When Christ and His Saints Slept

by Sharon Kay Penman

  This was exactly what Stephen had hoped to avoid, and he was furious with himself for letting Chester force the issue—which made him even more furious with Chester. “I told you that I would think about your request, no more than that. After due consideration, I have decided that I am willing to join you in Wales—provided that certain conditions are met.”

  Chester was silent for a moment, cursing himself for not putting an end to Stephen’s kingship when he’d had the chance at Lincoln. If only his aim had been truer! “What conditions?”

  “Bluntly put, your history does not inspire trust. I do not think it unreasonable to expect a show of good faith on your part. I want Lincoln Castle back. And hostages—of our choosing. I think that is a fair—”

  “Fair? It is outrageous! I come seeking your aid—the aid you owe me as your liegeman—and what happens? You lie to me and then spit in my face!”

  “I did not lie to you! Nor do I see why you object to these conditions. If you have been honest with me, why not provide hostages? What risk to them—as long as you are true to your word?”

  “It is insulting, an affront to my honour!”

  To Chester’s fury, that evoked a burst of derisive laughter from most of the men. Stephen smiled scornfully and Chester tensed, ready to lunge for his throat. But others were now joining in the fray. Bennet de Malpas put a restraining hand on Chester’s arm, for they were hopelessly outnumbered. William de Ypres had shouldered his way to Stephen’s side. “I never knew you had such a droll wit, my lord earl,” he gibed. “Surely that was a jest—your complaint about affronted honour?”

  That prompted more laughter, which stilled, though, when William Peverel at last made himself heard above the uproar. “Treason!” he shouted. “He meant to betray the king!” And that stark cry of “Treason” was quickly taken up by others, until the entire hall seemed to echo with this deadly denunciation, the one accusation no king could ever ignore.

  “You fools!” Chester raged. “I did nothing wrong!”

  “Prove it, then,” Stephen challenged. “Accept my terms.”

  “Rot in Hell!”

  Faced with such defiance, Stephen had no choice. “Arrest him,” he ordered. Resistance would have been futile and possibly fatal, but no one had expected Chester to realize that, too. He surprised them all and disappointed more than a few by an unwonted display of common sense—he let himself be taken.

  Afterward, there was jubilation among Chester’s enemies. But others were more ambivalent, asking themselves if suspicions alone were enough to justify a charge of treason. Even some who rejoiced in Chester’s downfall were still troubled by the way he’d fallen. If so great and powerful a lord as Chester could be arrested without proof of wrongdoing, who amongst them was safe?

  MAUDE and Ranulf arrived at Bristol Castle in midafternoon. The summer sky was just starting to darken when Nicholas rode in. His unexpected appearance jarred Ranulf; barely two months had passed since his confrontation with Ancel and the memory was still raw. For a moment, he let himself hope that Nicholas might be bringing a letter from Annora, routed through Maud. But he knew better, knew that Nicholas was here on a far more urgent mission than the delivery of a clandestine love letter, and his suspicions were soon confirmed. Summoned hastily to the privacy of the castle solar, he and Maude and Rainald and Amabel listened in astonishment as Robert read aloud his daughter’s letter, a laconic account of her husband’s arrest at Northampton.

  There was an amazed silence once he was done. “Has the man gone daft?” Rainald said at last. “How could even Stephen blunder this badly?”

  “Just be thankful, Rainald, that he has,” Robert said earnestly. “We need not fear any more sheep straying from our fold now, not after the way Chester was sheared.”

  “There will be no more defections, for certes,” Maude agreed. “I do not understand why Stephen keeps making the same mistakes. Does he not realize how weak and sly it makes him appear—breaching the King’s Peace to arrest men at his own court?”

  “First the bishops, then Mandeville, now Chester. If he keeps on like this, he’ll have to send out his sheriffs to fetch his dinner guests. ‘Come and dine with the king, get to see the royal dungeons, too!’” Rainald was always one to laugh at his own jokes; the others were too preoccupied for levity.

  “I wonder,” Maude said thoughtfully, “if Chester was guilty.”

  They all did. It was easy enough to agree upon the obvious—that Chester’s refusal meant nothing, for even if he’d been as innocent as one of God’s own angels, he’d have balked at a public submission. But beyond that, they could only speculate. None disputed Ranulf, though, when he observed wryly that a man could rarely go wrong suspecting the worst of Chester.

  “I find it difficult to give him the benefit of any doubt, too,” Robert admitted. “My daughter seems to think he was not plotting evil—for once. Of course he’d not be likely to confide in her if he was setting a snare. But he is having trouble with the Welsh; that was no lie.”

  “I suppose he could be innocent,” Ranulf conceded grudgingly. “And if so, it would be the ultimate irony—that he’d be punished for the one sin he did not commit!”

  There was laughter and then Maude surprised them with a comment that showed just how far she’d traveled down the road toward self-awareness. “No, Ranulf,” she said, “the ultimate irony is this—that for all the harm Stephen and I have tried to do each other, our worst wounds always seem to be self-inflicted.”

  AN autumn rain was making life miserable for any Londoners who had to be out in it. Within the palace at Westminster, it was drier, but the mood was as dreary as the weather. Stephen had been closeted all morning with his wife, his brother, and William de Ypres, gloomily assessing their options. They agreed that they had but two choices, neither of them palatable.

  If they kept Chester in confinement, they risked a rebellion by his vassals and tenants, who’d reacted with outrage to their liege lord’s arrest. Moreover, Chester was garnering support from unexpected quarters. The Cheshire Church was speaking out strongly on behalf of so generous a patron. Naturally his brother was among the most vocal of his defenders, as was his nephew, the Earl of Hertford. But others were arguing for his release, too, respected lords like the Earls of Derby and Pembroke. It had not helped, either, when the Welsh took advantage of Chester’s disgrace to raid into Cheshire. As unlikely as it seemed, Chester was becoming a figure of sympathy.

  The longer Chester was imprisoned, the more problems he posed. But if he was set free, they well knew what to expect. He’d never forgive Stephen for this, never. Even if he was as guilty as Cain, he’d still see himself as the one wronged. When Ypres pointed this out, no one disputed him, and he took the opportunity to argue further against Chester’s release. “If you snared a wolf, would you let it go just because the rest of the pack was on the prowl?”

  “Spare me your hunting homilies,” the bishop said brusquely. “They do not address the issue at hand. I like the thought of freeing Chester no more than you do, but I see no other way. How do you expect the controversy to abate as long as we keep him in the Tower?”

  “Nor can we bring him to trial,” Matilda said, “for we have no proof to offer of his treachery. So in all fairness, Willem, how can we continue to hold him?”

  “Kill him, then. Let him have a convenient mishap, fall down a flight of stairs or catch a fatal fever.”

  Matilda wanted to believe this was one of Ypres’s unseemly jests, but as she met his eyes, she was chilled to see that he was in deadly earnest. She’d always known that he was lawless at heart, a man who’d passed most of his adult life perilously close to the dark side of damnation. She’d convinced herself that he’d pulled back from the brink, that salvation might still be within his grasp. But in recent months, he’d begun showing flashes of an erratic temper, his humor had soured, and he was either drinking more or not holding it as well. She did not know what was troubling him, was not even sure she wanted to kno
w, for she suspected that she was not equipped to deal with his demons. But she was worried, nonetheless.

  Stephen and the bishop had been offended by Ypres’s cynical suggestion, and they were taking turns berating him for his murderous advice. He listened in silence, not looking in the least contrite. As soon as she could interrupt the castigating flow, Matilda urged them to “Let it be. Willem erred, you were understandably affronted, and told him so. Now can we get back to the problem at hand? I agree with Henry. I think we must set Chester free.”

  There was an unusual asperity to her tone and all three men looked at her in surprise. Stephen felt remorse stirring anew; she may have been far more tactful than his acid-tongued brother, but he knew how dismayed she’d been by Chester’s arrest. He’d repeatedly tried to explain that it was not his fault, and she’d professed to believe him, but he still fretted that she blamed him for the debacle.

  Sometimes so did he, usually late at night as he sought to convince himself that Chester was the one at fault; it was then that he heard the insidious inner voices, insisting that his uncle the old king would never have gotten himself into such a bind. These voices sounded depressingly like his brother’s, for Henry was still reproaching him for not taking command of the situation before it got out of control. He never tired of pointing out that a private confrontation would have posed few risks; if Chester had balked at proving his good faith, Stephen need only have refused to go into Wales, and that would have been the end of it.

  Now there seemed no end in sight. But how could he admit that he’d blundered when he did not know what he could have done differently? Even if he were given a chance to relive that scene in Northampton’s great hall, the outcome would likely be the same, and that realization was the most troubling of all.

  “I botched it,” he said abruptly. “I know that. Chester will bear me a lifelong grudge. I know that, too. But I cannot change what is already done. I can put a high price on Chester’s freedom, though, high enough to make him think twice about incurring the wrath of the Crown again.”

  He sounded as if he truly believed what he said, that it was possible to intimidate Chester into submission. For his sake, Matilda tried to believe it, too. Even the bishop held his peace. Ypres reached for his wine cup and drained it, in an unspoken sardonic salute to the phantom presence in their midst, the man they were at such pains not to mention, the late, unlamented lord and rebel, Geoffrey de Mandeville.

  BY the time the negotiations for Chester’s release were completed, winter was upon them. It had not yet snowed, but the fields were bleak and the ground frozen as Chester and his brother rode west. William de Roumare had brought Chester’s favorite white palfrey and an impressive armed escort so that he could return to Cheshire in the style befitting an earl. But he knew it would take more than resplendent trappings to blot out the memories of the past few months.

  Roumare kept glancing uneasily at his brother’s profile, as hard and unyielding as the barren countryside around them. Chester had been publicly shamed, clapped in irons, treated like a common felon. To gain his freedom, he’d been forced to swear a holy oath that he’d not bear arms against the king. He’d had to offer up a number of highborn hostages as pledges for his future loyalty, among them his nephew Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Hertford. And most galling of all, he’d had to surrender his castles at Lincoln and Coventry.

  Roumare had expected Chester to be wild, afire with homicidal intent. The brother he knew ought to have been raging and raving and cursing, making threats and vowing vengeance with every breath he drew. That sort of frenzied fury would not have disturbed him unduly; it was just Chester’s way, and he was prepared for it.

  Instead, he’d encountered a stony silence, so unlike Chester that he was becoming genuinely alarmed. Like William de Ypres, he, too, was haunted by memories of Geoffrey de Mandeville, the rebel earl who’d died an outlaw, accursed by all. Looking again at Chester, Roumare shifted in the saddle. He was not a fanciful man, but he seemed to feel the rage radiating from his brother, hot enough to scorch. Hot enough, too, to consume all common sense? Was Randolph so hate-maddened that he’d follow Mandeville’s bloody road to his doom?

  “Randolph…” He cleared his throat, nudged his stallion closer to his brother’s mount. “You must tell me,” he urged, “what you mean to do.”

  Chester’s eyes flicked toward him, opaque and unblinking and blacker than pitch. “I mean to do all in my power,” he said, “to gain the throne for Maude’s son.”

  STEPHEN celebrated Christmas that year in his newly recovered castle at Lincoln. The citizens, freed from six years under Chester’s yoke, welcomed Stephen joyfully, as their liberator, and he rewarded them with lavish pageantries, festivities that heralded his victory over Chester as much as they did the Nativity of the Christ Child. The people were so bedazzled by the royal revelries that they accepted with aplomb Stephen’s decision to defy local superstition and wear his crown within the city, even though that was traditionally held to be bad luck.

  The high point of the Christmas court was the elaborate ceremony in which Stephen knighted his eldest son and invested him as Count of Boulogne. Eustace would be seventeen in the spring, and he made a favorable impression upon Lincoln, for he was as tall and tawny-haired as Stephen, and looked like a fine young king in the making—from a distance. That heretical thought was Matilda’s. It had come unbidden, casting a shadow over the pleasure she’d been taking in the evening. It was an unbearably lonely feeling, for she could not confide her qualms to another living soul. How could she ever admit that she harbored such doubts about her own son?

  THE Christmas fête had been over for hours, but Matilda was still clad in her elegant court gown with its long, hanging sleeves and decorative silk belt that reached below her knees. A fur-trimmed mantle trailed from her shoulders, shielding her from the cold as she made her way to the small chapel in the east tower of the keep. She’d promised Stephen that she’d not be long, but she needed time alone with the Almighty, needed the peace of mind that could come only from entrusting her troubles to a Higher Power.

  The chapel was in the upper story of the tower. Wall sconces still burned, and the scent of incense lingered on the air. She was not expecting to find anyone there, for the priest had retired for the night. But a man was standing before the altar. He spun around at sound of her footsteps, almost as if he were fearing an ambush, and she saw that it was William de Ypres.

  “Willem!”

  “I suppose I am the last man you thought to find here.”

  “Well…” She did not know how to answer, for he was right, but to admit that seemed insulting.

  “You never speak ill of people if you can help it, do you? We both know that if I turned up missing, you’d mount a search in the town’s alehouses, taverns, and whorehouses. You’d expect,” he said, “to find me in the gutter, not in church.”

  His words were slurred, his eyes swollen, and she shivered, realizing that he was drunk. But he was also in pain. “Your need brought you to church tonight,” she said softly. “He is there for all of us, Willem. He loves the sinner as much as He hates the sin.”

  To her consternation, he laughed, a harsh, grating sound that caused her to shiver again. “If that is a suggestion that I mend my ways,” he said, “I have already started down that road. I got as far as Boxley, too, for all the good it did me…”

  Matilda was not comfortable being alone with him in this dimly lit chapel, for she was timid around drunkards; they tended to be loud and often quarrelsome and alarmingly unpredictable. His last words were so garbled that she was not sure she’d heard him correctly. “Boxley?” she echoed uncertainly. Forcing a smile when he did not respond, she repeated, “Boxley? Where is that, Willem?”

  “In Kent.” He moved toward her, steady on his feet but with a telltale stiffness in his carriage, the rigid posture of a man concentrating carefully upon the commands his brain was sending his body. “I just founded a Cistercian abbey there,” h
e said, and laughed again, mirthlessly, at her dumbfounded expression.

  Matilda’s initial amazement gave way almost at once to delight. She and Stephen had rewarded Ypres lavishly for his loyalty; he had been given such vast holdings in Kent that his enemies complained he was its earl in all but name. Even so, founding an abbey was an incredibly generous gesture, one which went well beyond the usual largesse bestowed upon the Church by its more pious or repentant sons.

  “Willem, how wonderful! You seem so…so worldly sometimes that I feared you’d not given sufficient thought to your immortal soul. This is a worthy thing you’ve done, and I admire you for—”

  “Do not!” At her startled recoil, he said again, more calmly this time, “Do not, my lady. There is nothing admirable about a bribe, especially one that failed.”

  Matilda blinked. “I do not understand.”

  “It is simple enough. I sought to make a deal with God. I’d give Him a House for His monks if He would give me back—” He bit off the rest of his words, would have turned away had she not caught his arm.

  “Give you back what? Willem, tell me! Give you back what?”

  He looked at her for a moment that seemed endless before saying hoarsely, “My sight. I am going blind.”

  “Sweet Jesus,” Matilda breathed. “I did not know…”

  “I did not want you to know.” His voice was flat, almost hostile. “I did not want your pity.”

  “It is not pity! Willem…Willem, listen to me. I know it seems like meagre comfort, but the Almighty does not give us burdens too heavy to bear. Let Him help you carry it. And let us. Stephen and I will do all we can—”

  “Will you?” His mouth contorted, in a bitter parody of a smile. “Even after I’m of no more use to you?”

  Matilda understood, then, the true source of his fear; it was rooted in his turbulent and bloody past. His father had been the Count of Ypres, his grandsire Count of Flanders, but he was tainted by the Bar Sinister, not his father’s heir, just his bastard. He’d been unwilling to accept so limited a destiny, though, had fought for Flanders, lost, and been forced into English exile. At fifty-six years old, all that he had, he’d won by the sword, by his ruthless will and superior skills as a battle commander. No wonder he was so afraid now, she thought. It was not Death he dreaded, not even the loss of light; it was being helpless, unable to defend himself in a world that had never been anything but hostile.