When Christ and his Saints Slept eoa-1

by Sharon Kay Penman

  “But with one flaw.” Henry glanced around to make sure his cousin was not within earshot. “Will would have been his heir!”

  That had never occurred to Ranulf. “God save England,” he said, with feeling, and they both laughed. But then Ranulf stiffened, moving away from the tree with a startled oath, for the sky to the north was streaking with smoke.

  Dusk came early in December, and the fading light slowed them down. They forged ahead, though, sure that the smoke was coming from Devizes, and soon had confirmation of their fears. A lone rider was galloping south at a reckless speed. He shouted at sight of them, yanking his lathered stallion to a shuddering halt scant feet from Henry.

  “Devizes is under attack, my lord! Eustace burned the town and then laid siege to the castle. By the time we got there, they’d breached the outer defenses and had driven the garrison into the keep. When we rode in, Sir Hugh and his men sallied forth on the attack again. I suppose they thought the whole of your army had arrived. Of course we then went to their aid, but we’re outnumbered, my lord. You must get there fast or you’ll lose the men, the town, and the castle, too!”

  Riding into Devizes was like riding into Hell. Orange flames were shooting up into the darkening sky, black, suffocating smoke was everywhere, and bodies were stacked like firewood in the narrow streets. But the bloody fighting was done. Eustace and his men were in retreat, having broken off the battle once they heard the sounds of an approaching army.

  Hugh de Plucknet was limping toward them. Blood was running down his leg, his face was begrimed with smoke, and one eye was squinting, half closed by a rapidly swelling bruise. But he was grinning broadly. “Your timing was well-nigh perfect, my lord,” he told Henry gleefully. “We were being hammered right bad. But they turned tail once they realized you were coming up upon them. Say what you will of Eustace, he’s got brains as well as ballocks, for he knew when he was beaten. And to give the Devil his due, he can fight with the best of them!”

  Hugh sounded almost admiring. That would have perplexed Henry at one time, but he was learning that for some men, courage was the true coin of the realm, and as long as a man had it to spend, he could earn himself unlimited credit, whatever his political debts. But while Henry was coming to understand this point of view, he did not share it, and he found it hard to muster up any respect for Eustace, whose only demonstrable talent seemed to be for killing.

  Roger was all for pursuing the enemy, but Ranulf and Will thought it a waste of time, and Henry agreed; the men would just scatter in the darkness. For now, it was enough that he’d driven Eustace off and saved Devizes. From all he’d heard of his rival, this would fester with Eustace like a running sore, that he’d been put to flight by the whelp, the stripling, the foe he’d so openly scorned.

  Henry felt triumphant, tired, and angry by turns. Dismounting hastily, he set men to fighting the fires. People had begun to creep out of hiding, and cries and lamenting soon filled the air as the survivors discovered the bodies of loved ones. Embers lit the night like winter fireflies, and when snow began to fall, the scene took on an air of eerie unreality to Henry, a weird juxtaposition of fire and ice, heat and cold, grief and joy.

  He watched as a church was given up to the flames, as slate-roofed cottages were saved and thatched ones doomed, as horses were blindfolded and led to safety from the blazing stables. All around him, men were shivering and sweating, slipping in the snow only to be singed in the smoldering ruins. People were celebrating their deliverance and mourning their dead, even as the fires continued to burn and the snow to drift down into their midst, and as he walked through the wreckage of this prosperous market town, he heard himself proclaimed as its saviour.

  Ranulf eventually found Henry in a churchyard, watching somberly as a weeping man and woman crouched over the body of their four-year-old son, trampled by the horses of Eustace’s fleeing soldiers. “The fires are almost out. Come on back to the castle, Harry. You must be half frozen by now.”

  Henry nodded, then flinched when the woman began a high, keening wail. “I am thankful that we got here in time,” he said. “I am beholden to God, and to Hugh de Plucknet for not giving up. I know we won a victory here this night. But I am beginning to see, Uncle, that victories in this war are not what they seem. For what have we truly won? The chance to do it all again on the morrow.”

  Ranulf could not argue, for he’d come to realize that, too, a bitter lesson learned at grievous cost in the past two years. He did not know whether to be sorry or glad that his nephew was learning it so young.

  The winter weather put a temporary halt to campaigning. Henry paid a prudent courtesy call upon the Bishop of Salisbury, who was still pressing the Church’s claim to Devizes. He visited John Marshal, who was just fourteen miles away, at Marlborough. And he and Ranulf passed a quiet Christmas at Devizes Castle.

  January was cold and blustery, and Ranulf and Henry were surprised in midmonth by the unexpected arrival of John Marshal and the Earls of Hereford, Gloucester, and Salisbury. After a hearty meal of roast goose and pork pie, they withdrew to the solar, where the men soon revealed why they were at Devizes-to convince Henry that he ought to go back to Normandy.

  Although they phrased it as tactfully as possible, the gist of their message was unmistakable: Henry had become a liability. He stiffened in shock, but did not interrupt, hearing them out in silence. Only then did he say coolly, “It sounds as if you want to get rid of me.”

  Roger and Will and the Earl of Salisbury at once made vociferous denials. John Marshal sat back in his seat, arms folded across his chest, looking like a bored pirate chieftain. When Henry glanced his way, he drained his wine cup, set it down with a thud, and then said candidly, “You are right. We do want you out of England, at least for a while.”

  The other men protested even more vehemently, but Henry paid them no heed. “Go on,” he told Marshal. “Explain yourself.”

  “It is a matter of survival, ours and yours. You do not have enough of an army to force another Battle of Lincoln upon Stephen, not yet. But as long as you remain on English soil, you’ll be a target for Stephen and Eustace. You saw what they did to these shires last autumn. Well, it will happen all over again come spring, and it will keep on happening until you get safely beyond their reach…back to Normandy.”

  “What are you saying, that I should just give up?”

  The older man shook his head impatiently. “Good Christ, no! We want the crown for you almost as much as you want it yourself. But this is not the way to win your war. You’ve acquitted yourself well this past year,” he said, and Henry flushed with pleasure, for he knew Marshal was not a man to pay polite compliments. “What we need now, though, is some time to heal our wounds and plant our crops and strengthen our defenses. You can give us that time-but not if you stay in England.”

  They all watched Henry intently once Marshal was done speaking. But he gave them no clue as to what he meant to do. “I shall think upon what you’ve told me,” he said, and they had to be content with that, for they’d learned that, like his mother, he’d balk if pushed.

  Ranulf thought Marshal’s argument made sense. But he was not sure if Henry had been ready to hear it. It was only natural that he’d long for a decisive victory to end his first campaign. Ranulf did not want his nephew’s pride to put him at needless risk. But neither did he want the youth to return to Normandy thinking that he’d failed. An uncle-nephew talk was in order, he decided.

  He was groping his way up the spiral stairwell toward Henry’s bedchamber when he collided with someone coming down. His initial contact was enough to tell him he’d bumped into a female, and his first guess was that she was a maidservant, for she was carrying a tray and wine flagon. But then he caught a whiff of jasmine perfume, too expensive for a serving-girl, and realized that this was Henry’s bedmate.

  “Lora?” There was a wall sconce several feet above them, casting a feeble light upon the stairs, and before she ducked her head, he saw the tear tracks on h
er cheek. “What is wrong, lass?” he asked, wondering why she should be weeping alone out in the stairwell. This could be no lovers’ quarrel, for her tryst with Henry was a business transaction. He’d met Lora upon his visit to Salisbury, and had taken a fancy to the young prostitute, coaxing her into coming back with him to Devizes. Ranulf had approved of his nephew’s taste, for she was fair of face and lush of body and seemed quite worldly for her years, just eighteen or thereabouts. “What is it, lass?” he asked again, gently. “Why do you weep?”

  She startled him, then, with a flare of temper, for until now, she’d always appeared cheerful and accommodating. “Did you think whores had no tears?” she snapped. “If we do not often weep, it is only because we learn early on that it avails us naught.”

  Beneath the sarcasm was a genuine hurt, and he took no offense. “Can I help?” he asked, and she shook her head, swiping at her wet cheek with the back of her hand, a gesture he found plaintively childlike.

  “I did not mean to bite your head off,” she said. “You’ve always been right good to me, Lord Ranulf, and deserve better than that. I was crying because Lord Harry told me he is leaving.”

  “I see,” Ranulf said, for he did. Her tears made perfect sense now. Of course she would be sorry to see their liaison end, for she’d achieved the pinnacle of success for one in her precarious profession: she’d found herself a highborn protector, one who was young and personable in the bargain. Little wonder, he thought, that the lass dreaded going back to her old life in Salisbury.

  Lora could not read books, but she’d learned, of necessity, to read men. “I’ll not deny,” she said, “that I shall miss the comforts of a castle. Servants and a feather bed and a roof that does not leak and no lack of candles or firewood-who would willingly give up such ease? But whether you believe me or not, it is Lord Harry I shall miss the most. He never made me feel like a whore. Not once!” she added defiantly, as if to fend off his disbelief.

  “Is that so uncommon, Lora?” he asked, and she nodded, marveling that a lord like Ranulf could ask so innocent a question; she did not doubt that Henry, even at sixteen, already understood more than his uncle about mankind’s propensity for careless cruelties.

  “Very uncommon, my lord,” she said bleakly. “But Lord Harry has a good heart. Moreover, he truly likes women.”

  “Most men do, lass,” Ranulf pointed out in amusement, and was surprised when she shook her head again.

  “No, my lord.” She contradicted him with an odd smile, one that was both cynical and sad. “Most men like to lay with women.”

  Ranulf felt pity stirring, and he hoped it did not show upon his face. “Harry truly has no choice, Lora. He must return to Normandy…but not for good. He’ll be back.”

  The smile she gave him now was polite and practiced and far too knowing for her years. “Yes,” she said, “but not for me.”

  “ I ran into Lora in the stairwell. She said you’ve decided to go. For what it is worth, Harry, I think you made a wise choice.”

  Henry shrugged. “Well…my father always said that if you want to get invited back, you’d best know when to go home.”

  Ranulf was not fooled by the levity. “It sounds to me,” he said, “as if you’re uneasy in your own mind about this.”

  Henry shrugged again. “It is just that if I go now, Ranulf, all my efforts will have been so…so damned inconclusive.”

  “You’re going home alive, Harry. What is inconclusive about that? For nigh on a year, Stephen and Eustace did their accursed best to hunt you down, but to no avail. You think that went unnoticed? All over England, there are men thinking to themselves: If they could not bring the empress’s son to ruination at sixteen, how are they going to fare against him once he reaches nineteen or twenty? No, lad, this campaign of yours was a rousing success, for you opened the door wide for your next foray. And you’ve got a powerful ally on your side-time.”

  “I’ve a better ally than that. I’ve got Eustace, too,” Henry said, and smiled at Ranulf’s surprise. “Fortune’s Wheel has turned with a vengeance, Uncle. Why was it so easy for Stephen to steal my mother’s crown? The country was not full of men afire to put Stephen on the throne. They just did not want the empress, Geoffrey of Anjou’s wife. And now…now none of them can be utterly sure that I’ll make a good king.” His smile flashed again, sudden and sardonic. “But there’s hardly a soul in England,” he said, “who doubts that Eustace would make a bad one!”

  Ranulf accompanied Henry to Wareham, and promised to join him and Maude in Normandy after he paid a farewell visit to his Welsh kin. He and Padarn then started off on their long journey back to Gwynedd. Henry sailed with the tide for Barfleur.

  Henry received a joyous welcome from his parents and partisans in Normandy. Geoffrey was pleased enough with his firstborn’s prowess to declare Henry legally of age. He then did something which greatly gratified his wife, horrified Stephen, alarmed the French king-newly back from the Holy Land-and astonished most of Christendom. He’d always contended that he was holding Normandy for Henry. But he’d won the duchy by his own efforts, and in their world, men rarely yielded up power of their own free will. That was what Geoffrey now did, though, relinquishing his rights to Normandy in his son’s favor. While still a month shy of his seventeenth birthday, Henry became Duke of Normandy.

  45

  Trefriw, North Wales

  February 1150

  It was a typical February afternoon-raw and grey. Selwyn, one of the youths honing his skills of manhood in Rhodri’s service, had built a fire in the open hearth, burying a log in wood ash so it would burn slowly and steadily. Bechan, the serving-maid, was dipping candles in sheep’s tallow, for only the very wealthy and the very extravagant burned wax candles for everyday use. Olwen, who attended Rhiannon and Eleri, had positioned a spindle close to the hearth so she could spin flax in comparative comfort. And Rhiannon had brought a mortar and pestle to the table, where she set about crushing wood betony. The cook had been ailing, she explained to the curious Selwyn, and when mixed with honey, powdered betony leaves eased coughing and shortness of breath.

  Selwyn was never satisfied with a simple answer and he wanted to know all about the other uses of betony. Rhiannon answered patiently as he flung question after question her way, for she liked the boy, but she was glad, nonetheless, when he fetched a whetstone and began to sharpen his sword. He was touchingly proud of the weapon-his first-for he was only fourteen, and he was soon so intent upon his task that Rhiannon and herbal remedies were forgotten.

  Rhiannon welcomed the silence, for she’d awakened that morning with a headache that was so far resisting both sage and pennyroyal. She’d been able, though, to use the headache to escape accompanying Enid and Eleri on a courtesy call to a neighbor who’d recently given birth to her first child. Enid and Eleri had not objected, for the woman invariably fluttered around Rhiannon like a deranged moth, so acutely uncomfortable with Rhiannon’s blindness that she made everyone else equally uncomfortable with her.

  Rhiannon had another-secret-reason for not wanting to visit Blodwen. She agreed heartily with Eleri’s caustic assessment of Blodwen as a woman “who has feathers where her brains ought to be.” She could bear Blodwen’s twittering and fidgety hospitality-if she had to. What she could not endure was that the Almighty had seen fit to give foolish, shallow Blodwen what Rhiannon would never have herself: a newborn son.

  Snatching up his mantle, Selwyn muttered something about an “errand.” Rhiannon suspected he was off to the kitchen, for he seemed to spend half of his time there, trying to inveigle cider and honeyed wafers from the cook. He’d been gone only a few moments when the door opened again and a familiar voice bellowed out an unnecessary proclamation of his arrival.

  Rhiannon was delighted; her father had been at Aber for the past week, attending his king, Owain Gwynedd. “Papa, you’re back early!” Pushing her chair away from the table, she started toward the sound of his voice.

  The warning was not in t
ime. Her father cried out her name, but by then she’d already stumbled over something out in the middle of the floor, something hard and heavy, something that should not have been there. As she fell, she felt a sudden surge of heat and she twisted desperately away from it. She avoided the open hearth, but hit the ground hard enough to drive all the air out of her lungs. Momentarily stunned, she lay still until her father reached her, with Olwen just a step behind.

  “I am not hurt, Papa,” she insisted, and after she’d repeated it for the fourth time, he finally believed her. He was assisting her to her feet when Selwyn came back into the hall. Rhodri glanced from the boy to the offending whetstone, and then erupted. Ranulf had once told Rhiannon and Eleri about a legendary mountain called Vesuvius, said to belch forth fire and smoke. Rhiannon thought her father’s temper was like that volcano, usually so inert and sluggish that his rare explosions were terrifying. There was no doubt that Selwyn was thoroughly cowed, reduced to incoherent stammerings as Rhodri berated him furiously for his carelessness.

  “The day I took you into my household, I warned you that you were never to leave things strewn about or to move furniture, did I not? You swore upon your very soul that you would be heedful…and so what happens? My daughter nearly fell into the fire because you did not put your whetstone away!”

  Rhiannon eventually managed to reassure her father, assuage his anger, and spare Selwyn the worst of his wrath. By then she was exhausted, for she’d been more shaken by her fall than she was willing to admit. As soon as she could, she withdrew to the bedchamber she shared with Eleri, and lay down, fully clothed, upon the bed.

  Her cheek was stinging and would likely bruise. But the bruises that troubled her were the ones on her memory. It would be a while before she could forget her terror as she felt the flames. What frightened her just as much was the reminder of how fragile the defenses of her world were. All it took was one misplaced whetstone to reveal how vulnerable she truly was.