THE EARL (A HAMMER FOR PRINCES) (28 page)

Cold raindrops splashed on him; he looked into the sky and drew his cloak around his shoulders. The conversation with
Winchester
seemed coarse and ugly to him when he thought of it. Yet how else could men tend to their affairs, except by exchanging favor for favor? If
Chester
held
Lancaster
, he would be too great. Fulk mounted his horse without a word and rode back to his tent, his shoulders bowed to the gusts of windy rain.

When he rode up to his tent Rannulf was standing outside in its lee, talking to one of his friends. He walked over to Fulk’s horse before Fulk could dismount and said harshly, “I want to talk to you, my lord.”

Fulk looked down at him a moment and nodded. “If you wish.” His groom stood waiting to take his horse when he got off, and Fulk waved him away. “I’ll ride him down, Edwyr.” To Rannulf, he said, “Get your horse and come with me.”

“It’s raining,” Rannulf said. “Can’t we—very well.”

He walked around the tent to the back, here the horses were held. Fulk said to Morgan, “I’ll be hungry when I get back, don’t let me wait for my supper.”

“No, my lord.”

Edwyr had taken Roger’s horse, and when Morgan started toward the tent Roger followed him. Fulk called him back, and Roger came over to him and stood by his horse’s shoulder.

“I think we’ll be going to
Stamford
next. I want to leave as soon as the truce is set. Get the men who will be going with us ready. You know who has paid this year’s service.”

Roger nodded. “Are you calling up others? Most of the crossbowmen are going back to
Normandy
.”

“No. We won’t need so many.” Rannulf was leading his horse toward them, and he straightened up.

Rannulf mounted without saying anything, and they turned their horses and rode across the camp to the field where Fulk’s horses grazed. The rain had turned to a steady drizzle. Small groups of men sat under makeshift tents filled with smoke from their fires. Fulk steered around a puddle and moved over closer to Rannulf.

“Did the prince agree to it?” Rannulf said.

“Yes.”

“I wish you had told me. Everybody else knew but me. You deliberately kept it from me.”

“I was afraid you’d tell Thierry, and he would tell the prince.”

Rannulf gave him a sharp look. “You don’t trust me at all. No more than you trust Thierry.”

“I’m sorry. I should have told you.” They crossed a narrow strip of marsh, rode through the willows at is edge, and came up onto the field. Under every tree, horses stood with their tails to the wind and the rain. The fires of the grooms, drovers, and prisoners glowed all around the edge of the field.

“That’s just what you would do to Mother,” Rannulf said. “Keep from her what you were doing. So she worked against you, and you hated her for that.”

"I never hated her. She wasn’t always wrong, either.” He rode up to Edwyr’s fire and dismounted. Rannulf looked around at the men at the fire and led his horse up in front of Fulk’s, so they could talk unobserved.

Fulk yanked his girth loose. “I should have told you, as I said. I’m sorry.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t have. I did tell Thierry.”

“What?”

Fulk had his hands on the pommel and cantle of his saddle, and he leaned on his arms and stared at Rannulf.

“What did you say?”

“I told Thierry. As soon as I found out. Yesterday.”

Rannulf looked down, turned his back on Fulk, and pulled his saddle off his horse’s back. "
Chester
called this siege of
Wallingford
a sham, remember? When he captured me, I asked him what he meant.”

Fulk stared at his back; all the sense had flown out of his head. If Thierry had known he would surely have told the prince, and yet the prince had—Henry’s fine rage when all his barons in their pompous council told him their demands, his final submission were fake, because he had known already what they would say.
Chester
had known that Fulk wanted it kept from Rannulf, yet
Chester
had—for mischief’s sake, perhaps—or—Rannulf turned toward him again.

“I only did what Mother did. I shouldn’t have, I know it, but if you had explained it to me I might have understood why not to tell him.”

Fulk nodded, still amazed. “Yes. What has happened?”

“What do you mean?”

“Why are you so upset about it? The prince accepted the agreement, after all.”

“Oh.” Rannulf turned his back again and started to unbuckle his horse’s bridle. “The prince has sent thirty men to take command of Sulwick, by siege if necessary. So I lost you Sulwick.”

Fulk snorted. That was undoubtedly Thierry’s idea. He walked around behind his horse and called to one of the knights beside the fire, who were supposed to be guarding the horses.

The knight leaped up and ran over to him. Fulk said, “You were at Sulwick, weren’t you? So you know the way. Go there and tell Simon d’Ivry to withdraw all his men to Bruyère-le-Forêt and wait there for my orders.”

“Yes, my lord.” The knight saluted him and went off toward the horses tethered under the trees.

Rannulf was cleaning out his horse’s forehoof with a stick; Fulk picked up a cloth. “Why aren’t you accusing me of treason to my prince? Thierry must be.” He scrubbed at the dirt on his horse’s back, just behind the withers, and the horse groaned and lowered its head.

“That’s what I thought yesterday,” Rannulf said. “I thought it over last night. I kept thinking about what you said of loyalty.”

In the trees overhead, a gust of rain rattled the leaves. Fulk shook out the cloth.

“Besides,” Rannulf said. “It was only doing what
Chester
wanted, and he’s always been our enemy. I should have thought it out first.”

“Thierry has always been our enemy, too.”

“No,” Rannulf said. “Thierry is too stupid.” He led his horse off toward the picket line in the shelter of the trees.

Fulk worked quickly over his horse’s back and ran the cloth down its legs.
Leicester
would have to know that the prince had only allowed it to seem that the barons had forced him to the truce. That was a curious mind at work, a subtle and interesting mind. What Rannulf had said amazed him, but how he had said it amazed him even more. He straightened up and stood idly stroking the horse’s shoulder, thinking.

“I’ll take him, my lord,” Edwyr said. “He’s hungry.” He spoke softly to the horse in English.

“Take him,” Fulk said. He stood until Edwyr had led the horse away from him, and walked over to the groom’s box and threw the cloth into it. Rannulf walked up to him.

“Now we have to walk back in the rain.”

“I know,” Fulk said. “I’m starving.”

They started down toward the marsh that separated the horse field from the camp. Fulk pulled up the hood on his cloak. The rain was blowing into their faces, and Rannulf held his hand up to shield his eyes.

“We could have talked inside,” Rannulf said. “This was your idea, remember?”

“I was hoping you wouldn’t come.”

Rannulf laughed, fresh and clear in the evening rain.

The king’s banners laid their bright reflection on the surface of the river; opposite, on this bank, Prince Henry’s barons were lined up behind him, their horses standing hipshot in the noon sun. The prince, in a blue coat and scarlet hose, stood at the very edge of the bank, with a herald and two standard bearers. Fulk leaned forward to see his face. The king’s herald was shouting a list of conditions for the truce; Stephen’s voice was too feeble to shout clearly over the noise of the wind and the onlookers. Fulk looked back at
Leicester
.

“Well?”

Leicester
was pulling irritably at his horse’s mane. “I don’t believe it. Rannulf is mistaken. If the prince knew of what we intended the day before we told him, he would have talked to us separately and won a few of us to his side. Remember how we feared that?” He yanked two long black hairs from the horse’s mane. “It was why you kept the secret from Rannulf in the—”

He lifted his head; his mouth stayed open, but no words came out, and Fulk smiled. The wind shifted suddenly and brought him the sounds of the men striking the camp before Crowmarsh. The prince and the king had already agreed to lift their siege and countersiege. The herald had stopped talking, and now Henry began to shout, in his own voice, high and firm and Angevin.

“So he made us all fools,”
Leicester
said.

“That’s what I think.”

Leicester
frowned at the prince. “If we reach a settlement, he is the king, and if we cannot, we will never be able to force him to do anything again.”

“I think we had better reach the settlement, don’t you?”

“What do you think
Chester
meant by it?”

“I don’t know.”

The aldermen of
Wallingford
had come down to the river to listen to the arrangement of the truce; Fulk looked up at them, on the other bank but closer to the city than the king, near a clump of willows. In their best coats and caps and medals they looked scarcely less than earls.

“He’s trying to butter both sides of his bread again,”
Leicester
said. “He can always say he warned the prince. Don’t you think?”

“I’m not sure. It could be only spite, that
Winchester
didn’t talk first to him.”

“Or to bedevil you and Rannulf. Or all three. He’s a dangerous man. You should watch him.”

Chester
was down near the middle of the line of barons. Fulk did not turn to look at him. He watched the king’s herald, now talking. They had settled the major conditions of the truce—the end of the sieges, the opening of negotiations, and a length of six months. Henry had just said that he meant to press his siege of
Stamford
. Fulk caught the last syllable of a name the king’s herald spoke and clicked his tongue.

“
Ipswich
. He’ll go chase Hugh Bigod out of the castle. See how it’s all a circle.”

Leicester
nodded. Hugh Bigod, in the crucial days after King Henry died when Stephen seized the throne, had provided the lie that the old king on his deathbed had disinherited his daughter and named Stephen England’s king.

“He won’t have any trouble taking Ipswich,”
Leicester
said. He looked to his left, and Fulk followed his eyes.

Chester
was coming toward them, riding behind the line of barons, his eyes on the king. Fulk and Leicester watched him approach, saying nothing.

“Did you hear what the king has said? Our friend Hugh Bigod may finally learn to say his prayers.”
Chester
barged into their midst, smiling, his bulging eyes cheerful.

“It’s was obvious,”
Leicester
said. "Naturally the king will go to
Ipswich
—one need not have heard him say it.”

Fulk nodded. His eyes fixed on the huge jeweled clasp that held
Chester
’s cloak on his breast. “You seem to have been slow of thought lately, my lord
Chester
.”

He looked into
Chester
’s face.
Chester
’s cheeks sagged, and the smile slid away.

“But quick to speak,”
Leicester
said. “The sun grows hot, Fulk. Shall we find some shade?”

Fulk gigged his horse. He and Leicester rode past
Chester
, one on either side, and left him there alone behind them. The prince and King Stephen were shouting their farewells. All along the bank of the river, the ranks of witnesses were shifting, turning to go.
Leicester
reined in this horse, looking up and down the river, and Fulk brought his horse up alongside him. The bright hot sunlight bleached the sky white; the dry brown grass of the fallow fields stretched out around them on either side of the river.

With his pages and his herald riding behind him, the prince was galloping away from the water, down toward his camp. The knights and barons who had witnessed the truce followed him, in no order, a great spill of horsemen down the brown fields.
Leicester
reined his horse after them and started away. Fulk hung back. The aldermen of
Wallingford
were walking back toward the city, but even before they reached the gate it opened and the people rushed out to greet them as heroes.

NINE

"Where is Thierry?"

“With the Earl of
Chester
.”

Fulk made a face. He was beginning to regret the luxury of snubbing
Chester
. He turned to look back at the column of men following him out of Prince Henry’s camp. Morgan carried his banner, and Rannulf rode on his left side, although Rannulf was staying behind to go north with the prince.

“You yourself said he is stupid. Will you not keep watch on him for me?”