“I’ve heard you out. That is fairer than you deserve. Go home, Master de Cornhill, and tell your friends that a bill has come due, five years late, payable upon demand.”
They’d gathered to hear Ranulf’s report of his reconnaissance mission into London. He was relishing the attention, and spun out for them a vivid account of his reconnoitering. “I think I might have a promising career as a spy,” he boasted, “for I was able to mingle freely without arousing any suspicion. But it is just as you feared, Robert. I wandered about the marketplace; I tarried in alehouses and taverns and the cookshop down by the river. I even paid a visit to the Friday horse fair at Smithfield. No matter where I went, the talk was of Maude and it was blistering hot. They are angry and fearful and some of them are defiant, too. They accuse Maude of being overweening and unwomanly, of seeking to bleed them white and destroy their commune. They are even quoting from Scriptures, that ‘The Lord will be a swift witness against those that oppress’ and ‘All wickedness is but little to the wickedness of a woman.’ I’ve never seen London in such a furor. Maude has stirred up a hornet’s nest for true this time.”
“I know,” Robert conceded. “This is why I’ve asked you all here. We have a problem for certes. Maude seems set upon doing herself grievous harm, and we must find a way to limit the damage. We have to act, for she is losing the Church, the Londoners-”
“Her mind,” Rainald said acerbically, and Robert glared at his brother.
“This is no time for joking, Rainald.”
“Who is joking? I think she has gone stark, raving mad! How else explain it? It cannot always be her time of the month, can it? But what do you propose, Robert? I see no means of silencing her, shy of stuffing a gag in her mouth, and she pays you no more heed these days than-”
“This serves for naught,” the Scots king interrupted impatiently, and Rainald yielded, grudgingly deferring to the other man’s greater age and rank. “I am not here to mock my niece, but to determine why she has gone astray and figure out how to correct her course.”
“I was thinking,” Ranulf said pensively, “that it might be that her first taste of power has gone to her head. She has never had any, after all, not until now. Wine always hits a man harder if he is not one for drinking. Mayhap it is like that for Maude…” He trailed off, a little shy before the Scots king, and was pleased when Brien concurred.
“I know I am not her kinsman, as the rest of you are, but I think Ranulf might well be right. Lady Maude has always been compelled to obey, as a daughter and a wife, even as a widow. If you cage an animal up from birth, it takes time to adjust once it is finally set free.”
“What are you both blathering about?” Rainald was scowling. “We all have to obey our betters. You think I have always done just as I please? My father kept me on a tight lead, I assure you! But I did not go helling about like a lunatic after he died, did I?”
“No,” Brien said coolly, “but then no one ever told you that one of your ‘betters’ was to be a lad of fourteen.”
Rainald showed signs of pursuing the argument, but David headed him off. “I think the true problem is that Maude was not schooled in kingship. She seems to believe that royal power is absolute, and her father ought to have taught her better than that. It was not enough merely to name her as his heir. She needed guidance as much as she did a husband, and she did not get it. In a sense, we are paying now for Henry’s shortsightedness.”
There was a moment of circumspect silence, none of them wanting to say what they were all thinking-that David’s heavy-handed clash with the monks of Durham had not helped any, either. “We seem to be in agreement,” Robert said, “that something must be done. But what? It occurred to me that we ought to summon Miles back from the Marches. Maude respects his opinion.”
“She respects you, too, Robert,” Ranulf insisted, and Robert shrugged.
“Mayhap so, but she is not listening to me much these days.”
Rainald reached across the table for the wine flagon. “Well, I think Brien ought to be the one to talk to Maude. Come now, Brien, you need not look so surprised. It makes sense, after all. Anyone with eyes to see knows you fancy her, so Maude must know it, too. If you-”
He stopped abruptly, for Brien had just jerked the wine flagon out of his reach. “Let it be,” he said, in a voice low-pitched and dangerous, “or you’ll have reason to regret it.”
It was suddenly very tense. Ranulf was fascinated, for although it was almost universally agreed that Brien was a man of uncommon honour, he’d heard others say, too, that he made a bad enemy. But he’d not seen that side of Brien. Not until now.
“Rainald, not another word! Do you ever think ere you talk? At times I’d swear your tongue and brain cannot possibly be connected!”
“The man just threatened me, Robert! I’m supposed to ignore that?”
Robert leaned over and grasped the younger man’s wrist. “You heed me and heed me well. Nothing is easier to start and harder to stop than rumors of scandal. I do not ever want to hear you slander our sister’s good name again. Is that understood?”
Rainald was accustomed to giving his temper free rein. But the hostility was repressive, walling him in on all sides. “I can see I am not wanted here,” he said, and shoved his chair back. No one tried to stop him as he stalked toward the door and pulled it open. Almost at once, he recoiled. “Maude!”
“However did you know I was outside, Rainald? I’d not even knocked yet…” But Maude’s smile wavered as she stepped into the room. For the men, it was like watching a shield crack after taking an unexpected blow, for in the instant that her defenses were down, they saw with unsparing clarity her surprise, her suspicion, and her hurt.
“You are getting forgetful, Robert. You neglected to let me know we’d convened a council for this afternoon. Is it not lucky,” she said tonelessly, “that I happened by?”
Robert got slowly to his feet. “I asked them here, Maude. I am troubled by your recent actions and I thought it best to tell them of my qualms ere I sought you out.”
“That is true,” David agreed, “as far as it goes. But I cannot let him take all the responsibility upon himself. I share his qualms, too, lass. I suspect we all do.”
“I see. So…now that you’ve had a chance to tally up my shortcomings, have you reached any conclusions? Is there any hope for me at all, or should I just abdicate at the first available opportunity?”
“You cannot abdicate until after your coronation,” Rainald muttered, “and if you stay true to form, you’re likely to offend the Archbishop of Canterbury so mortally that you’ll end up having to crown yourself!”
“I am sorry that you find my behavior so shameful, Rainald. But you’ve not always been so critical, have you? As I recall, you said nary a word of protest when I bestowed the earldom of Cornwall upon you!”
Rainald flushed, but before he could retaliate, Robert said swiftly, “Maude, we need to talk about this. I’ve tried to tell you of my concern, but you seem to have defective hearing these days. I labored long and hard to win the Londoners over, and in one angry audience, you undid all my efforts. They are now convinced that having you as queen will be putting a cat amongst the pigeons, and it need not have come to that. You are making enemies faster than I can count them, and I do not understand why!”
“No, you do not understand…none of you do!”
But when she would have turned away, Ranulf stopped her. “Tell us, then,” he entreated. “Make us understand. Maude, we are not the enemy. Surely you know that?”
She looked at him, and then nodded. “Yes,” she admitted, “I know…” The anger had drained out of her voice, but so had the animation. As they watched, she walked to the window, stood staring out at the regal silhouette of Westminster Abbey. “If Stephen had taken me prisoner at Arundel, all resistance would have ended within hours of the word’s getting out. You’d have been loath to do it, but you’d have made your peace with him. What else could reasonable men do?”
She swung back to face them, and was reassured by what she saw, for they were listening intently. “But what happened after Lincoln? Stephen and I had submitted our claims to trial by combat, and I prevailed. That should have been enough…but it was not. Still men balked, still they refused to recognize my right. How many of Stephen’s barons have come to my court? Where are these craven souls who abandoned Stephen at Lincoln? Robert Beaumont hastened to make a truce in Normandy-with Geoffrey. But neither he nor Waleran has made any peace overtures to me. Neither have the Earls of Northampton or Surrey or Pembroke. Even Chester’s brother has kept his distance, and that after you saved his skin at Lincoln!”
