They all did. It was easy enough to agree upon the obvious-that Chester’s refusal meant nothing, for even if he’d been as innocent as one of God’s own angels, he’d have balked at a public submission. But beyond that, they could only speculate. None disputed Ranulf, though, when he observed wryly that a man could rarely go wrong suspecting the worst of Chester.
“I find it difficult to give him the benefit of any doubt, too,” Robert admitted. “My daughter seems to think he was not plotting evil-for once. Of course he’d not be likely to confide in her if he was setting a snare. But he is having trouble with the Welsh; that was no lie.”
“I suppose he could be innocent,” Ranulf conceded grudgingly. “And if so, it would be the ultimate irony-that he’d be punished for the one sin he did not commit!”
There was laughter and then Maude surprised them with a comment that showed just how far she’d traveled down the road toward self-awareness. “No, Ranulf,” she said, “the ultimate irony is this-that for all the harm Stephen and I have tried to do each other, our worst wounds always seem to be self-inflicted.”
AN autumn rain was making life miserable for any Londoners who had to be out in it. Within the palace at Westminster, it was drier, but the mood was as dreary as the weather. Stephen had been closeted all morning with his wife, his brother, and William de Ypres, gloomily assessing their options. They agreed that they had but two choices, neither of them palatable.
If they kept Chester in confinement, they risked a rebellion by his vassals and tenants, who’d reacted with outrage to their liege lord’s arrest. Moreover, Chester was garnering support from unexpected quarters. The Cheshire Church was speaking out strongly on behalf of so generous a patron. Naturally his brother was among the most vocal of his defenders, as was his nephew, the Earl of Hertford. But others were arguing for his release, too, respected lords like the Earls of Derby and Pembroke. It had not helped, either, when the Welsh took advantage of Chester’s disgrace to raid into Cheshire. As unlikely as it seemed, Chester was becoming a figure of sympathy.
The longer Chester was imprisoned, the more problems he posed. But if he was set free, they well knew what to expect. He’d never forgive Stephen for this, never. Even if he was as guilty as Cain, he’d still see himself as the one wronged. When Ypres pointed this out, no one disputed him, and he took the opportunity to argue further against Chester’s release. “If you snared a wolf, would you let it go just because the rest of the pack was on the prowl?”
“Spare me your hunting homilies,” the bishop said brusquely. “They do not address the issue at hand. I like the thought of freeing Chester no more than you do, but I see no other way. How do you expect the controversy to abate as long as we keep him in the Tower?”
“Nor can we bring him to trial,” Matilda said, “for we have no proof to offer of his treachery. So in all fairness, Willem, how can we continue to hold him?”
“Kill him, then. Let him have a convenient mishap, fall down a flight of stairs or catch a fatal fever.”
Matilda wanted to believe this was one of Ypres’s unseemly jests, but as she met his eyes, she was chilled to see that he was in deadly earnest. She’d always known that he was lawless at heart, a man who’d passed most of his adult life perilously close to the dark side of damnation. She’d convinced herself that he’d pulled back from the brink, that salvation might still be within his grasp. But in recent months, he’d begun showing flashes of an erratic temper, his humor had soured, and he was either drinking more or not holding it as well. She did not know what was troubling him, was not even sure she wanted to know, for she suspected that she was not equipped to deal with his demons. But she was worried, nonetheless.
Stephen and the bishop had been offended by Ypres’s cynical suggestion, and they were taking turns berating him for his murderous advice. He listened in silence, not looking in the least contrite. As soon as she could interrupt the castigating flow, Matilda urged them to “Let it be. Willem erred, you were understandably affronted, and told him so. Now can we get back to the problem at hand? I agree with Henry. I think we must set Chester free.”
There was an unusual asperity to her tone and all three men looked at her in surprise. Stephen felt remorse stirring anew; she may have been far more tactful than his acid-tongued brother, but he knew how dismayed she’d been by Chester’s arrest. He’d repeatedly tried to explain that it was not his fault, and she’d professed to believe him, but he still fretted that she blamed him for the debacle.
Sometimes so did he, usually late at night as he sought to convince himself that Chester was the one at fault; it was then that he heard the insidious inner voices, insisting that his uncle the old king would never have gotten himself into such a bind. These voices sounded depressingly like his brother’s, for Henry was still reproaching him for not taking command of the situation before it got out of control. He never tired of pointing out that a private confrontation would have posed few risks; if Chester had balked at proving his good faith, Stephen need only have refused to go into Wales, and that would have been the end of it.
Now there seemed no end in sight. But how could he admit that he’d blundered when he did not know what he could have done differently? Even if he were given a chance to relive that scene in Northampton’s great hall, the outcome would likely be the same, and that realization was the most troubling of all.
“I botched it,” he said abruptly. “I know that. Chester will bear me a lifelong grudge. I know that, too. But I cannot change what is already done. I can put a high price on Chester’s freedom, though, high enough to make him think twice about incurring the wrath of the Crown again.”
He sounded as if he truly believed what he said, that it was possible to intimidate Chester into submission. For his sake, Matilda tried to believe it, too. Even the bishop held his peace. Ypres reached for his wine cup and drained it, in an unspoken sardonic salute to the phantom presence in their midst, the man they were at such pains not to mention, the late, unlamented lord and rebel, Geoffrey de Mandeville.
BY the time the negotiations for Chester’s release were completed, winter was upon them. It had not yet snowed, but the fields were bleak and the ground frozen as Chester and his brother rode west. William de Roumare had brought Chester’s favorite white palfrey and an impressive armed escort so that he could return to Cheshire in the style befitting an earl. But he knew it would take more than resplendent trappings to blot out the memories of the past few months.
Roumare kept glancing uneasily at his brother’s profile, as hard and unyielding as the barren countryside around them. Chester had been publicly shamed, clapped in irons, treated like a common felon. To gain his freedom, he’d been forced to swear a holy oath that he’d not bear arms against the king. He’d had to offer up a number of highborn hostages as pledges for his future loyalty, among them his nephew Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Hertford. And most galling of all, he’d had to surrender his castles at Lincoln and Coventry.
Roumare had expected Chester to be wild, afire with homicidal intent. The brother he knew ought to have been raging and raving and cursing, making threats and vowing vengeance with every breath he drew. That sort of frenzied fury would not have disturbed him unduly; it was just Chester’s way, and he was prepared for it.
Instead, he’d encountered a stony silence, so unlike Chester that he was becoming genuinely alarmed. Like William de Ypres, he, too, was haunted by memories of Geoffrey de Mandeville, the rebel earl who’d died an outlaw, accursed by all. Looking again at Chester, Roumare shifted in the saddle. He was not a fanciful man, but he seemed to feel the rage radiating from his brother, hot enough to scorch. Hot enough, too, to consume all common sense? Was Randolph so hate-maddened that he’d follow Mandeville’s bloody road to his doom?
“Randolph…” He cleared his throat, nudged his stallion closer to his brother’s mount. “You must tell me,” he urged, “what you mean to do.”
Chester’s eyes flicked toward him, opaque and unblinking and blacker than pitch. “I mean to do all in my power,” he said, “to gain the throne for Maude’s son.”
Stephen celebrated Christmas that year in his newly recovered castle at Lincoln. The citizens, freed from six years under Chester’s yoke, welcomed Stephen joyfully, as their liberator, and he rewarded them with lavish pageantries, festivities that heralded his victory over Chester as much as they did the Nativity of the Christ Child. The people were so bedazzled by the royal revelries that they accepted with aplomb Stephen’s decision to defy local superstition and wear his crown within the city, even though that was traditionally held to be bad luck.
The high point of the Christmas court was the elaborate ceremony in which Stephen knighted his eldest son and invested him as Count of Boulogne. Eustace would be seventeen in the spring, and he made a favorable impression upon Lincoln, for he was as tall and tawny-haired as Stephen, and looked like a fine young king in the making-from a distance. That heretical thought was Matilda’s. It had come unbidden, casting a shadow over the pleasure she’d been taking in the evening. It was an unbearably lonely feeling, for she could not confide her qualms to another living soul. How could she ever admit that she harbored such doubts about her own son?
The Christmas fete had been over for hours, but Matilda was still clad in her elegant court gown with its long, hanging sleeves and decorative silk belt that reached below her knees. A fur-trimmed mantle trailed from her
