He had no conscious awareness of coming forward, kneeling before John; the action was automatic. “Your Grace, I think it best that we speak alone,” he said warningly, never taking his eyes from the man who was his sovereign, onetime carousing companion, friend, and benefactor. “What I have to say be for your ears alone.”
“Indeed? I can think of nothing you could say that would warrant a private audience. Be thankful, rather, that I was willing to grant you any audience at all.” John’s voice was cool, impersonal, utterly at variance with what de Braose read in his eyes. “What would you say to me?”
And in that moment de Braose understood. He had underestimated John after all. They might indeed share a bloody secret, but they were not—and this was his fatal mistake—partners in crime. He’d not thought John had the courage to call his bluff, and in this he had been wrong, too. The twisted, dark road they’d traveled together since that Eastertide at Rouen had come to an abrupt end here in the shadow-filled solar of Hereford Castle. John had thrown down the gauntlet in irrevocable and unmistakable fashion, before a roomful of witnesses. Now the choice was his. He could subject himself to his King, make a total and humiliating and costly surrender to a man not noted for generosity toward fallen enemies. Or he could make use of what he knew, could damn John and doom himself.
John showed no emotion, but his son Richard drew a sharp, audible breath, stepped from the shadows as if to forestall de Braose. For Richard, too, understood what was occurring. When he’d first realized what his father was doing, daring de Braose to speak of Arthur, to make a public accusation, Richard was appalled; until that moment, he’d not recognized how much he preferred not to know Arthur’s fate. Now he stared not at de Braose, but at his father, awed by the risk John was willing to take.
But…but was the risk, in truth, all that great? As the silence spun out, Richard’s eyes flicked rapidly to the faces of the other men, to his uncle Will, to the aging Pembroke, to the elegant Peter des Roches, one of the only two Bishops not to follow their brethren into French exile in the wake of the Pope’s Interdict, and some of his anxiety began to ease. No, not so great a risk after all. His uncle would be loyal to the grave and beyond. Like Will, Pembroke was a man of rock-ribbed integrity, little imagination, and moderate ambitions, a man who had devoted the whole of his life to the fortunes of the House of Plantagenet. Whatever personal repugnance he might feel at hearing a confession of royal murder, it would not shake his loyalty, for his loyalty was to the crown, to the man anointed by God to reign…even if that man be revealed as Cain. And Peter des Roches was no rebel priest, was a worldly, accommodating, and ambitious Prince of the Church, not one to be shocked by the dark underside of men’s souls. Even if the worst came to pass, and de Braose blurted out an admission of conspiracy and murder, none of the men in this room would ever act upon it; instead, they’d do their best to bury their unwelcome knowledge beyond recall.
But even as Richard realized that his father had shrewdly acted to minimize his political risks, he realized, too, that the personal risk John was willing to take was considerable. He could be sure that his brother and son would never betray him, no matter what they heard in this solar at Hereford Castle. But how could he be sure that they would forgive him?
“Well?” John demanded. “Have you nothing to say to me?” There was defiance in the query, but there was triumph, too, for he’d correctly interpreted de Braose’s continuing silence as surrender.
De Braose did not answer. Once the initial shock had ebbed, he’d seen what Richard had, that John had picked his audience with a sure hand, an artful understanding of the men he’d chosen as witnesses. But if John was bluffing, so was he. He would never have made a public accusation of any kind. The day that he accused a reigning King of murder was the day he signed his own death warrant, and he knew it. But knowing what he had to do did not make it any easier.
“I do owe Your Grace five thousand marks. I am here to promise payment.”
“Promises are cheap. You’ve made them before. And there are other considerations now. In the past year you’ve given me reasons enough to doubt your loyalty. As you know, a fortnight ago I dispatched the sheriffs of Gloucestershire and Shropshire and five hundred men-at-arms into the West Country. I thought their presence there might serve to prod your memory, to remind you where your interests lie. It would seem they did. But men-at-arms need to eat, expect their two pence a day. So, in addition to the five thousand marks you do owe me for the honour of Limerick, you now owe me another thousand marks for the cost of that campaign.”
De Braose was truly taken aback by the utterly outrageous gall of that demand, that he should be assessed for the expenses of an army sent to ravage his own lands. “I serve the King’s pleasure,” he said at last, with such bitter irony that John smiled.
“Just so,” he said softly. It was a warning as oblique as it was economical, but there was no need to say more. De Braose understood.
Of all his grandfather’s castles, Will de Braose liked Abergavenny the best. He’d been born there, and had recently celebrated his twelfth birthday within Abergavenny’s massive stone walls. On this Tuesday in late April, he was alone in the uppermost chamber of the polygonal tower. The chamber housed the de Braose family chapel, but Will was not there to pray; he was leaning recklessly out of the unshuttered window, watching the road that wound off toward the north, toward Hereford, where his grandfather was meeting with the King. He’d sent word that he would be returning this Tuesday noon, and Will had been keeping an impatient vigil as the day dragged on.
Down in the bailey he saw his father, Reginald de Braose, conferring with his uncle, William de Braose the younger. His young cousins were playing a rough-and-tumble game of ball with an inflated pig’s bladder, under the watchful eye of their mother, Matilda. There’d been a full gathering of the de Braose clan at Abergavenny; only Will’s Aunt Margaret and his Uncle Giles, Bishop of Hereford, were absent, Margaret having sailed for Ireland to rejoin her husband Walter, Lord of Meath, and Giles having gone into foreign exile in obedience to the Pope’s Interdict. All were waiting anxiously for word from Hereford.
Will did not share their concern; he could not imagine any man getting the better of his grandfather. Moreover, he knew that his grandmother fully expected the King to restore her husband to favor, and Will needed no greater guarantee than that. As far back as he could remember, his grandmother had been the family linchpin. Imperious and earthy and blazingly outspoken, she’d always utterly eclipsed the Lady Gracia, Will’s mother, a timid, passive personality who was reduced to wraithlike incompetence in the presence of her formidable mother-in-law.
Now Will decided to seek her out, to renew his faith in Maude’s reassuring certainty that the bad times were over. The disgrace that had so suddenly come upon their family had been hard on Will. Since the age of seven, he’d been serving as a page in the household of Lord Fitz Alan, and when he was taunted by the other pages about his grandfather’s fall from favor, Will had responded with hot, heedless rage, had gotten into so many bloody brawls that his training at Clun Castle came to an abrupt end. His father had been predictably furious; Will could not recall a time when he and his father had not been at odds. But his grandmother once again came through when it counted, saying cuttingly, “Christ Jesus, Reg, let the boy be. Just be thankful he has the pluck to stand up for himself, that he has the backbone you too often lack!” Her acerbic intervention had spared Will a beating, but added yet one more drop of poison to a relationship already soured beyond salvaging.
Will was remembering that as he entered the great hall, saw Maude sitting upon the dais, attended by the submissive daughters-in-law who never dared stray out of beckoning range. She frowned at sight of him, gestured for him to approach.
“I saw your cousin Jack’s eye; your handiwork?”
Will was not fazed by the scowl. “He ran into my fist,” he said, saw her mouth twitch.
“Do not make a habit of it,” she sai
d, but when Will grinned, she grinned back.
Settling down on the steps of the dais, Will began to occupy himself in carving a whistle. Within moments he’d attracted an admiring audience, his little cousin Philip. Will was quite contemptuous of his cousin Jack, whom he considered a weakling and a tattletale, but he liked Philip, who was only seven. Now he made room on the steps for the youngster, and turned obligingly so Philip could watch him whittle.
“Will…was it truly in this very hall that Grandpapa killed that Welsh lord and his men?”
Will nodded, cast Philip a sideways, searching look. Philip’s eyes were wide; he was looking about him as if still expecting to see the floor rushes soaked in blood, the walls splattered with gore. Will understood, for he remembered his own confusion when he’d first been told of the Abergavenny massacre. Will had given to his grandfather all the love and respect he did not give to his father, and he’d been shocked to discover that his grandfather had so violated every tenet of the chivalric code. There was no way he could reconcile what his grandfather had done on that December day in 1175 with the accepted standards of knightly conduct, with the tales told by minstrels and bards of Roland and Arthur and the Knights of the Table Round, for his grandfather had lured his enemies to Abergavenny under the guise of friendship, murdered them while they ate and drank at his table, then abducted Seisyll’s wife and put her young son to death before her eyes.
Will had been troubled enough to go to his father with his qualms, but his father had laughed at him. Apparently the Welsh were not covered by the chivalric code. That was not good enough for Will. He’d often heard his family jeer at the strange ways of the Welsh, heard them called “reckless” and “untamed” and “half mad.” By Norman standards he supposed they were, but those were the very qualities that most appealed to him. Wales was to Will a wild, mystical land of legend and blood feuds and stark grandeur, and he loved it as if it were his own. Most of his twelve years had been spent within its borders; he spoke fluent Welsh, had friends named Rhys and Ifor and Garwyn. He needed a better explanation for the killings at Abergavenny than merely that the victims were Welsh.
He’d gotten that explanation from his grandmother. “Those men were your grandfather’s enemies, Will. The enemies of our House. We do not forgive a wrong done us, not ever. You are old enough to understand that, lad, to learn that in this world we have to look after our own, to do whatever be necessary to safeguard what is ours. Learn that if you learn nothing else, and never forget it.”
Now Will gave his young cousin the same bleak, uncompromising answer his grandmother had once given him, saying tersely, “They were the enemies of our House, Philip.” An answer that said all that needed to be said, that he had long since taken to heart.
He handed the completed whistle to the boy. “You can have this if you like.” And then, because Philip was so young, because there was time yet before he had to learn the lessons of being a de Braose, Will drew Philip’s thoughts away from that long-ago and bloody December day. “Life must have been right lively back then, Philip. Seisyll’s surviving sons besieged Abergavenny seven years later and burned all but the keep; luckily for Grandpapa, he was elsewhere at the time of the attack! And then, some years after, Gwenwynwyn attacked our castle in the Machawy River valley, the one the Welsh call Castell Paen. Our grandmother put up so successful a defense that people started calling it Castle Maude!”
Philip laughed. “Which Welsh Prince is Gwenwynwyn, Will? I can never keep them straight.”
“You’ll have to learn; you’re old enough now. Gwenwynwyn is Prince of Lower Powys; he’s the whoreson who’s been making raids upon our manors. South Wales is divided now between the sons of the Lord Rhys—Maelgwn and Rhys Gryg. And the North is ruled by the man Grandpapa says is the most dangerous one of the lot, Llewelyn ab Iorwerth, who is married to a bastard daughter of King John.”
As soon as John’s name had crossed Will’s lips, he swallowed, grimaced as if he’d tasted something sour. In the past year he’d come to nurture a deep and abiding hatred for the English King who was giving his family such grief. He started to speak, and then stopped, head cocked expectantly to the side. “Philip, you hear? Grandpapa has just ridden in!”
Will’s excitement congealed at first sight of the men accompanying his grandfather: Thomas Erdington, Sheriff of Shropshire, Gerard d’Athie, Sheriff of Gloucestershire, and Falkes de Breauté, to whom William de Braose had been forced by John to yield up Glamorgan and Gwyllwg. The first two had, in the past fortnight, led an army onto de Braose lands; the third was a bitter and open enemy of their House. Will knew his grandfather would never have chosen their company of his own accord. He ran for the nearest window, looked out to find the bailey filled with men-at-arms, men who wore the red and white colors of the King.
Maude had risen, was staring at her husband in dismay. “Will? Will, why are they here?”
Will knew his grandfather was no longer young, was in his sixties, but he was so energetic, so fit that Will never gave his age any thought. He was shocked now to see how haggard his grandfather suddenly looked, exhaustion etched into the smudged hollows under his eyes, impotent and embittered fury in the rigid set of his mouth.
“Not now,” he snapped, giving his wife a look that would have daunted all but the most intrepid or reckless, a look that made no impression whatsoever upon Maude.
“Name of God, Will, what has happened? Did you not see the King?”
“I said not now!”
But his unlikely escorts were not so reticent. It was Falkes de Breauté who told Maude what her husband would not, saying with conspicuous relish, “Ah, indeed he saw the King, Madame, and made many and varied promises to the King’s Grace, amongst them to make payment of six thousand marks.”
“Six thousand!” Maude’s eyes narrowed, cut sharply toward her husband. “We do not have it,” she said flatly, defiantly, and de Breauté grinned.
“You’ll be relieved, then, Madame, to know you need not pay it all at once. A thousand marks are due today, but the balance may be paid in installments. Of course, you will have to surrender to the King’s Grace your castles at Hay, Brecknock, and Radnor as a pledge for payment—”
“Jesus God!” Maude whirled around to confront her husband. “What have you done, Will?”
“What I had to do!” he snarled. “But we’re damned well not going to talk about it here…or now!”
“Hay Castle is mine, to me! I’ll not give it up!”
“Your husband has already done that, Madame.” Gerard d’Athie spoke up for the first time. Sounding as if he was enjoying himself no less than de Breauté, he said cheerfully, “He gave the order two days ago to turn them over to the King’s constables. We are here only to collect the thousand marks…and the hostages, of course. Not surprisingly, the King feels that your husband will be more likely to keep faith if he is keeping your grandsons!”
Maude gasped, and her husband took two swift steps forward. But even as he warned, “Maude, no!” she was swinging back toward Gerard d’Athie, her face flushed, mouth contorted.
“Are you mad? Do you truly think I’d ever agree to that? Give my grandsons up to the man who murdered his own nephew? Never in this lifetime!”
Will’s throat had closed up, cutting off an involuntary cry of protest. But his fear lasted only until Maude began to speak. He found himself blinking back hot tears; never had he loved anyone as much as he loved his grandmother at that moment, his grandmother who would dare to defy the King of England for his sake.
And then he became aware of the utter and absolute silence, then he saw the looks of horror on the faces of the adults. His grandfather had gone grey under his tan; even his lips were bloodless. His grandmother was standing very still. Will could not see her face. But he could see the faces of Falkes de Breauté and Gerard d’Athie. Astonishment had given way to exhilaration; they both wore the jubilant grins of men unable to believe how fortune had favored them.
William de
Braose at last turned away from his wife, turned fathomless grey eyes upon Erdington, d’Athie, and de Breauté. All three men reacted as one, dropped hands to sword hilts. Falkes de Breauté said coolly, “We’ll be rejoining our men. You do remember the men-at-arms awaiting us in the bailey? You need not offer us your hospitality for the night, after all.”
De Braose said nothing. They departed the hall with enough haste to compromise their dignity, hands still on sword hilts. Only then did William de Braose move. Crossing the space that separated him from his wife, he struck her across the face.
Maude’s head rocked back; she stumbled, put up a hand to stanch the sudden gush of blood. No one spoke. Her sons looked away. Will alone took a shocked step toward her.
“You stupid bitch.” William de Braose’s voice was low, raw with rage, but it carried clearly to all in the hall. “Know you what you’ve done? You and your accursed unbridled tongue, you’ve destroyed us all!”
24
Shrewsbury, England
October 1208
Soon after Maude de Braose publicly accused John of murder, William de Braose and his sons made a desperate attempt to regain possession of the castles de Braose had surrendered to John. Failing in these assaults, they plundered and burned the market town of Leominster. John proclaimed de Braose a traitor to the crown, and on September 29 he freed de Braose’s vassals from all allegiance to their fugitive lord.
Gwenwynwyn, Prince of Lower Powys, at once sought to take advantage of the resulting chaos by launching raids upon the de Braose lands and those of neighboring Norman lords. John responded with more force than the Welsh Prince could hope to equal. The two agreed to meet at Shrewsbury to discuss peace terms.
Shrewsbury Castle had been held by the crown for more than two hundred years, and the great hall had been rebuilt in stone by John’s father. John’s son was thinking of that as they awaited the arrival of the Welsh Prince, wondering if his grandfather would have done what John meant to do. Probably so, Richard decided; his father’s lessons in cynical statecraft had been learned under Henry’s tutelage.