Lady of the English (24 page)

“I thought I was too late,” he told her as he brought the items to her chamber. “They were gone from the abbey treasury when I arrived in Rouen, but Queen Adeliza had them safe in her keeping and she was glad to give them to me. She said you and your son were the rightful owners, no matter what was decided, and that no one else should have them.” He made a face. “She gave them to me in her private chamber and bade me leave straight away. I had to hasten from the city as the gates were closing for the night, but the queen gave me a letter of safe conduct with the old king’s counterseal and the guards accepted it. I rode all night, changed horses, and rode again all day to get myself clear.”

Matilda ran her hands over the polished, embossed leather of the casings. “You have done well,” she said. “I was unsure if you would succeed.” She swallowed a knot of emotion. “I am grateful to Adeliza. It can have been no easy task to obtain these from the treasury in the first place, and there will be repercussions…”

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“She has sent you letters,” Reynald said. “I have them in my satchel.” He gave her an eloquent look. “They are going to offer England and Normandy to Theobald of Blois. They were talking about it in Rouen as if they had already decided.”

“They?” Matilda raised her brows.

Reynald dropped his gaze. “The archbishop of Rouen, the Earl of Leicester, Waleran de Meulan, and…our brother Robert.”

The words were like a blow to her solar plexus. “Not Robert,” she said.

“I do not believe he had much choice,” Reynald looked miserable. Matilda felt sick. Not for the first time she wished she could crush to dust these men who thought her a lesser being. Even her own brother, her supposed backbone, was prepared to turn away from her.

She unfastened the straps on the nearest leather casing. Inside lay the hinged panels of the imperial crown she had brought back from Germany. As Matilda touched the great ruby set in the front section, Warrin Algason arrived, his chest heaving from his run up the turret stairs. “Domina, sire!” He sketched a swift bow. “I have news. Stephen, Count of Mortain, has claimed the throne of England and been handed the treasury by the bishop of Winchester.”

Matilda felt the initial jolt of the words, but the impact was not colossal because she had braced herself to receive just such tidings. Ever since the death of le Clito, Stephen had been her closest rival for the throne, and the faction that gathered around him had long been ready to pounce. While she had been playing a waiting game and arguing over these castles, they too had been biding their time, but closer to the hub of the wheel, and so secretively organised that even Theobald, head of the Blois family, had been kept in ignorance. Having assembled the crown, she held it between her hands as she had done in Germany. “So,”

she said, “I am brought a diadem, but no country.”

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“If we muster swiftly and ride north, we can nip this thing in the bud.” Reynald’s young voice cracked with eagerness.

Matilda shook her head. “It is too late for that. If Stephen has indeed claimed the throne and has access to the treasury, he is already too strong.” Distaste entered her expression. “He will buy men and goodwill with my father’s wealth, but when it is all squandered, they will abandon him.” She stood the crown on top of the case. “What we must do is bide our time and make ready.”

When Reynald had gone, she summoned her scribe and while he prepared his inks and parchment she showed Henry the imperial crown and the one from the second case of filigree and gold flowers. “One day these will be yours as king of England and Duke of Normandy. This I swear to you, my son.”

The vow was a lifeline to hope, but it was one thing to swear an oath, another to bring it to fruition. She had found the first strand of grey in her hair last night as she combed it and wondered how many more there would be before she was an anointed queen.

ttt

It was very late when Matilda eventually retired. Her new pregnancy was making her nauseous, and her eyes were sore because she had been awake for too long, and had held back too many tears. She was exhausted but too keyed up to sleep.

She had drafted letters to allies and vassals, to the pope, to her uncle King David…to Brian. The wording would need to be considered and altered, but they were begun. Now, propped against a pile of pillows and bolsters, she opened the letter Adeliza had enclosed with the crowns.

The message was in Adeliza’s own hand, and although she used the formal language of the queen of England, there were clear indications of the suffering woman beneath. Matilda had been unable to cry for herself or for her father, but now the dry 186

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burning of her eyes became a flood of scalding tears and she had to set the letter aside as drops fell upon the ink and smudged the words.

By the grace of God and because it was the right thing to do, Adeliza was sending her these crowns. She wrote of her grief at Henry’s death and wished she could have been a better wife in the time allotted. She wrote that for the sake of Henry’s soul and her own, she intended to go to Wilton and live there in retirement, perhaps eventually to take vows.

“He did not deserve you,” Matilda said, wiping her eyes on the heel of her hand. “Why do you not see your own worth?”

She was angry with Adeliza for choosing the path of retreat and contemplation, because it was not an option open to herself, even had she desired it, and she was furious with her father.

And grieving, too, because now she would never be able to tell him what she thought, or show him that she was more capable of ruling than any son he had begotten.

She picked the letter up again and looked at the smeared writing that moments ago had been so delicate and clear.

Adeliza would hate to see it in this state. Matilda folded the parchment and set it on her bedside coffer. Her stepmother might retire to a nunnery, but she was still a dowager queen.

She was still young, and grief was not everything. Grief was just the moment before you tied off the thread and began the next one. That was when you made your choice about what you were going to sew next.

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Twenty-two

Reading Abbey, Berkshire, January 1136

S tanding upright, swathed in his fur-lined cloak, Brian breathed shallowly through his open mouth. The cold weather and the heavy perfume of incense did not mask the aroma of decay emanating from the coffin shrouded in purple silk standing before the altar of Reading Abbey. The lead seals confining the liquefying body of the former king were not secure and foulsome black ooze seeped from one edge. A bowl had been placed under the damaged corner and now and again a drip plinked into the basin. Henry had been dead for over a month. In Rouen he had been eviscerated and his bowels interred in the cathedral. His body had been packed with salt and wrapped in a bull’s hide, then sealed in the coffin and brought to England when the wind eventually turned fair for a crossing. Two months in which the salt had drawn fluids from the body and now the dreadful brine solution was dripping into a bowl on the floor of Reading Abbey while the archbishop of Canterbury conducted the funeral mass.

Stephen wore the crown that had been set upon his head a fortnight ago at Westminster, and bore himself with regal dignity. He had set his shoulder to the bier and helped to carry the coffin into the abbey church. Henry, bishop of Winchester, and Roger, bishop of Salisbury, each wore embellished robes LadyofEnglish.indd 188

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worth a small barony. Their faces were solemn too, but, as with many gathered here, aglow with an underlying smugness that was almost as distasteful as the stench emanating from the coffin.

There was no doubt in Brian’s mind that Stephen had stolen the crown of England and the duchy of Normandy, although like everyone else he had bent his knee and sworn his fealty despite feeling sickened. Henry’s corpse had still been warm when Stephen had taken ship from Wissant and made his bid for the throne, and if it had not been pre-planned, Brian would eat his red leather boots, silver laces and all.

Stephen’s speed had been such that his acquisition of England had become a fact before anyone had had a chance to think. The Londoners had supported him to the hilt, as had the citizens of Winchester. Canterbury and Dover had closed their gates, but only until they realised that Stephen had gained access to the treasury at Winchester. Hugh Bigod had sworn on his soul that he had heard Henry absolve his barons of their oaths to Matilda on his deathbed, but Brian did not believe it because that was not Henry’s way. He suspected Henry had not said anything, because he was still clinging to power with his final breath.

Henry’s sudden death had caused the ground to heave up beneath Brian. He had had no choice but to give his fealty to Stephen because everyone else had done so and there was no one with whom to ally. The king of Scots was too far removed to be of immediate help, and Matilda herself was far away in Anjou. What use was rebelling for a cause that had no head, and no direction? He could not talk matters over with Robert of Gloucester because he was still in Normandy. Robert was not in open rebellion, but neither had he come to court to bend the knee at Stephen’s throne.

Once the former king had been lowered into his tomb before the altar, the mourners and attendees processed solemnly out of the abbey into the raw January day.

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Waleran de Meulan paused at Brian’s side and gave him a calculating look. “Well,” he said in a quiet voice, his breath making swift, short clouds in the air, “the business is finished now and we can move on with a new reign. I for one am glad to be out of there. The embalmers did a poor job of hiding the corruption of the world.”

“He deserved better,” Brian said.

De Meulan shrugged. “It hardly matters now, does it?”

“It always matters, my lord. We owe respect and the correct duty to a man whether he be living or dead.” De Meulan annoyed Brian. There was friction between them going back to de Meulan’s house arrest at Wallingford, and in the years since then, their antipathy had continued apace. Waleran and his twin brother were keen to monopolise the king’s ear and anyone not of their faction was already being forced out to the edges and isolated.

Waleran wrapped his hands around his belt and thrust out one foreleg in a dominant pose. “It must be difficult for you,” he said.

“You have no kin in England to rely on, beyond those belonging to your wife, and none of them are worth the time and trouble.”

He shot Brian a malicious look. “You have no heirs and the lands King Henry bestowed on you were in right of your marriage.

They were in the king’s gift, and what was given might be taken away again should a vassal prove disloyal to his sovereign lord.”

“Your meaning?” Brian said icily. “Let us have it out in the open, my lord.”

Waleran shrugged. “My meaning is obvious, FitzCount.

You may be a scion of the house of Brittany, but, like my lord of Gloucester, you are bastard born and you, even more than he, depended on the largesse of the king for your power. He raised you up from the dust and to the dust you could return.”

Brian was sickened. “So could any man.”

“Some more than others.” With a nod of his head, Waleran 190

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joined his twin brother, Robert de Beaumont, and Hugh Bigod, who was swaggering like a plump cockerel. Brian stood alone for a moment, and thus Waleran’s point about isolation was emphasised. However, moments later, he was joined by Miles FitzWalter, the castellan of Hereford, a tough, pragmatic border warlord.

“De Meulan should watch his step,” Miles said amiably.

“Those who walk with their heads in the air usually don’t see the shit on the ground until they tread in it.”

Brian grunted with reluctant amusement. “You noticed it too, my lord?”

“One always has to be wary of factions at court,” Miles replied.

“If I were you, I would put in appearances when necessary and find reasons to spend time on your lands.”

Brian nodded. “I have thought for a while that I should attend more to my affairs at Wallingford. The buildings need supervision and repair and my wife complains that she never sees me.” He had to swallow a grimace at that. “What of your own affairs, my lord?”

Miles rumpled his thinning sandy hair and gave a taut smile.

“Being a soldier, I like to know all is in order. Sometimes you have to strike swiftly, as our new king has admirably demonstrated, and sometimes it is wise to be cautious. My lord of Gloucester is doing the latter just now.” He glanced in the direction of Stephen, who was flanked by the Beaumont brothers, Bigod, and the bishops of Salisbury and Winchester.

“But he will have to come to terms one way or the other. For myself, I will wait and see what kind of king has been bought for us while I mourn the passing of a truly great sovereign. I doubt you or I will see his like again in our lifetime.”

ttt

“Madam,” the nun said, and gestured through the open door into the chamber that had been prepared.

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Adeliza gazed round as she stepped over the threshold. The room was sparse, but sufficient to her needs, and it was clean.

A smell of fresh limewash filled the air and when she touched the wall, the paint came away on her fingertips in a moist white smudge. Braziers had been lit to warm the room and aromatic smoke curled gently towards the rafters. The bed had a rope frame and a down mattress covered with a close-woven linen sheet, a bolster and two large, soft pillows. This was all she needed. Somewhere tranquil to retreat and pray and come to terms with the vast changes in her life.