It took time for Empress Matilda to get over her surprise at her victory. Not until she’d seen a calm and graceful Stephen actually in chains at Bristol did it become real.
Although Stephen’s queen was holding out in the South-East the Empress was, in effect, Lady of England. To become Queen she had to gain the support of the Church, which meant winning over Stephen’s brother, Henry of Blois. She must have access to the treasury at Winchester where the royal crown was. Last, she must persuade the Londoners to open their gates to her.
She found herself with new and surprising allies: Hugh Bigod, his manner suggesting that fighting for Stephen had been a minor hiatus in a career devoted to the Empress’ cause, Waleran of Meulan and others.
The Empress swore on oath to Bishop Henry all the promises to the Church which his brother had made – and broken. That gave her Church and treasury.
It took until June to get London. The delay was not just due to the Londoners’ reluctance but to garrisons still loyal to Stephen who opposed the Empress en route. The city gave way only because the Empress bought Geoffrey de Mandeville, castellan of the Tower of London, and it could hardly hold out with the Tower breathing down its neck.
De Mandeville’s price was enormous; he was confirmed as Earl of Middlesex, Essex and Hertfordshire with the right to build castles where and when he wanted. The Empress gave away power on a scale that would have enraged her father, Henry the First. But the market was de Mandeville’s and he squeezed it dry. The Empress entered London.
All that was necessary now was the coronation.
In the Great Hall of Westminster the Empress received petitioners. In the overlooking gallery her devoted supporter, Brien Fitz Count, banged his head against the balustrade with a violence likely to break one or the other. He turned to the Empress’ devoted half-brother, Earl of Gloucester: “You’ve got to stop the bitch.”
Earl Robert, whose calm was legendary, tore off his cap and stamped on it. “Didn’t I try? You saw. She didn’t even rise. I knelt before her and got bawled at like a butler who’d stolen the bloody spoons.”
“We’ll lose every ally we’ve got.”
For two days now the Empress had received petitioners as if they were dirt. Lords spiritual and lords temporal were treated with the same disdain as commoners. To her poor, ignored advisers it seemed she only granted a petition when doing so would offend somebody else. She was rude to her uncle, King David of Scotland. She was rude to her new ally, Henry of Blois.
Matilda de Risle was only one of the petitioners turned away with a sharp: “Attend on me until I consider the matter.”
The repelling calm which had distinguished the Empress when she’d fought for her throne was gone; she vibrated with a resentment that she’d had to fight for it at all.
“Is it a woman’s thing… you know, the Change?”
Hoping to find the answer to a mystery in a mystery they peered down for symptoms of the menopause, looking for a hot flush in the pale, beautiful face.
“Should we send for the Plantagenet?” Fitz Count was reluctant but desperate. No Norman liked ceding to an Angevin, but her husband might be able to control her.
“He won’t come. England’s her problem. His is Normandy.”
“It’s an error Stephen wouldn’t have made. He’d have been all things to all men by now.”
“Regretting your choice?”
“There was no choice.” In Fitz Count’s book the hereditary principle had to be established. He was an orderly man. The killing, the seizing of goods, all the things he’d had to do to hold Wallingford for the Empress had been done with disgust and in this belief.
Below them a deputation of Londoners moved to the foot of the dais. They were genuinely worried men wearing torn cloaks to indicate poverty. “Your demand for tallage, my lady… it’s not that we won’t pay it, but at the moment we can’t.” They’d given their last penny to Stephen some time ago, not that they mentioned it now.
The anger which had vibrated the Empress all day almost oscillated her now. She swayed as she stood up. “You crawling swine. You filth.”
The men in the gallery closed their eyes.
“You poured out your coffers to strengthen Stephen and weaken me. Do you think I’ll show kindness to conspirators? I’ll have justice from you traitors and I’ll have every penny.”
A voice from the crowd shouted: “You’re not queen yet.”
In Westminster Great Hall next day the servants prepared the tables for the Empress’ coronation banquet. The chamberlain knotted his belt and his brow in the effort to memorise the precedence in which he must seat the guests. In the kitchens cooks were dripping sweat as freely as the hundreds of carcases on spits were dripping lard.
Cursing as only he knew how, John the Marshal had personally kicked every human backside in the stables until the horses for the Coronation procession were groomed to his satisfaction. The exercise made him grumpy and reminded him that he still hadn’t been given all the estates the Empress had promised him. He stamped through the palace to her apartments, his boots dropping clumps of horse manure.
He found the Earl of Gloucester looking out at the river. “She’s in the chapel preparing her soul. Leave her alone, marshal.”
“She still owes me Newbury.”
“You’ll get it.” He was watching the far bank of the river for the return of the army. Last night Stephen’s queen had shown that she was still to be reckoned with by raiding Southwark. The earl had sent his main force to chase her back into Kent. He now wished he hadn’t. He was picking up vibrations of bad luck.
John the Marshal, never sensitive to vibrations, never sensitive to anything, returned to his grievance. “Bloody female. Stephen wouldn’t have made me wait for it. Say what you like about Stephen, he was a generous bastard.”
“Stephen’s in prison.”
“And serve him right.” The marshal was crude, vulgar and illogical, everything Brien Fitz Count and the earl were not. He believed a woman’s place was in her man’s bed. But in his belief that the rightful heir should inherit he was as unwavering as they were.
He nodded downriver. “They’re starting the celebrations early.”
“What?”
“The Londoners. Ringing the bells. Celebrating.”
The sound had crept up on him, first one solitary bell and then another; he’d dismissed it as a fire alarm. The city was always burning somewhere.
But the ringing spread. Some three hundred churches were crammed into the square mile of London and now each one was ringing, as if an earthquake had shaken it.
The earl had been in Flanders when the towns erupted against their lords. He said: “Commoners ring bells as a muster to arms. Oh Jesus.”
They pelted down to the palace yard and one of the earl’s squires came riding in, shaking. “The Londoners are coming, my lord, thousands of them. They’re armed.”
Butchers had grabbed cleavers, slaughterers had fetched their knives and woodmen their axes. Women whose hands could snap a goose’s neck picked up pokers, rolling pins and gridirons. After a night discussing its grievance, the corporate temper of the city had suddenly boiled. It was out for the Empress’ blood.
The earl felt sick with, of all things, embarrassment. He felt a fool not just because he had miscalculated in leaving the lady defenceless, but because, for an instant, he saw himself and all Normans as posturers who held their place only so long as the animal on which they pranced kept its eyes shut. Stephen was not his enemy: at root they were the same. The true enemy was at this moment streaming along the Strand.
“Well, for Christ’s sake, say something. Evacuate. We can’t hold them, but if they find this place empty they’ll stop and loot. They’re only cattle.” Good and noble marshal. They were only cattle.
He gave orders.
John the Marshal half-carried the Empress, who had not adjusted to the emergency, to the western postern. As he urged her to mount the waiting horse, she made a stand for dignity. “I’ll not ride like a man. Fetch a side-saddle.”
The marshal picked her up and threw her so that her legs scissored open and she landed astride. “Get up there, you silly bitch.”
An army headed by Ypres and Stephen’s queen pursued the Empress west. Her retreat became a rout.
King David of Scotland had an epic flight in which he was captured three times and three times bought off his captors.
John the Marshal hid in a barn and his pursuers set fire to it. Even so he escaped, though a flaming spar fell across his face and burned out one of his eyes.
The Empress got away, but only because her half-brother turned to delay the pursuit. The earl fought like a lion, but in the end was captured.
With Stephen in prison on the Empress’ side of the country and with the Earl of Gloucester in prison on Stephen’s side, it was stalemate. Each held the other’s ace.
So they exchanged. With elaborate safeguards, Stephen was returned to his throne at Westminster, and Earl Robert to his Empress at Oxford. The Battle of Lincoln might never have happened.
The reminder that anything had happened at all lay in account rolls all over England which had once shown a profit. Now on the right-hand side where the figures should have been, there was written against estate after estate the one word: “Waste”.
Because she didn’t know what else to do, Matilda de Risle followed the Empress’ court to Oxford. There could be no going back to Stephen who had betrayed her. She was committed to the Empress’ cause now, win or lose.
She put such knights as she had left at the Empress’ disposal.
With the money from the few estates remaining to her out of Stephen’s clutches, she hired lawyers in every court she could think of to establish that she had never been legally married to Fitz Payn. She laid out a vast sum on an emissary to the Pope to do the same thing.
Gervase of Holborn advised her against it. “It’s expensive and it could take years. Fitz Payn’s probably dead, anyway.”
“I know he’s dead,” said Matilda. “But everyone must realise I did not consent to him. I owe it to my son.”
It had become an obsession. She bored everybody with the story, repeating again and again: “I did not consent.”
Adeliza noticed that Matilda had begun to take a bath every day as if her skin had contracted some invisible infection from being enveloped in the mercenary’s cloak.
It did her no good. Ladies of the court, previously her friends, avoided her where possible not just because she had become boring but because, whether she had consented or not, she had been disgraced. The Empress ignored her, but then the Empress ignored practically everybody.
Adeliza suggested: “Why don’t we go to Wallingford and stay with Lady Maud? It’s not far away. Gervase can send a messenger every day to say what’s happening. You’d like to see Maud of Wallingford again.”
Matilda was tempted but hesitated. She felt instinctively that she should stay at the hub of her contracting world, keeping an eye on the Empress and keeping in the Empress’ eye. Sheer loneliness tipped the balance. It would be nice to see the jolly, friendly wife of Brien Fitz Count again. Gervase of Holborn could be trusted to watch events at Oxford on her behalf. She went.
Matilda looked incredulously at the little woman who greeted her into Wallingford Castle. “Maud?” She recovered her manners. “My Lady Matilda.” But Maud did not repeat the my-Lady-Matilda joke; there was no joking left in her. The unborn baby she carried might have been a succubus taking the goodness from her bones; her mouth had fallen into puckered lines and the eyes which had been lively boot-buttons stared wearily at nothing.
When they were settled in the keep solar, Matilda asked: “Was the siege as bad as all that?”
It had been as bad as all that. Wallingford had been sieged on and off almost since the war started and in all that time Maud had commanded it. Every time the siege was lifted Brien Fitz Count had come back, impregnated his wife and then gone off to rejoin the Empress. Maud of Wallingford said none of this. She said: “It was an honour to serve the Empress.” She wasn’t joking. The health of poking fun at the Empress had drained out with the rest. To avoid hating the woman who took her husband away from her, Maud had become her acolyte too.
“I bet it wasn’t as bad as what I’ve been through, eh Adeliza?” and Matilda launched into her tale, ending with her usual: “But I did not consent.”
“I am sure you did not.” Maud was polite and vague. She hauled herself up. “If you’ll excuse me I’ll go and see to the sleeping arrangements.”
She went out and Matilda cried. She wanted Percy of Alleyn. She wanted Berte and Jodi. She wanted her son. She wanted her old life back and all the people in it who had made it safe.
Adeliza cradled her. “You’ve still got me, ’Tildy. ’Tildy.”
“Yes?”
“Let’s go to Normandy. Count Geoffrey nearly owns it now. He’ll welcome you. We can join all the others and everything will be like it used to.”
Matilda wiped her eyes. “You go if you want to. It’s time you were married. I’m staying here. Somebody’s got to protect Edmund’s lands in this mess.”
The solar, once a light-filled, fan-vaulted circle, a woman’s place, was full of war. Its windows had been bricked in to become arrow slits, ladies’ embroidery frames stood among clumps of spears. The cradle waiting for its occupant had rolls of rags in it for the bandaging of male wounds. Matilda sighed for the lost symmetry of things.
At Oxford, Gervase of Holborn was becoming uneasy. The court was disintegrating. Robert, Earl of Gloucester, had left it for Normandy to try and persuade Count Geoffrey Plantagenet to come to England and fight on his wife’s behalf.
The moment he’d gone the Empress’ supporters began to slip away. They weren’t defecting to Stephen, but Stephen was attacking from the south and threatening their homes and they had to defend them.
If the gaps they left were dangerous, so were the men who came to fill them. Mercenaries of all kinds began to make an appearance – and were received. The Empress was desperate. For the first time she was forced to employ men on whom, a few weeks earlier, she would not have wiped her boots. She did it with disdain, but it was a seller’s market; the mercenaries took her insults and upped their price.
Since the Empress was ashamed of these transactions, she conducted them in secret and Gervase had to bribe her chamberlain to keep tabs on what was going on. The chamberlain was eager to unburden himself: “I never thought I would see such things, never. She’s sent this German brute, Fitz Hildebrand, to recover the treasury at Winchester for her. He’s a known killer, you know. I never thought… and these scum don’t just want money, you know. They want estates – and they’re getting them. Her father would spin in his… and there’s another one down in the hall this minute. She keeps them waiting for the look of the thing, but she’ll employ him, don’t you worry. Oh yes. She wants this one to recapture Ibber. God knows what his price will be.”
“What’s this one’s name?”
“I don’t know their names,” said the chamberlain, pettishly. “They’re all Fitz something. And they’re all scoundrels.”
Gervase of Holborn walked as inconspicuously as he could into the hall to cast his eye over the petitioners who filled it. Almost at once he saw the tall, sweet-complexioned man talking engagingly to one of the Empress’ ladies and he knew what this particular mercenary’s price would be. He backed out as quietly as he could, then ran for the stables.
Fitz Payn watched him go and beckoned to his lieutenant.
The riders caught up with Gervase on a deserted part of the track leading to Wallingford alongside the Thames. The moment he heard the hoofbeats he knew he’d miscalculated; he should have taken a faster horse than his usual palfrey.
Even then he tried to outride them. He was terrified for himself, terrified for his lady. She must be warned. Frantically, as he rode, he tried to remember his sins to confess them to God. “Absolve me from them, whatever they were.”
They got him in the same way they’d got Percy of Alleyn. A stone hit his shoulder and toppled him off the horse. As he sprawled on the ground they put a spear through his heart, clean as a whistle, and threw his body into the river.
At Wallingford Maud’s captain of the guard entered the solar. “A messenger from Oxford, my lady.”
“Thanks be to God.” Matilda had received no news from Gervase for two days and had been preparing to ride back to Oxford to see what was wrong.
“Not for you, madam. For my lady. A marshal of the Empress’. With a Praecipe.” A command.
“Admit him.”
“I shall,” said the captain, “but not the crew with him.” He hadn’t guarded Wallingford all this time to let in any cut-throat who asked admittance.
But the marshal ushered into the chamber, though a stranger to them, was genuine enough and he carried a scroll bearing the Empress’ own seal.
He had the brusequeness of a man doing an unpleasant job as quickly as possible. “‘From Matilda the Empress to our best beloved Maud of Wallingford. I command that she deliver without delay the person of Matilda of Risle to this my marshal to be safely delivered to her husband Ralph Fitz Payn. Sealed by my hand. Witnessed at Oxford by the Earl of Norfolk.’”
It took time, but as it sank in that Fitz Payn was alive and that she had been sold to him again, this time by a fellow-woman, the particles which made up the soul of Matilda of Risle unstructured themselves. Memories, myths, scoldings, landscapes, loves, everything which had formed the invisible Matilda and given volition to the physical Matilda splintered away from each other. She watched as her body acted on its own like a decapitated hen and threw itself at Maud of Wallingford’s feet. “Don’t give me up.” A particle of her reason whizzed by and said: “Ridiculous. How futile.”
Maud of Wallingford was white and holding her stomach. “Please, please.”
Somebody else was sobbing. Matilda’s face felt the wet, smooth face of Adeliza as the girl hugged her. Another particle said: “Protect Adeliza. Protect Edmund.” To Adeliza she said: “Go to the Fens. Get a boat. Go to Edmund.”
The marshal saw the hysteria could get out of hand. He told the captain: “Help me take her down.”
The captain said reluctantly: “She’ll need her things. It’s getting bitter.”
“Send a maid. Bring the boxes to the gate.”
They pulled her up between them and took her to the door. Adeliza ran in front and tried to stop them but they pushed her down.
A passing particle of Matilda’s past said cheerily: “I shall fear no evil,” as they dragged her, screaming, down the stairs.