Not until the next morning’s chapter would the household hear its abbot’s account of that momentous council held in the south to determine the future of England; but when Hugh Beringar waited upon Radulfus about midafternoon, and asked for audience, he was not kept waiting. Affairs demanded the close co-operation of the secular and the clerical powers, in defence of such order and law as survived in England.
The abbot’s private parlour in his lodging was as austere as its presiding father, plainly furnished, but with sunlight spilled across its flagged floor from two open lattices at this hour of the sun’s zenith, and a view of gracious greenery and glowing flowers in the small walled garden without. Quiverings of radiance flashed and vanished and recoiled and collided over the dark panelling within, from the new-budded life and fresh breeze and exuberant light outside. Hugh sat in shadow, and watched the abbot’s trenchant profile, clear, craggy and dark against a ground of shifting brightness.
“My allegiance is well known to you, Father,” said Hugh, admiring the stillness of the noble mask thus framed, “as yours is to me. But there is much that we share. Whatever you can tell me of what passed in Winchester, I do greatly need to know.”
“And I to understand,” said Radulfus, with a tight and rueful smile. “I went as summoned, by him who has a right to summon me, and I went knowing how matters then stood, the king a prisoner, the empress mistress of much of the south, and in due position to claim sovereignty by right of conquest. We knew, you and I both, what would be in debate down there. I can only give you my own account as I saw it. The first day that we gathered there, a Monday it was, the seventh of April, there was nothing done by way of business but the ceremonial of welcoming us all, and reading out-there were many of these!-the letters sent by way of excuse from those who remained absent. The empress had a lodging in the town then, though she made several moves about the region, to Reading and other places, while we debated. She did not attend. She has a measure of discretion.” His tone was dry. It was not clear whether he considered her measure of that commodity to be adequate or somewhat lacking. The second day…” He fell silent, remembering what he had witnessed. Hugh waited attentively, not stirring.
“The second day, the eighth of April, the legate made his great speech…”
It was no effort to imagine him. Henry of Blois, bishop of Winchester, papal legate, younger brother and hitherto partisan of King Stephen, impregnably ensconced in the chapter house of his own cathedral, secure master of the political pulse of England, the cleverest manipulator in the kingdom, and on his own chosen ground-and yet hounded on to the defensive, in so far as that could ever happen to so expert a practitioner. Hugh had never seen the man, never been near the region where he ruled, had only heard him described, and yet could see him now, presiding with imperious composure over his half-unwilling assembly. A difficult part he had to play, to extricate himself from his known allegiance to his brother, and yet preserve his face and his status and influence with those who had shared it. And with a tough, experienced woman narrowly observing his every word, and holding in reserve her own new powers to destroy or preserve, according to how he managed his ill-disciplined team in this heavy furrow.
“He spoke a tedious while,” said the abbot candidly, “but he is a very able speaker. He put us in mind that we were met together to try to salvage England from chaos and ruin. He spoke of the late King Henry’s time, when order and peace was kept throughout the land. And he reminded us how the old king, left without a son, commanded his barons to swear an oath of allegiance to his only remaining child, his daughter Maud the empress, now widowed, and wed again to the count of Anjou.”
And so those barons had done, almost all, not least this same Henry of Winchester. Hugh Beringar, who had never come to such a test until he was ready to choose for himself, curled a half-disdainful and half-commiserating lip, and nodded understanding. “His lordship had somewhat to explain away.”
The abbot refrained from indicating, by word or look, agreement with the implied criticism of his brother cleric. “He said that the long delay which might then have arisen from the empress’s being in Normandy had given rise to natural concern for the well-being of the state. An interim of uncertainty was dangerous. And thus, he said, his brother Count Stephen was accepted when he offered himself, and became king by consent. His own part in this acceptance he admitted. For he it was who pledged his word to God and men that King Stephen would honour and revere the Holy Church, and maintain the good and just laws of the land. In which undertaking, said Henry, the king has shamefully failed. To his great chagrin and grief he declared it, having been his brother’s guarantor to God.”
So that was the way round the humiliating change of course, thought Hugh. All was to be laid upon Stephen, who had so deceived his reverend brother and defaulted upon all his promises, that a man of God might well be driven to the end of his patience, and be brought to welcome a change of monarch with relief tempering his sorrow.
“In particular,” said Radulfus, “he recalled how the king had hounded certain of his bishops to their ruin and death.”
There was more than a grain of truth in that, though the only death in question, of Robert of Salisbury, had resulted naturally from old age, bitterness and despair, because his power was gone.
“Therefore, he said,” continued the abbot with chill deliberation, “the judgement of God had been manifested against the king, in delivering him up prisoner to his enemies. And he, devout in the service of the Holy Church, must choose between his devotion to his mortal brother and to his immortal father, and could not but bow to the edict of heaven. Therefore he had called us together, to ensure that a kingdom lopped of its head should not founder in utter ruin. And this very matter, he told the assembly, had been discussed most gravely on the day previous among the greater part of the clergy of England, who-he said!, had a prerogative surmounting others in the election and consecration of a king.”
There was something in the dry, measured voice that made Hugh prick up his ears. For this was a large and unprecedented claim, and by all the signs Abbot Radulfus found it more than suspect. The legate had his own face to save, and a well-oiled tongue with which to wind the protective mesh of words before it.
“Was there such a meeting? Were you present at such, Father?”
“There was a meeting,” said Radulfus, “not prolonged, and by no means very clear in its course. The greater part of the talking was done by the legate. The empress had her partisans there.” He said it sedately and tolerantly, but clearly he had not been one. “I do not recall that he then claimed this prerogative for us. Nor that there was ever a count taken.”
“Nor, as I guess, declared. It would not come to a numbering of heads or hands.” Too easy, then, to start a counter-count of one’s own, and confound the reckoning.
“He continued,” said Radulfus coolly and drily, “by saying that we had chosen as Lady of England the late king’s daughter, the inheritor of his nobility and his will to peace. As the sire was unequalled in merit in our times, so might his daughter flourish and bring peace, as he did, to this troubled country, where we now offer her-he said!- our whole-hearted fealty.”
So the legate had extricated himself as adroitly as possible from his predicament. But for all that, so resolute,
