A Place Beyond Courage (46 page)
‘If you want me to accompany you and add my word to yours, I will do so,’ John said.
Henry ceased chewing and pondered for a moment, then shook his head. ‘Thank you, my lord, but the impact will be greater upon Stephen if I go alone and am seen to be acting of my own will and not under instruction.’
John nodded and felt relieved. He would have gone, but knew there would be consequences, as much from the Empress and Gloucester as from Stephen. Mountains would be made of molehills and loyalty put in question. ‘As you wish, sire,’ he said gracefully.
Meal finished, Henry went off to consult with his men and John went to the bed, drew back the hangings and sat down beside his wife. Hunger briefly sated, William drowsed in her arms. ‘You would make a fine general, my love.’ John handed her his cup to take a drink.
‘I was trying to think of ways of escaping an impossible corner. I remember you saying Stephen was easily swayed by brave gestures and that he could be manipulated. It seemed to me the Prince would have an easier time getting around him than he would the Empress and the Earl of Gloucester.’ She looked at him. ‘Why are you smiling?’
‘Nothing. I was remembering what your brother said about you - that you had a tendency to meddle and that I should nip such behaviour in the bud.’
She put her chin up and John immediately pinched it between forefinger and thumb and kissed her hard on the mouth. ‘I pay little heed to what your brother says. His notions of meddling and mine are somewhat different.’ He rose to his feet and sighed. ‘I suppose I’d better go and talk to Henry’s men and sort out which two I’m going to keep.’
36
Gloucester, October 1147
Robert of Gloucester massaged his temples and frowned at the parchments laid out on the trestle in his chamber as if he was suddenly unsure what they were.
John eyed him and them. He was gathered with other commanders, senior barons and court officials to discuss the latest campaign against Stephen. Robert had led a disappointing sally into Hampshire earlier in the year and was now regrouping for another effort. The general mood was one of grim weariness - not quite exhaustion, but coming close. John could see it in the lined faces, the tight mouths. Humour was absent and tempers short.
‘There are more horses due to arrive,’ John said, indicating a tally stick at Gloucester’s right hand. ‘Thirty from Ireland and a hundred mercenaries. I’ve managed to find stabling and fodder for the horses and a hall for the men, but when they arrive and what condition all are in will depend on the weather in the Hibernian Sea.’
Gloucester nodded and swallowed with difficulty. He had been sneezing for two days and was suffering from a heavy chill. ‘I trust to your efficiency, John.’ His voice was hoarse. ‘Is there any other business? Does anyone wish to speak?’ He glanced around at the others, but matters, it seemed, were finished for the day. Everyone knew their role and had given an accounting of the resources they had and how they were going to deploy them.
Gloucester retired to his chamber with his eldest son. Watching him go, John noticed the heavy step, the pause to gather himself, and thought that the man looked at the end of his tether. He was carrying a weighty burden. They all were, but Gloucester’s load was the greatest.
Patrick slapped John’s arm. ‘A drink before retiring?’ He gestured to a cushioned alcove.
John had a deal to do, but since he functioned on less sleep than most men he was still alert and restless. A woman might have settled him down, but he was not going to conduct business with one of the castle whores under the gaze of his brother-in-law and there were other ways of scratching an itch. ‘Why not?’ he said.
Stephen de Gai was on his way to bed, but paused to speak. ‘I hear you’ve added another son to your tally, FitzGilbert,’ he said. ‘Four boys is a fine number to have, but finding employment for them all is going to be a trial, eh?’
‘Good education and training should see to most of that,’ John replied. ‘Skilled men are always in demand, be it in castle or church. I do not doubt William will make his way in the world as surely as any of the other three.’ He looked wry. ‘If his ability to crawl is any indication, he’s already halfway there.’
De Gai grunted and smiled.
‘Your daughter is well?’
‘Flourishing,’ de Gai replied, ‘and bidding fair to be a beauty. You must send your older boys to visit. Their mother misses them.’
John murmured that he would and the men parted. He would indeed send Gilbert and Walter, but he doubted Aline’s maternal needs were gut-wrenching. They never had been when she had the boys with her all the time. She had shown them affection because they were her gift to the marriage; loved them as symbols of duty fulfilled rather than for themselves. She had never cooed over their cradles, given them suck or dandled them the way Sybilla did with little John and William.
Patrick poured wine. His hair was Sybilla’s colour but with more red in it and his beard, which he had let grow, was a startling shade of auburn. John thought he looked rather like an English peasant but kept it to himself. His brother by marriage was touchily proud on the matter of his native ancestry.
‘So,’ Patrick said as he slid John’s cup across. ‘I’ve been considering what you said about Newbury.’
John drank and waited. He had put the facts before Patrick but not made a great thing of the matter. Patrick was much more receptive to ideas if he believed they were his in the first place.
‘I have no objections,’ Patrick went on. ‘If we have thought about it, then doubtless Stephen will have considered the notion too and rather we should control that road than him.’ He gave John a hard look. ‘Just so that you understand Newbury is a Salisbury manor and not a Marshal one.’
John raised an eyebrow at him. ‘Yes, brother,’ he replied, ‘I understand it clearly.’ It amused him to see how Patrick winced at being called ‘brother’. The feeling was mutual, only he was better at concealing it. He intended remaining on the best terms he could with Patrick, but for the sake of his sons rather than himself. The Salisbury connection would be useful when planning their careers. To be polite he drank a couple of measures with Patrick; he even enjoyed some of the conversation, since the discussion ran to horses, armour and battle tactics, subjects on which they had much in common. Patrick was also curious about the visit John and Sybilla had received from the young Prince Henry in the spring.
‘You wouldn’t have had anything to do with his going to Stephen for succour, would you?’ Patrick enquired as he divided the dregs of the flagon between their two cups.
John shook his head. ‘Nothing whatsoever,’ he said, telling the literal truth. ‘He came to me for lodging and I took on two of his best men who were content to remain in my garrison for regular food and pay. What happened afterwards was none of my doing.’
‘I just wondered. You think I don’t notice, but I know how devious you can be.’
John drank down his wine. ‘Patrick, you only know what I want you to know - and you certainly don’t know your sister at all. I’m going for a piss.’ He rose to his feet, clapped the puzzled younger man on the shoulder and took himself off to the garderobe.
The latrine was already occupied by Robert of Gloucester. He was slumped on the far seat, his body at an angle and his head tilted back. By the flare of the latrine torch, John could see the sweat glistening in the hollow of his throat. His eyes were closed and his breathing stertorous. A smell of vomit hung in the air despite the cold draught from the squint window. John attended to the need of his bladder, readjusted his braies, then went to the Earl. Leaning over him, he felt the heat rising from his skin as if from the coals of a brazier. ‘My lord, you should not be here, you should be abed.’
Gloucester opened his eyes and stared at John blankly out of glazed eyes, then he rallied and struggled to his feet. ‘I can’t take sick now,’ he croaked. ‘Too much to do. I’ll be all right in the morning. The breeze in here . . . it’s cool. Servants fuss too much.’
‘Have you ever known me to fuss?’
‘No. I don’t expect you to start now.’ Gloucester started towards the entrance, staggered and almost collapsed.
John grabbed him and braced him up. ‘Nor will I, my lord.’ He helped him out of the garderobe and to his chamber. As they approached the door, Gloucester insisted he was all right and shrugged John off. ‘Sleep, all I need is sleep,’ he said, ‘but thank you. Don’t let me keep you from your own bed.’
John hesitated, then bowed, turned round and came face to face with a guard and a dusty, mud-spattered monk. Gloucester narrowed his eyes in their direction as if struggling to focus.
‘My lord Earl,’ said the monk, ‘there is news . . . grave news.’
Robert backed and leaned against the wall. ‘Not Stephen . . .’ he rasped. ‘Stephen hasn’t taken . . .’
‘No, my lord - it’s your son . . . Philip. He took sick on the way through Hungary and died at the roadside. I bring you his effects and his request for your blessing and forgiveness.’ The priest held out a ring on the palm of his hand, the shank set with a ruby that gleamed like a dark eye in the torchlight.
Gloucester stared at the ring and then took it with a trembling hand. His throat worked and twitches ran across his face like raindrops striking a pool. ‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘Ah, dear Christ, no!’ His knees buckled. John grabbed him and the guard hastened to his other side. Together they brought him into his chamber, the monk following behind. Gloucester was making crowing noises in his throat that might have been grief, or just the struggle to breathe. His eldest son, who had been asleep, roused from his pallet and came in his chemise and braies to see his father helped into bed. Gloucester’s fist remained tightly clenched around his son’s ring. ‘Philip,’ he gasped. ‘Philip, God forgive me, child.’
‘Send for a physician,’ John snapped at Gloucester’s usher of the chamber. ‘God’s life, he’s burning up.’
William leaned over his father. ‘Sire?’
Gloucester opened hazy eyes. ‘Your brother is dead,’ he said. ‘Philip is dead . . . and I never told him that it wasn’t his fault but mine . . .’
The physician arrived and John left the room. The wine he had drunk had turned to lead in his stomach. Everyone was exhausted, hurting, but if Robert died, it would be a cut so deep that it might prove mortal to the Empress’s entire cause.
37
Hamstead, Berkshire, February 1148
‘Dog,’ William said. For some time he had been trying out different sounds in a babble meaningless to anyone but himself, but on this occasion the word was emphatic, intentional and directed at Doublet who was sitting by the chamber door, pawing it and whining.
Sybilla stared at her son, who was contained in a walking frame, then at Gundred. ‘Did he just say . . .’
‘Dog . . .’ William said again and began scrabbling the frame towards Doublet. ‘Dog . . . Dub . . .’ The rest of the word failed him. ‘Dog!’ he said again, louder, arm outstretched, finger pointing.
Sybilla laughed and clapped her hands. ‘Oh, aren’t you a clever boy!’ She went to lift him from the frame and into her arms. ‘Yes, dog!’ He was almost ten months old, a sunny, sturdy infant, good-natured but determined and fiercely energetic. She and her women dared not turn their backs for a moment or he would be into mischief. He would soon be walking, and was a swift, adept crawler, covering the length of the bower at an unbelievable speed. Yesterday she had had to stop him from eating the charcoal in the brazier basket, unravel him from the tangle he had made of a skein of wool, and had been just in time to prevent him from pulling a dangling cloth off a trestle and braining himself with the ewer standing on it. His older brother had added the word ‘pest’ to his own vocabulary and used it frequently with reference to William. Young John was currently sitting on his mother’s bed, well out of William’s reach, playing with his wooden animals.
Sybilla opened the door for Doublet, thinking the bitch wanted to relieve herself, although she had already had a walk around Hamstead’s slushy, freezing yard once that morning. The hound clattered down the steps and began to bark, her tail wagging furiously and her eyes fixed on the gate as the guards slid back the draw bar. Sybilla’s heart began to pound. ‘Your papa’s home,’ she said to William and felt a jolt of mingled excitement and apprehension.
John and his troop clattered into the yard in a mist of white vapour from breath and hard-ridden horses. ‘Dog!’ William declared, excitedly opening and closing his hand in a gesture towards his father’s stallion. Doublet had flung across the ward to greet her master and, as John dismounted, she threw herself at him, twisting and wriggling, frantic to lick him while John laughed at her efforts and fended her off.
‘I don’t know what it is about you and women,’ Sybilla said with a shake of her head as she joined him. ‘They all turn to wantons in your presence!’
He smiled at her and removing his helm, pushed down his coif and arming cap. He had grown his hair longer over the bitter winter season and it curled around his ears, darker than its bleached summer gold. A tawny hint of beard gleamed along his jawline. He looked her slowly up and down. ‘Is that so?’
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