Caging the Lyon Page 22

  ‘Sir William, not so long ago you tried to kill me and would have done so if I had not managed to manoeuvre my horse so that you killed it and not me.’ Richard accused William Marshal but Marshal just laughed.

  ‘Sire, if I had wanted to slay you I would have killed you and not your horse. I regret having to do even that, but my duty was to delay you and ensure your father’s escape.’

  ‘You misunderstand me, Marshal. You were ever steadfastly loyal to King Henry and not a reed shaken by the wind as are many of my nobles. I mean to reward you for your loyalty to my father, not punish you.’ He paused and examined the knight standing in front of him for a moment and then, seeming satisfied, he continued. ‘My father promised you the hand of Isobel de Clare, did he not?’

  ‘He did sire.’ Isobel was a seventeen year old girl, the king’s ward and heiress to the earldom of Pembroke on the Welsh marches, as well as the earldom of Striguil and the lordship of Leinster, both in Ireland. As such she was the richest heiress in England, Wales and Ireland.

  ‘Well, that is all now in the past. What my father promised you is of no consequence anymore.’

  William’s face fell. Not only had he fallen for the girl on the one occasion that they had met in the Tower of London where Isobel lived as a ward of the king, but it would change his fortune. Instead of being a landless knight dependent on the favour of those in power, he would become one of the greatest magnates in the country. Sir William Marshal might be honourable to a fault but he was also ambitious for power and wealth.

  ‘The girl is now my ward and it is my decision who she marries.’ Richard paused, enjoying the moment and the palpable tension in the air. ‘My choice of husband for Lady Isobel is you, William, but on certain conditions.’ William curbed his delight until he knew the terms. He knew he could not accept if his honour might be compromised.

  ‘What are the conditions, sire?’

  ‘There are two: that you are as loyal to me as you were to my father and that you act as co-regent together with the lord chancellor and rule England for me whilst I am on crusade.’

  ‘You have my loyalty unconditionally together with my gratitude sire. As to effectively acting as joint ruler with William Longchamps, would not Prince John be a more acceptable choice to your barons?’ Longchamps was bishop of Ely, papal legate and the lord chancellor of England.

  ‘You haven’t been listening, Marshal. I said that I needed people I could trust. You may certainly include my mother on that list but never my brother. Well, do you accept or not?’

  ‘Yes, of course your highness.’

  The following day William Marshal sailed for England, falling off the gangplank into the sea in his haste to board ship, and married Isobel de Clare as soon as he arrived in London. King Richard then made him earl of Pembroke; he had come a long way from the six year old boy who King Stephen had so very nearly hanged when his father, Sir John Marshal, had refused to surrender Newbury during the Anarchy.

  ~#~

  King Richard walked down the gangplank onto the dock at Portsmouth on the thirteenth of August 1189 to an enthusiastic reception from the people of the town. All over England the news of Henry the Second’s death was greeted with rejoicing. The first Plantagenet may have been a strong king and just what England needed after two decades of civil war and lawlessness, but he had been neither fair nor held in much affection by his people. Richard was popular because he had opposed his father and he was the epitome of what a king should be: successful in battle and just in his dealings with others. Whereas Henry was careless of his appearance and cared even less what people thought of him, Richard looked every inch the king and was a natural cultivator of public opinion. The one trait he did share with his father was hatred of those who were disloyal.

  Exactly a month later he was crowned in Westminster Abbey and the new king then set about removing his father’s favourites from office and re-instating those who had supported him and his brothers in their struggle against their father. Ranulf Glanville, the man who had captured King William at Alnwick, had been made chief justicar by Henry. Richard stripped him of the office and made Hugh de Puiset, prince-bishop of Durham – the man who had allowed William and his Scots free passage over the Tweed at Norham - chief justicar in his place. Then he repaid King William for his support.

  Geoffrey, bishop of Lincoln and illegitimate half-brother of Richard Plantagenet, arrived at Norham to meet King William and his brother and escort them south to meet Richard at Canterbury. William took a sizeable entourage with him, including Alan FitzWalter, Patrick of Dunbar and Edward de Cuille of Craigmor. Edward would have taken Tristan with him but he had just left Dunbar to start at Harbottle as his uncle’s squire. Hervey de Keith, the marishal, had fallen ill and was unable to travel, so Edward had asked Hervey’s leave to take his second son, David, with him.

  The boy now rode proudly at his father’s side with a knight carrying Edward’s banner behind them. Edward had decided that, now he served William, it wouldn’t be sensible to continue to use the de Cuille device of the white chevron between three gold dog’s heads and instead had registered a new coat of arms in Scotland. He had adopted Guy’s device of three rearing white horses but, instead of placing it on a green field, he had kept the black one used by his family since the days of Hugo de Cuille.

  It took three weeks for the Scots to reach Canterbury and by the time they got halfway there Edward was regretting bringing David with him. The boy had come under the spell of Niall, the newly knighted son of the earl of Lennox. The earl himself said he was too old to travel all that way and had sent his second son instead. David was no doubt flattered at being befriended by the handsome young man but Edward couldn’t help but think that the knight’s interest in his son was peculiar, given the eight year gap in their ages. David was a good-looking boy and he had heard whispers that Niall seemed to prefer boys to girls. He had no intention of allowing his son to come to harm so he decided to speak to Sir Niall after the cavalcade had made camp near Doncaster. However, he was too late. The two Lennox knights accompanying Niall told Edward that their master had already gone over to Edward’s tent to collect the boy to take him fishing. It sounded innocent enough but Edward had a hollow feeling in his stomach. He now wished he had tackled Sir Niall and put a stop to their relationship before this

  He made his way towards the bank of the River Don and found several men washing and filling cooking pots near the camp. He realised that no-one would fish there and so he made his way upstream. As the sounds of the camp faded to nothingness they were replaced by bird song and the scampering of small animals. Then he heard a cry of alarm and started to run. He stopped to listen again. At first there was nothing than he heard raised voices, albeit at a little distance.

  ‘Don’t be a fool, David. You should be flattered that I have chosen you over all the other boys in camp.’

  ‘Well, I’m not. I thought you just wanted to be my friend.’ The unbroken voice was clearly David’s.

  ‘My God, you are naïve aren’t you? Now stop being precious, lie back and enjoy what I’m about to do to you.’

  Edward ran towards the voices again praying he would be in time to stop Niall. By the time he found them he was sobbing in desperation and his vision was blurred. He stood there for a few seconds blinking to clear his eyes then he saw something he spent the rest of his life trying to forget. He was so enraged that he drew his sword and cut at Niall’s bare buttocks with it, he had the sense to pull the blow at the last second so that the cut was no more than a couple of inches deep but it was enough to make the young man howl in pain. He rolled off David and his hand sought frantically for his sword but, before he could reach it, Edward’s sword point was at his throat.

  ‘Are you alright David.’ Edward risked a quick glance at his son who had curled himself up into a ball, clutching his clothes to him. The boy nodded dumbly and then leaped to his feet and ran out of sight. Edward turned back to Niall.

  ‘I’ve heard abou
t men raping children during the sack of towns, though that’s inexcusable in my book, but I never knew before today that there were loathsome reptiles that preyed on young boys in cold blood. I would never have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes. Why would you do such a thing?’

  The man lay there looking up at Edward with hatred in his eyes. ‘You will regret coming between me and my pleasure, my lord. I am not a man to forget the injury you have done me and both you and your son will pay with your lives.’

  Edward couldn’t believe the venom with which this was said. It was obvious that Niall of Lennox felt absolutely no remorse, or even a trace of guilt, at what he had tried to do to David.

  ‘You are in no position to threaten me; the question is what do I do with you?’ He looked down as the man lying on his back with blood seeping from his buttocks into the earth beneath him. If the cut was hurting, as it must be, Niall didn’t show it.

  At that moment Edward’s son, now fully dressed, erupted into the clearing by the river and leapt onto his abuser thrusting the small knife that his father had given him on his tenth birthday into the young knight’s groin again and again. By the time that Edward had dragged him off the damage was done. David clung to his father, his body racked with sobs. Edward comforted his son as his abuser bled to death.

  It was time they were getting back but first Edward had to hide the body.

  ‘David, listen to me. No-one must know what happened here. The earl of Lennox is very powerful and he will want revenge for his son’s death, no matter how well deserved that death was.’ He fixed his eyes on his son’s. Eventually David nodded.

  ‘What do we do?’ he asked in a small voice.

  ‘Go up and down the river bank and look for an overhanging part of the bank where we can hide him.’ David nodded and set off in one direction whilst his father went the other way. Edward was still looking for a suitable place and wondering if David understood what he had meant when the boy came running back to him.

  ‘I’ve found somewhere,’ he said excitedly. It was a perfect place, much to Edward’s surprise. The river had hollowed out an overhang about eight feet long and three feet deep. With some difficulty Edward and his son carried the body to the spot and hid it with Niall’s clothes and sword under the water in the hollowed out space. They stacked rocks in front of the place so the water didn’t wash the body out of its hiding place, then found a disused badger sett some distance away in which to hide David’s blood-stained braies and over-tunic. They returned to camp separately just as the sun sank below the horizon. In the poor light David managed to make it into his father’s tent without being seen. Edward chucked some clean braies and an overtunic to him and the boy got dressed.

  When he had finished Edward gave his son a reassuring squeeze on his shoulder and went to the tent flap to yell at his squire asking where their food was. That evening he was relieved to see that David was behaving normally as if nothing had happened. However, he felt his son’s eyes on him once and, when he looked at him, David’s mouth formed a silent thank you. He had never been that close to either of his sons before but from then on he felt a very particular bond with David.

  The next day there was some consternation when the earl of Lennox’s son was nowhere to be found. King William was impatient to get going again so he left the Lennox party to look for him and continued on his way to see King Richard.

  As they rode off Edward overheard David of Huntingdon say to his brother ‘probably found some poor local boy who he can’t bear to leave.’

  ‘That’s not funny, David. I’ve heard the stories too but without proof you would do better to keep your smutty remarks to yourself. We need to keep Lennox on side.’ With that the king dug his spurs into his palfrey and rode off. Edward reflected that it was just as well that Niall was dead and gone. Besmirching the Lennox family honour by making known what Niall had been about to do to his son would have caused a rift between the earl and the king and William would have blamed Edward for creating the problem: far better that the obscene Sir Niall should have disappeared with his so called honour intact.

  His thoughts were interrupted by one of the Lennox knights.

  ‘Excuse me, my lord, but may I speak to your son a moment?’ Edward nodded uneasily as the man turned to his son.

  ‘David, I think you went fishing with Sir Niall yesterday evening and so I wondered if you might know where he might be?’

  Edward’s heart sank and he prayed that his son didn’t break down or act suspiciously, but he needn’t have worried.

  ‘He did invite me, yes, but fishing is pretty boring, isn’t it? So I changed my mind and stayed with my father in camp. The last I saw of him he was setting off down river.’ Edward felt immensely relieved on one level but on another he was somewhat concerned by the easy way that his son had lied so effortlessly. Not only that but he had the wit to send the man downriver rather than upstream where the body lay.

  The knight seemed satisfied and, with a curt nod of thanks to Edward, he and his companions rode off in that direction. He heard later that the earl of Lennox had accepted that his son had probably been killed by robbers and his body buried somewhere in the woods. He may have known of his son’s penchant for small boys and certainly didn’t seem to mourn him overmuch. Perhaps young David Cuille had done the earl a favour.

  Richard and William had been allies in 1174, albeit at a distance, and when they met at Canterbury they found that they liked each other on a personal level. On the fifth of December both kings signed a document called the Quit-Claim of Canterbury. In it Richard returned Scotland to the state it was in prior to the Treaty of Falaise. The five castles and the town of Berwick were to be returned to William and the independent status of Scotland was recognised. No longer was it a client state of England. In return William agreed to donate ten thousand marks to the fund that Richard was raising to go on crusade. The two men parted as firm friends. Many of his supporters thought that Richard had been too generous but the more astute recognised that the king had secured peace in the north whilst he was away in the Holy Land.

  ~#~

  In February 1190 Lord Edward de Cuille left Craigmor with Blanche, the three year old Emma and half the garrison. He entrusted the castle to the care of Sir Callum, Edmund of Winchester’s eldest son; Edmund having died two weeks before Christmas the previous year whilst Edward was away in Canterbury. His death was as sudden as it was unexpected. Edmund had retired to bed with his wife the previous evening as normal but she awoke at three in the morning to find him growing cold beside her.

  As Edward rode through the streets of what was once again a Scottish town he was struck by how little it had changed since he was here before. Some of the English merchants had left and some Scots were returning after a fifteen year absence. Edward sighed; there would be many a dispute over property for him to settle no doubt. The English constable was waiting with a small escort just inside the gates of the bailey to formally hand the castle over to Edward. After the handover Edward and Blanche went up to their old bedchamber. It was completely bare but it still brought back memories. By nightfall their bed had been assembled, the coffers filled with clothes lined the walls, two tapestries brightened up the cold stone walls and a fire in the hearth did its best to bring some warmth to the room.

  One of the first things King William had done after the Quit-Claim was signed was appoint Edward as governor of the town and constable of the castle. If the king of Scots realised the irony of appointing the same man who had held the town and castle when it was deemed part of England, he kept it to himself. Edward’s son, David, had returned to life as a page with the marischal’s household after the return from Canterbury in January but it wouldn’t be long before Edward had to find him a post as a squire. Edward looked up at his white horses on a black field fluttering in the stiff breeze off the sea beside the royal banner of a red lion rampant on a yellow field and felt quite satisfied with life.

  Two days later his world was
turned upside down again by two messengers who arrived within an hour of each other. The first was from Alan FitzWalter, the high steward, saying that he intended to take the cross and join King Richard’s contingent for the crusade. He offered to take David, who would shortly be thirteen, with him as his second squire. Then another messenger arrived from his brother, Richard, asking to meet him and discuss the arrangements for looking after his barony whilst he was away. He too had decided to go on the crusade and would be taking Tristan with him as his squire. He later explained to his brother that he had never got over Jocelyn’s death and no number of confessions and absolution or masses said for Jocelyn’s soul could lift the burden of his guilt. Perhaps he could finally atone for killing Claire’s brother by going on crusade. Nothing Edward said could dissuade him. Miles of Byrness had asked to go with him so Sir Turstin, the constable of Harbottle, who was now in his mid-fifties, was placed in charge of the barony of the Cheviot.

  No one left alive remembered Turstin as the young boy who had climbed the flag tower of Chester Castle to rescue Hugh de Cuille, Lord Richard’s father.

  After serving Hugh as his squire Turstin had spent his entire life as a household knight in the barony and it was fitting that, as he neared the end of his time, he should be entrusted with its care. He had never married but he had sired several bastards, one of whom now served him as his squire.

  Edward would be left as the only male member of the Cuille family who was not going to the Holy Land to fight the Saracens and he worried about the very real possibility that none of them would return.

  TO BE CONCLUDED IN