Authors: Stephen R. Lawhead
“How do we know this letter is even genuine?” demanded the young knight.
“Do not be an ass,” the king growled. “The thing is genuine. The imbecile de Braose affixed his seal. I know it well enough. We must think now what is to be done, and that quick. We have a day, likely less, before the others arrive in force. We must work quickly if we are to save ourselves from the trap they have laid for us.”
King William folded the parchment and tucked it under his arm, then stepped forward, extending his hand to Bran. “My thanks and my friendship. You and your men are forthwith pardoned from any wrongdoing in this matter. Come, friend, we will sit and break fast together and decide what is to be done with those who would steal my kingdom.”
S
uch palaver with the high and mighty was hard on this simple forester, I can tell you. Ol’ Will has had his fill of Ffreinc enough to last him all his allotted days thrice over. If every last one of those horse-faced foreigners were to hop ship back to Normandie, this son of Britain would sing like a lark for joy till the crack o’ doom. Nevertheless, here we were up to our neck bones in Normans of every kind, and most of them with sharp steel close to hand.
It fair made me wish for the solace of the greenwood, it did.
And I wasn’t the only one with my teeth on edge. Poor Siarles was about as rattled as a tadpole in a barrel of eels. The fella could neither sit nor stand, but that he had to be jumping up every other breath to run to the door to see if any Ffreinc were lurking about ready to pounce on us. Still, though we could hear men moving about the palace, both inside and out, as more of the nobles arrived for their council, they left us to ourselves. The morning passed into midday, and the waiting began to wear on us.
For myself, the pain in my throbbing hand and the toils of the past few days rolled over me like a millstone, and I curled up in a corner and closed my eyes.
“We should go find out what is happening,” I heard Mérian say, and Iwan agreed.
“Aye,” replied the big man. “Bran might need our help.”
The two had just about worked themselves up to go and see what they could discover, Siarles was fussing and fretting, and Cinnia—too frightened to know what to do—had come to sit beside me, when the door opened and Bran and Jago strolled into the room.
You’d be forgiven for thinkin’ they’d been twice around the moon and back the way we ran to greet them. Before either one of them could speak, Iwan swooped in. “Well?” he demanded.
“What did the king say?” asked Mérian. “Will he help us?”
“Will he give back our lands?” said Siarles, joining the tight cluster around Bran. “When can we go?”
I roused myself, and Cinnia helped me to my feet and we joined the others.
“Come, tell us, Bran,” said Iwan. “What did the king say?”
“He said a great many things,” Bran replied, his voice a sigh of resignation. “Not all of them seemly, or even sensible.”
To my weary eye, our Bran and Brother Jago seemed a little frazzled and frayed from their encounter with the English monarch. “King William keeps a close counsel,” Jago added. “He gives away little and demands much. Yet I believe he has a mind to help us insofar as it helps him to do so. Beyond that, who can say?”
Who could say, indeed!
We had risked all to bring word of high treason to the king—and now that he had it, we were to be swept aside like the crumbs of yesterday’s supper.
“He didn’t give us back our lands?” whined Siarles.
“No, he did not,” Bran confirmed. “At least, not yet. We are to wait here for his answer.”
Siarles blew air through his nostrils. “To think that after all this we are beholden to that fat toad of a king!” he grumbled. “We should have supported Duke Robert instead!”
“No, we made the right choice.” Bran was firm on that point. “Listen to me, all of you, and do not forget: we made the right choice. William is king, and only William has the power to give us back our lands. The king is justice for the people who must live beneath his rule. Our only hope is Red William.”
“Duke Robert would have been king and returned our lands to us,” Siarles insisted. “If we had supported him, he would have supported us in turn, and we’d have what is ours by rights.”
Mérian gave Siarles a glance that could have cut timber. The rough forester glared back at her, but mumbled, “If I have spoken above myself, I am sorry, my lord, and I do beg your pardon. It just seems that for all our trouble we are no better off than before.”
Bran clapped his hand to the back of Siarles’ neck, drew him close, and said, “Siarles, my friend, if you truly think supporting Robert would avail us anything, you might as well join those traitors who are even now gathering to work their wiles.” Bran spoke softly, but there was no mistaking his resolve. “But while you are thinking on it, remember that Baron de Braose is one of the chief rebels. It is his hand squeezing our throats and his arm supporting Robert. If Duke Robert were to become king of England, bloody de Braose would become more powerful still, and he would never surrender his grip on our lands.”
“Bran is right,” Iwan declared. “The only way to get rid of de Braose is to expose him to the king.”
“We have warned Red William in good time, and now he can move to disarm the traitors,” Bran explained, releasing Siarles. “I have put our case before the king, and we must hope he succeeds in punishing those who have conspired against him.”
“Well,” said Siarles, rubbing his neck. He was still not completely convinced. “It seems we have no other hope.”
“It has been this way from the start,” Bran said. “We have done all we can. It is in God’s hands.”
See now, Bran was right. Never doubt it. We had no other hope for redress in this world, save William and William alone. But Siarles, bless his thick head, was not wrong to raise the question. Truth to tell, it was something I wondered at first myself—and it was not until Odo told me about the two popes that I began to see my way through that tangled wood. Why would Baron de Braose write a letter like that? Who was it for? Then I remembered who had signed that letter, and although I could not recall all the names, I remembered Duke Robert right enough, and wondered why the king’s brother and one of Red William’s dearest barons should be makin’ up a letter like that.
Oh, it was a right riddle to be sure. But the answer was there starin’ us in the face all along. We just didn’t see it.
Yet sitting there in that rank pit of a gaol, a fella begins to see lots of things in a different way, if you know what I mean. Ol’ Will had time to think and little else.
Even so, when my monkish scribe let out there were two popes, God knows I didn’t believe him. Odo was so convinced, his conviction carried me along in the end. I considered it a mite curious that Baron de Braose should take up with Clement when the whole of England, so far as I knew, answered to a pope named Urban. What could it mean?
Two popes. One throne. What else could it mean but that the men who signed the letter had bartered their support for Pope Clement in order to gain the throne of England for their favourite, Duke Robert? Outright rebellion had been tried and had failed; Robert could not be trusted to enter the fray even in his own interest, as many an upright Englishman discovered to his hurt—my old master Aelred included, God rest him. So this time, they meant to use the church somehow. Although I could not rightly say how they meant to force the abdication, the more I thought about it, the more certain I became that the men who had put their names to that letter had formed a conspiracy with the aim of plucking the crown from William’s round grizzled head and placing it on luckless brother Robert’s. This is why de Braose was so murderously desperate to get that letter back. More valuable by far than the big gold ring or fine leather gloves—mere fancies, after all—that sealed square of parchment exposed the traitors and, if I guessed aright, was well worth a throne.
“God’s hands or no,” Mérian was saying, “I could wish we knew what was happening now. To have come this far only to be shut out sits ill, so it does.”
“Never fear,” Brother Jago replied. “God’s ways may be mystery past finding out, but he hears all who call upon his name. Therefore, be of good cheer! God alone is our rock and our fortress, our friend and very present help in times of trouble.”
“That was a sermon entire, Brother,” observed Iwan. He turned to Bran and asked, “How much longer are we to loiter here?”
Some little time, I reckoned. As the day wore on, though we heard men moving in the corridors and rooms ’round about the palace, no one darkened our doorway. One by one, we settled back to wait. I sat propped against the wall in one corner, and after a time, Bran joined me. “How are the fingers,Will?” he asked, sliding down into his place beside me.
“Not so bad,” I told him. “The pain comes and goes, but not so much as before.” I did not like dwelling on that, so I asked, “What do you think Red William will do?”
Bran was quick to reply. “I expect he’ll give back our lands,” he said, an edge to his voice. “Brother Jago was eloquent on our behalf, and I think we made him understand in the end. He promised justice, and we will hold him to it.”
That, of course, was deeply to be hoped. “We owe you a debt,Will Scarlet,” he said. “Your quick thinking gave us the chance we needed to save Elfael.”
“Well, it took me long enough,” I allowed, “but we got here in time. That is all that matters.”
“There’s still one thing I wonder,” Bran said. “How did you work out the nature of the conspiracy?”
“Well, now,” I said, running back over the events of the last days in my mind. “It was all those days talking to Odo and getting an idea how those Normans think—that’s what started it. Then, when I learned about the two popes, it seemed to me that the letter was intended as a treaty of sorts—why else write it all down?”
“A treaty,” mused Bran. “I never thought of that. You mean Duke Robert and Baron de Braose agreed to support Clement’s claim to the throne of Peter, if the pope would support Robert’s claim to the throne of England.”
“Our William is not well loved,” I added. “And, as I know from my old master Aelred, his barons almost succeeded in unseating the king last time they rebelled. I reckoned things have only got worse for them since then. I know William is no lover of the church.”
“He uses it as his own treasure store,” Bran said. “Helps himself whenever he can.”
“Aye, he does—and that’s the nub. Our William milks it like a cow, keeping all the cream for himself. But if that was to stop, his throne would begin to totter, if you see what I mean.”
“With both the barons and the church against him, the king could not stand,” observed Bran. “I got that much from your message.”
“A bit o’ blind luck, that,” I told him, shaking my head at the remarkable string of events that small patch of parchment had set off. “I wasn’t sure what you’d make of it, or what you’d be able to do about it. I didn’t even dare hope that scrap would reach you. I had only Odo to depend on, mind. He’s a Norman, but he gave good service in the end. I’d like to do something for him one day.” I paused and looked around the bare room and at our unlikely company. “God’s own truth, my lord, I never dreamed it would come to this—squattin’ in the palace of the archbishop of Rouen and waitin’ for the king of England to decide our fate.”
“My lord!” said Siarles, speaking up from his place across the room. “Are we to be expected to sit here all day like moss on a log?”
As if to answer his question, there was a bustle in the corridor and the door to our chamber opened. Canon Laurent strode into the room with two clerics dressed in robes similar to his own; with them were three knights from King William’s force. All wore solemn expressions. The knights carried swords at their belts, and two gripped lances. The canon held a scrap of parchment and carried it flat between his hands as if the ink was still wet on the surface of the page. “Peace and grace,” said the canon, which I understood. “I have come directly from private council with King William, who expresses his highest regards, and sends this message to you.”
Mérian stepped beside Bran and slid her hand into his. They stood side by side, an unlikely pair in their disguises. The rest of us drew near, too, taking our places beside our lord and his lady to receive the judgement of the king. Whatever the king’s decision might be, whether for good or ill, we would take it standing together as one.
“Hear the king’s words,” said Laurent, raising the parchment. “Be it known that in gratitude for his good service to our crown and throne, William, by the grace of God, king of England, does hereby bestow the sum of thirty pounds in silver to be used to aid and assist Lord Bran ap Brychan and his company to return home by the way he has come . . .”
“What?” complained Iwan, when this much had been translated for us. “He’s sending us home? What about the return of our lands?”
“Peace, Iwan.” Bran held up his hand for silence. He nodded to Jago.
“Pray, continue,” Jago said to the canon.
“Further,” resumed Laurent, “His Majesty, King William, serves notice that you are commanded to attend him at the royal residence at Winchester on the third day after the Feast of the Archangels, known as Michaelmas. At that appointed place and time you will receive the king’s judgement in the matters laid before him this day.”
Here Laurent broke off. Looking up from the proclamation, he said, “Do you understand what I have read to you?”
When Jago had finished translating these words, Bran said, “With all respect to the king, we will stay here and await his judgement. It may be that we can help bear witness against the rebels.”
“No,” answered the cleric, “after today it will be too dangerous for you to remain here, and the king cannot ensure your safety. The king has commanded that you are to be escorted to your ship at once and you are to make your way home by the swiftest means possible. His Majesty the king wishes you a pleasant journey and may God speed you in all safety to your destination.”
Steal breath from a baby, we were stunned.
We had come all this way prepared to bargain, plead, fight tooth and nail for the return of our lands only to be tossed lightly onto the midden heap like so much dung. It beggared belief, I can tell you. Though Bran tried to get the canon to see the thing as we did, and though the cleric sympathised in his way, Laurent could do nothing. The king had allowed him no room to wiggle; there was nothing for it but to take the money and go.
Red William is every inch as much a rogue as any of his bloody barons, no mistake. The king’s knights escorted us to our horses and accompanied us back down the hill and through the town to the river wharf and our waiting ship. We rode in silence all the way, and my own heart was heavy until we came in sight of the
Dame Havik
at her mooring—and then I remembered Nóin. Suddenly, I cared no longer about the doings of the high and mighty. My sole aim and desire was to see my love and hold her in my arms—and each moment I was prevented from doing that was a moment that chafed and chapped me raw. From the instant I set foot on the deck of that ship to the day I stepped off it and onto solid English earth once more, I was a man with an itch I could not scratch.