The Passionate Enemies (43 page)

‘We must be watchful,' he said. ‘We know our enemies are above the border. They must not be allowed to think that we shall let them stay there.'

He was astonished to receive a communication from Henry.

Henry was in a quandary, he stated, and he believed his uncle might help him out of it.

This was an extraordinary notion, since a short while before Henry had boldly marched on England.

He had too small a force to attack, explained Henry. He was now in Scotland but wished to return with his troops to Anjou. His predicament was that he had no money with which to pay his men and to get them back. He knew well the King's generosity. He was therefore asking Stephen for the means to ship his men back to Anjou.

This request from an enemy was considered not only audacious but absurd. This irrepressible young man who had come to take Stephen's crown was now asking for money to get his men back to Anjou.

Stephen was amused.

‘He cannot be serious,' said the Queen.

‘He is.'

‘He is an impudent young man. To ask
you
for help.'

‘How will he pay those men and get them away without my help?'

‘That is surely his affair. Let them see what a Prince they have. They may not be so eager to follow him in future.'

‘He is headstrong,' said Stephen. He could not help it but he felt a tenderness for this young man. Eustace was his own son, he reminded himself, but was Henry also?

He felt almost certain that he was. And who should a boy appeal to but his own father?

No one could deter him. Money was sent to Henry of Anjou, a note of thanks came from Henry: and he and his troops departed for Anjou.

Was the King mad? This was a question people were asking themselves. They all knew of his generosity, his desire to live in amity with everyone. But this impudent boy was the enemy.

They remembered how he had let the Empress slip through his hands. He certainly behaved in a very strange manner now and then.

With Henry back in Anjou there was peace again.

The recent events, however, had worried the Queen a great deal. The refusal of the barons to acclaim Eustace king, the arrival of Henry of Anjou and Stephen's strange behaviour towards that young man . . . all this had been a great strain on her health.

The news of Adelicia's death was very upsetting. She felt she understood her need to retire from the world and shut herself up in a nunnery. Poor Adelicia, she had not lived long to enjoy that peace.

They were of an age and she, Matilda, was very, very tired.

She fell ill and on this occasion was too weary to pretend otherwise.

Stephen was horrified. It was characteristic of him that he had preferred to believe that there was nothing seriously wrong with her and when the truth could no longer be avoided he was bewildered.

She could not rise from her bed and asked that her confessor be sent for.

‘I do not think I shall leave my bed again, Stephen,' she said.

‘Nay, nay,' he cried, in panic. ‘I beg you, do not talk so.'

‘It's the truth, Stephen.'

‘How can you be ill . . . so suddenly?'

‘It is not sudden, Stephen. It has been coming for some time . . . more than a year ago I knew.'

‘I did not. Why did I not? No, Matilda, it is not so. What shall I do without you?'

She smiled gently. ‘You have given me great happiness, Stephen. I have lived but to be of use to you.'

He kissed her hands fervently. It was as though he were pleading with her not to leave him.

‘It is no longer in our hands, Stephen,' she said.

Her children came to her, Eustace, William and Mary.

‘Oh, Stephen,' she whispered, ‘I would I could stay with you to care for you all . . .'

Stephen wept openly. How could he live without her? He had not known, in spite of everything that had happened, how much she meant to him. Why had he not been a better husband to her?

‘If I could have another chance,' he whispered.

She could only smile at him.

For several days she lay between life and death and on a beautiful May day of the year 1152 she died.

They buried her at Faversham Abbey which she and Stephen had so recently founded. Stephen knew that he would mourn her all his life for he loved her more in death than he had believed possible while she lived.

THE KING WAS
melancholy. He was overcome by remorse. She was dead, his good and faithful wife, and he could never tell her now what she had meant to him. He brooded often on the past; he thought of the women with whom he had betrayed her; he had forgotten half of them now. There was one, though, whom he would never forget and he often wondered how much the Queen had known of that affair.

She was a saint; there would never again be anyone to care for him as she had done. His loss was irreparable. Sometimes he thought he was going to have another bout of that mysterious illness which had brought him close to death and had plunged him into such lethargy that he could do nothing but lie on his bed so limp and indifferent to the world that if his enemy were storming the castle he would continue to lie there. And if he did? Who would nurse him then? Who would keep the secret of his illness? His guardian angel was gone for ever and only now did he know how much she had cared for him.

He longed for a chance to explain to her, to tell her that he was aware of all she had done. He wanted to explain how that other Matilda had put a spell upon him and that it was nothing but witchcraft which had seduced him from his true and loving wife.

News came of the death of Geoffrey of Anjou. Stephen wondered then how Matilda was taking the death of the husband she despised. She cared little for Geoffrey, that had always been obvious, but his death was found to affect the future.

She was constantly creeping into his thoughts though he did his best to banish her from them. Yet he remembered her in her various moods; and he hated himself and assured himself that this was not so, but in his heart he knew that more than anything he longed to see her again. He wanted to see Henry – why, he would be twenty years old, a young warrior, as ambitious as his mother. Let us hope he has not inherited her temper, thought Stephen. Ever since she had
hinted that Henry might be his son he had been overwhelmed by an interest in him. He would glow inwardly with pride when he heard of his exploits. Eustace was his and his Queen's legitimate son but he could not help it if he tingled with pleasure every time he thought of Henry.

Sometimes when a spell of lethargy came over him he would let himself dream that he had married the fierce Matilda instead of the meek one and that Henry was their son, the future King of England. Such a grand boy, bold, puckish, lusty, everything that a young man should be.

Then he would return to reality and understand that this Henry was the enemy as the Empress had been.

Geoffrey's death was hardly likely not to have its effect. The reason the Plantagenet had refused his wife's plea for his presence in England when Robert of Gloucester had gone to fetch him was that he was far more concerned in taking Normandy, for Stephen, so deeply involved with holding England, had been unable to defend the Duchy. Now that Geoffrey was dead, Normandy had passed to young Henry who had placed himself in a strong position by making an advantageous marriage.

That this marriage shocked many, would of course, mean nothing to the gay adventurer. Eleanor of Aquitaine, twelve years older than Henry, had been married to the King of France. Eleanor, wild, adventurous and completely immoral, had become so enamoured of the dashing young Plantagenet that Louis VII had divorced her. It was this woman whom young Henry had now married and he was proudly calling himself Duke of Aquitaine and Normandy.

Stephen could imagine his dead Queen's concern at this turn of events. Normandy today, she would say. England tomorrow. Eustace is the Duke of Normandy, not this son of the Empress.

Eustace was furious; he strutted about the Court telling the King what he would do if he could come face to face with Henry Plantagenet.

His best plan was through negotiations, said Stephen. Eustace should go to the Court of France with his young wife Constance. Louis was powerful enough to give him his
support and to declare Eustace Duke of Normandy. This meant that Eustace must swear fealty to the King of France and then it seemed certain that Louis would agree. His sister was the wife of Eustace and his wife had deceived him with young Henry. Certainly Henry should not inherit Normandy. That should be for his brother-in-law, young Eustace.

So Normandy was won back. His Queen would have been pleased with that. That was a clever piece of diplomacy to have sent Eustace to France at the time when the King of France had divorced his wife and she had married Henry of Anjou.

Stephen had sent a message to the King of France to the effect that this young man who seemed to have such an opinion of himself had attempted to rob him of Normandy as churlishly as he had robbed Louis of his wife.

The King of France was very serious and replied that he was well rid of his wife and glad to pass her over; he was sure that she would cause as much trouble to her new husband as the Duchy of Normandy did to its dukes.

Stephen wondered what the Empress was thinking and guessed she was in one of her violent rages over the manner in which Normandy had been returned to its rightful owner.

Stephen was eager now to assure the succession as his dear dead Queen would have wished it. He made up his mind that he would insist on the crowning of Eustace, for, once a king was crowned, he was accepted as such and it was a very different matter displacing a man who was the recognized King from ousting him from his place when he was merely the heir apparent.

He had failed once but he was going to succeed this time. It was what Matilda would wish.

He called together the leading men of the Church and told them his will.

They would not agree, he was told.

‘You shall agree,' he told them. ‘I am the King and I will be obeyed.'

The churchmen conferred together. It was true he was the King but many of them still looked upon him as a usurper.
They had seen the way Eustace was growing up and they had also had a glimpse of the young Plantagenet. The latter was the true heir to the throne; he was the grandson of Henry I whereas Stephen was only his nephew. They had accepted Stephen as King because there had been a bloody civil war fought on the issue and the Empress Matilda would have been an even less attractive sovereign. Stephen had certain qualities; he was not a strong king, but he was not harsh and cruel. They would accept Stephen but not his son.

This was their verdict and although they would not have dared give such a decision to Henry I, they did not hesitate to give it to Stephen.

For once Stephen was wrathful. He would imprison them all, he declared. They should all be shut up until they bowed to his will. He was determined that Eustace should be crowned King.

This he did but it was no rigorous confinement. It merely meant that he shut them up in one house, which was characteristic of him.

No one was very much surprised when the Archbishop of Canterbury escaped from confinement. This made nonsense of the whole affair because a king could not be crowned without him.

Stephen was only faintly disturbed when news reached him that the Archbishop had escaped across the Channel and was with Henry Plantagenet, urging him to make an attempt to secure the crown of England.

Henry lost no time in setting out for England. His marriage to a forceful wife, his certainty that he was the true heir of England and the haranguing of his mother made him determined to secure what he believed was his inheritance.

Stephen rode out to meet the invading army with a feeling he did not himself understand. He was coming face to face with this young man who was often in his thoughts. Matilda's son! Naturally her son would be no ordinary young man. Stephen laughed inwardly to think of Henry's seducing the wife of the King of France, marrying her, and their son being born about two months after the wedding. It was clear that this young man was not going to follow an orthodox pattern.

They were now going to face each other in combat and Stephen could feel that lethargy creeping over him. No, it was perhaps not the old illness. It was a strong conviction that it was wrong for him and this young man to stand on opposite sides in a field of battle.

The weather was cold and the roads icy, and as Stephen rode with his army his horse slipped and he was thrown.

There was a hush throughout the ranks for this sort of incident was regarded with great superstition as an evil omen and more particularly when it happened on the verge of going into battle.

Stephen picked himself up and mounted his horse. He had not his grandfather's gift for turning such an incident which could well be a bad omen into one which was a good one.

His horse slipped almost as soon as he had mounted and again he was thrown. He mounted again and the horse slipped as before, and for the third time Stephen was thrown to the ground.

Once would have made his followers apprehensive, twice would have been alarming, but three times appeared to be an undoubted sign.

Many of those men who stood waiting for the beginning of the battle were convinced that Stephen had lost the day before it started.

It was dusk. The battle would begin with the dawn. The King wandered round the camp fires and talked to his men. He talked to them of victory but his heart was not in the fight and they knew it. He wondered how many of his men would have deserted by morning.

William de Albini came into his tent and asked for a word with him.

‘My good friend,' said Stephen, ‘I can see you are distraught. You fear the outcome of this battle.'

‘I fear, my lord, the effect of a long and arduous war on the people of this land.'

‘You think it will be such?'

‘I think that unless some understanding is reached there will be no end to these wars. My lord, you see how the country suffers from them. When the last King died we were
prosperous, this was a law-abiding land. Since then it has been torn by almost continuous civil strife. Put an end to it, my lord, before it is too late.'