The Wolf at the Door Read online

  Elsewhere, Queen Eleanor had heard of her son’s vengeance, marvelled at his devotion, then sent men to Chinon to learn the truth. Young Softsword might be anxious to drive a wedge between Audemar and the Lusignans, and he might possibly have sought to avenge his aged mother. But Eleanor told her scouts to look for another reason. With John there was always another reason.

  ‘I do not think you’ll need to squint and peer in order to find it. It will be as obvious as the castle itself. If it exists, you’ll see it as soon as you get there. It’ll stare you in the face.’

  She was right, understanding him better than anyone. When her scouts returned it was to tell her that Isabelle had been given the freedom of the district, yet showed no inclination to leave the castle. She was escorted everywhere, but not by men in mail. It was John who guided her arm, referring to her as the Sparrowhawk, his diminutive bird of prey. She wore two of his rings, trilled at his jokes, and disported herself as though she was the chatelaine of Chinon.

  ‘That,’ Eleanor remarked sourly, ‘or the next Queen of England.’

  Chapter Two

  The Zephyr Blows Chill

  March, April 1201

  The undergrowth had been cleared and boards tied to the surrounding trees, and there was now a level, fenced-off area deep in the forest. Its existence was known only to King John, a handful of his advisers, and those workmen who had grubbed the bushes and constructed the fence. The workmen had been sworn to secrecy, on pain of having their tongues clipped, though they could think of no one who would be interested in such a trivial accomplishment.

  ‘…Listen. You know what lies in the forest south of Chinon? A fenced clearing! I swear it. A patch of ground in the trees…’ No, they decided, the information had little market value.

  Nevertheless, it was important to John that the whereabouts of the clearing be kept secret, and the path to it remain unmarked. Empty, it was just a shadowed enclosure, a pen in which to herd stray sheep and pigs. But it would not be empty for long, and men were already converging on it from every part of the country. They too had been sworn to secrecy, and told that on no account were they to show themselves at the castle. Instead, they were to make their way to a ruined monastery on the south bank of the Vienne, from whence they would be conducted to the clearing. Once there, they would make obeisance to the king and display their special skills.

  Of the twenty or so that had been summoned, three would be chosen, and of these, two would eventually perform. The third would be retained in case either of his companions fell ill, or deserted.

  One other who was privy to the secret was Isabelle of Angoulême, or, more correctly, Queen Isabelle of England. In this, too, Eleanor had been right, for John had married the girl in August, two months after her abduction and, in October, she had been crowned in Westminster Abbey. The English barons found the child-queen uncomfortably strong- willed, but they prayed that she would curb John’s vile temper and help allay his sense of persecution. If anyone could calm him, it would surely be his Sparrowhawk.

  On the other side of the Channel the nobility were less optimistic, and queried the speed with which John had taken her as his wife and queen. Had she really been abducted – pebble for pebble – in response to the Lusignans’ treatment of Eleanor, or had John previously taken a fancy to the girl and stolen her for himself? The situation was serious enough, for the theft had alienated not only Hugh and Ralf, but many of their supporters. The crippled Audemar had isolated himself in Angoulême, while, in Paris, Philip Augustus weighed the Lusignans’ appeal. Serious enough, the barons agreed, but what if the king had stolen the girl merely to gratify his personal desires? He would then have hoodwinked his enemies and his friends, this wolf from the forest.

  When the Sparrowhawk learned why the ground had been cleared, she insisted on attending the display. She told her husband, ‘I can be of value to you, when you make your selection.’

  ‘There’ll be no pennants,’ John said. ‘It’s not an entertainment.’

  ‘I know. We have our own yards for that.’

  ‘And there’ll be blood. It’s unavoidable.’

  With chilling accuracy, she said, ‘But that’s the issue, isn’t it?’

  Unwilling to agree, he closed his hand over hers. ‘Very well, keep me company. But before the selection there’s another problem to be dealt with. Amongst all my advisers, can you guess which one is most opposed to the scheme?’

  She nodded immediately. ‘Yes, though the question that does defeat me is why you continue to listen to him. He’s an old man, old and I’d have thought served-out. Every day you speak ill of him, complain about him, step wide of him. It’s become a ritual with you, my lord—’ She withdrew her hand and raised it to forestall his denial – ‘a ritual to curse him when we’re alone.’ She did not add that the ritual was most often enacted at night, to be followed by a bout of ferocious love-making, as though by drawing cries from his wife, John could somehow expunge his fears. ‘Why not dispense with him? He brings you more distress than—’

  ‘Sweet Christ!’ John erupted. ‘You do no better than my friends. If I were to list— If I described the ways and methods that have suggested themselves to me. From banishment to sinecure; sent off as emissary to the East, in the hopes that he would fall prey to disease or some Saracen arrow. Yes, and a backstairs murder not least among them. Dispense with him? Oh, yes, Isabelle, I’ll dispense with him. When a ship can do without sails.’

  The outburst left him with his mouth twisted in irony and with one hand pressed to his head, a mannerism he had long since been unable to control. The gesture had begun as a way of displaying his elegant, bejewelled fingers on a mat of reddish hair, but time and tension had transformed it into an instinctive clamp of despair.

  Isabelle watched, appalled that even now, in the sanctuary of their private chambers, the king could be so cowed. His air of resignation made her careless, and she shouted back at him, ‘I am better than your friends, for I know best of all what he does to you. He countermands your authority and blocks your way. He comes between you and half the things you would achieve. He brings you awake at night, sweating out the problems that he has set. He has you shivering, my lord, and clutching your skull. Yet you allow all this, and still regard him as, what did you call it, the sail for your ship?’

  In a weak attempt at humour, John said, ‘I meant the wind. As king, I can afford to buy the sails, but only he, it seems, has the knack of raising the wind.’

  ‘Maybe so,’ she continued, ‘but I have never heard this special wind that drives you all along. We trade ten words a day, he and I. Cold courtesies, for that’s all he’ll afford me. Oh, I find no fault with his greetings or farewells. He bows just deep enough, and he’d catch me if I stumbled on the steps. But I know what he thinks of his new queen, and I can tell you how I see him.’

  ‘Don’t,’ John murmured. ‘You are angry on my behalf, and for yourself, but you do not know him, so—’

  ‘A lean, dried-out scabbard, with its sword rusted away.’ ‘You don’t know him,’ John repeated. ‘I like him less than you do and yes, he certainly blocks my path. But he is necessary to me, and—’

  ‘Then let me learn.’

  ‘What?’ ,

  ‘If I don’t know him, let me find out. You say there’s a problem to be resolved. Well, let me be there when you resolve it. I’d like to see how he fills the sails.’

  The king started to shake his head, then turned the movement into a shrug. Why not? The experience might make Isabelle more tolerant of his nightmares. Yes, it was probably time she put to sea with William Marshal.

  * * *

  He had been up on the wall-walk and was still dressed in his link-mail hauberk and studded gauntlets. The latter were too new for comfort, the leather inflexible, the metal sharp from the anvil. It would need a few weeks of sweat and rain to mould the gloves to his hands, a dozen applications of oil before the scraped ox-hide became supple. Once they had taken shape, they would
be welcome protection against the cold and sudden wrench of a sword grip.

  The previous pair had lasted more than a year, but they had eventually rotted to their fibres and were now in his weapons chest, with other discarded equipment. Early years of poverty had taught him to abandon nothing; a split belt was still good for its buckle, or as laces, while the arms of a leather gambeson could be unstitched, then attached to a sleeveless tunic. He was no longer poor, far from it, but the habit had never left him, witness the pile of mildewed clothes.

  He shut the chamber door, hung his helmet from a hook above the chest, then tugged wearily at his gauntlets. He had walked the entire length of the ramparts, climbed the narrow stairways of every tower, and exchanged a nod or a comment with each of the sixty lookouts. He was neither the constable of Chinon nor sergeant of the guard, and was under no obligation to patrol the mile-long wall. Yet he did so at every change of the watch, albeit pausing longer and more often to catch his breath. If the guards noticed the lengthening interruptions they welcomed them as the chance to spend more time in the company of their hero, William Marshal. These days there were few malingerers among the wall guards of Chinon.

  He had freed one hand from his glove when he heard a heel tap on the flagstones, and he swung round to see King John emerge from the deep recess beside the fire. As in most rooms in the castle, logs smouldered day and night, summer and winter, in an attempt to combat the dampness drawn up from the Vienne. But during Marshal’s tour of the defences the fire had gone unattended, and the flames had died down, no longer illuminating the stone benches that lined the recess.

  From the other side of the alcove came Queen Isabelle, her eyes reddened by smoke, her expression a mixture of discomfort and triumph. It was obvious that Marshal had been caught unawares, the way the king’s footsteps had startled him. The mighty Earl of Pembroke, to whom Christendom supposedly clung for colour, and here he was, surprised at his own fireside.

  It’s his age, Isabelle thought. It must have smothered his senses, to leave him so vulnerable. What if we had been assassins? He’d be dead by now, with one gauntlet still hanging from his hand. A ludicrous sight, not at all what the devoted garrison would expect from their exemplar.

  John acknowledged an unsmiling welcome and said, ‘We sent word we were coming, Earl Marshal. The messengers are probably still tramping the length of Chinon. You were in one of the turrets, I daresay.’

  ‘I was in all of them,’ Marshal told him, ‘and I am still waiting to see evidence of the repairwork I suggested. The list grows, king, and the weak spots become more apparent. Your father called this place “a stone crown on a stone head”, and did more than anyone to improve its defences—’

  ‘I told you before, my architects are examining your reports. These things take time.’

  ‘And effort,’ Marshal emphasized. ‘But, so long as none of the architects turn traitor and tell the enemy where best to place their ladders… A stone crown was King Henry’s description, not a patchwork cap.’ He dragged off the second glove and tossed the pair into the open chest. He was impatient to shed his heavy mail tunic, but he resigned himself to another hour of clinking irritation. Perhaps less than an hour; perhaps the rest of the day. It depended on his visitors.

  ‘You’re right to hound me,’ John placated. ‘Chinon must remain impregnable, as must Château Gaillard and Loches and our other frontier fortresses. If we lost Chinon—’ a sudden grin, boyish and charming, a valuable weapon in his armoury – ‘well, you’d be deprived of your promenades, eh, Marshal? There are no other walls in the region as extensive as—’ But his humour evaporated beneath the warlord’s gaze, and he turned away to motion Isabelle into a chair. ‘No more pleasantries,’ he told her. ‘We’ll say our piece and go. The Earl of Pembroke was never one for uninvited guests.’

  The chair was too large for the young queen, as it would have been for John, and she was forced to sit well forward, as though eager to hear what was being said. She hoped John would notice her plight and forage for some cushions, but he stayed where he was, his eyes on Marshal.

  ‘It’s been a disturbed year so far,’ the king said. ‘The Lusignans ran squealing to King Philip and, when he rejected their complaints, they took the law into their own hands.’

  ‘He did not reject them,’ Marshall countered. ‘He set them aside in favour of more pressing business. If you’re here to discuss recent events, lord king, you must be more precise. Philip Augustus rejects no one. The word does not apply.’

  ‘Very well. The brothers were set aside. They were put off. Their complaints were held in abeyance. However you care to phrase it. But you would agree that since then they’ve fomented trouble in Poitou and Normandy. You would accept that they’ve made the law their own?’

  ‘Yes, I would. In return for which you have installed your own commanders in La Marche and all but driven Ralf from his holdings in Normandy.’

  ‘God’s sight!’ John snapped. ‘You say that with disapproval. Of course I invaded their lands! They are traitors to the crown, they and all who support them. They refused to pledge allegiance to England, maltreated my mother in order to secure La Marche, and now they’re in open revolt against me. Of course I attack them! Or does that word not apply!’ He had begun to slap the flat of his hand against the chair arm, a rhythmical overture to fury, symptoms of the Angevin sickness.

  Isabelle murmured, ‘Don’t let him blow you about, my lord.’ Then, in her first informal address to Marshal, ‘Do you know, Pembroke, there’s a smell that pervades this chamber? It’s you, I think, reeking of reason. How you love to sit in judgement on the king’s actions, only stirring yourself to prowl the walls. Yet I did not see you lead the invasion into La Marche—’ She felt John’s hand on her shoulder and glanced up as he mouthed, ‘Leave it be. You do not know him. Now leave it be.’

  But she would not be dissuaded. True, she was sublimely ignorant of Marshal’s achievements, but she would not let him stand there – a picture of hawk-nosed severity – and imply that the king himself held the law on a loose rein. If William Marshal had the power to raise the wind, she had yet to see him do it.

  ‘Nor did you accompany King John on his recent visit to Philip Augustus. Indeed, I have not been witness to anything you’ve done, unless it’s to cast yourself as the Zephyr. Is that the part you take, Pembroke, the god of the west wind, blowing us about?’ It only required her to stamp her foot and it would have been perfect. But she lacked her husband’s high heels and could not quite reach the floor.

  John interceded. ‘There’s no value in this. Queen Isabelle has mentioned the meeting with Philip, at which I agreed to grant the Lusignans a fair hearing. We merely want your opinion, Marshal, on how best to summon them.’ He tried another disarming grin, but again it failed, and he let his gaze edge down to Isabelle. Too late now, the list of Marshal’s accomplishments unrolled in his mind, and he blamed himself for having kept the Sparrowhawk in ignorance. He had meant to apprise her, but each time the opportunity had arisen, he’d found himself unable to speak well of the man who made him sweat in his sleep.

  Nevertheless, to hear his wife suggest that William Marshal only walked the walls, that he cast himself as a god, but had otherwise not done much…

  He had spent his youth on horseback, travelling the length and breadth of Europe, the undefeated champion of a hundred brutal tourneys… If nothing else, he had visited as many countries as a messenger, or a pilgrim… If nothing else, his success in the lists and against the quintain remained unsurpassed… If nothing else, his name was known throughout the West by the time he was twenty…

  But he had then gone on to serve the volatile King Henry, choosing to remain landless whilst his companions scrambled in search of manors or fiefs… They had grown rich around him and, growing rich, had grown fat…

  At forty-three he was still single, and had then married a woman of nineteen, the enchanting Isabel de Clare, heiress of Pembroke and Striguil… With the peal of the weddi
ng bells the impoverished knight had become one of the most powerful men in England and would never again need to patch old tunics…

  The companions of his early life were fattened for the grave, but another ten years had passed, during which he had sired five sons and guided the tempestuous Richard Lionheart, daring to contradict him when others acquiesced…

  And now, as Henry had bequeathed him to Richard, so Richard had charged him to guide the fortunes of brother John… But it remained to be seen if the heroic William Marshal, the arid, dried-out scabbard, was still firm enough to hold Softsword… Henry and Richard had been problem-enough, but they were lions, and here was a wolf…

  Isabelle’s accusations had earned her one of Marshal’s rare, dry smiles, and he made no attempt to defend himself. Instead, he nodded at John’s hurried explanation and said, ‘How best to summon the Lusignans? At sword-point, I should think. They’ll never come otherwise.’

  ‘And why not? They are being offered the justice of the court.’

  Marshal shifted in his heavy mail coat. ‘Is that why the ground has been cleared in the forest? An open-air hearing? The scent of spring?’

  ‘You know what it’s for, so don’t play the innocent.’

  ‘Yes, king, I do, and so will they within the week. And then how will they react to your talk of a fair hearing? Why not ask it of yourself? Ask how you would react if you learned that Philip Augustus had fenced off a Paris square with you in mind. Would you take the risk? No, my lord, you’d do better to have the boards dismantled, and think again. If not, you will drive the Lusignans even deeper into rebellion and closer to France.’

  John stared at the lean, dark-skinned commander. Marshal’s adzed features and bird’s beak nose reminded men of the Bedouin, the Saracens, the ferocious disciples of Mohammed. For the thousandth time the king wished it had been so; that Marshal had been an Arab, and slain by a Crusader.