Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [252]
The knight laughed. “Quite a family affair. The king really means to break them then?”
The young man gave him a curious look.
“If he can. You’d better go in.”
The two brothers were standing together in the tent, deep in conversation. Several other knights crowded the place as well. When William saw Godefroi come in he looked surprised, then shot the knight a careful look of suspicion; but obviously deciding it was unlikely that the knight from Avonsford was intriguing with other parties, he came towards him with an outstretched hand. Like his brother he was a tall, spare figure with a long, fine face only marred by a brutal and slightly crooked nose.
“We didn’t send for you, Richard, but we’re glad you came,” he said easily. “You’ve heard the news?”
Godefroi nodded. William turned confidentially to one side.
“It looks as if the king may win this skirmish, if he sticks it out,” he murmured.
“Will he?”
William grimaced.
“God knows. He’s like the wind: always moving but constantly changing direction. He starts things well but never finishes them, you know. He’s just as likely to get bored and break the whole siege off.”
“If he does, what then?”
The magnate looked at Godefroi carefully.
“We’ll tell you what to do,” he said, and turned away.
Several times that day Godefroi saw the king. Stephen went about the camp bare-headed usually, accompanied by a group of magnates. Godefroi noticed that his curly hair was thinning. He seemed cheerful though. His general, William of Ypres, had stationed his men in front of the castle gates, and was prepared to settle down to a regular siege. But on the afternoon that Godefroi arrived, a messenger suddenly ran out of the king’s tent and galloped towards the town.
Even William of Sarisberie was surprised by the king’s message.
“He’s told them that unless they surrender, he’ll hang the Chancellor in front of the gates,” he explained to Richard. “As for Bishop Roger, the king says since he’s started to fast, he may as well continue it indefinitely. He’s getting nothing – not even water.”
But if King Stephen thought this would bring matters to a head, he under-estimated the Bishop of Ely.
“He says the king can hang and starve who he likes,” the squire at William’s tent told Godefroi excitedly, and William soon confirmed it.
“He’s called the king’s bluff,” he remarked coolly. “Now we shall see.”
The next morning they brought the stout, balding Chancellor out of his tent. His hands were bound and there was a noose round his neck. They put him on a horse and led him up to the castle walls before taking him back to the camp. But still there was no response from within.
In the afternoon they tried another tactic: they sent out Bishop Roger to talk to the rebels.
Godefroi watched him as six men-at-arms led him past: even under guard and after several days of starving, he was a frightening sight; his fast had done nothing to reduce his massive paunch; his heavy jowl shook as he walked. He stomped along looking neither to right nor left, and out of sheer force of habit, Godefroi shivered. The aura of power and menace he remembered had not left him.
But the conference that took place in front of the town between Bishop Roger and his nephew was a failure. Roger, with his practical eye, had seen at once that it would be better to surrender the castle and win back the easy-going king’s favour; the resistance was only making his cause weaker and might cost his son’s life. But Nigel of Ely was indifferent to his cousin’s death, or his uncle starving, and after a short while Roger returned to the castle.
The next day the test of wills went on. William of Sarisberie grew impatient.
“If the king’s going to hang the chancellor, then why doesn’t he do it?” he asked irritably.
It was his lack of ruthlessness that made Stephen such a poor leader; if the king would not carry out his threat then even a humble knight like Godefroi could see that there would never be order in the kingdom.
Another day passed.
And then, unexpectedly, Stephen won everything he wanted. A messenger came out of the