The Sword and The Swan Read online

  "I would have the matter settled without delay”

  "I too," Maud said softly, laying her hand on his arm, "but is this a fitting time or place? These are not matters of state for all men to speak their minds upon but private things."

  To a great extent Rannulf agreed with Maud and was already regretting the fury that had driven him to expose his affairs and the king's weakness in public. He glanced quickly at the table, hoping Stephen would redeem himself by some decision, but the king only smiled encouragingly at him. He might have stayed anyhow to prod Stephen, but Eustace, the king's eldest son, growled and started to rise and Rannulf quickly turned away.

  Eustace had never forgiven Rannulf for tearing him by force from a lost battle, and took every opportunity to insult his father's liege man. In his present temper, Rannulf could not trust himself to hold his tongue and, being too loyal a vassal to provoke his overlord's heir, sought safety in absence.

  His progress down the hall, however, was slow, for many men at the top of the room, great noblemen though they were, rose to greet Rannulf of Sleaford. Many of the greetings he acknowledged with no more than a curt nod, a few hands he pressed quickly—he was in no mood for civilities—but at the middle of the center table he stopped.

  "May I ask, Leicester, what you are doing in this fine company?"

  Before the heavy, deliberate man to whom the remark was addressed could answer another voice intervened. "Is that meant for me?"

  The retort was quick and hot in reply to the bitter sarcasm of Rannulf's tone, the voice clear and youthful. Maud's hand tightened on Rannulf's arm and she drew a hasty breath, but there was no need to speak, for the harsh laugh of her escort forestalled her.

  "Nay, Hereford, you are an honest enemy and, though our swords may cross on the field in the future as they have in the past, I will break bread with you and welcome when we have space to breathe."

  Leicester had glanced up at Rannulf but still said nothing.

  "Sit down, my cockerel.” William of Gloucester interposed in his silken purr. "The barb was meant for me. But he who is well-armored by righteousness need fear no feeble shaft of wit. I hope your arm is still stronger than your tongue, Tefli. Besides, I am no enemy to any man—"

  "Except him who has a wife or a daughter or a young son—"

  "My lord," Maud pleaded softly, cutting off Sleaford's choking voice. "We are all at peace now. Let us not unearth buried sorrows to bring us new grief."

  Indeed, there was little sympathy, even among his companions, for William of Gloucester's wanton provocation of Rannulf. Perhaps Tefli had not been civil—he never was—but it was no secret, considering his manner of entrance into the hall, that he was out of temper and the insult, if insult there was, had been directed at Robert of Leicester, who was well able to take care of himself. The earl of Hereford cast a glance of passionate dislike at Gloucester and stepped across the bench he had been seated upon.

  "I give you thanks for those just words. I am not sorry to see you, Sir Rannulf, for I have long desired to tell you that I bear you no ill will for the trick you played us at the battle of Devizes."

  For the second time in a few minutes, Rannulf wished he had controlled his hasty tongue. He should have known better than to play at talk with William of Gloucester, and he should, by now, have been able to control the inexplicable loathing he had for the man, who, after all, had never done him any more harm than to prick him with words. He turned now, almost smiling with relief to Hereford.

  "Nay, why should you? I did my duty as you did yours. That we see our duty in different lights is no cause for ill will between us as men when the battle is over."

  "True. Moreover, I hope for the future that our paths will lie side by side rather than at cross-purposes."

  Rannulf looked at the young man who was now walking beside him and the lightness died out of his face. "I do not think of the future, nor of the past, my lord Hereford. As each day comes to me, so do I live it, looking neither forward nor back. I am too old—"

  "That you are not, and it is needful in these times to look forward." Hereford checked his own hasty tongue, suddenly conscious of the silent woman who kept pace with them. "Do you stay long in London? As my lady the queen says, it is useless to talk of any matter when the mind is clouded with weariness and the body restless with discomfort. I will leave you that you may take your ease, but I hope we will speak together again at a more suitable time.

  "Here I am at leisure," the older man replied in a more normal tone of caustic indifference, "if you wish to speak; no doubt I will be constrained to listen. I know not how long I will stay, except that it be until my … private matter is settled."

  As Hereford left, Maud sighed. "Alas, I do not know whether it is easier when they are in open rebellion or when they come here in 'peace' to breed more war in those who are yet faithful to us."

  "Save your speech for those who have need of it, madam. From me you will get neither more nor less than I have ever given since the day I gave sword-oath to your husband."

  "Nay, my lord, I know you cannot be turned from the true course, nor did I think of you when I spoke," Maud said hastily, standing aside while Rannulf opened the heavy door to her quarters on the floor above the hall.

  Only she did doubt, because Maud doubted everyone, and Rannulf had been seriously provoked by Eustace's behavior. He had shown his consciousness of Eustace's hatred only by withdrawing from court, but to Maud it seemed essential to bind the vassal with new chains of obligation.

  Maud did not believe in oaths; she had broken too many herself, and there were signs and portents throughout the court. Leicester was more friendly than ever with the rebel lords, and Leicester was Rannulf's foster brother. If Robert of Leicester loved any man other than himself and his twin, he loved Rannulf of Sleaford; if he attended to any man's opinion, it would be to his. Maud did not really fear that Rannulf would turn on them, but he might slip into neutrality since he had no personal quarrel with the rebels.

  Maud had guessed Rannulf's attitude toward the rebels accurately. True, it was Robert, the first duke of Gloucester, who had started the civil war when the barons of England had invited Stephen of Blois to take the throne in preference to Gloucester's half-sister Matilda, but Rannulf did not basically object to that. It was fit that each man should fight for what he believed to be right, and it was senseless to carry political grudges over into private life; the way things were, a man would soon have no one with whom to exchange a word.

  As far as Rannulf of Sleaford was concerned, war was the natural state of living, and it was in no way dishonorable to sit down at table, when the battle was done, with the man with whom you had just been crossing swords. It mattered very little to him whether one fought over political ideals, to conquer new territory, or to suppress the people one had already conquered. War was war, and, one side or the other, Rannulf hated no man who fought it honestly.

  Shifting purposes Rannulf of Sleaford also understood, although he despised them. He despised them more in men like Gloucester than in the queen, being guided by emotion more than he realized; for their behavior was almost exactly the same and for similar reasons. But in most things, Rannulf did not permit his emotions to run away with his reason.

  Just now, though, he had done so, cherishing his rage until it had overflowed in a. way that was almost as detrimental to Stephen's cause as was the behavior of the rebels of whom Maud complained.

  The feeling was beyond his ability to express, however, since he was far more given to suppressing all thought of emotion than to discussing it. He took refuge, therefore, in a sullen silence, allowing Maud to direct her women to prepare a bath for him. With eyes stubbornly lowered and lips grimly set, he allowed the women to undress him and wash him in the hot, scented water. At last, as the maids wrapped him in a soft cloth for drying, feeling a difference in the atmosphere he looked at Maud and found her considering eyes upon him.

  "Do you see something upon me that interests you,
madam?"

  Maud transferred her eyes from her guest's body to his face. "In a way. To Hereford, below, you said you were old, yet I find you to look both fresh and young." She rose and, without more embarrassment than if he had been her son, pulled loose the cloth to stroke the smoothly rounded, heavily muscled shoulder. "Look here. This is not the stringy strength of active age. What are your years, my lord?"

  Knowledgeable as he was in the queen's ways, and knowing that she loved her husband with an all-consuming passion that left no room for extramarital desire, he reasoned that there must be a purpose to this admiration; even so Sir Rannulf was still flattered. His voice was as harsh as ever when he spoke, but involuntarily his eyes dropped.

  "I have passed my fortieth summer. However I look, I am not young."

  "To one who has passed some few years more, that sounds most melancholy. I would that I appeared as fresh as you do. You hold yourself too cheap, my lord—" she laughed "—and I will think twice before I leave you in my maidens' hands when I am not by. Did you not see their eyes upon you?"

  "With five score young bucks to feast their eyes upon, I should not think you need worry over my influence with them," Rannulf replied drily.

  "The young have not what you have, Sir Rannulf. There is a softness, even in their strength, that breeds insecurity. To look upon you is to be sure." There could be no harm in building up his confidence. Sometimes a man of his age, when faced with a much younger and very beautiful bride, developed fears of insufficiency.

  Rannulf moved restlessly. All this had a purpose, but what it was he could not, for the life of him, guess. "Very well. A man of my age is a master of his own or no man at all. I did not realize that women felt masterfulness in a man to be an advantage."

  It was useless to press him further, Maud realized, because he was growing suspicious. She asked after his children instead, thinking with half her mind as he answered her inquiries that his sons were the weakest chink in his armor. Perhaps she could use them in some way as a weapon to get him well married. In addition to her political designs, Maud owed Rannulf a deep debt of gratitude and she was determined to do him a good turn in spite of himself.

  A little less than a year previously, Henry of Anjou had come from France to try to wrest the throne by force from Maud's husband. Rannulf, together with those barons who were faithful to Stephen, had rallied to the defense of the kingdom, and Rannulf had been attached to the army of Maud's eldest son, Eustace. He had performed his duty well, as he always did; in addition, he had kept a rein on his young leader's enthusiasm and courage in a way that had recommended itself strongly to the mother, although the son had written home three times a week to call his mentor a traitor.

  In the fall of 1149, Eustace had launched a massive attack on the castle of Devizes, one of Henry's major strongholds in England, and had sworn that he would take the castle or die in the attempt. In fact, he had done neither. Henry and his chief ally, Roger of Hereford, had returned in time to defeat the prince's force, and, although Eustace had been prepared to fulfill his oath, Rannulf of Sleaford was far past any belief in such vainglorious swearing. He had knocked the young prince unconscious with a single blow from his mailed fist and carried him off to safety.

  It was not this deed alone for which Stephen and Maud wished to reward their liege man, however. Only a few days after Rannulf's rescue of Eustace, Henry of Anjou had mysteriously given up the fight and returned to France. A few months later the earl of Leicester had arranged to mediate a truce between the king and the rebel lords. Peace, of a sort, had descended upon England.

  No reason had ever been discovered for Henry's action, and the king and queen had finally put it down to discouragement, crediting Rannulf with the final blow to Henry's hopes of conquest. Their sincere good will for him had caused them to consider long and anxiously a suitable reward. The continuing civil war had sucked them dry and they had little to give beyond empty titles, which they knew Rannulf did not desire. In the midst of their perplexity a solution to their problem offered itself in the death of the earl of Soke, who left Lady Catherine, an only daughter, as his heir.

  For once, Stephen did not vacillate or delay. Within hours of the time he had the news, he had set out alone with his household guard, leaving Eustace to marshal the barons if necessary, and had taken the chief castle at Bourne and the heiress into his hands.

  At that, Stephen was only just in time, because Hugh Bigod, duke of Norfolk, had arrived the very next day with the same purpose in mind. The major portion of the lands of the earl of Soke stretched eastward along Norfolk's borders, and Bigod had desired to ensure the continued quiet of that border by marrying Lady Catherine to a man of his choosing.

  Without sufficient force to fight a pitched battle, Stephen had raised the drawbridge and prepared for siege. News of Eustace's imminent arrival with a larger force and visual evidence that the vassals of Soke were gathering to his rear induced Norfolk to withdraw, and Stephen triumphantly returned to London bearing his prize with him.

  That the prize did not wish to go mattered little, for Lady Catherine in her overlord's hands was nothing more nor less than a prize of war. She was a prize treated with great courtesy, but nonetheless a prize to be disposed of like any other piece of property.

  In truth, Stephen did not even realize Lady Catherine's unwillingness, for she made no protest against going with him. Both her father and her late husband had remained totally aloof from the court and the civil war; even so, rumors and snatches of news came by way of traveling knights errant and merchants, and she had heard a good deal about King Stephen and about Hugh Bigod.

  If she had to fall prize to either of them, Catherine considered herself lucky to have fallen into Stephen's hands. He was, she had heard, an exceedingly kind man—indeed, he acted kindly and spoke kindly to her—and Queen Maud was said to be very thoughtful and considerate of others when her family's interests were not involved.

  This did not mean that Catherine thought any desire of hers would be consulted; she understood her position completely. It merely meant that, within the bounds of their own advantage, the king and queen would do the best they could for her.

  Had it been absolutely necessary to marry her to an ugly, brutalized mercenary, even to a monster of degraded cruelty, they would have done so—with regret, but done so nonetheless.

  As it was, when Maud told Catherine that she was being proposed as a third wife to Sir Rannulf of Sleaford, she congratulated the young woman on her good fortune. She pointed out that Sir Rannulf might seem to be a hard and bitter man and not young, but he had not actively mistreated his previous wives. He was just, honest beyond any doubt, and in excellent health and physical condition.

  Privately Maud thought that it was unlikely that Rannulf would offer his wife either love or tenderness, but, on the other hand, he was equally unlikely to starve her, imprison her, steal her property, or beat her for amusement—all of which, if not common practice, were frequently enough encountered forms of behavior among unscrupulous husbands who married heiresses.

  Lady Catherine, unlike Sir Rannulf, did not cry out against the marriage. For this there were many reasons, none of which included any satisfaction with the proposal. Her religion and training, as well as her knowledge that she was a virtual prisoner, predisposed her to be submissive to the will of authority; above and beyond that, Catherine was in a state of emotional paralysis brought on by a series of shocks of grief. So many sorrows had oppressed the young woman in quick succession that her strong steady spirit lay inert and her mind was dulled.

  In the same moment that Eustace was being carried senseless off the field before Devizes, Catherine was burying her young husband and her three-year-old son. She had not been passionately attached to her husband, it was true. He had not possessed the strength or spirit that was necessary to arouse her love, but he had been chosen for her by her sweet-tempered, overindulgent father because of his gentleness, and he had fulfilled his father-by-marriage's ex
pectations in the treatment of his wife.

  Because he was kind and in love with her, Catherine had been fond of her husband, and her grief for him was sincere if not deep. Her feeling for her son was of a different order entirely. So violent had been her maternal agony at the loss of her child, that she had brought further tragedy upon herself and had miscarried, in the seventh month of her pregnancy, a desperately desired daughter. Received back into her father's keep with the tenderest sympathy, Lady Catherine had barely begun to recover some semblance of emotional balance when the final blow fell upon her—the earl of Soke also died.

  Looking across the width of the fireplace at Rannulf of Sleaford, Maud wished irritably that he was as much a docile fool as the woman. She was tired and she did not wish to sit and reason with an unreasonable man who was ungratefully rejecting every offer made to him for his own advantage. If only he, like Catherine, would express neither joy nor repugnance, but sit with folded hands and eyes discreetly lowered, accepting as final all that he was told.

  Maud almost giggled at the thought of Rannulf in such a position. The fool! He would not realize what a prize he was being given, and not in disposition only, for Lady Catherine was as beautiful as she was docile. A strong strain of Saxon blood had made her truly as fair as a snow maiden, her hair so pale a gold that it seemed silvery, her skin white and delicate as skimmed milk, and her large eyes of that soft, fathomless blue that makes the eyes of a very young child both infinitely mysterious and infinitely innocent.

  Maud, however, had not yet introduced the lady into the conversation. By the time her inquiries about Rannulf's children were concluded, he was dressed. Instead of returning to the great hall, Maud had instructed her women to bring food to the solar and Sir Rannulf was now slumped in a cushioned, high-backed chair before the roaring fire, gnawing on the foreleg of a suckling pig. His eyes were not lowered, but fixed on his hostess, and their expression was an interesting mixture of fondness and caution.