‘I would be honoured, sire. But what of your men? I am an Englishman, and new to your service. Will they accept me?’
‘They will do as you and I tell them. You have made a good impression on all of us. Do you accept or not?’
‘I do, my Lord, with gratitude.’
‘Good, Ademar will leave us before we travel to Caen. You had better go and see him and prepare for the handover. He knows about my decision.’
I could hardly contain my excitement.
After the Duke had left the hall, to go to his chambers, I bounded to the door like an excited child, leaving Father Alun in my wake. Realizing I had forgotten my manners, I stopped and turned to say goodbye. With a broad grin on his face, he waved to me to go on.
I rushed to tell Negu and the men, and that night we all ate together in celebration.
Later, as Negu and I embraced one another in private, she whispered in my ear.
‘Well, I missed the man with the heart of a lion by a whisker… but I managed to snare his cub.’
I took her remark as a compliment – which, I am sure, was what she intended – but it did make me smile a little.
Ademar was gracious in the handover of his responsibilities. Two days later, we were riding north to Caen with me at the head of Duke Richard’s conroi of personal guards.
I had made Godric my sergeant-at-arms and integrated my Little Quintet into the column as the first two ranks.
It was a proud moment for all of us.
Negu rode with me. It felt very grand to be marching through the mighty Plantagenet Empire at the right hand of its most famous son.
I was unashamedly proud of what I had achieved.
8. Old Nun of Rupertsberg
When we reached King Henry’s palace at Caen, the warmth of spring was in the ground and the city was stirring from its winter hibernation. The markets had fresh vegetables, and people walked with a lighter step, without their heavy winter cloaks and boots.
The King’s castle at Caen had been built by Richard’s great-great-grandfather, William, Conqueror of the English, over a hundred years previously. It was created to be a symbol of his lordship of Normandy, just as his Great Tower in London had been built to emphasize his subjugation of the English. It was the biggest fortified place I had ever seen. Its walls were so thick, it was possible to move along them with a cart and a full team of horses. The bailey was the size of an English burgh and even though it was full of various buildings, there was still space in the middle to hold tournaments and accommodate large crowds of spectators. The tall rectangular exchequer building sat next to the donjon to its east. The numerous heavily armed guards, and the thick oak doors, were testament to the vast hoards of gold and silver locked inside.
There were immaculately turned-out men and horses everywhere. The stables, armouries, forges and storehouses were without blemish, and there was a pervasive air of discipline and organization everywhere. I was reminded of Westminster; I felt very much at home.
Negu, my men and I were accommodated in the garrison’s barracks, while Richard was taken to the royal apartments in the huge square donjon that towered over the bailey and served as the King’s royal palace.
Later that day, when the Lionheart went to supplicate himself before the patriarch of his pride, he asked Father Alun and me to accompany him.
When we entered the Great Hall, it was a wonder to behold, even bigger and more opulent than the King’s Great Hall at Westminster. The walls were covered with tapestries and hunting trophies while, at the end of the hall, silver dishes and candleholders glistened on the King’s high table. A fireplace large enough to roast an ox sat prominently in the middle of the wall, to our left, around which several ornate oak chairs were arranged for the King and those granted an audience with him.
While four houndsmen played dice against the wall, several lyam hounds, which King Henry liked to use as scent dogs when hunting, and a couple of very large Alaunt guard dogs sprawled in front of a roaring fire, hot enough to warm our faces several yards away. Servants and stewards scurried and skivvied, and members of the King’s elite personal guard, at least one of whom I recognized, stood to attention at every doorway and on either side of the massive fireplace.
The King’s regal chair sat at the end of a refectory table so long it seemed to merge into the horizon. Suspended above it, as a centrepiece on the wall, was the Baculus, the Norman war club of legend that had been carried to Normandy by Rollo the Viking, ancestor of all the Dukes of Normandy and Kings of England since the Conqueror. It was now only of symbolic importance, but old men of my grandfather’s generation said that King William had carried it into battle at Senlac Ridge and throughout his campaigns against the English Resistance. Some even said that the Conqueror had used the Baculus to strike down Hereward of Bourne at the end of the Siege of Ely.
Duke Richard looked ill at ease, and even more so when a commotion in the direction of the King’s private chambers announced his impending arrival. The stewards hurriedly checked that all was in order in the hall, the servants made themselves scarce, the dice players pocketed their gaming cubes and even the dogs pricked up their ears.
Just as the King – the progenitor of the Devil’s Brood – appeared, the Duke ushered us out and asked us to wait in the hall’s antechamber. Thus we were not privy to what was said next, but the echoes of the King’s invective rang long and loud. Duke Richard lent his fair share to the din, and the arguments went on for many minutes.
Suddenly, the door to the hall opened and a sergeant-at-arms gestured to us to enter. I looked at Father Alun. He was not in the slightest overawed, and signalled to me to go first. We had hardly entered the hall when King Henry bellowed at us.
‘Step forward, Earl Harold’s disciples, and let me see who presumes to be my son’s guardians.’
As we drew near, and the light of the fire illuminated our faces, the King – who was as imposing as ever, but now in his mid-forties with his long red mane streaked with grey – recognized me.
‘I had heard that the Earl of Huntingdon had chosen one of my Westminster captains as Duke Richard’s counsel. I remember you; tell me your name.’
‘Ranulf of Lancaster, my Lord King.’
‘Yes, I dubbed you knight. The Earl has made a good choice. And you, priest, you are going to save my son’s soul?’
Father Alun did not hesitate with his response.
‘My Lord King, just as the safekeeping of the Duke’s corporeal self is Sir Ranulf’s area of expertise, mine is the well-being of his soul. But where his spirit will rest at the end of his days will be determined by his actions, not mine.’
The King looked at Father Alun sternly.
‘I am told that you are a very astute man. I don’t like clever men; be careful with your riddles.’
Father Alun bowed deeply. Again, he did not seem in the slightest perturbed. It was as if he was playing a game of chess against a good opponent who had just made an aggressive move.
The Duke now intervened.
‘If I may interrupt, Father. You are right, the priest came to me with a formidable reputation. Indeed, he may be useful to us in offering a solution to our current impasse. If I am to be punished by being denied a domain of my own until you think I merit it, and if you will not grant me any funds to recruit a new army, he has a proposal.’
Duke Richard then nodded to Father Alun, who recognized his cue and took it without hesitating.
‘Sire, I have asked your son to take a pilgrimage to cleanse his soul, not a journey to the relics of a long-dead saint, but to a living one: Hildegard, Abbess of Rupertsberg, at Bingen on the Rhine.’
The King looked surprised.
‘The Old Crow of the Rhine, who preaches to emperors and popes and teaches girls to sing? She must be dead by now!’
‘On the contrary, sire, she is alive and well and perfectly capable of dispensing wisdom to popes and emperors… and also to kings and dukes.’
I expected the wo
rst at that moment, but King Henry’s ire was not stirred by Father Alun’s sarcasm. He just smiled.
‘You will go far, priest. You remind me of a certain Archbishop of Canterbury, who was also dubbed the cleverest man in England. But remember, Becket met a grisly end thanks to his sharp mind and ready insolence.’
Again, Father Alun just nodded in acknowledgement of another powerful riposte in their verbal sparring. The King then turned to his son.
‘So, do you want to make this pilgrimage to see the old witch?’
‘Yes, Father, I do. But I want your promise that upon my return you will let me resume my ducal sovereignty in Aquitaine with the resources to defend it properly.’
The King looked at him intently and thought for a while before answering.
‘So be it. Sir Ranulf, keep a watchful eye on my son and bring him home in one piece. Priest, redeem his soul, but don’t inhibit his spirit.’
The King then left amidst the same flurry that had announced his arrival, leaving the three of us to collect our thoughts.
Duke Richard spoke first.
‘Father Alun, your ridiculous suggestion about the nun suddenly became very fortuitous. The King had wanted me to take the cross and go to the Holy Land, but that is even further away than England. I am not ready for the Outremer just yet; I haven’t committed anywhere near enough sins to need the redemption afforded to a crusader. So, a short excursion to the Rhine is much more appealing – and I’m out of sight and out of mind, as far as my father’s concerned.’
Father Alun grinned from ear to ear.
‘I will make the arrangements, my Lord.’
Wily Father Alun had been either very shrewd, or very lucky. But either way, he had got what he wanted.
So, the son of the great Plantagenet King, who was an emperor in all but name, was to venture into the domain of the mighty Frederick Barbarossa, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, a man sanctified by the equally impressive Pope Alexander III, God’s Emperor on Earth.
Barbarossa, despite being in his fifties, was in Lombardy trying to stop his Italian princes from forging an alliance with Manuel I, the Emperor of Byzantium. Fortunately, this meant we did not need to make a detour to his imperial palace in Aachen to offer our respects.
We travelled light. The Duke had sent all but five of the twenty-five members of his conroi back to Poitiers. We avoided Paris, so as not to provoke King Louis, and travelled through Rheims, Metz and Trier, before reaching the Rhine at Bingen. Hildegard’s Benedictine foundation was close to Bingen, nestling in the forests, high on the left bank of the Nahe River, where it met a dramatically sharp elbow in the Rhine. I marvelled at the rivers I had seen since leaving Westminster; they made the rivers of England seem like brooks in a hay meadow. Where the Nahe met the Rhine, the vast river was over 500 yards wide and yet it still had to journey over 250 miles to reach the sea.
Hildegard had chosen the ground at Rupertsberg because it was the resting place of the physician and alchemist St Rupertus, who had built a chapel there hundreds of years before. She hoped he would be an inspiration for her own work and had arrived thirty years ago, with eighteen other women from the nearby foundation at Disibodenberg.
Rupertsberg flourished and, in 1158, Archbishop Arnold of Mainz granted it official recognition. Five years later, it was guaranteed protection by the Emperor Barbarossa himself. Soon afterwards, both men began to seek guidance and advice from the ‘Oracle of the Rhine’.
As we climbed towards the monastery, I was struck by the large number of people in the fields and vineyards and the orderly way in which they were working. They seemed properly fed and comfortable, their humble houses in neat rows and well maintained, each with its own patch of market garden. There were no monks to be seen; all the supervision was being done by nuns, impeccable in their dark-brown habits and black scapulars. Their fresh, earnest faces were framed by clean white wimples, their only ostentations being the silver crucifixes around their necks and the plain silver bands on their ring fingers, demonstrating their marriage to Christ.
The most dramatic aspect of our arrival drifted across the valley of the Rhine like a chorus of angels. I had never experienced anything like it before. I had heard plainsong every day at old King Edward’s abbey at Westminster, sung by men and young boys. But this chanting was different. It was sung by women and girls but it was also a new sound, something I had never heard before, not just one layer of song but a series of them, each one rising above the other. I turned to Father Alun who, with his head thrown back and his eyes closed reverentially, was wallowing in the sounds.
‘Her music?’
‘Yes, isn’t it marvellous? She says that when she composes, she is performing the Rituals of the Virtues, and she writes her songs in praise of God. She calls them her Symphonies, her Harmonies of Heavenly Revelation.’
‘Do the nuns sing all the time?’
‘The Benedictine Rule observes the Divine Office eight times each day, beginning in the dead of night at two in the morning and concluding at nine in the evening. They sing every three hours. It’s like being in Heaven.’
Although I did not have the same appreciation of Hildegard’s musical ambition as Father Alun, I could certainly hear the soaring harmonies. I was moved by what I heard, as was the Duke. He looked around at the simplicities of monastic existence and listened to the melodies in the air. Then he nodded at me, and smiled.
Father Alun came back down to earth and reverted to the mundane.
‘My Lord Duke, let us get our men settled. Abbess Hildegard is expecting us for dinner.’
‘Where do we stay?’
‘Sire, you, Ranulf and Negu may stay with me in Hildegard’s cloisters. But remember, the cells will be very austere. The men are excluded from the proximity of the nuns’ cells and must make camp outside the monastery walls. And they need to be reminded that they must keep their pricks in their braies.’
‘Does that injunction apply to me as well?’
‘Of course, sire. The only passion you will find here is a love of Jesus.’
Duke Richard looked as if he had been scolded by his mother.
‘Father, why do you reprove me, even before I have sinned?’
‘Sire, my rebuke is based on prior experience. Your previous behaviour suggests that it might be wise to admonish you before you commit an inevitable indiscretion.’
‘Oh, ye of little faith!’
It was good to see the Duke relaxed. The almost relentless energy that he showed during his campaigns in Aquitaine had faded. For once, he had the air of a man at peace with himself. Father Alun smiled broadly, pleased that the Duke was happy to engage in banter with him and impressed that he was able to quote from the New Testament.
The Lionheart jumped from his horse and put his arm around Father Alun’s shoulders.
‘The chanting of the nuns is very soothing. Let us go inside; I want to meet the woman who creates such sounds.’
When we arrived, Abbess Hildegard was sitting in the locutory, surrounded by half a dozen nuns.
She was dressed exactly as the others. Framed by a pristine white wimple, her face had the same pale countenance as the nuns who attended her, which contrasted sharply with her dark habit and the gloom of the shadowy interior. The only difference was her heavily wrinkled complexion. The single candle on the table in front of her illuminated the ravaged skin of a woman of great age – at least seventy-five, or even eighty. Her back was hunched, and she was frail to the point of being not much more than skin and bone. Her hands, one of which grasped a walking stick so tightly that her knuckles gleamed like ivory, had no flesh on them, but were just scraggy bones, traversed by bulging blue veins.
Although she had a body racked by age, she looked serene as one of the nuns read to her in Latin from an ancient tome. When she saw us arrive, she tried to get up, but Duke Richard stopped her.
The Lionheart sank to his knees at her feet.
‘Abbess, we are honoured to visit you her
e at Rupertsberg.’
Father Alun then made the introductions.
As he did so, Hildegard smiled benignly at each of us in turn. But when it came to Negu’s introduction, the Abbess called her over and put a hand on her head and stroked her hair.
‘Where are you from, child?’
‘I am a Basque, Reverend Mother.’
‘Ah, that is why you are so dark. You are very beautiful. You must sit next to me tonight at dinner. I prefer to have girls next to me when I eat; men smell too much.’
She then turned to Duke Richard.
‘Your Grace, you and your companions are very welcome in our humble home. You must be tired from your journey, and I must go to pray. Let us talk this evening.’
We withdrew, leaving the nuns to help Hildegard make her way to her cell.
Dinner that evening, although good humoured with fine conversation, was a frugal affair, a thin stew of meat and vegetables, but at least the bread was fresh and the sweet fruit beer intoxicating. Hildegard ate like a horse and swilled copious pots of beer; she belched regularly and occasionally lifted one buttock to fart loudly. The other nuns were just as uninhibited with their digestive functions.
After the food, the Abbess was helped to the locutory by a pretty young novice. Here the Duke, Father Alun, Negu and I joined her. Hildegard began drinking kirsch, and the novice poured the strong, clear liquid into small wooden bowls for us. It was a new taste for me and one that took some getting used to. However, Hildegard was well beyond the beginner’s stage and quaffed it with abandon.
She insisted that Negu sit at her feet so that she could stroke her hair. ‘Do you mind me stroking your lovely hair? Here, we cut our hair short and our wimples mean I can never feel the tender silk of a woman’s hair.’
‘Not at all, Reverend Mother; you have gentle hands.’
‘Can you sing, child?’
‘I don’t know; I’ve never tried.’
‘Listen to the nuns singing in the chapel now. Can you make sounds like those?’
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