For the King's Favor (8 page)

“I do not think it foolish at all. Everyone should strive after something.” She turned further towards him. “What then makes a fine destrier—strength?”

“Well, yes, he has to be strong, but he must also be swift and manoeuvrable in tight corners. Biddable too, and intelligent. Plenty of stamina and able to endure upon poor fodder in times of warfare and hardship.” Once launched upon the subject his enthusiasm overcame his wariness and discomfiture. Here he was on firm ground.

The contest reached its conclusion as the last knight to hurl the stone struck a rose arbour, bringing down a shower of scented petals and breaking one of the stems into the bargain. Flourishing a bow, he was received with a cacophony of whistles and applause. Ida shook her head. “He will not be the gardener’s friend in the morning,” she said, but she was laughing.

“None of us will with all this trampled grass. I—” Roger stopped as an usher bowed before them.

“Mistress, the King summons you to attend him,” the man announced.

Even by torchlight, Ida’s flush was plain to see. “Of course,” she murmured. With downcast eyes she curtseyed to Roger. “My lord, I have enjoyed talking to you, but you will excuse me.”

“Demoiselle,” he said, and bowed. He did not reciprocate her sentiments nor say perhaps another time, although enormously tempted to do both. For his own good, he mustn’t be seen to court or encourage her company, even if he would have liked nothing better. He watched her go to the King. Stooping over him, she listened to what he was saying, her attention solicitously fixed on her lord. Henry reached up, smiled, and stroked her face. Exhaling on a hard sigh, Roger rejoined his companions and, somewhat grimly, put all thoughts of dalliance from his mind.

Châteauroux, French Border, Autumn 1177

Gasping for breath, Roger cleaned his sword on the sleeve of the footsoldier he had just brought down. At his side Anketil unhooked the mail ventail protecting his face and gulped breath like a toper sinking his first cup of wine after a dry spell.

“God’s bones!” he wheezed, swiping his forearm across his mouth and jaw. “That was too close for comfort!”

Roger bared his teeth in a mirthless grin. He didn’t have the breath to retort that seizing a castle from those in occupancy was never likely to be comfortable. Having gained a section of wall walk by scaling ladder, the fighting to secure it had been intense and it wasn’t over yet. The battle was still raging elsewhere on the ramparts. Châteauroux was a strategic fortress on the disputed Marches between France and Anjou. Its lord, who had done homage to Henry, had died on crusade, leaving a five-year-old daughter as his heir. The French had laid claim to the castle and occupied it, and Henry was hellbent on its retrieval and control of the inheritance of little Denise de Châteauroux.

Roger had fought his way into castles before. The battle for Haughley was burned indelibly in his memory: his father blaming him; his own sense of failure; the loss of his men. In a way, his detested father had done him a service. He had learned some difficult lessons that day, had been tempered in the fire, and had emerged as tougher, more resilient steel. It had glittered at Fornham in all its new shine and now, with a patina of experience, it enabled him to organise his men, secure what they had won, and move on to the next pocket of resistance with grim and balanced efficiency.

“
A Bigod! A Bigod!
”
Anketil recovered enough breath to roar as the gold shields with their red crosses blossomed on the battlements like fire, and the banners of Bigod together with the royal lions of England were unfurled and cracked in the wind, signalling victory.

***

That night the guardroom was raucous as Henry’s soldiers celebrated wresting Châteauroux from the King of France. Seated at a trestle with Anketil, Hamo Lenveise, and Oliver Vaux, Roger tipped wine from pitcher to cup, raised his arm, and drank. His head was buzzing and he knew if he stood up, his legs would be unsteady. Time to stop even if he was into a rhythm. It was always the same in the aftermath of hard fighting. Get drunk. Forget. Give the raw red wounds of memory time to scab over so that the mind could bear them. But he wasn’t a young knight among many now; he had a position of command and drinking himself into a state of oblivion was no longer an option.

He had seen to the prisoners; ensured that they were given a reasonable standard of care and their wounds had been tended. He had told himself it was because they needed to survive in order to be ransomed, but there was more to it than that. Enough was enough and kicking a man when he was down smacked too much of the way his father had behaved.

King Henry had ridden into Châteauroux, triumphant on his white destrier. He had promised riches and reward to all who had fought to retake the castle. Mostly he had spoken in terms of booty, but he had hinted at more wide-ranging prizes for some men, including Roger. Tantalising portents of things to come. Roger hadn’t allowed himself more than a brief interlude of optimism. Henry’s policy was to feed small but delectable morsels and keep men hungry. Roger suspected that in his case the “prize” would actually be more work. Henry would see how much he could load on to him—testing his breaking point.

Roger knew, from the gossip around the fires, that he was gaining a reputation for being calm, pragmatic, and a good judge of a situation, both on the battlefield and off it. A man who could keep a civil tongue in his head yet use it to flay to the bone if necessary without raising his voice. A man of fairness and judgement. He wondered how long it would be before he was unmasked as a fraud, because sometimes the rage and impatience within him were molten.

To a chorus of cheers from the soldiers near the doorway, one of the camp whores who had been flirting with the men began to dance for them, swaying her arms above her head like branches, then lowering them to caress her body in a suggestive manner. She pleated handfuls of her gown at her hips and hitched her skirts, revealing shapely ankles and even a flash of calf. Roger stared, as all the men were staring. She was tall and generously endowed and even if her gown was shapeless, he could still detect the fluid motion of her breasts as she danced, and imagine the rest.

“More!” someone shouted, tossing a coin on to a trestle. “Let’s see your hair!”

Laughing, she pursued the coin on to the table where she reached up to her veil, plucked out the pins, and shook down a mass of wiry black curls. Then, using the veil as a kerchief, she stamped and danced on the table, inching her skirt higher with each turn, to show calf and knee, and the red ribbon garters tying her stockings at the level of her lower thighs. With each tantalising exposure, more silver spilled on to the board and the men’s encouragement grew increasingly strident and bestial, the bolder ones reaching out to touch her bare legs.

“God’s blood,” Anketil wheezed, eyes bulging as she unfastened a garter and a stocking flew off. He delved into his pouch and flipped a coin to join the others. “Higher, wench, higher! Show us your cleft!”

Oliver and Hamo were slack-jawed and drooling. Roger kept his mouth tightly closed and pretended indifference, but he was not immune and could feel himself growing tumescent.

Teasing her audience, breathless with her power, the woman showed the men a swift gleam of high white thigh, then let her hem fall back around her feet. The initial howls of protest changed to roars of approbation as she laughed, licked her lips, and unpinned the neck of her gown. Roger swallowed. His throat was dry and a hot pulse was beating in his groin. He wanted to look away but, like the others, was drawn into the lewdness of the moment.

Her breasts were blowsy white pillows, blue-veined, tipped with long brown nipples, and she obviously had an infant somewhere, for when she cupped a breast and squeezed it, milk squirted out in parody of a male ejaculation.

Hamo Lenveise muttered an obscenity under his breath and Anketil almost choked. Roger clenched his teeth and made himself sit still as the other men bayed around her like dogs unleashed on a deer. Lust coiled in the air as thick as smoke. To men raised to know that fertility and motherhood were two of the most desirable traits in women; to men who worshipped images of the Virgin Mary suckling the Christ child and whose earliest contact with the world outside the womb had been the squashy comfort of a milky breast, the sight was arousing beyond belief.

Her teasing, shocking dance became too much for some of the more worked-up soldiers in her audience, who seized her off the table and bore her to the straw in a corner of the room. One man thrust himself between her spread thighs while his friends made demands on her hands, her mouth, between her milky breasts. Anketil, Hamo, and Oliver shouldered their way forwards to watch while they pondered taking their turn. Roger followed on their periphery, but as he gazed on the rutting, bucking mass his lust evaporated on the instant, leaving disgust and a feeling of drained sorrow that was akin to awakening in the aftermath of a sinful dream. What his men did was up to their personal consciences, but Roger had seen enough. Turning on his heel, he left the guardroom, but on his way out he tossed a coin among the spill of silver on the table and reaffirmed his personal vow never to take a woman except in full respect and honour.

Winchester, Easter 1179

Having dismounted in the stable yard at Winchester Castle, Roger handed his palfrey to a groom. A brisk April wind flirted with the kingfisher feathers in his scarlet felt hat, and the tilted brim shaded his eyes from the bright spring sunshine. Two doves bowed and pirouetted in courtly dance to each other on the stable’s shingled roof. He smiled wryly to see them, reminded of the dances in the King’s hall. It was easier for doves to find a mate than for people.

He had been absent from court on his demesne lands near Bayeux for several weeks, but it didn’t do to stay away for too long. Out of sight meant out of mind, and he needed to keep himself noticed and positively so. Since Henry’s eldest son and heir was visiting his father, putting in an appearance now was a politically prudent move. Apart from his visit to the family estates, Roger had been continuously with the King. He had witnessed charters, administrated, worked on judicial tasks, kept long hours, and ensured that Henry saw him keeping those long hours. He had fostered friendships, made contacts, established himself. Wheel-greasing was essential, but that grease had to be applied with diligence rather than slathered on superficially for effect. Deep was what mattered, and deep involved a lot of hard work and thought.

He turned to the horse on the lead rope behind his courser and undipped the rein. The mare was a gift for Henry from Roger’s stud at Montfìquet. Her coat had the sheen of pale honey, dappled over the rump with chains of darker amber. Her mane and tail glittered like silver snow and her gait was so smooth that it would carry a rider all day without leaving him a bone-jarred wreck. At forty-six, Henry was reaching an age when such comforts were more important than they had once been.

He was giving his groom detailed instructions about the palfrey’s care when another man arrived with a destrier and a packhorse on a lead rein. Roger’s gaze went first to the horses and admired the young red-gold stallion and the knight’s handsome iron-grey palfrey, both superb animals. Then he looked at the rider and realised why the quality was so high. William Marshal was the commander of the Young King’s military household. He was a renowned champion of the tourneys and unbeaten in foot combat and throwing the stone. The young bloods of the court all aspired to emulate him.

William nodded to Roger, although his gaze too focused on the horseflesh rather than the man holding it. “A fine beast, my lord,” he said admiringly.

Roger smiled with pleasure and a note of pride entered his voice. “It’s a gift for the King. Bred at Monfiquet.”

“And a kingly gift indeed. I have heard many fine things about the Bigod bloodstock. May I?”

Roger gestured obliging assent. William had a groom hold his own horses and came to inspect the golden ambler. He ran knowing hands over grooved shoulder and rump, examined the teeth, picked up the hooves, then stepped back to scrutinise the whole.

“I do not suppose you have any more like this running on your pastures?” he asked.

“I have a yearling colt born of the same dam and sire,” Roger replied. “The colt’s darker than this one here—amber coat and red dapples.”

“Spoken for?”

“Not as yet,” Roger said. “If you are interested, I will keep you in mind.”

William said that he was and Roger did not ask if he had the necessary funds for such a purchase. The Marshal might not have landed wealth, but his clothing and equipment spoke for itself. “Your destrier is magnificent.”

“He is rather fine, isn’t he?” William looked smug. “Lombardy’s best.”

In his turn, Roger checked over William’s horse, asked questions, and the men swiftly established an easy camaraderie. Roger had half expected the younger Henry’s marshal to be like his master—charming but superficial. The charm was indeed there by the bushel, but there was strength and depth too. Roger was good at assessing men as well as horses. William Marshal was not the kind to fall by the wayside for lack of stamina, he thought, although given his master, he would probably need every iota of his formidable vigour.

***

Across the room, Ida watched Roger Bigod talking in a group of men that included William Marshal and Henry’s heir, the Young King, so titled because he had been crowned in his own father’s lifetime to ensure the succession.

She had missed Roger’s presence at court and the time had dragged without that frisson of covert flirtation. Other men would gladly have played a game of dalliance with her, but Ida wasn’t attracted in the same way, nor would she have felt safe answering their looks. With Roger, she knew it wouldn’t go beyond a glance, a quick smile, or a passing word. There was no such boundary with the others. Not that Roger had paid her any attention since his arrival, for he had been deeply engrossed in masculine conversations and interests thus far. She also suspected he was avoiding her on the principle that if you didn’t go near the fire in the first place, you couldn’t be burned. But it did no harm to warm yourself a little at the periphery if you were careful—surely?

Determined to enjoy herself, Ida joined the ladies of the court to watch a troupe of acrobats performing gymnastic feats on a series of ropes and poles suspended from a beam. The players’ costumes were wonderful confections festooned with coloured silks and tassels. One man had showers of blue ribbons at his shoulders that Ida thought were lovely. She admired the supple grace of the performers, their elegant gestures and lithe coordination. The ladies whispered and giggled together about the fine musculature on display.

Chief among the spectators were the Young King’s wife, Marguerite, daughter of King Louis of France, and her sister Alais, who was betrothed to Prince Richard, although whether the marriage would actually take place was debatable and a source of much friction. King Louis kept demanding that the couple be married and Henry kept finding excuses, because if something better came along, a betrothal could be broken more easily than a marriage. He already had one son bound in matrimony to France and Ida had heard him hint that a match to secure possessions in Poitou and Aquitaine would be a better long-term policy.

Alais was slim and pretty with straight brown hair, a turned up nose, and a wide, laughing mouth. Her sister Marguerite, the Young King’s wife, was by contrast plump and serious with eyes that held shadows. She had borne her lord a son who had died soon after birth, and had miscarried of another. Matters were difficult between herself and her superficial young husband, and even though she clapped her hands and laughed at the performance, Ida could see that, like the entertainment, it was an act to please others, and she ached with empathy.

The Young King joined the women to watch the display. Ida’s stomach performed acrobatics of its own as Roger Bigod and William Marshal followed in his wake. Roger briefly met her gaze and courteously inclined his head to her and the other women.

“What do you think, my lord Bigod?” Ida asked, using the moment of eye contact. “Are they not skilled?”

“Indeed so, demoiselle. I wish I was as supple.”

“You are when you are on a horse, my lord.”

He gave a rueful smile. “That is hardly the same. I would need to be boneless to do some of those things.”

Ida longed to touch his arm and make a playful comment, but she dared not when they were in the midst of such public scrutiny.

William Marshal walked up to the arrangement of poles and ropes and eyed them thoughtfully. He was so tall that he could touch them just by stretching his arm.

“Go on, Marshal!” urged the Young King. “I dare you! Let’s see how good you are!”

William laughed round at his lord. “Have you ever known me to refuse a dare, sire?” He dusted his hands in the earthenware dish of chalk the acrobats were using to improve their grip before grasping one of the dangling poles and hoisting himself up hand over hand.

The acrobat with the blue ribbons—the leader of the troupe—knew a golden opportunity when it arose and milked William’s participation for all it was worth. Watching the Young King’s marshal hang upside down from one of the rods, like a bat in a roost, Ida began to laugh until she was holding her sides. Although the knight was tall and powerfully built, he was athletic and muscular too—if not exactly boneless. In fact, she had seldom seen anyone more real and solid. At her side, Roger chuckled and relaxed, leaning towards her a little so that their shoulders almost touched. “Now you see why he’s so successful in the tourneys,” he said. “And at court.”

“Indeed, but it seems to me hazardous too.”

“He would call it no more than meeting a challenge; he thrives on it.”

“And if someone challenged you?” Ida asked mischievously.

She was briefly caught in the intensity of his sea-wash stare. “It would depend on the challenge,” he replied, then looked away and with a shout of amusement began to clap as the leader of the acrobats had William grip a flat board in his teeth and began balancing some small blue cups to left and right. “I would hope myself up to it.”

The last cup was placed on the board and the player flourished to his audience, who applauded, whistled, and cheered their appreciation. Cups and board were removed and William, scarlet in the face, somersaulted to the ground. Grinning broadly, showing off the fine white teeth and strong jaw that had served him so well, he accepted the acclaim with deep bows and hand gestures. The Young King clapped William heartily across the back and pressed a cup of wine into his chalk-powdered hand. Several women crowded forward, including Princess Alais, but not Marguerite, who hung back. Ida recognised the look in her eyes as she watched the Marshal, and it gave her pause for thought.

The laughter ceased as the King joined the group and everyone bowed. “Your talents are many, Messire Marshal,” Henry said. His tone was pleasant, but Ida sensed his tension. He had been on edge ever since his eldest son had arrived at court. The undercurrents were so strong that everyone was working hard just to tread water. “I can well see the skills for which my son values you.”

William Marshal bowed more deeply and smiled. “I am accustomed to hanging on by the skin of my teeth, sire.”

Henry grunted with reluctant humour. “I am sure you are,” he replied. “And being given enough rope too.” He gestured to the gathering as a whole. “I desire a word with my son, but pray continue to amuse yourselves.” His glance fell upon Ida where she stood at Roger’s side. “Mistress de Tosney, I would speak with you too, if you will attend on me later.” He signalled to an usher. Ida flushed. She hated it when Henry summoned her to his chamber in public. She knew she should enjoy the power of being the favourite royal mistress, but it made her feel soiled when he did it like this, especially in the presence of his eldest son and with Roger looking on, no longer smiling and relaxed but wearing an expression of polite neutrality. With downcast eyes, she murmured her apologies and left the gathering.

On her way to Henry’s chamber, she detoured to fetch her sewing casket and use the vinegar. He had been in a sour mood ever since his heir had arrived from Normandy. He was constantly making dark comments concerning the young man’s frivolity and spendthrift ways. There was suspicion in his gaze and a permanent frown set between his eyes. Nothing pleased him. His leg had been plaguing him again, he had a misshapen toenail that was growing inwards and causing him pain, and he couldn’t see to read without holding a manuscript at arm’s length. Pointing up all the petty ailments of Henry’s deepening middle age, his son blazed at court like a young and glossy lion.

Ida sat down before the hearth in Henry’s chamber, took out the tunic cuff band she was embroidering for him, and set to work. She pretended she was making the piece for Roger and imagined a scene where she was his wife, sewing by the fire in their private solar. Roger would be sitting across from her, watching her stitch, a look of fond contentment on his face while he gently stroked the sleek flank of a pet hound. She smiled a little at the image, but it made her throat constrict with sadness too.

After a while, her eyes began to ache and she had to stop. The hour was late even for the unpredictable Henry. The servants were yawning and the candles would soon be stubs. Ida tidied away her sewing, wrapped herself in one of Henry’s fur-lined cloaks, and, taking a poker, stooped to the fire and stirred the embers. As tentative yellow tongues flickered to life, the door opened and Henry barged into the room, his stride imbued with the vigour of irritation. With a snap of his fingers, he dismissed the servants.

“God’s wounds,” he huffed as he threw himself down on the bed and waited for her to kneel and remove his boots. “My son knows all about display and ostentation and nothing about being a king.” He exhaled on a hard breath and then pressed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets. “He truly has no idea—thinks that all you need is to smile and scatter largesse like rose petals and everything will rule itself. He says I give him no responsibility, but how can I trust him with greater things when he has proven so fickle with the ordinary?”

Ida set his boots aside and made a maternal soothing sound. With quiet efficiency, she helped him remove his tunic and chausses.

“He says he doesn’t have enough funds. Hah, when I was a child, my mother lived hand to mouth trying to preserve my inheritance—his inheritance, come to that. He has to learn to live within his means; I don’t have a bottomless treasury and I won’t give my coin to support him and his…his foolish hangers-on who would rather squander their time in idiotic sports and looking ridiculous than in the serious occupation of supporting kingship. Tcha!” He scowled at her. “I suppose you thought he was handsome,” he growled. “Women usually do.”

Ida gave him a steady look. “I thought him fair to look upon,” she replied, “but only in the way I might admire a glossy horse or a fine view at a glance. No more than that.”

Henry grunted, slightly mollified. He got into bed and patted the other side emphatically. Ida modestly turned her back to remove her own clothing as far as her chemise and she heard him chuckle. “Even now, my lovely girl,” he said, “even now when you have been warming my bed for more than two years, you are still shy. That’s what I like about you—your modesty and sweetness. Come, there’s a good lass, rub my shoulders for me.”