May 1067, Lichfield, Staffordshire
Priest!” bellowed Alaric from his tent, his annoyance at Father Pierre, his malingering personal confessor, increasing by the moment. Thanks to his mother’s relentless cajoling, Alaric could read and write French—barely. But he could not read or write Latin, the language of the court, the church, and commerce. Like most nobles, Alaric relied on priests and monks for all written communications, which he preferred over oral messages easily forgotten by couriers.
Father Pierre ducked beneath the flaps and scurried into the tent.
“A letter to Johan,” Alaric said as his squire loosened his quilted aketon.
“So soon? You left him just yester morning.” At Alaric’s scowl, Father Pierre quickly crossed the tent and sat on the stool. There he pulled the writing board and accoutrements from his satchel.
Pierre had served Alaric’s father for years in Hereford. Simeon’s move to Eashing and the disruption after Hastings had left Pierre an itinerant priest until Alaric returned to Herefordshire and found him. To honor his father, Alaric took on the priest and his family, who all traveled with him.
Impatiently, Alaric watched Father Pierre assemble his reeds and ink and unroll a quarter sheet of parchment.
“One moment, my son,” Pierre said. He wrote the date and salutation.
Six days before Whit Sunday, May 21, 1067, in the first year of our King William’s reign. To Johan de Vaux, my loyal friend and honored seneschal, from Alaric, Seigneur de Tutbierrie.
Father Pierre nodded.
Alaric began. “I trust that you will rule my wife as diligently as you rule my estates.”
With God’s blessings, I have entrusted to you the honor of governing my land and riches and my bride, in confidence that you would do so with care and in accordance with my wishes.
Pierre looked up.
“Your oath must prevail over sentiment. If she opposes my restrictions or disobeys in any way, you must punish her on my behalf as you would punish anyone who disobeys my orders.”
Your liege duty to me, wrote Pierre, supersedes any pity you may engender toward the lady. If she disobeys you, she disobeys her husband, who, by God’s law, is her master. I charge you with full authority and responsibility to punish her as you see fit. Deny her food, beat her with rod, or lock her in the tower or pillory if it must be done.
As the priest tapped his freshly inked pen against the pot, Alaric continued.
“This marriage exceeds my reach. Eustace de Boulogne, not known for generosity—
—gave me riches far beyond the customary blood price, which means this marriage serves him alone. We can only conjecture his intent, but all know that he relishes power and aspires to influence the realms surrounding his county. He boasts that he gave William the throne, despite God’s hand placed upon our holy king’s humble head, and, with brazen arrogance, he proclaims his sons will be kings. Ambition might drive him to one day revoke his sworn alliance to William and seek greater rewards through armed challenge. What better accomplice than a niece tucked within the nest of William’s most trustworthy lieutenant?
Whether the countess were innocent or not, you know why I loath her and her uncle. Although William forced this marriage to preserve the kingdom’s unity, I intend to null the marriage.
Severance of a divinely endowed union must, of necessity, win the king’s support. Only proof of treason will suffice, for William’s piety will accept no lesser plea. I must present evidence of such deceit to him.
As my agent, you shall succor this burden and provide my eyes and ears so I may end this virulent wedlock. I shall seek in your letters precise information concerning the countess and her conduct. Report her manner upon receiving my dictates and her behavior henceforth. Determine whether the countess speaks any languages but French and whether she can speak or understand Saxon. All missives sent to her are to be intercepted, deciphered, and preserved for court council. Your scribe may read them to her, but they must be withheld lest there be secret symbols known only to her. She may send no letters unless dictated in your presence. These documents may help me gain William’s support for my annulment.
Seek counsel with Monkman for any matters of conscience these orders cause you. Remember, the Church warns us about the odious burden of grievous wives. Cloister your sympathies and guard your loyalty to me, for a traitor may well hide beneath a guileless smile or a gentle word.
May 1067, Tutbury, Staffordshire
Three days after the wedding, Brother Derrick finished translating Alaric’s letter aloud to Johan and Gilbert and looked up to see them staring at him. He rolled the scroll and handed it to Johan with a slight bow.
“Get to your task,” Johan said.
Dismissed, the nineteen-year-old monk crossed the loud, crowded bailey, so different from Burton Abbey where he’d lived since childhood. A few days ago, his prior had sent him to serve Johan because he was proficient in secular and ecclesiastical law—and in Norman French. And now he was headed down Castle Road to count slaves.
As he neared the trench, a whip cracked. An old man screamed and crumbled to his knees. A soldier dragged the bleeding villager to his feet and shoved him into a group of workers lifting stones onto a wagon. Derrick’s anger boiled. He wondered if he could have helped his people better as a warrior like his namesake, Saint Theodoric, who died a martyr fighting the pagan Norse, ancestors of these Normans.
Derrick, known by the Saxon form of his ordained name, found the Normans impious, avaricious, and malevolent, for they, like Father Pierre’s pompous letter, expressed Norman assumptions of superiority. They had stolen the English crown and defiled this place once belonging to the ancient Mercian kings who had ruled before Alfred. Though a distant relative of those great families, he tasted the bitter ale of his people brushed aside and trampled by Normans, who took for themselves all his people had built.
A traitor may well hide beneath a guileless smile or a gentle word, or beneath a monk’s habit, thought Derrick.
He had not met the Black Wolf, rumored to favor brutal pleasures. His letter did not inspire a desire to do so, although it aroused his sympathy for Lady Stafford. Prepared to dislike this Norman countess who’d come to rule over his people, her kindness had disarmed him. Now, he found it ironic that, like his own people, she had fallen from a once glorious past in Blackwolf’s wake.
Lord on high, guide me, he prayed, gazing at the overcast sky. He believed that God did not care if people were English or Norman. Derrick himself cared deeply, and in this, he sinned. His duty to God was to minister to all: Saxon, Angles, or Mercians. His duty to the Normans was unclear, for he possessed all the skills to aid the Normans oppress his people. He hid the sting of Judas beneath his robes and reached for his waxed tally board.
As the days marched into June, Hortense’s companionship kept Elise from total isolation. Elise rarely saw Marguerite or Johan. Gilbert kept his distance, acknowledging her presence with a cool gaze. She assumed he rotated the two guards accompanying her daily walks so that she would not befriend them. Servants coming to the tower seldom spoke. Likewise, she heard Brother Derrick’s voice only when he ministered the sacraments.
Elise’s outings were limited to the stables to visit her mare and the adjacent smith works where she watched in fascination the forging and shaping of iron. Occasionally she spun yarn in the shadow of an outlying tent on the edge of the bailey, which swarmed with hundreds of soldiers overcrowding the castle, training, moving carts or carrying building materials.
In these moments, as she twirled and dropped the spindle, she resisted thinking about her sister which might bring dismal tears. Instead, she conjugated verbs, first in Latin, then in Greek. She missed playing chess with Walter and their long talks. She even missed Guillaume Arques. But despite her husband, she vowed to find a place for herself at Tutbury.
Frequently, she climbed to High Tower’s ramparts above her quarters to see how the village and castle fared. From a young age she had learned the skills necessary for the wife of a great lord. In addition to reading and writing, the nuns, her seneschal, and castellans had taught her how to manage and defend her land.
Accustomed to looking after her Norman estates, she observed—and dreaded—the coming months. The harvest would not feed the castle’s soldiers, much less the villagers pressed into hard labor or the slaves. No one plowed new fields to support the inhabitants. Few people were hunting, gathering, or drying food. Although sawyers cut and stacked timber for defense walls, no one was preparing enough wood for winter fires.
She understood why Johan and Gilbert rushed to build the castle. Work gangs, including soldiers, dug the wide, deep defense ditch. Oxen hauled wagonloads of dirt and rocks from the excavation to the top, where more gangs built raised banks bordering the castle’s periphery. These would support the timber palisades encircling the castle, but the earthwork created a basin, which flooded during rainstorms and made passage within the courtyard difficult. Worse still, the latrine—a trench unwisely situated to drain down to the marshes—also flooded, leaving a pervasive stench. She ached to order the privy moved and lined with tight-fitting wood or baked clay as Tristan described the Roman works. Foolishly, she had Hortense speak to Johan, who replied that her duty was to look after her niece and not challenge his authority.
Neither of them would again jeopardize Hortense’s position, for, unlike Elise, Hortense had full access about the castle and village and spoke Saxon. When they were alone, she reported the deficiencies of Marguerite’s rule over the domestic affairs.
“The kitchens are in disarray,” she said, stabbing a needle into her linen. “Bakers use too much yeast or bad grain. Meat left untended on fire pits chars to a crisp. Pigs run amuck through the tents, hounds roam in packs, devouring precious chickens and eggs, and killing tethered goats.”
Elise turned another seam as Hortense confirmed what she feared. “Do English tongues wag freely in your presence?”
“For now.”
“What do servants say?”
“Ah! The maids assigned to you are the concubine’s spies, serving you in fear of Marguerite’s whip. She is delighted that you did not conceive from the consummation bedding.”
Elise nodded, annoyed at the woman’s interest.
“Servants boast about pilfering joints or cheese from under her nose, and claim they follow Marguerite’s thieving ways. They say she stole a gold and silver torc of cunning workmanship from an English noblewoman, now dead, and wears it hidden beneath her clothes.”
“No doubt the villagers resent being forced into hard labor.”
“They grumble that their fields lie fallow. A few women, those not digging the ring ditch, scurry to find food, fearing hunger will take their children. Today, a group went to the river to wash Marguerite’s clothes. One scolded another for hoarding food. They tore each other’s hair, biting and slapping. Meanwhile, some of Marguerite’s clothes were lost in the current, and she had the washerwomen whipped.”
Elise put her sewing down and paced the small chamber. She understood that obedience could and often must be obtained through the whip, yet Norman survival required villagers to provide sustenance, and few would labor hard to feed Marguerite.
Hortense set her own sewing aside. “Never forget that you are the highest ranking member of your husband’s household, King Philip’s cousin, a countess in your own right. I chafe at the grace with which you bear your diminished authority and especially Marguerite d’Hesdins. By my faith, that woman enjoys her elevated position far too much. I long to see you smite her down.”
“Like an avenging angel?”
“Like a wild boar in armor.”
Elise laughed and shook her head. “God bless you, Aunt, but my purpose is fixed. My husband is master. He ruled me from the moment I sealed the betrothal documents. I must obey, as Church and law require, and will serve him as he and God see fit. I only wish to learn why he imprisons me.”
“His reason may stem from Eustace. I’ve learned that Eustace and your husband are foes although I have not yet discovered the cause.”
“If they are enemies, this marriage is an alliance pursued by William himself. Even so, it must benefit Eustace, for he would not have given my estates to a lowly knight who could not further his ambitions or to a man he could not control.”
“The Vexin has always been Eustace’s foremost interest. He sought to control the county by marrying his first wife. Your Fontenay controls the road from Rouen to Paris, which alone could threaten either William or Philip. I cannot yet see how Eustace would use it or your husband. Or why. But I am certain he intends to create havoc.”