Conquest II

by Tracey Warr

  A smile flashed across Benedicta’s face at such a description, which she swiftly suppressed, trying to keep her expression humble.

  ‘I want you to convey a donation of precious books I intend to make to Robert d’Arbrissel’s new abbey at Fontevraud.’ The Countess paused for Benedicta to respond.

  ‘I am happy to serve you, my lady, and honoured that you feel I can be of use in this matter.’

  ‘I want you to spend time at Fontevraud, Sister, to find an excuse to stay there for a while.’

  Benedicta nodded.

  ‘You are probably aware that the abbey is favoured by the Angevin family and is a nest of repudiated and widowed noblewomen of the families that are of most concern to us. I believe there will be a great deal more to interest us than what you have been able to glean at Almenêches.’

  ‘I imagine so.’

  ‘You may, of course, refuse this mission, Sister. I appreciate it is a lot to ask of you.’

  ‘I am pleased to serve you and King Henry in any way I can,’ Benedicta said, ignoring her misgivings. She could not see how she could refuse so great a lady.

  ‘As you know, the religious community of Fontevraud is … controversial. I should not wish to send you unknowing into spiritual danger.’

  I am already in spiritual danger, Benedicta thought, undertaking such spying. ‘I heard that Robert d’Arbrissel has been suspected of,’ Benedicta suppressed the urge to say heresy, ‘unconventional views.’

  ‘I can assure you, Sister, that he is a holy man. In particular, he is a champion of we weak women,’ the Countess said forcefully. ‘A most eloquent preacher. He was one of those forest hermits, in company with Bernard of Tiron and Vitalis of Savigny. His preaching is a thunderclap that lights up a cathedral with its eloquence. He is an outstanding herald of Christ and an extraordinary word-scatterer. Yet, yes, there are some concerns about his theological position. I fear, Sister Benedicta, you may need to guard the whiteness of your soul fiercely when you are there.’

  Whiteness of her soul? Was it not already blackened with duplicity? Oh, so much penance she would have to do.

  ‘D’Arbrissel is known to practise and encourage syneisaktism,’ Adela said, her expression eloquently steeped in abhorrence. ‘I cannot send you into such danger without due warning.’ Her voice lowered to a whisper and she leant closer across the table. ‘He believes in the mortification of the flesh by sleeping amongst women.’

  ‘I see.’ Benedicta frowned and shrugged. ‘Have no fear, Countess. I will not slip in that way.’

  The Countess shook her head slowly. ‘Do not be so certain of yourself, Sister. Always guard against your own lust and the lust of others.’

  Benedicta snorted inadvertently and coughed quickly to try to cover the unseemly noise that had escaped her. The passions the Countess spoke of had never been roused in her, never plagued her. She knew from her readings that others, particularly religious men, often struggled with that sin, but she could not imagine it would present her with any real problem.

  ‘You will remain at Fontevraud for some time,’ the Countess instructed her. ‘Later today, at the feast, you will see a storyteller who will act as go-between for you and me. His name is Breri. In a few weeks, you will set out to Fontevraud. I will send two menat- arms to guard you and the valuable books I am sending.’

  ‘I am honoured by your trust in me, Countess, and will do all in my power to perform this task well.’

  ‘Good. Then my servants will convey you to a chamber where you might take some ease before the meal and change into a clean habit and footwear.’

  Benedicta swallowed. So, the Countess could see over the table. Benedicta had no such clean clothes with her. At Almenêches the sisters were only issued with one set of clothes and these were then renewed every five years. Perhaps a servant could furnish water and cloths and something could be done to freshen her attire before the feast.

  Benedicta was seated at one of the lower trestles but close, nevertheless, to the high table, where Countess Adela conversed with her family and other noble guests. The hall was rammed with diners and rushing servants.

  Another nun, seated next to Benedicta, introduced herself as Sister Lucie and explained who the people were at the high table. On either side of the Countess were her sons: Thibaut, the new Count of Blois, around nineteen years old, and Etienne, Count of Mortain, who was sixteen. Etienne was a big, freckled lad with a very loud voice; Thibaut was more slender and had an intelligent face, long hands and a merry laugh. Ranged on either side of these two young men were many young girls.

  ‘Who are all those young ladies?’ Benedicta asked her neighbour.

  ‘Countess Adela’s daughters are seated to the right of Count Thibaut – his sisters Matilda, Adelaide, Eleanore and Alix, and the Countess’s nieces are seated to the left of Count Etienne.’

  Benedicta frowned. ‘Her nieces?’ Benedicta knew that Adela’s brother, King Henry of England, had one daughter named Maud, but knew of no others.

  Her neighbour saw her confusion. She lowered her voice and brought her mouth close to Benedicta’s ears. ‘They are King Henry’s daughters. The daughters of his mistresses.’

  ‘Ah!’ Benedicta counted five young ladies.

  ‘The Countess is educating them all here and negotiating marriages for them.’

  ‘Goodness! Nine marriages to negotiate, including her own daughters!’ Benedicta reflected that, between them, King Henry and Countess Adela had accumulated a significant store of young women who could be used to confirm alliances.

  ‘Yes,’ Sister Lucie laughed, ‘and those betrothals are a mere pin-prick in the business that Lady Adela concerns herself with.’

  ‘And what do you do here, at the Countess’s court, Sister Lucie?’

  ‘I study poetry with the Countess. And games.’

  ‘Games?’

  ‘Yes. There is a small group of us, all nuns with the exception of Lady Adela. We compose poems and songs, oftentimes in response to conundrums set for us by Baudri de Bourgueil. We weave words, literary morsels. Perhaps you will join our play for the short time of your stay? The Countess says that the one who is loved is conceived as a text and so we exercise the invocatory power of language.’ Sister Lucie smiled.

  Thinking of the handsome Archbishop Baudri and his suggestive poetry, Benedicta asked: ‘Poems in Latin?’

  ‘Yes, in Latin, but also in Langue d’Oil or Occitan.’ Sister Lucie waved her fork gaily. ‘Sometimes we play at satire, making our words salty!’

  ‘I would be delighted to join your textual community,’ Benedicta said, momentarily pleased at her own sophisticated remark, but then immediately anxious that her wit and knowledge might not be adequate for the game. How marvellous, she thought to herself, if she could in some small way swim in these swift currents, keep up with the effervescent passions of these intellectuals whose words she had read so avidly in the cloister.

  A brown-bearded, rotund man sat down on the bench opposite them. A harp was slung across his back. ‘Excuse me, Sister Benedicta, I wonder if I might speak a little privately with you for a moment, on an errand from the Countess.’ His accent was strange. This must be the ioculator the Countess had told her about. Sister Lucie looked at Benedicta curiously but excused herself to speak with others in the hall now that the meal was concluded and people were beginning to move around.

  ‘I will sing soon,’ the man told Benedicta, ‘so I must be brief. I am Breri. I believe the Countess has spoken of me.’

  ‘Yes. I am pleased to meet you, Breri, and look forward to your performance.’

  He looked up to a passing serving girl. ‘Bring me a vase of wine, girl, and be quick about it.’ He turned back to Benedicta. His cheeks were high-coloured and well-padded. He received his glass into a large hand and rolled the wine around the glass, taking his ease with an indolent and louche air. ‘For now, our business is short, Sister. You travel soon to Fontevraud, and I will be a few weeks behind you on the road. I wi
ll stay in a nearby inn and contrive to fetch any report you have. It is safest if we deal with our tongues and not our styluses.’

  Benedicta spluttered on her wine and looked again at Breri’s face. Clearly his innuendo had been intended and he was pleased with its result. His eyes twinkled gaily at her.

  ‘A little jest, Sister. Forgive me. It is my trade. All you need to know is this: the inn is on the road between Candes and Fontevraud and has the sign of a bear. You might leave a brief message there for me and I will meet you at the abbey under cover of dark to receive your report. Will that be satisfactory?’

  ‘I am a novice at this creeping around,’ Benedicta said. ‘I suppose you are not, and so I am happy to take my steer from you.’

  ‘Excellent. But do not use our actual names in any notes, Sister. I will term you ….’ He looked up at the ceiling and then back to her face, thinking. ‘I will term you Ladybird. And you might call me Hawk.’

  Benedicta frowned. ‘I see. But I will ask for you by name at the inn, no?’

  ‘Indeed, but it is with the written word we must take the greatest of care. Words in the air might be denied, or lost with the thrust of a dagger.’

  Benedicta swallowed hard on the crust of bread she had been chewing and felt it rasp the tender interior of her throat. ‘Thrust of a dagger?’

  ‘No need to worry yourself,’ Breri winked at her, ‘Ladybird. Enough of business, now to play.’ He stood and sauntered to the space before the high table and began to tune his harp. The noise of conversation slowly died down around him and an expectant silence grew in its stead.

  Sister Lucie resumed her seat next to Benedicta. ‘He is very good.’

  Breri was a strange man from a strange country – Pays de Galles. Benedicta had never heard the like of his songs. He sang of the court of a strong king of the Britons and of his knights and, most particularly, one named Gawain. All eyes were upon Breri, and even the circumspect Countess leant forward, listening avidly. Benedicta marvelled at how far a story could travel, how far a thing could be told, and everyone in the human family could understand and feel with it, no matter what their origins were. When Breri’s song concluded, the applause and shouted compliments were loud. Breri took his bows graciously and briefly before moving from the hall with a pronounced rolling gait and no glance at Benedicta.

  On Sunday evening, Benedicta luxuriated in a tub in front of the fire in the small chamber allotted to her. Such physical self-indulgence, such privacy, was a rarity in her life and she relished it. The water was beginning to cool and she pushed herself upright, watching the water rush from her body. There was a long, burnished sheet of pale metal in the room, affixed to the wall, for looking at yourself. The Countess had many such newfangled things about the palace: these mirrors, an abacus, clocks. Standing ankle-deep in the cooling water, knee-deep in the tub, Benedicta saw herself for the first time. She saw her pale hair, her smooth white skin. Her breasts were small and pink-tipped, her stomach flat, her arms and legs thin but muscled. Her hip bones jutted, angular. Her body was boy-like, she considered, unlike the rounded, fleshy bodies of women she had seen nurturing children. A tear trickled down her cheek and she wiped at it, telling herself it was probably water that had dribbled from her hair. If she had not been given to the abbey as a child, she could instead have been a wife, a mother. She stepped from the tub, rubbed the remaining water vigorously from her limbs and slid her shift and then her habit back over her head. It felt like stepping back into her life from some magical place she had momentarily slipped away to. It felt like putting her pelt back on.

  She sat down to write to Haith who was currently at King Henry’s court in England. She told him she was in Chartres on abbey business (which was almost true) and would be travelling on to the new abbey at Fontevraud. She told him she had been to hear the great theologian and reformer, Bishop Ivo, preach that morning. She wrote not a word of the Countess and her real reason for going to Chartres or Fontevraud, and felt a pang that now she must lie even to Haith. I must not worry him, she told herself, immediately finding herself out in yet another lie.

  6

  The Water Wolf

  In my chamber at Carew, William stood with his head cocked to one side as Amelina dripped a pale yellow liquid into his ear from a screwed cloth, just as she dribbled sauces on a tart in the kitchen. I watched the slender viscous skein twisting around itself. William looked up at me without moving his head, comical in his sideways position. ‘What’s going on?’ I asked.

  ‘He has an earache. The wise woman prepared this camomile oil to ease it. We have to put two drops in each morning and two before bedtime. Stay still! Or it will go all over your tunic or the floor where it’s no good for the earache.’

  I crouched beside him and took his hand. ‘I’m sorry to hear you have the earache, William. Amelina will make you feel much better soon, I’m sure.’

  He grinned.

  ‘Good, you can stand up straight now,’ Amelina told him, and he careered out of the room in search of Henry and Maurice. Amelina and I raised our eyebrows at each other at the sound of a horse and shouts of welcome in the courtyard below. Amelina stood on tiptoe, peering from the window. ‘A messenger wearing the King’s livery,’ she called back to me.

  ‘What now?’ I sighed. ‘Things were just starting to settle.’

  In the hall, I read the King’s missive. ‘Thank you.’ I rolled it, handed it back to the messenger. ‘Please take it to my husband at Pembroke but wait a moment while I write a note to add to it.’

  ‘What is it?’ Amelina asked.

  ‘The King kindly informs me of his intention to arrive at Pembroke in one week’s time,’ I said, tensing my jaw. Henry wrote to me, at Carew, to announce his visit. Gerald would be offended at that. I wrote a short note, telling my husband I would follow the messenger the next day to put all in order at Pembroke for the King’s visit.

  ‘Pack up my things, Amelina,’ I said. ‘And your own,’ I added, when I saw that the messenger was out of earshot. ‘You are going on a journey with the boys.’

  ‘To Pembroke?’

  ‘No. You are going to take them to the seashore to learn how to fish.’

  She gaped at me.

  ‘I can’t have my boy Henry here when the King arrives. He must be concealed.’

  ‘But … yes, I can see that. But shouldn’t William and Maurice stay? Won’t Gerald be angry?’

  ‘Probably. But it might enter the King’s head to take one of Gerald’s sons as hostage, if he cannot find his own. I’m not taking any risks. You know where to go?’

  ‘Yes.’ She had been to the old boathouse with me before. It was concealed in the cliff beneath Llansteffan castle and was only known to us. I had played there often in my childhood with my brother, Goronwy. Summer was advancing and it would be warm enough for them to camp there. My sons would be safe with Amelina for the duration of the King’s visit. I would send one of my bodyguards with her: a Welshman I trusted not to betray my actions to Gerald or the King, or to any Welsh rebels in the area who might also be happy to capture the King’s son, or Gerald’s sons.

  When I arrived at Pembroke, I let Gerald assume I had left the boys at Carew. ‘Don’t you think the King will want to see little Henry, Nest?’ he asked.

  ‘Unfortunately, that won’t be possible on this occasion.’

  He shook his head at me.

  The castle bustled with preparations for the royal visit. Henry would soon arrive with an enormous retinue to house, feed and pickle in alcohol. ‘Do you know why he is visiting?’

  Gerald frowned. ‘Well, if not to see you and his son, I hazard a guess that he wants to discuss strategy.’

  ‘Can you be civil to him?’

  ‘What choice do I have about that?’

  ‘Gerald, keep him busy with strategy. Very busy.’

  He nodded.

  ‘And Gerald, you should come to my bed every night. Early.’

  He took a deep breath. ‘By Christ, N
est!’

  ‘Hold your head, Gerald. Think of it as a siege that you are defending.’

  We smiled grimly at one another.

  I stood with Gerald at twilight on the battlements of Pembroke Castle watching the approach of the King’s cavalcade along the road from Carmarthen. Behind us the river lapped softly at the stones of the castle and in the slant of the pale, evening sun, the towers and battlements were reflected almost perfectly in the slow waters. Ahead of us, on the road, churned a great crowd of people, horses, wagons, weapons, creating a maelstrom of dust, shouts and whinnies. As they grew nearer, Gerald and I began to discern faces and liveries and tell each other who we saw. The King’s retinue included his bastard sons, Robert and Richard, grown to young men and trusted commanders; Haith; Richard FitzBaldwin; Walter of Gloucester and his son Miles; and Gilbert FitzRichard de Clare. We had heard rumours that the de Clare family were gaining great trust and prizes from the King. Gerald was anxious that the King might be coming to take away his office as castellan at Pembroke and give it to another of these Norman nobles.

  When the cavalcade was at the gate, Gerald led me down to the bailey to offer them our formal greeting. The setting sun touched the top of the high battlements and dazzled me. The King dismounted. We greeted him hand in hand, Gerald bowing and I dropping a curtsy. Rising, I thought I could keep all formal but, as soon as I looked at Henry, his eyes were speaking to me of everything we had felt in our past. I looked away and mouthed the customary words of welcome.

  Pembroke, with its garrison, was always a place dominated by men, but now this maleness ratcheted up since none of the King’s entourage were accompanied so far into Wales by their wives and, disconcertingly, even Henry was travelling without a mistress. For the first few days of the royal visit, I was busy supporting my staff in their efforts to billet the visitors. Henry had three horses with him and a full pack of hounds. The many nobles in his entourage were each accompanied with their own servants and horses.