The Winter Mantle (35 page)

Winchester, Spring 1076

The guard took Simon away from the warmth and light of Winchester's hall and brought him into the darker regions where brightness and sunlight did not reach. A single torch flared in a bracket on the wall and a musty smell pervaded everything - like the soil dug from a grave pit. Simon felt the shaved hairs at his nape prickle upright and an involuntary shudder ran down his spine. Behind a door on the right someone moaned, but the guard paid no heed and led Simon further into the darkness until they arrived at another door of iron-bound oak. A narrow grille was cut in the top for observation, and there was an opening at the base to admit and retrieve food bowls and the slop pail.

The guard peered through the grille and, taking a large key from the ring at his waist, turned it ponderously in the door lock. 'Go on, sir,' he said to Simon with an ushering gesture. 'I'll be outside if you have need. Shout when you are ready to leave.'

Simon nodded, pressed a silver penny into the man's hand, and entered the cell. It was large enough to contain several prisoners but confined a single occupant. The floor was thickly strewn with new rushes and instead of a straw pallet the prisoner had a proper bed with linen sheets and a coverlet of red and blue wool. Wax candles burned with a clear, yellow glow, chasing shadows into the deepest recesses of the walls. The prisoner, being an earl, could afford to pay for such luxuries.

'My lord?' The door closed solidly at Simon's back and the key bolt shot home. He advanced into the cell. Waltheof was kneeling before a crucifix that had been nailed into the wall; either side of it, on a narrow bench, two candles flickered, forming a makeshift altar. He turned at the sound of Simon's voice and his features brightened with pleasure. He did not, however, bounce lithely to his feet as once he would have done, but rose rather gingerly, as if he had been kneeling for a long time. 'It is good to see you, lad. What are you doing here?' Hobbling forward, he embraced the youth.

'I asked the King's permission for leave to visit,' Simon replied. In the confines of prison, Waltheof's vigorous musculature had diminished and it was like clasping a gaunt-boned stranger - a man already halfway to the death that was his sentence under English law.

'And I suppose he gave it so that you could bid your farewells to a condemned man.' Waltheof broke from the embrace with a barren smile.

Simon did not reply, for Waltheof had spared him the need.

'Still, all visitors are welcome for whatever reason.' The smile grew bleaker yet. 'Guests to my cell have been somewhat lacking and in truth I have not expected them. Ulfcytel and the Bishop of Winchester of course. My soul has its comfort to take to the next world. I had thought that Judith might…' He grimaced and thrust his hands through his hair. Uncropped in captivity it gleamed on a level with his jawline. 'I have not seen her since the day I left for Normandy. I was told that she came to Winchester at Christmastide, and it was about the time of her visit that I was cast in here to rot. I wonder if this is any of her doing. I know her strong enough… but I cannot bear to think that she would do this to me…'

Still Simon was silent.

'Do you know the truth?' Waltheof demanded harshly. 'You are a party to much of what is said in the King's chamber.'

Simon lifted his head. 'Indeed I am, but I would not break the King's trust in me by repeating anything that I happened to hear.'

'Even to a man who will take the tale nowhere except to his grave?' Waltheof's expression was bitter. 'Am I not entitled to know who betrayed me?'

'You betrayed yourself at Ralf de Gael's bride-ale,' Simon said. He felt uncomfortable at the turn the conversation had taken, and began to wonder if he should have made this visit at all.

'If I had not been arraigned for my part in Ralf's rebellion, it would have been for something else,' Waltheof retorted. 'I had too much power, too high a standing to be allowed to keep it and prosper. Men are covetous, especially of that which could be theirs for the sake of a push.'

Simon began to feel queasy. The walls of the cell seemed to press in on him. He wondered how Waltheof bore day after day in the gloom, knowing that the only light at the end of the tunnel led to the executioner's sword. 'I can say nothing,' he replied.

'Not even about my wife? Is it because she was responsible that you will not speak? You have to tell me.' He took an agitated pace towards the youth, his hand outstretched to grab at Simon's tunic, but even as he touched cloth a look of misery and self-loathing crossed his face and he spun away. 'I almost struck her,' he whispered. 'And I would not have hurt her for the world.' His shoulders shook.

Simon was at a loss. He had known plenty of pain in his life, and constant challenge. He knew what misery felt like, but when its cause was this deep he was not sure that his arm was long enough to reach down and rescue. 'Lady Judith had naught to do with your imprisonment,' he said. 'It is true that she came to Winchester at Christmastide, but not in order to seek your death.'

'Then for what? Certainly, it was not to see me!' Waltheof said in a grief-drenched voice. 'Not once has she been near… nor my daughters.'

The way he spoke the last word left Simon in no doubt as to what was hurting Waltheof the most. 'The Countess came to tell the King what you had said about the bride-ale because he demanded it of her.'

'What else? There must be more.'

Simon drew a deep breath. He knew that he was treading on dangerous ground. Unlike Waltheof, he could dissemble when he had to, but it was not a role that he particularly enjoyed. Probably a gentling of the truth would best serve him now. 'She said that she did not desire to see you because your marriage was over… but that was all. And she left your daughters at Northampton - out of a care for them I think, not to slight you.'

'A care for them,' Waltheof repeated and his mouth twisted. 'Oh yes, no one could accuse her of being neglectful in her "duty".'

Simon winced, knowing that whatever he said would not ease Waltheof's torment.

Wiping his eyes, Waltheof made an effort to compose himself. 'I should have remained in the Church and taken the tonsure all those years ago,' he said. 'Of all the mistakes I have made, that is perhaps the worst one.' He bent a reproachful look on Simon. 'Still, I will go to my God with a clearer conscience than those who remain.'

'I am sorry,' Simon swallowed. He had thought himself an accomplished courtier, able to deal with any situation, but knew that he was suddenly out of his depth. 'I came to make my farewell, but I do not know how to do it.'

Waltheof smiled sourly. 'I can lie down on my pallet and we can pretend that it is my deathbed. Would that help?'

'You should not jest, my lord.'

'Why not?' Waltheof shrugged. 'Jesting will avail me more than misery in my hour of reckoning.'

There was an uneasy silence in which Simon cast around for something to say. 'The ordinary folk are disturbed by the rumour that you are to be executed.'

'Are they indeed?' Waltheof's smile broadened and grew a little savage. 'I may yet cause a rebellion then with my dying breath…"

'Which William will suppress and swiftly.'

'Oh indeed.' Waltheof paced to the end of the cell and turned. Simon noticed that there was a path worn in the straw. 'Strange how English and Norman rules have suited him,' Waltheof said. 'Roger of Hereford is sentenced to remain the rest of his life in prison because he is a Norman. However since I am English the penalty for me is death, and there is no one willing to stick out their own neck and argue for my freedom.'

'Abbot Ulfcytel has done so, my lord,' Simon objected.

'And he too is English and so his word carries small weight with those who would see me deprived. I should have died in the wasting of the North, fighting with an axe in my hand, not in this dark and shameful way.'

'And I should not have come,' Simon said, and turned to the door. The hand he raised to knock for the guard was trembling violently. Never again, he swore. Never again would he put himself in such a fraught situation.

'No, wait.' Waltheof strode to Simon and grabbed his sleeve. 'I don't want you to leave like this.' Pulling the youth against him, Waltheof smothered him in a second embrace, harder and more desperate than the first. The bone of mortality on bone.

'I know there is nothing you can do. I know that I should not waste my last hours in bitterness, but it is hard,' Waltheof said, his voice tearing. 'Once I gave your life to you. Now live it for me. When you look out on a ploughed field or the women bringing in the May, remember me and see with my eyes as well as your own. When you take a wife and hold your own firstborn child in your arms, think of me.'

'You know I will,' Simon replied, his own voice constricted by the force of the embrace and the emotion that Waltheof was squeezing out of him.

'Do not just say it, swear it.'

'I swear it, on the cross,' Simon gasped as Waltheof's grip tightened.

As if realising that he was asphyxiating the young man, Waltheof relaxed his hold. Simon dragged a deep gulp of air into his lungs and dropped to his knees.

Going to his bed, Waltheof swept the bearskin cloak off the end. 'I want you to have this,' he said. His large hands caressed the thick, white fur.

Simon stared. His throat ached and he could not speak, but he managed to shake his head.

'You always admired it as a child and it will mean more to you than anyone else. I have no doubt that when they sever my head from my body someone will appropriate this garment to themselves in naught but greed. I would rather you had it.' With a final parting stroke, Waltheof handed the cloak to Simon.

The young man took it across his arm and felt its weight settle - almost as heavy as a mail hauberk, for as well as the weight of the pelt the outer layer was thickly woven, fulled wool, and the bordering braid was twined with thread of gold. The garment of a magnate, an earl. He was moved and awed. For as long as he could remember he had admired and coveted this mantle. Now he would have done anything to see it back in its rightful place billowing from Waltheof's shoulders as he strode through his life.

'I will treasure this…' he said in a tight voice.

'Do not be so precious as to make of it an object of worship. It is meant to be worn - and worn with pride.' Taking back the cloak, Waitheof opened it out and swung it around the squire's shoulders. It drowned his slenderness and the hem almost swept the floor. Borrowed robes that did not fit, Simon thought with an inward grimace.

'You will grow into it,' Waltheof said, as if reading his mind. His mouth twitched in a painful smile. 'In more ways than one.' He thrust home the enormous silver penanular pin with its thistlehead decoration.

Simon departed shortly after that, and was not ashamed of the tear streaks on his face as the guard led him back through darkness towards the light. He had to hold the cloak above his ankles like a woman holding her skirts to prevent himself from trampling on the hem.

'Worth the meeting then,' the guard said with an envious nod at Simon's acquisition.

'Without price,' Simon said in a choked voice. They passed an alcove redolent with the stink of a latrine hole - a crude wooden seat set over a shaft in the wall. Simon dived sideways and hung over the foul pit, retching dryly, He could have told Waltheof that his betrayers were none other than his motherin-law and her husband aided and abetted by the Montgomery family, who never forgot a slight, but he had kept that information to himself. He felt as if he had been drinking poison for a long, long time, and finally it had made him sick. Was there a difference between good treachery and bad treachery? Was Waltheof's rebellion against William, worse than the calumny practised against him by the venomous tongue of Adelaide of Champagne and Roger de Montgomery? He had no answers, only reaction.

'As bad as that?' the guard said.

'Worse,' Simon gasped, and forced himself upright. His stomach still trembled and he compressed his lips. No matter how much it sickened him, he was a straw on the flood and there was nothing he could do.

In the morning, the final one of May, Waltheof, Earl of Huntingdon, Northampton and Northumberland, was brought from his cell and escorted by mailed guards to the top of a hill outside the city walls. It was a beautiful dawn, a flushed apricot horizon uplighting the growing blue of the new day. Waltheof's last footsteps left their trail in grass that was silver -green with dew and starred with the clenched buds of daisy and dandelion.

Simon stood amidst the small crowd that had followed the soldiers to witness the execution. Most were Normans and the majority wore the mail and gambesons of knights and soldiers. There was only a handful of English folk, drawn from the community of castle servants. The executioners had deliberately chosen the early hour so that few of the townspeople were about or free of their labours. The Normans did not want a riot on their hands,

Simon saw Waltheof stumble and winced for him. How long it must have been since he had seen the light and stretched his legs. At least they had given him access to clean raiment and he must have washed his hair, for it had a metallic sparkle in the sunshine and the filaments floated on the breeze like the finest threads of copper and gold.

The beheading was to be done with a sword, for he was highly born, an earl, and even those who wanted him dead for their own base reasons, respected the privileges due to his high birth. Simon had watched the swordsman sharpening his blade on a whetstone the night before and the sound of the brightening of the steel had sent chills through him with each long rasp. Had he not owed Waltheof his life he would have fled the slaying, but it was his duty to bear witness so that he could look Waltheof's executioners in the eyes when they could not look him in his.

On the crest of the hill, facing the dawn, the guards thrust Waltheof to his knees. As Walkelin, Bishop of Winchester, prayed over him, the swordsman approached, the blade shining with the reflection of the rising sun.

Waltheof's eyes widened in panic and Simon saw that they were full of the desperate need to live. That even now Waltheof could not believe that he was about to die. 'For the love of Almighty God!' he cried in a choked voice. 'At least let me say the Lord's Prayer one more time… for your sake, and for mine.'