They were seated in Henry’s chamber in a fortified house in Martel, which Henry had commandeered. The tents of his mercenaries were spread like a locust cloud over the village and the pastures beyond.
“And God knows that I will repay Him. Have I not taken the Cross in his name?” Henry indicated the bright red strips of silk ostentatiously stitched to the breast of his mantle. He parted his lips in a mocking grin. “Twice taken, in fact.” From the open coffer at his feet, he withdrew a cross of gold and gemstones, purloined from the altar of the shrine of Saint Martial. Henry had sworn over the tomb of the saint and in the presence of his father, with whom he had called a truce, to go on holy crusade. But on the day the truce was due to expire, he had plundered the shrine and carried off all the coin and trappings to pay his expenses. Now, short of funds again, he was contemplating more raids on the easily milked churches. Henry tilted the cross this way and that, admiring the way that the sunlight shining through the window reflected off the gold and gemstones and scattered the wall with coloured lozenges.
William swallowed bile. “Surely it would be more profitable to make peace with your father?” he said.
Henry gave a rude snort. “Depends what you mean by profitable. All he’ll do is pay my debts and tell me to behave myself in future. Perhaps I really should go on crusade,” he mused. “That would whiten the old goat’s beard.”
“So you have no intention of taking the cross?” William’s nape prickled. The flippancy in his young lord’s voice frightened him. God was not mocked.
“Of course I’m taking it,” Henry said impatiently. “But I can hardly set out now, can I?” His expression turned sly. “Besides, I’ve no funds, so it’s up to the Church to provide them.”
William felt like seizing Henry by the scruff and shaking him until his teeth fell out, but he controlled the urge. The Old King had hoped that William could rein in his eldest son’s excesses, but for the nonce there was nothing to be done except let Henry run until he was exhausted—and then tackle him again and hope to find a spark of reason. “I should think your father’s beard is already white over the treatment of his heralds,” William said. “He sends knights to parley with you under a banner of truce and your troops beat and slay them.”
Henry looked sulky and tossed the cross back into the chest where it clanged against two candlesticks and a goblet of silver-gilt—the last of the treasure purloined from Saint Martial. “That wasn’t my fault. The men were over-zealous. I hanged the perpetrators. What more do you want?”
William shook his head. “Perhaps it saddens me to watch chivalry dying piecemeal.”
“It’s already dead,” Henry retorted. “This is war, Marshal, not a tourney. I told you, I punished those responsible.”
William’s patience came close to snapping. “I know the difference between war and playing at war, but what your men did shows appalling lack of discipline. You need brutality in soldiers, but you need to be able to contain as well as unleash it. The dog should wag the tail, not the tail the dog.”
“Then you lick them into shape, Marshal. That’s what you’re here for…After all, you don’t have a dog and bark yourself.” Henry thrust himself up from his chair and went to stand by the hearth, one arm braced against the wall. “I have a desire to pray at the tomb of Saint Amadour. Have the men saddle up.”
William’s gut tightened and twisted. “Sire, you should not do this,” he said hoarsely.
“I will decide what I should and should not do. Does any man dare to question my brother Richard? Am I less than him?” Henry rounded on him, eyes bright with anger. “Do you think that Richard and his mercenaries would hesitate for one moment to take whatever they needed? Jesu, he’s been stripping Aquitaine like a butcher fleshing a corpse for the past ten years!”
“But you are not Richard, sire. The barons of Aquitaine hate and fear him, but they do not hate and fear you. If you despoil and strip the wealth from their people and their churches, they will quickly learn to do so. I still say you should not do it.”
“I have heard you. Now, order the men, or else stand down as my marshal,” Henry said coldly.
William wrestled with his conscience. He wanted to refuse and ride away, but if he stayed, perhaps he could still turn the Young King from his purpose. Besides, he had given his promise to the young man’s father that he would ride into the fire with him if necessary. “As you wish, sire,” he said, and bowed from the chamber.
The sun was blazing from a sky the colour of the finest blue enamel when Henry the Young King came to Rocamadour and stripped the shrine of Saint Amadour of all its relics, including Durendal, the sword of the hero Roland who had given his life fighting the Saracens at the pass of Roncesvalles. “It is for the crusade,” he said, when the monks tried to stop him. They had made a hasty effort to conceal some of the finer pieces, including the sword, but the hiding place was soon discovered and looted.
William looked on, taking no part, but still filled with shame and fear. By allowing Henry’s mercenaries to desecrate the shrine, he was condoning the deed of thieving from God and knew the punishment would be dire. “Christ Jesu, forgive me,” he muttered, feeling as if the rock walls of the shrine were closing in and crushing him. The gentle, lop-sided smile of a figurine of the Madonna, carved with devotion and rustic joy by a long-forgotten artisan, reproached him as the offerings were stripped from her niche, even down to the small change of half coins and cheap iron rings left by the poorest pilgrims. It was as obscene as rape.
Henry strode through the several chapels, moving with vigorous purpose and enjoyment, the sword of Roncesvalles clutched in his right fist.
“Your sins will catch up with you and take you to hell!” threatened the Abbot, flapping his sleeves like flightless wings. “God will curse you for this!”
Henry wagged his forefinger at the monk and tut-tutted. “You can afford to give generously to poor crusaders.” He touched the blood-red cross on the shoulder of his cloak. “I am under oath to visit the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Surely you would not deny me your donation?”
“You are committing blasphemy!”
Henry gave the priest a tolerant smile. “I’ll overlook that you said that.” He set his hand to the monk’s quivering shoulder. “You have my royal oath that your wealth will be restored to you—I would say five-fold but that smacks of usury and we all know how much the Church is against that, don’t we?”
They departed Rocamadour, their saddlebags stuffed with the treasures from the stripped shrine, including several pounds of beeswax for the altar candles and the carcass of a pig that was intended for the monks’ dinner. Henry was in a high good mood, laughing aloud to the late spring sky, working his horse to make it prink and dance. “Don’t look so grim, Marshal!” he cried, leaning across to belt William on the shoulder. “I’ve said I’ll pay it back and I will. Christ, did you see their faces!”
William said nothing for he was fighting his gorge. The stripping of God’s altar and the cowing of a handful of bewildered monks was no great victory but the thin end of the wedge. A knight was sworn to protect the Church, and what they had done was the opposite. He felt dirty and defiled. And when this became common knowledge, Henry’s popularity would wane faster than the bloom from a whore’s cheek.
At Martel, Henry paid his mercenaries some (but not all) of their arrears. Had he settled in full, there would have been nothing left for his own use. When the men grumbled he told them what he had told the monks—that they would eventually be paid. If they wanted to supplement their incomes, they could always go raiding the lands that were controlled by Richard, or rob one of his father’s supply trains.
“That won’t ingratiate you with your father,” William said darkly.
“Hah, he already thinks me a parricide,” Henry replied, pouring wine into his cup, drinking, pouring and drinking again, then looking up as the chamber door opened and Wigain entered the room, a vellum scroll in his hand. The little clerk’s sallow complexion had an underlying greyish cast and for once he was not smiling.
“Don’t tell me, the pig we sent to the kitchens was going off,” Henry laughed, his voice overloud. He looked at the scroll. “What’s that?”
