Ranulf. It does not seem like him at all.”
“Ranulf gave up a great deal to support my claims to the English crown. And now…now he fears it was all for nothing.”
“No,” he said, “it was not for nothing.” Removing his mantle, he moved toward her. “You saw Maud,” he said, “and Rainald, and you’ve come to Arundel to bid Adeliza farewell. But you were going to leave without seeing me.”
Maude swallowed. She could feel her face getting hot, but she owed him the truth-this once. “I could not, Brien. It would have been too painful.”
“Are you sorry, then, that I came?”
“No,” she said softly, “no…”
“I have something for you.” Reaching into his tunic, he drew out a soft pouch. It was finely stitched in her favorite shade of green, with silken drawstrings. Nestled within was a small coin, threaded upon a delicate gold chain. Maude’s eyes misted as she gazed down at the keepsake, a silver penny minted at Bristol in her image, with her name and title engraved in Latin around the rim. Lady of the English, the queen who might have been.
“Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you, Brien.”
He hesitated and then gave her one last gift-his jealousy. “Are you going back to Geoffrey?”
She did not pretend to misunderstand. “Not if I can help it.” Her fingers clenched around the silver coin. “I have no choice, Brien, but to go. When Robert died, it all started to crumble. It was only a matter of time until I’d have fallen into Stephen’s hands, and what good could I do Henry from an English prison? I was even in danger of losing Devizes. We’d seized it from Stephen, but he’d taken it from the Bishop of Salisbury, and the new bishop is now demanding its return to the Church. Ranulf accused me of losing heart, but I did not, I swear I did not. I am not giving up.”
“I know that. So does Ranulf. You are doing what you must-for your son’s sake. There is nothing you’d not sacrifice for Henry.” The corner of his mouth curved in a melancholy smile. “Who would understand that better than me?”
Maude shook her head. “Do not make me sound heroic, Brien. There is nothing heroic in defeat, nothing admirable in failure.”
“You did not fail, Maude.”
“No? Then why am I fleeing this accursed country like a thief in the night? More than eight years and God alone knows how many deaths, and what have I to show for it all?”
“Normandy,” he said succinctly. “And do not tell me that was Geoffrey’s doing, for you made it possible. You kept Stephen so busy defending himself that you gave Geoffrey the time he needed to win Normandy. That was as much your triumph as it was Geoffrey’s. Do not let him tell you otherwise.”
She summoned up an unconvincing smile. “I was never one for listening to Geoffrey,” she said. “Thank you… for your abiding friendship and your faith in me, your faith in Henry. He is not old enough, not yet. But he will come back. He’ll lay claim to our crown. And he will prevail.”
“I never doubted that,” he said, “for what son of yours could ever lack courage or fortitude? He’ll be back for certes. But you will not…will you?”
“No,” she admitted, “I will not. England may not have broken my spirit, Brien, but it did break my heart.” It was a feeble attempt at a joke, holding too much truth for humor, and to her dismay, she found she could no longer blink back her tears. When he reached for her, she did not pull away, and they stood for a long time in a wordless embrace, while the fire burned down and the shadows advanced, for night was coming on.
Sleet was pelting the beach, and the ship rocked from side to side as Adeliza’s men pushed it out of the shallows, then splashed hastily back to shore. Maude clung to the gunwale, with a white-faced Minna standing resolutely at her side. Alexander de Bohun, William Marshal, and the others were already heading for the canvas tent, and Maude now insisted that Minna seek shelter, too. “Go on,” she urged. “It looks like a rough crossing.”
Waves were starting to break over the bow. Back on the beach, the wind was blowing sand about and buffeting the onlookers, most of them servants from the castle and curious villagers. They soon were in retreat, until only three hardy souls remained: Brien and Adeliza and Hugh de Plucknet, who’d wed an English heiress but insisted upon seeing Maude safely to Arundel. She would miss Hugh. So many she would miss. So many she mourned.
The sky was as grey as the sea, splattered with clouds. The sleet stung her face and her eyes blurred as the shore started to recede. Adeliza and Hugh were trudging toward their horses, but Brien still stood at the water’s edge, staring after the ship. Maude was trembling with the cold, but she stayed there on the pitching deck until the blue of Brien’s mantle was no longer visible and England began to fade into the distance.
38
Canterbury, England
March 1148
Matilda knelt before the High Altar in the cathedral church of the Holy Trinity and prayed for peace. The choir was chilled and damp, but she stayed on her knees until her back began to ache. She should have been happy, for fortune seemed to be favoring Stephen at last. There were rumors, as yet unconfirmed, that Maude was preparing to leave England. Matilda herself was fulfilling a long-cherished desire; she’d acquired thirteen acres of land from the canons of Holy Trinity, Aldgate, so that she could establish a hospital to treat London’s poor and pray for the souls of her dead children. And she and Stephen had finally been able to go ahead with their plans to found a Cluniac abbey at Faversham. But her satisfaction was shadowed by Stephen’s continuing quarrel with the Archbishop of Canterbury, a clash of will made all the more ominous by the new Pope’s obvious sympathy for the Angevin cause.
Archbishop Theobald’s intransigence was all the more infuriating to Stephen because he saw it as rank ingratitude; he and Matilda had done their utmost to secure the See of Canterbury for him, at Stephen’s brother Henry’s expense. Stephen had long insisted that Theobald was much too quick to acknowledge Maude after the Battle of Lincoln, and he’d soon convinced himself that Theobald was a secret Angevin partisan. Theobald was, after all, once the Abbot of Bec, the monastery that Maude favored above all others, and when Theobald had hastened over to Paris last May to meet with the Pope, Geoffrey of Anjou had just happened to be there, too. Coincidence or conspiracy? Stephen was sure he knew the answer.
Matilda had been less suspicious, loath to think ill of so pious and godly a churchman. But she was no longer so willing to give the archbishop the benefit of every doubt, not since the furor over the York See. The Pope had deposed the current Archbishop of York, Stephen’s nephew, and then chose his own candidate, who thus became the first English archbishop ever to be consecrated without the consent of the king. To Stephen, it was a slap in the face-and Theobald had delivered it, for he’d supported the Pope wholeheartedly, exercising his considerable influence on behalf of the Pope’s man.
Stephen had been provoked into taking drastic action of his own, urged on by his brother, who blamed Theobald for thwarting his reappointment as papal legate. When the Pope summoned England’s bishops and abbots to a Church Council at Rheims in March, Stephen forbade the clerics to attend. Warned that Theobald meant to defy the ban, Stephen had then taken his court to Canterbury and put his ports under guard. But Theobald managed to slip through the royal net. Accompanied only by one of his young clerks, Thomas Becket, he’d arranged to board a small fishing boat in a secluded cove, and survived a perilous Channel crossing to be accorded a hero’s welcome by the Pope and his fellow clerics.
Matilda sympathized with Stephen’s indignation, but she was troubled by this widening breach with the Church; no good could come of it. Making the sign of the cross, she rose wearily to her feet; she tired more easily these days than she was willing to admit, even to Cecily, who awaited her now in the nave.
She should have said a prayer for Cecily, too, for all her attempts to find the other woman a worthy husband had come to naught. Most men were leery of Cecily’s falling sickness; her fits scared them more than her marriage portion tempted them. The only ones who seemed willing to take advantage of Matilda’s generosity were not the sort of men likely to make Cecily content. And Matilda’s disappointment was tainted by guilt, for in a small, selfish
