Fires of Winter (51 page)

The queen was not unkind. She called for wine for Fechin and a stool for him to sit on, but she did not let him go until she had heard everything he knew at least twice, and it took several tellings interrupted by many questions before she was sure she had drained him dry. She gave him gold coin and told me to see to his comfort. She never thanked me—one does not thank the bearer of such tidings. I went to see Fechin settled near Merwyn, who was not so near death as I had thought, only exhausted, and made sure that Barbe was stabled beside Vinaigre and being cared for. But when I returned to her, Maud took my hand and held it. Then, with a face like stone and in a voice so soft that I do not think anyone save me heard, she cursed every earl that Stephen had belted and made rich.

Most especially did she curse Waleran de Meulan, who had most influenced the king to reject the peace treaty, and then had fled the field. I said, “Amen” and “amen” again, but I do not remember feeling anything but relief that day. The shock of thinking Bruno dead followed by the joy of learning he was alive numbed me to all else. In the days that followed my mood swung from hope to terror and back again. As a prisoner, Bruno would fight no more, so I had hope that he was out of danger; but other times I had visions of him being tortured and starved, chained in a black dungeon.

And then we waited. Two days after Fechin came, William of Ypres rode into London. The early news Fechin had brought was of value to Queen Maud. It gave her time to absorb the shock and control her rage, to think what she must do to save her husband—and what was first and foremost was to keep the good will of any who were still faithful to the king. She was specially gracious to Ypres, who had at least not fled without striking a blow and whose power was in Kent, which gave her access to ports close to Boulogne, from where she could get money and mercenaries.

A month dragged by. In the beginning of March the queen sent for me to tell me that a messenger had come from Henry of Winchester with news of the king and Bruno. The bishop had assured the queen that Stephen was well and being treated with honor and that he had with him his own servant Sir Bruno of Jernaeve. She did not then tell me the real purpose of the message, which was to announce that Winchester had repudiated his oath to his brother and accepted Matilda as queen and that he had called a council of bishops to convene on 7 April. At that council, the bishop intended to use his authority as legate of the pope to announce that Stephen had been cast down by God and deprived of his crown for his trespasses against the Church and call for an election of Empress Matilda as Lady. When I heard, I wondered why the title of Lady rather than Queen had been selected. I never discovered the answer, but I think perhaps it was because Stephen had been anointed as king and the bishop feared that even his legatine authority could not wipe away God's chrism.

Although Winchester did not obtain the enthusiastic approval he expected, even from many of the other bishops of England, most of the country withdrew into a kind of fearful neutrality. Even London, where Stephen was loved, in the end dared not resist openly and agreed to allow the empress to enter the city when Geoffrey de Mandeville, keeper of the Tower of London and thus master of the troops that guarded the city, was bought by Matilda's promise of rich new lands. When Mandeville broke faith, Maud was deeply shaken. She wept bitterly and then wrote to the empress offering to yield if Matilda would only release Stephen under bond never to seek to regain the throne of England.

The empress refused—well, I expected that; I knew Matilda well by now and pity and mercy were not in her nature—but I did not expect her answer to be so coarse and cruel. And Matilda's messenger not only insulted Queen Maud but told her Stephen was now chained like a slave and it was the empress's intention that he should die in those chains. That was a great mistake on Matilda's part. It made Maud desperate. The queen would fight now, with every device and resource she could muster, and Ypres began to gather an army for her.

As Matilda approached London, we retreated, but only to Rochester, less than ten leagues from the city and in easy reach of Ypres's strongholds in Kent. We did not lack news from London, for the burghers sent news nearly every day; and it seemed to me that the empress was fighting on our side, so ill did she manage friend and foe alike. We heard how she would not rise to greet even King David, a fellow monarch, and how when her own half brother, who had fought for her, knelt to request mercy for an offender, she bawled a refusal at him almost as coarse as that sent to Maud.

Most foolish of all, within days of entering London, Matilda demanded a huge tallage of the city, which I understand she had no right to do, being not yet crowned. Then the burghers, who still desired peace even with so harsh a mistress, sent a delegation who knelt and begged her to reduce the sum. The city was drained of its usual resources by the damage to trade owing to the war. Matilda would not listen and roared at them in a rage that she would not abate her demand a penny and threatened to punish them for having in the past supported King Stephen.

Had Matilda agreed to Maud's pathetic terms, London would have had no one to turn to, no help in rising and driving out the empress and her supporters. Now men came and whispered in Maud's ears and Maud whispered back. In the second week of July, Maud's army marched west and we with it, but for us it was just another journey; there did not seem to be any connection with the large number of men talked about by Maud and Ypres. Even when the army began to ravage the district south of London, I saw nothing of it. The queen and all her women had taken refuge behind the high, thick walls of Southwark priory, with a strong troop of Boulognese to protect both her and the priory.

The most I saw was the red light of fires reflected on the low clouds and sometimes I heard a low, dull noise. But the ravaging of Southwark was the signal, given on the very eve before Matilda was to be crowned, while a feast was being readied to celebrate the event. I did hear when all the bells of London suddenly began to toll, and my eyes met the queen's. I almost laughed, for she looked as I felt—eager, and hungry. We knew that those bells were calling the men of the city to rush out to attack Westminster, where the empress was making ready for her coronation.

The burghers were as good as their word. As Ypres and Maud's army marched toward the bridge and began to seek boats in which to cross the river, London rose. Unfortunately there were those among the empress's party who were not befooled into believing that the bells were ringing in celebration of the coming coronation. The surprise was not complete and Matilda had time to flee with her supporters, but they went with what they had on their backs. In her haste to escape, the empress even left behind the royal crown, which she had been carrying with her since Winchester had opened the treasury to her. Ypres arrived before the Londoners who were looting the palace had broken open the strongboxes that held the royal regalia and plate, but I am sure Maud would have preferred to lose the crown than Matilda. Yet she could not blame Ypres; he did not know until he entered the palace that the empress was not there. He set out after her as soon as he was sure she had escaped, but no one of importance was captured. We learned later that they had broken up into small parties and fled in different directions so that there was no clear trail to follow.

I have told the events, many of which I only heard about days after they happened, and in the telling I have not mentioned how they affected me. I can hardly bear to do so now. After Matilda had refused Queen Maud's proposal of peace, my days were too busy to give me time to think, and much of my employment concerned the attack on the empress in London. That sustained me because I hoped that the empress would be captured and we would have her to exchange for Stephen and Bruno. But the nights were terrible. Awake or asleep, as soon as it grew dark—as it might be in a dungeon—I saw visions of Bruno, chained so he could neither sit nor stand and was in continual torment, all wasted and covered with running sores as I had seen prisoners in Carlisle and Richmond. And when I came into Westminster with the queen and learned that Ypres had returned without a single prisoner of note, I slipped back into the emptiness that held me for so many months after I learned my father was dead. I must have lost a few hours or a day, for I came to myself in a start of pain in an empty room in the palace when the queen slapped my face.

“You coward!” she shrieked at me, slapping me again. “You spoiled, self-indulgent monster! What right have you to sit staring at the wall? Selfish beast! Will you let your husband die in chains rather than make the effort to save him?”

Bruno

I have been so often praised for sacrificing myself for the king, that I must confess my shame. I did my duty to the utmost of my ability in the battle of Lincoln, though I was appalled at the dishonor of the attack, but my refusal to be parted from Stephen after we were captured was purely selfish. Did no one save me realize that to be one with the king was my best hope of freedom? Where could I find a ransom? Melusine had nothing except the few coins I had left with her when I departed; Audris and Hugh would pay, I was sure, but why should I drain their slender store and take on a debt I might never be able to repay? Moreover, I was assured of far better treatment in captivity as Stephen's servant than as a poor knight with no estate.

It was fortunate that Robert of Gloucester, to whom our captor delivered us, recognized me as one of the men who had brought his sister to him from Arundel. I was supporting the king, who was still partly dazed from the blow to his head, when we were brought before Gloucester, and he stared at me a moment and then said, “You are Bruno of Jernaeve. My sister had a good deal to say about you when I was escorting her back to Bristol.”

I thought I was a dead man in that moment, but I could not change the habit of a lifetime, and I stared back at him and said, “I am sorry to have displeased Lady Matilda, but I am not sorry for the cause. Free or captive, I can see no reason to beat servants for not being able to guess in advance what was wanted of them nor to give up my wife to a service she loathed.”

“A round answer, and what I might have expected from a man who puts his hand on his sword hilt in reply to a look,” Gloucester said.

His voice was sober, but to my amazement there was a slight crinkling of the skin near his eyes and a twitching at the corner of his mouth that looked like a desire to laugh. It gave me hope, and I shrugged. “I am sorry for that too, but I could not bawl across the distance between us a denial to a question that had not been asked.”

Then Gloucester smiled. “Just so, but we are far from the business at hand. Kahains here informs me that he and his men had some difficulty in making you lift your shield away from Lord Stephen when they captured him. You are a loyal servant. Do you wish to remain with your master?”

Before I could answer, I felt Stephen turn his head. “Stay with me, Bruno,” he muttered. “Stay and show me one candle worth of loyalty in the black night of treachery that surrounds me.”

Despite my anger at the king and my feeling that he had shown his nobles the way to their treachery with his own, I think I would not have denied him even if I had not already seen the advantages in being Stephen's fellow captive. “You need not ask,” I said to Stephen. “I have given you my oath, my lord king, and that oath will hold me until you release me.” And then I looked at Gloucester. “Thank you, my lord. I beg you to let me go with my lord king and serve him.”

I had given Stephen his full title because Gloucester had called him Lord Stephen—and whatever Stephen had lost in attacking Lincoln, nothing could take from him his anointment as king. Gloucester looked at me, and for a moment I thought he would take back his offer of allowing Stephen to have his own servant, who might, as I had just done, attempt to keep up the king's spirits and thus interfere with attempts to make Stephen renounce his crown. But he said no more to us, only ordering that horses be found for us so we might be taken into Lincoln keep. Gloucester was a fine man, and I thought it a great misfortune that he should be a bastard and—by his own honor and his love and respect for his father as much as by any other cause—be deprived of the right to the throne. Better, far better for our unhappy realm had Gloucester the bastard sat on the throne than either Stephen or Matilda.

That is true, even though I may have overestimated Gloucester's kindness in allowing me to remain with the king. Gloucester knew Stephen of old, and may have known him better than I in certain ways. I had never seen the king truly cast down, except for very short times until something diverted him from whatever had disappointed him. Gloucester may have realized that nothing I could do could lighten the king's mood once he realized the finality of his condition as captive. That he did not realize it in the beginning soon became clear.

By the time we were mounted, Stephen was fully recovered from the blow on his head. We were both wounded, as was Gloucester, but not seriously, and none of us had lost enough blood to induce weakness. Still, I could hardly believe my ears when I heard Stephen talking quite cheerfully to the earl about a ransom. I wondered if the king believed what he was saying, or if he was simply putting off the time when he must face the truth—that there could be no ransom on earth that would free him except the yielding of his crown.

For over a week Stephen resisted this truth. It was not until we came to Gloucester and Stephen was forced to do reverence to the empress that he realized his situation was nigh hopeless. I was not there. I was sent on ahead to Bristol, and I thank God I do not know what actually happened at that meeting for it broke the king. For a few days after he arrived in Bristol, he still seemed stunned. Then, instead of recovering his usual optimism, he sank into alternating periods of grief and rage in which he first wept and lamented his misdeeds and cried he had been justly chastised by God and then cursed those who had fled the battle without even trying to save him.

The poor king was thrust even deeper into a pit of despair when in March he was summoned to the hall to hear, before a crowd of his enemies, a special messenger from Matilda. With sneering satisfaction, that messenger announced that Stephen's brother had betrayed him and had offered—of his own free will and without conditions—to proclaim that Stephen had been cast down by the judgment of God and that Empress Matilda was the true ruler and Lady of England. The king wept for a day and a night, moaning of his brother's ingratitude. I do not know how often I bit my tongue to keep from reminding him of the many times he had affronted and slighted Winchester, beguiled by the smooth flattery of Waleran de Meulan.

To tell the truth, I was nearly as despairing as the king. The news was a bitter blow to me too. I had not thought Matilda could be crowned until the king had agreed to yield the throne. If Matilda were crowned without Stephen's abdication, it might profit her more to keep him a perpetual prisoner—or be rid of him entirely. I felt myself fittingly punished for my selfish decision to cling to Stephen, not for honor or loyalty or his many kindnesses to me but because I thought service a cheap way to win comfort and freedom. My solace was that I had done my master no harm despite my selfishness and I began in good earnest to try to cheer him.

I told Stephen—and it was true—that Matilda was proud, cruel, and thoroughly venomous and that he must not believe all that her messengers were bidden to tell him. I pointed out that Winchester's change of heart might not last long. As soon as Matilda showed him her true character, he would regret bitterly what he had done. But the king would not listen to me and sank deeper and deeper into apathy, wandering listlessly about the hall or sitting silently in his chamber. He no longer even walked on the walls, which was allowed. We were not confined harshly. Mostly we were treated as guests and given much freedom—only certain places in the keep, like the armory, and leaving the inner bailey were forbidden to us.

I could not rouse Stephen, even when toward the end of March, Theobald the archbishop was allowed to visit him to ask his permission to transfer his allegiance to the empress. I stood as usual beside Stephen's chair, but I could not tell whether Stephen even heard the archbishop. The man spoke low; I suppose he was ashamed, as he might well be, for his election was probably the major cause of Winchester's defection. Stephen stared at him, and I pressed the king's shoulder hard enough that he winced and looked at me in protest.

“Say you will consider,” I murmured, bending over him. “Then we can go back to your chamber.”

Stephen repeated my words obediently, and went with me like a sleepwalker, but he had indeed heard Theobald. “Why do you want me to delay?” he asked, standing and staring into the fire. “Does it matter whether I say yes today or tomorrow?”

“You should not say yes at all, my lord,” I urged. “Are you not angry with that creature? You gave him the power he now has. How dare he come and ask permission to change faith! Do not give him that ease of soul! If the highest member of the Church is so weak that he will forswear himself and betray the man who lifted him up from nothing, let him be forsworn before all men's eyes. If that less-than-man has a soul, let it be wrenched and blackened. Do not give away your crown.”

He smiled wearily at me and rested a hand on my shoulder. “Did I not choose him because Waleran said he was weak and I hoped to rule the Church in England as I ruled the realm? Is it not just therefore that this weakling be unable to help me? And why should I complain of one more traitor or try to make his change hard when others change even faster without asking my permission?”

“My lord, listen to me—”

But he shook his head and soon after that he absolved Theobald of his oath to serve him and “graciously” permitted him to swear to the empress instead. Next, I knew, would come the formal abdication, and I was torn between my hope that it would lead to freedom and my fear that it would lead to death. I felt helpless to bring the king to resist, and no longer was sure I should try. Why should I cause him pain when his case was hopeless? And then I wondered if I was so ready to believe the case hopeless because I hoped for freedom once the king yielded his crown. It was no merry treadmill my thoughts went round on, but I never did need to decide what to say or do. The date of the council, which Theobald had told the king, passed, but no triumphant message came from Matilda nor any word of a coronation.

Then one day near the end of April when I was pacing the wall, looking north toward the hills of Wales, beyond which though many miles away lay Ulle, a middle-aged man came and stood in my path. I did not know him, and I did not much like his looks. He had the face of one who has suffered too many disappointments, hard eyes and a thin mouth that turned down at the corners. I almost turned and went the other way, but then I thought it wrong to be so churlish—some of the men in Bristol keep had sought out of kindness to lighten my captivity with talk and invitations to gamble or drink with them—so I nodded at him but without speaking, hoping he would let me pass by.

Instead, he put out his hand to detain me and said, “You are the king's man, are you not?”

“I am,” I said, instantly alert because he had used the word king. The other men in the keep either avoided referring to the king, called him “your master” out of politeness, or named him Lord Stephen.

“I have a word of news for him. Tell him, from Sir Grolier d'Estaple, that the council did not go as the Great Lady desired. Few bishops came and the delegation from London did
not
invite her to come to their city or to be crowned at Westminster. Instead they begged the council to free the king. Moreover, Winchester could not prevent Queen Maud's clerk from reading aloud a letter from her begging the bishops to remember their oaths to King Stephen. It is said that some were much shaken.”

There was no one near enough to hear, and he smiled as he spoke, as if he talked of some light matter. “Thank you,” I said, shaking my head as if denying an invitation. “I will tell him.”

He shrugged to show he had accepted my “refusal,” and we parted, he going on past and I continuing ahead. To tell the truth, the news confused me more than it made me happy. Until now we had heard nothing except what Matilda or Gloucester wanted us to hear. We had been given news of each defection from Stephen's cause to that of Matilda and heard that Hervey Brito had lost Devizes keep to a crowd of common folk and had fled back to Brittany as had Count Alan, who had lost control of Cornwall. I knew, of course, that we would be told only what could lower the king's spirit; nonetheless, over the two months we had been imprisoned, without realizing it, I had begun to believe that the whole country, like so many of his earls, had deserted Stephen without a struggle.

It took me a long time to absorb what I had heard, and part of that time I kept telling myself Sir Grolier was lying, that I did not like his looks, that it was not reasonable that one of Gloucester's men should carry good news to Stephen. I was pacing fast along the wall; when I realized I had gone all the way around, no short distance, and was back where Grolier had spoken to me, I stopped. Then I had to ask myself why I was denying the truth of the news Grolier had brought? The answer was not flattering to me. I resisted because I was, at heart, as bad as the king. I had given up hope, and I did not wish to hear good news because it woke hope in me—and hope hurt.

Then I asked myself whether it was the king's fault or mine that my efforts could not cheer him? The answer was that I had doubtless done the king more harm than good. Now I realized I had always spoken like a beaten man, urging Stephen to stand firm in defeat but never holding out hope that those loyal to him could bring about his restoration. Full of guilt, I now went quickly to the chamber where I had left Stephen lying on his bed and staring into nothing. He was still there, and I shook his arm.

“Thank God you had not gone out into the hall,” I said when he looked at me. “I have good news, my lord.”

“
Good
news?” Stephen echoed.

“One came to me on the wall where none could hear, by name Sir Grolier d'Estaple—”

“Estaple?” Stephen interrupted. “That is near by Boulogne.”

“Can he be the queen's servant?” I breathed and then told the king what Sir Grolier had said about Winchester's council.

“So London has refused her,” Stephen said slowly.

“But is it true, my lord?” I asked uneasily. “Of course, if Sir Grolier is Queen Maud's man…I have never seen him here before that I can remember.”