Chapter 2
Chateau Alençon, Normandy – 1046
The castle wasn’t blockaded, but Mabel and her father were shut up inside as if it was. For nearly two months, they dared not leave for fear of personal attack. The family of William d’Echauffour—who was called Fitz Giroie—had come for vengeance. Mabel’s father wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of meeting on the field. He’d done no wrong; he didn’t need to defend himself by combat.
Instead, the brothers, nephews and friends of Fitz Giroie pillaged the countryside all around like common brigands and bandits. That the Duke of Normandy didn’t act to stop them was an outrage, even if he was barely a man. All he had to do was give the order to his Constable, Ralph de Gacé. Alençon belonged to Normandy. They were his people being slaughtered and raped, his lands being burned.
“I knew it when I saw the red curls,” her father told her as she strolled with him in the courtyard, the most exercise she could get these days. “Duke Robert was so proud of his boy’s giant head, he didn’t care that it was covered with the hair of Judas. I warned him he should get a true heir on that Princess of England. ‘Red hair brings ruin,’ I told him. And look at the state of Normandy. Going to hell.”
Mabel agreed. There was constant, uncontrolled feuding amongst the duke’s vassals. All his childhood guardians had been murdered, except de Gacé, who had probably been the murderer. Since Duke William had been knighted two years before, things had quieted down. But his vassals were running wild again, attacking the Bellêmes.
“If he can’t control things,” Mabel said, “then they need to find someone who can. Why was a bastard allowed to rule, anyway?”
“They wanted to keep his father happy. Duke Robert was a devil when crossed. That’s why I liked him so much. A generous man, a great friend, but you had to know the boundaries. ‘Keep them close, but keep them worried.’”
“But when he died they should have put his son in a monastery. There were other, better men to be duke. There was William’s uncle, the Count of Arques. And there was Guy of Brionne, his cousin. Why choose the one who was a bastard?”
“None of them were men. There were only boys to choose from, and feuding factions who controlled them. William had the most powerful men to back him and use him. Duke Robert chose his friends well. Remember that, dearest. Choose your friends well, and your enemies carefully.”
Mabel bit her lip at that. Her father had made some powerful enemies by disciplining one of their friends harshly, and publicly. Though it was justified, Mabel thought perhaps it would be better if one punished one’s enemies quietly.
Finally, help arrived. Her father’s cousin by marriage, Guy de Laval, sent a message. He and Geoffrey de Mayenne had negotiated with the marauders and sent them away. Mabel and her ladies went to the wall above the gate to watch the lines of chevaliers approaching, to cheer for them and throw flowers. There must be a hundred chevaliers, dressed for battle. And these were just the representatives coming to free the castle. The armies must be enormous.
“Oh, there’s your brother,” Hildeburgis said with a sigh, and the other ladies giggled. The tall fifteen-year-old was the daughter of Sieur Guy. Too bad she’d inherited the long face that most of the men of the family wore.
Arnoul, Mabel’s brother, had grown since she’d last seen him. Just as she knew her own beauty for what it was, she recognized his, as well. He was a male version of her. Physically, at least. Three years older, he had left home a decade ago to serve in Sieur Guy’s household. Now, at seventeen, he was a squire, carrying a banner with the blue eagle of the de Lavals. Hildeburgis was in love. No wonder she was sent to stay with Mabel’s family so much. It was the one place she was least likely to be in company with Arnoul. Mabel rarely saw him, herself, so she couldn’t know his character. But he must have argued in favor of aiding their father.
“Look,” Mabel told Hildeburgis, pointing at the nine-year-old boy riding with the pages behind the de Mayenne banner. “There’s your nephew, Guy.” She sighed heavily and threw a flower towards him with her left hand. It angled sharply down and to the side, into the moat. The ladies giggled again.
She noticed, however, that most of the men didn’t look up at her, or at any of the people of Alençon who were cheering their procession. They acted as if they were going to war
By the time Mabel arrived with her ladies, the hall was filled with local lords, ladies, and the burghers of Alençon. There was no balcony for her to climb to, so she stayed a few steps up on the stairs that entered from the side of the room to look over the throng. She saw right away the serious faces of the men-at-arms around the perimeter. So many people were talking, laughing, reaching out to clap shoulders, that no one else noticed they were surrounded by an outside force.
Not even her father. He was smiling, looking almost handsome, watching his son approach.
That was another thing that was wrong.
Arnoul was leading the group of men through the parting crowd. Seigneur de Laval, her brother’s lord, was half a step behind his own squire. Like most of the de Laval men, Sieur Guy had the long nose and dour face which usually made people feel they were disappointing him. His black hair and eyebrows were shot heavily with grey; his dark eyes were clear and sharp. He was about ten years older than Talvas, but his stone face remained unlined.
Walking next to Sieur Guy was Seigneur de Mayenne. That was the man whose castle had caused all this trouble. He built a fortress right on the border of Bellême and gave lordship of it to Fitz Giroie, a vassal who had sworn to serve both Bellême and Mayenne. After the first castle was destroyed, he started building a second one nearby, and named it Saint-Céneri-le-Gérei, as a reward to Fitz Giroie. A reward for faithlessness.
Arnoul was staring right at their father as he approached. It almost looked like the two men weren’t related. Except for the squarish face, neither he nor Mabel favored their father, who was looking very aged and faded as he faced these three dark men. The noise in the hall lessened as people began to sense the tension. Talvas, however, rose from his seat next to his mousy new wife, Emme, and started to descend the dais, arms outstretched to embrace his son. Her brother halted. “I haven’t come to save you,” Arnoul growled. “I’ve come to save them.”
His voice had deepened since she last saw him, several months ago at her father’s wedding. It was loud enough to carry through the remaining noise in the hall. Talvas peered at Arnoul and at the men at his sides. Then his eyes scanned the room, noting the position he was in. He smiled defiantly.
Instead of anwering his son, Talvas spoke to de Mayenne. “Well, Geoffrey,” he greeted loudly. “That explains the presence of your enormous nose. Perhaps I should have smelled something wrong when an enemy rode to my rescue, but you were snorting in all the odor, weren’t you?” Seigneur de Mayenne merely smiled. “What is this? Am I to be tried for my ‘crimes?’”
“We’re not a jury,” Sieur Guy told him. “We’re the executioners.”
There was a stir in the hall as people began to leave, mostly women. Hildeburgis tugged on Mabel’s sleeve and whispered, “Come away. We mustn’t see this.”
“Yes,” Mabel told her. “You should go. You don’t want to see my father kill yours.”
She looked back to see Talvas’s watery blue eyes on Arnoul again, his lip curling. “Come to save them, have you? So dramatic, so heroic. Oh, look! They can save themselves.”
The elegantly clad nobles and townsfolk were rustling and swishing from the hall with distressed sounds, much like Hildeburgis and Cecilia had. However, no weapons were being drawn yet.
“But this is tiresome,” her father continued. “You have no authority here, none of you. I am Seigneur of Alençon by right of the Duke of Normandy, on whose land you now stand. Do you hear?” He spoke loudly to his men-at-arms. “You serve the Duke of Normandy!”
A sword was unsheathed then. One of her father’s men held a bare blade, but there was a knife at his throat, wielded by de Mayenne’s man.
Arnoul addressed their father’s people and men-at-arms. “You all know what my father did. He didn’t give his vassal a chance to defend himself. In fact, he never claimed any wrong at all! He invited him, as a friend, to his wedding. I was there. I saw him laughing with Fitz Giroie, sharing drinks and jokes. When his guest and his men were drunk, the servants seized them. I told him it was wrong, it was unjust.”
“You sputtered and cried, then ran off to hide behind your papa,” Talvas pointed at Sieur Guy. Arnoul looked at Seigneur de Laval, accepting that the granite-faced man was his true father.
“I am ashamed I didn’t stand up more forcefully to you, but I would have suffered the same fate as Fitz Giroie. I sought help from a better man.” Arnoul talked to his jury again. “I rode from Bellême to Laval in two days, and the better man agreed to negotiate for Fitz Giroie’s release. By the time we returned, it was too late. Without accusation, without trial, Talvas tortured a man he tricked by inviting him into his home as a guest. He mutilated him, burned out his eyes, then pushed him out the door. But we discovered there isn’t only evil in Talvas’s world. A merchant had been about to take Fitz Giroie into this home when we found him.”
“There was no need for a trial!” Talvas shouted. “The vicomte de Maine was there for his daughter’s wedding and didn’t try to stop me.”
Emme was still sitting on her chair, though she had sunk down so far she could be mistaken for a seat cushion.
Talvas continued. “Fitz Giroie’s own men slunk away without much protest. Why? Because everyone knows the man took up arms against me, his sworn lord. He should have quit Montaigu when my army approached it, but he didn’t. He chose defiance and war. Disloyalty! Oathbreaker! I summoned him for his judgment, allowed him one last look at joy. It was a mercy. I showed mercy! I could have hanged him and it would have been justice. He has his life still. Though he can’t have any more children, he’ll have grandsons to bounce on his knee, even if they’re just the bastards his sons got on the women they raped while destroying your farms. But this! What you are doing now is not justice. It is invasion. This is Normandy and none of you have any right!”
Mabel looked around at the people remaining. Some were waivering. Alençon was a major stronghold of the duke, an important bulwark on the border, and Talvas was the lord. She knew they were wondering if this would be considered an attack on his territory. Would the duke send Ralph de Gacé? The Constable of Normandy was a man known to be as ruthless as Talvas, and possibly a murderer of his own family.
“I have letters,” Sieur Guy announced in his quiet yet forceful way. “Duke William wants you dead, but will settle for dispossessing you from Alençon. Your cousin, Gervais, and your brother, Ivo, have also agreed to transfer lordship of Domfront and Bellême to Arnoul.”
“To Arnoul? He doesn’t even have any hair growing out of his asshole!”
Her brother’s face was blazing as he put a hand on his sword. She could see how much he wanted to carve up his own father. What kind of monster had he become?
“You’re finished,” Arnoul said through tight lips. “No longer will anyone have to follow an ogre who feasts on the misery of his own people.”
“I cursed that Bastard when he was a babe. I knew he would bring ruin to Normandy and the house of Bellême. And so I curse you,” he told Arnoul.
“I don’t think I’ll worry,” Arnoul responded. He was about to walk away on that, but then his eyes locked with Mabel’s. They were so like her own. But this young man was a stranger. A hated stranger. She turned and walked up the stairs.
Sieur Guy’s wife, Rotrude—a Bellême by blood—had entered the castle after it was clear there would be no defense for the lord of Alençon. Rotrude offered to take Mabel home to Laval. To live as Hildeburgis’s lady? Ha! Emme hadn’t offered her shelter. She’d gone crying home to her papa, to annul the marriage. Good riddance.
Arnoul had tried to talk to her. In the hall, during her father’s “trial,” he’d nearly persuaded her, along with everyone else, that their father was a monster. But her father’s words had made more sense. Yes, Fitz Giroie had been caught between his two lords. It was true that he couldn’t destroy de Mayenne’s castle. But it was equally true that he couldn’t take up arms against Talvas. He should have walked away, but he chose treason. Her father had truly been merciful.
Arnoul tried to turn Mabel by sharing his suspicion about their mother. She’d been strangled in her garden one day after church. Their father had been away that day. “I never believed it until after Talvas seized Fitz Giroie,” he told her. Mabel noticed how Arnoul stopped referring to Talvas as his father. “He has a twisted sense of justice.”
Mabel didn’t answer him. Only ten years old when it happened, she’d still been aware that her mother hated her father. The week before, Mother spoke loudly in church about Father’s wickedness. Mabel never questioned the death, because she’d always known it had been justified. The punishment for an unfaithful wife could have been much worse.
Talvas was given three days to leave Alençon, with whatever followers could be mustered, and with whatever possessions they owned. Mabel had decided to join him. Arnoul, Rotrude and Sieur Guy had argued against it. She refused to be swayed. In the end, she still belonged to William Talvas, and he said she could go with him.
Only three of her father’s oldest retainers would remain with their lord. Three! Gosse de Boitron and the brothers, Auderic and Aloys de Vidai, who were old. The youngest member of the group was her father’s bastard, Olivier de Mesle, who was nearly a decade older than Arnoul.
There would be only two pack horses. Mabel couldn’t take much with her. They were leaving tomorrow. She was looking through her clothing with her ladies, trying to decide which two dresses to take, when Arnoul spoke from her doorway.
“Don’t go, Mabel.”
She glanced at him, his sad face like a little puppy, his dark eyes pleading so eloquently. She wanted to roll her own eyes when she heard Hildeburgis sigh with compassion. Ignoring him, she turned back to her task.
“There’s ill-feeling everywhere toward Father,” he said. “He has few allies or friends. It will be difficult for him. For you, a gently-raised girl of fourteen, it will be worse.”
“I’ll have my softest shift,” she observed to Cecilia, “so I can wear the heavy wool underdress.”
“No grooms, no servants, no cooks or pavilions.”
“Could I take two overdresses and wear them both this winter, Cecilia?”
Arnoul became more strident. “You might not even have a safe place to sleep at night, Mabel. In the cold winter, on the hard ground, in the rain, with hungry wolves or bears.”
Mabel turned to him, her eyes wide with rage. “Wolves and bears?” she sneered.
Her brother was angry, too. “They might not be the worst thing. Even if you find shelter in a noble house, you could be mauled by a human animal. You need more protection than that old man, his bastard son and ancient retainers can give you.”
Mabel rushed up to him, stood right before him and looked up to his deceptively angelic face. “You think I fear the world? What safety do I have here? There is no faith here, no trust! I won’t stay in a household of disloyal chevaliers who would follow a seventeen-year-old traitor!”
She started hitting him, on the arms and chest. He just stood there and took it until she slapped his face twice. Then he grabbed her wrists. Eventually she had to stop struggling, panting from her exertions and emotions. She had the power of rage within her, but he had a man’s strength.
Once she calmed enough, Arnoul spoke quietly. “Mabel, you break my heart. But you will always have a place with me. You may come back at any time, or send word and I will fetch you myself. Please.”
She looked up into his deep blue eyes, so sincere and limpid. When she mimicked his look exactly and his jaw relaxed with relief at her acquiesence, she said, “I would rather be raped a hundred times.”
His hands tightened uncomfortably on her wrists and he looked at her intently, beseechingly. Was he going to cry? She’d spit in his face. But he released her and left.
She turned back to the young ladies in the room. Of course Hildeburgis was crying.
1. Mabel.