When Christ and his Saints Slept eoa-1

by Sharon Kay Penman

  “No more talk about pawning souls, though,” he joked, “not in the archbishop’s hearing, anyway. You do not want to remind him that the Devil’s daughter roosts in a branch of your family tree, do you?” That got a grin from Henry, and Ranulf reached out, clouting the man fondly on the shoulder. “You are twenty and Stephen fifty-seven. Time is your ally, Harry, not his. And as unhappy as you are with this truce, just think how Eustace must feel!”

  “ Eustace, wait! Stay and hear me out. It is true that I agreed to ask for a truce, but only because they gave me no choice. I have no intention, though, of bargaining with Maude’s son, that I swear to you, lad, upon your sweet mother’s soul!”

  “Do not besmirch Mama’s memory with your lies!” Eustace was drunk on despair; the very ground seemed to be shifting under his feet and all he had to hold on to was his rage. “You betrayed me, admit it! I know you mean to make a deal with that Angevin hellspawn! But what sort of man would disown his own son?”

  “Will you listen to me? I agreed to a truce, nothing more! I would never betray you. Our men have lost heart for further fighting, but we can remedy that. Together, we can find a way, Eustace, to restore their faith in you. But you must trust me, for I cannot do it alone-”

  “Trust you? What a sour joke that is! You’d give your last coin to a beggar by the roadside, even if it meant your own would starve! By the time Maude’s accursed son is done with you, you’ll be plucked clean and thanking him for leaving you a chamber pot to piss in, old man! But you’ll not barter away my birthright, by all that’s holy, you will not! I’ll see you both in Hell first!”

  Stephen caught his arm as he swung away, but Eustace jerked free, and within moments, he’d disappeared into the darkness beyond Stephen’s tent. Badly shaken, Stephen deemed it best not to follow; they both needed time to calm down before their healing could begin. It was a sensible decision, but one he would soon come to lament. For in the morning, he discovered that Eustace was gone. He had ridden off in the night, leaving Stephen with an anguished regret, that his son’s last words to him had been a curse.

  The Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of Winchester negotiated a fortnight’s truce, under terms beneficial to Henry. Stephen and Henry agreed to lift the sieges of Wallingford and Crowmarsh. Stephen also consented to raze his castle at Crowmarsh, and Henry permitted its eighty-man garrison to march out, unharmed. But the preliminary efforts to end the war by mediation did not progress well. Eustace cast a long shadow.

  Eustace soon made his presence felt in a far more ominous way. Gathering a large band of mercenaries, he rode north into Cambridgeshire, and began to pillage and rob. Whether he was simply venting his own fury and frustration or seeking to bait Henry into coming after him, no one knew for certain, possibly not even Eustace himself. But the skies over Cambridgeshire were once again darkening with smoke, as in the wretched days when Geoffrey de Mandeville had rampaged through that unhappy shire.

  The monks of Bury St Edmunds knew that Eustace’s army was on the prowl and getting closer, for panicked refugees had been streaming into the monastery for days. Abbot Ording continued to hope, though, that his abbey would be spared, for St Edmund’s tomb was England’s most sacred shrine. Surely the king’s son would not allow his brutal hirelings to desecrate such holy ground? He’d held to that hope right up to the moment that a terrified lay brother stumbled into the Chapter House, crying out that Eustace’s men had been sighted on the Cantebrigge Road, heading for their abbey.

  When Eustace rode into the abbey precincts, he found Abbot Ording waiting for him. Flanked by his prior and hospitaller, with the other brothers huddled a few steps behind, the abbot sought to ward off disaster with a wan welcoming smile. They were indeed honoured, he said, to have the Count of Boulogne as their guest again, and he’d already given orders to prepare his own quarters for the count’s comfort, just as he’d done at the count’s visit last year with his lord father, the king. Their cook was busy making a dinner sure to be to the count’s liking: fresh pike from their fish pond and a special delicacy, rabbit stew.

  Eustace seemed taken aback, and the abbot prayed that their feeble defense-hospitality-would hold. Was it too much to hope for, that if Eustace was treated as a guest, he’d act like one? But this Eustace bore little resemblance to the privileged, unhappy youth the abbot remembered. Unkempt and almost gaunt, blue eyes bloodshot and suspicious, this was no pampered king’s son. The abbot had seen men like this before, men haunted and hunted, some of them brigands and bandits, others merely victims of bad luck, but all of them with nothing left to lose.

  “Thank you, my lord abbot. I would be pleased to dine with you and your brethren.” But if Eustace had been surprised into civility, he had not been dissuaded from his purpose. “But first we have a matter of money to discuss. I am running short of funds to pay my troops. I am sure, though, that I can rely upon the generosity of your abbey.” He named a sum, then, that caused the monks to gasp.

  The abbot had gone ashen. “My lord, that…that is a vast amount of money!”

  Eustace smiled, chillingly. “You are too modest, my lord abbot. So prosperous an abbey could easily spare that much. In fact, I’d say it was a bargain, indeed, in view of what you’d be gaining-the favor of a future king.”

  “My lord count, I swear that you’ve been misled. Even if our revenues were twice what they are, we would not be able to raise such a sum!”

  A muscle twitched in Eustace’s cheek and his smile became a grimace. “Think you that I am some green, callow stripling, to be put off with soft words and honeyed lies? All know that you Black Monks have even more money than the Jews!”

  “I entreat you-” the abbot began hoarsely, but his prior could no longer keep silent. Well past sixty, too old to be intimidated, he glowered at this intruder in their midst, his high, reedy voice cracking with indignation, not fear.

  “There can be no greater crime than to steal from Almighty God. Look to your immortal soul, son of Stephen, ere it is too late!”

  The prior might have lacked the majestic presence of an Abbot Bernard, but he did make an impressive sight, tonsured silver hair streaming down onto the somber black cowl of the Benedictine order, cobalt-blue eyes aiming at Eustace like arrows, a clenched fist upraised as if to invoke the Almighty’s intercession.

  For a brief moment, Eustace looked at the aged monk, and then he turned in the saddle, saying to his men, “Take whatever we need, whatever you want.”

  At first, the monks offered no resistance, watching in appalled silence as Eustace’s soldiers plundered and despoiled their abbey. The stables were hit first, and then the storehouses. Abbot Ording’s lodgings, too, were stripped bare. The guest hall, the monks’ dorters, the kitchen and bakehouse and buttery, even the infirmary-all were ransacked.

  The looting soon spilled over into the town, and smoke began to stain the cloudless August sky. Somewhere a woman was screaming; Abbot Ording flinched away from the sound, groping for his rosary. This was his domain; the townspeople, too, were under his protection. And yet he could do nothing for them. His eyes blurred with tears and he sank to his knees in the dust, praying to St Edmund to protect his own.

  When some of the soldiers emerged from the church, laden with chalices and expensive altar cloths and St Edmund’s special silver candlesticks, there were gasps of outrage from the monks. At sight of the pyx, holy receptacle for the Host, now tucked under a brigand’s arm, several of the younger monks could not contain their fury and rushed at the offender, only to be beaten down into the dirt by his comrades, for mercenaries rarely held monks in much esteem.

  “Do not resist them!” the abbot cried. Crouching over one of his bruised and dazed monks, he pillowed a bleeding head in his lap, staring up at the king’s son, white-faced and accusing. “St Edmund will punish you for the evil you have done. You have sinned against him and against the Almighty, and for that, there can be no forgiveness.”

  There was a time when Eustace would have be
en dismayed and alarmed by the abbot’s words. Now he did not care. What did God’s Curse matter when compared to the loss of a crown? “Tell your St Edmund to do his worst,” he said mockingly. His men laughed, impressed by his bravado, but the monks shuddered and Abbot Ording made the sign of the cross.

  Stephen had easily captured the North Sea port town of Ipswich, and for the past ten days, he’d been besieging Hugh Bigod’s castle. The siege was faring well, but he was not. He sought to fill all his waking hours with enough activity to keep from thinking of his renegade son and crippled kingship, only to lie wakeful and wretched, night after endless night.

  The Bishop of Winchester was no longer with him, having gone off to consult again with his erstwhile adversary the Archbishop of Canterbury. Stephen might have admired his brother’s newfound zeal for peacemaking, had he not known that any proposed peace plan must, of necessity, involve a repudiation of Eustace. But the others in his dwindling inner circle were here at Ipswich: the Earls of Arundel and Oxford; William Martel; his younger son, Will; and even William de Ypres, again exposing himself to the rigors of the road and the pity of others for Stephen’s sake. And yet never had Stephen felt so isolated, so utterly alone.

  The blows had been coming in swift succession, giving him no time to recover his bearings. Eustace’s rebellious flight had been followed by the sudden death of one of the few men Stephen truly trusted, Simon de Senlis, Earl of Northampton. And as he mourned his old comrade-in-arms, word began to filter into Suffolk of Eustace’s outlaw raids, tales of crops burned in the fields and villages torched, culminating in last week’s outrage at Bury St Edmunds. Horrified and heartsick, Stephen refused to discuss his son’s marauding with any of his men, forcing them to join him in a conspiracy of silence, in which it was tacitly understood that as long as Eustace’s banditry was not acknowledged, nothing need be done about it. Before the others, Stephen stubbornly held his peace; alone in the night, he prayed for his son to come to his senses, and he grieved.

  After occupying the town, Stephen had found lodgings at Holy Trinity, a small priory of Augustinian canons. He’d returned this Monday at dusk, after another long, tiring day at the siege site. Although he knew the others were waiting for him in the guest hall, he slumped down in a chair by the window; at times he found it hard to remember why it mattered whether he took this castle or not. He’d been told that Henry had gone north, that he was now laying siege to William Peverel’s castle at Stanford, apparently as a favor to the Earl of Chester. He wondered if it ever occurred to Henry that they were playing a peculiar form of chess. A castle taken here, another lost there, and the game went on.

  He was turning away when several men raced past the window, running flat-out on a hot August evening, when even a brisk walk would work up a sweat. He leaned out, saw nothing in the gathering dusk, but the oddness of it lingered and when William Martel entered a few moments later, he commented upon it, half humorously, to the seneschal. “I just saw two of the Black Canons sprinting across the garth. They’re usually so protective of their dignity, but these lads were kicking up so much dust you’d swear Satan had come calling!”

  William Martel did not return his smile. “It is Eustace.”

  Stephen froze. “What of him?”

  “He is here, my liege. He just rode into the priory.”

  Their shouting had carried beyond the chamber, out into the garth where men gathered to listen. When Stephen and Eustace finally emerged, their covert audience scattered in haste, but neither man noticed, so caught up were they in their private war. Stephen kept staring at this stranger who was his son, unable to admit that there was nothing left to be said. He’d raged and cursed and then pleaded, but he’d gotten no answers from Eustace, only angry abuse. Eustace had offered neither explanations nor apology for what he’d done. He’d come back, he said defiantly, because if he were not here to defend his rights, no one else would. And for Stephen, that was the most painful of his wounds, that Eustace had been so quick to believe in his betrayal.

  Eustace stumbled as they entered the hall, jostling his father, and only then did Stephen realize how much his son had been drinking. But he found a small measure of comfort in that; if Eustace had not dared to face him sober, how could he be as unrepentant as he claimed?

  Their entrance killed all conversation. Several of the Augustinian canons were present, but not for long, for as soon as Eustace came through the door, they made a hasty exit. Stephen’s men seemed no less hostile than the canons, although they at least attempted-however poorly-to hide their antipathy. Eustace raked the hall with a bold, challenging stare, as if defying anyone to speak out. None did, yet there was no thaw in the air, no easing of the tension.

  “Come, take a seat,” Stephen insisted. Eustace’s arm was rigid under his hand, but Stephen’s grip was too tight to shake off, and he reluctantly allowed his father to steer him toward the high table. Familiar faces were all about him. Arundel. That Judas Fleming. His milksop of a little brother. To his fury, none of them seemed willing to meet his eyes. Did they think they could make him disappear by pretending not to see him? If they hoped he’d slink away in the night, they would be sorely disappointed. He’d never make it easy for them. They’d have to confront him openly from now on, if they dared.

  It enraged him, though, to be shunned like this, as if he were a foul, stinking leper instead of the rightful heir to the English throne. Draining his wine cup, much too fast, he signaled for a refill. The food on his trencher was a favorite dish of his, a lamprey-eel pie, but he was too angry to savor it and ate quickly, without tasting what he swallowed, brooding upon the injustice of it all, silently cursing Henry Fitz Empress and his weak-willed father with every bite.

  It was proving to be a miserable meal for Stephen, too; the food on his trencher went untouched, even unnoticed. What was he going to do? If he punished his son as he deserved, he’d risk pushing Eustace into open rebellion. But the monks of St Edmunds had been grievously wronged, and how could he ignore that? Eustace could not have served Henry better than he had at Bury St Edmunds; why could he not see that? If only Tilda were here to counsel the lad; mayhap she could have made him see reason. Each time Stephen glanced up, he saw men warily watching Eustace. How long would they remain loyal if he continued to force Eustace upon them? And yet how could he ever abandon his own son?

  So unnaturally quiet was it that the sound of an overturning chair was shockingly loud, startling them all. Seeing his son on his feet, Stephen felt a throb of despair. What sort of mischief was Eustace up to now? Could he not even get through a single meal without shaming them both?

  But once he got his first clear look at his son’s face, he cried out sharply. Something was wrong. Eustace was clutching at his throat, his eyes cutting frantically toward Stephen. When he lurched into the table, knocking a wine flagon over onto the other diners, there were curses and even a few audible mutterings about “drunken sots.”

  Stephen knew better. “Eustace, what is wrong? Tell me!”

  Eustace seemed to be trying to do just that. His mouth was working, but no words were emerging. By now they’d all realized that he was having some sort of seizure. Chairs were shoved aside and men scrambled away from the table, away from Eustace, for the same thought was in most of their minds: a plundered abbey and a saint’s curse.

  Eustace’s face was suffused with blood. He sank to his knees, one hand still clawing at his throat, the other reaching out toward his father.

  “He is choking!” Time seemed to have slowed, even to have stopped, as Stephen struggled to get to his son. Eustace was convulsing; there was spittle and blood on his lips and his skin had taken on a bluish hue. Stephen began to pound him desperately upon the back and shoulders. Someone was shouting for a doctor. There were a few cries, too, for a priest. But most of the men just stood there, watching. Eustace’s eyes were rolling back. His body jerked in several uncontrollable spasms and then went limp. Those who’d ventured closer now caught the smell of u
rine. Death was no stranger to any of them. But few had ever witnessed a death like this one, so sudden and swift and divinely ordained. For surely it could not be mere happenchance that Eustace would be struck down in all his youthful arrogance just days after defiling a holy shrine?

  As Stephen cradled his son and wept, men glanced at one another, and then crossed themselves. Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, and St Edmund was not to be mocked, for he tended to his own. And as the shock began to subside, more than a few of the witnesses gave silent thanks to this vengeful saint, even as they looked with pity upon their stricken king.

  Stephen’s younger son still stood, rooted, at the end of the table. He did not seem capable of movement, so chalky-white that he appeared likely to keel over himself at any moment. When someone shoved a wine cup into his hand, though, he drank obediently. As color slowly came back into the boy’s face, William de Ypres said, “Go to your father, lad. He has need of you.”

  The youth blinked, then did as he was bade, moving as if in a daze. He did not have it in him to take charge, but fortunately there would be others to do what must be done. William Martel was already at Stephen’s side, gently seeking to coax him away from his son’s body.

  Ypres was more than willing to let others shoulder the burdens for a change. Surprised by how tired he suddenly felt, he fumbled for a chair, sat down wearily midst the wreckage of Eustace’s last meal. He’d choked on a mouthful of lamprey eel, the same dish that had supposedly caused the old king’s death, too. Ypres’s mouth twitched in a grim and private smile, for the eerie aptness of it appealed to his sense of irony. If Henry Fitz Empress were prudent, he’d ban eels from the royal table in future. Why tempt Providence, after all?