When Christ and his Saints Slept eoa-1

by Sharon Kay Penman

  He’d taken but a few steps, though, before he heard his name echoing across the square, and this was a voice so familiar that he spun around in astonishment. He’d not noticed the second nun. As Ranulf deftly intercepted the abbess, her companion cried out again, “Robert, wait!”

  He did, for she was family, Hawise Fitz Hamon, his wife’s younger sister. “What are you doing here?” he demanded. “We heard all the nuns had been moved to the convent at Amesbury.”

  “I came back with the abbess, hoping to shame the king into returning our abbey to us. What we got for our pains, though, were smiles and fair words. And now…with your men swarming over the nunnery like bees at a hive, I shudder to think what we will find. We need to fight the fires you started if the town and abbey are not to burn to the ground.”

  “It is being done,” he said, and she turned, saw that Ranulf was indeed responding to the abbess’s demand. But she did not seem satisfied, continuing to glare at her brother-in-law, arms akimbo, chin jutting out, looking eerily like Amabel, camouflaged for some unlikely reason as a nun.

  “It will take our nunnery years to recover from this outrage,” she said angrily, and he reminded her, no less sharply, that the abbey’s adversity was Stephen’s doing, for he was the one who’d seized it for his own purposes.

  “Of course Stephen is at fault,” she snapped. “But what does that matter now, with our town in flames and the abbey plundered? Look around you, Robert, at what you and Stephen have brought to Wilton. What did we do to deserve this misery? You think that burned-out wain-right cares whether the crown goes to Stephen or Maude? I assure you his only worry is how he is going to feed his family now that his shop has been gutted. Ask the draper in Frog Lane, his shelves plucked bare and every scrap of cloth stolen. Ask my sisters in Christ, forced to take refuge in Amesbury whilst God’s Acre is turned into a killing ground!”

  “Hawise, enough! Innocents suffer in war. You think I do not know that? I sympathize, but-”

  “Sympathy makes a poor gruel, Robert, fills no empty stomachs. Just tell me this, in all honesty. How much longer is this accursed war to continue?”

  “I thought,” he said bitterly, “to end it here and now-at Wilton. Suppose you answer a question for me, Sister Hawise. Tell me why the Almighty chose to let Stephen escape, to let the war go on.”

  She looked at him in silence, having no answer for him. But he’d not expected one.

  AS hot and dry as July was, August was even more parched and scorching. A people usually starved for sun now had too much of it, and the crops began to wither in the fields. To a troubled, lawless land came new woes in this eighth year of Stephen’s reign-a fear of famine.

  Matilda was walking across the garth toward Westminster’s abbey church, accompanied by Cecily, and her confessor, Christian. The subject was one dear to her heart, the distribution of alms to Christ’s poor, but she found herself increasingly distracted, for Eustace and Constance were quarreling again.

  They had the sense to keep their voices low, but Matilda could still hear more than she wanted to. Constance’s usual weapon was silence, a tactical retreat into an inner fortress where Eustace could not follow. But this afternoon, she was speaking up, insisting stubbornly, “I did not!” “Yes, you did!” Eustace countered, with the certainty he brought to all issues, and Matilda shot them a warning glance over her shoulder.

  She did not seek, though, to learn the nature of their quarrel, for she well knew they disagreed over trifles. Their arguments were superficial, their differences so deep they burned to the bone. Eustace was thirteen now, Constance a year older, and they were getting dangerously close to the day she dreaded, the day when they were old enough to share a bed as man and wife. She already knew the marriage was a mistake; consummation would be throwing clods of dirt upon the coffin.

  “Eustace!” There was so much alarm in Constance’s cry that Matilda spun around, half fearful of what she would see. But for once Eustace was not the cause of his young wife’s dismay; she was staring across the garth at the men just emerging into the sunlight, her blonde fairness fading into an ashen, greyish pallor. Eustace pulled her in behind him, at once protective and defiant, for in this alone were they utterly united: in their shared loathing for Geoffrey de Mandeville.

  Mandeville never even noticed them. He was carrying on an intense, angry conversation with William de Warenne, but he broke off at sight of Matilda and strode toward her. “I am glad you are here, madame. Mayhap you can talk some sense into the king.”

  Matilda’s reply was icy enough to defy the oppressive August heat. “It is not my place to question the judgment of the King’s Grace, my lord earl.”

  Mandeville did not have the sort of incendiary temper that started so many fires for the Earl of Chester. But it burned deep if not hot, and Matilda suspected that he stored away grievances for kindling. His dark eyes narrowing, he said with lethal courtesy, “Correct me if my theology is flawed, madame, but I was taught that infallibility is an attribute of the Pope, not the King of England.”

  The temptation to lash back was a strong one, but Matilda had never lacked for control; she could wait. Her pressing need now was to learn the cause of his anger. Fortunately a more reliable source was approaching, and she hastened to intercept William de Ypres so they could speak together in private, with the candor queens were rarely allowed.

  Ypres was no less provoked than Geoffrey de Mandeville, and he did not keep Matilda in suspense. “We finally heard from Robert of Gloucester, damn his soul. He has offered to ransom William Martel-for Sherborne Castle.”

  “Oh, no…”

  He nodded bleakly. “Without Sherborne, we cannot hope to challenge Gloucester’s hold upon the western shires. It is too great a price to pay for any one man, but your husband, God save him, means to pay it, and I doubt that even you, madame, can talk him out of it.”

  “I am not sure,” Matilda confessed, “that I would want to try. We owe William Martel so much, Willem! If not for him, Stephen would have been captured for certes. How can we turn our backs on him now?”

  “A king owes other debts, too, madame-to his supporters, to the men who’ve fought and bled for him, and to the subjects he rules. I’ll not pretend that I care tuppence for the English people, but I know that you and the king do, and yielding Sherborne Castle will prolong the war. Even Stephen admits as much.”

  “What would you have him do, Willem? Abandon the man who sacrificed himself so he could escape? You know Stephen could never do that.”

  “Yes, I do know…and so does Gloucester. But why does the cup always have to be brimming over or empty? Why will half measures never suffice? Offer a lesser ransom for Martel, one we can afford to lose, and in time, Gloucester will let him go. A year or two in confinement against the loss of Sherborne-I’d say that was a fair bargain.”

  “But you’d not have to pay it, Willem. If you were the one being held in a Bristol dungeon, can you honestly say you’d not want Stephen to offer the sun and moon for your release?”

  “Of course I would,” he said impatiently. “But I am not the King of England…am I? It seems to me, madame, that we had this same conversation once before, in a Guildford chapel more than two years ago. Not much has changed since then, has it? That hawk still will not hunt.”

  Matilda found Stephen in the church, standing before the tomb of the sainted Confessor, the last but one of the Saxon kings. He’d just lit a candle, but at sound of her familiar footsteps, he turned so abruptly that the flame guttered out. When she was almost close enough to touch, he said softly, “I have to do this, Tilda. I cannot let Will barter his freedom for mine.”

  “I know.”

  “Do you think I am wrong?”

  She was silent for some moments, considering. “As your wife, I would gladly give a dozen Sherbornes to gain Will’s release. As your queen, I have doubts. It is a difficult decision, Stephen, and I am glad it is not mine to make.”

  Stephen reached out to her the
n, entwined her fingers in his. “It was not difficult for me. You must understand that. For me, it was an easy choice, for it was the only choice.”

  “I know,” she said again, and coming into his arms, she clung tightly, resting her cheek against his chest as she sought to comprehend the ultimate irony, she who had no irony at all in her soul, that the qualities she most loved in Stephen were the very ones that were crippling his kingship.

  29

  Tower of London

  October 1143

  Geoffrey de Mandeville had lost track of time, could not be sure how long he’d been held as a prisoner in the stronghold that had so recently been his. On those rare occasions when his rage receded enough for calculation, he thought it must be nigh on a fortnight, for it had been Michaelmas week when he’d arrived at St Albans for the king’s council, unsuspecting that he was riding into an ambush.

  He still felt a sense of disbelief, remembering that moment when the king had turned upon him without warning, ordering his arrest. He’d not even been able to resist, for Stephen had managed to separate him from his men before springing the trap. Of course Stephen was now in trouble with the Church, for the arrest had taken place within the abbey grounds, and the outraged abbot had viewed this as sacrilege. But he could take little consolation from that, for he’d been dragged off to London in chains, forced to order his garrison at the Tower to submit, and then thrown into one of his own dungeons. And now he waited, alone in the darkness, for the king to decree his fate, his world in ruins, and nothing to sustain him but his hatred.

  When he was brought before them, dirty and unkempt, blinking like a barn owl in the sudden surge of sunlight, Matilda was taken aback; could this pitiful wretch of a prisoner and the elegant, prideful Earl of Essex be one and the same? What shocked her even more than how far he’d fallen was the joy she took in it. Moving to her husband’s side, she stared coldly at Geoffrey de Mandeville as he was shoved to his knees before them.

  Stephen was experiencing the same unfamiliar emotion: satisfaction in an enemy’s suffering. “You do not look as if you’ve enjoyed your stay here at the Tower, my lord earl. But then I doubt that my daughter-in-law enjoyed her stay, either.”

  Mandeville’s eyes were gradually adjusting to the light, and when he blinked now, it was in surprise. “Is that what all this is about-the little French lass? No harm came to her, I saw to that. So I imposed my hospitality upon her for a while…what of it? That seems a minor sin, indeed, when compared to some of the other betrayals you’ve forgiven, including those of your own brother. You’d need a tally stick to keep count of all the times he has switched sides!”

  Stephen scowled, and so did Matilda and William Martel. But the gibe did find an appreciative audience of one: a laugh floated from the window seat, where William de Ypres was comfortably sprawled, whittling upon a stick of white beech. His amusement seemed genuine, but his blade flashed all the while, paring the wood down to splinters.

  “Had you betrayed only me,” Stephen said, “I might have forgiven you. But you wronged my wife and Constance, and there can be no forgiveness for that.”

  Geoffrey de Mandeville said nothing, merely glanced toward Matilda and then away. But that look, brief as it was, was chilling in its intensity, its malevolence, for until that moment, Matilda had not known what it was like to be an object of hatred.

  “If I pleased myself, I’d keep you caged here at the Tower till you rotted. But you are luckier than you deserve,” Stephen said coolly, “for a number of your fellow barons have argued for clemency. And so I have decided to offer you a choice. If you cooperate, I will set you free.”

  Mandeville shifted awkwardly, for Stephen had not given him permission to rise and his calf muscles were cramping. “And what will this…cooperation of mine cost?”

  “You’ve already yielded the Tower. Surrender as well your castles at Pleshy and Saffron Walden and I’ll give you your freedom.”

  Mandeville took time to think it over, as if seeking to convince someone-if only himself-that there was an actual decision to be made. When he nodded, Stephen gestured and the guards jerked him to his feet. “I’ve a word of warning for you,” he said, “and you’d best take it to heart. You’ll be getting no second chances.”

  Mandeville paused at the door, balking when the guards would have pushed him through. “You may be sure,” he said to Stephen, “that I will remember.”

  Once Mandeville was gone, Stephen took Matilda’s hand and steered her toward the settle. “A pity Henry was not here to see that,” he said, surprising them all, for he did not often express a yearning for his brother’s company.

  But the bishop had made possible Geoffrey de Mandeville’s downfall, and Stephen was grateful. In a maneuver as guileful as it was adroit, Henry had contrived to have the hostile Bishop of Ely charged with Church irregularities, thus compelling him to journey to Rome to defend himself. With the Bishop of Ely absent from England, Stephen no longer needed Mandeville to keep peace in Bishop Nigel’s Fenlands, and he’d at last been able to punish the earl as he deserved.

  The reckoning had been no less gratifying for being so belated, and Stephen knew his brother would have enjoyed it immensely. But Henry, too, was now on the way to Rome, seeking to persuade the new Pope to reappoint him as a papal legate.

  An even more unlikely source now echoed Stephen’s regrets. “I wish the bishop were here, too,” William de Ypres said, “for I’d wager that he’d have agreed with me-that Geoffrey de Mandeville ought not to have seen the light of day again in this lifetime.”

  “Are you still fretting about that, Will?”

  “I am, my liege. I know you think you’ve pulled his fangs by taking the Tower and his strongholds away from him. But a defanged snake is still a snake, and my experience says you kill it when you can; you do not let it slither away just because all the other snakes are pleading for mercy.”

  Stephen slanted an amused glance in the Fleming’s direction. “I do not think my barons would like your calling them snakes, Will-scales and forked tongues notwithstanding!”

  “I am not jesting, my lord king. Why do you think Hugh Bigod and the others were so keen to speak up for Mandeville? You think any of that lot would truly care if you hanged him higher than Haman? They do not want you to punish Mandeville too harshly because they fear that the next time, it might be one of them whose double-dealing comes to light.”

  “Your view of mankind is bleak enough to disturb even the Devil,” Stephen joked. “I am not denying that there is some truth in what you say; even Mandeville’s Vere and Clare kindred do not seem overly fond of him. And I’ll not deny, either, that they get downright disquieted at the prospect of one of their own being treated like any other felon or brigand. But no man ever died from the bite of a toothless snake, Will. What trouble could he stir up now? He cannot go crawling off to Maude, not after his betrayal at Winchester. That lady is far less forgiving than I am, and all of Christendom well knows it!”

  “I cannot argue with anything you’ve said,” Ypres admitted. “I can only tell you that when I first learned to hunt, I was taught that if you go after dangerous prey-like wild boar-you never strike unless you are sure your blow can kill.”

  “Sometimes it is enough,” Matilda interjected, “for a blow to maim, Willem,” and the Fleming did not demur. But neither was he convinced, and because they knew that, the disgraced earl’s presence seemed to linger on in their midst, long after he’d been returned to his prison cell.

  Nature that year was unrelenting. An arid, sweltering summer had brought a poor harvest to a land already ravaged by four years of war, and to add to the miseries of the English people, winter came early. Even for November, the weather was unusually wretched: day after day of icy downpours, gusting winds, and sleet. By early December, the first snow of the season had blanketed half the country, and Annora was thankful when the walls of Lincoln at last came into view, for there a hot meal, a soft bed, and a lover’s embrace awaited her. />
  Ranulf had been awake since dawn, cocooned in coverlets, blissfully content to lie abed on this frigid December morn, watching the young woman asleep in his arms. It was easy to pretend they were snowbound, that the world beyond the boundaries of his chamber did not exist, easy to convince himself that their love affair was a secret from even the castle servants, for Annora’s bed was in Maud’s chamber and who but Maud would know where she really slept? It was always easy to hold on to his hopes while holding on to Annora, too. It was even possible to forget the living, breathing impediment to their union, Annora’s husband-almost.

  Annora stirred eventually, giving him a sleepy smile. “I love waking up with you,” she murmured, leaning over to claim a kiss. “But I almost did not get to come, for Gervase was uneasy about my being out on the roads, even with Maud’s escort.”

  Ranulf frowned; any mention of her husband, however fleeting or casual, was sure to sour his mood. “Because of Geoffrey de Mandeville’s arrest?” he asked, and when she nodded, he drew her in against him, propping pillows behind their heads.

  “It is passing strange, Annora. Stephen reached manhood at my father’s court, had ample opportunities to learn the lessons of kingship from a master. Whatever his other failings, Papa understood the uses and perceptions of power, and his mistakes were few, indeed. He knew how to handle men, whereas Stephen…with the best will in the world, he just lurches from one blunder to another.”

  “Because he arrested Mandeville at his court, the way he did with the Bishops of Ely, Salisbury, and Lincoln? I grant you that does make him a dubious host,” Annora teased, “but why is that so damaging to his kingship?”