Chapter 6: The Hunting Lodge

The Lady Elinor, who is both the Countess of Brittany and Lady of Picardy, with holdings in Flanders, and I make ready to ride to the Count of Flanders’ court at a hunting lodge some two hours’ gentle ride from Brugge. Her husband, referred to by less kind tongues than mine own as “Gervaise the Short”, is a minor count of one of the four counties which falls within the region. In Gervaise’s absence, she is required to swear loyalty to the new Count, which has been owed since spring and arrange for the payment of tithes for the coming year starting next March.

My father ran down to the dock and fetched two of the three short bows he had brought with him as “our protection on the road”, as he put it, before we departed. Lady Elinor, still dressed as a boy as she had been yesterday, rejoiced in the feel and draw of the small bow and itched to try it out with the short arrows Sir William had made especially for it.

Lady Catherine laughed at the very thought, but had a brace of servants fetch a straw target borrowed from a nearby neighbour and had it set up in her garden about 30 paces from the house. After firing and retrieving a dozen darts each, we found ourselves well satisfied with the results, my father most pleased of all that others found the bows as easy to use as he.

As a vassal of this local Lord, Brugge being one of Flanders’ principle ports, through her husband’s homelands here in Flanders, Lady Elinor has been summoned to pay her respects to the new Lord. The Count of Flanders is Charles the Good, the Good meaning that he was a good Christian and he appears to have begun his less tolerant reign by evicting the Jews from Brugge. We had all assumed that either Rebecca was kidnapped or had simply disappeared to a more tolerant society further east into Saxony and the Holy Roman Empire. But it seems she had prior knowledge of this act by Charles and had already decamped to Normandy and the Ducal Court of Henry, King of England, Lady Elinor’s father.

Although with the death of Henry V, King of Germany and Italy, and Holy Roman Emperor, only age 39, on 23 May 1125, was just four months ago, the future of the Empire was also uncertain with no single male heir born to the Emperor and Empress. It was feared that the Empire would break up, riven with warfare, harming the wealth in trade in the region that Flanders, and particularly the port of Brugge, thrives on.

I bring up the subject with the Lady as we ride, knowing that when we sail to Rouen, we will meet with the Lady’s half-sister Matilda, late widow of the Emperor, and her father the King who, only the day before yesterday, was trying to arrest the Lady Elinor for some treasonous act that Lady had earlier promised to divulge when we were alone. She had not yet done that, although that may have been due to my conscious efforts to avoid being alone with her. Yet she seemed to barely react to the suggestion that we all sail together to her father’s court upon this evening’s tide.

“Is this visit to the Good Count Charles simply an act of fealty?” I ask of the Lady, starting off with an easier subject, but find I am unable to avoid letting my mouth run away with me, “or to do with some plot that you or Gervaise are running?”

She looks at me with what I regard as a critical eye, before sighing and replying.

“I hope by this visit to hear any news of Gervaise, what the Count might know and what part of his knowledge he be prepared to share with me. Charles is not simply a battle axe who has outmuscled his rivals to rule the County, but is a shrewd leader who has earned the support of the major families hereabouts, including mine. Although the lands we hold in the County are Gervaise’s, he has no family of his own and, if the worst was to befall him, Charles would seek to ensure the lands are not abandoned but secure and productive in the future and able to supply its due quota of trained men for the County’s defence.”

“So you hope he has news of Gervaise?”

“Yes.” Adding quietly, “Or confirm what I already fear.”

We are quiet for a while, as I think over the consequences of her fears of the death of her husband or worse. She may be the daughter of a king, but widowhood is not an easy life for any woman of any station in life. I can imagine that King Henry would want to marry her off soonest, if she is free of her husband.

There are already rumours that he seeks a good remarriage among the Norman, Anglo-Norman nobles and influential neighbouring lands for his daughter known as Maud in England and Matilda on the mainland of Europe, widowed but half a year since and childless. Though it be said in the taverns that she has no wish for any man to marry unless he be King of the Italians, where she ruled as Queen five or six years ago and earned much respect though she were but 15 or 16. The Lady has been married for almost half her twenty-three years and may be desired by any number of suitors willing to take a chance that the Empress Matilda might be barren and that Lady Elinor may be the only daughter of King Henry who bears a child destined to be king. We are both quiet, keeping our thoughts close to our chests.

I recall visiting Pitstone in Spring of this year when Lady Elinor’s mother Margrett Lady Pitstone almost died from a malignant fever, having met with her three and a half years prior, in Oaklea. I slept in her bed at her behest as comfort for her during her fever in what she thought were her last two days and nights on earth. I was only going to stay for a day but ended staying for a week, travelling to the tourney at dawn and returning to tell her tales of my triumphs in the early rounds during supper. Lady Margrett is a wonderful person and I loved her for herself and not only for being the mother of the woman I was in love with.

Our guide Valter, a servant of the Glosters who speaks little but the basics of our English tongue, rides on ahead and we follow. Before we left, Lady Elinor spoke conversationally and comfortably with the servant. I decide this is a way to start a new and safer line of conversation.

“You speak English and French so well, or certainly French as well as I can understand and follow it. While the King speaks only in Norman French and Latin, I think. What is your native tongue?” I ask.

“Well, there’s a question. My mother and I always conversed in English at home, specially when my demanding father was there. Henry hated the English tongue as he found it so difficult to speak. He declared it an uncouth Saxon tongue that could never be valued enough to ever be written down. He was proud to be the first among his brothers to learn to read and write Latin, which he considers the first of all tongues, and he made sure that all his many children properly learned their letters and their Latin grammar.”

“Yes, I imagine he can be a hard taskmaster.”

“Aye, he was that!” Lady Elinor, muses and smiles, “Even the princess and our half sisters escaped not the teaching of Latin grammar, but when I went to school, only Maudie and Willy were near my age, with me much the youngest among us.”

She pauses in thought.

“To answer your question truthfully, I suppose the English dialect of Buckinghamshire is my native tongue, where I was born and spent time as a girl until I was eight and taken to Henry’s Court to attend school. As I said, my father spoke only Norman French and Latin, my mother spoke English as her first tongue from her Saxon mother and maintained it as being her most useful language, and she learned some Hungarian as her second tongue from her mother, which was her mother’s birthplace and the language of her mother’s nursemaids. However, English was her mother’s preferred tongue within her chambers. My grandparents were Saxon exiles from England, following the Conquest. My Mother was born in Dunfermline Scotland and learned Norman French and lowland Gaelic at school, so she says that she was comfortably able to converse with her first husband who was a Scotchman who only spake Gaelic.”

“So many tongues. I would not know which one to think in.”

“Ha! I learned English first and that is what I feel I think in. We lived in an English Buckinghamshire village, running the local inn, frequented by the local Norman Lord of the Manor, so I learned enough Norman French from my mother to get by, and I lived in Germany with my sister for three years from when I was 12 to 15 and can converse well enough in that tongue, while my little Hungarian was useful too as I spent time with my sister in Berlin and the vast Roman empire has as many languages as it has peoples within its environs. Gervaise is extremely poor with languages. He is comfortable only in a peculiar French dialect, that is dotted with Dutch words, and has a little Latin, so I pretend to not know either German or French, which forces him to speak to me in halting English with a heavy French accent, which can be very funny.”

“l wouldn’t—”

“Of course you wouldn’t, Robin, you could never be so deceitful about such pretence, but some of us cannot help but be human in our petty amusements.”

I look for scorn on her face, but it appears she is only gently amused by my simpleness of approach to the world around me. It is a truth that I am but a simple craftsman, who over enjoys the sport of competition. I do not even feel the need to gamble on the results like my father did but enjoy the sales of bows as a result a bonus after success in a competition. Don’t get me wrong, I love making bows in my workshop and I stick at it for long hours when the season dictates, but the call of the road gets to me every spring and in the past four summers I have criss-crossed this country and experienced every type of person in England.

The Lady mentions she had recently been in Scotland. I have heard that they have many clashes between tribes or clans and fight at close quarters with sword and dagger, perhaps the sale of a few long bows would settle arguments by threat from a distance without cause to actual fighting.

We were riding through a pinewood forest, the canopy of which shaded us from the warmth early in the after noon sun. Although it was not exactly cold, it was quite cool and darker than the open road. The pine needles underfoot muffle the sounds of iron shoes on stone road. It occurs to me that it could be very dark through here when we return in the early evening, providing some incentive for us to leave as early as possible or decency allows us to take leave of a powerful host. The servant accompanying us has gone on ahead 200 paces while Lady Elinor and I had exchanged conversations, giving us our privacy as servants ever must allow. The pine woods remind me of my father’s speaking of the great Scotch pines which thickly cover the moors and hills in the North.

“You are very quiet, Robin, has my counting up of my fluidity in tongues stunned ye once more into one of your long silences?”

“Nay, Madam, I was only thinking of where I might seek to travel after the coming winter and I had a sudden fancy to ply my wares in the North, maybe as far as the Kingdom of Alba in Scotland, maybe even beyond in the wild Highlands.”

“I fear you will find few and poor archery tourneys in the North, Robin, the population is still harrowed from the wilds of the North and with all the sheep they have sitting upon their front doors they have little need of a bow for hunting!”

“Perhaps you are right.” I smile at the thought of flocks queueing up for skinning and quartering for the cookpot, “It was but an idle thought.”

“My mother could have told ye that the Scots prefer to fight face to face with sword and sgian dubh.”

“Aye, no doubt she would have, had I asked.”

“So, what did you ask of my mother upon your visit?”

“You mean when I visited her this spring?”

“Aye, exactly then, when you gave her solace as she waited to pass from this earth while I could not be traced anywhere to be summoned to her deathbed.”

“Nothing,” I reply, “I asked for nothing but her company and pay my respects as I tarried between tourneys, as I was half a week early for the one held at Biggleswade. The timing of my call so close to her end was naught but one of chance.”

“So why call on my mother, you met only the once afore and Pitstone is a quiet village and well away from the busiest roads and ways.”

“I was nearby and wanted to pay my respects to the good lady, even though we were of the briefest of acquaintance. I felt honour bound to call upon her as I was passing quite close and scarce knew when I would ever pass her way again. And by good fortune I was able to comfort her in her days of fever which racked her so severely that we both feared for her life.”

“So, Robin,” she smiles, “my mother had made an impression upon you, even though she was in Oaklea but a day or two some four years since?”

“Your mother is a noble gentlewoman, full of interesting counsel and a charming person too.” I reply, “It was no onerous duty, such as our present trip.”

“So you enjoyed your brief sojourn with Lady Pitstone despite her illness?”

“Aye, I did and glad I was to see her recover her spirits so well even if my visit was a once and only time. She reminded me much of my sister, the Lady Alwen. Your mother is an honest and steadfast woman, who stood up for her rights as a proud and chaste widow against a King who wished to pursue his favours and, through showing her mettle, won a King’s respect and a little of his heart, no small feat, especially with a king who is as irresistible a force as we ken your father to be. She had long earned my respect, and she’s a person I feel privileged to have known and glad I had been of some small service in comfort while she was alone and at her lowest ebb.”

“And so you grew to like my mother, as a person during your reacquaintance?”

“Aye, I did.”

“She liked you, too. She had told me several times even before last Spring that you and your father are the finest men she had met and that was before she knew you had just been knighted in the Noble Order of the Black Knights.”

“I know not what to say.” I reply. I should have known that there be no secrets between father and daughter, especially when the daughter is nosier than the Queen of All Cats.

“It is an honour to be invited to join such a select order, your King’s personal knights, Robin. You should be proud and display your new coat of arms to your family at least. I thought you had no secrets from them?”

“It is not a secret, Lady Elinor, it is only that I haven’t yet found the words to tell them.”

“Why is it hard to tell them such good news of your honour?”

“Because ... because I feel as unlike any knight as I can be. My father owns that he is a reluctant knight, but he is a natural leader, whose considered decisions make sense and those in his charge follow his commands because they know he is right and are certain that they have a better purpose and tread a safer path with him than without.”

“You are younger and less experienced than your father, Robin, true, but among your peers you stand out well enough and the experience you lack will follow in time,” the Lady comments, “So why did you tell my mother of your elevation to knighthood?”

“So you have heard of my confession to your mother? She said she saw little of you beyond once a twelve-month and despaired of living long enough to see any grandchildren through her only daughter.”

“I found out she had been so ill and close to her deathbed but three weeks ago when I visited her and also heard that you made sure she didn’t suffer her illness alone. She is almost fully well now and just as stubborn as ever! She would tell me nothing of your visit other than that you came when she needed you and without you she would have slipped away forgotten and unnoticed. She was ever so dramatic in her exchanges with me! A servant told me that she overheard you tell Mother of your knighthood and I confronted my father the King by letter, who had also told me naught of it until I took my father to task. It took me from then unto the London tourney to follow your tracks and catch up with you.”

“So your mother had not passed when you saw her?”

“No, she pretended to faint away, knowing if she lingered any longer you would miss your next tourney. Then after you left she said she felt better. When I saw her she was as hearty as ever she was and spoke much of you and what she thought of you with deep affection. I then resolved to find you.”

“Well, you found me, my Lady, and I am here adoing thy bidding once more as if we are but children again. It is as if the last near four years have melted away as if they had never existed and I am once again your obedient servant to drag from place to place with little comprehension of my real purpose hither or thither.”

“You were already strayed far from your home county, first Buckinghamshire, then London City, so my bidding you to follow me as errand knight to stranger climes shouldn’t disturb your balance too much, I hope ... Sir Robert of Oaklea.”

“Don’t call me that, I beseech you, Lady, it has such a hollow sound to my ears.” I stop myself from saying that even from lips well practised in turning lies to truth, my elevation above the common esquire still rings false to me.

“I will call you knight, then, only when we are together alone on this journey of ours,” she smiles. “One which, it appears, may reach its terminalia at my father’s palace in Rouen.”

“If so, then with a fair wind our course has but a few more days to run, my Lady, with my first and probably only visit to Henry’s Court in Rouen.”

“It will not be my first visit there. My first was memorable in meeting the Queen Matilda, known to me as my dear ‘Aunt Edith’, who became a second mother to me. I missed her final days, I was in the Dutch lowlands when I received news of her sudden death.”

“You must be constant on the move. I am sure all my journeys, planned by me or following at your behest, pale into morning mist compared to your constant movements.”

“Sometimes, I wish I could just settle into a quiet comfortable home to call my own, like Sir William and Lady Alwen,” she muses, “Do you still live with your parents?”

“No, I have taken a room at the inn, Alwen’s old quarters, once upon a time the room of my birth mother, Alwen’s mother, it is more convenient for my workshop and they look after me well enough there. When I am travelling, they can let the room out to visitors if they are busy.”

“I sometimes forget how complicated your family life should be in your relationships but you live so comfortable within. If only mine fit me like a glove too ... So, do they get busy at your inn?”

“Aye, all the time,” I smile from the memory, “l oft find I have to fetch my wardrobe on a well trod path from the lofts upon my return at the end of summer. A wearisome occupation that I have to bear for my otherwise general convenience. But you mentioned on our ride through East London and Marsh Wall that you had taken a trip to Scotland on a mission for your father, the King?”

“Aye. I did...” she falls silent as if reluctant to explain. Perhaps, I think, this was the root of her quarrel with the King?

All I can hear is the muffled clip clops of the horses’ iron-shod feet upon the loose pine needles over the smooth roadstone. I give the Lady leave to her thoughts; I know not what her thoughts are working through, perhaps her task was too secret for a humble archer like me to comprehend. The servant continues to ride ahead of us. She turns her lovely head to mine.

“My mission to Scotland and the seat of the Kingdom of Alba at Dunfermline, was to arrange a possible marriage between a prince of Scotland, King David’s only son, and a ... princess of England.”

“That makes sense,” say I, “your sister Matilda is young and would therefore one day be a Queen again, uniting the thrones of England and Scotland under a strong King and Queen, along with the Principality of Wales would mean the borders of a Kingdom such United would only be the sea that is all around us.”

“My sister Maudie has turned my father down of all opportunities of marriage, Robin. She still has her eye on being Queen of Italy as the succession, brought about by the sudden death at such a young age of the Holy Roman Emperor, with no heir in place. She does not want to rule herself out as she could be Empress again about whom, many could rally, popular she be among the Italians, she says.”

“Aye, that could also be a strong possibility. So who is the other princess that your father had in mind... ?”

“Me. My father fully intended annulling my marriage and making me a belated princess at last by declaring in Court the legality of my birth under English Common Law, a contract signed and sealed by his own hand long before my conception and birth, and then marrying me to Prince Henry of the Kingdom of Alba.”

“But he is what, about nine years old?”

“Ten. He cannot legally marry under the laws of Scotland until he be 14. Matilda would have baulked at the very idea of marrying such a boy twelve or thirteen years our junior, but the King is desperate for an heir to both the throne of England and the Duchy of Normandy. He is already in his late fifties and four years of marriage has brought forth no fruit at all, despite their constant bedchamber efforts. He fears the end of the House of the Conqueror.”

“But a betrothal followed by marriage to a boy of ten now, means that you will be in your mid-thirties by the time an heir could be born, putting Henry into his mid-sixties at the birth, and mid-eighties by the time the heir could reign in his own right. Henry is a very fit man for his age but no man even if he live that long could hold off all challenges to this kingdom without a fit heir to fight his battles.”

“Aye, Robin, true. But aside from your misgivings, do you have no comment regarding my part in this proposed fabrication of royal heirs?”

“Naught but sympathy for your broken heart, Lady Elinor, if that is what it comes to,” I say carefully, “honour and duty have dues to be paid, with a King’s influence upon the Archbishops some reason of annulment can, I’m sure, be found or cleverly created to settle your fate, of that I have little doubt. While I have an open mind about our creation and recognise that heathens and Christians all seem to muddle along on their own well enough, whether they have a church to attend or not, the solutions for a King without an heir are simple, he must choose an heir from within his family who will find acceptance among the barons and earls who hold the power to protect or reject them ... and we all know who that be.”

“Aye. His nephew and my cousin William Cato. You know by now that he was responsible for the revolt that led to the deaths in Oaklea near four years ago?”

“Aye, that was the conclusion we reached at the time. But he is the next highest ranking prince in the royal family, the grandson of the Conqueror, and he has the quiet support of many barons who consider Henry’s treatment of his brother Robert was unjust.”

“My Uncle Robert is mad, Robin, he can never be set free as it is his mind that is bound in the chains of his mind illness. My father does not want his ... affliction ... his madness ... generally known except within the Royal family.”