SirenSong (2 page)

“No,” Henry said, “she will think only of your mother’s pain
and be the more hot to assure her of your safety if she knows of her ignorance
of your whereabouts. And, even if I could fob off Eleanor with some tale,
someone
at court would write to some friend in Provence. I assume your mother would
send first to your grandfather to ask whether you had gone to him.”

“Yes,” Raymond sighed, then shrugged. “Oh well, I will have
a few weeks at least.”

Henry frowned, his eyes looking past Raymond. Then he said
slowly, “If no one knew you were here, and I told Eleanor she must not write
because you are engaged in some secret work for me…” His eyes focused on
Raymond. “I have a little task, a minor annoyance but one for which I need a
man truly trustworthy to me and yet not known to be my man—”

“I will do it if I can, and gladly,” Raymond offered
quickly.

The king smiled most sweetly, his eyes luminous with warmth.
“It will mean that you must forgo your rank and name for some time longer,” he
warned.

Raymond laughed. “Nothing could give me greater pleasure.”

“I have a brother, as you must know,” Henry began, “whom I
love most dearly, for he is a most excellent person. Some years ago, however, I
noticed that Richard was at times cold to me and critical of what I did, and
sometimes he acted even worse, berating me before my council. We have always
been close, and such behavior hurt me to the heart. I could not believe it came
of Richard himself, yet I believed also there was no one whom he loved who did
not also love me.”

Raymond had been so surprised by the mention of Richard,
earl of Cornwall, that his face went blank and hid his feeling of recoil. He
had expected, after their conversation, that Henry wanted him to perform some
feat of arms, and it was with this expectation that he had pledged himself to
do the king’s will so eagerly and without reservation.

“Now I have heard,” Henry continued, “through a trusty
clerk, that a vassal of my brother’s—no great man but only the holder of two
keeps, albeit one sits on the Thames and the other commands a road of great
importance—is the man who has poisoned Richard’s mind against me.”

“Is it likely that so insignificant a person could influence
the earl of Cornwall?” Raymond asked stiffly, liking the turn of conversation
less and less.

“I would not have thought so myself,” Henry agreed, “but
after the clerk named him I remembered that in the last years of my father’s
reign, during the troubles, and after, when Louis was in the land, this man’s
father, a friend of de Burgh, was castellan of Wallingford and had Richard in
keeping quite often. The vassal, William of Marlowe by name, is of the same age
or perhaps a year or two older than my brother. They must have been, from time
to time, playmates. Moreover, Richard mentioned to me that this William was
squire to Rannulf of Chester.”

“That is a high lord for a squire of so little note.”

Raymond was growing less happy by the moment. Rannulf of
Chester had been known throughout Europe as a man of the highest character,
just, merciful, unwavering in his faith, fearless in advice, fine of purpose.
Could a boy trained by the late earl of Chester grow up into a man who would
maliciously seed discord in the royal family?

“That is true,” Henry agreed, “but I believe he was taken
because my brother begged for his company. After the country was at peace and
Chester was not every day in the forefront of battle, he was my brother’s
guardian.”

Henry was a very self-centered person. Except for his wife,
he rarely noticed what other people felt. This was not owing to coldness or
indifference. Henry was a warm-hearted, loving man. It was merely that he was king,
had been king since he was twelve years of age. By and large, people tried to
echo and mirror the king’s feelings and, if they felt differently, kept it to
themselves. His guardians, of course, should have molded him better, but they
were more concerned to teach the young king politics than to give him
understanding of individual feelings. Thus, Henry did not notice the
reservation in Raymond’s manner and voice.

“Then the earl of Cornwall and Sir William are longtime
companions,” Raymond pointed out, trying to make the king see that the evil
influence would have to be much older than a few years. The king’s expression
clearly showed he had not taken the point, and Raymond went on. “I cannot see,
sire, what so small a man could gain from such a thing. And surely, he must
risk all by speaking ill of you to the earl of Cornwall. It is well known, even
in my land so far from here, that the earl of Cornwall is most true and loving
to you.”

“Yet it was not always so.” Henry’s face darkened
alarmingly. “When Richard Marshal raised rebellion against me thirteen years
ago, my brother was very near to joining him.”

The king, Raymond realized, feeling a little cold, carried
grudges a long time. “That must have been a false tale told you by an enemy,”
he protested.

“Richard told me so himself, to my face,” Henry snapped
pettishly. “And only six years ago, when I gave my sister to the earl of
Leicester—both of them came weeping to me and begging my help, for they were
mad for love and had long tried to vanquish the feeling and could not—Richard
spoke to me most foul in full council.”

“Surely you cannot doubt your brother’s love,” Raymond
breathed. “He has proved it again and again.”

What had he made himself agree to? he wondered. Was this
uncle, praised to the skies by his young wife, some kind of monster who
intended to destroy his own brother?

But Henry’s face had cleared. “No,” he agreed, smiling, “I
do not doubt Richard. He acknowledged his fault most handsomely and has
supported me since then. But you asked me what such a small man hoped to gain.
Is it not clear he hoped to gain a king who would raise him up among the mighty
of the land?”

Raymond’s mouth opened and closed without sound, his voice
being suspended by horror. This time the emotion was so apparent that Henry
could not miss it, and he laughed and shook his head.

“No, no, I am not accusing Richard of treason. However
mistaken my brother may have been in his actions, he never thought harm to me.
He thought, of course, that he would
save
me from harm by preventing me
from some act that would anger my barons. But I do not think Sir William wished
to save me from harm. He, I think, hoped Richard’s action would so turn the
nobles against me that I would be killed in war or by murder. Then he would sit
at the king’s right hand.”

That made a kind of sense. Raymond frowned in thought. “Have
you spoken to Earl Richard and—”

“You do not know my brother,” Henry said. “He is the most
loyal man in the world. You heard what I said just before. As Richard would not
for any reward be disloyal to me, so is he to other men. If I spoke to him, he
would defend his friend. No, I need proof. Hear me. I do not think this Sir
William is a fool—Richard does not suffer fools gladly. He would not speak open
ill of me to Richard, no man could do so and retain my brother’s good will. He
would say, ‘The king harms himself much by this thing he does. For his own
good, it would be well to curb him at all cost.’ But perhaps among his own
family and friends he speaks differently.”

That, too, might be true, Raymond thought.

“I cannot act against Sir William because Richard would be
furious. I have made enquiry and so much is true that they are frequent
companions. Whenever Richard is at Wallingford, he spends some time in Marlowe
or Sir William goes to him.”

“Are you perfectly sure the tale is true?” Raymond asked.

“No. That is my second reason for holding my hand. I am this
sure, that the clerk who carried the tale had no private reason to do so. He is
not connected with Sir William in any way except that the abbey in which he was
trained is nearby. It seems he heard by accident some talk that betrayed Sir
William’s purpose. Still, things overheard can be misunderstood. There is a
chance, indeed, that Sir William is not guilty.”

The feeling of being trapped by his own too hasty offer of
help, of being a dirty instrument used to cut a man down, receded. Raymond
smiled. The king was well within his rights to weed out disloyal subjects.
Raymond still felt a little uneasy about acting the spy. However, so long as
his purpose was to discover the truth, not to find evidence by hook or crook to
condemn an innocent man, Raymond was willing to gain his freedom by a small
subterfuge.

“But I do not know this man,” he pointed out, “nor even Earl
Richard. What am I to say to him? I do not see—”

“Oh, I will give you a letter, saying—if you will forgive me
the jest—that you came penniless to my court seeking succor. I will ask Sir
William to take you into his household. As to why I send you to him rather than
to another, I will say Richard has spoken well of him to me and so I thought he
would be a kind master to a young man needing kindness.”

At that Raymond laughed aloud with relief. He could scarcely
be accused of spying if he came with a letter from the king. Apparently Henry
did not wish to deceive his brother’s vassal, only to discover the real truth.

“Excellent,” he agreed. “I can be a simple Sir Raymond from
Aix. That will not give me away. Every third man in Provence and Aix is named
either Raymond or Alphonse.”

“Perfect,” Henry approved, and they laughed together like
children over the mischief they were brewing.

Then Raymond’s smile faded. “But how long am I to stay with
Sir William? What if I find nothing that suggests either guilt or innocence?”
He smiled wryly. “Sooner or later I suppose I must go home or at least tell my
father where I am.”

“I did not intend that you should spend the rest of your
life as a hireling knight,” Henry laughed. “I have not yet told you the end of
the tale. There has been trouble in Wales. I will not take the time to explain
that in full now. There is
always
trouble in Wales. But it grows more
and more likely that we will have to march in with an army and lesson this
David ap Llewelyn. What this clerk Theobald overheard was that Sir William’s
new plan for enraging Richard against me was to force me to attack him.”

“Attack him?” Raymond said with patent disbelief.

“Not with an army, but to seem to persecute him,” Henry
explained. He paused, and his face darkened again. “I am always accused of
unjust persecution. When I wished to free myself from being shackled like a
slave to the will of Hubert de Burgh, that was unjust persecution. When I wish
to obtain a see for a dear friend and a relation I am accused of persecution of
Walter Raleigh. When Richard protects his friends, that is noble. When I do it,
that is persecution.”

Raymond was appalled. The king’s voice had risen to a
petulant whine as he recounted his wrongs and there was nothing Raymond could
say. What Henry complained of was both true and not true, according to the
tales Raymond had heard in Aix. De Burgh had certainly become too great and
needed a set down, but Raymond’s father said he thought the king had carried
the matter too far and too long. It was the action, Alphonse d’Aix pointed out,
of a young man who still feels the chain of tutelage when all others can see
that it has fallen away. Thus he continues to strike out for freedom after the
enemy has fallen and should be shown mercy.

In the matter of the see of Winchester, which Raymond had
heard about in every hospice in France, Henry again was not totally innocent
nor totally at fault. He had begun a perfectly legitimate campaign on behalf of
a perfectly worthy man, but the see of Winchester had long been held by a great
man of affairs who was more often absent from his diocese than in it. Those who
held the right of electing the bishop claimed they had suffered neglect because
their lord’s attention was so much drawn away from them. Thus, when the king
suggested to them another man much like Peter des Roches, the previous bishop,
they said they would not have him and elected Walter Raleigh, also learned and
wise but with no political interests or foreign connections.

Fortunately for Raymond, Henry did not expect a response to
his complaint. Until he was made aware of the fact by near brutality, the king
assumed that everyone to whom he spoke was in complete agreement with him. It
was an unfortunate assumption and the cause of much pain because, when someone
was finally forced to disagree violently enough to make the king understand,
Henry was all the more shocked and hurt. This time, however, the long-dead de
Burgh and the see of Winchester were side issues. Henry shook off his petulance
to return to the immediate problem.

“Sir William’s plan, as I understand it, was either to be so
slow when called to fight in Wales that he would be fined or reprimanded, or to
cause such disruption in the campaign against the Welsh as to produce the same
result. Then, when accused or blamed, to fly to Richard saying I wished to
disseisen him or some such. That, on top of the Winchester affair and perhaps
some other things of which I do not know, was to rouse my brother against me.”

There was something wrong in what Henry was saying. If Sir
William was Richard’s vassal, it should be Richard who would summon him to
Wales. However, Raymond was aware that he did not really know whether the terms
of vassalage were the same in England as in his country. Besides, he was not in
a mood to examine things too closely. He was thrilled at the idea of a
masquerade in which he would not have to play the role of a responsible heir of
great territories. He nodded gleefully when Henry told him the Welsh affair
would surely come to a head within six months. Six months would be a delicious
spell of freedom. It would be a pleasure after that to go home and be cosseted.
Then, if his mother still sought to shackle him, he would tell her plain he
would be off again and see if that taught her wisdom.