When Christ and His Saints Slept

  “Such a promise would be hollow, Matilda, unless it came from the Almighty. I cannot promise you that I’ll never come to harm. I can pledge to you that I will not be so careless of my own safety in the future. Lincoln was…my Antioch, but that is not a mistake a man makes twice.”

  Lincoln and Antioch. The similarities between the two sieges had occurred to Matilda almost at once, so striking were they. The crusaders capturing Antioch, Stephen besieging Lincoln Castle. Both armies then caught by surprise, confronted by a large enemy force. Stephen’s father had abandoned the siege, rode away from Antioch and—fairly or not—into infamy, disgrace that not even his subsequent martyr’s death had fully expiated. Stephen had chosen to stay and fight. It was Matilda’s belief that he’d been paying off his father’s debt, but she had not expected him to see that for himself, as he was the least introspective of men.

  He sensed her surprise and said wryly, “Solitary confinement gives a man plenty of time to think. What else was there to do?” Reaching for her hand, he kissed her fingers, one by one. “I do not have too many memories of my father, Tilda, for I was only five when he took the cross again, at my mother’s insistence. But I do have one very strong memory of a church, probably the cathedral at Chartres. He was telling me about Antioch, and what I remember was the sadness in his face…”

  Raising up on her elbow, Matilda brushed her lips against his cheek. What a heartless wife Adela had been, that she could have valued her husband’s honour above his life. She was no longer threatened, though, by her indomitable mother-in-law, for Adela’s shadow had receded in the three years since her death in the cloistered quiet of a Marcigny nunnery. Matilda supposed most people would say her life had been a great success. Daughter, wife, widow, mother, and nun—she’d never failed to play the part expected of her, and lived long enough to see one son as a prince of the Church, a second as Count of Blois and Champagne, and a third as England’s king. But when Adela died, few had grieved for her.

  Stephen had been stroking her hair, sliding his hand down her back, along the curve of her hip. Before his caresses could become more intimate, she laced her fingers through his, holding his hand still against her thigh. “Stephen…we need to talk about betrayals, those beyond forgiving.”

  “Geoffrey de Mandeville?”

  “Yes. I realize that you can take no action against him now, not yet. But he must be punished for what he did. I entreat you to see that he is, to hold him accountable for his treachery.”

  “Of course I will. Jesú, the man abducted Constance! Moreover, he abandoned you when your need was greatest. Do you truly think I could ever forgive him, Tilda?”

  “Forgiveness comes easily to you, my love, sometimes too easily.” Her smile was tender enough to take any sting from her words. “You are not a man to nurture grudges, and I admire you greatly for that. But Mandeville owes us a debt that cannot be remitted. Promise me, Stephen, that you will harden your heart against him. He is not deserving of clemency, yours or the Almighty’s.”

  She kissed him then, a kiss so soft and seeking and full of promise that he began to laugh. “What is hardening at the moment,” he said, “is not my heart!”

  She laughed, too, and gave herself up gladly to the joys of the marriage bed, those pleasures of the flesh that were so sweet and mayhap sinful, for the Church said passion was suspect, even if sanctified by wedlock. But it seemed a strange sin, indeed, that of loving her husband overly well, and she could not believe it was one to imperil her soul. “I’ve been so wretched without you,” she confided, and those were the last words she got to say for some time thereafter.

  Later—much later—as they lay at ease in each other’s arms, he could not resist teasing her about her “sudden thirst for blood.” Dropping a quick kiss on the tip of her nose, he said, “Can this truly be my Matilda? My gentle little wife who would not even frown at a mangy dog or a surly beggar? Can this be the same woman who now plies her seductive wiles with a skill that Salome might envy?”

  Matilda was unperturbed. “If I remember my Scriptures,” she said placidly, “Salome did her dance of the veils for the head of John the Baptist. But I do not want you to kill Geoffrey de Mandeville, Stephen.” She turned her head on the pillow and smiled at her husband. “Just ruin him.”

  UPON Robert’s arrival at Oxford, Maude celebrated his freedom with a lavish supper of roast swan, stewed venison, baked lamprey, and a sugared subtlety sculptured to resemble a unicorn. Wines were poured freely, her minstrel entertained them between courses, and all did their best to act as if they truly had cause for rejoicing.

  Afterward, they retired to the solar, ostensibly for privacy, but also because they could keep up the pretense no longer. The castellan, Robert d’Oilly, and his stepson, yet another of the old king’s by-blows, had excused themselves as soon as they could, leaving behind a fractured family circle.

  Rainald thought those remaining were as glum a bunch as he’d ever had the bad luck to encounter. Robert was so quiet one would have thought he’d taken a holy vow of silence whilst he was captive. Amabel and Maude were being polite to each other, but it was the kind of courtesy to set a man’s teeth on edge. And Ranulf was brooding again. He was usually good company, cheerful and obliging. But something was sitting heavy on his shoulders these days, over and above his natural chagrin at Maude’s rout from Winchester. Whatever it was, though, he was keeping it to himself. Rainald had made one attempt to find out what was festering, only to have the lad snap at him like one of those blasted dyrehunds.

  Ranulf was staring intently into the fire, and did not even notice when Rainald leaned over and helped himself to his brother’s drink. It would be a shame to waste good wine, he reasoned. His gaze roamed the chamber, flitting over his wife, sitting meek and mute in the window seat, before coming to rest on Maude. She and Robert were hunched over a chessboard, but neither of them seemed to have much interest in the game. Rainald felt pity stir and looked away hastily, lest she read it in his face, for he knew she’d forgive him almost anything but pity. He did feel sorry for her, though, damned if he did not. He did not even blame her anymore for botching things so badly. Mayhap it was just not meant to be. At least he’d done better than most, for he’d gotten an earldom out of it all. If he could hold on to it. Getting to his feet, he reminded them that he was leaving for Cornwall on the morrow and bade them goodnight, remembering just in time to take Beatrice with him.

  Amabel soon went off to bed, too; she was finding the atmosphere in the solar just as oppressive as Rainald had. Ranulf was the next to make his escape, claiming he had to let his dogs out, and Robert and Maude were left alone with a flagging chess game and a silence heavy with all that lay unspoken between them.

  Maude pushed her chair back. “I cannot concentrate upon this game. I am truly glad to have you safe, Robert. But tonight I feel as if…as if we’d struggled and panted and clawed our way up a mountain, only to stumble just as we neared the summit and fall all the way down, landing in a bloodied, bruised heap at the bottom. What in God’s Name do we do now?”

  “I suppose,” he said, “we start climbing again.”

  “How many of our men will have the heart for it?” Rising, she began to pace. “To come so close and then to have it all snatched away like this…it is so unfair, Robert, so damnably unfair!”

  “Life is unfair,” he said, sounding so stoical, so rational, and so dispassionate that she was suddenly angry, a scalding, seething, impotent rage that spared no one—not herself, not Robert, not God.

  “You think I do not know that? When has life ever been fair to women? Just think upon how easy it was for Stephen to steal my crown, and how bitter and bloody has been my struggle to win it back. Even after we’d caged Stephen at Bristol Castle, he was still a rival, still a threat…and why? Because he was so much braver or more clever or capable than me? No…because I was a woman, for it always came back to that. I’ll not deny that I made mistakes, but you do not know what it is like, Robert,
to be judged so unfairly, to be rejected not for what you’ve done but for what you are. It is a poison that seeps into the soul, that makes you half crazed with the need to prove yourself…”

  She stopped to catch her breath, and only then did she see the look on Robert’s face, one of disbelief and then utter and overwhelming fury, burning as hot as her own anger, hotter even, for being so long suppressed.

  “I do not know what it is like?” he said incredulously. “I was our father’s firstborn son, but was I his heir? No, I was just his bastard. He trusted me and relied upon me and needed me. But none of that mattered, not even after the White Ship sank and he lost his only lawfully begotten son. He was so desperate to have an heir of his body that he dragged you back—unwilling—from Germany, forced you into a marriage that he knew was doomed, and then risked rebellion by ramming you down the throats of his barons. And all the while, he had a son capable of ruling after him—he had me! But I was the son born of his sin, so I was not worthy to be king. As if I could have blundered any worse than you or Stephen!”

  Maude was stunned. She stared at him, too stricken for words, not knowing what to say even if she’d been capable of speech. Robert seemed equally shattered by his outburst: his face was suddenly ashen. He started to speak, then turned abruptly and walked out.

  THE night was bitter-cold and starless, the sky choked with clouds. Maude leaned into the embrasure, gazing down into the darkness of the bailey. She knew her presence on the battlements was making the guards uneasy. They kept their distance, but she could feel their eyes following her, curious, probing, wondering what she was doing up here, alone, at such an hour. She wondered, too.

  It may have been memory that had drawn her up to the battlements. Shivering each time the wind caught her mantle, she remembered watching a summer sunset from this very spot, Brien at her side. Not so long ago, just a lifetime. Brien was back at Wallingford Castle now, not far away, twelve miles or so. As if distance mattered, as if what kept them apart could be measured in miles. She did not often let herself think of Brien, of what might have been and what could never be. But she did now, deliberately and unsparingly. She wiped away tears, and thought of them all. Robert, who’d turned into a stranger before her eyes. Robert, whom she’d trusted and taken for granted and never really known. Ranulf, who’d lost the earldom she’d promised and mayhap much more. Rainald, who’d profited, too, from her quest—a mad wife and a precarious hold upon a corner of Cornwall. Geoffrey, whom she’d loathed from the very day of her wedding, because it was easier to hate him than to hate her father. And her sons, growing up without her. Her sons, whom she’d not even seen in more than two years.

  She lost all sense of time, and when the sky began to pale, it was with shock that she realized she’d passed the entire night out on the battlements, standing guard over the wreckage of her ravaged kingdom. The cold seemed to have penetrated into her very bones, yet for hours she’d not even been aware of it. She watched as the shadows receded and daylight slowly gained the ascendancy. Only then did she turn away from the battlements, go to find her brother.

  As early as it was, Robert was already up and dressed, attended by a sleepy squire. The bed curtains were closed; Amabel still slept. But after one glimpse of Robert’s face, Maude was sure his night had been as wakeful as her own. The squire soon remembered an urgent need to be elsewhere, and muttering about bringing his lord cider and bread to break his fast, he made a swift, discreet exit.

  Maude was still trembling with the cold, and she knotted her hands together to still their tremors. When Robert gestured toward the bed, she nodded and kept her voice low, no more wanting to awaken Amabel than he did.

  “I am sorry, Robert. I do not say that as often as I ought, but never have I meant it more. You have been my rod and my staff, more loyal than I deserved. You would have made a very good king.”

  His shoulders twitched, in a half-shrug. “Well, better than Stephen, for certes,” he said, with the faintest glimmer of a smile.

  “Our father was a fool,” she said, and he did not dispute her.

  “Robert.” Her mouth was suddenly dry. “I am never going to be queen, am I?”

  “No,” he said quietly, “you are not.”

  She’d known what he would say. But his uncompromising, honest answer robbed her of any last shreds of hope. She averted her face, briefly, and he, too, looked away, not willing to watch the death of a dream.

  “I’d best go now, ere Amabel starts to stir.” She gave him a smile so pained that he winced.

  “Maude.” She turned back to face him, slowly, and he said, “You are not giving up?”

  “You know better than that, Robert. I may have lost, but I’ll not let Henry lose, too. I shall fight for my son as long as I have breath in my body. He must not be cheated of the crown that is his birthright.”

  She saw sympathy in his eyes, and what mattered more, respect. “I will do whatever I can,” he vowed, “to make sure that does not happen.” And in that moment, she realized the truth—that he’d been fighting for Henry all along.

  24

  Devizes, England

  March 1142

  THE Countess of Chester arrived the day after her aunt and father held an urgent council at Devizes Castle. Maud needed to take but one meal in their company to conclude that something was amiss, for her senses were finely attuned to emotional undercurrents. As soon as she could, she lured her mother away, and after some bantering about the tedium of the Lenten menu, she demanded to know why “Aunt Maude and Papa and the others look like mourners at a particularly dreary wake.”

  Amabel settled herself in the window seat. “They have cause, child, for they have had to swallow their pride, and that goes down much harder than salted fish. They have decided to send envoys to Maude’s husband, asking Geoffrey to aid them in overthrowing Stephen.”

  Maud’s eyes widened. “Were they sober at the time? I cannot believe they’d turn to Geoffrey!”

  “Well, they did. Which proves, I suppose, just how desperate they are.”

  Maud was still incredulous. “I would have sworn upon my very soul that Aunt Maude would never have agreed, no matter how great her need!”

  “For herself, I daresay she would not. But there is very little she would not do for her son.”

  Maud sat down abruptly, suddenly realizing the full magnitude of what her aunt had lost at Winchester. “It is not fair, Mama. She ought to have been queen!”

  “Most people thought otherwise.”

  Amabel’s tone had an edge sharp enough to slice bread, or so Maud thought. She was sorry that her mother and her aunt were so often at odds, for they were the two women who mattered most to her, but she was insightful enough to understand why it was so, and pragmatic enough to accept it. Diplomatically steering the conversation away from hidden family reefs, she said, “I understand now why Uncle Ranulf was in such a black mood. He trusts Geoffrey even less than he likes him, and he once told me that if he was given a choice between befriending Geoffrey and trying to tame a polecat, he’d take the polecat every time!”

  “Do you remember that Bristol goldsmith’s son, Maud…the wretch who was caught setting all those fires? When he was asked why, he said he just liked to watch things burn. Well, Geoffrey likes to set tempers afire, and he does it right well. But Ranulf’s ‘black mood’ cannot be blamed on Geoffrey’s coming, for he has been troubled for some weeks now. Even Robert commented upon it, and men are usually blind to any wound that does not bleed.”

  Maud’s curiosity was piqued. She was quite fond of Ranulf, no less fond of intrigue, and later that afternoon she set herself a dual task—to ferret out Ranulf’s secret and to console him if she could.

  She was halfway up the stairs to Ranulf’s chamber when she bumped—quite literally—into her uncle’s young squire. Luke recoiled, stammering incoherent apologies, for his natural shyness became almost paralyzing in the presence of self-assured, flirtatious young women like Maud. Eventually, though
, he managed to suggest that this would not be a good time to seek out Lord Ranulf.

  “Has he a woman with him?” she asked, and when he blushed at her bluntness but shook his head, she gave him a bewitching smile and continued on up the stairs. In his haste to escape, Luke had left the door ajar. She was about to knock when she heard the voices, as angry as they were audible.

  “I swear by the Rood, Ranulf, that you’ve gone utterly daft! Let’s suppose you are able to evade bandits and the king’s men and get safely to Shrewsbury. What then? How are you going to contact Annora? Hope she comes into town ere the year is out? Or do you just intend to ride out to her husband’s manor and ask him if you can borrow his wife for a bit?”

  “Damn you, Gilbert, this is none of your concern!”

  “Someone has to keep you from dying so young and so needlessly!”

  “I’ve had enough of your meddling!” Ranulf jerked the door open, only to find himself nose to nose with his niece. “Maud! What are you doing out there?”

  “I should think it would be obvious. I was eavesdropping, of course.” She stepped forward into the room and winked at Gilbert. “My turn to talk some sense into him.”

  “Good luck,” he muttered, giving the door a satisfying slam on his way out.

  “I want no lecture, Maud,” Ranulf warned, but his rudeness fazed her not at all. Perching on the edge of the bed, she arranged her skirts decorously and then smiled sweetly.

  “Sermons are for church. I’d much rather talk about your tryst with…Annora, was it? The girl to whom you were once plight trothed? Such fidelity is rare indeed in our world and must be rewarded. First of all, I need to know what she is like. My husband—and most men, if truth be told—seem far more interested in what is between a woman’s legs than between her ears, but—”