Hawks of Sedgemont

by Mary Lide

  “Churchmen fight as well as knights,” Robert told me shortly. “Duke William’s brother Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, rode to battle at the duke’s side and used a mace to avoid the curse of fighting with a sword, that way to keep within the letter of the holy law. So do all these Churchmen, who will use Becket’s death to feather their own nests. They own lands; they have knights within their service; they will fight.”

  He said thoughtfully after a while, “That Archbishop Becket was a holy man, I agree. Yet stubborn, too. Henry chose him as archbishop because he thought he would help control the Church, not encourage it. I have a memory myself, once, when I was small, of seeing him pass, a tall, noble-looking man, at the head of a great procession, a line of sumpter mules, carts, carriages, stretched out for miles, with monkeys capering on strings like dogs, the wedding gifts, I think, for Prince Henry’s bride. God knows, Becket put such riches behind him when he was made archbishop, more than this abbot does. But a crowning at Winchester does not really give us a new king; and Becket, who loved the prince, would have been the first to point that out.”

  Robert was silent for a while. Then almost to himself he burst out again. “For treason is what it is, to rise against a living king. And sin to rise against a father. But God’s life, what shall I do if Henry’s brothers rise with him; who then should I serve?”

  Well, a strange messenger that abbot had been, spilling out secrets on a gust of wine. That night came worse. For as we slept, there was a scratching at our door. I had been sleeping with Lord Robert’s squire, both of us in one pallet at the foot of our master’s bed, and was awake myself, the squire being tall and strong, with long legs, which he thrashed about, disturbing my sleep. That scratching noise of steel on wood sends the senses flaring, awakes the nerves as no noise else. It roused the squire on an instant for his sword, whilst Robert as quick snatched up his, both mother-naked, advancing on the door. The squire, coldly professional in a way I was to admire, jerked the latch while Robert guarded him. The men who fell inside were known to us, although in truth no one might have recognized the second of them, his face a mask of blood, his mail coat streaked with it, his sword arm gashed apart. We hauled him to his feet and sat him down, whilst the other guards we had posted came crowding around. When he could speak, the wounded man told us news that struck a silence and a fear, such is the cost of treachery. He came from Sedgemont with tidings, simply told, an echo of the abbot’s own. The castle was shut, the guard were left there in siege alert, and the earl and his lady wife were gone ahead to France, to Paris, departed already this past week, where we were bid to follow them. The cause? That war the abbot had spoken of was ready to break out, not only here in England but everywhere the Angevins ruled, even in Anjou and Maine, the paternal homelands. So came the warning that was to change our lives.

  The Great War, so they called it of Henry’s reign, as if war can be called great. And we, despite the earl’s hope of neutrality, were caught up in its midst. For this was no small skirmishing, here now, there next, but one combined, united effort set off by the archbishop’s death and led by the king’s own son.

  And our messenger, how came he to be in such a state? As his wounds were bound, he gasped out the rest: how hastening in the dark, hoping against hope he would catch us before we had left Cambray, a good month’s ride away, he had stumbled on a group of men guarding the one road across the abbey lands. Who they were he did not know, nor what they wanted, but having blundered upon them in the dark, he blundered through, and they let him go. Wiser then in the aftermath, he had circled back and, seizing one of them in turn, had soon pricked the details out of him. Abbey men, they were, the abbot’s knights, making a blockade to the north to stop us when we rode out at dawn.

  “Now by the bones of Saint George, which this holy abbot swears he owns.” Robert was angry, striding back and forth so his squire, half-dressed, could not begin to dress him. “By the holy Mass, which he will be too drunk to celebrate, he does not hold me captive to his will, nor attack my father’s messenger. How are those churls positioned, where?”

  Back and forth Robert strode again, his father’s self, whilst we armed and prepared, listening to the messenger’s assessment. He had blundered in and blundered out, but one man, even in the dark, does not easily fight his way clear. A Cambray ambush would never have let a man escape to reveal their whereabouts. And although the abbot’s knights were more numerous than we, by everyone’s guess they were soldiers who, like their master, had grown lax, unlikely to detain us long if we took them unawares. But break out we must, at once, before they began to think and came to close around the abbey to hem us in.

  Now I saw for the first time how Cambray could arm and ride, what Dylan had prepared us for; an exercise become grim reality. It was the first of what, in after years, we would grow accustomed to. You may regret leaving Cambray. This was but the start, the format, of our future life. Yet as the horses were led out, having been saddled the evening before, and as the men silently mounted in the dark, not a whisper, not a sound, save the muffled clink of iron and steel, all gear previously loaded, everything muffled that could be safely so, I realized what a great captain Dylan truly was. Nothing was left to chance; the baggage train sorted through, all that could be abandoned was left behind (better to leave what was not necessary than be slowed down), and the Lady Olwen and her ladies were already similarly prepared. So that, although we left in haste, not standing on ceremony, we left in good array, not shoddily. And although we made a noise, as who could fail to hear when we stormed out of the main abbey gates, the abbot and his monks slept through, either because they thought it wise to pretend sleep or because, deep drunk, they never heard us at all. In any case, they must have relied on the ambush to stop us. That, too, was a mistake.

  We let the wounded messenger lead us, he remembering which way he had come more by feel than by sense, for we left the road at once and cut across the open fields. In the darkness they all seemed the same, a mire of mud we floundered through and hedges like stone walls, with banks of turf and ditches on the other side that we had to break across. The women rode with us, top speed, their skirts knotted up, astride like troopers, not one word of distress from them. And when in the grayness of dawn we saw ahead the curve of the road (handsomely paved by the abbot’s sweating peasantry), the women, those who could, rode on with us like men, with knives drawn.

  The abbot’s men had posted themselves against a hedge, with an open field behind their backs. It was still not light. The ambushers were lounging negligently, looking down the road, not expecting us, and in any event waiting for a leisurely group of travelers, not armed men spoiling for a quarrel. For Robert was angry, and although perhaps not wise in turn, he was determined to teach that abbot a lesson. Seeing the Stefensforth knights, he planned to charge right through their midst to teach them a lesson, too, and so he did. His voice rang out like his father’s. “À moi, Sedgemont, à moi, Cambray.” Our own knights took up the cry, not even having to urge their horses forward.

  Downfield we beat, surged in upon the poor wretches, caught them looking the wrong way, caught them off guard as they had hoped to catch us. And with us rode the Lady Olwen, her dagger in her hand. And I rode with her.

  What did I see? A startled face that crumpled apart; a sword arm suddenly flung wide; a hedge that blurred into a line of men, shifting and crumbling like the turf we kicked apart. When I could see again, we were through, and the Lady Olwen was shouting in my ear, “Draw, you dolt, draw,” for although I had ridden in a charge, I had not even had the sense to unsheathe my sword. By the time I had struggled to free it, the fracas was already done, and whatever remained of the abbot’s men had run howling back for sanctuary in their church.

  Well, in the semi-dark it would have been as easy to ride round as break them down, but in this instance, I think, Robert was justified. So now, honor appeased, we wheeled back, rounding up the rest of the womenfolk; and if Robert saw how his sister rode, he did not blame
her this once. But she said to me, as in more seemly way we headed toward the coast, making for the nearest port, the messenger sent back to Sedgemont, “Urien the Bard, I never thought to see you ride or fight.” She turned to me suddenly, her hair fallen down, her dress ripped. She did not look like an earl’s daughter now, more like the peasant maid I once had thought her. “So will you serve me, when the time is ripe.”

  “Lady,” I told her, reining back so that we were out of earshot, “I cannot swear twice an oath that I have already sworn. But I repeat: I will serve you and your house as long as I have life. No more, no less.”

  “Well said, Urien,” she told me. “And will you help me with anything I ask?”

  “I swear.“

  “Good,” she said. She suddenly smiled and stretched out her hand as she used to do. “One day I will hold you to that oath.” Thus it was that we heard the news of war and, escaping the abbot’s attempt to force us to his will, came to the Channel coast, looking for a ship to France. And thus began the worst year of our lives.

  Chapter 7

  I have made the journey to Paris many times since, seldom in weather so vile as then, a Yuletide spent in a dirty little port, in a fisherman’s hut. And so it was that our journey, begun in leisure and grace, ended in a race for safety. A wise old fox was Dylan, no stranger to the vagrancies of the world; for in his cunning way he prepared us to expect the worst. And such were the whims of fate that all of us whose lives were entwined were destined to meet again.

  Yet that cold December wait was one we might well have regretted. Cambray, with its homey amusements, kept up by Dylan, as seneschal, in traditional way, seemed in another world; the feasting for the villagers, the fires built with the Yule log, the spits for meat, the white bread for everyone, became things to dream about. This year we did not even have enough food, certainly no mummer’s play or new suit of clothes, only the fishermen’s huts and their smells were familiar. Well, this, then, was the other side of traveling with great lords; this, too, the consequence of greatness.

  But when at last we were embarked on ships—better equipped, I hasten to add, and if not better built at least larger than those Prince Taliesin had journeyed on—I noted how the Lady Olwen kept watch beneath the forecastle, made of wood, as if looking for pirates herself.

  “Courage, little sister,’’ Robert said, coming up to her. He looked at her, his brow furrowed. For there was no doubt that in these past weeks she had grown thinner and more pale than before. He had been seeing to the bestowing of his horses and men, fore and aft, making all as safe and comfortable as space allowed, and now he had a moment to think of her comfort, too. “Courage,” he repeated. “The crossing will not take long. And he will already be there ahead of us.”

  The “he” was Lord Gervaise, of course, and the thought was kindly meant. But that was not of whom Olwen was thinking, and her gaze was fixed westward, not south; west to Brittany, not south to Paris, where we went.

  But when we landed on the French coast, every day, every place, were signs of that general unrest, Henry’s enemies springing up like weeds to thrust him off. And everywhere, men speaking, in tones hushed or shocked or relieved, of Henry’s submission to the Church, as if that were the sign they waited for, the proof that God was on their side. And those who had most nursed their resentment secretly now were most open in defiance, most determined to be rid of a strange, cruel, and clever king, whose rule had been too long and hard.

  In later years I have heard scholars, well known, dispute the cause of this Great War, laying blame here or there for this or that, as their own detachment allows. But they were far removed from the war and its start; easy to sit before a fire with warm feet and argue dispassionately among their books. Those of us who lived through it, this greatest, worst war of Henry’s time, would agree upon two things. One was that the archbishop’s death, a murder that had shocked all Christendom, was in truth the main reason for this war. The other, that the king’s treatment of his son was the second cause. Myself, I will add a third, and it, I think, was equally strong: the claims of that young Welsh prince, who was to submerge his own personal wrongs in this general one, and yet whose personal quarrel was the most true, and most just.

  We did not meet up with this prince (although presently we were to have tidings of him, as shall be told) but everywhere heard news of other rebels making their bid against the king. And as I took my duties of scribe seriously, I made careful note of their names (the more so since when we arrived at Paris ourselves, we found the earl but not the Lady Ann, who had been left behind to act as chatelaine at Sieux in these dangerous times). So much of what I recall was writ for her, a priest at Sieux serving as lector, since she could not read herself. That list of names, names heard of, names met up with, names dropped as hint, seemed to encompass the whole world, all men riding, like us, on the same errand, bent for a feast, to carve up King Henry’s lands, determined to snatch their share.

  Knights there were, small men with a squire or two and great lords with their retinues, hotfooted on the same quest, names I still remember, names to savor like honey, clinging to the tongue, sweet to roll around, the men who bore them less sweet. They came from Normandy; Gilbert de Tillières, the lords of Conches and Breteuil, Arnulf, the Bishop of Lisieux, the Count of Eu, ever ready for rebellion. They came from Maine and Anjou, well-known lords of Sarthe, Huïsne, and Mayenne, long restive under Henry’s rule, spoiling for fight; and south again from Aquitaine, the border lords of Poitou and Angoulême. And from still farther south came lords of Toulouse, ever a thorn in Henry’s flesh.

  Some came alone, slipping along furtively; others rode openly as at a fair, dressed in their best, greeting each other as friends, although in the past they had not always been friendly; so does rebellion beget strange bedfellows. Yet all were armed; their forces, large or small, battle-keen, riding in haste, looking for allies or to be allied in a cause that was become common to all men. That Benedictine abbot was a fool, but not in this. If anything, he underestimated the rising against the English king and the strength of its leadership under the new Young King, Prince Henry. And where was that King Henry, where his son, in whose name this commotion was bestirred? Gone from Louis’s court, gone south to the Auvergne, all this rebellion broken out in their absence, as now we heard.

  Since then I have met nobles, more than my share, and have come to know the way of the world. I no longer gaze about me in that blank stare with which, like Prince Taliesin’s men, I hid amaze under guise of nonconcern. So I will add that, to my taste, most of the lords we met on the high road to Paris that January of 1173, a wet and windy one, were a patchwork of ruffians. For every one who had genuine grievance, a hundred were like that fat abbot, puffing up a personal spite into a major claim, seeking to further their own ends. Yet had they been in King Henry’s place, they would have acted exactly as the king had done. As we rode, for the most part through a mist of rain and sleet, I thought I had never seen such sodden fields, such rough forest stretches, such dreary plains, all soaked underfoot and gray above, portent of the times we lived in.

  But one day we did hear of that Celtic prince, to make my lady’s eyes shine and give her heart. It was the end of a long, wet ride, and come the evening we were all weary, hungry, cold. With a group of strangers (for as we traveled now through the French king’s lands, we found we were often joined by these other lords and, whether we would or no, were obliged to make a company with them), at the day’s close, then, when, in yet another villainous hostelry, we waited to see our horses stabled and fed, I began to wander, in my way, among the ragtag groups who made up the various lords’ retinues. My lady Olwen and her squire (for she had a squire these days, Joycelyn by name, a stouthearted and strong young man who took his duties seriously) had come trailing after me, glad to stretch their legs, even through the mud. I had often before found things of interest in these nightly walks, heard strange tales, picked up more gossip than our betters did when they sat at meat;
for this is the hour when men let down their guard and speak freely of their plans and fears. This particular evening my attention was soon caught by two men. They were afoot, yet their clothes were too fine, too elaborate, albeit stained with travel, for mere menials (although afterward, knowing better, I would have recognized their finery as old, outdated, belonging to another age). The French they spoke was different, too, and they had an air, not so much of secrecy as rather of reserve and haste.

  The older man was tall but bent. He moved stiffly, as if his joints were cramped, yet had he been better attended or on horseback, I might have marked him down as a minor baron, come to offer his service at King Louis’s court, for he had a look of nobility. But even a disgruntled lord would not travel so meanly, without escort, with only one elderly servant to wrestle with his bundles and one younger man, his son, I guessed, who at least was armed, as his father was not. They had the same dark hair, thin face, sallow skin, except that in the son the father’s distinguished look had not yet emerged, or rather had been submerged into furtiveness, which the close-set dark eyes enhanced.

  Such a sidelong glance the son now cast at me, then paused and nudged his father’s arm so that the older man, too, turned slowly, with the expression of one used to looking and judging. Yet when he spoke, his voice was hesitant, and it was his son who told him what to say.

  “Boy,” the older man, prompted, now asked, his voice low with fatigue and some other thing, “boy, who serve you?”

  Perfectly at ease in looking and listening, I did not like to be questioned thus, especially since my lady and Joycelyn had walked on. The younger man, irritated by my silence, gave me a push. “Speak up,” he hissed, “answer with courtesy.”

  Since I meant my reply to be courteous, I gave the name slowly, and the older man repeated it as if he were savoring it, “Robert of Sieux, Robert of Sieux,” until his son nudged him again and whispered in his ear.