Not until dark did the heat begin to abate. From her bed, Eleanor could see a starlit, ebony sky. When Yolande tilted a cup to her swollen, bitten lips, she swallowed thirstily, too tired even to identify what she was drinking. Deep shadows lurked under her eyes, hollowed her cheekbones, and for the first time, she looked her age to Yolande, a woman of thirty-one, a woman past her first flush of youth, all the glamor and glitter stripped away by her twelve-hour ordeal. But as Eleanor smiled down at the infant in her arms, Yolande felt tears sting her eyes, so great was her regret that her lady’s husband would never see that smile.
“Ah, madame, if only you could be there when Lord Harry hears!”
“I wish so, too, Yolande,” Eleanor admitted, “but it was not to be.” Fighting her fatigue, she looked again at her baby, and then up at the women hovering by the bed. “Nor would I have minded being there when Louis and Abbot Bernard hear,” she murmured, and this time her smile was irrepressible, wickedly triumphant.
Ranulf had been to the Lincolnshire market town of Stanford once before, on his odyssey with the Fenland orphans; he’d had to seek out a barber in St Peter’s Street to yank Simon’s infected tooth. The barber was still there, older and grayer and understandably alarmed by the siege under way up the road, barely a stone’s throw from his small, cramped shop.
The castle of William Peverel boasted a newly constructed circular stone keep, rising above the meadows of the River Weland. It had held out for the past fortnight under heavy bombardment, the local quarries providing ample ammunition for Henry’s mangonels. But September got off to a promising start; the garrison was offering to talk.
The Benedictine priory of St Leonard’s, just east of the town, had become Henry’s headquarters, and the Black Monks were making heroic efforts to accommodate not only the Duke of Normandy and his entourage, but a handful of demanding lords, including the notorious Earl of Chester, long the bane of Lincolnshire. On this ominously overcast morning, Ranulf had lingered at the priory to tend to a personal matter; he was sending one of his Welshmen home with a letter for Rhiannon. He’d thought that their separation would get easier with time; the opposite seemed to be occurring. Without even realizing what was happening, he’d given his heart away, and England was now the alien land.
Padarn was waiting out in the priory garth with their horses, and they headed into the town. By the time they reached the siege, rain had begun to fall. The marketplace adjoined the castle, and would normally have been crowded with stalls and booths, had the siege not utterly disrupted town life. Instead of customers, it was occupied by soldiers, and it was here that Ranulf found his nephew, conferring bareheaded in the rain with Rainald and a visibly irate Earl of Chester.
Catching sight of Ranulf, Henry beckoned to him, just as the clouds split asunder and a torrent engulfed the marketplace. Men scattered for cover, Ranulf following Henry toward the closest shelter, the alcove of All Saints’ Church. As they waited for the rain to subside, Henry revealed why Chester was so disgruntled, even though the garrison had agreed to surrender.
“We discovered that William Peverel was never in the castle. It seems he is holed up at Nottingham, so of course that is where Chester wants us to go next. I told him that I’d have to think about it. Helping Chester settle scores with all his enemies could well turn into a lifetime’s occupation!” Henry said and laughed.
Ranulf laughed, too, pleased to see his nephew in such high spirits. August had not been a good month for Henry, not at first, for he was waiting impatiently for word from his wife, finding it hard to focus all his energies upon the Stanford siege, still vexed that he’d been cheated of a battlefield confrontation with Stephen and Eustace at Wallingford.
But that had all changed dramatically once they learned of the events at Ipswich on August 17th. Most people seemed convinced that Eustace’s death was divine retribution for his sins, and even more impressive proof that the Almighty favored the Angevin cause. Naturally, Henry did nothing to contradict this view, remarking privately to Ranulf that God could hardly be improved upon as an ally. But whether he owed a debt of gratitude to an unforgiving saint or a lamprey eel, the result was the same: the removal of the last obstacle in his march to the throne.
Roger Fitz Miles was holding forth on that very subject a few feet away, assuring all within hearing that peace was at hand, it was just a matter now of working out the details.
“One of which is the Earl of Surrey,” Henry interjected. “You do remember him, Roger-Stephen’s other son? How can you be sure that Stephen will not want him to step into Eustace’s shoes?”
“No one can see Will as England’s next king, not even Will himself,” Ranulf commented, and then added, sotto voce, for Henry’s ear alone, “You know that, too, Harry. You might as well face it, lad. You’re not going to be able to fight for the crown. You’ll just have to grit your teeth and let us hand it over to you at the bargaining table.”
But Henry always gave as good as he got. “I think you mean at Stephen’s grave, do you not, Uncle? That is the fly in the ointment, after all. Unless you want me to start sending the man eel pies?”
“Only as a last resort!” But no sooner were the words out of Ranulf’s mouth than he regretted them, for he had too complicated a history with Stephen to joke comfortably about his demise. Before he could say more, a voice carried across the marketplace, calling out for Henry. A rider was cantering toward the church, close enough now to be recognized as one of Rainald’s household knights.
Dismounting, he swore lustily as he stepped down into a widening puddle; the churchyard was fast becoming a sea of mud. “My lord duke, I have a message for you. One of the monks was coming to find you, and I told him I’d pass the word on. A courier has ridden into the priory with a letter for your eyes only.”
“From Aquitaine?”
While many of Henry’s men knew how anxiously he was awaiting word from his wife, this particular one did not even know Eleanor was pregnant. Surprised by the urgency in Henry’s voice, he nodded, and then stood, gaping, as Henry snatched the reins from his hand, vaulted up into the saddle, and galloped off on his horse.
By the time Ranulf and Roger got to their own horses and followed, Henry was out of sight. They spurred their mounts along High Street, on toward the priory, arriving onto a scene of jubilation. Henry was standing in the guest hall, surrounded by Abbot Thorald’s smiling monks. As soon as he saw Ranulf, he broke away from his well- wishers, strode across the hall, and gave his uncle a wet, joyful hug. “Eleanor has borne me a son!”
It took a while for a semblance of calm to return to the hall, and Ranulf had to wait to learn that Eleanor was in good health, that the baby had his father’s bright hair, and that she’d christened him William.
“She claims she named him after my great-grandfather, William the Bastard,” Henry chortled, “but I know damned well she really had her father and her beloved ‘Grandpapa Will’ in mind. I guess I can count myself lucky she did not name the lad after another one of her illustrious ancestors-Charlemagne!”
“I am gladdened for you, Harry,” Ranulf said, experiencing a sudden longing for his own small son, Gilbert. “Eleanor has given you a great gift, indeed.”
Roger agreed, although he could not keep from pointing out the political benefits of this birth. “Stephen lost a son, you gained one. The contrast will not escape people, that your fortunes are rising as Stephen’s are plummeting.”
“Especially once they learn that my son was born on a Monday eve, two days after the Assumption,” Henry said, and nodded as they stared at him in amazement. He was no longer smiling, for that was so uncanny a juxtaposition of life and death, hope and doom, that there could be no joking about it. “On the same day that Eustace was dying at Ipswich, Eleanor was giving birth to William.”
It took another two months of negotiations to end the war, but an end did come, due in great measure to the patient and persistent mediation of the Church. The eventual agreement was a compromise in the truest sense of the word, in that no one was fully satisfied. Stephen acknowledged Henry’s hereditary right to the English crown, and agreed to accept Henry as his “son and heir.” Henry, in his turn, conceded that Stephen should continue as king for the remainder of his life. Stephen’s surviving son, William, was to receive all those lands and titles that Stephen had held prior to his kingship, and Henry agreed to recognize him as Count of Boulogne and Mortain and Earl of Surrey; as his young Warenne wife was a great heiress in her own right, William would emerge from the peace conference as the richest lord in England, his wealth eclipsed only by that of the king.
The other provisions of the agreement were aimed at implementing it. The Tower of London and the castles of Windsor, Oxford, Lincoln, and Winchester were to be entrusted to castellans acceptable to both sides. Solemn oaths were to be exchanged to uphold the pact, Henry was to do homage to Stephen, and their barons would then do homage to him as England’s future king. The men disinherited by the war were to have their lands restored. Foreign mercenaries were to be expelled, and castles constructed since the death of the old king were to be razed.
