Here Be Dragons
Page 57
Isabelle greeted Richard with unfeigned warmth, for they were long-standing allies in a conspiracy of self-interest, one dedicated to John’s weal.
“Did my father meet with the papal legate?”
“Yes, they met yesterday in Dover.” Isabelle gestured for the nurses to take the children on ahead. “It did not go well, I fear. Will told me that Pandulf was aloof, unable to conceal his doubts, his suspicions that John was not acting in good faith. And the terms offered were the very ones John had scorned for these five years past. He had to agree to receive Stephen Langton as Archbishop of Canterbury, to reinstate the clergy who’d gone into exile when the Interdict was declared, and to recompense the Church for its losses. But what I think John found hardest to swallow was the Pope’s insistence that he pardon Eustace de Vesci and Robert Fitz Walter, restore them to favor.”
From their respective exiles in Scotland and France, de Vesci and Fitz Walter had been loudly and persistently proclaiming themselves martyrs to conscience, Christians who could not serve an excommunicate King. Richard had not expected the Pope to give credence to so spurious a rationale for treason, and he could only shake his head in wonder, conclude that the name this particular Pope had chosen for himself was uncommonly apt: Innocent III.
“I thought I knew John so well, Richard, but I’ve never seen him like this. Never.”
“What man would not be distraught, sore crazed with wrath?”
“But that is just it; he’s not in a tearing rage. Richard, he is…well, there’s but one way to describe his mood. Do you remember when Reginald de Dammartin gave John those weighted dice? Remember how he kept winning every toss, until he finally relented and showed us the trick? He is acting now just as he did that day, like a man who knows he cannot lose.”
Isabelle glanced about, reassured herself that none was within hearing range. “He has called a council meeting for this forenoon, and he means to summon Pandulf back to Ewell on the morrow. I do not know what he has in mind. I can only tell you what he said, that he has thought of a way to thwart Philip’s invasion plans, whilst gaining His Holiness the Pope as a steadfast ally.”
“Papa is more than clever; at times he can be utterly ingenious. But not even Merlin could manage that. The Pope would never trust Papa again. Nor would he intervene on Papa’s behalf unless the Church had a stake in the war, and it does not.”
Isabelle shrugged. “I daresay you’re right. But John is strangely calm for a man beset on all sides. He—Richard, look. The prisoner being escorted through the gateway…is that not Llewelyn’s son?”
Richard spun around. Gruffydd’s guards were pulling him from his horse. He stumbled, nearly lost his balance, and looked in Richard’s direction. Richard saw recognition on his face and, for the briefest of moments, an involuntary appeal.
John glanced around the table at the few men he did not suspect of complicity in the de Vesci-Fitz Walter plot. They’d listened intently, without interruption, as he explained what he planned to do, and why, and he’d seen their initial shock slowly give way to understanding, and then approval.
“Well?” he said. “Now that you know, what say you?”
“It ought to work,” Chester conceded, and then added, with uncharacteristic enthusiasm, “For certes, Philip will be caught utterly off guard.”
“So, too, will His Holiness the Pope.” Will was beaming; it had been some years since John had seen such unqualified admiration in his brother’s eyes. Pembroke, too, was nodding appreciatively. But it was Reginald de Dammartin, the fugitive Count of Boulogne, who echoed John’s own opinion of his desperate ploy. Dammartin was a newcomer to John’s inner circle; he’d fled to England the preceding year, after a bitter dispute with the French King. Aggressively independent, not overly scrupulous, and possessed of a brutally candid tongue, he had not found many friends at John’s court. But as he was also utterly without self-pity, undeniably quick-witted, and a raconteur par excellence, with an inexhaustible supply of boisterous, bawdy tales as uproarious as they were unseemly, John had conceived a genuine liking for the man, quite apart from Dammartin’s considerable value as a political ally. For not only was Dammartin Count of Boulogne by right of his wife, he also held the Norman fiefs of Aumale, Domfort, and Mortain, which John had lost to Philip in 1204.
Dammartin was grinning. “There is but one word for such an underhanded stratagem—brilliant.”
The other men laughed. They were still laughing as the solar door opened and Gruffydd was thrust into the chamber.
His guards shoved Gruffydd forward, forced him to kneel before the English King. John pushed his chair back from the table, watched Gruffydd in unnerving silence, his eyes speculative, not easily read.
“You’re looking rather bedraggled these days,” he said at last, and some of Gruffydd’s fear was lost in a sudden surge of hatred.
“I’ll not beg. No matter what you mean to do.”
“What I mean to do,” John said blandly, “is to instruct your guards that you may have a bath upon your return to Dover.”
Gruffydd’s jaw dropped. To be offered the promise of future tomorrows when he’d been measuring his life in minutes was a shock not easily absorbed. “Why would you want to do a kindness for me?”
The corner of John’s mouth twitched. “I see you have your father’s impeccable manners. As it happens, I mean to do you a greater kindness than that. I’ve decided to allow you to write a letter to your father.” He beckoned to one of the guards. “Cut his bonds, but make no mistake; he’s not to be trusted. There is parchment and pen and inkwell on the table, Gruffydd. You do know how to write? If not, you can dictate to one of my scribes.”
Gruffydd flushed. “I can write. I’m a Prince’s son.”
John’s smile was sardonic, but he said only, “You may write what you please, within reason. I think you should assure Llewelyn that you are well, that you are not being maltreated or abused. You may tell him, too, that I am willing to let him send Joanna to my court in order to verify the truth of your assurances.”
Gruffydd was surreptitiously rubbing his wrists, while trying desperately to make sense of John’s sudden benevolence. In the nine months since the Nottingham hangings, he’d dwelt in death’s shadow; not a day dawned when he did not wonder if it would be his last. What enabled him to endure was the intensity of his yearning for freedom—and for vengeance. But if a beneficent spirit had offered to grant his lesser wishes, he’d have asked for a hot bath and contact of some sort with his family. It seemed almost diabolical to him that John should have pinpointed his vulnerabilities with such uncanny accuracy.
“Well?” John was regarding him with amused impatience. “What are you waiting for? The sooner you write the letter, the sooner you’ll get word from home.”
Home. To Gruffydd’s horror, tears suddenly filled his eyes. “No,” he said huskily. “No. I’ll write no letter for you, now or ever.”
It had never occurred to John that Gruffydd might refuse. “Why ever not?” he demanded, sounding more astonished than angry.
“Because you want it written. I admit I do not know why. But if it serves your interests, it cannot be to my father’s advantage. So I’ll not do it.”
It was suddenly quite still. Even to Gruffydd, his words rang hollow, not so much defiance as doomed bravado. John was slowly shaking his head. “Do not be a fool, boy. Surely you know I can make you write that letter.”
Gruffydd’s stomach knotted. “You can try.”
John pushed his chair back still farther; wood grated harshly on the flagstones. “I cannot decide whether you’re an utter idiot or merely foolhardy beyond belief.” He made an abrupt gesture and the guards jerked Gruffydd to his feet. “Take him back to Dover, where he can think upon his lunacy.”
Reginald de Dammartin was the first to break the silence that followed Gruffydd’s departure. “Are all the Welsh as mad as that?”
“I would that they were,” John said tersely. “If so, Wales would be an Engl
ish shire by now.” Rising, he moved away from the table and, for the first time, noticed his son. Richard had entered unobtrusively some moments before, after a futile attempt to coax Isabelle into interceding on Gruffydd’s behalf; she’d parried with a cynical and unanswerable, “If John indulges me, it is because I ask only for what I know he’s willing to give.”
Gruffydd’s intransigence had not surprised Richard any, but his father’s forbearance had. He reached John just as Will said approvingly, “Your patience with the boy was commendable, John, in truth it was.”
“That was not patience, Will. He called my bluff, pure and simple. The joke is that I doubt whether he truly knew what he was doing even as he did it!”
“What do you mean?”
“Think upon it, Will. How would you have me explain to my daughter that Gruffydd’s assurances of good health were extracted under torture? Even if I resorted to more subtle means of persuasion, withheld food or sleep until he agreed to cooperate, there’d be no way to keep him from regaling Joanna with all the gory details afterward. It should be obvious by now that the damned fool is too simpleminded to scare!”
While there was understandable exasperation in John’s voice, he seemed to be taking Gruffydd’s defiance with remarkable equanimity. Isabelle was right, Richard decided; something was definitely in the wind.
John was shaking his head again, in disbelief. “I daresay if I’d told him he was free to return to Wales, he’d then have insisted upon staying in England! I ought to have reminded him of the fate of his granduncles; mayhap that would have shaken some sense into him.”
“I know about as much of Wales as I do of the heathen kingdoms of Cathay,” Dammartin drawled, “and I confess I find them of equal interest. What befell the boy’s kin?”
“After my father lost the battle of Crogen to Llewelyn’s grandfather, Owain Fawr, he took vengeance upon his Welsh hostages. Two of them were Owain’s sons, Llewelyn’s uncles. Their eyes were put out with red-hot awls.”
Dammartin was not shocked, for Philip had been known to do the same to captured English soldiers; while Norman knights and men of rank were routinely ransomed, it was not unheard of to mutilate common soldiers, thus rendering them unfit for further combat. But for Will, that was a jab into an old wound.
“I’ve never been able to understand how our father could have done that,” he muttered. “It was not like him.” He hesitated. “John…you’d never take vengeance of that sort upon Llewelyn, by blinding Gruffydd?”
Will saw at once that he’d made a monumental blunder. John’s eyes were suddenly opaque; a muscle jerked in his cheek. “I told you why I hanged those accursed hostages! It was necessary to set an example, to remind my barons how much was at stake. I did what had to be done, and I’m bone-weary of being criticized for it. Christ, the utter hypocrisy of it all! Who spoke up for those blinded Welsh hostages? Or those hapless souls hanged by my sainted brother Richard at Châlus? He took his deathbed vengeance upon men, women, and children alike, and none called him ‘butcher’ for it. As for that double-dealing hellspawn on the French throne, his hands are as bloody as Richard’s. I may treat my Jews like milch cows, milk them for all they’re worth, but they’ve not been slaughtered by rampaging mobs as they were in Richard’s reign, and I’ve never burned Jews at the stake the way Philip has—eighty at Brie-Comte-Robert, when a Christian was found slain.”
John paused, breathless, realizing too late just how much he’d revealed. “Leave me,” he said, in a tone that brooked no argument. Richard alone braved his displeasure by remaining.
“Why did you want Gruffydd to write to Llewelyn, Papa? What would you gain by that?”
John was standing by the window, watching as Gruffydd and his guards rode through the gateway, on their way back to confinement at Dover Castle. “Llewelyn did warn me, Richard. He told me plainly that Joanna was his hostage as Gruffydd was mine. But I did not believe him, not then.”
Richard was suddenly sorry he’d stayed. “And now?”
“Twice in the past six months I’ve summoned Joanna to my court, and twice he has refused to let her come. The last time I even offered to provide hostages if it would ease his qualms. Hostages…for my own daughter! And all I got in return was a stilted letter from Joanna, saying it was not possible for her to leave Wales, a letter she obviously wrote at Llewelyn’s direction.”
Richard had learned to pick his way through conversations about his sister as if each one were a quagmire. But never had he so dreaded making a misstep. Knowing that John was too adept at reading faces, he busied himself at the table, pouring wine for them both. “So you thought Llewelyn might relent if you made it worth his while?” he ventured cautiously, and John nodded.
“But I did not reckon with his son’s lunatic yearnings for martyrdom! It might be foresighted to look after that lad, Richard; what could better serve England than to have Gruffydd one day reigning as Prince of Gwynedd? Can you envision him ever humbling his pride to an English King as Llewelyn did at Aberconwy? When pigs fly and monks no longer like their wine!”
Richard was relieved that they seemed to be edging away from the precipice. To banish Joanna into the peripheral reaches of memory where she could do John no harm, he said hastily, “How long are you going to keep me in suspense, Papa? Isabelle says you’ve a scheme to outwit Philip and foil his invasion plans. What do you have in mind…a miracle?”
John laughed. “I am merely taking a page from Philip and Llewelyn’s own book. Philip has had great sport these months past, posing as a pious champion of the Church; to convince the Pope that he was acting in good faith, he even went so far as to release the long-suffering Ingeborg from Étampes Castle! And Llewelyn, too, has had his fun at my expense, turning treason into a crusade for Christendom, all with the Pope’s blessings. You ask what I mean to do, lad? I mean to show them that I can play that game, too, and with far greater skill.”
Philip was currently holding court in the sleepy village of Gravelines, and his restive barons were forced to seek livelier sport in the seacoast town of Calais, just twelve miles to the west. Hugh de Lusignan, Count of La Marche, and his younger brother Ralph, Count of Eu, rode into Calais just before dusk, headed for their favorite wharfside alehouse.
“Three days till Ascensiontide.” Hugh shoved a drunk aside, claimed the table closest to the door. “Think you that John is keeping count?”
“I am, for certes. I’ve a wager with our cousin Geoffrey, am hazarding one hundred marks that the old hermit is right.”
“Wishful thinking, Ralph. I’d have to be able to spit into John’s open coffin ere I’d believe he was well and truly dead. He may have the scruples of a Scotsman and the morals of a rutting swine, but he has Satan’s own luck.”
“Anyone using the words ‘swine’ and ‘Satan’ in one sentence can only be talking about John Plantagenet. John Lackland. John of the Devil’s brood. John, the Pope’s sworn man.”
The room was hazy with smoke from hearth and reeking tallow candles, and Hugh’s eyes were stinging. He blinked up at the man weaving toward their table, said trenchantly, “In your cups already, Fitz Walter?”
Robert Fitz Walter straddled the bench, sat down without waiting to be asked. “I’m nowhere near as drunk as I hope to get. Since you’re both still sober, I take it you have not heard yet? The papal legate Pandulf landed at Wissant on Saturday, wasted no time joining Philip at Gravelines. He carried a right interesting message for Philip, told him the Pope demands that he abandon the invasion of England. He said that if Philip does not heed the warning, the Pope will lay France under Interdict again and, if need be, will excommunicate each and every man who sets foot on English soil.”
Hugh and his brother exchanged startled glances. “If that’s an example of your English humor, it’s not much to my liking.”
“Philip did not find it very amusing, either.”
Hugh set his goblet down, sloshed red wine onto the table. “You are not jesting, are you?”
They were staring at him, dumbfounded. Hugh found his tongue first. “You’re daft or drunk, or both!”
“Pandulf told Philip that on Wednesday last John did freely surrender to God and the Holy Mother Church of Rome the kingdoms of England and Ireland, to hold them henceforth as the Pope’s vassal.”
Fitz Walter helped himself to Hugh’s wine, drank too deeply, and gave a harsh, spluttering laugh. “All know those tales told of men who sold their souls to the Devil. But John must be the first to turn a profit by selling his to God!”
“Wrath of God, man, how can you laugh about it?”
“What would you have me do? Rant and rave and sicken on my own bile like Philip? When I left him, he was venting his fury upon God, John, Innocent, his servants, his dogs, all within reach. But it’ll change nothing. He’s already learned what a confrontation with the Church can cost, is not likely to go that route again. I’ll wager that he calls off the invasion as the Pope demands, and turns his rage instead upon a safer target, John’s ally, the Count of Flanders. Whilst in England, John will continue to rule as arbitrarily as ever, except that the Pope will now have a vested interest in John’s survival.”
“You’re taking this rather well for a man who can now expect to live out his remaining days in French exile,” Hugh said suspiciously, and Fitz Walter grinned.
“Did I forget to tell you? My cousin de Vesci and I are included in the Pope’s peace. I will be returning to England as soon as my safe-conduct does arrive.”