Before winter ended Henry left his continental domains for England where he wrote to Malcolm, King of Scots, inviting him to a meeting in Derbyshire. ‘I would love you, Nephew, to enjoy the spring festivals of my realm; hunting, feasting, fairs, Maypole dances and my subjects’ joy when sacred relics are paraded through garlanded streets.’
Richard stood beside the King as he dictated the letter. The Remembrancer was overseeing how well the scribe he had trained was performing his task for the monarch. ‘Will he suspect?’
‘What could he possibly suspect?’ Henry asked. He turned innocent eyes to his Remembrancer.
When Malcolm read his uncle’s letter he turned to his constable. ‘This is a trick, is it not?’
‘Sire, you suspect the English King of perfidy?’
‘I suspect he’s a fox.’
‘Perhaps, Highness, you could be more gracious in your assessment. Henry may wish to look you over as a husband for his daughter. Such an alliance would be to his advantage and to ours.’
The young monarch was thoughtful. ‘Our blood is too close, is it not?’
‘No closer than his and his Queen’s. The Church has not objected to their marriage.’
‘And if I refuse his invitation?’
‘That, Sire, will be taken ill. It may be used as an excuse for war.’
‘As I thought,’ Malcolm muttered. ‘Somewhere in his invitation is a trap.’
His younger brother, William, a boy of twelve, stood beside the King. He was strongly built, truculent in manner and known for cruelty to animals and servants. ‘Sire, may I accompany you?’ he asked. ‘I’d like to see for myself the English fox.’
The young King smiled. ‘Why not? One day you may have to fight him. I’ll take you, William. But you’re to promise to hold your tongue.’
The monarchs and the young Scottish prince lodged in Peveril Castle in Derbyshire and for a week Henry entertained his royal nephews with all the amusements his letter had promised. Fields had been ploughed and sown as soon as winter snow melted. They were already a mass of green shoots. One morning after the hunt, when they had come indoors for breakfast, the younger brother plucked King Malcolm’s sleeve. ‘Look!’ His normally closed, surly expression was alight with excitement. ‘Paganism!’
The Scottish monarch peered through a window and gasped. Four priapic dolls stood in each corner of a field, belled ribbons fluttering on the spring breeze.
Henry smiled amiably. ‘Once the crops are planted and sprouting, monks and priests ride out and destroy the peasants’ fertility dolls. But at night the wicked things mysteriously rear up again.’ They were a yard long, bright red and tumescent. ‘Pagan, as you say. But charming, don’t you think? Never underestimate the wisdom of old customs, dear boy. Look at the height of the corn in that field – twice that of the one next to it, where the dolls were destroyed.’
‘The priests say …’ the King of Scotland began.
Henry interrupted him. ‘Priests say all kinds of things. Half their pronouncements they don’t understand themselves.’ His tone changed and his features, smiling before, rearranged themselves. ‘Malcolm, you’ve done something I’ll never understand. You humiliated the greatest warrior in Scotland, a man as dear to me as my own right arm. That is a personal matter. But your folly is also political. In dismissing Douglas as commander of your Highland regiment, you have flung away the strongest shield in your army. Such an act by a king does not go unpunished.’
Malcolm started. ‘Your meaning, Uncle?’ he asked.
‘I’m confiscating Cumberland, Westmorland and Northumberland. You must hand over their fortifications to my knights. ‘
‘You’d break your vow to King David!’
‘I can no longer tolerate the diminution of my kingdom.’
The Scottish monarch regained control of his voice after a few minutes. ‘I wish to seek advice,’ he announced. He was scarlet with anger.
Henry was amiable again. ‘Please do so.’
Suddenly William, the younger prince, launched himself at his uncle, aiming to headbutt his groin. Henry grabbed him before he could, lifted him by one arm, dumped him to ground and twisted the boy’s arm behind his back. His nephew gave a yell of pain, his elder brother staring, horrified. Henry’s knights unsheathed their swords the instant the child rushed at their King. The Scots knights did the same. Henry nodded to both groups to stand down. For moments the only sound in the chamber was the harsh grate of iron. When all swords were rehoused Henry turned to the boy whose arm he still held pulled up behind his back. ‘As for you, you ill-mannered whelp, next time you set foot in my kingdom I’ll put you in irons.’
William stared at the King defiantly. ‘You perverted our Highland Regiment. You and that old bastard they believe is a Merlin.’
Henry’s dagger was in his hand before anyone saw how it could be there so quickly. ‘Renounce those words of abuse,’ he muttered.
‘I’ll kill the stinking old bastard!’ William replied.
Henry turned to an English knight. ‘Remove him before I do,’ he ordered. He glared at Malcolm’s men. They were outnumbered two to one; their own King signalled them to remain still. The English knight, a tall man in his prime, flung the boy prince over his shoulder, holding him by the ankles. The young lout continued to shout abuse and obscenities and beat the knight’s back with his fists as he was carried out of the chamber.
His elder brother had turned from red to pale. Stiffly he said, ‘I apologise, Sire, for William’s temper.’
Henry’s face was scarlet with rage. ‘His rudeness shames your house. Were he not so young and impetuous I’d keep him hostage for your own behaviour.’
An hour later King Malcolm returned. ‘I’ve considered your greater power, Uncle, and I therefore acquiesce.’
Henry was as amiable as he had been for a week. ‘Your brother’s right to the title of Earl of Northumbria is forfeit. But as you show the prudence of your breeding, in recognition I grant you the earldom of Huntingdon.’
King Malcolm hesitated.
‘For which you’ll now pay me homage.’ Henry turned and beckoned his Chancellor to step forward from a corner where he’d stationed himself, breathless with excitement again at his idol’s earlier masterful action. ‘Gather some witnesses, Tom.’
Richard stood beside and slightly behind Henry, ready with quill and parchment, at the corner of his soft pink lips at tiny upward curl. He, too, had been witness to the sudden dispossession of the King of Scotland. He planned it for weeks but allowed it to happen as elegantly and naturally as a lady lifting her skirts to step over a puddle, he thought . I learn from him every day.
Henry turned and read Richard’s expression. ‘A king never spills blood unless there’s no alternative,’ he murmured in Latin.
A crowd of about thirty, half of them Scots, watched as Malcolm swore to defend Henry’s life with his own. The young monarch held back tears of furious remorse as he clasped his hands inside his uncle’s large, warm paws.
When the English King was alone with the Chancellor he said blithely, ‘His courtiers warned him the Highlanders wouldn’t fight my army. It came as such a shock he struck his constable across the face.’
Thomas replied carefully, ‘But you did break a vow, Henry.’
‘I was sixteen when I swore it, as green as those ears of corn in the field outside. My Uncle David was a hard, wily man. He made it a condition of awarding me a knighthood that I allow his heirs to keep English lands. I had to be knighted to have a chance of defeating Stephen. The vow was expedient.’
‘So …?’
‘So nothing. I broke a vow made under duress.’ He paused and looked again at his Chancellor. ‘I see what you’re thinking.’ His expression became threatening.
‘Henry, I-I was thinking nothing.’
‘You stammering quinny!’ Henry shouted. ‘You condemn me! Behind my back you’ll call me perfidious, a man who breaks his word. You think you understand statesmanship. You don’t! You understand money. Do the figures for me on what we’ll take from the northern counties. That’s why I brought you up here.’ He turned so fast the heavy, gold-fringed hem of his robe flew up, striking Becket on the shin as he walked out.
The Scots left that afternoon. An hour in their rear rode a cowled stranger and a large body of knights. Douglas was to stay in the northern counties until all fortifications were back in English hands.
That evening Henry sent a note inviting Thomas to dine in private with him. The Chancellor glided in with his swan walk, a look of dignified injury covering his face. ‘Sackcloth and ashes,’ he had murmured as he chose a robe of dark grey silk.
‘Oh, come here!’ Henry said. He grabbed Thomas and kissed his cheeks. The eyes of perfect shape and deep, beautiful colour became lustrous.
‘You’re so nasty to me, Henry!’
‘I’m not … All right, I’m nasty! God’s teeth, I’m the King! You saw how I treated my nephew and that little cur of a prince. All manner of what you call nasty is required of me. Not for personal amusement but for the realm.’
‘You never speak to the justiciars as harshly as you speak to me.’
‘They understand kingship, Tom. They understand compromise and flexibility. They know what a king must do for his crown. You, my darling Chancellor, do not. Kingship is as opaque to you as Greek is to me.’
‘There’s no need to treat me like a worm.’
Henry was nonplussed. ‘A worm,’ he muttered. ‘Do I really? Sometimes I don’t like myself, Tom. Sometimes I dislike myself. Sometimes I even hate myself. I hate myself if I’ve ever treated you like a worm. Do you forgive me?’
Thomas gave a small, shy smile. ‘You are so lovable, Henry. You know I still harbour the deepest, the sweetest …’
The King stroked his hand. Keep the falcon hungry, he thought. Especially this one that’s half-mad. ‘Have I told you that even my wife admires your eyes?’ He watched for the Chancellor’s reaction to his reference to Eleanor. He knew from Richard that Becket hated her and called her disgraceful names. For her part, Eleanor always referred to Thomas as ‘Our s-s-s-sodomite Ch-ch-ch-Chancellor.’ She had not written to congratulate him on becoming a member of the familiares, as everyone else had done, including Guillaume and Matilda. Henry suspected she would continue to treat him as a household servant when she returned to England. Since their last marital fight, in bed in Aquitaine, he’d decided it would be easier to work on Thomas’s feelings for the Queen, than on hers for his courtier. He needed them to cooperate for the embassy to Louis he planned for the following year. ‘She’s pregnant again, as you know. She’s sure it’s another son.’
‘Congratulations.’
‘I want to persuade her to allow you, in due course, to take our Crown Prince into your household for education.’
The Chancellor flushed. ‘Such an honour!’
Henry sighed. ‘But …’
Thomas held his breath.
‘… she favours the Earl of Leicester as the prince’s mentor.
I consider the Earl’s household too dour. Yours throngs with ambassadors and courtiers and music and endless banqueting. Your best wines are served in gold cups, I hear. The German ambassador is so impressed he’s begged permission from Red Beard to order a set for the imperial table. London’s goldsmiths are in ecstasies of greed. Tom, apart from hunting, which is wholesome exercise for the body and useful for the provision of our board, I’ve no time for amusements except at Christmas. I want my son, however, to experience the delights of elegant company. A prince should have gaiety as he grows up, to develop charm as an adult. I was lucky with my papa; he had more style and élan than any man in France. You have both, Tom, when you put your mind to it and dispense with insolence. You’re to display your elegance and wit to my son so he takes you as his model.’ And you’re to keep your coarse nature hidden.
Becket’s chipped front tooth made his smile more youthful and attractive. ‘I’ll do anything to help you persuade Her Highness to accept me as the prince’s mentor.’
Henry raised his plain pottery wine cup. ‘To your success with my wife, Magic Lantern.’
While her husband had been away Eleanor and the justiciar, Richard de Lucy, had acted as co-Regents. With de Lucy’s help she had mastered English. Practising it had filled the tedious hours of inactivity that were forced on her by the English court physician. He forbade hunting. ‘Never before have I felt so healthy, strong and alert while with child,’ she objected. ‘One half-morning of queasiness has been my only discomfort.’
‘Nevertheless, Highness, as a queen your duty to the realm…’
‘He’s probably thinking of the prophesy,’ she told Orianne.
Everyone in England knew the prophecy of Merlin. ‘The eagle of the broken covenant shall rejoice in her third nesting.’ Divorced from Louis, Eleanor had become known as that eagle. A third nesting meant a third son. Eleanor knew she had been blessed with another heir for the throne when, as if chosen by angels, the perfect wet nurse was presented to her.
Officially the woman was an orphan from the minor aristocracy, widowed while pregnant. Actually she was a nun of brilliant intellect who had entered the nunnery of Littlemore in Oxfordshire as a child of seven and taken the name of Benedict when she was ordained. The Abbess had chosen Benedict to succeed her and it was in the role of Abbess-in-training that the nun had travelled often to the English court where the mistress of Littlemore, a countess, a witty and feverish gossip, had entertained the Queen with the scandals of her district. Benedict changed her name to Hodierna the day she realised her lover, a priest, had got her with child. ‘This won’t do at all,’ the Abbess said when Benedict confessed. ‘I’ll appeal to Her Highness. She’ll find something for you.’
Eleanor had secretly supported Hodierna from that day. She bought her a small house near Littlemore and provided her with a servant. They wrote to each other in English and in Latin, a language with which Hodierna was as familiar as the Queen. In addition to her knowledge of scripture, the wet nurse-in-waiting understood mathematics, the new architecture that came from France, took an interest in military affairs and in the politics of Outremer.
‘If she weren’t destined to devote herself to my son I’d give her a dowry and marry her to someone great,’ Eleanor told Orianne.
‘But, my Lady, she’s too clever. Men are frightened of her.’
‘Unfortunately that’s true, Buttercup. It’s why she should have been the next Abbess. She would have frightened bishops. Now she’ll have to be mother for the boy who leaps about like a hare inside my belly.’
She wrote to Henry, ‘I’m certain it’s another prince and a strong one. Our ambition for the House of Plantagenet progresses.’
He replied with a parchment covered in drawings of lips kissing and hearts intertwined. Above them hovered a long dark shape – his effort at drawing an eagle.
Henry had chosen Derbyshire to meet King Malcolm because he planned to call his barons to a war meeting in Northampton a few weeks later. In the interval between his confiscation of counties from the King of Scots and the barons’ council he would, in person, persuade men to fight in Wales with him. He visited their hunting lodges, castles and manors where he put the case he wanted them to understand – a campaign against Owain, prince of Gwynedd, was for the protection of England. In his entourage he took Guillaume, Richard and Prince Cadwaladr. Cadwaladr had fled when his brother, Owain, seized his lands. His wife was the aunt of Strongbow. His daughter was Alaw, the harp-playing princess, whose name meant Rippling Water. ‘The only woman, besides Mama and my sisters, for whom I’d lay down my life,’ Guillaume said.
To his political advantage, Cadwaladr was a long-time supporter of the Matilda cause against King Stephen. Added to this was his race’s genius for expressive language. Knights wept as the Welsh prince fell to his knees to recount the injustices and cruelties of Owain in a voice more sweet, plaintive and musical than they had ever heard. After each performance, translated with eloquence by Richard, Henry stepped in, announcing the dangers to England and their own families from Owain. After one of Cadwaladr’s spellbinding performances he finished with a song that Guillaume accompanied on the cittern. Ten barons, owning the service of seventy knights each, drew swords and slapped their palms on the blades. ‘We fight for England and for Cadwaladr!’ they cried. Guillaume’s eyes flashed as his fingers danced across the strings.
The night after that decisive meeting Henry called his brother to sleep beside him. Guillaume entered with a wood warbler perched on his shoulder, a foundling bird he had raised by hand. By whistling to it he had taught it a half dozen songs. It was green with a lemon-yellow breast. It trilled a short, fluid, high-pitched song of greeting to the King, peering at him from small bright eyes. With a flutter and a jump, it moved from Guillaume’s left shoulder to his right, the better to stare at Henry.
‘I don’t like birds staring at me. Tell the stupid thing to shut up.’
‘It’s highly intelligent. Its voice is as fine as …’ He was going to say ‘my own’, but thought that immodest. ‘… a nightingale’s.’
Henry grunted. His vision and sense of smell were acute but his hearing was only average. Guillaume’s hearing was extraordinary, a gift of nature developed by his devotion to music. He settled the warbler on a window ledge. As he turned, Henry punched his shoulder.
‘I can read your mind, lecher!’ He wiggled his fingers as if playing a harp. ‘Where is she? Why didn’t she accompany her father?’
‘She had to return home. She wrote me a note that her mother needed her urgently.’
‘So now she speaks French?’
‘She’s studied diligently with a nun.’
‘Oh? Rippling Water is a Christian? I thought they were pagans.’
‘Many are but she’s Christian. Most of her people believe that east of the River Dee we eat dogs. They don’t know the difference between Saxons, Normans and Anjevins. We’re all Romans, as far as they’re concerned.’
‘So they have long, unforgiving memories?’
Guillaume nodded.
A milking maid arrived. Henry, luxuriating in the woman’s work, usually let his mind go blank. Suddenly the thought came to him, If I restore her father’s lands perhaps I can marry her to Guillaume. His happiness and my western borders assured in one stroke. ‘Would you … marry the river goddess?’ he murmured. ‘I’d make it a dowry condition that you, not any of her brothers, inherit her father’s lands and the title of prince.’
Guillaume sighed.
Good start, Henry thought. His milking was quick because the maid accompanied the work of her lips with a goose-grease massage. ‘His turn,’ Henry jerked his thumb at his brother. In Anjevin he said, ‘God’s feet, man. What a pathetic stalk you have.’
Guillaume replied, ‘I was thinking the same of yours. It doesn’t seem to have grown since you were ten years old.’
‘The river goddess must have wanted to drown herself when she felt your miserable endowment.’
‘Shut y’ gob.’
He is in love with her, Henry thought.
Next morning Richard took leave of the King. Becket had made such a drama about needing his services to train other scribes in the scriptorium that Henry thought it politic to allow his Remembrancer to return to Westminster. He, Guillaume and some local barons departed for the saltings south of Chester, where the main army gathered. Henry was holding on to the lands of his ward, the Earl of Chester, lands Owain craved for himself. If the Welshman could take Chester he could strike through the heart of England, cutting the country in half.
Henry chose the estuary of the Dee as the route to Owain. He was confident that his men, marching along the coast of the estuary, would draw the Welshman south to fight where the land flattened out. Because the interior terrain was such wilderness he had sent a fleet up the coast of Wales to prevent the prince retreating to his stronghold, Anglesey. Henry’s navy would provision his army with extra food and weapons.
Unlike the vile weather during his reconnoitre with Strongbow, the days were fine and warm and he and Guillaume rode side by side along the riverbank. In front of them was Henry of Essex, bearer of the royal standard. Strongbow brought up the rear. On either side of the Dee deep green forests rose, impenetrable for warhorses. Guillaume kept his brother constantly engaged with naming and whistling the sounds of the forest birds. ‘That’s a fox bark,’ he said.
‘Where?’
‘Listen. Over to the left. It’s a vixen.’ Henry screwed up his face but still heard nothing.
The path narrowed until only two horses could travel abreast. As they rode Guillaume and his warbler whistled a marching song. It was so stirring Henry wanted them to continue, but after a few moments he said, ‘Brother, don’t advertise yourself too loudly.’ The town they aimed to reach that morning was Flint, some miles to the west. They had to pass beneath Ewloe Castle, which stood on a steeply sloped promontory inside the wood towards which they rode. The path narrowed further so only one horse at a time could pass. Guillaume pulled ahead of Henry. Suddenly his warbler fluttered from his shoulder and flew into the trees. Guillaume reined back his horse. ‘Shh!’ he said. ‘He’s heard something.’ He turned to Henry. ‘Do you hear it?’
‘What?’
‘I hear harp music.’
Henry squinted at the forest of Ewloe. It was motionless, casting a dark green light across the earth. He sensed the horses chattering to each other. He flashed an image of the forest to his mount. The animal’s nostrils opened wide. It smells something. Again he squinted at the trees. Nothing moved. But his horse was jittery. The stallion began flicking his ears back and forth.
Guillaume shouted, ‘The harp song! Henry, we’re amb—’
The Welsh fighters, hidden in the green gloom, let fly a volley of arrows. Then a second. And a third. They were beside and behind the army. Knights fell from their mounts, horses screamed and reared, some trampling fallen riders. The Welsh broke cover, screaming down the hillsides with battleaxes, halberds, short swords, slingshots. Henry and Guillaume leapt to the ground, the better to fight in the narrow space. But the royal standard bearer, looking round, saw the monarch’s horse without a rider scrambling away from the fighting towards a hillside. A Welshman struck it through the belly with an axe. The animal, after a single toss of its head, crashed to the ground.
‘The King is dead!’ Essex shouted. He could see the rear of the army was ambushed too. He flung the royal lions to the ground and galloped towards Flint.
Henry and Guillaume were fighting so hard they did not, at first, hear his shout. But suddenly other men began yelling, ‘Le Roi est mort!’ They merely tried to fend off the blows of their attackers and they’d lost the will to fight. Some dropped their weapons and ran.
‘I’m alive!’ Henry roared, but in the chaos, his voice was lost. Beside him, Guillaume glanced up towards Ewloe Castle.
A moment’s inattention was all it took.
A Welsh fighter knocked him to the ground and stamped on his chest. Guillaume, struggling inside his hauberk, tried to raise himself on his elbows. Quite slowly, his assailant jammed his sword through the eye slit in Guillaume’s helmet. The Welshman’s back, unarmoured, was turned to Henry, whose sword removed his head.
Guillaume’s horse had not bolted. Henry grabbed it and leapt from the ground to its saddle, standing in the stirrups, his sword aloft.
‘I’m alive! Je vive! Fight! Fight them!’ he shouted. At the rear of the army Strongbow, still mounted, was firing arrows more quickly than anyone could imagine, and with deadly accuracy. ‘Our King lives!’ he yelled. ‘Fight, men! Fight!’ Henry turned the horse and spurred it towards the thickest number of the enemy. There was one man, he saw instantly, whom the Welshmen were trying to protect. ‘Take him! Take him alive!’ he shouted.
His men, seeing their King in command, retrieved their courage. They attacked with ferocious rage. The battle lasted only another few minutes. As swiftly as they had sprung the ambush, the Welsh vanished back into the trees. ‘Tie him up,’ Henry ordered. ‘And any other vermin.’ He turned Guillaume’s horse and rode as quickly as he could without trampling his fallen warriors, back to his brother. Guillaume lay on the ground where he’d fallen, one arm flung out. Blood oozed from beneath his helmet. Henry jumped down and pulled the chainmail away from his neck to feel for a pulse. ‘Brother,’ he whispered, ‘you’re alive. You’ll live.’
Guillaume made no answer. Above their heads a long, tremulous scream drifted down from Ewloe Castle.