The Bastard's Son

by H A CULLEY

  Richard was now in his early forties but he had never had children. His wife had died in childbirth and he was disinclined to marry again. His heir was his younger brother, Edward, but he was worried as they were the only two knights at Cuille and both of them were required by Count Helias, together with their five men-at-arms and fifteen armed villagers, to report to the muster at Le Mans. From there they would march to the relief of Alençon, which was being besieged by William Rufus and an army from Normandy.

  William had demanded that Helias acknowledged him as Count of Maine as the county had been conquered forty years previously by William the Bastard before he embarked on his subjugation of England. However, Helias maintained that Maine was an independent county, owing fealty only to the King of France.

  Alençon lay on the border between Normandy and Maine at the junction between the Rivers Sarthe and Briante, the former forming the border. The territory to the north formed part of the Lordship of Bellême and Roger was anxious to recover the town, and also the nearby castle of Domfort, which used to be part of his mother’s estates.

  Richard and his brother rode away from Cuille with a heavy heart. The manor was left in the charge of the bailiff, a good enough man but one inexperienced in warfare. As he and Edward were taking the five men-at-arms and the most experienced of the archers and spearmen, it would leave Cuille and the other village that made up the manor virtually undefended. His only consolation was that Cuille was out of the way, lying as it did at the western edge of the County of Maine near the boundary with the Duchy of Brittany. As the Duke of Brittany had gone on crusade with Duke Robert, he could only pray that the border area would remain peaceful whilst they were away.

  -X-

  Hugo led his two conroys down to the docks at Dover. The men-at-arms and the archers he had brought with him from Derbyshire and elsewhere been given to other captains to command. In return, he had been allocated a dozen other knights and ten serjeants so that he had a total of fifty mounted men. He decided to command the knights himself and gave the serjeants to Sweyn to look after. The sky was overcast and the wind was blowing quite strongly, whipping up the crests of the waves into white horses. In some places it blew the crests into long streaks of spume. It would be an unpleasant crossing, Hugo reflected, thinking of the previous times he had ventured out into the Channel.

  It was the first time for Sweyn and he looked decidedly unhappy.

  ‘It’ll be alright,’ Hugo told him. ‘It may be unpleasant for a while but I assure you we’ll reach the other side safe and sound.’

  ‘Oh, it’s not that, though I am dreading it. It’s Edwina.’

  She was the daughter of Aeldred the miller, who was one of the wealthiest freemen at Edale. Because he had the right to mill everyone’s grain in the Hope Valley, he could charge more or less what he liked, though Wulfric the steward tried to ensure that he was reasonably fair in his dealings with the peasants. Hugo knew that Sweyn was courting the girl and he had promised him a house when they wed. This was unusual because household knights didn’t normally marry; they lived in their lord’s hall which made it difficult, if not impossible. That didn’t mean that they didn’t have sex whenever they could, however, and the local town or village was often littered with their bastards.

  ‘I know that I’m twice as old as she is but we’re in love. However, Aeldred knows that I’m poor compared to him and, although marrying a knight would be a step up socially, he has other plans for her. He’s getting old and he intends to buy his way into Heaven by offering Edwina to the King’s Mead Convent in Derby as a novice nun.’

  ‘Sweyn, I’m really sorry. I wish that there was something I could do, but the man’s a freemen and, provided he pays me the taxes he owes for operating his mill on my land, I have little influence over him. The only sanction I have is to withdraw his licence to mill grain and no-one would thank me for that. They would have to haul everything over to the mill at Chapel-en-le-Frith and back again until I could find another miller.’ He paused. ‘What does Edwina think?’

  ‘She hates him; she’s even threatened to kill herself, but the man is adamant.’

  Hugo looked at Sweyn out of the corner of his eye as the white cliffs of Dover slowly receded behind them and the ship started to buck and toss in the heavy sea. Sweyn stood there, rolling with the motion of the ship staring at England as it faded from view. He had the look of a man who had nothing to look forward to in life.

  -X-

  Richard and Edward had been put into the conroy commanded by the lord of Ballon, the grandson of the man who had charged their father with the theft of his palfrey over forty years previously. Thankfully the name de Cuille meant nothing to the present baron and he seemed a pleasant enough young man, if somewhat inexperienced.

  Fulk le Réchin, the nephew of Geoffrey Martel who had struggled with William the Bastard for control of Maine, had been Count of Anjou ever since he had deposed his elder brother in 1068. He was now in his early fifties and so he should have been anything but inexperienced. However, he had set out with his relief army for Alençon without establishing a proper system of supplies. Consequently his men were dependent on foraging in order to eat.

  Fulk’s army wasn’t strong enough to attack William Rufus’ besieging force and Rufus wasn’t about to break off the siege in order to attack Fulk and so, during the stalemate, the two armies sat five miles apart and the war deteriorated into a series of minor skirmishes. After a week or two of this the lord of Ballon had selected Richard de Cuille and ten other knights and serjeants to accompany him on a foraging trip but, instead of raiding the nearby farms, as others had done, he decided to organise a hunt. It was the height of folly in hostile territory.

  They had been incredibly lucky and had managed to kill a boar and a hart before deciding to return to camp as nightfall was fast approaching. Despite the advice of Richard and other more experienced knights, their lord had scorned the idea of sending out scouts and they proceeded to ride back chatting and boasting of their success on the hunt as if they didn’t have a care in the world.

  Hugo and his conroy were also out hunting, but not game – they were after their enemies, the Angevins and the Mainards. They heard the returning foraging party from about half a mile away and they quietly disappeared into the undergrowth on either side of the track. He sent his best crossbowmen up into the trees from where they could get a clear shot down onto the enemy and waited.

  Although on a hunt, de Ballon’s men were at least wearing armour and were armed with sword and shield as well as hunting bows and spears. Surcoats displaying the owner’s heraldic arms had not yet come into fashion; that happened when it became necessary to wear cloth over chainmail in the Holy Land in an effort to ward off the heat from the sun. However, both sides carried shields displaying their lord’s arms. In the case of the de Cuille family this was a white inverted chevron on a black field. Differentiation marks to distinguish one branch of family from another hadn’t yet been introduced and so both Hugo and his mesnie and Richard de Cuille and his men-at-arms carried similar shields.

  Seeing this device the crossbowmen in the trees left those with the de Cuille shields alone, not sure who they were, and brought down four of the other knights, including the unfortunate lord of Ballon. This left Richard as the senior person left alive and he quickly saw that their only hope of escape lay in abandoning the kills, the packhorses, the huntsmen and their dogs, and making off into the trees.

  Richard and three of his men broke off the fight and charged off to the right of the track. He felt some guilt at leaving the rest to their fate but he had a strong sense of self preservation. The four men he’d abandoned were quickly overcome by the eight who had charged them on foot from the trees. However, Hugo had divided the rest of his two conroys into four as cut-off groups to prevent anyone escaping. Two blocked the track behind and in front of the killing ground and the other two waited a little distance back on either side of the track. Hugo himself with six men waite
d in a small clearing along the most obvious escape route from the ambush. Sure enough, four men came riding into the clearing after five minutes or so and he gave the order to charge as soon as they appeared.

  His mind was totally focused on killing the enemy and it wasn’t until his lance had struck the chest of the knight in the lead, breaking the links of mail asunder before smashing through his ribcage, his heart and his spine and exiting from his back, that he realised that the knight carried the same shield as he did. He had only met the elder of his two Mainard half-brothers when the latter was a young boy and he didn’t recognise him now, but he knew instinctively that he had just killed Richard. He dismounted and ran to the dead man, cradling his head in his arms and weeping whilst his men killed the other three.

  The next day he set off with a herald leading Richard’s body slung over the dead knight’s destrier. The only person in the party was his squire, Edwin, who carried aloft the de Cuille banner. Once the herald had negotiated a safe conduct for Hugo he rode into the enemy camp and asked for the whereabouts of Edward de Cuille. Once he had found him he dismounted and led the horse bearing the body towards him.

  ‘Don’t come any further!’ Edward spat at him. ‘Just leave my brother’s body and go, before I dishonour myself by killing a man under the protection of a safe conduct.’

  ‘Edward, he was my brother too, but I didn’t know who he was when I charged him. I’m so sorry.’

  Edward didn’t say anything but glared at him and half drew his sword from its scabbard.

  ‘Very well, I’m going.’

  Hugo rode out of the camp with Edwin leading his destrier by its reins. Hugo’s eyes were too full of tears to see where he was going. He never forgave himself for killing his brother and he never heard from the Maine branch of the family again. Later on, when he was an old man, he had a strong desire to see Cuille – the place where he was born and where he spent his childhood years – once more before he died. He wrote to Edward hoping that the years had healed the rift, but he never had a reply.

  After Richard’s death, Hugo returned to Edale and sent his son Robert out to take his place in the king’s army. Leofric should have gone with him as his squire but that would have taken him away from Peak’s Cavern just as he was beginning to learn what it would mean to be its lord in a few years’ time. Therefore Robert took the squire of one of the knights remaining as part of the castle garrison with him and Leofric took the squire’s place. Hugo was haunted by the slaying of his brother and nothing seemed able to shake him out the melancholic stupor he had sunk into. He kept telling himself that he should have seen the shield that Richard was carrying, but, in truth, he was too absorbed with aiming his lance and avoiding his opponent’s to notice the knight’s device.

  He wasn’t the only one who was deeply depressed. Sweyn had been delighted when he had been knighted and he was inordinately proud of being one of Hugo’s household knights; perhaps too proud. Later on the prospect of living in his own house with the girl he had fallen deeply in love with seemed like a dream, and so when that dream was shattered he took it extremely badly. He even blamed Hugo deep down for promising him the house; it would have been better if he had told Sweyn that, as a household knight, he couldn’t marry. He would have been extremely upset but at least the disappointment when it came wouldn’t have been such a crushing blow.

  When the gates of Alençon had finally been breached, Sweyn volunteered to lead the assault. He fought like a man possessed, having the great advantage over his opponents of not caring whether he lived or died. The defenders didn’t make it easy for William’s army. They knew the town would be sacked and fought hard to protect their women and children. Sweyn cast aside his shield with its inverted chevron on a black field – a device he had come to hate – and fought with a sword in one hand and mace in the other. He scarcely noticed it when the point of a spear broke asunder the links of his chain mail hauberk and broke a couple of his ribs before he half decapitated the spearman. He suffered several other wounds to legs and arms before loss of blood and the inability of his muscles to obey his brain weakened him sufficiently for his enemies to get close enough for the kill. By then the surge of adrenaline that had driven his battle frenzy so far had worn off and he was left lightheaded and confused. He looked around him blearily at the circle of dead and wounded men. He had advanced well ahead of his fellow attackers and had driven deep into the enemy ranks. Now they were driving the defenders back and the latter were on the verge of breaking, but not quickly enough to save Sweyn.

  The blow that killed him was an unworthy one. The men surrounding him were still scared of him, despite his drooping shoulders and the fact that he had lost his mace. The tip of his sword touched the ground and he lost the strength to wield it anymore, but still they didn’t close for the kill. Instead, a crossbowman put a quarrel deep into his chest from close range, stopping his heart instantly. Sweyn fell to his knees and toppled sideways into the dust just before his killer and the rest fled deeper into the doomed town.

  When the news came that Sweyn was dead, Hugo wasn’t even able to mourn for his old friend; he was too sunk into black depression for anything else to affect him. Edith looked after him but even her love for him was beginning to falter after six months of his apathy and self-pity. His two-year old grandson, Richard, who he had doted on, failed to evoke any interest; indeed he couldn’t bear the little boy near him. The choice of his name, shared as it was with his dead half-brother, seemed a cruel mockery now. It wasn’t until a messenger arrived with the tidings that Tristan and Hièrru had had a son that he tried to raise himself out of the despondency into which he had sunk. Thankfully they had called the boy Humphrey, which reminded him of no-one.

  A few days later Hugo suddenly announced that he would be travelling north to visit his new grandson and would stay until his baptism. Some of his old energy returned and he sent for young Richard so that he could play with him. He would never fully forgive himself for killing his brother, but at long last he had a more balanced outlook on life.

  The wild hills of Northumberland in late spring did much to restore his equilibrium and Edwin, riding by his side, seemed to have a permanent smile on his face. He admired and revered his uncle and he had felt so helpless when Hugo had allowed himself to sink into misery and self-loathing.

  Meanwhile Edith, left behind at Edale, felt disgruntled. Hugo had never thought to ask her if she would have liked to go with him. As usual, he had taken her for granted. At thirty seven she no longer had the looks that had first attracted Hugo to her when she was a young girl, but he still found her pretty enough to make love to her, albeit not so frequently in recent years and not at all when he had been depressed. She took no part in running the estate - that was Wulfric’s job – so her sole responsibility was managing the household at Edale.

  There were no ladies with whom she could gossip whilst she embroidered a new surcoat for Hugo. She hoped that Wulfric might have found himself a girl to marry now that he had a house to live in. She would then have someone to keep her company. However, so far he seemed content to live there with his squire, a cook and a kitchen boy to look after him. She wondered idly who did all the jobs her servants did in the hall, such as the laundry, throwing out the old floor rushes and strewing the new, looking after the larder and brewing the weak ale that was drunk by everyone, even children. It was seen as being a lot safer than water; often the cause of disease. One day, having nothing better to do, she decided to pay him a visit and find out.

  As soon as she entered Wulfric’s house her hand went to her nose. It was obvious that no-one had thought to change the rushes for a long time. They were foul with spilt wine, decaying food, rat droppings and, worst of all, dog faeces. The table in the main room still had the remnants of several meals on it together with a number of empty goblets. Evidently Wulfric and his squire ate off bread trenchers instead of earthenware or pewter plates and two or three of these had gone mouldy. There were also clear indicati
ons that rats had gnawed on part of the hard stale bread from which the trenchers were made.

  Apart from the table and a bench at one end of the single room, the only other items of furniture were three straw filled palliases along one wall, which presumably belonged to the cook, his boy and the squire, and a small bed at the far end of the room with a curtain to give Wulfric some privacy. There was a small table for food preparation and a cauldron suspended over the central hearth, which was where all the cooking was presumably done. Provisions were stored in an outhouse near to the small hut which housed the deep trench latrine, but a smoked leg of pork and a haunch of venison hung from the rafters inside the house.

  Edith pursed her lips at the sight of the venison. Killing the king’s deer, and the only place it could have come from was the Royal Hunting Forest of the High Peak, was a serious offence. She had seen Wulfric and his squire ride off to visit one of the other manors earlier in the day but she had expected to see the two servants hard at work. Instead the rotund cook and a boy of about thirteen or so were asleep on their palliases. Enraged, she was about to kick them awake when she realised at the last moment that she had no authority here in the steward’s house. She decided to leave but she would have to speak to Wulfric on his return.

  However, on her way back to the hall she passed a paddock where Hugo’s bailiff was busy supervising the training of several new destriers. In addition to his role as bailiff of Edale, Osgar was also Hugo’s trainer of the horses that were bred on the manor. They ranged from warhorses like destriers and coursers to riding horses like the expensive palfreys, jennets and the more common rounceys. Seeing the horses gave Edith an idea and she went to the hall to get changed into her riding clothes.