SirenSong (13 page)

“No, of course not. I am sorry for it but I do not think
Savoy would stay now even if Henry could offer him Canterbury. He was hurt,
much hurt by the behavior of the nobles and the clergy. I blame myself in part.
I tried to explain, but perhaps my own feelings showed and I may have made
matters worse instead of better.”

“There is no blame to you, and I am not sure I
am
sorry the queen’s uncle goes,” William remarked. “In himself, Savoy is a good
man, but there is so much murmuring against ‘this horde of foreigners’…even at
Wallingford I heard it. No, do not shake your head, Richard. These are the
lesser men, men like me, some of them your own vassals, others in the retinues
of the other earls. They would not speak to you, but to me they do.”

“What the devil do they mean, foreigners? I am Angevin and
Poitevin and Angoulême. You are Norman—”

“Mostly, with a few other strains but that is not what I
meant. We were both born here in England and our main interest and heritage is
here in this land. Even in little things… Do you not speak English, Richard?”

“Of course. These people are so stubborn about learning French
one cannot deal with an artisan or stop in an inn without using a translator,
and that is so awkward. Besides my English servants—”

“I speak French to you, Richard, but Alys and I often fall
into English when we are alone or in company with our neighbors because we use
that language so much every day. Perhaps it is a little thing, but it is one of
the things at the heart of the ill feeling over these Italian priests the pope
sends in ever-increasing numbers to English benefices.”

“Now that is perfectly reasonable,” Richard said firmly. “A
priest must minister to a flock, and if the flock cannot understand one word
the priest says, what kind of ministry can there be? But in the higher offices
of the clergy, the language cannot mean much.”

“Why not?” Alys asked. “The canons and monks are mostly
native born and many not even from the nobility. For most, English is the only
unlearned tongue they speak. To Latin they grow accustomed, but French comes
slowly and awkwardly to them. I think in their hearts there is anger when they
are made to feel stupid by slow understanding.”

Richard opened his eyes wide. “You may be right, my love. I
think you are. Whatever put it into your pretty head?”

Alys giggled. “Raymond.”

Both men turned to look at Raymond, where he sat at
William’s left, but he looked even more dumbfounded than they did. “I never
said a word about the canons of Winchester,” he protested. “I never spoke to
one of them and know nothing about them.”

“It is by example you taught me,” Alys laughed. “You grow
irritable when the people on the estate or the castle speak to me in English,
and it is even worse when they speak in their broken French that you cannot
follow easily. But that was not all.” She grinned at him merrily. “I would have
put that down to plain bad temper if I did not myself feel like telling you to
take the pebbles out of your mouth when you speak to me. Moreover, I often feel
like saying something much worse when I ask you to repeat, and you look down
your nose at me as if I were deaf or a lackwit.” She turned to Richard. “And it
is not all a matter of temper. Do you not think there must have been
misunderstandings from time to time that brought blame or even punishment and
that would linger most hatefully in the mind?”

“It might,” Richard agreed thoughtfully, and William nodded
his approval.

The two older men looked at each other, thinking only of a
new facet on an old problem. Raymond looked at Alys, marveling at her ability
to enlarge on a personal irritation in an impersonal way. His sisters never did
so. Offended by an equal or a superior, they merely scolded or wept. Alys had
considered the reason behind what had happened. When his attention returned to
the men’s conversation, it had moved from the general to the particular,
William having recalled Richard to his initial statement about the see of
Chichester.

The earl sighed. “Yes, well, Henry suggested Robert
Passelewe to the canons, and between a judicious gift here and there and their
memory of the misery of Winchester, they elected him without argument.”

“Passelewe, eh?” William shrugged. “He is a good servant and
did right well if a little too harshly and suddenly on the matter of the king’s
forests. Of course, he is no scholar. However—”

“You need not go any further. It may not matter to you or to
the canons that he is no scholar, but it does to Boniface. He gathered a group
of bishops and ‘examined’ Passelewe, found him wanting and annulled the
appointment.”

“No! What the devil got into them? To begin another brangle
with the king, and when this damned Master Martin is just waiting to swallow
the revenues of any vacant see for the pope’s purposes, is plain idiocy.
Boniface of all men—”

“Yes, he should be grateful when my brother fought so hard
for his appointment as archbishop of Canterbury. I spoke to him. He said there
is a higher good… Damn! I think he even believes it and is convinced he is
doing his duty to God this way. You remember that old story about my
grandfather and St. Thomas à Becket. However, Boniface is not a fool with regard
to the pope’s greed. He has already appointed Richard de Wiche as bishop and
seen that all the revenues were distributed to the proper persons.”

William made no reply to that other than a low whistle.
Richard nodded and continued. “That settled the matter of Winchester. Henry
knew it was a lost cause anyway, and I think Savoy had told
him
he no
longer desired it. Henry was hanging on out of stubbornness, but he saw quickly
enough that yielding on Winchester, which the pope has been urging so strongly,
would gain much sympathy for his point of view about Chichester.”

“So be it,” William remarked. “Chichester is not important
enough to worry about, and since Passelewe and de Wiche are both ‘English’, the
barons will not care much, although there are many who hate Passelewe because
of his exactions after the forest inquisition. Still, this is not the tinderbox
thing that Winchester was. If that is all of your bad news, we are most
fortunate.”

“No,” Richard said grimly, and had anyone been there who had
known King John, he would have shuddered, so strong was the look of the old
king on the son at that moment. “Gruffydd ap Llewelyn is dead.”

“Dead?” William’s voice scaled upward.

“The day I had your letter, I had also one from Henry on the
same matters. I had known about David’s appeal to the pope. If I did not
mention it to you—”

“Never mind,” William put in, smiling. “You were in no mood
for business when I last spoke to you and the matter was scarcely urgent.”

“Then it was not, but this matter of Gruffydd makes it much
worse.”

“Was there something suspicious in how he died?” William
asked.

Richard shrugged. “No… Yes… I do not know. William, you know
what the Welsh are. He tried to escape. He made a rope of cloth—sheets,
tablecloths, tapestries—and tried to climb down. The knots did not hold. He was
a big, heavy man. He fell to his death.”

There was an appalled silence out of which Alys said softly,
“Everyone says they are like wild beasts, and I suppose it is true in that they
cannot bear to be caged.”

William shuddered, but he did not take his eyes from
Richard’s. “There was no other way to hold him,” he assured his friend. “His
parole was worthless. No one will blame Henry for this. He was permitted his
wife’s company, and others, and provided with every luxury—”

“Except freedom,” Richard broke in bitterly.

“Be reasonable,” William urged. “He would have raised war
when Henry had promised David peace. And, if he had been taken by David, his
fate, I mean while he lived, would have been worse.”

“You never liked him,” Richard said.

“No, I did not and I do not like David any better. I wish
old Llewelyn had been less farsighted and abided by Welsh custom. If he had
divided the lands between them, they would have been enough occupied with
fighting each other to leave us in peace.”

“Oh no,” Richard remarked angrily, “it would have been the
same. One or the other would have appealed to Henry, and he would have let
himself be dragged in—”

“It is his duty and his right,” William stated. “He is
overlord of Wales. He must settle quarrels between his vassals.”

“Everyone except the Welsh is in agreement,” Richard
snapped, and then sighed. “Well, it does not matter. They are in arms again.”

“What? Over Gruffydd’s death? How did they hear so soon?”

“How can you ask that, William? You yourself wrote to me
about the rumors that everyone had heard. What did you think Gruffydd intended
to do when he reached the ground, walk or swim to Wales? This was not one man’s
doing. How could it be that the guards did not notice tablecloths and
tapestries missing? Do you think it takes a minute to cut such things and tie
so long a rope? I do not doubt someone rode off to Wales less than an hour
after it happened. All that I cannot guess is who was involved and whether it
was intended that Gruffydd escape or die.”

“One would depend upon the other, I should think,” Raymond
said, then stopped and flushed when both older men looked hard at him.

“Yes? Well?” William urged.

“I beg your pardon,” Raymond said. “I should not have thrust
myself forward.”

“Oh no,” Richard remarked. “You cannot whet our appetites
with a statement like that and then withdraw. Let us hear the rest.”

William also smiled encouragingly, and Raymond realized his
sharpness had been interest not irritation because a young man intruded his
thoughts on his elders, a frequent problem Raymond met at home. Still, he
continued a little less certainly than he had begun.

“It seems to me that there must be two, or rather three,
possibilities. The first is simplest, those who love Gruffydd and simply could
not bear to think of him caged.”

“A small and unlikely group,” William muttered under his
breath. Richard shook his head at his friend but did not speak.

“Then there are those who either do not desire a war in
Wales or, rather, wish to see King Henry’s influence reestablished by the
desire of the Welsh rather than by force of English arms. Last, there must be a
group that urgently desires to have all impediment to free action by David ap
Llewelyn removed.”

William shifted uneasily in his seat, but Richard cast
him
a warning glance and he held his tongue.

“I see where you lead,” Richard commented, “but say it for
me. Those who loved Gruffydd, of course, desired him alive and free for his own
sake. Go on from there.”

“From what I have heard,” Raymond continued, so intent on
what he was saying that he missed the byplay between Richard and William, “if
Gruffydd had come to Wales alive his first act would be to gather those
faithful to him and attack his brother. The immediate result would be that David
would have to use the force he has raised to resist Gruffydd rather than to
attack the English. The second result must be that either David or Gruffydd, or
both, would appeal to King Henry for help and reestablish the treaty as the
king desires.”

“Are you suggesting that the king urged or was party to the
escape attempt?” Richard asked quietly.

“Sacred Heaven, no!” Raymond exclaimed, with every evidence
of sincerity. “I never thought at all,” he added with a guilty look in
William’s direction. “I was only reasoning it out like a puzzle.”

As he spoke, a last nail was hammered into the coffin
holding his suspicions of Sir William. The clerk could have heard a
conversation very like this one, Raymond thought, where innocent speculation
had taken on an ugly implication. Certainly Raymond had no intention of turning
Richard’s mind against his brother yet that implication could very easily be
read into his words, and he had spoken them even after William had warned Alys
against just this sort of thing.

“I am sure,” William said dryly, “that if the king was in
any way interested in Gruffydd’s escape it would have been accomplished safely.
What need for sheets and tablecloths? If no tale of bribery so that Gruffydd
could walk out the door would work, surely a decent rope could have been
provided. It is far, far more likely that David wished to be free of the
millstone around his neck.”

“It is more likely that one brother would seek to destroy
the other?” Richard remarked with distaste.

“Oh Richard, you know it is a family tradition among the
Welsh. Do you want me to give you instances? There was never any love
between-David and Gruffydd. David himself imprisoned Gruffydd and, I heard, not
so kindly as Henry did.”

“He imprisoned him. He did not kill him or even arrange his
death,” Richard said softly.

“While David held Gruffydd himself, he did not need to do
so,” William snapped. “What could those who favored Gruffydd do with their lord
in David’s hands? It was a very different matter while Henry held him. For
David it was better that Gruffydd should run free than that he should be
available for your brother’s use.”

“It is indeed very curious and significant that Gruffydd
should die just when David was seeking to throw off King Henry’s yoke,” Raymond
added, trying to redeem the damage he had done. “If he had not, the king would
have had an alternate ruler to offer the Welsh. That was the third case, and
the most likely of all, I believe. I agree with Sir William that a better type
of escape could have been arranged had it ever been intended that Gruffydd
should come alive out of the Tower. None could benefit from his death except
David ap Llewelyn, or those attached to his cause.”

Richard sighed and nodded. He had been playing devil’s
advocate because he had a dreadful fear that Henry had been somehow involved.
It was a relief to him that someone who he believed could not have any
partiality, absolved his brother from considerations of pure reason. Alys
neither agreed nor disagreed, but her eyes were admiring as they rested on
Raymond. No other young man had spoken with such freedom before her father and
Richard of Cornwall, and had made good enough sense that they hung on his words
with deep interest. Competent herself, Alys had a strong taste for competency.