A Place Beyond Courage (42 page)
‘Christ, boy, what’s all this?’ Robert demanded, looking round at the torchlit chaos of men and horses. ‘Is there trouble?’
Philip’s throat worked.
‘Is Stephen close by? Do we need to prepare for siege?’
Philip shook his head. ‘It’s nothing like that, Father, I wish it was.’ He swallowed. ‘I . . . Is there some wine?’
Robert narrowed his eyes at his son, looked around at the men, exchanged glances with John, then, with a brusque nod, brought Philip to the private apartment beyond the hall. When John made to take his leave, Robert bade him remain. ‘You’re the Empress’s marshal,’ he said. ‘When my son arrives in the middle of the night with wounded and dead men in his tail, these are matters that may concern you.’
John nodded and sat down before the hearth. Philip, despite the fact he was almost ready to fall down, remained standing. Robert handed him a cup of wine. ‘Tell me,’ he said. ‘What has happened?’
Philip took a drink, but his swallow was forced. ‘There wasn’t anything we could have done,’ he said in a rusty voice that didn’t belong to a youngster of one and twenty. ‘They were all over us. Rather than lose all the men, I decided it was best to withdraw and replenish while I still had the option.’
Robert’s expression hardened. ‘I take it you were routed by Stephen’s men.’
Philip lowered his voice. ‘We received a drubbing,’ he said.
‘And why did you come here to lick your wounds and not to Faringdon?’ Robert’s voice was soft and dangerous now. John’s nape prickled.
‘Because . . .’ Philip raised the hand not holding the cup and rubbed his face, ‘because it was at Faringdon they took us. We couldn’t sustain the onslaught. We had no choice but to surrender to them.’
John hissed softly through his teeth. Faringdon had cost a great deal of money to build and was strategic to Robert’s campaign in the Thames valley. The Earl said nothing, although his cheeks and jaw tightened to show taut grooves of muscle. The silence from him filled the room like air inflating a bladder balloon to bursting point.
‘You whore!’ Robert exploded at his son. ‘Do you know what you have done in selling it to Stephen?’ He took a step forward, fists clenched, and struck at the young man.
Philip blocked the descending blow on his raised forearm. ‘I had no choice. There were too many of them. Would you rather we had all died?’
‘At least I would have been proud!’ Robert snarled, braced against his son. ‘What use are you to me when I lean on you and you break in two?’ He pushed himself away and turned his back, his chest heaving.
Philip was white with shock. ‘You don’t understand.’
Robert whipped round. ‘I understand that you relinquished your charge of Faringdon without so much as an appeal for aid. You were in a strong position. You had the security of a stout palisade around you. You could have withstood a siege for at least two months; you had the supplies. I understand all that. What I do not understand is why you left it?’
‘We had to,’ Philip said in a voice that shook. ‘They were coming at us from all sides and over the top. We couldn’t hope to hold them. It was either surrender or death.’
‘Then death should have been your choice. You should have stood! I never thought I would have a coward for a son!’
‘I am no coward, as well you know, and I will not have you call me one.’ The young man jutted his jaw.
‘What I see standing before me is a coward,’ Robert said through bared teeth. ‘Get out of my sight.’
Trembling, Philip drank up, slammed his goblet down on the board and strode out without looking back.
Robert stared at the door as it banged shut behind the young man. Cursing, he strode back and forth across the room like a caged lion. ‘Christ, how could he lose Faringdon? How?’
John looked at him sombrely. He was shocked by what he had just witnessed. Robert’s troubles were mountainous and a new range of them had just surged out of the ground with Philip’s failure to hold Faringdon, but to react thus showed how close to the edge Robert was. ‘Inexperience,’ he said flatly.
‘He’s a fledged soldier; he’s been in the thick of battle before.’
‘But not commanding a keep against a determined foe without senior commanders backing him up. He’s only one and twenty.’
‘Would you have yielded? I doubt it.’
‘At that age I can’t say what I would have done. Made mistakes, certainly.’
Robert flashed John a belligerent look. ‘You think I was too hard on him?’
‘I wouldn’t interfere between you and him. He lost Faringdon and he’s let you down but he feels he has let himself down even more.’
Robert tightened his jaw. ‘That is no mitigation. I can’t trust him ever again; I can’t rely on him.’ He let out a hard sigh. ‘It’s late and I’d rather have my own company to think about this. I’ll see you in the morning. We’re going to have to sort out what to do next with Faringdon gone.’
John rose to his feet. He said nothing because there was nothing to say that would help the situation. He briefly gripped Gloucester’s shoulder and left in silence.
Outside, he discovered that Philip had not just removed himself from his father’s sight, but from Wallingford itself, taking his sound knights with him and heading for his other keep at Cricklade. Brian FitzCount had appeared, belatedly summoned from his bed and looking bleary and rumpled.
‘What’s been happening?’ he asked
John gave him a succinct résumé. ‘Faringdon lost and the Earl and his son estranged. It’s not a good night’s news.’
FitzCount looked morose. ‘And Faringdon’s only thirty miles from here,’ he said. ‘I had better look to my own walls.’
32
Devizes, Christmas 1145
Across the room, John watched Sybilla talking to the Empress. The latter’s smile was unaccustomedly warm as she listened to what Sybilla was saying.
‘I swear that wife of yours could charm the birds out of the trees,’ remarked Gloucester, joining him.
‘More than that, she could charm the feathers off them too,’ John answered, quietly proud.
‘You sound like a man besotted.’
John waved the comment aside as if it were nothing, but in fact it struck close to the truth.
Sybilla had wanted to come to the Empress’s court at Devizes for the Christmas season. Their son at nine months old was now being suckled by a wet nurse and taking weaning foods, so was not dependent on her. John had been unsure about bringing her into his domain, but she had had ways of persuasion that were below the belt in all senses of the word. Now he was glad he’d capitulated for she was proving an asset. She knew how to handle people and possessed a natural warmth that put folk at their ease. She was skilled at drawing smiles and confidences from the reluctant and taciturn and moved through the world of the court with the glide of an accomplished veteran, rather than a stumbling newcomer. Even the Empress, who was hard to please and not always fond of other women, had warmed to her.
With Matilda, Sybilla had been deferential but not obsequious, adopting a grave air that had almost made John splutter because of the incongruity. Then the smile had left his face as he was struck by an epiphanic moment of deeper emotion that had lodged like a soft ball of light at his core. He suddenly realised that what he had on his hands was not just a delightful, sunny-natured girl who was as keen to be tumbled as he was to tumble her, but a fiercely intelligent woman, subtle and complex. Still innocent, still open-hearted, but no one’s fool and equally not one to suffer fools gladly.
‘There has been no word from my son,’ Gloucester said abruptly, breaking into John’s fond contemplation. ‘Cricklade might as well be on the other side of the world.’
Making an effort, John gathered his wits and faced the Earl. New lines of worry dragged at the latter’s mouth corners and his eyes were sad and tired. ‘Can you not send word to him?’
Robert sighed and looked older than ever. ‘Many times I have sat down to write to him and just as many have I risen again. I will not beg his forgiveness because he should have held, but I put more on him than he was capable of achieving and that is my fault. I shouldn’t have listened to him at the outset but trusted to my own judgement and not given him command of the place. If I was harsh, it was out of my own disappointment that my flesh and blood had failed.’
‘If you want to see him, one of you must build a bridge. Perhaps he too has sat down to write and then abandoned the issue.’
Robert nodded and agreed, but John sensed a withdrawal in him. He knew the answer but he didn’t want to accept it. ‘But is it the coward who breaks first, or the strong? Ah John, I tell you I am weary of this. I have a campaign to plan, and my heart sinks at the thought. But if I don’t, who will? Too many give me the support they would not give to my sister.’
Later, John strolled back to his lodging house with Sybilla. The air was sharp with frost and the night aglitter with stars. Across the ward, the porter was sitting in his shelter, warming his hands and feet at his brazier.
‘The Empress told me you are a fine man,’ Sybilla said with a sidelong smile.
John snorted. ‘Words are all very well, but I do not suppose she offered you lands and riches to go with them?’
Sybilla nudged his ribs. ‘Don’t be so sour,’ she reprimanded. ‘Talking to her now will reap future reward, and why should one not converse for the pleasure of doing so? She gave me a brooch and a silk veil which she need not have done. And she asked after our boys.’ She gave a thoughtful frown. ‘I think she finds it difficult to show her gentler side lest folk take it for weakness, but she does have one. When she looks at Brian FitzCount she softens like kindled wax.’
‘It’s an affair of long standing,’ he said.
Her eyes widened.
‘Ah no, not like that. If they ever took each other to bed, they’d set the sheets afire, but they’re both careful of status and propriety; they know what’s at stake. The closest they come to adultery is what you have seen and remarked upon.’
‘I pity them,’ she murmured.
‘Don’t,’ he said. ‘They don’t pity themselves any more than I pity myself for my blind eye and scarring.’
Their conversation was stopped by a pounding on the gate. The porter left his brazier and, with cloak bundled about his body, went to enquire and then pull the bolt. A messenger rode through the postern opening and dismounted from his tired courser. On seeing John and recognising him as a royal official, he came to him and bowed. ‘My lord, I have messages for the Empress and the Earl of Gloucester.’
‘Urgent news?’ John held out his hand for the letters.
The messenger nodded. ‘Earl Robert’s son, the lord Philip, has given his oath to King Stephen and handed him the keep at Cricklade . . . He is ravaging the lands he had a remit to protect.’
John looked down at the packets he was holding and a blank look settled over his face. He dismissed the messenger to the stables and turned back to face the keep. Sybilla laid her hand on his sleeve. ‘Oh John.’ She caught her lower lip in her teeth.
‘Go to bed,’ he told her. ‘Don’t wait up on me; I may be a while . . . If you want to spare pity for anyone, then do it for Robert of Gloucester and his son.’
33
Salisbury, July 1146
In response to the fall of Edessa, a new crusade had been called. King Louis of France had announced he would join its ranks and take an army to the Holy Land, together with his young Queen, the vivacious Eleanor, Duchess of Aquitaine. The news had reached England’s shores and in every church, cathedral, manor and castle, at every market cross, the word was proclaimed and the cry went out for soldiers to cease fighting their fellow Christians, abandon their petty warring, renounce their sins and head for the Holy Land.
Bishop Joscelin preached a stirring sermon in Salisbury Cathedral, hands outspread and palmed with light from the great painted window at his back. Standing beside John in the nave, Sybilla could feel the tension rippling through her husband. He was like a mettlesome horse just waiting the prick of the spur. She was concerned about how strongly the crusading ideal might strike into a warrior’s heart. It wasn’t just the absolution from sin that mattered, nor the idea of fighting for one’s faith; it was the notion of adventure and pastures new. By his very nature, John was bound to be attracted. Patrick had a gleam in his eye too. He stood with arms folded, head thrown back, listening attentively. Several Templar knights populated the congregation - austere, hard-jawed warrior monks. She had noticed the men giving them admiring glances. It was one thing to be exhorted to join the crusade by a village priest; quite another to be harangued by a bishop and seasoned knights bearing a fierce glamour about their persons. She could see Gilbert and Walter drinking it in too and thanked God they were still children. Women exchanged rueful, worried glances with each other. The Queen of France might be bound Amazon-like on the expedition, but few women present in Salisbury Cathedral were eager to follow her lead or relinquish their men.
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