned it alone for England.’

  ‘I know – I know!’ d’Abernon cried out in distress, his hands gripped together. ‘But don’t you see for some reason it is not right for us?’

  ‘Well, I for one don’t see.’ Robert de Beaumont had come into the tent to hear the last words. ‘I only know we had cowards for friends and the King has done all that any man could do. Why should God punish him for that? And you should have seen his face when he gave the order.’

  John saw it next morning as the army led by Hubert Walter, his episcopal dress hidden beneath a coat of mail, began to wind its way back towards the coast. The King, usually in the van, rode with the rearguard this time, his eyes on his horse’s neck, his shoulders bent.

  A young knight came galloping up to him, all eagerness, his words tumbling out. ‘Sire – Sire! If you ride up that low hill there you can see Jerusalem clearly. The sun is on the towers and minarets and –’ he stopped, for Richard had raised his head and was looking at him yet without seeing him.

  ‘The man who is not worthy to conquer the Holy City is not worthy to look upon it,’ he said and his eyes filled with tears so that they spilled down his cheeks.

  No one spoke. The knight fell back, abashed, and there was no sound on the desert road but the hooves against rough stone and the jingling of harness.

  William was pacing a passage in the palace at Winchester, pausing occasionally to look out of the narrow window at the wintry landscape below, his mind on only one thing. There was much to occupy him but this morning state affairs were forgotten as Isabel laboured of their third child. His two sons William and Richard were with their nurse in the big house he had bought near Reading – Richard was an ailing child and it was thought best he should be kept quietly in the country – but Isabel had come here to be with Queen Eleanor when the news came that the King was missing.

  His army, under Hubert Walter’s expert command, was making its slow laborious way home, but Richard’s ship appeared to have been wrecked on the Adriatic coast and the King himself had vanished – into an Austrian dungeon, some said, and William could well believe that Leopold’s hatred could sink to that. But no one knew for certain and Queen Eleanor’s face was white and drawn with anxiety for her son, Isabel came at once to the Queen, though she was near her time, and now the child was to be born William waited outside the chamber in a fret of anxiety.

  These two years since Richard had left England had been difficult ones for him. In the high office of justiciar he had clashed with both Longchamp and Prince John, though as far as the chancellor’s behaviour was concerned he had been at one with the Prince. Longchamp’s overbearing manner, his scorn of England and English law had finally gone beyond what could be tolerated, and when he had imprisoned the Archbishop of York, William’s old friend Geoffrey, William joined the Prince in the storm of protest. Furious, Longchamp had excommunicated him, and a wretched uncomfortable time it had been, but the chancellor had overreached himself and Richard, hearing the news in Acre, had sent the Archbishop of Rouen, Walter of Coutances, to restore order. Longchamp was driven from the country, all Europe laughing outright at the tale of his attempt to escape in woman’s clothing, only to be discovered at Dover by an over-attentive fisherman. The Archbishop rescinded the excommunication and now he, with William as his subordinate, ruled England in the King’s name. William kept his eyes on Prince John, however. To his mind Richard had given too freely to that smiling, dangerous young man and there were too many French messengers arriving at Nottingham Castle, John’s favourite residence. It seemed to him that John and Philip were playing as mice might play when the cat was out of the barn.

  He began to pace again, his hands behind his back. The two births had not been difficult – for all her smallness Isabel bore her children well – but there was always danger. So many women died in childbed and his love for Isabel grew d
aily so that he could not imagine life without her. He had been in the room for the birth of William, but he found it hard to watch Isabel’s suffused, perspiring face, listen to her cries of pain, see her swollen body heaving beneath the coverlet. At least out here he could pray for her to the Blessed Virgin. He had lighted a dozen candles in the cathedral this morning when the pains came on her and now, at last, he heard the sound he had been straining to hear, a sudden thin wail.

  It was over then, and a few moments later one of his wife’s attendants came to the door. ‘My lord, you have a daughter.’

  ‘God be praised!’ he pushed past her and went swiftly to the bed. Queen Eleanor sat on the far side, holding one of Isabel’s limp hands, her own worry forgotten briefly in her joy for them. ‘A fine child,’ she said, smiling up at him, ‘A daughter who favours you, I think.’

  William knelt by the bed and took his wife’s other hand, finding it hot and damp. He put it to his lips. ‘My love –’

  She gave a tired sigh. ‘Are you sorry that it is a girl, my lord?’

  ‘Sorry? Dear heart, we have two fine boys, it is time we had a daughter. She shall be well dowered and well married and our family will grow. Will it not be so, your grace?’

  ‘If God wills,’ Eleanor agreed, but the fleeting thought was in her mind that she had only two grandchildren, born of Constance whom she so disliked and who kept them, Eleanor and Arthur, far away in Brittany where she might not see them. But John was soon to marry and surely Richard and Berengaria would have children in the course of time. She was so fond of Berengaria and wished she could have comforted her in these days of anxiety. That Richard would not return she refused to countenance. Yet she felt old and dispirited today. She patted Isabel’s hand and said she must sleep now, that William must see his daughter. He rose and bending kissed Isabel on the mouth, their tenderness for each other such that Eleanor felt an ache of envy for something that even in her most passionate days she had never known.