Trevieres, Villiers-Bocage, Briquessard, Aunay-sur-Odon, Plessis-Grimoult, Vire, Tinchebray, Teilleul, St Hilaire, Mortain, and Pontorson. He had just space enough to add Cerences. He’d not made a conscious effort to memorize his father’s conquests, but he’d followed the campaign so closely that he now knew the names of the captured castles as well as he did the names of the servants who tended to him back in Angers.
They were getting easier, these victories. Cerences had surrendered at once. Glancing across the hall, Henry studied his father and uncle as he should have been studying his Latin. He knew about their quarreling; all of Normandy knew. One more castle. It was always one more castle. They would triumph and then they would argue and his father would make Robert more promises, promises few thought he had any intention of keeping. Henry did not understand the rules about lying. His tutor said that lying was a grievous sin. But his father often joked that life without sinning was like food without salt, pure but tasteless. As far as Henry could figure, some lies were harmless, some were necessary, and some were unforgivable. But what if people could not agree which was which?
Men kept coming into the hall, seeking shelter from the frigid November wind. Some of them Henry knew from past visits to siege sites. Fulk and Hugh de Cleers were rarely far from his father’s side. But his uncle Helie was usually as far away from Geoffrey as he could get; men jested grimly that they could teach Cain and Abel about brotherly rivalry.
Tonight Helie was dicing with Henry’s cousin Philip. Philip’s family ties were tattered, too, these days; Henry hoped his father would never look at him the way he’d caught Robert looking at Philip, with disappointment too deep for words. Henry did not like Philip; he was moody and sarcastic and insisted upon calling Henry “Nine and Eight” after hearing Henry explain that he was nine years and eight months old. Henry didn’t mind being teased-his father teased him all the time-but he did mind being mocked; to his thinking, those eight months mattered.
He did like the man watching the dice game, one of his uncle’s knights. He’d been put off at first by Gilbert Fitz John’s odd appearance, for he had but one eyebrow and no eyelashes. But Gilbert never failed to smile at sight of Henry, he’d patiently answered Henry’s questions about the fire at Wherwell nunnery, and Henry no longer even noticed his scars.
Geoffrey was usually the focal point of all eyes; that was a role he relished. Tonight he was sharing center stage with a new arrival, a man unfamiliar to Henry, a tall, fair-haired lord with a loud laugh and a tendency to run roughshod over any conversation but his own. Men seemed willing to listen to Waleran Beaumont, though, for he’d just come from Paris and was well informed about the great scandal sweeping the French court.
Henry already knew about the scandal, for they’d been gossiping about little else back in Anjou. The Queen of France’s younger sister, Petronilla, had fallen in love with the Count of Vermandois. Count Raoul de Peronne was the French king’s cousin and his seneschal. He was fifty to her nineteen, an age that seemed vast indeed to Henry, but it was not the age difference that troubled people; it was not so uncommon for men to take much younger wives. The problem was that Raoul already had a wife. Petronilla would have him, though, wife or no, and she’d gotten her sister the queen on her side. Eleanor in turn had won over her husband, and to please her, King Louis set about finding a way to get rid of Raoul’s unwanted wife. The Bishop of Noyon, who happened to be Raoul’s brother, declared himself willing to dissolve the marriage on the grounds of consanguinity, and Louis found two other compliant bishops to go along with him. The marriage was invalidated, the countess and her children packed off to her uncle, and Petronilla and Raoul married before the ink was dry upon his annulment decree.
Unfortunately for the newly wedded pair, Raoul’s repudiated wife was not without allies of her own. Her uncle was none other than Count Theobald of Blois and Champagne, Stephen’s brother and long a thorn in the French king’s side. Theobald had promptly appealed to the Pope, and the verdict was now in. According to Waleran Beaumont, the papal legate had reaffirmed the validity of Raoul’s marriage, excommunicated the guilty lovers until Raoul agreed to take back his lawful wife, and suspended the three bishops who’d been so overly eager to please their king.
The news created a sensation, for it was sure to have dramatic repercussions. Yet none doubted the accuracy of Waleran’s account, for he was kin to the love-stricken count; Raoul de Peronne was his uncle. And when he added that the French king was so enraged by Theobald’s meddling that he was swearing upon Christ’s Cross to take a bloody vengeance upon the count’s lands in Champagne and Blois, none doubted that, either, for it would not be the first time Louis had gone to war on his wife’s behalf. Just a year ago, Louis had led an assault upon Toulouse, which Eleanor claimed through her grandmother. The claim was questionable, and the campaign so ill planned and poorly executed that it soon resulted in Louis’s ignominious retreat back to Paris, nursing a nasty wound to his pride.
It was clear to Henry that these men held the French king in no high esteem, and he tucked his newfound fact away for future reference: that a man ought not to love his wife overly well, for if he did, other men would laugh at him. The rules about men and women were just as confusing as the code about lying. Wives were supposed to obey their husbands, but not all of them did. Not his mother, for certes! But the French queen not only did as she pleased, she got her husband to do what she wanted, too. That was a trick his mother had never learned; Papa begrudged her so much as a smile. Henry wondered why the French king was so eager to do his wife’s bidding, and he found himself suddenly curious about Eleanor, this woman who seemed to play by her own rules and get away with it. Once he was old enough, that was what he meant to do, too.
The men were still joking about the scandal, but the festive mood ended abruptly when Waleran asked Geoffrey which castle would be assailed next. “Avranches,” Geoffrey said promptly. He did not look at Robert as he spoke, though, and Henry tensed, for he was learning to read storm signals in faces as well as cloud formations. Papa and Uncle Robert were on another one of their collision courses. He kept hoping that eventually Uncle Robert would wear Papa’s resistance down; either that or they’d run out of castles to besiege. But each time they clashed, he feared that their quarreling would flame out of control, end with his uncle’s giving up in disgust. And that must not happen. Papa had to agree. For Mama to ask for his help, her need must be dire.
He was watching them uneasily for signs that trouble was brewing when servants ushered a stranger into the hall. Henry had never seen anyone look so bedraggled; his face was reddened and chapped by the cold, his clothing torn and filthy. But he was no beggar, for as his mantle parted, Henry glimpsed a sword riding low on his hip. He sat up hastily, understanding the significance of what he’d just seen. This pitiful wretch was a courier, one bearing a message worth risking his life, health, and horse for.
Geoffrey had already pushed his chair back, getting to his feet. But the man never even glanced his way. Stumbling forward, he sank to his knees before Maude’s brother. Robert’s first, fervent hope was that this messenger was from Maude, for he was becoming more and more worried by the silence echoing across the Channel. The seal on the letter, though, was not hers.
“You come from Brien Fitz Count?” he said, and the man nodded numbly.
“I swore to him that I’d get to you as quick as I could, but my ship was caught in a gale and blown off course. We finally came ashore in Flanders. And then I did not know where you were campaigning-” He stopped, realizing he was rambling, putting off the moment of revelation. “The empress is in grave peril, my lord. Three days before Michaelmas, Stephen swooped down on Oxford, forced his way into the city, and lay siege to the castle.”
Robert stared at him, appalled, then tore the letter open and read rapidly. When he looked up, his face was flushed with outrage. “They left her? Miles and Baldwin de Redvers and the others…those fools just rode off and left her to fend for herself?”
The messenger nodded again, bleakly. “Stephen lured them off by raiding Cirencester, all but Ranulf Fitz Roy and my lord Brien at Wallingford. But he lacks the men to break the siege.”
Robert already knew that; Brien’s letter had been brutally honest about the gravity of the danger Maude was facing. “Michaelmas,” he said, and then, “Jesus God!” for that meant Maude had been under siege for six weeks. The castle could fall to Stephen any day now-if it had not already fallen. Swinging around, he pointed an accusing finger at Maude’s husband. “This is your fault, too! If not for your damnable delays and excuses, I’d have been back in England in time to keep this from happening!”
“And just what do you think we’ve been doing here-playing chess with real castles? We have been waging a campaign to conquer Normandy for my son, and I’d say that matters as much as your endless and futile skirmishings in England!”
Robert made an enormous effort to master himself, clenching his teeth until his jaw muscles ached. “How much time will you need to make ready?”
“More time than you can afford to spare. I am not about to break off this campaign and go chasing off to England on a misguided mercy mission. There are too many malcontents eager to take advantage of my absence,”
