XXIX

True to Juliana’s prediction, Eustace was up next day, looking slightly better for his fortnight’s illness, but having shed none of his unpleasantness. He hated the idea of our having had fun without him. He would see to it next year that he ran the revels. They would be a man’s revels, none of this silly girls’ stuff.

He was prodigiously hungry, and while he made a great breakfast out of some of the leavings of the feast, his mind was full of something new, to me at any rate, what he called the Ivry problem. He summoned me to sit with him while he stuffed his enormous jowls with capons and roast pork. It seemed that he had made up his mind to try and employ my skills on his behalf, to seduce me from Juliana. Fat chance, of course, but since he was so fat he had to give his chances a go.

The problem all stemmed from Amaury de Montfort who had, it seemed, been stirring Eustace up on the subject of the nearby castle of Ivry which belonged to the Duke. But it didn’t really belong to the Duke, Amaury maintained, it belonged to Eustace. Why did it belong to Eustace? Because it had been granted by Duke Robert, Henry’s brother, to William of Breteuil, Eustace’s father.

I realised it was another Amaury plan to cause trouble for both Henry and Eustace; Juliana had told me that Amaury had his eyes on Breteuil to which he himself had a good claim. He hoped by rocking the boat that he might end up, after some cathartic brouhaha, stepping into the vacant castle himself. Besides, he loved rocking boats. If he saw so much as a wooden duck on the water, his instinct was to go up and pat its bottom.

After breakfast, Eustace took a walk in the bailey where a path had been cleared in the snow. At last he had a grievance of his own. He must have Ivry back. There would be trouble in eastern Normandy until he did. The Duke would know next time not to take Eustace of Breteuil for granted.

He invited me to walk with him and, though I pleaded my lesson with the children, he insisted. He wanted my counsel, and outlined his cause. He should have had a chancellor to do this kind of work but the last incumbent was infirm, and Eustace had not got round to appointing another. I think he thought that I might be able to do the work of scribe and accountant without the dignity of office or reward.

I tried to tell him that I thought his cause was futile. He was already a great baron, he had four other important castles, what need was there of more? Disappointed by my lack of enthusiasm, he even sought the opinion of his wife who also counselled against it. Her father would not be happy, she said. Had Eustace not made himself nuisance enough already? She told me later that she should have argued strongly in support of his plan, for Eustace had a habitual reflex of immediately rejecting anything that she suggested, but the die was cast.

Eustace thought about it some more, and the more he thought, the more convinced he became that Ivry should be his. A spell of milder weather prevailed, and he even rode over with a few knights to have a look at the place. What he saw entranced him. The knights liked it too – as they would.

‘A fine place,’ he announced on his return. ‘I immediately felt I had come home when I saw it. The house of my fathers…’

So there it was. Inflamed by the weasel words of Amaury de Montfort, and against his wife’s advice, Eustace sent what was tantamount to a challenge to the Duke, his father-in-law. He wanted his castle back or (reading between the lines) the Duke could look for his allegiance elsewhere. The Duke, of course, already knew about Eustace – it was better to have him as an unofficial enemy than an uncertain friend – but it was another thing to spell it out in a letter.

If Henry had been in a better position vis à vis his enemies – principally King Louis of France, the Comte of Flanders, the Comte of Mortain, Amaury de Montfort, Robert de Bellême ’s son down in the south of the Duchy, and ex-Duke Robert’s son, William Clito (wherever he was, always lurking away somewhere) – he would have told Eustace where to get off, indeed he would have put it more roundly since he was a man who didn’t mince his words and had a proverbially robust temper.

But on this occasion he was sweetly reasonable. He was all affability indeed. He proposed, in a couple of weeks’ time, to visit Eustace and the lovely Juliana, his beloved daughter, and to bring with him Harenc, the Castellan of Ivry himself, together with his young son. He sent Eustace a letter using these very words which the Comte received with considerable satisfaction.

‘You see,’ he said to Juliana that evening in hall, thrusting the unsealed parchment towards her as he mangled a capon wing, ‘what a mistake you made in advising against tweaking the Duke’s nose, and what sound judgment I displayed. As in war; so in peace. I am a leader in the tradition of my forebear Osbern who would never grovel for a favour.’

‘The Duke my father is a clever man, they do not call him Beauclerc for nothing,’ Juliana replied. ‘It takes a clever man to depose a duke who would be king, and take both titles for himself. Be careful not to enrage him or it will be the worse for you and, I fear, for us. This letter says he will be with us in a week’s time. We must prepare the castle to receive him. Bertold, you must also prepare since the Castellan’s son is the same age as Marie, and he will need some entertaining.’

‘He is just a castellan, a keeper of a castle, Lady Juliana,’ said Eustace contemptuously. ‘Just a caretaker, not even a vicomte. He and his son must take what they find.’

‘And I suppose my father is just a duke and a king and must do the same?’ retorted Juliana, with some spirit. ‘You are like a mastiff, Eustace, only good for war and mauling people.’

The Comte took that as a compliment.

‘Very good. Mastiff. I like that.’

There was a pause.

‘You will heap misfortune upon this house and upon yourself. In no way do I understand you or wish to do so,’ she said. ‘I give up.’

‘You had better,’ he advised her, ‘because you know I will win in the end.’

He was stupid enough to believe it, and a great misfortune was to fall on the house of Breteuil because of it.