The Greatest Knight (21 page)

Henry frowned. “No,” he said. “It happened in the heat of the moment and as you say, Adam, you took some useful ransoms. I value you both, and I will not have you shame me by quarrelling in public. That too is a slur on my dignity. Let it go. There is still half a day’s tourneying left and I want the prize. Clasp hands and set your differences aside.”

William swallowed bile. The heat of the wine in his belly had gone from flame to ashes. He was furious, but with himself more than anyone else. He had allowed Yqueboeuf to strike under his guard, which was precisely what his rival had intended. Tightening his jaw, he held out his hand. At least Henry had not asked them to apologise to each other, only to set their differences aside. With bad grace, Yqueboeuf grasped William’s hand, gave it a squeeze that deliberately crushed William’s fingers together, and then abruptly withdrew.

Satisfied, Henry gave a terse nod and lifted his voice. “Anyone who needs a fresh horse or sustenance, attend to it now. We ride on the moment!”

The enclosure became a surge of knights hastily obeying Henry’s bidding. William checked Bezant’s legs, but they were sound apart from a minor graze to the left fore. Indeed, William thought, he was probably in a worse case than his mount. Somewhere out on the field was the shattered stump of a lance with Queen Marguerite’s ribbon attached to it, but he wasn’t about to go and search for it. Collecting a fresh one from his squire and setting his mind to the business in hand, he lined up behind Henry, who had changed his own winded mount for a spirited Spanish roan.

“Stay with me if you can, wet nurse!” Henry shouted, and clapped spurs to his mount’s flanks.

Pushing Bezant after his lord, William began to wonder if he was getting too old for this.

***

The tourney lasted for three days and on the last night, Henry held a feast in his hall for the knights and lords who had fought on his side. There were prizes given out to those deemed the best. Harry Norreis was presented with a silver trumpet in token of being the knight with the loudest voice. William le Gras was given a silver-headed spear for breaking the most lances in the tourney and Thomas de Coulances was awarded a fine silver goblet for being the most drunk. Yqueboeuf too was given a drinking vessel—a gold-rimmed mazer. “It’s a loving cup,” Henry said with a wave of his hand and a gleam in his eye. “Because your nature overflows with the milk of human kindness.” Yqueboeuf thanked Henry with a bow and a forced smile. For William there was a silver-gilt aquamanile in the form of a knight on horseback, and for Ancel a cloak lined with squirrel fur with a clasp of gold and amethysts.

Ancel beamed at William. “What would our brother John say about all this?” he asked.

“That I was leading you down the slippery slope to perdition,” William said wryly.

The tourney feast was a masculine affair and no women had been invited (beyond the ubiquitous dancing girls) for which William was thankful. He could not have dealt with the Queen and her ladies this night. Besides, after three days of some of the hardest jousting and feasting he had undertaken in a while, he was tired, his body telling him that he was no longer twenty years old. However, Henry showed every intention of roistering all night, albeit it with a select few. Partway into the feast, he suddenly declared that he had decided that only men named William were allowed to sit at his board, and ordered everyone else to leave. Anyone taking exception was helped on his way by a pair of hefty serjeants.

Ancel chuckled as he fastened his new cloak and, slapping William’s shoulder, left the bench. “At least you won’t have to suffer Yqueboeuf and the Coulances brothers for the rest of the night, eh?”

William made a face at him. Yqueboeuf glared murder at William as they left the Young King’s hall, obviously believing that the jest was William’s idea and deliberately aimed at excluding them from Henry’s company. William could do nothing about that. He directed a squire to pour wine into his cup and set about getting as drunk as his young lord. Gazing round the hall, he saw that it was far from empty because William was a favourite name amongst all ranks of the nobility. Henry had sent messengers out in search of more Williams to fill the empty benches.

“Now you’re one among many the same, Marshal,” Henry slurred, giving William a bruising nudge. “But I’m the only Henry.”

It was almost dawn when William and the knight William de Preaux hoisted the Young King between them and brought him semi-comatose from the disarray of the feast hall to his lodging chamber. William’s feet were unsteady, although he had a harder head for drink than Henry, and de Preaux was staggering too. A squire ran to open the chamber door and William heard the anxious murmur of the Young Queen’s maids, and then of Marguerite herself. She was wearing a thick, fur-lined bedrobe. Her hair lay over one shoulder in a heavy brown braid, and as the men tottered into the chamber, her eyes widened and she set one hand to her throat.

“He’s all right,” William said, “although he won’t think so when he wakens.” The two knights brought Henry to the bed and laid him face down, turning his head to one side so that he could breathe.

“I am glad that this is the last tourney of the year,” she said bitterly. “I do not think that I could bear another one.”

“You can’t bear anything,” Henry slurred, more aware than he appeared. “Least of all a living child.”

Marguerite made a small sound in her throat, but it never left her lips which were tightly compressed. William saw the misery in her eyes. “Madam, he is in his cups. He does not know what he is saying.”

“He knows exactly what he is saying and it is what he thinks when he is sober. It is what everyone else thinks too.” She turned away, her palm pressed over her mouth.

“Madam…” William held out a beseeching hand but she did not see it for her back was to him and facing the dark shadows in the room.

“Go,” she said in a trembling voice. “And thank you for seeing my husband to his bed.”

William and de Preaux bowed from the room. “I wouldn’t change places with either of them for an instant,” de Preaux said, shaking his head.

William said nothing. When the Queen had spoken, the cracks in her voice had run through his body. Pity and compassion welled within him. Poor lass, he thought, poor, poor lass, and wished that he had gone back to look for the silk favour she had given him in pride for his chivalry that morning.

Fifteen

Le Mans, Anjou, Autumn 1182

"You took your sweet time. I do not mind you travelling to tourneys, but you shouldn’t linger.” Henry’s voice was petulant as he received William into his chamber.

William bowed to the Young King. “Sire, the weather was foul and delayed us on the road.” He had been attending a tourney at Epernon to which Henry had chosen not to travel. Queen Marguerite looked up from the game of chess she was playing with one of her ladies, her expression warm with greeting, but hers was the only smile in the room. Adam Yqueboeuf and Thomas de Coulances lounged against pillars near Henry’s chair and regarded William sourly. Henry was glowering.

“I don’t suppose that while you were courting your own fame you heard any news of my beloved brother?”

“Which one, sire? I saw Lord Geoffrey jousting with the Breton team and spent an evening with him and the Count of Flanders. He seemed in good spirits.”

“I don’t give a whore’s slit about Geoffrey’s spirits,” Henry snarled. “I was speaking of Richard.”

“No, sire. If the lord Richard was mentioned, it was in passing. Should I have heard news of him?”

“While you’ve been breaking lances in sport and hiding from the rain, Richard’s been stealing my castles,” Henry said, scowling.

“Sire?” William’s first feeling was one of weary irritation, but he forced himself through it. This was his path and, for better or worse, he had to tread it.

“He’s fortified Clairvaux, which he knows full well is mine, and garrisoned it with his own men.” Henry ground his teeth. “Because it’s near his borders, he thinks he can take it and do with it as he pleases.”

William glanced briefly around. Baldwin de Béthune gave an infinitesimal shake of his head. Peter de Preaux was looking at his fingernails and Roger de Gaugi at the scuffed toes of his boots. “Have you spoken to your father about this, sire?” William asked.

“He won’t intervene,” Henry spat. “He’ll say it’s not worth bothering about. He treats me like a child while Richard does as he pleases in Aquitaine and steals whatever he wants from Anjou.” He stabbed his chest with his index finger. “I am the eldest, I’m the heir, I’m the one who has been crowned King and yet I have the least standing of all—apart from John and even he’s been promised Ireland as soon as he’s of age. All my father does is complain like an old miser about how much I cost him.” Henry’s expression grew pinched and narrow. “He doesn’t know the half of what I could cost him if I chose.”

William concealed a grimace. Henry was still ploughing the same furrow he had done as a youth of eighteen. Ten years later the bitterness and petulance were much uglier to behold. Lessons had been taught but not learned.

“It’s time I paid a visit to my brother-in-law,” Henry said softly. “At least he’s prepared to see things my way.”

He would, William thought. It was in Philip’s interest to keep the Angevin family fighting itself.

“Philip doesn’t know how fortunate he is,” Henry continued. “His father’s in the grave and he doesn’t have any brothers trying to steal his patrimony. He can do as he pleases.”

“Yes, but he has difficult relatives on his borders,” William answered.

Henry laughed but wasn’t distracted from his purpose. “I’ve ordered the baggage wains to be readied,” he said. “We’re leaving on the morrow.”

“Sire.” William bowed and went to greet Marguerite who indicated that he should take her lady’s place at the chessboard. William had not been going to stay, but could not refuse without seeming churlish. She enquired after his success at the tourney and he regaled her with a few incidents to oblige.

“And now my husband travels to the Île-de-France,” she said when they had dispensed with the preliminaries. She glanced towards Henry. Yqueboeuf and de Coulances had joined him and the three of them were sniggering together like adolescent youths. Her lips compressed. “I fear that a storm is coming.”

“Like the one before when he rebelled against his father?”

Marguerite moved a pawn two spaces. “I do not know. He doesn’t talk to me. He never has, but even less now since we—” She broke off and looked down at the chessboard. “He is so eaten up with what he thinks he should have that he doesn’t see what he’s got. His resentment frightens me—for his sake.” She looked at William. “Stop him if you can. You still have his ear. You can still reach him.” She laid her hand on his sleeve.

William was not so sure of that. He was no longer the young knight on the white stallion, dazzling Henry’s childhood imagination. A charge at the quintain and a clean lift of the ring on to the point of a lance were not enough to secure the Young King’s respect and attention these days, and he had little inclination to jump through the hoops of fire that were required. “I’ll do what I can,” he said, placing a reassuring hand over hers. As he rose from the bench, Adam Yqueboeuf was watching him and Marguerite with calculating eyes. Without taking his gaze from them, he leaned to murmur to de Coulances and a couple of other knights.

***

Despite the uneasy political situation and the sense of impending danger, William enjoyed the Île-de-France. King Philip was seventeen years old and although there were as many internal politics and power struggles at his court as there were at those of his Angevin relatives, the young man was weathering them well. Like Henry he had a strong sense of his own importance, but it was more focused. He knew what he wanted and had both the steel and the patience in his backbone that augured well for him obtaining it. A streak of ruthlessness too, William noticed, that put him more in mind of Henry’s brother Richard, and he also had some of the low cunning of John. Yet he was still a likeable youth, and malleable to a degree. He enjoyed Young Henry’s company, the way that one might enjoy a grand feast or the spectacle of a menagerie. It was a diversion from mundane business—a momentary distraction.

Marguerite’s mood lightened once she was “home.” Although she had been raised at the Angevin court, handed over to Queen Eleanor’s household when scarcely out of swaddling, these were still her people and Philip was her half-brother. She rediscovered her smile and when the court came together of an evening she joined the dancing and stayed to watch the entertainments. William took part also, throwing himself into the round of pleasure with an enthusiasm born of a premonition that soon the dance must stop, and when it did, there would be no dancing for a very long time. He kept his martial skills honed by training on the tilting ground with French knights and spent evenings in their company, swapping tall tales until the candles burned low. He and Ancel had kin at the French court. Rotrou, Count of Perche, was their cousin through the Salisbury side of the family and they spent much time in his company. Taking to Ancel’s convivial nature and competence with a blade, Rotrou offered Ancel a place in his own mesnie.

“Will you give me your leave?” Ancel asked William as they dismounted in the stable yard after a day’s hunting with the court.

William shrugged. “You are your own man. You have no need to ask me.”

“But you gave me the opportunity and you are my brother…”

“And Rotrou is our cousin and Count of Perche. Jesu, take your chance and fly.” William thumped Ancel’s shoulder. “As matters stand, you are probably better off in Rotrou’s household. Go on. Seize your life and your chances in both hands. It’s what I did.” He braced himself as Ancel engulfed him in an ebullient hug.

“You won’t regret this!”

“I will if you don’t let me breathe!” William laughed. Shaking his head, he watched Ancel hand his horse to a groom and then hasten off to find the knights of Rotrou’s mesnie. The humour remained on William’s face but his lips closed and a slight sadness entered his eyes. The age gap between him and Ancel was six years, but just now it felt like a generation. Somewhere he had lost the optimism and vitality that Ancel still carried with him like a pouch of new-minted coins. “I’m getting old,” he sighed to Rhys.

The groom looked him up and down and made a rude sound through his pursed lips. “I’ll believe it when I see it, sir,” he said. “You still run rings round all the youngsters on the tourney field.”

William smiled. “That’s just experience.”

Rhys picked up William’s bridle to clean and rubbed his thumb over one of the enamelled green and yellow badges at the brow-band. “A lot to be said for experience, so my wife tells me.”

“Does she now?”

“Aye, sir, and she should know. With respect, I’m a few years older than yourself…and I’m not ready to claim my dotage just yet, in bed or out of it.”

William looked at his sturdy, dark-eyed groom and felt his spirits lighten. “No, Rhys, you’re right,” he said. “A man shouldn’t claim his dotage until he’s well and truly earned it through a baggage roll stuffed with living. I’ll do my best not to let you down.”

Rhys cocked an eyebrow at him and, with a loud laugh, William gave him two silver pennies. “Buy something for your wife,” he said, and went out into the gathering autumn dusk.

***

“I never see you these days,” Clara pouted when he found a moment to visit the hostelry where he had lodged her for the duration of their stay in Paris. “I might as well not be here for all the attention you pay.”

William shrugged. “It’s not like the tourneys,” he said. “I have to attend on the Young King and I have other duties. I thought you would like Paris and the markets. Have you enough silver?”

“It’s not money that I want.”

William’s sigh was not the right response, for she turned her back on him and flounced into the main room. “I suppose you have dined at court too, so you won’t want to eat with me.”

“Clara…” He looked at the trestle set up in the room, laid with an exquisitely embroidered cloth—her work while she waited for him. There was a bowl of fresh bread, and a platter of stuffed mushrooms—one of his favourite dishes. He noticed that she was wearing her blue gown, the one stitched with seed pearls, and was filled with guilt.

“No,” he said, “I didn’t dine at court.” It wasn’t quite true. He had eaten a mountain of cheese wafers whilst playing dice with Henry and several members of his mesnie. Then there had been the dates stuffed with almonds and the small forcemeat pies placed at his elbow during a recitation of the romance of Tristan and Iseult by one of Marguerite’s ladies. He removed his cloak and hung it on the wall peg. “I would bring you with me if I could but…”

“But they don’t allow whores at court?”

He sat down at the trestle and rubbed his eyes, suddenly realising how tired he was. “Yes, they do permit whores at court, but I would not number you among those women. They belong to any man who has their price, even the courtesans.”

She poured wine into his cup, then took her own place at the trestle. “I used to think that I belonged to you, William,” she said softly, “but I’ve come to realise that I don’t, and that you will never belong to me.”

Made guilty by the tone of her voice and the expression in her eyes, William leaned towards her. “We can go riding together on the morrow,” he offered, wondering if he would be able to find the time, but trying to be conciliatory.

She shook her head. “It is too late…” She hesitated. “I have other plans for the morrow.”

William laid down his knife and abandoned the pretence that he was going to eat. “Other plans?”

Clara wasn’t touching the food either and he could see the tension in her throat. “You warned me when I came to your tent that night that I would be little better than a beggar, but I chose not to hear what you were telling me. I thought it would be enough, or that things would change…but of late I have grown weary of holding out my begging bowl for meagre crumbs.”

“I am sorry,” William said with contrition. “I know I have been neglectful…Matters are difficult at the moment.”

“And will likely not improve.” She drew a deep breath and raised her gaze to his. “I have met someone—a vintner from Le Mans. He’s a widower, visiting kin in Paris. He says that he will give me his time as well as his silver if I will marry him.”

William stared at her while the words circled his brain but declined to sink in. There was anger, but there was relief too, and not as much surprise as he had expected. Clara was like a cat: self-contained, self-sufficient, but needy for affection. He hadn’t been taking the time to give it and someone else had. “You have been busy behind my back,” he said.

Clara flushed. “Because that is all I ever see of you—your back. You return to me only when you need sleep or a woman.”

Her words stung him, for while they were true in a literal sense, they did not acknowledge the subtleties. “That is not fair,” he said reproachfully.

“You are right, it is not,” she replied, deliberately misunderstanding him. “Stephen is returning to Le Mans on the morrow and I am going with him.”

Stephen.
William flinched, for giving the man a name put flesh on his bones. “Have you bedded with him?” His lip curled. “How do you know he won’t abandon you in the gutter?”

“All we have done is talk; indeed, we have talked more in a month than you and I have done in the last year. And even if matters do turn sour, I have enough put by to live on…” She faced him with defiance in her eyes, daring him to say that all she possessed had been given to her by him. William declined the challenge, knowing her likely retort that she had earned it on her back was more than he could bear.