Conquest II

by Tracey Warr

  Lady Adelisa de Clermont, de Clare’s wife, greeted us and offered us water to wash our hands, and bread and wine were set before us. Lord Gilbert’s brother, Roger, and his eldest son, Richard, were both fighting in Normandy alongside the King. We talked for some time of any news we had between us of events there. A short man with a large head of thick brown hair came into the hall and Adelisa called out to him. ‘De Marais!’

  He came to us, smiling. ‘May I be of service, Lady Adelisa?’

  ‘Yes. This is Nest, Lady of Pembroke,’ she told him, ‘Henry’s mother.’

  ‘Ah, yes, of course. I am deeply honoured to meet you, lady.’ He bowed low to me.

  ‘This is our Constable, Stephen de Marais. Will you ask Henry to come to us here?’

  He bowed and returned with four boys close on his heels and Henry – my little Henry – thrust them all out of his way to get to me first. ‘Mama!’ I almost burst with laughter at the sight of him. He recollected himself. He slowed his pace and presented a very grown-up bow to myself, Gerald, and Lady Adelisa.

  The three boys with him were the youngest de Clare sons: Gilbert, who was twelve; ten-year-old Walter; and Baldwin, who was close to my Henry’s age of seven years. The four boys were being trained together in arms. Henry seemed quite at home amidst this group. His face was glowing like a beacon at the sight of me. Amelina clapped her hands in delight at him and after a brief look at Lady Adelisa to see that he had permission, he ran and kissed her cheek while she smoothed his hair and measured his arm muscles. Although I ached to hold him, I knew that my own caresses with him must come later, when we had some privacy. I must not puncture his dignity as a small man.

  Gilbert and Adelisa, Gerald had told me, were from very highborn Norman and French families, but I was pleased to find Adelisa was a warm, affectionate foster-mother to my son and that they already had a friendly, joking relationship. ‘We are honoured to foster your son, Lady Nest,’ she told me. ‘He is a delightful boy!’ They all knew, of course, that he was the King’s son. I realised that now he had left home, I needed to tell him about his paternity and felt great anxiety about how to tell him and how he might react. I talked it over with Amelina and we agreed there was nothing for it, I must simply tell him, before he discovered it from the careless words of a stranger.

  I chose a moment when Henry and I were at last alone in the small chamber that had been allotted to Gerald and myself for our visit. Our hug was a long, close one. ‘Mama! I was so afraid for you when that Welsh Prince stole you, and so relieved when I heard the news you were returned home to Pembroke and Papa. I prayed hard for you every night.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘it was a terrible ordeal for us all.’ I felt a sad tug at my heart that he should refer to Owain as ‘that Welsh Prince’ as if there were no Welsh blood in his own veins. He was being raised in Norman households and saw himself as Norman. When he came in the room, and rushed into my arms, he had thrown a leather-bound book onto the bed beside me. ‘What are you reading here?’ I said, pulling it towards me.

  ‘It’s a manual for fighting,’ he said, enthusiastically. ‘Look!’ He turned the pages to show me two young noblemen crossing swords, assuming fighting positions. There were no words in the book, just these finely drawn illustrations. I knew that my sons must be fighters or monks, and I must harden myself to the terrifying thought of my tender boy one day parrying a real swordedge rather than the blunt, wooden practice swords. I could only hope that he would learn these fighting lessons well.

  ‘Henry, I have to tell you something, something that will be a surprise to you. Perhaps it will be hard to hear.’

  He made his face serious. ‘What is it, Mama? You are not going away again?’

  ‘No. Not that. You know Gerald as your father.’ His eyes widened but I had no option but to rush on. ‘Gerald has loved you as your father, Henry, since you were a few weeks old. He loves you dearly, but he is not your father.’

  ‘I’m illegitimate, you mean? I’m not Welsh, am I?’ he said, looking aghast.

  ‘You are the son of King Henry,’ I told him quickly, ‘who loved me before I married Gerald.’ This was not strictly accurately.

  ‘The King. King Henry?’ He was silent for a moment and I waited. ‘I liked him.’

  ‘He is your father and acknowledges you as his son, just as Robert FitzRoy, Lord of Glamorgan, Bristol and Gloucestershire, is his son, and also your half-brother. It’s why the King made you Lord of Arberth.’

  ‘Robert FitzRoy?’ he said, mulling that over, a look of admiration on his face. I knew that the parallel would help him to understand his position and that Robert would appear to him as a positive role model. He took the news with a small frown but seemed to make a quick recovery with his usual sanguine approach.

  Amelina told me later that she had spoken with him about it, that she knew I had told him about his real father. ‘He just said, very proudly, that Robert FitzRoy was his brother. It will take him time to absorb it.’

  I was relieved to find no visible change in the affectionate relationship between Henry and Gerald.

  At the meal, I noticed a tension between Gerald and Gilbert Fitz- Richard de Clare and guessed at its cause. Henry had strengthened the position of the de Clares in Wales because of Owain’s assault on Cenarth Bychan and his abduction of me. The King and Gerald had both suffered injury to their reputations. Gerald had lost the King’s confidence and now he lost real ground and prospects to de Clare.

  Hoping to defuse the tension, I drew Gerald’s attention to a conversation I opened with de Marais, the Constable, but unfortunately he then bored us both with overlong stories that were of little interest to us. He was a pedantic man with a patronising manner, a tiresome certainty that he was correct on every topic we tried.

  At last, Gerald and I could escape from the meal to our own chamber. Gerald held the door for me to enter and then leant his back, laughing, against it, listening to the latch fall in place. ‘I thought that de Marais would never shut up! That we must listen to him boring away into eternity!’

  I smiled warmly to him and then felt overcome with uncertainty. Here we were, he and I, in a bed chamber together. We had been able to avoid that in Pembroke. I saw him looking at the bed and saw the same thought in his head. ‘Nest, I can take a pillow, lay on the floor …’

  I stepped to him and put my hand on his chest. ‘Gerald. I don’t want that.’

  He straightened up, his back still against the door. ‘Perhaps it’s best if I sleep in the hall. It will not be remarked. I …’ He was already half-turned to the door.

  I gripped the bare skin of his wrist as he reached to the latch. ‘Gerald. Please. Speak with me?’

  ‘I can’t,’ he said, his back to me now.

  ‘Please. Just words, Gerald. Please.’

  He turned and looked at me. ‘What can be said, Nest?’

  I pulled him by the wrist now, walking backwards. There was a small table and two stools and we sat on them. A jug stood on the table and I poured a little wine into two beakers. Gerald picked his up and gulped it down. I refilled his beaker and took a sip from my own.

  ‘We must speak of it, Gerald. Of Owain.’

  ‘It would be best if we said nothing.’

  ‘How? How would that be best?’

  He said nothing, filled his beaker again and added a little to mine.

  ‘I have loved you through it all, Gerald. I love you now.’

  Still he was silent, his head bowed, staring into the tiny dark pool of his wine.

  ‘I stayed with Owain when de Clare came to pay the ransom because I feared that Owain would kill our children. Owain was shamed by the whole incident. He had hoped that you would be killed and that then he could marry me. That would have seemed an honourable marriage by abduction to him. But you lived.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘You lived because of my actions at Cenarth Bychan,’ I whispered.

  He looked up at me now. Looked into my face. And nodde
d. ‘Yes. But I should not have escaped as I did, shamefully. I should have stood my ground and fought him.’

  ‘You would have been killed if you had done so, and I would be his miserable wife now and our children would be in a shallow grave in the Welsh mountains.’

  He held my gaze. ‘I know you are right but I have lost face by it. It may be hard, impossible even, to recover my reputation amongst my peers.’

  I felt as if our conversation was an attempt to sing a two-part melody from two different tunes that could never harmonise. ‘When the ransom was offered, I suspected, I was sure, that Owain would allow me and Henry, the King’s son, to be ransomed, but that he would slay our children – William, Maurice and Angharad – as a way to make a name for himself in the songs of the bard, to impress his men with his zeal against the invaders.’

  Gerald nodded. ‘I am grateful beyond words that you have all survived it. All of you.’

  I placed my hand over his. ‘Can we …? Gerald, my heart was never unfaithful to you.’

  He nodded again and sighed heavily. ‘It’s hard, Nest. Give me time.’ He stood, kissed the top of my head, took a pillow from the bed, and left the room. I closed my eyes, swallowing on my tears, gripping the edge of the table.

  16

  Hunting Ground

  Benedicta tried to calm her mind as she packed her few possessions into her saddlebags. What had her nefarious activities got her into now? King Henry had summoned her to his court at Bonneville-sur-Touques. It would be delightful to see Haith, but she suspected that was not the reason for the summons.

  Last year, the simmering divisions in Normandy had threatened to spill over the sides of the pot, and Benedicta regretted playing a part in it. At the beginning of the year, Robert de Meulan attacked Paris in retaliation for King Louis’ raids on his lands. De Meulan captured the royal palace, broke the bridges, and pillaged houses and shops. In August, King Henry crossed to Normandy to support the Countess’s son, Thibaut, who had come out against King Louis in a dispute about the construction of a castle at Allaines. As the year turned to autumn, Normandy was stormy with thunder, rain and war. Thibaut and other lords fought against each other, and against the French king, all along the banks of the Seine. Thibaut’s brother, Count Etienne de Blois, had joined Henry’s court. Robert of Flanders had been fatally wounded in the fighting, leaving a child heir, and his capable widow, Clemence, as regent.

  King Henry had banished William, Count of Évreux, and his haughty wife Helwise, Countess of Évreux. They had gone into exile in Anjou where, Benedicta knew from Bertrade’s correspondence, they were conspiring with Amaury, Robert de Bellême and Hugh de Chateauneuf-de-Thymerais. Hugh du Puiset had been persuaded by Thibaut and Countess Adela to switch sides to Henry, and so the conflict flowed, back and forth. There was a rebellion in Anjou, and many suspected that it was engineered by King Henry, who had been slowly gaining friends in the lands close to Anjou and Maine by marrying off his numerous illegimitate daughters to win himself allies.

  Benedicta had neither heard nor seen anything of Amaury since the night he had come to Fontevraud and she had stolen de Bellême’s letter as de Montfort slept, after the heat of their embraces. Benedicta found that, whilst she regretted the deceit of stealing the letter, she had no such regrets about the loss of her virginity. On the contrary, if she never saw Amaury again, never repeated her transgression with any man, she would not regret it. She thought of the nonagenarian nuns surrounded by dust motes in the library at Almenêches Abbey and could only be glad that she had known desire and physical ecstasy.

  About Amaury himself, she was not sure how she felt. She barely knew the man. He, no doubt, would forget her in a blink of an eye. Perhaps a nun was an unusual conquest for him, but doubtless there were many women loved and forgotten behind him as he made his shining way through life. She was brutally honest with herself. She knew she had no hopes at all with regard to Amaury, but her encounter with him had left her with other vague hopes and longings where before she had been so sure that she was impervious to such feelings.

  Benedicta had reported to Breri that she knew from Bertrade’s correspondence that William d’Evreux and his countess Helwise, who were childless, were determined to make Amaury their heir. Perhaps this was why Benedicta had been summoned by King Henry. She told Prioress Petronilla that it was her brother Haith who had urgently requested to see her. More lies. Benedicta was terribly anxious that if the extent of her spying were exposed to Haith, he might feel loathing for her and never speak with her again.

  It was early November when Benedicta and her escort, a young servant lad from Fontevraud, arrived at the castle. She was exhausted by the four days’ ride north. They had stayed at convents in Le Mans and near Alençon, and then at the great monastery of Lisieux. Now the five watchtowers and formidable walls of Bonneville-sur-Touques confronted them. This had been a favourite hunting ground for King Henry’s father, William the Conqueror, and no doubt both the hunting and the proximity of his administrator, Bishop John of Lisieux, were the main reasons Henry held court here.

  Benedicta was dismounting from her palfrey, her toe barely touching the cobbles, when she heard a commotion and turned to find herself confronting Robert de Bellême.

  ‘You!’ he said, instantly recognising her, as he had failed to do at Fontevraud. ‘The sneaking sister from Almenêches!’ His gauntleted hand went to the whip at his hip and he began to draw it from his belt.

  Benedicta was quaking before him, her guilts coaelescing to reduce her to a kind of jellied thing. She heard Haith’s shout. ‘Bellême! What are you at? Leave that woman alone!’

  De Bellême turned angrily to Haith, who was running across the courtyard towards them, his face a picture of anxiety, his straight fair hair flapping rhythmically at his ears as he ran and, Benedicta saw with dismay, his hand was on his sword hilt. ‘Stay out of this, Fleming! I have cause to be angry with this nun. What are you doing here?’ he turned back to Benedicta.

  She could have asked him the same question. Her knees shook. She could not answer. Instead, she took gulps of air and stared in distress at Haith who reached her, took the horse’s reins from her shaking hand and gave them to a groom. He placed his long arm across his sister’s shoulders, gripping one shoulder reassuringly. ‘She has cause to be angry with you, de Bellême,’ Haith shouted. ‘You burnt her convent to the ground.’

  ‘She!’ De Bellême pointed a finger at Benedicta, but whatever his accusation was going to be, it was interrupted by the arrival of King Henry. The crowd parted respectfully for the King, suppressing their delight at the expectation of witnessing either a nun whipped by de Bellême or de Bellême and Haith drawing swords on one another. Benedicta watched de Bellême damp down the fury that had risen at the sight of her. ‘Sire.’ He knelt to the King.

  ‘What’s going on here?’

  ‘De Bellême was giving angry words to my sister.’

  ‘This is not seemly,’ the King told de Bellême, who rose and offered the King no argument. ‘I will have no abuse of a holy sister at my court. Greetings to you, Sister Benedicta. My thanks for your attendance here.’

  ‘Come with me, Benedicta, and I will get you settled,’ Haith told her, keeping a protective arm around her as they moved past de Bellême.

  ‘You would not have drawn your sword on such as one as de Bellême, would you, Haith?’ she said in a nervous voice, as he helped her unclasp her cloak and she looked around, taking in her surroundings.

  ‘Why not? For you, I would. I have faced him in battle often enough. As have you when he burnt your abbey,’ he said, characteristically trying to lighten the tone of their exchange.

  In the small chamber that Haith had led her to, Benedicta looked at two chests laying open with costly gowns displayed within them. More clothes were lain across a broad bed, and a small jewel casket stood on a table. ‘You are billeted with Lady Sybil Corbet,’ Haith said. ‘But I don’t suppose you will see much of her in this room.’


  Benedicta nodded. She knew that Sybil Corbet was the King’s mistress. Benedicta was bewildered by the enormous number of people rushing around the fortress, all seemingly intent on some great purpose. ‘Is there an emergency?’ she asked Haith.

  He laughed. ‘No emergency. Just the usual business of the King’s court.’

  ‘Such a lot of business!’

  ‘Yes.’ Haith sought to help her forget the terror of her recent encounter with de Bellême. ‘The King has to keep a tight rein on everything in Normandy, but also England and Wales, and then there is all his diplomatic relations besides, outside his own realm, with the Pope, King Louis, Flanders, Maine.’

  Benedicta wondered at Haith’s descriptions of the King’s officers. There were scribes, a Master of the Seal, justices, seneschals, chamberlains and butlers, chaplains and marshals. Benedicta saw that the King was perpetually working at a tremendous pace with all these officials, and her awed respect for King Henry grew greater with her understanding.

  Haith left her for a while to rest from her journey. She lay down on the bed but was startled awake and found herself looking at a small, young woman, very slender yet very pregnant and pretty. ‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’ Sybil Corbet said, her arms full of the clothes she had been tidying away. ‘I was tip-toeing around, trying not to wake you, Sister.’

  Benedicta sat up. ‘Please, don’t worry. I need to be awake now. I am pleased to meet you, lady.’

  ‘And I, you. You are Haith’s sister I understand, and I can see that in your face.’

  Benedicta smiled. There was a knock at the door.

  ‘Enter,’ Sybil commanded.

  An elderly and portly man stood in the doorway.

  ‘Yes, what is it, Herbert?’

  ‘The King commands your presence in his chamber, lady,’ the man told her, and Benedicta noticed a moue of contempt on his face after Sybil had turned away from him and given her promise to attend the King.