The Morning Gift Read online

  The Morning Gift

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Epilogue

  Copyright

  To Samantha Norman with all my love

  Prologue

  The jolly young nobles lining the sides of the White Ship as she prepared to leave Barfleur Harbour for England on the night of Thursday, November 25, 1120 AD, were drunk. They jeered at the priests who had come to the dockside to bless their voyage.

  The White Ship was beautiful, the finest in the fleet of Henry the First of England, Duke of Normandy, who had given her to his heir, William the Atheling. In his conviviality the Atheling had pressed wine on the crew and even on the pilot who was to guide his ship through the rocks and sandbanks which made this stretch of Normandy coast dangerous.

  The tall young Count Stephen of Blois, who had been about to board the White Ship, looked around at the general drunkenness and changed his mind. He would return to England on another vessel.

  The priests watched the elegant sterncastle slide erratically out of harbour into the night.

  The rocks on which the White Ship tore out her side lay not far out to sea and the screams of the drowning could be heard by those on land. But nothing could be done; the water was cold and the currents strong. Two hundred men and women, among them the heir to the throne of England and Normandy, lost their lives.

  When they brought the news to King Henry in England he fainted. Like the great king he was, however, he forced himself to recover and, like the great despot he also was, began to ensure that it was his seed which inherited his realm after him. The trouble was that his only legitimate surviving heir was female, the Empress Matilda. And England had never yet been ruled by a woman.

  So it goes. One man changes his mind, a pilot can neither refuse liquor nor hold it, and because of them both a war begins twenty years later.

  The waters which closed over the head of William the Atheling that night in 1120 AD were to form a maelstrom which would suck into itself the lives of thousands – among them that of a girl who had only just been born…

  Chapter 1

  1134–1135

  The first night of the marriage between Sigward, Lord of Hatfelde, and Matilda de Risle of Normandy was more complex and less brutal than fourteen-year-old Matilda – whose ideas of human copulation were based on stockbreeding – had feared.

  But her relief that things had gone comparatively well were as nothing to that of her lord’s.

  As he rose from their bed the next morning his bellows of joy silenced cockcrow, set the dogs barking, scattered the pigeons from the loft and roused the drink-sodden wedding guests in their niches round the hall.

  Matilda lay where she was, listening to Sigward thump down the stairs and hearing the castle come to life, waiting for her ladies to come and dress her.

  As she’d known she would be, Berte, her nurse, was first in, her mouth pursed in triumph as if her lamb had vanquished the Devil single-handed. Their eyes met. “That’ll silence her,” said Berte. Silence seemed to be the last thing Matilda had achieved – the bell on the chapel roof was now adding to the hullaballoo – but Berte was referring to Matilda’s predecessor in the bed, a previous wife whom Sigward had repudiated after six years of marriage. She had not produced a child in that time and so had been tidied away into a convent but had managed to appeal to the bishops’ consistory court to have her marriage reinstated, although she was also spreading the rumour that Sigward was impotent.

  “Contradictory, if you like,” Berte was saying, tidying away the mandrake root, corn dollies and other symbols of fertility she had concealed around the bed, afraid the priest would see them. “And lies anyway, so it do seem.” She was begging for revelations but Matilda gave her none.

  “Nine months from now…” Berte crooned and opened the chest at the foot of the bed to take out Matilda’s robes and give them a shake. “Anyway, Sigward’s purchased the bishops’ goodwill to prove consanguinity between them and that’ll finish her for good.”

  Actually it was difficult for a man and woman of the nobility not to be related within the seven degrees which the Church now said prohibited marriage. Matilda, who knew her pedigree as well as she knew the hunting coverts around her Normandy homes, was aware that she and Sigward shared a great-great-grandmother. But the laws were generally disregarded when it was desirable that two great families should be allied and invoked only when a husband wanted to rid himself of an unsatisfactory wife.

  Sigward was down in the bailey now, whooping awake the guests who had been quartered in the outbuildings. Berte opened the shutters to watch him, smiling as at the antics of a small boy and letting in the smell of forest, bluebells, wood-smoke, horse manure and a Hertfordshire breeze that fluttered the garlands round the bed.

  “Poor fat Saxon,” she said, leaning out and presenting her own ample backside to Matilda’s view. “Only needed a Norman spark to light his tinder.”

  “He’s not Saxon,” said Matilda, stung. The fatness could not be disputed.

  “Spindle-side, spindle-side,” chanted Berte. “His lady mother was Saxon and lady mother ruled this roost, so they tell me. It was her, God rest her soul, chose her, blast her. Good thing the Lord called her when He did, God rest her soul.”

  “You show him respect or you’ll go back to Normandy.” Berte presumed too much on a relationship begun when she, Matilda, was one minute old.

  “Don’t I respect him?” asked Berte. She turned back from the window and began brushing Matilda’s pelisse. “Didn’t I show that pis-aller cook how to honey the duck and didn’t his lordship chomp it up? Don’t the king think well of him? Isn’t he powerful? I like fat men: they’re cosy in bed.”

  Matilda hissed with irritation: Berte was vulgar; worse still, she was right. Sigward’s girth had been embarrassing compared to the lean, Norman lords at her wedding. But in the darkness those broad expanses of flesh had been comforting, symbolising the richness of Sigward’s English acres. And Matilda, who loved richness in all things, had burrowed into them, joining the domain of bodies and lands and practising the submissiveness which Berte had advised. Berte had said: “Now you be humble, like a little child. None of your pride with him, my lady. She was bossy, so they do say, like the lady mother, and she was put away. We don’t want to be put away, do we? So be soft. Shy, but willing.”

  Matilda had pretended to ignore her but her careful mind had considered the advice and found it good. Had she been put into a convent she would have had to please God; being married she must please her husband and God in that order. Heiress to large estates she might be, but wealthier women than she had been repudiated and left impoverished, their lords not having found it necessary to repudiate also the lands they’d brought with them. Only a generation before, Philip, then King of France, had repudiated his queen, Fat Bertha, after twenty years of marriage. The poor lady had died of shame and been buried in a commoner’s grave.

  So Matilda had made a game of the night, play-acting the role society urged on wives, becoming compliant, tender, admiring, submissive, while the true Matilda watched and learned about men, the lords, in order to manipulate this one to her advantage. The effect had been an overwhelming response of joy from Sigwa
rd.

  Now there was clatter on the stairs and other members of her personal household came in with most of the lady guests, some peeking quick glances, others frankly staring to see how the night had changed her. Adeliza regarded her with horrified curiosity as if she had been to the grave and come back, reeking, to tell the tale. Adeliza of Louvain was the twelve-year-old who was to be brought up in Matilda’s care until she should be married herself. They had been playmates and now, thought Matilda, they belonged to different generations.

  Father Alors – nobody could remember his real name – her confessor and secretary stood at the foot of the bed with a crucifix upraised against contamination. His face was gloomy and getting gloomier with every shout of Sigward’s from the courtyard. “Search your conscience, my child, and tell me that you are yet in grace.”

  As he had circled the two of them in bed last night, censing them with holy water, he had given improving selections from the Church’s current marital teaching: “If the spouses take pleasure in their marriage bed they sin,” and, “If a man love his wife too passionately he be guilty of adultery.” Sigward’s priest had been much jollier and winked at them.

  “Father Alors always says Judgment Day is tomorrow,” Matilda had muttered to Sigward, who’d muttered back: “As long as it’s not tonight.”

  Matilda searched her conscience, reducing the matter to essentials. What Father Alors was asking was had she enjoyed the night and she would be blameworthy if the answer was “yes”.

  What did they want of her? She had not chosen to be married. She had been just as prepared to take the veil at Fontevrault. But then her two older brothers had died, one from measles and one from a hunting accident, and at once Matilda was heir, tenant-in-chief to King Henry, the Duke of Normandy, and a valuable asset to him since her marriage was in his gift.

  He had given her, for a price, to Sigward. Matilda’s advisers had felt she could have done better, although Sigward was of good birth, but Henry had given neither them nor Matilda the choice. It had been strategically important that Matilda’s lands should not fall into the hands of the greater Norman barons in case they became too powerful and that Sigward, who commanded English lands and loyalty, should be bound even closer to his king.

  So Matilda was married whether she wanted to be or not and now the Church in the shape of Father Alors was disappointed in her. It was better to marry than to burn, but only just. Had she enjoyed the night? Would the Virgin Mary, who had replaced Matilda’s long-dead mother in Matilda’s affection, still think her worthy?

  Well, it had been a peculiar night, full of strange textures and experiences and not nearly as bad as she’d imagined, but if it never happened again she wouldn’t mind. Perhaps that would do.

  She said, “I am as much in grace as I can be, being married.”

  Father Alors sighed. “It is all we can hope for. God keep you in that state, my child.” He wandered off, nearly inert with the world’s coming death.

  “C’est à en Paques Avril, que chantent oisillons gentils…” Jodi, her minstrel, had perched himself and his lute on a cupboard shelf and to the accompaniment of his singing Matilda was dragged out of bed, her head dunked in a bowl of water and the business of dressing her begun. Garment after garment was dragged down over her upraised arms until her thin body was layered like an onion. In itself the beautiful pelisse was three layers, the inner cloth and the outer silk sandwiching between them the ermine which was proof, or nearly, against the spring breeze outside the castle and the eternal draughts inside.

  “Do we all wear the same tunic again today, Matilda?” asked Adeliza. In the wedding procession yesterday bridesmaids and bride had been covered in the same Virgin blue to confuse the evil spirits who were abroad to bedevil a marrying.

  “We do not,” said Matilda. She loathed looking the same as anyone.

  “Matilda spent the night wrestling with demons,” drawled Ghislaine.

  “But did she win?” asked Flore.

  Matilda aimed a barefoot kick at them both and within seconds the chamber was a mêlée of scuffling, giggling girls. Berte waded into it and grabbed Matilda’s hair which had become entangled in somebody else’s circlet. “This,” she said, “goes up.” It was a reminder of her dignified marital status.

  The girdle they fastened around Matilda’s hips was set with carbuncles of topaz, agate, sardonyx and rubies which had been brought back from the Holy Land by Matilda’s father. Some protected against fever, some lighted up darkness. Matilda had compared it to those of the lady guests and had satisfied herself it was richer even than Matilda of Boulogne’s whose husband, Count Stephen of Blois, was representing the absent King Henry.

  They were putting the finishing touches, dabbing her nose with saffron powder and her ears with rosewater when the two stewards made their entrance, tapping their rods of office. Matilda’s, Rollo, who had come over temporarily and would go back to supervise the Norman estates, was beaming. Alfwin, Sigward’s man, was impassive as ever. “My lady,” said Rollo, “your lord begs you to go down with your ladies and accompany him to church…”

  Waleran of Meulan loomed up behind him: “You’ve been a clever girl, cousin, and are to be rewarded for it, apparently.”

  “My lady,” continued Rollo, “to church and there receive your lord’s morning gift.”

  * * *

  The breeze flattened the squirrel cloaks and discs of hawthorn blossom stuck to flying veils. Tiny tides of yesterday’s thrown wheat ran over the ground to pile up under lavender bushes. Now, as yesterday, Matilda and Sigward stood in the church porch and faced their guests. Yesterday each had said: “I receive you as mine,” Sigward’s cloak had covered the two of them and Matilda had knelt to her husband and given up her legal existence. Henceforward her property, land, even her dower and marriage portion, were under Sigward’s control for as long as he lived.

  Today he was handing something back. “Know all assembled here that, for the love I bear her, I grant to my wife, Matilda of Risle, my manor of Dungesey in the County of Cambridgeshire with all its appurtenances, rights of custom…” The enumeration of rights rolled out in thick deep notes, easily reaching the back of the crowd and was assisted by the breeze down the hill, over the elm tops, to the tiny wagons on the track and even to the villeins and cattle in the valley fields so that they turned their heads towards the cawing of this master rook.

  The gift was as vulgar and generous as the man who performed it, and as Saxon. No full Norman could or would have instituted the tradition of the morning gift which was a reward for giving sexual pleasure, a sign that a husband found his wife congenial. The Church’s dislike of sexual satisfaction even in marriage had still not caught on among the lax and more matriarchal Saxons.

  But the Norman Waleran of Meulan, who was Matilda’s cousin, had shown waspishness when he’d called her a clever girl as if she had gained advantage by unscrupulous means. Even Matilda herself, a true Norman, felt a moment of nausea at the thought that she had betrayed her breeding, that the tall, lean, confident men facing her, these arbiters of what was proper and what was not, should think less of her. She was embarrassed by the sweating emotion of the fat man she belonged to who was implicitly betraying her. “I’m not like that,” she wanted to shout. And at the same time, she was wondering what sort of manor it was.

  * * *

  It was nearly a year before she saw it because first it was necessary for Sigward to be introduced to his (once Matilda’s) lands in Normandy. They travelled from castle to manor to castle in a party sixty-odd strong, including some of Sigward’s dependent relatives, Matilda’s ladies and household, a chamberlain, a priest, grooms, servants, cooks, household knights and men-at-arms, staying at each estate for as long as its provisions held out or until the cesspit overflowed.

  They hunted, paid visits and were visited, attended the local courts, gave judgments in their own, feasted, played, danced.

  It was as administrative partners rather than as playfe
llows that the marriage prospered. Matilda found a revelling Sigward embarrassing; he drank too much and cried into his cups, he ate too much and belched like a Turk. He was too fat to dance without appearing ridiculous and out hunting he became puffed long before the quarry was killed. She found him most admirable when he was wielding power as a lord. Never was she so fond of him as when he was up on the dais surveying villeins, decreeing fines, settling disputes and receiving homage as her father once had. If he’d been a noticing man Sigward might have become aware that it was on the nights after official appearances that Matilda was most responsive to love-making.

  So it was to quell her unworthy embarrassment and to heighten her admiration that she encouraged and took part in his governing.

  It began at Guercy in the Suisse-Normande. At the Thursday court Matilda sat with Sigward on the dais and whispered into his ear as each villein came forward.

  “Alcuin has encroached unlawfully on to West Field, which is yours.”

  “Alcuin will be fined 6d for unlawful encroachment on the demesne,” said Sigward, promptly.

  “Pierre has been pasturing his bull on the common and Rollo says he gave him no permission to do it.”

  Pierre was fined 6d.

  “The hamlet of St. Dreux has not put its sheep on your fallow to manure it this year.” St. Dreux, who wanted its own land manured, was fined 3s.

  By the end of the day the returns from Guercy were up on what they had been when Matilda’s father was alive and Sigward was pleased with his wife. The villeins complained that they would starve, but villeins never said anything else.

  After that Sigward took to consulting Matilda on most matters so that, as well as overseeing the preparations for the guests, the almsgiving, the menus and the general household conduct, she spent time with bailiffs counting tallies. She found herself to be a capable manager and enjoyed herself.

  Their only disagreement was at Mainscourt near Rouen where Simnel, a villein, was presented at court for poaching a stag in the lord’s deerpark.