Bone of Contention (45 page)

Bell laughed, harsh and humorless. “I am the bishop of Winchester’s knight. He trusts me—yes, but only to wield my sword as he directs. He would not take my advice if I offered it, and I am not likely to offer advice so much against common sense and decency.”

“You mean it would be more decent for the king to wait until Robert of Gloucester landed and Salisbury used those castles he has stuffed and garnished for war to overthrow the anointed king? Stephen was
anointed
king and his claim to the throne was validated by the pope only three months ago.”

“No one has challenged his right to the throne!”

William’s expression was bleak. “No one has challenged the right of the bishop of Salisbury to be a bishop. The king may change the officers of his realm at his own will. When a man leaves his office, he must return to the king what he held from the king during that office. That is all that has happened. All. Will you tell the bishop of Winchester so much in my name?”

Bell relaxed, nodded. “If I may use your name and say you bade me say those words, I will—”

“Thank you.” William nodded at him, then turned his head to look at Magdalene. “Remember, Chick, six for the evening meal. Tell the whoremistress to keep five girls for us. I do not know if anyone will be in a temper fit for using a woman, but if inquiries are made, the whoremistress will be able to say that those girls were with those men.”

Having said that, he walked right past her, opened the door, at which two men were standing guard, and went out. Magdalene dropped her head and let out a long sigh.
William at his worst,
she thought, and then felt guilty because she knew his mind was occupied with half a dozen other things…and it was William who faced assaulting the bishops’ keeps and taking them if Salisbury and his nephews did not yield.

“Five girls?” Bell’s voice was choked, “Then he intends to sleep with you!”

“I doubt any of the men will be bothering with women tonight,” Magdalene said tiredly, although she was reasonably sure that William probably would stay the night. She was glad she had cried herself out during the day. Her eyes were dry now, although she feared what was coming.

“He does not even care that this whorehouse might be marked by the concourse of great men suddenly coming to it? There is an alehouse full of men-at-arms right next door. They could easily be paid or driven to attack this place.”

“He cares, but he is busy now trying to keep everyone quiet until their first fine fury subsides and they have time to think.

Once men begin to think, they are less likely to fly to arms. And as for the men-at-arms next door, they are more likely to come to the aid of the Soft Nest than to attack it. Please do not worry about me. I am too insignificant to be a target.”

“You are known as William of Ypres’s woman—and if you were not before, you will be now. There will be those who think you can tell them what he plans. There will be those who will think he can be constrained by holding you hostage.” He put out a pleading hand. “Come with me. Do you fear he will turn on you if you do not obey him?”

“No.”

That was not completely true. William might indeed punish her if she went with Bell, not for disobedience but for betrayal. But she was not staying out of fear of William. Partly she was staying because William needed her, trusted her so completely that he used neither bribes nor threats to keep her in Oxford even though he must have known that Bell would urge her to leave. And partly she was staying because if she went with Bell, she would be his and only his in her own mind and heart, and she did not believe she could survive the pain when he called her whore and turned away from her.

“Then why?” Bell cried.

She could not tell him her fears and listen to his easy assurances that he would never think of her as a whore and drive her away. Sooner or later, he would. So instead she said, “Because I love William, too. Because he needs me more than you do right now.”

“You said you owed him. You said nothing of love…” He choked and began to wrap his gambeson and armor back into the leather.

She saw what he was doing and tears stung her eyes but she did not let them fall. “When you owe a man as much as I owe William and do not hate him with every fiber of your being…why, then you love him. You should have known that without my telling you. I do not love him as…as I love you, Bell, but love him I do, and I will stand by him and give him whatever help he will take with my body or my wits or my very soul—whether he asks it of me or not—as long as he needs me.”

Bell’s face was white gray and looked as if it were carved of granite. “Fare thee well, Magdalene,” he said. “May only good befall you and may the Merciful Mother keep you.” And he picked up the untidy bundle of armor and went out of the room.

For a long time Magdalene stood looking at the closed door. She knew that whether the bishop of Winchester sent him back to Oxford or not, she would not see Bell again. She did not weep, she had done her weeping already. Finally she went out and asked Florete for another stool. William might not want to sit in the high chair if he intended to cajole Salisbury’s friends so she would need an extra stool, unless she wanted to stand. Then she scrubbed the table and put out the cups she had bought and the flagon of wine.

When William’s guests began to arrive, she smiled at each with apparent pleasure, extending a graceful hand in welcome, lowering her lids over her eyes in modest acceptance of the compliments about her beauty from those who did not know her. She served the wine, then the food. Once the serious talk began, she sighed and looked utterly bored, retreating to a corner and coming forward only to refill cups as needed. She started with well-simulated surprise when one of the men spoke to her and again when another asked her what she thought.

She laughed then, making clear that she was totally indifferent to what they said to each other.

Much later, when the guests were all gone either to their lodgings or to the women waiting for them and she was lying beside William, whose breathing had deepened into sleep rhythms, tears began to trickle down her face again and an occasional sob shook her. A heavy arm fell across her and gathered her close.

“Not to worry, Chick,” William murmured sleepily. “He’ll be back. Can’t remember how many times I swore I’d be done with you, that I was a fool to trust a whore. Well, I was wrong about that, but I didn’t know it then. Came back anyway. So will he.”

Political infighting in the reign of King Stephen might not have been
quite
as complicated as that in the early twenty-first century, but in many ways it was more interesting because it was less a matter of vague, faceless corporate and national interests and more driven by individual personalities. For those who are interested, or only confused by the personal relationships and conflicts, I hope this author’s note will be of help.

A very brief summary of the history of England from the conquest to the beginning of Stephen’s reign was given in the Author’s Note to my previous book,
A Personal Devil.
Here I hope to explain the events that led up to Stephen’s dismissal of the bishop of Salisbury and his kin from the highest offices of the country.

The Council at Oxford in June of 1139 was a turning point in the reign of King Stephen, who had not been the one and only possible heir to the throne of England when he succeeded King Henry I. King Henry’s only legitimate son, William the Aethling, had drowned in a crossing of the English Channel on 25 November, 1120. His death left three contenders with varying claims.

First and foremost was Henry’s daughter Matilda, to whom King Henry had forced the barons to swear fealty in 1126, however, Matilda was a woman, and of less importance but still significant, she had a strong and unpleasant personality. Second was his eldest illegitimate son, Robert of Gloucester, who was deeply respected and admired by many of the barons of England, but Robert was a bastard, and his strong sense of honor restrained him from pushing his claim. Finally there was Stephen of Blois, a nephew greatly favored by the king, who always treated him like a son. Stephen had been raised mostly in the English Court, had been richly endowed with lands by his uncle, and was known and liked by much of the nobility.

When Henry I died, Matilda made no move to seize her inheritance. Robert of Gloucester dutifully remained with Henry’s body to see him decently interred. Stephen set out from Boulogne as soon as he heard of his uncle’s death, and after being refused permission to land at Dover and repulsed at Canterbury—both of which owed homage to Robert of Gloucester—he sailed up the Thames to London. There he was enthusiastically received. He promised the Londoners that he would “gird himself with all his might to pacify the kingdom for the benefit of them all.” (John T, Appleby,
The Troubled Reign of King Stephen 1135-1154.
New York, Barnes and Noble Books, 1995, page 22.)

Meanwhile Henry, bishop of Winchester, who was also Stephen’s younger brother, was hard at work convincing William Pont de l’Arche, the keeper of Henry I’s treasure, to welcome Stephen into Winchester Castle, which he did. Equally important, Henry convinced Roger, bishop of Salisbury, King Henry’s chief justiciar, to accept Stephen. Salisbury was King Henry’s most trusted servant, he had been left as regent in England when Henry had cause to travel abroad. When Salisbury acknowledged Stephen’s claim to the throne, many of the nobility followed his lead. Moreover Salisbury and the bishop of Winchester joined forces to convince William of Corbeil, the archbishop of Canterbury, to crown Stephen king. Once anointed, to the medieval mind whether his was the best claim or not, Stephen
was
king.

Thus, with the crown, King Stephen inherited the bishop of Salisbury, who was of course confirmed in all his honors and possessions. Salisbury had held great power for a long time and had, as was the custom of the time, elevated his relatives to positions of power. Thus his nephew Nigel was bishop of Ely and the king’s Treasurer, and his son, Roger le Poer (because he wasn’t yet a bishop), was the king’s Chancellor. Among them they controlled the entire government of England. Salisbury had also, with King Henry’s approval—and sometimes when the king was abroad without specific approval but with his trust and concurrence—appointed most of the sheriffs, who ran the governments of the individual shires. Thus, indirectly, Salisbury also influenced the local governments.

The advantage of this inheritance to Stephen was that there was no disruption at all in the government of England when he became king. The disadvantage was that Stephen—no administrative genius—had not the faintest idea of how the realm was governed. Over the first few years of Stephen’s reign, the advantages of the inheritance far outweighed the disadvantages. There were minor rebellions of nobles who were dissatisfied with Stephen’s failure to right what they considered their wrongs, and there was an invasion by the Scots, whose king had sworn to support Matilda as queen and used that oath as an excuse to attempt a seizure of English territory.

Dealing with these matters was of prime importance, and Stephen managed them for the most part satisfactorily so that his grip on the country became more secure. Perhaps, as more and more of the barons gave him oaths of fealty, he began to believe that the machinery of government, which he did not understand, was unimportant.

Nor, in truth, did the king have time, even had he been willing, to learn the intricacies of government. There were problems abroad, in Normandy, and those were not concluded so satisfactorily. One of Stephen’s favorites, the leader of his Flemish mercenaries, William of Ypres, tried to rid Stephen of Robert of Gloucester (the second claimant to the throne), but the attempt at ambush failed, multiplied Stephen’s problems, and cost William of Ypres much of the king’s confidence.

William of Ypres was not Stephen’s only favorite. The king had also reestablished relationships that had weakened over the years while he was away from England after his marriage to Matilda of Boulogne. The strongest of these relationships was with Waleran, count of Meulan, head of the great Norman family of Beaumont. Waleran was clever and a good soldier, but self-seeking and very ambitious. He too had a family whose power he wished to extend, but one prime favorite stood in his way. The man closest to the king was his brother, Henry, bishop of Winchester, who had done so much to win the throne for him.

In 1136, William of Corbeil, the archbishop of Canterbury who had anointed Stephen king, died. Henry, bishop of Winchester (and most of the other bishops of England) expected that the king would appoint him to that position at once, but he did not. It was possible that Stephen realized his brother was cleverer than he, and Henry certainly had a stronger personality. It was not impossible that Stephen feared if Henry became archbishop of Canterbury, ruler of the Church of England, that there would be two kings in the realm, and the archbishop would be the stronger. Still,
Stephen could not appoint any other English bishop without a violent breach with his brother, not to mention that there was not another English bishop equally fitted for the office.

Thus the archbishopric was kept vacant for two years and then, in December of 1138, Theobald, abbot of Bec, was elected to the office when Henry had been conveniently involved in Church business at a distance. Theobald had only been abbot of Bec for two years and was virtually unknown—except by Waleran de Meulan, who was the lay patron of Bec. Was it too much to suspect that Waleran had proposed Theobald to Stephen, and that Theobald’s primary qualification for the office was that he was
not Henry?

There is no hard evidence one way or the other, but the appointment of Theobald accomplished one thing that Waleran must have desired. It opened a gulf between the brothers, Henry was angry and bitter, Stephen felt guilty. The ease and confidence that had existed between them was gone. Henry was no longer the first advisor to the king.

Other problems had also arisen. William of Ypres’s action in Normandy had borne bitter fruit. Robert of Gloucester, who had actually sworn fealty to Stephen in 1136, withdrew that fealty in June 1138. And in 1139, Matilda at last began to move against Stephen. She appealed to the pope against Stephen, who she said had not only committed perjury in violating his oath to receive her as heir to King Henry, but had usurped the throne as well.