Conquest II

by Tracey Warr

  ‘Up with the larks as usual, Haith?’ Benedicta said.

  He smiled blearily, too semi-conscious to reply, and sat down beside Henry, searching the table for the ale jug. The King moved it and a beaker towards him.

  ‘We sail today, Haith,’ the King said. ‘You go in the new ship with the Prince’s household, as soon as you can get them up and ready after their noisome carousing last night. Sister, you and Mahaut will sail with me. We will go onboard in the afternoon and take sail before the light goes.’

  On the dock, Benedicta stood saying farewell to Haith before leading Mahaut onto the ship. The child was hopping excitedly from foot to foot, looking all around her wide-eyed. A few of the Prince’s household had emerged and were beginning to shift their horses and goods to the new ship, but many still tarried, the worse the wear from an excess of wine. Many small ships bobbed around the larger ships loading on goods and sailors. Someone, somewhere on one of the ships, blew a loud blast on a horn, startling everyone on the dock to laughter. ‘I suppose we will have to wait for the next tide,’ Haith told her, ‘and will be some hours behind you. I will find you at my house.’

  ‘Is the Prince up and about?’

  ‘Yes, but sluggish, as are they all that were drinking and dancing until the cock crowed. Etienne de Blois says he is too ill to sail.’

  ‘Ill with wine? He will recover in time, surely?’

  Haith shook his head, frowning. ‘I know he did not overimbibe last night.’

  ‘Some sickness instead, then?’

  Haith shrugged. ‘He looks fine to me.’

  The King came onto the jetty in the company of his bodyguard and he paused to speak with Haith. ‘I am aware I owe you a great debt, my old friend.’ Mahaut took his hand and he smiled down at her and then returned his earnest gaze to Haith. ‘You, and your sister here, have done me so many kind services they become impossible to count. When we reach England, I am determined to repay your kindness. You asked me a favour some time ago, regarding your marriage, and I denied you.’

  Benedicta looked swiftly at Haith’s face. What favour had he asked and not spoken to her of it?

  ‘When we reach England,’ Henry said, ‘I will rectify this matter.’ The King moved to board the ship.

  Benedicta smiled happily at the sight of the joy on Haith’s face. ‘What does the King speak of?’

  ‘Sister!’ a sailor called down to her. ‘We’re loading the last of the barrels and horses and looking to cast off very soon.’

  ‘Let’s wait to see what the King intends when we reach England,’ Haith said. Benedicta burned with a longing to know and wanted to press him further, but she was trying to school her curiosity, which had led her into so much trouble, so she stood on tiptoe instead, kissed Haith’s lowered cheek, and hauled herself carefully up the slippery plank, clinging to the rope slung at the side to aid her. The boat slid smoothly from its moorings and she joined Mahaut at the stern, waving to Haith until they could no longer see his cheerful features. They pointed and watched the synchronised swoops and glides of the following gulls, like white handkerchiefs, that were mirrored in the white-crested waves beneath them.

  ‘Let’s go to the prow and watch for England!’ Mahaut exclaimed.

  ‘Very well,’ said Benedicta, ‘but move slowly. All is pitching and slipping.’

  30

  The Boy

  Benedicta had settled Mahaut at court and made ready for Haith’s return at the modest house that he had recently bought. It was good to be back in London. Two days after their arrival, she went to Westminster to meet Mahaut and expected that Haith would either be there already or arrive later that day. The vast stone hall felt chillier than usual and she wished she had worn her red fleece vest. Henry was seated, and many people crowded in the space as usual, and yet she sensed something different in the atmosphere. As she approached the King with Mahaut, she looked at the faces of the nobles and saw strange expressions there. Some bad news? People were grouped towards the sides of the hall, whereas usually it was hard to make your way through when there was so much milling and gossiping, pushing to get close to the King. Had something happened? Benedicta, without thinking, slowed her own pace, and Mahaut frowned at her, tugging her forwards.

  ‘Ah, my Mahaut!’ exclaimed King Henry, ‘and Sister Benedicta. Welcome. I trust you are well settled after our voyage.’

  ‘Yes, Papa. My chambers are lovely and Benedicta has filled them with flowers,’ Mahaut answered him. The King beamed at her. He seemed his usual self. He had not noticed the odd tension in the hall, it seemed. Benedicta looked back over her shoulder. She had not imagined it. There was an uncommonly large gap in front of the King, and people’s backs were turned as they huddled in small clusters, whispering low to one another. Benedicta caught the eye of Count Thibaut and her knees almost gave way as she read the expression of distress on his face. Something, something very serious. She watched Thibaut gently push a small boy in the direction of the King. The boy arrived before the long, burnished table where the King sat and reached a sheet of parchment across the breadth of the wood with a shaking hand.

  ‘What’s this?’ asked Henry, kindly. He took the parchment.

  The boy stared, mute.

  ‘Nothing to say?’ asked Henry.

  ‘I think the boy, the letter, came from Count Thibaut,’ Benedicta said.

  The boy nodded and started to back away as the King looked down and began to read. Benedicta watched the boy’s retreat but turned quickly at the sudden scraping of the bench against the floor and an animal sound emitted by the King. Henry’s face had taken on a deformity, as if his skin had turned to molten wax.

  Benedicta watched transfixed as the King dragged himself, half-falling, around the edge of the table, into the cleared space in the centre of the hall. The courtiers pushed themselves back further against the walls and into the corners.

  ‘No!’ The shout was ripped from the King’s quivering mouth and cried out to the ceiling. He dropped the parchment to the ground and followed it there, bowing his forehead to the cold stone flags. The crowd shifted awkwardly in unison. All hesitated, trying to decide whether or not they should attempt to lift the King. Nobody wanted to touch him.

  ‘Leave me here,’ he whispered to the few who took tentative steps forward. ‘Keep away from me.’ He scrabbled at the hard, dry ground. Could he dig down into it? Find his son here? He was not there. He stopped scraping at the stone and turned his hands over, looked at red blood blooming vivid in the midst of pale brown dust on the fingertips. Whose hands were they? What could he do with them? He held them out in front of him like an offering. Was it his fault? It must be his fault. He was a sinner. He had done it. He looked up, anguished, through tears, at the carved teeth of the arched doorway yawning at him, ragged, jagged. Yes, he deserved it. He placed his bleeding fingers carefully on his thighs and small ovals of blood transferred to the beige cloth of his hose. He bowed his head down again onto the ground and began to grind his forehead in the dust. There was groaning. Somebody was groaning. An animal birthing, perhaps. Now he had the brown dust in his hair, in his eyes. His eyes felt hot and dry. He sat back on his heels and they were all hovering, starting to approach again. They would not leave him be. ‘Leave me alone!’ he shouted but they were coming towards him and would lift him soon, he could see it about to happen. Why couldn’t they just leave him alone? He just wanted to stay here kneeling in the dirt, staring at the hideous stone archway. Just that.

  Everyone stared at the King muttering and grovelling on his knees in the dust, for long, shocked minutes. Benedicta and Count Thibaut hurried to him, crouched beside him. ‘Sire?’

  ‘No!’ Henry stared ahead unseeing. ‘No!’

  ‘Sire?’ Thibaut asked again. The King’s face was deathly white. Benedicta looked up and around at the ranks of horrified faces surrounding them. She looked down at the parchment and read there, ‘… with great sorrow, the loss of The White Ship and all aboard. The ship foundered again
st a rock just out of the harbour.’

  Benedicta blinked. All aboard The White Ship. All aboard. Haith? Prince William? The young nobles of the Prince’s court. Haith?

  Count Thibaut gestured to a group of servants who hurried to help half-carry the King from the room. Benedicta stayed crumpled on the floor, her face in her hands, her world too collapsing around her.

  The King sat staring into space and had transformed into an aged man. His hair was grey and thin, his face haggard. He had lost three children in the wreck of the ship: his heir, William; his first daughter, Matilda, the Countess of Perche; and his son, Richard. So many gone into the waters. Three hundred souls – passengers and crew. The King’s greatest friend, Haith; Richard, Earl of Chester, who had been raised at Henry’s court, and his wife Matilda of Blois, Henry’s niece; Richard’s half-brother Othuer, the illegitimate son of Hugh, Earl of Chester, and the two sons of Ivo de Grandesmil, all raised at court; Ralph the Red of Pont- Echanfray, the hero of the recent campaign, and one of the King’s best military captains. All those young men and women floating down, down, their eyes open and unseeing, their skin pale as anemones. An unbearable litany.

  Every moment of the day Benedicta wanted to lay down and die but she plodded on, one step, one breath, each filled with unendurable grief for Haith. She clung to the King’s hand as much to comfort herself as to comfort him. Thibaut had brought the King one small piece of good news. His brother, Etienne de Blois, had not sailed with The White Ship, and lived still, although their sister, Matilda, Countess of Chester, was lost and Countess Adela was in great grief. Benedicta looked anxiously at the King, wondering if his sanity would hold under this extreme distress, wondering who amongst his enemies might strike first at his weakness. Perhaps she should write to Adela if Henry did not rally soon. Bishop Roger of Salisbury had come to court to take charge of business so it was just the King’s mind that Benedicta had to worry about.

  It did not take long for the news to spread across all Europe. The heir to the English throne was dead. King Henry had no heir. The alliances with Anjou and France were gone. Mahaut had lost her husband. The court buzzed with speculation about the succession. William Clito was now the most plausible heir, at least to Normandy. Or another of the King’s nephews: Thibaut, perhaps. Or one of his surviving illegitimate sons might be legitimised. The eldest, Robert FitzRoy, was the obvious candidate. The King’s own father had been a bastard. Yet many claimed the Church would not countenance that option. And Benedicta wondered what plans Amaury de Montfort might be hatching to take advantage of King Henry’s grief.

  After a week, news came of one survivor: a butcher from Rouen named Burold who had clung to a spar from the wrecked ship throughout the night. Haith would have said the Flemish word for butcher, a ‘budger’, Benedicta remembered, with another stab at her heart. They waited, hoping to hear of more survivors, but no more such news came. The families of the drowned tried to find the bodies of their loved ones but almost all had been swallowed by the grey swell of the English Sea and could not be retrieved. With Haith gone from the world, everything was gone from the world. Everything was just black.

  The court was a bustle of coming and going, everyone desperate to hear a different story but as the weeks passed it became clear that the story would not change. They would not return. They were gone. Isabel de Beaumont arrived with her mother, Elizabeth de Vermandois, and Isabel attempted to comfort the King. The King’s scribe Bernard was promoted to take the place of Gisulf who, too, had gone down with The White Ship.

  Benedicta sat staring at the river from the window, thinking of how she had deceived herself, how she had not known herself, and now it was too late. She ignored a commotion at the door. Banging, barking, servants calling out. Someone else would have to deal with it. The maid tapped tentatively and put her head around the edge of the door. ‘There’s a visitor for you below, Sister.’

  ‘I cannot receive visitors.’

  ‘It’s a lady!’ the maid said, in awed tones. ‘Come a long way by the looks and sound of her.’

  Benedicta turned to the maid, frowning. ‘From Normandy? From France?’ Perhaps it was someone from Countess Adela but what lady would come here, to her?

  ‘No, Sister. From Wales I reckon. She’s got that accent, you know.’

  ‘Wales? I don’t know anyone in Wales.’

  ‘I think you should come, Sister. She is weeping fit to drown us – well I mean … not drown but … says she knew your brother.’

  Benedicta flapped her hands at the maid’s faux pas and her graceless efforts to recover it. She stood and followed the maid downstairs.

  An astoundingly beautiful noblewoman with black hair and large, dark blue eyes, stood wringing her hands in the middle of the room. The woman was tall with an exquisite oval face but that face was wet with tears and the sides of her nose and her mouth were puffed and red with crying. She was very finely dressed in a dark green hooded cloak with an intricate golden knot brooch at her throat, but she was smutted and smeared with the dust of hard travel. Another woman, her maid, also dark-haired, shorter and buxom, was tugging at her arm. ‘Sit, Nest. Be calm! We don’t know it.’

  The tall noblewoman, snatched her arm back from her maid’s grasp and turned to Benedicta. ‘Tell me it isn’t true, please!’

  Benedicta dropped her gaze to the stone flags. ‘Is it my brother, Haith, that you come to ask about?’ She looked up again.

  ‘Yes. Haith.’ The lady’s swollen mouth stayed open, expectant.

  Benedicta noticed the delicate strands of tears and saliva between her lips. She put her hand on the lady’s arm, and through gentle pressure and words, cajoled her into sitting. ‘You knew Haith, my lady?’

  ‘Knew!’ The woman’s mouth fell open again and her eyes welled anew. The maid fussed a handkerchief at the woman’s wet cheeks, which she batted away. ‘Oh, please, Sister Benedicta, tell me he isn’t drowned,’ she wailed.

  Benedicta felt her own hot tears rising and took the woman’s hand between two of hers. ‘How did you know my brother?’

  The woman snatched back her hand, dropped her face into her hands in her lap, unable to stay upright and wept loudly, her shoulders shaking. The maid put a protective arm around her heaving shoulders. ‘My mistress is Lady Nest, Sister. She was a good friend of your brother. I am Amelina. We’ve come fast as we could from Wales. We were on our way here about another matter when we heard the news on the road and couldn’t believe it. We hoped it might be scotched when we got here.’

  ‘You also knew my brother, I see, Amelina,’ Benedicta said, seeing the misery on the maid’s face.

  ‘Yes. We both knew him well, for many years, since we were girls.’

  Amelina and Benedicta looked with great concern at the engulfing grief of her lady, Nest. Benedicta ordered her own maid to stoke up the fire and bring wine and warm water for the guests to wash their faces and hands. She whispered instructions that the guest chamber should be made ready for them. By the time she resumed her seat, Amelina had succeeded in calming her lady a little. Nest sat upright, dabbing at her eyes, but each tear she mopped was replaced by two new ones. Amelina blew her own nose loudly.

  ‘So, it is true?’ Lady Nest said to Benedicta, visibly forcing herself to bravery, her mouth trembling. ‘Haith drowned on The White Ship?’

  ‘I fear that is it true, yes. I hoped for weeks that news would come that he had survived but only one survivor was found. The rest went down. Three hundred souls and my dear Haith.’

  Nest stared at Benedicta, swallowing, her expression anguished. ‘You look a great deal like him, Sister,’ she said, when she could trust her voice.

  ‘You knew him well?’

  ‘Yes. I knew him well. I loved him well.’ Nest stared at her hands in her lap.

  Benedicta looked in surprise at Amelina and the maid nodded her head. ‘They were deep in love, they were. Would have married if the King had let them. Greatly in love.’

  Benedicta realised t
hat this must be the Nest, the Welsh princess that Haith had written to her about but he had never spoken of a relationship between them, of love.

  Nest sat upright again, long pale fingers wiping at the wet, delicate skin beneath her eyes. ‘The Dogs have gone too far,’ she whispered, staring at the fire. ‘They have run amok and killed all and I have lost my Haith and poor Henry is broken into pieces. It is my fault.’

  ‘It’s not your fault at all,’ Amelina said impatiently, and turned to answer Benedicta’s bewildered frown. ‘It’s the Dogs of Annwn she’s talking about. A curse she made against the murderers of her family: the Normans. But you didn’t make no curse against Haith,’ she turned back to Nest.

  Nest struggled to recover some composure. ‘Perhaps you are unaware that you have a nephew, Sister Benedicta.’

  A great smile bloomed on Benedicta’s face. She thought she had forgotten how to smile. ‘A nephew?’

  ‘He is called Robert. He is three years old and a bonny boy. I hope you will come to meet him at Carew.’

  ‘Yes!’ Benedicta laughed, ‘Yes, I will.’

  Part Four

  1121

  31

  The New Broom

  After the muted celebrations for Christmas and the new year, the talk at court was of nothing but the succession. Henry begged me to stay in attendance with him during the Christmas season and I could not refuse him. The King looked terrible: all the joy and strength wrung from him. His broad back hunched and I remembered his image of how he carried a great mountainous island upon it. He was still only fifty-three but looked twenty years older.

  Benedicta suggested that Amelina and I stay with her in Haith’s townhouse. I had given up the house that Gerald had kept in London some time back. Even if I had wanted to return to Wales, the season was too bad to allow for travelling. In truth, I had no idea of wanting to ever do anything again. I moved around in a daze, going through the motions of living each day.