‘I think,’ said Flambard in a calm voice, aware that they were once again in a conversational quicksand and apprehending by now something of the reason – he knew a good deal about Rufus by hearsay – ‘that the bequest to your brother Robert Curthose may have something to be said for it. It is customary to pass on inherited land to the eldest son. Normandy was your father’s inherited estate. After all, he confirmed Curthose as heir, years ago.’
‘I know. But my brother rebelled again just the same. As far as I’m concerned, that should have put him out of the running. My brother Henry agrees.’
Flambard, who knew quite well that Henry had also complained that he had been swindled out of England, to which he was entitled because he was the only son born there, and the only one born during his father’s kingship, said nothing. Rufus eyed him sharply.
‘You’re thinking that I’m the one who’s ambitious. You’re saying to yourself: ah, he wants all that his father had before him, all for himself and to hell with his brothers.’
‘I see nothing wrong,’ said Flambard, feeling his way, ‘in a son wishing to resemble his father. Your father was a great man. He gathered vast possessions and that always leads to complications when there is more than one son to follow on.
Looking at it from a purely practical point of view,’ said Flambard thoughtfully, ‘there’s no avoiding complications. If your father had cut Curthose out in your favour, as I suppose you wish he had, or divided his estates between you and Henry, do you think Curthose would have accepted that meekly? You’d have been at war already.’
‘We’ll probably be at war anyhow, before long. Curthose thinks he should have had the lot!’
‘Yes. As I said, complications are inevitable. Many men hold estates both here and in Normandy and therefore owe allegiance to both you and Curthose. We can only pray that the matter resolves itself smoothly.’
‘Oh, pray.’ He had made a sorry mess of that at his father’s bedside. ‘Well, I’m no use at that. That’s your job. You’re a priest, even if you’re an odd one.’ Rufus looked up the wall behind Flambard, where a silver crucifix hung. ‘Tell me something, Flambard. Do you believe in it?’
‘Believe in what, my lord?’
‘All that.' Rufus made an impatient gesture at the crucifix. ‘About the Resurrection and saying prayers and hell and heaven and angels and all the rest of it. Do you think it’s true?’'
‘We’re assured by the Church that it’s true, my lord. It does no harm to believe in it, certainly. Some men would keep no laws at all but for the fear of God. If it’s not true, if when we die there’s nothing… well, we’ll never know, will we? But a mistake in the opposite direction could be disastrous.’
‘I keep thinking about my father. If the priests are right, where is he now?’ In the death chamber, there had been sprinklings of holy water, and endless praying, as well as the scented herbs. And they had been just as much use, which was none. Another reason why he had not run down to the courtyard and asked who that young man was, was that as he turned from the window, he had seen his father’s sunken, waxy yellow face again and it had come between. Death was stronger than life, it seemed. ‘I think myself,’ said Rufus, ‘that he isn’t anywhere.’ And against all likelihood, the startled Flambard saw tears glitter in the pale eyes and knew that he was in the presence of mourning.
Priestly consolations were obviously useless. He offered the sympathy of silence instead. After a moment, Rufus recovered himself. ‘There were other things I disliked in that will, that the prelates insisted on,’ he said. ‘I’ll carry them out. I promised. But I don’t approve. Too much giving away, too many grants to too many abbeys and whatnot. I’ll be wanting to recoup.’ He glanced at the vellum sheets on Flambard’s table. ‘Any suggestions?’
Flambard, who had already totted up the awe-inspiring figure to which the Conqueror’s financial bequests amounted, had had similar thoughts. ‘There are ways and means,’ he said. Despite the opinions Rufus had just expressed, he still felt inclined to caution. ‘Income is at a good level just now. There have been some recent deaths among abbots and bishops,’ he said. ‘The revenues of their estates revert to the crown, of course, until their successors are appointed. Together, they’re worth about seven hundred and fifty marks a year. Naturally, the new appointments must be made. But it is vital in these matters to choose the right appointees and this can take time. Meanwhile…’
He was interrupted by a roar of laughter, gusty enough to blow the candle flames about. The sense of menace evaporated finally and completely, so that Flambard wondered if it had ever been real.
‘Ranulf, you’re priceless! And so bloody tactful!’ They were conspirators now, brothers in arms. ‘I should have thought of it for myself,’ said Rufus. ‘Why didn’t I? It’s a jewel of an idea. Take time to appoint replacements? It’ll take till Judgement Day if I can manage it.’ He thought it over, chortling. ‘Archbishop Lanfranc’s getting on. Canterbury’ll fall vacant one of these days. Now there’s a profitable concern if you like. He read me a lecture a mile long at my coronation, Ranulf, all about leading a pure life. I had to listen to priestly prating all the time the crown was being put on my head. Canterbury can pay for that, one of these days.’
CHAPTER TWO
And the New Order Is Unwelcome 1087
At Michaelmas 1087, Brand of Fallowdene, the father of Wulfhild, died in Ely Monastery and his daughter took to her bed. To Editha’s astonishment and horror, she stayed there for three weeks.
Wulfhild had known widowhood by then and had mourned Simon deeply. But her father’s death struck at her in a way even more fundamental.
Outwardly, they had not been close. She was his natural daughter and she was almost twenty before they met. After that, her Norman marriage had kept them estranged for years at a time and the last five years of his life he had in any case spent in Ely. Yet in the short time they had had together, a bond had nevertheless formed, all the stronger for being continually under challenge. Now she grieved for the years they had so irretrievably lost.
It was unlucky that her son Richard was away from home when the news came from Ely. He was Sir Richard of Fallowdene by then, young and earnest, taking his responsibilities as knight and landlord seriously. He had gone off in good time to attend the October Shire Court at Chichester. He had taken with him, among others, Ufi, the young Fallowdene man who had succeeded Editha’s husband as steward, old Alric having died the previous winter.
As a result, poor Editha, with the weight of the hall on her shoulders until such time as those to whom authority properly belonged should see fit to resume it, spent much of that October shaking her head and sighing to anyone who would listen that she’d seen others turn their backs on the world like Wulfhild and if it went on too long, her lady’d die too and then what would become of them all?
She undoubtedly had cause for despondency but happily it proved to be misplaced. There came a night when Wulfhild, instead of lying awake to weep as she had done for twenty-one nights in succession, slept quickly and woke, late, to find her sorrowing done, as though a loud and discordant noise had suddenly ceased.
Her father was dead and she would not forget him. But for her, life must begin again. She got out of bed, annoyed to find herself weakened by inaction and by the sharp pain in the stiff knees which were the principal sign of her forty-three years. The trouble had begun in the one which was wrenched on the hillside, the day Sybil was born, and had gradually spread to the other. Richard had made a handsome carved stick for her and she reached for it impatiently. Her brain, unlike her body, seemed the better for its rest and was teeming with sudden ideas, which she wanted to put into effect at once.
She summoned a thankful Editha. ‘Hot water, please. I want to wash. My hair too.’ While she washed, she thought about lapsed land. After the Conquest, Fallowdene, like everywhere else, had been desperately short of men and a certain amount of land had gone wild again for want of hands to till it. But a new generatio
n was growing up now. The hall had absorbed some of them as had always been the custom. Surplus young men moved into it to form the warband which every lord must train in arms; surplus girls or widows worked for their keep on the myriad tasks of a big house. But soon there would be too many for the hall to accommodate. Some of that land must be reclaimed. While Editha towelled her hair, she went over the map of Fallowdene in her head.
The manor actually consisted of three holdings. There was Fallowdene itself, with its fields and church and mill, at the eastern end of the valley. Then there was little Westwater, the subletting at the western end, and over the down to the south was Little Dene, which was actually bigger than Westwater. Little Dene still had enough land… her first objective, Wulfhild decided, taking the comb away from Editha in order to ply it more vigorously, should be the lapsed acres of Fallowdene land on the south down. The first steps might also be taken towards clearing some new land on the north down. Fallowdene had ample timber and there were some oaks which could with advantage be cut. Once seasoned, they could be sold for shipbuilding and the land they had occupied could eventually come under the plough.
‘There’s still hardly any grey in your hair, lady,’ Editha was saying. ‘Will you wear colours or mourning? Reckon you’ve mourned enough, myself.’
‘So do I. I’ll wear the blue overdress and the tawny undergown.’ Since Simon’s death, Wulfhild had reverted to English styles. ‘And a clean white headshawl.’ All her clothes were old, she thought. Some of the oak timber could be sold green, for a quick return of good silver. They could do with it. Money had been on their minds lately, with the bad weather of the last few years. They hadn’t actually gone short of food but they had had to deplete their stores. The land taxes hadn’t reflected the poor harvests, Wulfhild thought grimly. Eighteen shillings the tax gatherers had wanted last Lady Day. And there was still the matter of Sybil’s dowry. In fact, one way and another, there was the matter of Sybil…
In the hall, breaking her fast, she sat by the fire and watched her six-year-old youngest child ‘help’ Editha and the other women make bread dough. She continued to make plans. Her elder daughter, Blanche, was settled at Withysham Abbey, five miles away. She had been sent there for an education but said she wished to stay, as a nun. Her portion had been set aside already to be paid to the abbey but was modest in amount because the abbess was her aunt and was not asking much. But Sybil would never make a nun and anyhow, it would be a waste. Only, to make a worthwhile marriage, a girl must have material accompaniments in land or money and where was it to be found?
Sybil ran across the hall to show her mother a shape she had moulded from the dough. She stood on tiptoe, beaming, oblivious of the gap where she had lost a baby tooth. As always, Wulfhild looked at this lastborn child of hers with something close to wonder.
She and Simon had been neither goodlooking nor ugly; merely ordinary. Their elder children were much the same. Both had inherited Wulfhild’s somewhat heavy eyebrows, which gave strength to Richard’s face but were a drawback to Blanche. Both too had Simon’s light build.
Richard would have liked to be chunkier. But neither he nor his eldest sister were in any way remarkable.
Sybil was quite otherwise. In Sybil, some trick of heredity had worked a miracle, combining Simon’s fine brows and agility, and the smooth black hair he had possessed in youth, with her mother’s brilliant, almond- shaped blue eyes, and she was going to have Wulfhild’s good width of brow and cheekbone, too. The overall effect was breathtaking, and as if that were not enough there was in Sybil a sparkling spirit which was all her own. Even her naughtinesses were inventive. Many little girls ran off and hid when threatened with the boredom of lessons in spinning, but few were discovered in the sheep pasture solemnly doing a dance, ‘to amuse the lambs’, or leading half a dozen friends among the village children into the woods, ‘because we’re going to be hermits and live on nuts’.
When Sybil was grown, one glance from those merry eyes would topple knights from their saddles like the swing of a mace and drive monks whimpering out of their vows. She would have to be married somehow. Yet although Fallowdene was prosperous compared to many places, most of what it produced, it consumed. Any dowry it might yield, certainly at present, would be derisory.
But there was a possible answer. The idea popped into Wulfhild’s head as though it were the result of long de-liberation. Fallowdene was held on condition that it furnished two knights and four men-at-arms to its over- lord for forty days each year and at other times as necessary. The men-at-arms had never been a problem, since Simon had brought his own and now that most of these had gone away or retired into domesticity, there were the young men of the hall. What had at times been difficult was providing the knights.
While Simon was alive, he was one of them himself, and now Richard had replaced him. The second knight had been supplied by various stratagems over the years until, just before his death, Simon had let Little Dene to a young and impoverished knight called Sir Brian FitzWaleran, who had lost an inherited manor in a lawsuit and was very glad to get under a roof he could call his own, for he was a widower with a small son. The boy was between one and two years older than Sybil. In all probability Brian would agree to their betrothal. Fallowdene’s goodwill would be part of the deal, after all. He was a dull and worthy man whose conversation was limited to harvest prospects and his personal obsession that the crossbow was superior to the common bow, and his son already resembled him, but although Wulfhild would gladly have given Sybil the moon, in this matter she recognised limitations. Sybil would be lucky to get any husband sound in mind and body; she couldn’t expect him to be interesting as well. With Brian’s son, she would at least be safe.
Yes, that would do. As soon as Richard got back from Chichester, she would tell him. He would be relieved to have the worry of Sybil dealt with. Something must be done soon about a wife for Richard, too. Not that he’d be hard to settle, since he’d have Fallowdene to offer. Revolving candidates in her mind, Wulfhild finished eating, gave various orders to the women and went out, moving briskly enough with the aid of her stick, to see how much replenishment the woodstack would need before winter set in. It was on its way; the woodlands were turning russet and the wind had a restless gustiness which spoke of autumn. She glanced up at the southern escarpment of the down, trying to judge whether the racing clouds above it would thicken or lighten as the day went on. On the white path over the downcrest, the same path where once she had pursued a rogue dog, there were horsemen.
Even at this distance she knew them. Richard’s horse, the one his father had bought him, was a dapple grey, visible miles away. She turned, shouting for the household.
She was so busy chivvying them that the arrivals were drawing rein in the yard before she looked at them properly.
When she did, it was first of all to make sure that all who had set out, Richard and Ufi, the men who had accompanied them, their mounts and the three pack mules which carried purchases made in Chichester, were safely there.
Only when she had assured herself of that, did she notice that the three pack mules were now four and that there was an extra rider, hooded, cloaked and anonymous, sitting on a lightweight bay mare and hanging back, half-shielded from view by the rest.
Her mind jolting with a fearful premonition, Wulfhild turned to her son. ‘Richard, who…?’
Richard smiled down from his saddle. He turned and held out a hand to the stranger, who now rode forward. The mare halted beside him, tossing her pretty head, and Richard, jumping down, helped the mare’s rider to alight, putting back the hood with a brush of his hand which was more than half a caress.
Wulfhild looked into a small, pale, precise face: blue eyes, charmingly modelled nose (prissy small mouth, said a scathing commentator inside Wulfhild’s head) and a slightly receding chin. The owner of these doubtful attractions could be no more than seventeen. She did a beautiful little curtsey and drew off her gloves. They were of fine, supple leather and th
e hands they revealed were perfectly white, with small, gleaming, evenly-filed nails.
She raised one of them to tidy the hang of a plait and the plait, though mousey in colour and too thin, was clean and neatly threaded with silver cord.
‘Mother,’ said Richard, his voice quivering with pride, ‘may I present to you my wife, Alice?’
CHAPTER THREE
Opening Moves 1087-8
‘Who is she?’ Wulfhild demanded. ‘Where did you find her? To bring someone back to Fallowdene like this and without a word of warning… what were you thinking of?’
‘Thinking of?’ Richard sounded amused. He saw that Alice’s mare was eating her feed, patted her and came out of the stall, bucket in hand. ‘What does a man usually think of when he takes a bride, Mother? And why did you need warning? Fallowdene’s ready for her and she’ll be company for you. You’ll love her once you get to know her.’
‘Will I indeed? She doesn’t look strong enough to pick up a hoe, let alone pull her weight at harvest-time. Would she even recognise a hoe?’
‘Where is she now? I think we should walk for a while and talk.’ Richard put the bucket down, took his mother’s arm and led her out of the stable.
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