Chapter 13
August, 1174
Barfleur, Normandy
The Young King’s rebellion struggled on for another year.
Realizing Henry had effectively secured his borders in Normandy with the defeat of the alliance in Brittany, the rebels turned their attention to England, where they intended to create so much havoc that the king would be forced to come to its aid. King William of Scotland, another of Henry’s inveterate enemies, ravaged the north country and succeeded in capturing Nottingham in the spring of 1174. The loyalists defending the country (who included Geoffrey Plantagenet, Henry’s second bastard son), were able to hold their own in most of the midlands but when the count of Flanders made public his plan to personally invade England in retaliation for his brother’s death, they sent messengers to the king, begging him to return.
Henry landed at Southampton on July 7th. He went straight to Canterbury and at the cathedral did public penance for his part in the murder of Thomas Becket. There were those who had said that the rebellion of the king’s sons and the ensuing war were the result of that heinous crime, even though the papal court had seen fit to absolve him of any guilt. With his penance, Henry sought to quiet such rumblings and it seemed to work admirably. King William was captured in Yorkshire on July 13th and within a few days the whole of England was secure in Henry’s hands.
It became obvious that the count of Flanders’ declaration to invade England had been nothing more than a ruse to get Henry out of Normandy. On July 22nd, he and King Louis attacked Rouen, which had been their main preoccupation since the start of the rebellion.
On August 8th, Henry returned to the continent, putting down at Barfleur. William Longsword disembarked on shaky legs, splashed to the beach and dropped to his knees on the rocky ground. Of all crossings, he hated night ones the most. It was bad enough to be on a rolling ship but to not even be able to see past his hand at the same time was hell. He hadn’t slept a wink.
He muttered his fervent prayer of gratitude and got up, pausing for a moment while the rest of Henry’s army strode around him, carrying weapons and mail high to keep them from getting wet and pulling on the leads of the skittish, blindfolded horses. The memory of the trip behind him and his ritual completed, he was now free to glare at his father, who was watching with unconcealed impatience as his mount was led up to the shore, followed by a line of men, each of whom bore some accoutrement of his war gear: saddle, hauberk, helmet, dry boots and gloves, extra sword.
“Don’t tell me you’re still angry,” said Richard Delamere, splashing up behind him.
“No—I’m outraged!” Longsword snapped. He gestured with a sweep of his arm. “Out of all the men here why am I the one he picks to stay behind until all the damned ships have been unloaded?”
Delamere grinned. “I’m not certain but perhaps it has something to do with the tactless remark you made about skewering the Young King on the point of your sword when you meet up with him in Rouen.”
“It was a joke!”
“Will, in all the years I’ve known you, you’ve never made a joke,” Delamere told him. “You’re totally without humor.”
Longsword fixed his outraged glare on his friend, who burst out laughing. After another moment, he relented and smiled wanly. “Well, I do feel like skewering him. It galls me how my father can still look upon him so benignly after everything he’s done. Can you imagine Young Henry behaving likewise if he’d had the upper hand all this time?”
“As long as the king lives, that could never happen,” Delamere said seriously. “No one can defeat him.”
Longsword didn’t reply. He turned his gaze again to his father, attended now by his knights, and Delamere saw a mingling of devotion and admiration suffuse his face. He felt sudden anger with the king. Longsword deserved more recognition than he was given, more honors. While Henry inspired a fierce loyalty among many, he had no better champion than this bastard son. Yet he was seemingly oblivious of Longsword’s earnest endeavors on his behalf while simultaneously excusing the treachery of the Young King. Delamere could only hope that when the rebellion was finally put down, Henry would reward Longsword in a manner which would prove to his son how much his unswerving fidelity and hard work were valued.
Rouen had been under siege for more than a fortnight by the time Henry returned to Normandy. Although the city was defended by a sizable garrison, it could not hope to hold out for any great length of time against the combined forces of the king of France and the count of Flanders. Already its walls were suffering from the constant bombardment of siege machines such as the one Longsword had employed at Dol. It was also more difficult to defend an entire city instead of a single fortress; there was a large and unpredictable civilian population to be taken into account and a greater preponderance of timbered buildings that only increased the chances of widespread destruction from fireballs hurled by the attackers. And due largely to its strategic placement on the Seine, Rouen was an important commercial center. It couldn’t afford to lie dormant for too long.
Longsword had proposed taking two or three hundred mounted men and racing to the city ahead of his father’s army to engage Louis’ forces and divert his attention from the siege but Henry had refused the offer. Contrary to the prevailing opinion of most loyalists, he had no wish to deal the rebels a humiliating, crushing defeat which might very well provide them with an excuse to rebel again at some later time. He had no wish, as well, to alienate his heir. He rode instead at the head of his forces in a quick but showy procession designed to give Louis’ spies warning of his advance and the opportunity to withdraw to France as the rebels had done at Verneuil.
August 10th was St. Laurence’s Day and in Rouen a general truce was declared for a celebration. The citizens made merry in the streets and on the banks of the river there was a tournament for the knights of the garrison. But, just as he had done at Verneuil, Louis broke the truce in a desperate attempt to take the city before Henry arrived. Only the sharp observance of two clerks taking in the view from a high tower saved Rouen. They noticed the martial activity in the French camp and sounded an alarm which brought the garrison running back to its posts in time to prevent the rebels from scaling the city walls. Henry arrived the next day. There was some fighting but the true break came when carts carrying supplies to the French were seized by his mercenaries. Without supplies Louis realized he wouldn’t be able to survive for long in hostile territory and he fled across the border. Henry marched triumphantly into Rouen. England had been secured and now Normandy. Excepting the count of Flanders, the king of France and Young Henry, the major figures of the rebellion had all been captured. The fight was over. In September, Louis sued for peace.
Henry was generous in victory. After the treaty which formally ended the war was set, the majority of his prisoners were released after giving security and their lands were restored to them. He chose to ignore Louis’ large part in directing and inciting the rebellion, preferring for diplomatic reasons to consider it the result of the Young King’s sense of grievance. To this end, Henry gave his son more responsibilities and a greater allowance. The king of Scotland was released after signing a treaty in which he acknowledged Henry as his overlord. The earl of Chester, the earl of Leicester and Ralph de Fougères were the only ones whom the king kept his prisoners, lodged in comfortable but secure confinement in the royal castle at Falaise.
Richard Delamere watched his friend become gradually more uncommunicative as the days passed. Longsword wasn’t coping well with the realization that Henry’s purpose was to put everything back to the way it was before the rebellion and that included keeping the Young King his heir. They had both been amazed when the Young King was received back into Henry’s paternal benevolence without a murmur. If Henry had had harsh words for his son, he’d delivered them in privacy so strict that no other person had heard them.
Longsword was at first stunned and then angry. Although Delamere warned him to just swallow it, the bitterness welled up so high inside him that
he finally confronted his father. Any legitimate argument he might have had were lost in his frustrated shouts and scathing accusations and his timing was bad because the king was in the midst of an informal council meeting and the chamber was full of men. Henry didn’t like being shouted at, particularly before witnesses, and he answered the challenge with his own booming voice and forced Longsword into a glaring silence. When Longsword would have replied, Henry told him to get out and not to dare enter his sight until he was summoned. The younger man strode angrily from the chamber, slamming the door behind him, and went straight to the stables, where he threw the saddle over his horse and disappeared alone into the countryside for two days.
Delamere knew Longsword had a temper and after the first night wondered if his friend was going to do something stupid like ride to France and offer his services to Louis. The next day Henry sent for his son, only to be told that his whereabouts were unknown. Concerned, the king ordered a search organized but this proved unnecessary. In the morning, Longsword trotted into the castle, his anger finally subdued but something like mistrust in his eyes when he beheld his father waiting for him on the steps leading to the hall.
Delamere sat a discreet distance from the closed door idly nursing a cup of weak ale. His mind was too distracted to even pay much attention to the flirtatious glances of the castellan’s pretty young daughter. He expected at any moment to hear the wild burst of Longsword’s fury and the equally strident response of the king but no sound came to his ears. He didn’t know if that meant he could relax or if something far worse than a mere argument between father and son was taking place.
Finally, the door opened and Longsword emerged. His face had been sunburned by a long summer of fighting the king’s war but to Delamere it looked unnaturally pale—and emotionless. Longsword appeared not to have seen him; he walked almost silently through the hall and outside. Delamere followed.
“Will!” he called when Longsword showed no sign of pausing. He ran a little. “Will!”
Longsword stopped and turned around.
“Where are you going?”
For a moment Longsword made no answer, as if he were confused by the question. Then he said, “I don’t know.”
Delamere came up to him. “Let’s go up on the wall,” he said quietly.
They climbed the narrow steps to the wallwalk in silence and in silence stared blindly out at the view of neatly cut golden fields, recently harvested. Longsword was an uncomplicated man; Delamere had always known exactly what he was thinking just from the expressions which flitted across his open face. But now his friend’s face was shuttered and Delamere didn’t know how to proceed, whether to speak or to wait.
Longsword solved the problem. “The king thinks it would be a good idea if I leave his household,” he said abruptly, in a flat, tight voice.
Delamere jerked his head around to stare at him, open-mouthed. He was too stunned to speak; then he sputtered, “I don’t believe it! Why? What reason could he possibly give you?”
“The king said I have no understanding of his situation. He said that my unfortunate hatred of my half-brother is irritating to the point where it interferes with his efforts at diplomacy. He said it would be better for him, the Young King and especially for me if I were sent out of Normandy.”
There was something chilling about Longsword’s voice. It was unnatural for him to be so calm—he ought to have been ranting, striding up and down the wallwalk, waving his arms and loudly cursing his fate. Delamere thought it strange, too, that he kept referring to Henry as ‘the king’; he’d never heard Longsword call him anything other than ‘my father’.
“And that’s it?” he said finally. “He’s turning you out?”
Longsword continued to stare stonily out across the sun-warmed field. “Not quite. The king’s being very generous to me. He’s giving me a place to go. More than adequate compensation for my support during the war, he said. He sounded very satisfied about it.”
He himself didn’t sound as pleased. “Where is it?” Delamere asked apprehensively.
“Wales.”
“Wales? Wales as in the other side of the kingdom?”
Longsword nodded. “Yes, that Wales.” He turned to face Delamere, his expression still bland. “It seems, doesn’t it, that the king not only wishes me to get out of Normandy but out of England as well?”
“He must have a reason, Will! Perhaps it’s your strong arm. The petty Welsh rulers are none too secure and the peace Henry’s made with them is tenuous at best, especially in the south.”
“You must read the king’s mind better than that, Richard, because I’m being sent to the north. To Gwynedd. The principality where the king has strengthened his peace with Prince Dafydd by giving him his half-sister in marriage. The place whose ruler loves the king so much that in return he surrendered the Norman castle his father captured seven years ago and sent him a contingent of archers to fight for him in the rebellion. By the way, that’s the castle I’m getting. Rhuddlan. God alone knows what kind of state it’s in after being in the hands of the Welsh. Custodian of Rhuddlan. Probably the most boring appointment in the whole of the empire.”
Despite his friend’s lackluster portrayal, Delamere was excited for him. “But your own castle, Will!”
“He made his other bastard, Geoffrey, the damned bishop of Lincoln!” Longsword finally exploded. “He could have made me an earl at least! I am the eldest, after all! But no—a mere custodian is sufficient enough for William the Bastard!”
Delamere knew—and he was sure Longsword knew it too, but in his hurt and anger was choosing to ignore it—that King Henry had, since the start of his reign, been reducing the number of earls in England by not creating new earldoms as rewards and not filling old ones when their previous holders died without heirs. An earl’s wealth was bound up in his land and the more land he had, the more knight service he owed to the king. The situation could be potentially threatening to the monarch, as Henry had learned during the civil war when some of the barons who had sworn to his grandfather to support his claim to the throne switched their allegiance to his uncle and spawned over a decade of devastating conflict. It was rumored even now that the king’s punishment of the earls of Chester and Leicester, his only remaining prisoners and two of the most powerful men in England, would be severe enough to ensure that their influence would become drastically curtailed.
Delamere was annoyed on his friend’s behalf. It would have been fitting to make Will an earl, he thought; he deserved it for his loyalty and would have been so pleased and proud by the elevation in rank that he would have done anything for the king in return, including getting down on his knees and kissing the Young King’s boots. Being the keeper of a royal castle wasn’t the shabby appointment Longsword was making it out to be, but it certainly didn’t have the prestige and attendant power of being an earl.
“Maybe he’s waiting for a vacancy in an existing earldom,” Delamere suggested feebly.
“Yes, I’m sure it’s something like that,” Longsword agreed sarcastically.
Delamere lapsed into an uneasy silence, unused to Longsword’s unfilial attitude.
“There’s more,” Longsword said after a minute. He did not sound enthusiastic. “There’s a prize that goes with Rhuddlan. To further bind their friendship, Prince Dafydd has offered up his niece in sacrifice to the mighty king of England. And I’m the lucky one who gets to marry her.”