Henry of the High Rock

by Juliet Dymoke

  ‘Peace, beau sire,’ Richard said. ‘Roger will send a message as soon as it is done.’

  ‘Peace!’ Henry exclaimed and laughed wrily. ‘I tell you, Richard, I never felt less at peace in my life. Have I waited so long to have my fate in the hands of a parcel of churchmen?’

  ‘In the hands of the Archbishop,’ Richard corrected. ‘He will do what is right and the others will travel with him. And you cannot doubt the Princess after what she said to me?’

  ‘No, no, she has been steadfast. What a girl, Richard! Living so long with those holy sisters, pressed by that scheming aunt, the influence of that place all about her and yet, young as she is, holding to the memory of our meetings and a few kisses.’

  ‘The people will love her,’ de Redvers said. ‘In Romsey the poor and sick bless her name.’

  ‘With her by my side . . .’ Henry began and then broke off, thinking of Anselm’s words. ‘With her, I think I cannot fail to be what a King should be.’

  ‘You?’ Richard smiled. ‘The people of the high rock would vouch for that. I remember Herluin once said . . .’ He stopped abruptly. ‘There is no news?’

  ‘Nor will be,’ Henry said. He stared across the river at the buildings of the Archbishop’s palace, the gently flowing water in between. It was an unsettled day with patches of blue sky and heavy scudding clouds dark with the threat of showers, the changing light reflected in the water. Roger had told him something of Herluin’s fears, of the ‘end to living’ which had come to him. He would never know the truth of that day in the forest but he was as near to it as he could be and felt only compassion for a man caught as Herluin had been on a tide he could not stem – nor could he hold Herluin responsible for his actions on that day. Somewhere now, please God, he was easing his deranged mind in acts of penance and Henry had a sudden vision of him, nearer the truth than he knew, scrubbing sanctuary stones, performing menial tasks, withdrawn and melancholy. At every Mass he attended now he prayed briefly for Herluin that the knight from La Barre might know of the good that was to come under his rule, that God would be merciful to one whose life hitherto had been without evil, and bring him to peace.

  Towards supper time he was returning to the palace with Richard and was on the path to the steps when Ralph de Toeni came hurrying towards him. One glance at his face told Henry the truth and a great wave of relief spread over his whole body. Praise God, he thought, praise God – and felt the utter inadequacy of words.

  The Countess Maud brought Eadgyth to court but not before she had dressed the girl in new clothes and some of her own jewels that she might become her new position, and when at last she escorted her up the fine hall which Rufus had built, Henry saw an Eadgyth who was new to him. As tall as himself, slender and shapely, she walked with dignity and a composure born of years of self-control, with the right amount of modesty, mingled with eagerness.

  Down the length of the hall their eyes met and he knew at last that nothing had changed between them, yet because of the years that had gone there was a shyness about her, a certain hesitancy in himself as he greeted her formally.

  She made a deep obeisance to him and at once he reached out his hand and raised her. Suddenly oblivious of the watching court, even of Maud, he said, ‘Eadgyth – is it true?’

  A little laugh escaped her and her mouth was trembling. ‘I think so, my lord.’

  He led her to the high seat, suppressing the desire to catch her in his arms. But he was not the young Count who had dressed as a servant to snatch one moment with her, nor was she the imprisoned girl in a nunnery. He was a King and she a Princess of Scotland and a future Queen and all must be circumspect before this court he had sworn to reform, that he had already cleared of much vice. The pretty youths had gone or been forced to behave and dress as men and he would have no ridiculing of churchmen, nor mockery of those of lesser estate, neither would he allow anything but respect for women at his table. A few men might sneer and laugh behind their hands but most approved his actions and he must set an example to them all by his own conduct.

  When Eadgyth was seated and he beside her he said, ‘My chaplain, Roger, told me how it went. I did not doubt but I was mighty relieved when Anselm pronounced judgement.’

  ‘It was easier than I expected,’ she admitted. ‘The sisters spoke for me – they knew the truth and would not deny it, even for the Abbess – and the Archbishop was so kind. My aunt has gone back to Romsey and I could almost pity her for what she has done . . .’

  ‘I cannot,’ he broke in grimly, ‘for what she has done to you I would see her whipped from her place.’

  Eadgyth sighed. ‘If you knew her better you would pity her, for her house is divided now so that I think it will be a long time before she knows peace again.’

  Aware that they had been talking intimately for long enough, he presented the nobles at his table and the Count de Meulan who was sitting on her other side said, ‘Lady, our King must have made a great impression on you for you to wait nine years to wed him.’

  A blush warmed her cheeks. ‘I swore to Our Lady, my lord, that I would have no other husband.’

  He smiled at her in a grave kindly way. ‘Not many women would be so steadfast. I wish you joy of your marriage.’

  She thanked him and asked his lady on his far side how her twin sons fared. The Countess talked eagerly of the two-year-olds, Robert and Waleran, until her brother-in-law Henry of Beaumont laughingly told Eadgyth she would have to see these nephews of his who bade fair to conquer the world.

  There were so many new faces, so many names thrust at her, some she liked, some such as the Earl of Shrewsbury that she feared; one or two, among them Maud’s mother, the Countess Judith, who made her feel small and inexperienced, while the lady of Warwick and Gilbert of Clare’s lady were kind to her and set her at her ease. She could not help noticing, however, that they found difficulty in pronouncing her Saxon name. She turned to her bridegroom.

  ‘My lord, I think my name causes your people to stumble. Would it not please them if when I am Queen I took an easier one?’

  ‘If you will, my heart.’ He smiled indulgently at her. ‘What name would you choose?’

  ‘I thought perhaps Matilda, for your mother’s memory.’

  He was pleased and reaching for her hand held it hard in his. ‘Holy Rood, but you are wise. How is it that you know how to please me and my people at the same time?’

  She shook her head. ‘I do not think I am very wise, only I learned at Romsey how important it is to be kind.’

  ‘You shall have Winchester as your morning-gift,’ he said. ‘Old King Edward gave it to Harold’s sister on their wedding day,’ and he added with relish, ‘then Christina will find she holds her lands from you.’

  Eadgyth laughed delightedly. ‘Oh, I shall enjoy that. And yet it is so strange, so hard to believe – that I am free.’

  ‘Free?’ He lifted her hand to his mouth. ‘You have but changed one set of bonds for another. Will you accept your new chains cheerfully, my love?’

  ‘If so be you set them on me, yes,’ she said.

  On an impulse, born of a desire that she might have no illusions for him to shatter unwittingly, he said, ‘I should have told you – I have a son at court.’

  To his surprise she smiled, her face half hidden by her veil so that he could not read the expression in her eyes. ‘I have seen him.’

  ‘You have seen Robert? I did not realise…’

  ‘No one could see him and not know he was yours. He was with the Countess Maud’s son when I came in, and I thought…’ she hesitated. ‘I asked the Countess, and then I spoke with him. I think we shall be very fond of one another.’

  ‘You do not mind?’

  ‘How should I mind?’ Her voice was so low that no one else could hear her words. ‘You were not shut in a convent for all the years since we met.’

  He leaned towards her over the arm of his chair. ‘I have sworn to be true to you, I have sworn to raise an abbey to Our Lady in grat
itude for this day, but if I should fail . . .’

  ‘I do not want to change you,’ she answered and a deeper colour tinged her cheeks. ‘What is the body? A little pleasuring? I am ignorant of such things, but I know I have your heart and that is what I have always wanted.’

  ‘You have had it,’ he said, ‘since you tumbled head over heels out of a litter.’

  He saw her mouth curve as she turned away to answer the Archbishop who sat on her other side and he was left wondering at her combination of wisdom and innocence.

  There was no reason to wait and he hurried on the arrangements. Anselm, however, was pressed about with duties and the wedding and coronation of the new Queen could not be finally realised until St. Martin’s day.

  Eadgyth stayed with the Countess Maud and her mother at their manor a little north of the city, but at last the day came, a fitful sun lighting the crowded streets. From early morning the common people hurried into the city to see this wedding of a King – there had been no such royal nuptials since those of the Countess Judith and Earl Waltheof at Winchester – and the King had promised a cask of wine to every street in the city. Bells were rung in every church and as it was proclaimed a holiday men, women and children thronged the roads to see what they might of the pageantry.

  In the abbey church at Westminster Anselm married their King to the Scottish Princess, the girl who through her mother was one of the line of Cerdic, bringing back the ancient blood of the conquered kingdom so that Englishmen might hold up their heads again. When it was done and the crown was on her head she set her hand on her husband’s and together they walked from the church between the lines of barons to cheers and shouts from all their well wishers. But once Henry heard a laugh and a sneering voice say, ‘We have an English Godric and Godgifu to rule us now.’ He turned his head but could not see who spoke, though he thought it might be his cousin of Mortain. He had a feeling that nickname would stick. Well, let it. Yesterday someone, he thought it was Eudo Dapifer, had said he would be a ‘lion of justice’ and he would make that stick even closer.

  Outside the abbey the new King and Queen were cheered again. It was a day as great as his coronation day and the fact that the impossible had happened, that he was King and had Eadgyth whom he loved as his Queen was given a heady unreality by all the feasting and festivity that went on far into the dark hours.

  It was not until nearly midnight that she was escorted away by the Countess Maud to be undressed and put into the royal bed. He watched her go and it seemed an interminable time before Maud returned and he was accompanied up the narrow stair by his friends and a crowd of courtiers, all smiling and eager to see him bedded with the usual toasts and lewd jokes and final blessing by the clergy.

  But when he saw her lying there in his great bed, suddenly solitary in the dim rush light, her eyes cast down, a heightened colour in her cheeks, her hair unbound about her bare shoulders, he stopped in the doorway, a hand lifted to check his followers. In one swift moment he thought of all the other nights in the past when he had lain with one woman or another in his arms and knew that this one would be different – for this girl had reached his mind and heart as no other had done. She looked up momentarily, shy and uncertain, reminding him of the young faun who had ridden from Scotland so long ago, and on impulse he turned to face the eager, laughing gathering.

  ‘No,’ he said and threw custom aside. Smiling broadly he added, ‘Enough is enough, my friends, and by Our Lady, nine years is too long.’ And he shut the door in their astonished faces.

  He awoke in the morning at first light and leaned on one elbow gazed down at her sleeping face. She looked peaceful and happy, a faint smile on her mouth, and thinking of the night that had gone he had a desire now to kneel beside her and lay his head between her breasts as he had done so long ago, an untried boy, with Alide. Consummation, he thought, was more than one woman, one night.

  He got up from the bed and went to the window, throwing wide the shutter. It was a chill morning, the air striking cold against his body. Over the river lay a white November mist and outside where a spider had spun its web white beads of moisture turned the web into a pattern of beauty. In the distance the trees were half hidden in the mist but he knew the shape of the land, where the hills lay, the villages, the fields, the forests alive with the animals he loved.

  Standing there naked with no crown, no pomp, no rich robes, he knew himself to be a man as other men, yet with a rising confidence he knew he was better suited now than any other to wear the crown of England.

  A sudden memory flitted across his mind, long forgotten, of a day when he was about eight years old. Robert and Rufus had beaten him for some piece of mischief and he had hidden himself in tears in a stairway corner. There his father found him and said, ‘Don’t weep, my son. One day you will be a King.’

  A wise man, his father – knowing his sons better than they knew themselves. Could he be the strong King, the faithful husband his father had been? He did not know, nor could he read the future, but the days opened up before him rich with promise and the things that had been given into his hands. He glanced back at his sleeping wife, the best gift of all.

  Then he turned to the window again. Outside a pale wintry sun was struggling to dispel the mist, tipping with gold the last bronzed leaves, the roofs, the slow moving river.

  ‘It is a fair land,’ he said aloud, ‘and it is mine.’

  Postscript

  This story of the early life of Henry Beauclerc, later King Henry I, has been told as factually as possible, adhering to the accounts of the chroniclers of the time. On only two points, to fill in gaps and doubtful passages, have I created wholly fictitious happenings.

  With regard to Henry’s marriage the chroniclers state that immediately he was crowned he arranged his union with the Scottish Princess ‘whom he had long wished to marry’. Nowhere is it told how or when he met her, but there seems to be no doubt that he formed an attachment for her and I have set this at the most likely point. For a while after their wedding he discarded his mistresses and lived in complete domestic harmony and when, later, he fell from grace in that respect, the marriage remained happy and he was a fond father both to his legitimate children and also to his numerous bastards. It seems possible that Rufus forbade the match and that Henry’s request for the Princess was the cause of Rufus’ unexplained visit to Romsey Abbey when he merely looked at the girl walking in the garden in her nun’s habit and then rode away.

  As far as the killing of Rufus is concerned it was either, as the people of the day believed, a sheer accident or it was engineered on behalf of Henry. It seems highly improbable that he was implicated – seeing Henry through the eyes of the men of his day, and even making allowances for his rare acts of cruelty (certainly rare for his time) he emerges as far too wise to jeopardise his future by an act of fratricide. If there had been the slightest hint, any shred of evidence against him, Robert’s followers would have seized on it. Some writers of the day thought Walter Tirel guilty, though he denied it to the day of his death when he had nothing to lose, while others believed the fatal arrow came from an unknown hand – possibly someone with a grudge against the King.

  Once on the throne it took Henry little more than eighteen months to rid England once and for all of the curse of Robert of Bellême – though the latter continued to trouble Normandy for another ten years before Henry finally consigned him to a prison from which he never emerged. For thirty-three years England had peace. Order and justice were of prime importance to Henry and he was undoubtedly the greatest of the Conqueror’s sons, a ‘Lion of Justice’ as his contemporaries rightly called him.

  His nickname of ‘Beauclerc’ seems to have been of a much later origin but I have taken a certain licence in allowing it to be used by his brothers. It is certainly possible that it may have come down by tradition if not by the written word and it makes a pleasing contrast to ‘Curthose’ and ‘Rufus’.

  THE CONQUEST CONCLUDES

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  Juliet Dymoke, Henry of the High Rock