by Tracey Warr
The court waited to hear if the King would declare for William Clito his heir, or Thibaut de Blois, or even Robert FitzRoy. Elizabeth, however, had other ideas. She called upon me at Haith’s house, bustling into the room, excitement writ large on her face, where I was sitting quietly with Benedicta and Amelina, sewing clothes for Robert.
I had heard rumours that Elizabeth was asserting Henry would remarry and father another legitimate son. For weeks after the news of The White Ship had come, Henry did not look capable of surviving the tragedy himself, let about remarrying and fathering more children, but slowly he had been recovering. Now he appeared almost his robust self, almost, but I thought he would never be quite the same. First the incident with his granddaughters, and now the loss of his children and all the youthful flowers of his court had broken something in him. He told me during a private conversation that a king must always be certain and he felt no certainty anymore.
‘Nest! I have great news,’ Elizabeth burst out.
I suppressed my stupid hope at her words. Every tall, broad back I saw in the crowd, I thought it might be Haith. Every high blond head. And each flash of hope ended in bitter disappointment, tasting of ash.
‘What news?’ I faltered.
‘Isabel is bearing the King’s son!’
I frowned at her. ‘The King’s son?’
‘Well, of course, it could be a girl,’ she said, ‘but yes, the King’s child. Gaiety will return to the world with that news, don’t you think?’
Gaiety. No. I could not imagine what gaiety felt like. ‘Henry will be pleased,’ I said mildly.
‘Pleased?’ Elizabeth looked with theatrical outrage at me. ‘He will be ecstatic. All is recovered now!’
‘Not recovered, Elizabeth. Not all is recovered.’
‘Well, no. Of course not, but you know what I mean.’
‘Has Isabel informed Henry yet?’
‘Yes. Just yesterday. And he was overjoyed, of course. My darling girl gives us all balm for the future. We are all summoned to the hall now, Nest. No doubt to hear this news and Henry’s announcement of his intention to marry Isabel.’
I paused my stitching and stood, gathering my skirts about me. ‘You should come too, Amelina and Sister Benedicta, if we are to hear good news from the King,’ I told them.
Arriving at the hall, Elizabeth pushed and commanded a path through the throng of people until we reached the front and could stand looking at the seated King. ‘Where is Isabel?’ Elizabeth whispered to me. We scanned the crowding faces and saw no sign of her, but then I heard her voice behind us. ‘Mama? What is it?’ Elizabeth turned to look at her daughter in confusion.
‘The King is making an announcement.’ She frowned and turned back to look in bewilderment at Henry who stood up and the hubbub died down to silence.
‘Thank you for gathering. I have momentous news and wish to share it with you all.’
We looked at him expectantly. Mabel stood with her husband, Robert FitzRoy, to one side, near the King, and Thibaut de Blois was close to them.
‘We have all suffered great losses, great sadnesses for which there is no remedy,’ Henry said. ‘Only grieving memories of those we have lost. Only prayers for their souls. I have laid plans to establish a new monastery at Reading to honour our lost sons and daughters, our friends and loved ones.’ He paused and scanned the crowd. ‘I have decided to create two new Earls. My son, Robert, I make Earl of Gloucester.’
I smiled at Mabel, delighted that she would be Countess of Gloucester, Bristol and Glamorgan, inheriting the lands of her parents. Her mother would be proud to bursting and so was I. Did this mean that Henry would make Robert his heir?
‘I create Ranulf, Earl of Chester.’ Many of us in the crowd thought with sadness of the young Richard, Earl of Chester, and his wife, Matilda of Blois, lost on the ship. Thibaut de Blois looked down at his shoes, biting his lip at the thought of his drowned sister.
‘We must have some hope,’ Henry called out, raising his voice, ‘some hope for the future. And so I have decided to take a new wife, a new queen.’
An enormous buzz from the crowd grew at this pronouncement. Elizabeth turned to exchange a smug smile with Isabel and pulled her forward a little more so that she stood at the front. Isabel was a woman now, and a beautiful one. She would make Henry a good bride and she would bear him new heirs. I looked at Henry and saw that, in the pause, his gaze had strayed to us: to Isabel and myself. He held my gaze. I had no expectations. I was nearing forty years in age. He needed a young brood mare now. Still, there was regret. I remembered how I had loved him, how once I had longed that he might make such a choice for me.
‘I have been fortunate to secure the troth of Adelisa de Louvain, daughter of the Duke of Lower Lotharinga,’ Henry said in a loud voice, shifting his gaze past me, past Isabel, past Elizabeth, to look out across the crowd, who greeted this news with claps and shouts of approbation.
I felt Elizabeth stagger against me. I heard Isabel utter a surprised ‘Oh!’
‘The bastard,’ Elizabeth said, almost loud enough to be heard by Henry.
I pressed her arm, cautioning her. ‘Let’s move.’ I gripped her and Isabel and tugged them away from the front of the crowd towards the side of the hall where we might recover ourselves in some privacy.
‘You said you’d told him!’ Elizabeth accused her daughter.
‘But I did, Mama. Last night.’
‘You told him about the child. That it was certain.’
‘Yes. I told him.’
Elizabeth stared astonished at Isabel and then back to Henry. ‘Well, I … then …’
‘Elizabeth,’ I cautioned, ‘let’s not have this discussion here, in sight of all these gossips. Let’s retire to your room. If he is marrying the daughter of the Duke of Lower Lotharinga it’s not something that has just happened overnight. He must have been negotiating this for months, perhaps even before the ship went down. Come!’ I pulled them further towards the door. Isabel had her eyes cast to the ground and was snivelling a little. ‘Keep your composure, Isabel,’ I told her. ‘Don’t show your distress before all these others.’
Having done what I could to comfort Isabel and cool Elizabeth’s fury, I returned to the townhouse, where another surprise waited for me. Amelina and I were astonished to see Benedicta standing before us in a plain brown dress with a muted yellow mantle. Without the enveloping folds of her black habit I could see that she had Haith’s slender ranginess. The yellow curls of her short hair and her wide mouth reminded me painfully of him.
‘Sister!’ Amelina exclaimed.
‘No Sister,’ she replied calmly. ‘I have decided to relinquish my vows as a nun and to live as a pious woman instead. It would be best to name me Ida from now on. It was my birth name, before I entered the abbey. Ida de Bruges. I wondered, Lady Nest,’ she turned eyes that were uncertain now onto me, ‘if you might find a role for me about your household? It would be a comfort to me if I might find some purpose in helping to care for Haith’s son. And I am lettered. I could assist with your business, your correspondence and so forth.’
Amelina gaped at her. ‘This is a sudden decision.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I have been considering it for some time and now I have taken the leap, but with no living male relative I am in need of the shelter of some household.’
At last, I managed to get some words past my astonishment. ‘There is no need for a role, Sis … Benedi … I mean Ida. You are my sister. You are kin. My son’s aunt. You are already part of my household and always will be.’
‘Thank you.’ Tears sprang to her eyes.
Amelina gave me one of her surreptitious ‘well I never’ expressions.
‘But Benedicta, Ida, won’t you be pursued? By your Abbess, by the Church? Punishments for renegade nuns can be most terrible.’
‘I fall between the cracks,’ she said. ‘I am an anonymous. Abbess Mathilde thinks I am at Fontevraud and Abbess Petronilla thinks I am returned to Almenêches.
If you would conceal me in Wales from the notice of the King and the Countess, then I believe that no one will care one way or the other. I have not been honest with myself about who I am, what I hope for in my life. I believe I will serve God better as a pious lay woman than I ever did as a deceptive nun.’
‘Are you sure you know what you are doing? You were safe in the nunnery. Living concealed like this, you will be in peril.’
‘I don’t want to be safe. I want to live my life.’
It seemed I had been right about the length of time that Henry’s marriage negotiations had been brewing. The lady herself, Adelisa de Louvain arrived at court, fast on the heels of the King’s announcement. They were wed a few days after her arrival in London by William Giffard, Bishop of Winchester. Archbishop Ralph of Canterbury would normally have performed the ceremony but he had recently suffered a seizure that had left one side of his face paralysed and his speech impaired. Adelisa was an attractive young woman, descended from Charlemagne. In addition to her royal blood, her father had a powerful hold in the Low Countries and his men controlled a highly prosperous trade in London. It was, as ever with Henry, an astute move. Perhaps he was not entirely broken, after all. The main reason for Henry’s choice, however, was of course the eligibility of a young childbearing woman.
Isabel had been dropped altogether. Isabel and her growing belly. I knew how she felt and did my best to console her. Elizabeth fumed but did not dare to berate the King. I allowed her to rant for a few days and then I told her the hard truth. Why would Henry make Isabel his queen when he could have a fresh girl in his bed, one who brought him a huge dowry and important new alliances? And furthermore, if the Church would not countenance the King making his eldest illegitimate son, Robert, his heir, then Henry knew that difficulties would be created over the child that Isabel carried, that everyone knew had been conceived outside of the marriage bed.
In June, the court prepared to move into Wales, and I along with them. Maredudd ap Bleddyn and three of Cadwgan’s sons had taken advantage of the temporary vacuum of Norman power in Chester after the loss of the young Earl Richard on The White Ship. They had attacked two castles and slaughtered the garrisons. Perhaps they thought Henry’s grief and his lack of an heir gave them an opening, made him weak. Henry acted swiftly and led a military campaign against them. Ida (I struggled every time to think of Benedicta with this new name) travelled in a covered wagon with Amelina and kept her face from anyone who might know her as a renegade nun. Henry’s new queen accompanied him and he also commanded the presence in his entourage of Elizabeth and Isabel. ‘Why do we need to travel to Wales?’ Elizabeth asked him, her anger barely concealed.
‘Because I command it,’ Henry told her, serenely.
32
O Sea-bird
At Bristol, I parted company with the King’s entourage and headed towards Deheubarth with Amelina, Ida and a small armed escort provided for us by the King. The journey took us along the shore of Carmarthen Bay and we stopped overnight in Llansteffan before making for Carew.
From the headland, Ida and I looked down on the shifting waters. From here it was possible to see the three blue talons of the rivers reaching up into the land. Water had taken Haith, taken my joy, yet I could not look on water itself with bitterness. Water still looked like joy to me. It was where we had first found one another, and now where I had lost him. Water was joyous and so was Haith, and everything about him had been engaged with water. One day I would join Haith in the swilling sea. I had written a last testament stating that I wished to be ‘buried’ in the waters of Carmarthen Bay and not in the ground. I imagined myself swimming to find him, lying on the sands and breathing life into his mouth from my own. Such fancies gave me some meagre consolation.
‘See the wrack line?’ Ida said, pointing at the scrawl of seaweed and driftwood left behind by the tide.
‘Yes?’
‘It looks like writing, doesn’t it? Like the sea’s diary.’
‘Yes,’ I smiled at her notion. ‘We all struggle to leave our mark, our trace, just as the sea does. I keep a diary.’
‘You do?’
I nodded. ‘The traces of the past are all around us,’ I said, looking at Llansteffan beach, the estuary of the rivers, the bay. ‘The land is a bumpy container of our memories. Nothing is ever truly erased, it is simply transformed.’
‘I suppose you are right.’
‘There was an earthquake here once,’ I told her.
‘An earthquake?’
‘Yes, the ground shook and rumbled. Timbers, roofs and chimneys fell from buildings, rocks slid from the cliffs, but the worst thing was the sea.’
‘How so?’
‘It swelled and heaved like the back of a great monster and a great wall of water ran up the beach and kept going far inland, swallowing the lower parts of the village. In its retreat, it sucked everything back out with it – houses, barns, cows, hay bales, men, women and children. There were just shattered ruins and shredded timbers left behind and a terrible silence. The tide rolls back and forth, back and forth, but time rolls on and on relentlessly and cannot be undone or unravelled.’
I knew that the Normans who were here in Wales could not retreat, could not go back across the Severn estuary and the English Sea. We each act and one thing leads to another and how are we to know if we act for good or ill in the end.
Ida and I walked down to the beach, where I picked up a white fragment and examined it. It must once have been a large shell but it had been smoothed and smoothed, washed and planed by the sea so that now its form was blurred almost beyond recognition. I slid my fingers up and down and around its white faces. Everything is dilution rather than erasure, I thought. Nothing is ever really lost although it may lose its shape. I drew a bird’s claw on the sand at the edge of the water with the eroded shell. I watched the surf come in once, twice and a third time, gradually smoothing away my drawing to invisibility. I am not deleted, I thought. We, the Welsh, we are not deleted. We cling on, we transform. I stared out across the heaving waters of the bay. The inevitability of the rising and the falling of the sea twice between each moon, over and over, should be some comfort. Yet instead, a powerful surge of longing for Haith rose and crashed over me like the neap tide breaching the sea walls.
Whilst Henry was in the field against the Welsh, we stayed at Carew, and I introduced Robert to his aunt Ida, much to their mutual delight. News came that the King had been hit a glancing blow from an arrow in Powys but had been uninjured. The kitchen girl came knocking at my door early in the morning and said Amelina was asking if I might come down to the kitchen to speak with her. ‘And why can she not come to me?’ I asked languidly, stretching my arms above my head.
‘All covered in flour, she is, from head to foot,’ the maid assured me, making me laugh at the vision of what I might find downstairs.
I put on an old gown and found Amelina in the kitchen making bread. I watched her knead the dough, mesmerised by her expert, rhythmical actions. The ends of her head veil were thrown back behind her shoulders to keep them out of her way and to cool her flushed face and chest. Her sleeves were rolled to above her elbows showing how solid and strong her hands and forearms were. A blue apron protected her gown from the flour. ‘Thank you for coming, lady,’ she said, without looking up from the fat roll of dough that was suffering an extreme pummelling between her fingers.
‘Well?’
She set the dough roll in a circle of flour on the board, wiped her hands on her apron and looked up at me and then around the kitchen to see who was in earshot. ‘Best go elsewhere,’ she said, eyeing the cook and his assistants. ‘I’ll have to get the flour off my hands. Girl!’ she called out, as she dunked her doughy hands in a bowl and carefully wiped the sticky mix from between her fingers. ‘Get that dough into the oven!’
The maid walked swiftly to the table to obey.
I followed Amelina from the kitchen and out into the bailey where we sat on a bench near the well, a good di
stance from any possible eavesdroppers. ‘Well? What is all this intrigue and subterfuge?’
‘You know that arrow that was shot at the King?’
‘Yes, but he is not harmed.’
‘No, thanks be to God. But,’ she lowered her voice another notch and tipped her head closer to mine, ‘there’s a traveller just arrived in the hall, a Welshman. He’s a pilgrim going to Saint Davids. And he’s saying it was Gwenllian that shot the arrow.’
I raised my eyebrow. ‘Gwenllian? Gruffudd’s wife?’
‘Aye.’
‘Has she been taken prisoner?’
‘No. But the pilgrim says there were witnesses, credible witnesses, that said it was a woman, and some others that knew her by sight and said it was she.’
‘It could have been any woman and she is maligned.’
Now Amelina raised her eyebrows. ‘You think?’
I sighed. No. It was credible that it had been my sister-in-law, Gwenllian, and there was a harbinger in that of more trouble ahead.
In the wake of the news that Maredudd had come to peace with King Henry, I received a summons to attend the King at Cardigan and to bring my children, Angharad and David, with me.
‘Why does he want you to bring the children?’ Amelina asked, worried.
‘I don’t know.’ I considered disobeying but there was a distance between Henry and I now, and a new hardness about him, and I did not dare.
When we arrived at the gates of Cardigan Castle, our progress was much hampered by an enormous herd of cows that were being driven in the streets and filled every space. Thousands of brown and white cows thronged and banged against one another, churning up dust and dirt, trying to raise their heads with frightened rolling eyes above the broad backs of the other cows. They milled about the gateway, lowing and shoving and trampling the ground to a morass. The soldiers cleared a path for our horses with difficulty and a great deal of shouting, pushing and switching of whips.
