Strongbow (2 page)

Chapter 2

RICHARD

Preparing for a Hard Life

I was christened Richard FitzGilbert de Clare, and my father had every reason to expect I would one day hold his title as Earl of Pembroke. But I was born into a hard time.

My earliest memories are of battle tales. Every detail of war was discussed in my father’s hall until the firelight seemed to reflect blood-red on the walls. I had bad dreams at night, and thought the world was filled with death and killing. I never felt safe.

‘You still don’t look much like a warrior,’ my father said after my legs lengthened and I became tall. ‘You have a womanish face. And all those freckles. Your skin should be hard and brown from being out in all weathers, not dappled like an egg. Like a child’s. And your voice! Why hasn’t your voice changed? Why am I cursed with a son who has a high voice?’

‘I can’t make my voice change,’ I told him. ‘I would if I could, but I can’t.’

‘You do it to annoy me,’ he said coldly.

It was important to my father that I be a warrior like himself. ‘Our family won their lands fighting against the savage Welsh,’ he often reminded me. ‘We proved to be better warriors, we Normans. Your ancestors came to England with William the Conqueror, remember that, Richard. You bear a proud name. Your great-grandfather fought
with William against the Saxons, and won. Now we fight in the king’s name against the Welsh, and we win. We always win. Remember that, Richard. We are Normans, we always win.’ His voice was as hard as flint. He believed what he was telling me.

‘How can anyone win all the time?’ I wondered.

But he didn’t answer my question.

For a while, we did win against the Welsh. Fighting them was my father’s whole life. My mother explained it to me. ‘The King of England, King Stephen, has made your father Earl of Pembroke as a reward for his services in holding this land against the Welsh,’ she told me. ‘With the title, your father has been given a large grant of land, making us very wealthy.’

‘But didn’t that land belong to the Welsh before?’ I wanted to know.

‘It did, and they still want it back. The Welsh are strange people, Richard. They are Celts, and like the Irish Celts, they love the land for its own sake. To us it is property. To them it is something more than that.’

As Earl of Pembroke, my father was one of the Marcher lords, sworn to defend the western borders in the king’s name. The western borderland was called the Welsh Marches.

‘The name even sounds like soldiers and battle,’ I said once to my father.

‘Don’t be fanciful,’ he snapped.

I never said anything like that to him again.

My father had to fight more than the wild Welsh. The nobles of England were always fighting among themselves, too. Everyone wanted more power. It wasn’t easy, choosing sides. If you chose the wrong side you could lose everything.

When I was only ten years old my father began saying to me, ‘If I am ever killed in battle, Richard, it will be up to you to defend our property and our name. Remember that!’

Long before I was fifteen, which was the usual age for a boy to take up arms, he said to me, ‘I made my name with the Welsh longbow. It’s time you learned to use the same weapon. I am called Strongbow and you must be Strongbow after me, Richard.’

He didn’t ask me if I wanted to be Strongbow. He was, so I must be.

‘Can’t I have a nickname of my own?’ I asked my mother. It was easier to ask my mother things than to talk to my father. She listened to me.

‘You must be proud to bear his name,’ she told me. ‘His family belongs to him, you know. I do, you do, we all do. Like his lands,’ she added. ‘That is the law.’

For the first time, I heard a sadness in my mother’s voice. I wondered if she liked belonging to my father, like his lands and his horse. She was so gentle. Was it hard for her, being a warrior’s wife?

But I couldn’t ask her that.

Learning to use the longbow was very hard. I was too young, and didn’t have enough strength. I did my best, but it wasn’t good enough.

‘You aren’t trying, Richard!’ my father yelled at me. ‘You disgrace me!’

‘I am trying,’ I insisted. ‘I’m doing my best.’

‘Then your best isn’t good enough,’ he said coldly. He turned his back and walked away. That hurt worse than his yelling at me.

I tried harder.

Sometimes the bowstring tore the skin from my fingers. It felt as if I had put my hand into fire. I sucked my fingers to draw out the pain, and ran to my mother. ‘Poor little lad,’ she always said. If my father wasn’t around, she would take me into her arms and comfort me.

‘I’ll sing you a song about Normandy,’ she said. ‘A song about warm summers and blue skies, the way Normandy was in my girlhood. Would you like that, my little lad?’ She kissed my hurt
fingers and stroked my hair and sang, and the pain eased.

Our castle was cold and dark, with thick stone walls and narrow slits for shooting arrows out at the enemy. The castle wasn’t supposed to be comfortable. It was built to defend us, to defend England from the wild Welsh. It was one of the Marcher castles that were set all along the border with Wales. My mother hated it.

‘There are no flowers here,’ she’d say.

But Father wouldn’t let her have gardens. ‘To tend gardens you would have to be in the open,’ he said, ‘and it isn’t safe to be in the open. A spear could come over even the highest wall.’

Our castle had a keep, a safe place, in its centre, with a hall and chambers where we slept. It had high walls and towers where soldiers took turns day and night, watching for the enemy. We all learned to think about the enemy more than we thought about each other. Every day I imagined the eyes of the wild Welsh, watching us from the mountains.

I was told terrible stories about them. ‘The Celtic people are savages,’ my father said many times. ‘They should all be slain to make the land safe for civilised people.’

But my mother told me, ‘The Welsh are not monsters, Richard. The maidservant who takes care of my clothing is half Welsh, and you couldn’t find a sweeter girl.’

She summoned the maidservant. ‘Sing for Richard,’ she said.

The girl blushed and stared at her feet. ‘I can only sing a little, but I can say poetry.’

‘Say it then,’ my mother ordered.

And so I heard for the first time the language of the wild Welsh, and it was sweet and beautiful, like water running over stones.

My mother was proud of her servant. ‘She can read and write,’ she told me.

‘Read? And write?’ I was astonished. I didn’t know anyone who could read and write, except the priests. It seemed a magical thing to
me, a gift from God. My mother thought so too. ‘I wish I could read a little, so I could read my prayer book,’ she confided in me.

‘Would Father let you learn?’

She was shocked. ‘Your father cannot read. He would certainly not want me to. That’s not a woman’s place.’

Yet a Welsh servant could do it. I puzzled over this. Perhaps, I thought in my bed at night, God was on the side of the Welsh. Perhaps that was why they were beginning to win against the Marcher lords from time to time.

When they had some small victory my father despised them more than ever.

Not all of the Normans hated the Welsh as much as my father did. Some Normans even married Welsh women. But when Father saw me talking to mother’s maidservant he took me out into the courtyard and beat me.

‘Don’t ever do that again!’ he shouted at me. ‘They’re savages. You’re better than they are.’

Then he got rid of the woman. I never knew how. He owned her, he could do anything he liked with her.

Afterwards, my mother began to fade away. Her face got very thin and there were dark rings under her eyes. Then they kept her shut up in her chamber and I wasn’t allowed to see her, though I waited outside all day in the cold passageway.

At last someone came out and told me I had a baby sister.

Then Father came, looking like a thundercloud. ‘A miserable girl,’ was all he could say. He stalked past me without even looking at me.

Once he was gone, the servants let me go in and see my mother. She was so pale she frightened me. ‘You will have to love your little sister enough to make up to her for not having a father’s love, Richard,’ she told me. Her voice was no more than a whisper.

I grabbed her hand and held it tight. It was very cold. ‘How can I do that, Mother?’

‘With all your heart, Richard. With all your heart.’

Shortly after my baby sister was christened Basilia, my mother died. I don’t know what killed her.

Perhaps it was just a lack of flowers.

Life was harder for me after that. I had to practise fighting all the time. Father assigned me a training master who taught me to use the sword and ride a horse. At first I didn’t like horses. I was put onto a giant black animal with huge legs, and the ground was so far away my mouth went dry. When the horse started to move I couldn’t make it stop and I cried out.

The training master took me off the horse and beat me with a strap. Then he put me back in the saddle. I didn’t cry out again.

In time, I learned to ride. I think the horse felt sorry for me. But as soon as we became friends, it was taken away and I was given another one, bigger, harder to ride, and the training went on.

At night I crept into bed, aching all over.

Sometimes I went first to the nursery where my baby sister lived. It helped to visit her before I went to sleep. It helped to hold her in my arms – while her nurse watched and frowned, afraid I’d drop her.

‘Basilia,’ I whispered, ‘I’m sore and tired and afraid. But I can’t tell anybody. Except you.’

She smelled sweet, the way babies do, and she always smiled at me and waved her little hands. She was as gentle as our mother had been. She might not understand my words, but she knew I loved her.

I loved her with all my heart. Basilia was my friend, my safe place.

By the time I was fourteen I had hands as hard as cured leather. I was nothing but muscle and bone, and the muscles were hard, too. I went to bed afraid and woke up afraid. At night I was afraid the Welsh would attack us while we slept, and in the morning I was afraid of the training master.

When I was fifteen, my father took me to my first battle.

We were trying to sneak up on a company of Welshmen in a deep,
narrow valley near the border. Great dark pine trees marched like soldiers up the slopes on either side. In my memory I can still smell them. Their smell was sweet, like the smoke coming from the enemy’s cooking fire.

They didn’t know we were closing in on them. My father was in the lead, on his horse, with the rest of us on foot following him. When his scouts told him the Welsh were half a mile away, he dismounted and walked with us.

‘Will there be a big battle?’ I asked him. My heart was beating very fast.

‘I hope so.’ His voice was cold and grim. ‘It’s time you learned about battle.’

There were two score of us, I think – forty men or so. But suddenly I felt alone. I tried to move closer to my father. He shrugged his shoulder as if he wanted to shake me off. ‘Don’t crowd me,’ he said. ‘I need space around me to use my weapons.’

I dropped back a step, but he turned around and I could feel him glaring at me, even if I couldn’t see his face. I couldn’t see anyone’s face. We all wore heavy iron helmets that covered our noses and cheekbones and had slits like arrowslits for our eyes.

‘Stay in the front line!’ my father barked at me. His voice echoed inside his helmet. ‘Don’t fall back like a coward! And whatever happens, Richard, follow my banner!’

We began making our way among the trees. Sometimes I couldn’t see the banner, or the man who was carrying it for Father. I was afraid Father would yell at me for losing sight of it.

It was hot inside the helmet, though the day was cold. Sweat ran down my forehead and into my eyes, making them sting. But I couldn’t take off the helmet to wipe it away.

Then, through the slits, I had my first sight of the enemy. The wild Welsh. They were sitting around a campfire, and a deer was roasting on the spit. My mouth watered. We hadn’t yet eaten our daily meal,
and I was always hungry.

The Welsh looked up and saw us. They jumped to their feet and ran for their weapons, which were piled near the fire.

Our men ran forward, yelling. I had a sword in my hand and I yelled too, but my feet didn’t want to run forward. More than anything else, I wanted to turn around and run back into the shadowy safety of the trees. But I was afraid to run away because Father would do something terrible to me.

My heart was pounding so hard I thought it would burst out of my body. I was hot and cold at the same time, and my skin prickled all over. I knew I would be scared. I didn’t know I would be this scared. It felt like the hair was standing up on my head, inside my helmet. My stomach heaved.

Our men were making so much noise I couldn’t think. My feet acted on their own. They started to run forward with the other men. I couldn’t help myself. I was caught up in it, doing what everyone else was doing. My running feet carried me, terrified, straight towards the enemy. Men on either side of me were shoving and screaming and I screamed too. I don’t know what I said, I just screamed.