Hood

  “What can we do?” asked Anora, bunching her mantle in her fists. “Who is left that can stand against them?”

  “God knows,” replied Cadwgan. “Only God knows.”

  Baron Neufmarché received the news of his resounding victory with a restrained, almost solemn demeanour. After accepting a report on the casualties suffered by his forces, he thanked his commanders for carrying out his orders so well and so completely, awarding two of them lands in the newly conquered territory, and another an advancement in rank to a lordship and the command of the unfinished castle that had so readily lured King Rhys ap Tewdwr to his doom. “We will speak more of this tonight at table. Go now; rest yourselves.

  You have done me good service, and I am pleased.”

  When the knights had gone, he went to his chapel to pray.

  The simple room built within the stone walls of the castle was cool in the warmth of the day. The baron liked the air of calm quiet of the place. Approaching the simple wooden altar with its gilt cross and candle, he went down on one knee and bowed his head.

  “Great God,” he began after a moment, “I thank you for delivering the victory into my hand. May your glory increase. I beg you, almighty Lord, have mercy on those whose lives were given in this campaign. Forgive their sins, account their valour to their merit, and welcome them to your eternal rest. Heal the wounded, Lord Christ, and send them a swift recovery. In all ways comfort those who have suffered the pains of battle.”

  He remained in the chapel and was still enjoying the serenity when Father Gervais appeared. Aging now, though still vigorous, the cleric had been a member of the baron’s court since coming to Beauvais as a newly shorn priest to serve Bernard’s father.

  “Ah, it is you, my lord,” said the priest when the baron turned. “I thought I might find you here.” The grey-robed priest came to stand beside his lord and master. “You are not celebrating the victory with your men?”

  “God grant you peace, father,” said Bernard. “Celebrating? No, not yet. Later this evening, perhaps.”

  The priest regarded him for a moment. “Is anything the matter, my son?”

  Crossing himself, Neufmarché rose and, taking the priest by the arm, turned him and led him from the chapel, saying, “Walk with me, father. There is something I would ask you.”

  They climbed to the rampart and began making a slow circuit of the castle wall. “Earl Harold swore a sacred oath to Duke William, did he not?” said the baron after walking awhile. The sun was lowering, touching everything with gold.

  The summer air was warm and heavy and alive with the click and buzz of insects amongst the reeds and bulrushes of the nearby marshland below the east wall.

  “An oath sworn on holy relics in the presence of the Bishop of Caen,” replied Father Gervais. “It was written and signed. There is no doubt about it whatsoever.” Glancing at the baron, he said, “But you know this. Why do you ask?”

  “The oath,” said Bernard, “confirmed the promise made to William that he was to follow Edward as rightful King of England.”

  “D’une certitude.”

  “And the matter received the blessing of the pope,” said Bernard, “who is God’s vicar on earth.”

  “Again, that is so,” agreed the priest. He glanced at the baron, who continued walking, his eyes on the stone paving at his feet. “My lord, are you fretting over the divine right again?”

  The baron’s head turned quickly. “Fretting? No, father.”

  He turned away again. “Perhaps. A little.” He sighed. “It just seems too easy . . .” Unable to find the words, he sighed again.

  “All this.”

  “And what do you expect? God is on our side. It is so ordained. William has been chosen of God to be king, and thus any enterprise that supports and increases his kingdom will rightly be blessed of God.”

  Bernard nodded, his eyes still downcast.

  The priest was silent for a moment, then declared, “Ah! I have it. You worry that your support of Duke Robert will be held against you. That you will be called to reckoning, and the price will be too heavy to bear. That is what is troubling you, n’est-ce pas?”

  “It has occurred to me,” the baron confessed. “I sided with Robert against Rufus. The king has not forgotten, and neither will God, I think. There is an accounting to be rendered.

  Payment is due; I can feel it.”

  “But you were upholding the law,” protested the priest.

  “You will remember that at the time, Robert was the rightful heir. He had to be supported, even against the claims of his own brother. You were right to do so.”

  “And yet,” replied the baron, “Robert did not become king.”

  “In his heavenly wisdom, God saw fit to bestow the kingship on his brother William,” said Father Gervais. “How were you to know?”

  “How was I to know?” repeated Bernard, wondering aloud.

  “Précisément!” declared the priest. “You could not know, for God had not yet revealed his choice. And I believe that is why Rufus did not punish those who went against him. He understood that you were only acting in good faith according to holy law, and so he forgave you. He returned you to his grace and favour, as was only just and fair.” The priest spread his hands as if presenting an object so obvious that it needed no further description. “Our king forgave you. Voilà! God has forgiven you.”

  In the clear light of the elderly priest’s unfaltering certainty, Bernard felt his melancholy dissipating. “There is yet one more matter,” he said.

  “Let me hear it,” said the priest. “Unburden your soul and obtain absolution.”

  “I promised to send food to Elfael,” the baron confessed.

  “But I did not.”

  “But you did,” countered the priest. “I saw the men readying the supplies. I saw the wagons leave. Where did they go, if not to the relief of the Welsh?”

  “Before, I mean. I let the Welsh priest think that Count de Braose had stolen the first delivery, because it suited my purposes.”

  “I see.” Father Gervais tapped his chin with an ink-stained finger. “But you made good your original vow.”

  “Oh yes—doubled it, in fact.”

  “Well then,” replied the priest, “you have overturned the wrong and provided your own penance. You are absolved.”

  “And you are certain that my attainment of lands in Wallia is ordained by heaven?”

  “Deus vult!” the priest confirmed. “God wills it.” He raised his hand to the baron’s arm and gave it a fatherly squeeze. “You can believe that. Your endeavours prosper because God has so decreed. You are his instrument. Rejoice and be grateful.”

  Bernard de Neufmarché smiled, doubts routed and faith restored. “Thank you, father,” he said, his countenance lightening. “As always, your counsel has done me good service.”

  The priest returned his smile. “I am glad. But if you wish to continue in favour with the Almighty, then build him a church in your new territories.”

  “One church only?” said the baron, his spirits rising once more. “I will build ten!”

  CHAPTER 37

  You cannot save Elfael one pig at a time,” Brother Aethelfrith was saying.

  “Have you seen our pigs?” Bran quipped. “They are mighty pigs.”

  Iwan chuckled, and Siarles smirked.

  “Laugh if you must,” said the friar, growing peevish. “But you will wish soon enough you had listened to me.”

  “The people are hungry,” Siarles put in. “They welcome whatever we can give them.”

  “Then give them back their land!” cried Aethelfrith. “God love you, man; do you not see it yet?”

  “And is this not the very thing we are doing?” Bran said.

  “Calm yourself, Tuck. We are already making plans to do exactly what you suggest.”

  The friar shook his tonsured head. “Are you deaf as well as blind?”

  “Why do you think we watch the road?” asked Iwan.

  “
Watch it all you like,” snipped the priest. “It will avail you nothing if you are not prepared for the flood I’m talking about.”

  The others frowned as one. “Tell us, then,” said Bran.

  “What is it that we lack?”

  “Sufficient greed,” replied the cleric. “By the rood and Jehoshaphat’s nose, you think too small!”

  “Enlighten us, O Head of Wisdom,” remarked Iwan dryly.

  “See here.” Tuck licked his lips and leaned forward.

  “Baron de Braose is building three castles on the northern and western borders of Elfael, is he not? He has a hundred— maybe two hundred—masons, not to mention all those workers toiling away.Workmen must be paid. Sooner or later, they will be paid—every last man—hundreds of them.”

  Aethelfrith smiled as he watched the light come up in his listeners’ eyes. “Ah! You see it now, do you not?”

  “Hundreds of workers paid in silver,” said Bran, hardly daring to voice the thought. “A river of silver.”

  “A flood of silver,” corrected Aethelfrith. “Is this not what I am saying? Even now the baron is preparing to send his wagons with strongboxes full of good English pennies to pay all those workers. All the money you need will soon be flooding into the valley, and it is ripe for the taking.”

  “Well done, Tuck!” cried Bran, and he jumped to his feet and began pacing around the fire ring. “Did you hear, ban-fáith?” he asked, turning suddenly to Angharad sitting hunched on her three-legged stool beside the door. “Here is the very chance we need to drive the foreigners from our land.”

  “Aye, could be.” She nodded in cautious agreement.

  “Mind, the Ffreinc will not send their silver through the land unprotected. There will be marchogi, and in plenty.”

  Bran thanked her for her word of warning, then turned to his champion. “Iwan?”

  He frowned, sucking his teeth thoughtfully before answering. “We have—what?—maybe six men amongst us who have ever held more than a spade. We cannot go against a body of battle-trained knights on horseback.”

  “Yet the silver will not leap into our hands of its own accord, I think,” offered Siarles.

  Angharad, frowning on her stool, spoke again. “If thou wouldst obtain justice, thou must thyself be just.”

  The others turned questioning glances toward Bran, who explained, “I think she means we cannot attack them without provocation.”

  The group fell silent in the face of such a challenge.

  “Truly,” Bran said at last. Raising his head, he gazed across the fire ring, dark eyes glinting with merry mischief. “We cannot take on knights on horseback, but King Raven can.”

  Brother Tuck remained unmoved. “It will take more than a big black bird to frighten battle-hardened knights, will it not?”

  “Well then,” Bran concluded. His smile was slow, dark, and fiendish. “We will give them something more to fear.”

  Abbot Hugo de Rainault was used to better things. He had served in the courts of Angevin kings; princes had pranced to his whim; dukes and barons had run to his beck and bidding.

  Hugo had been to Rome—twice!—and had met the pope both times: Gregory and Urban had each granted him audience in their turn, and both had sent him away with gifts of jewel-encased relics and precious manuscripts. He had been extolled for an archbishopric and, in due time, perhaps even a papal legacy. He had governed his own abbey, controlled immense estates, held dominion over the lives of countless men and women, and enjoyed a splendour even the kings of England and France could sincerely envy.

  Alas, all that was before the rot set in.

  He had done what he could to prevent the debacle once the tide of fortune began to turn against him—benefactions and indulgences; costly gifts of horses, falcons, and hunting hounds to courtiers in high places; favourable endorsements for those in a position to speak a good word on his behalf. The reach of kings is long, however, and their memories for insults even longer.When William the Red cut up rough over the throne of England, Hugo had done what any right-thinking churchman would have done—the only thing he could have done. What choice did he have? Robert Curthose, the Conqueror’s eldest, was the legitimate heir to his father’s throne. Everyone knew it; most of the barons agreed and supported Robert’s claim.Who could have known the deceitful William would move so swiftly and with such devastating accuracy? He cut the legs out from under his poor deluded brother with such uncanny ease, one had to wonder whether the hand of God was not in it after all.

  Be that as it may, the whole sorry affair was the beginning of a long decline for Hugo, who had seen his own fortunes steadily wane since the day William the Red snatched away the crown. Now, at long last, the abbot was reduced to this: exile in a dreary backwater province full of hostile natives, to be bootlicker to a half-baked nobody of a count.

  Hugo supposed he should be grateful, even for this little, but gratitude was not a quality he had cultivated. Instead, he cursed the rapacious Rufus; he cursed the blighted wilderness of a country he had come to; and he cursed the monstrous fate that had brought him so very low.

  Low, he may be. Shattered, perhaps. Even devastated. But not destroyed. And never, ever finished.

  He would, like Lazarus, rise again from this dismal hinterland tomb. He would use this opportunity, weak and slender though it was, to haul himself up out of the muck of his disgrace and reclaim his former stature. The de Braoses’ new church might be an unlikely place to start, but stranger things had happened. That Baron William de Braose was a favourite of Red William was the single bright light in the whole cavalcade of misery he now endured. The road to the successful restoration of the abbot’s wealth and power ran through the baron, and if Hugo had to wet-nurse his lordship’s snotty-nosed nephew to ingratiate himself, so be it.

  Time was against him, he knew. He was no longer a young man. The years had not mellowed him, however; if anything, they had made him leaner, harder, and subtler. Outwardly serene and benevolent, with a charitable smile—when it suited his interests—his scheming, devious soul never slept. Though his hair had gone white, he had lost none of it, nor any teeth. His body was still resilient and sturdy, with a peasant’s enduring strength.What is more, he retained all the ruthless cunning and insatiable ambition of his younger years. Allied to that was the sagacity of age and the sly wisdom that had kept him alive through travails that would have consumed lesser men.

  He paused in the saddle and gazed out over the Vale of Elfael: his new and, he fervently hoped, temporary home. It was not much to look at, although it was not without, he grudgingly admitted, a certain bucolic charm. The air was good and the ground fertile. Obviously, there was water enough for any purpose. There were worse places, he considered, to begin the reconquest.

  Attending the abbot were two of Baron de Braose’s knights. They rode with him for protection. The rest of his entourage and belongings would come in a week or so—three wagons filled with the few books and treasures left to him, and a smattering of more practical ecclesiastical accoutrements, such as robes, stoles, his mitre, crook, staff, standard, and other oddments. There would be five attendants: two priests, one to say Mass and another to carry out the details of administration, and three lay brothers—cook, chamberer, and porter. With these, chosen for their loyalty and unfaltering obedience, Abbot Hugo would begin afresh.

  Once officially installed in his new church, Hugo would commence building his new empire. De Braose wanted a church; Hugo would give him an abbey entire. First would come a stone-built minster worthy of the name, and with it, a hospital—both inn for passing dignitaries and healing centre for those wealthy enough to pay for their care. There would be a great tithe barn and stable, and a kennel to raise hunting hounds to sell to the nobility. Then, when these were firmly established, a monastery school—the better to draw in the sons of the region’s noblemen and worthies and reap fat grants of land and favours from appreciative parents.

  With these thoughts, he lifted the reins and urg
ed his brown palfrey on once more, following his escort to the count’s fortress, where he would spend the night, continuing on to the church the next morning.

  Within sight of their destination now, the riders picked up the pace. At the foot of the hill, they turned off the track and rode up to the fortress, passing over the narrow bridge and through the newly erected gate tower, where they were met by the snivelling nephew himself.

  “Greetings, Abbot Hugo,” called Count Falkes, hurrying to meet him. “I hope you have had a pleasant journey.”

  “Pax vobiscum,” replied the cleric. “God be praised, yes.

  The journey was blissfully tranquil.” He extended his hand for the young count to kiss his ring.

  Count Falkes, unused to this courtesy, was taken aback. After a brief but awkward hesitation, he remembered his manners and pressed his lips to the abbot’s ruby ring. Hugo, having made his point, now raised the hand over the young count in blessing. “Benedictus, omni patri,” he intoned, then smiled. “I imagine it must be easy to forget when one is unaccustomed to such decorum.”

  “Your Grace,” replied the count dutifully. “I assure you, I meant no disrespect.”

  “It is already forgotten,” the abbot replied. “I suppose there is little place for such ceremony here in the Marches.”

  He turned to take in the hall, stables, and yard with a sweep of his keen eyes. “You have done well in a short time.”

  “Most of what you see was here already,” the count conceded. “Aside from a few necessary improvements, I have not had time to construct anything better.”

  “Now that you say it,” intoned the abbot, “I thought it possessed a certain quaint charm not altogether fitting the tastes of your uncle, the baron.”

  “We have plans to enlarge this fortress in due course,” the count assured him. “The town and church are of more immediate concern, however. I have ordered those to be finished first.”