Longchamp gave a nasty smile. “You’ll need to do better than that, Marshal,” he said.
“Oh, I don’t know,” William retorted. “Others seem to have escaped lightly enough, when you consider the abuses they perpetrated in the King’s absence, even down to forging documents and misusing his seal.”
Longchamp glittered him a narrow look. “I committed no acts of treason. I cannot say the same for your brother and yourself.”
William clenched his fists and held on to his temper by the finest of frayed threads. Mercifully they arrived at the King’s pavilion and Longchamp ran out of baiting time.
William hesitated as he gazed upon the billowing canvas, painted scarlet and gold and crowned with a great bronze finial. Behind the guards, the tent flaps were drawn back to show an interior draped with hangings of Damascus silk. A fur-covered bed was positioned on the left-hand side in the tent and a long trestle surrounded by stools and benches on the right. In the centre was the King’s chair, surrounded by an assortment of weapons, including his hauberk on a stand of beechwood poles. The floor was covered with a thick layer of green rushes, amid which spring flowers—cowslips and young daisies—gave splashes of colour. William’s stomach turned over. Richard emerged from a curtained-off area at the far end of the tent, adjusting his hose. There was a frosting of silver in his apricot-blond hair and harsh lines graven into his features by sun, wind, and the privation of captivity. He was seven and thirty but looked ten years older. His shirt and tunic, open at the throat, revealed wiry auburn curls, but despite the dishabille, he still had the presence of a king. Swallowing, William entered the tent and knelt. The green smell from the rushes rose around him and he clenched his fists. It was more than forty years since he had played as a small boy in King Stephen’s tent, innocent, unknowing, his life in the balance. If not for that long-ago day, he probably wouldn’t be here now.
“Leave us,” Richard commanded the servants and guards. “You too, my lord Bishop.” He waved his hand at Longchamp.
“But, sire, you need witnesses and I—” Longchamp began, plainly desperate to remain and watch as his rival was humiliated.
“I said leave us,” Richard said in a peremptory tone. “This is a private matter between myself and the Marshal.”
Longchamp hesitated for an instant, then bowed and swept out of the tent, his cloak creating a cold draught behind him.
“You are late to the meet, Marshal,” Richard said after a moment, gesturing him to his feet. “I had expected you sooner.”
“I travelled as fast as my horse would bear me, sire.” William resisted the urge to wipe his damp palms down his surcoat.
“But without your troop?”
William rose and faced Richard. His scalp was tingling. “My troop will come to Nottingham and be waiting. Currently they are under the command of my nephew and escorting my brother’s funeral cortège to Bradenstoke.”
Richard steepled his hands at his lips and paced the tent for a moment like a restless, hungry lion. “Your brother,” he said at length. “Yes, I heard that he had died, and I am sorry for it. The pity is that it was in rebellion against me.”
“He was loyal to your brother, sire.”
“Who is fickle and does not know the meaning of the word loyalty. Tell me, Marshal, were your own loyalties strained?”
“Not beyond breaking point, sire.”
Richard looked at him and William looked back without flinching. “I received letters in Cyprus, saying that you had betrayed me, that you had gone over to my brother’s side. And I heard the same again when I landed in England.”
“Whoever wrote them lied,” William said with a meaningful look over his shoulder towards the tent entrance from which Longchamp had so recently flurried out. “I have never revoked my allegiance, once given.”
“Yet you owe that allegiance to my brother for your Irish lands and your fief of Cartmel.”
“But not for Striguil and Longueville, sire, nor for my post of justiciar. Yes, I supported the lord John when the Bishop of Ely overstepped his authority, but that was on the instructions of your lady mother and the Archbishop of Rouen, who were in turn acting on your authority.” He made a throwing gesture with his right hand. “Either you have trust in me, sire, or you do not, and it ends here.”
Richard grunted. Reluctant amusement curled his lips. “I have heard plenty of persuasion on your behalf from my mother and Walter de Coutances,” he said. “In truth, enough to burn my ears off. And you have been eloquent in your own way if your contributions to my ransom are any statement of intent.” Richard clicked his fingers and an attendant poured wine into two cups. William’s glance flickered. For a moment it seemed as though there were two spectres in the tent with him and Richard: King Stephen, hollow-eyed and gaunt, beset by burdens but still finding a smile for a fair-haired little boy who looked not unlike William’s own four-year-old son. The smell of the rushes under his feet rose in nauseating green waves.
Richard handed the brimming cup to William. “There are few people in the world to whom I would give my trust, and my brother is certainly not amongst them, although he has his virtues nonetheless and I can still use him. Whatever you think of my chancellor—and I admit that Longchamp is part weasel and part snake—he is completely dedicated to my service and I find him valuable. But you, Marshal…” He paused for effect and William held his own breath. “You could have taken my life and you held back,” Richard said. “You could have set the South-west alight by joining in rebellion with my brother. You put me before your own kin. Some say that it is all in order to serve yourself, my chancellor especially; but then he lost his skirmishes with you and he doesn’t take kindly to being humiliated. My mother says that you are the most loyal man she knows…and that a king should value loyalty above all else.”
William had known that the words were bound to emerge. He had borne the remembrance of his meeting with King Stephen in dreams for almost all of his life, and as well as memory it had been premonition; he realised that now. He waited to drink to loyalty in the wine trembling in his cup and hoped he would not be sick.
Richard nodded thoughtfully. “My mother is wrong,” he said. “Or wrong in her choice of word at least…”
William stiffened. This was not how the scene was supposed to play out.
“I do value loyalty, but I value your integrity more. There’s a difference of shade. It was integrity that kept you by my father and sent your lance through my stallion’s chest…and it is what brings you here today. You will do what is right and just.”
William wasn’t so sure of that. True integrity would have seen him at Bradenstoke, burying his brother with all due ceremony, rather than attending a mass at Cirencester and cutting off to ride here. It was necessity and self-service that brought him to Huntingdon, but if Richard desired to give it a different word, then so be it. Loyalty, integrity, necessity. All were valid; all had shaped his life, and in different concentrations would continue to do so.
Richard raised his cup. “To the future,” he said.
William forced a dark smile. “Whatever it may hold,” he replied, thinking he could manage to drink to that.
