Roberta Gellis (43 page)

“No, it is not so foolish,” Sir Druerie said, laughing. “By all means, give it to Sabina.”

His remark reduced every person at the table to silence and staring. Of them all, the last one who should have been willing to approve Magdalene’s jesting suggestion was the elderly and conservative Sir Druerie. He looked around at them all in some surprise.

“If he is going to marry her,” Sir Druerie
continued, shrugging, “the money would come back to him anyway.”

“Marry me?” Sabina said faintly. “But Mainard cannot marry me. I am a whore.”

“Have you been?” Mainard asked harshly.

Sabina turned her blind face to him. “What kind of question is that? You know I was a whore before I came into your keeping—”

“I meant after?”

“No! Of course not!” Sabina drew herself up, and her voice was indignant. “You paid for my keep here and for Haesel’s, and I had money from my singing. Why should I go back to work that was never to my taste?”

“To get the taste of me out of your mouth?”

Sabina smiled, her whole face lighting with joy. “You taste of honey and heaven to me, Mainard. You are beautiful
to my hands, and I adore your funny face.”

For one moment the whole table was stricken mute. Fortunately it was Mainard who found his voice first. “Then will you marry me?” he asked.

“Mainard.” Her voice shook, and she paused to steady it. “You cannot mean that. I cannot bear you children. They would not only be the butt of cruel jests but, God forbid, they could be born like me, without eyes. I cannot. I cannot.” And she bent her head against his breast and wept.

A long sigh whooshed out of Mainard and he clutched her closer. “Don’t cry, beloved. You do not know how much you have eased my heart. That was one thing I always feared—that if we married you would want children. No more than you do I dare have a child. Not even having you for my own forever could make me willing to inflict on a child the life I have lived. You say I am beautiful to you, but the whole world is not blind.”

“No heir?” Sir Druerie exclaimed. “But what will you do with your business?”

“I could leave it to my journeyman, who will be a master I hope long before I die, or if he is too well established to want another
business, I could leave it to one of the apprentices. Or Sabina and I could take to ourselves one or more of the foundlings discarded by parents who cannot care for them because of death or poverty. Bertrild never understood that I did not marry her to get an heir. I wanted a woman to talk to, to laugh with, to lie with, to share my life, my worries and my pleasures.”

“That I will do, Mainard,” Sabina said. “Whether you marry me or keep me, I will gladly share your life in every way until I die or you drive me away.”

They all lifted their wine cups to toast that statement, and Mainard softly told Sabina, who smiled and thanked them. And when the cups were emptied, Mainard said that he would like Sabina to come to Lime Street and decide whether she would like to live in that house. Sir Druerie rose to accompany them. Magdalene and Bell saw them out and then sat down at the table and stared in silence at each other.

To her amazement, Magdalene felt herself blushing. Hastily she said, “I have rewrapped Genlis’s documents in their original—

Bell reached over and put a finger over her lips. “Enough. I do not want to hear one word more about Bertrild’s murder today.” He looked around the room which, despite the disorder of platters and scraps not yet cleared away, of stools disarranged by the number of people who had been moving about the room, had a look of comfort and ease to it. He stared for a moment at Magdalene’s embroidery frame, now carrying the start of another altar cloth or cope—some large piece of work that would take weeks or months to complete.

“You will never give up this life, will you?” he said.

She smiled. “No, never. I am me,
femme
sole
in law. No one has the right to tell me what to do. I am not beholden to any man for the bread I chew, the fire in my hearth, the clothing on my body. It is said that women are weak and evil and need men to control them, but if I have sold my soul to the devil, I am going to enjoy every moment of my weakness and evilness. It will be time enough to repent when I am silver-haired and toothless.” Her smile broadened into a grin. “By then I will be rich enough, I hope, that I will be able to buy absolution and a boost straight into heaven by leaving my goods and money to the Church.”

He shrugged. “Evil? Perhaps it is evil for a woman to be master of herself. But weak?” He laughed softly. Then the laughter was gone and his eyes and mouth looked sad. “I love you, Magdalene, as much for your cleverness, weak and evil though it maybe, as for your beauty.
I can resist you no longer.”

His hand had gone to his purse when he said he loved her, so Magdalene had some warning of what he would do. She knew she should refuse him. Love…love had been fatal to any man connected with her in the past. But Bell would be very hard to kill, she suspected, and her body was playing traitor, her nether mouth full and moist, her nipples hard and erect, and a warm softness suffusing all her muscles.

He had found five pence and held the silver coins out to her, but he would not meet her eyes, and his own showed a slight glitter along the lower lids, perhaps of tears. “Here,” he said. “I wish to buy a night in your bed.”

She folded his hand over the pennies and pushed it back toward his purse, smiling. “I am my own mistress, remember? I need pay share to no master, and I can take a man to my bed simply for my own pleasure. If you will come for pleasure, for laughter, knowing there may—by necessity—be others….” She stood up and held out her hand.

He slowly stood and stretched his own to take it, to draw her close, to kiss her. And under the rising, pulsing desire she felt for him came the little, laughing thought. “This time I had the last word.”

I have often been asked by readers what made me choose the twelfth century as the period in which I wished to set my books. The answer is simple: The Twelfth century combines the most exciting and violent political and social developments—developments not controlled by vast impersonal forces, like economics or global pressures, but directly by all-too-human people—with a beautiful simplicity of spiritual and moral values. Not that these values made people perfect. Human beings are human beings and in any period, no matter what its values, will manage to inflict upon each other every kind of misery. The reign of King Stephen of England (1134-1154) took place at just about the midpoint of this period and graphically illustrates every one of its characteristics.

Stephen’s reign has been described in the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
(trans. by G. N. Garmonsway, ). M. Dent & Sons, Ltd., London 1953) in simple words and horrible images as a period of utter disaster. “When the traitors saw that Stephen was a good-humored, kindly, and easy-going man who inflicted no punishment, then they committed all manner of horrible crimes…. For every great man built him castles and held them against the king…. They burdened the unhappy people of the country with forced labor on the castles; and when the castles were built they filled them with devils and wicked men. By night and day they seized those whom they believed to have any wealth, whether they were men or women…. They hung them by the feet and smoked them with foul smoke…. They tied knotted cords around their heads and twisted it until it entered the brain….”

“I know not how to, nor am I able to tell of all the atrocities nor all the cruelties which they wrought upon the unhappy people…. Wherever the ground was tilled the earth bore no corn, for the land was ruined by such doings; and men said openly that Christ and His Saints slept.”

Such a situation was the result of civil war, and while it was terrible for the poor people of England, it is a very fertile field for a novelist to plough. Civil war, however, is not only confusing to those living through it but also for those describing it and reading about it. For readers who found the glancing mention of political events in A
Personal Devil
unclear or in whom those mentions have aroused curiosity, I would like to expand, at least slightly, the historical background of the beginning of the reign of King Stephen.

In brief, William, duke of Normandy, who was called “the Bastard” in his own time and “the Conqueror” in ours, fought for and won the English throne in 1066. He ruled the country with success and surprising understanding, despite his brutality—but it was a brutal time—until his death in 1087.

William I was succeeded by his third son, also William, called “Rufus”; he only lasted for thirteen years, until he was killed (possibly murdered) by an arrow through the eye while hunting, in 1100. The priests who recorded history at that time made William II out to be a monster; more careful modern research implies he was no better nor worse than most other kings of the period, except that he insisted the Church pay the same feudal dues as any other noble and that he suffered a total lack of conviction about Christianity. The combination, plus a disinclination for female companionship, caused the bad press he received from the clergy. William II died unmarried and childless.

The heir to the throne was now William I’s youngest son, Henry. A chip off the old block (he was much like his father politically, although he was called “Beauclerk” because he could read and write and seemed truly interested in learning), he ruled for thirty-five generally prosperous years. Unfortunately, his only living son was drowned in a crossing of the English Channel. For reasons too complex to go into in this very brief summary, in 1126 Henry demanded that his barons swear to accept his daughter Matilda as queen.

Women were of no importance, considered weak and evil, in medieval times. As long as Henry’s powerful and ruthless hand held the scepter, the barons were quiescent, but when Henry died in 1135, they were more than willing to forget the oaths they had sworn in 1126. Both Robert of Gloucester, King Henry’s bastard son, and Stephen of Blois, a nephew of King Henry’s, who had spent many years in England at his uncle’s court and had married the heiress of Bologne, seemed welcome alternatives.

Stephen acted faster, however. While Robert dutifully made arrangements for his father’s interment, Stephen left Boulogne as soon as he heard of Henry’s death and made for London, the richest and most powerful city in the realm. What he promised the Londoners is not known, but they “elected” him king; he must have fulfilled those promises, too, because the Londoners were faithful to him until he died.

With the approval of London behind him, Stephen made a dash for Winchester, where his younger brother Henry was bishop. He was warmly welcomed, and through Henry’s assistance and persuasion, Stephen was recognized as king by Robert, bishop of Salisbury, who as justiciar controlled the government of England, and by William Pont de l’Arche, who was the keeper of the royal treasury. Having in hand two vital aspects of the kingdom, Stephen appealed to the archbishop of Canterbury to anoint him king.

The archbishop demurred, citing the oath that he himself and Stephen had taken to support Matilda, but Stephen’s supporters claimed that the oath had been forced upon them and was therefore null and void and moreover that King Henry had released them from that oath on his deathbed. Then Hugh Bigod, earl of Norfolk, took oath that Henry had also changed his mind about the succession on his deathbed and named Stephen his heir. (That Bigod had not been at Henry’s deathbed didn’t seem to trouble anyone.) Having considered these assertions and more importantly Stephen’s promise to restore and maintain the freedom of the Church (and no doubt thinking of the abomination of having a woman as queen), the archbishop anointed Stephen king of England on 22 December 1135. In medieval times this ceremony was of the utmost importance: It was believed to have made
Stephen king.

The nobility of England was less easy to convince. Some of the barons were truly honorable men and were bound by the tenets of chivalry; they had sworn an oath to support Matilda and were resolved to hold by it. More of the barons probably hoped that rejection of Stephen would bring into power, either as king himself or as the hand and mind controlling Matilda, Robert of Gloucester, whom they knew well, admired, and trusted. Sadly, most of the nobility simply saw the period before Stephen gathered the reins of government into his hands as a time to raid freely and indiscriminately and grow rich on loot.

Help came to Stephen not from a friend or ally but from an enemy. King David of Scotland was one of those honorable men who was determined to hold by his oath to Matilda. He also saw supporting her as an opportunity to win a large chunk of English territory. David gathered an army and attacked Northumbria. Whatever doubts the nobility of England had about Stephen, they had none about their hatred of the Scots.

Stephen called out the feudal army to defend the land. The barony rallied at once, and within a month Stephen was able to lead a large army north.

When David had news of the force opposed to him, he realized he could not resist. He came to meet Stephen at Durham and made submission, returning to Stephen’s control the castles he had seized; however, claiming that he still held to his oath to support Matilda, he refused to swear fealty to the English king. Stephen did not force the issue, which was to breed trouble in the future.

Having taken oaths of fealty from the northern barons, Stephen traveled south with his army, accepting homage from all those who offered it and listening to complaints and pleas. He made considerable efforts to reestablish peace and stability among his subjects. And his efforts were rewarded. When Stephen held a great Court in Westminster at Easter, a contemporary chronicler (Henry of Huntington,
Historia Anglorum
, ed. Thomas Arnold; Rolls Series 74, 1879, p. 259) reports: “There had never been a more splendid [Court] held in England with regard to the multitudes who attended it, the greatness of those present, the gold, the silver, the gems, the garments, the lavishness in every respect.” And at this Court, Stephen extracted oaths of fealty from all who had not previously sworn to him.