Stewart Binns: Crusade

‘Amazingly, at no stage did he ever tell me what he thought, and he certainly never suggested what I should think. He just kept posing questions. He kept saying that life is a search for more questions, not a search for answers.’

‘What will you do now?’

‘I don’t know… Sweyn and I have a decision to make about Harold. He thrived on his grandfather’s mountain. He never got sick, ate like a horse and slept like a baby.’

‘He is a baby!’

‘Yes, that’s what I meant. When he’s older, I will be able to tell him in the smallest of detail and hour by hour about his time with his famous grandfather in his mountain eyrie. I’m so glad we had that time together.’

‘It must have been difficult to leave?’

‘Not really – we were both content, and my father had spent time with Harold. He took us to Messene and we said our farewells. There were tears, of course, but he is happy reflecting on his past and searching for more questions to pose from his mountain top. He is fit and strong; I think he will live for many years yet. As for me, seeing him again and spending that time with him was the fulfilment of an impossible dream. I am very fortunate; I feel blessed to have had my time with him and privileged to have known him as a father.’

By the time we reached Westminster, Sweyn and Estrith had had their conversation and a decision had been reached about young Harold.

While in Bourne, the monks from Ely had told Estrith about a new church, only four years into construction, in the Burgh of Norwich. She reminded us that, when we first met, she had been about to start work on Durham Cathedral. Norwich, she said, was a good place to resume her career as a churchwright, make her hammer-beam roof a reality, and a safe place to raise young Harold. Sweyn would visit whenever he could, but the facade of the child being Adela’s would remain in that Sweyn would formally entrust the care of the child to Estrith.

We took steps to secure the boy’s future. Sweyn’s status at court meant that Harold would inherit his rank as a knight of the realm, subject to him passing the tests of knighthood at the appropriate age, and I bequeathed a few of my English holdings to him in a document that Estrith would hold until he reached adulthood.

She also took a casket, to be handed to him when he reached his majority. It contained a large purse of silver, ten gold Byzantine bezants, a vellum scroll with the Oath of the Brethren of the Blood written on it and the names of its founding members, and St Etheldreda’s rosary that Estrith had carried with her since the fall of Ely.

So, after our own fond farewells in Westminster, Estrith headed back the way we had come to Norwich, while Sweyn and I sailed for Normandy with all the panoply of the progress of a royal prince, but also with the onerous task of telling Robert the detail of the pact I had agreed with Henry on his behalf.

When we reached Rouen, Robert and his entourage had just arrived. They had received news of Rufus’s death while in the Rhône Valley but had not hurried back, Robert preferring to show his bride the sites and introduce her to the lords and princes along the way. As I suspected and hoped, he had no real desire to claim the English throne.

Telling Robert about his agreement with Henry turned out to be no hardship at all. He laughed heartily at my cunning and thanked me for moving so adroitly. He was particularly pleased about the Charter of Liberties; as I had said to Henry, Robert was a changed man as a result of the Crusade and his single priority was now Sybilla.

‘We are going to Mont St Michel to pray for our firstborn. Sybilla hasn’t conceived yet; the sea air will do her good.’

Robert sailed to England in the summer of 1101 to formally ratify the pact with Henry. He took a large force with him, just in case his brother had had a change of heart, but when they met at Alton in Hampshire, there was an outpouring of what can only be described as brotherly love.

Robert renounced his claim to the English throne and each acknowledged the other as their legitimate heir until they produced a son. Henry renounced all claims on territory in Normandy and agreed to pay Robert the huge sum of 3,000 silver marks as an annual tribute, about one tenth of his royal budget. This particular clause brought a distinct smile to Robert’s face. He told me later that, with part of the first instalment, he was going to buy Sybilla the biggest jewel in Christendom.

Finally, they pledged their loyalty to one another and promised to come to one another’s aid. The agreement was signed and sealed at Winchester, and Sweyn and I breathed a huge sigh of relief.

Henry and Robert travelled to London together, and they stayed together until Christmas – hunting, visiting the great Norman magnates of the realm, viewing their mighty churches and fortresses and reinforcing the power of Norman hegemony.

The sea air of Mont St Michel had not enhanced Sybilla’s fecundity, but England’s temperate climes had, for shortly after we returned to Rouen, she announced that she was pregnant.

Sweyn and I took great satisfaction in knowing that the child had been conceived in our homeland.

Robert and Sybilla’s child, William Clito, was born on the 25th of October 1102, in Rouen. It was an occasion of great joy throughout the duchy. The boy was a healthy young heir to continue Normandy’s powerful dynasty.

But prodigious joy soon turned to unbounded sadness.

Sybilla never recovered from the birth and her condition slowly worsened. There were rumours of poison but, in truth, the birth had been difficult and she had become septic. She fought the ever-tightening grip of the infection in increasing pain until it killed her in March 1103. Robert was unable to cope with her death and, like his legacy from Palestine, was changed by it ever after.

He had a white marble slab made for her like the one for his mother’s tomb, on which were carved the words:

My niece, Edith, now Queen Matilda of England, also produced an heir for her husband, in the autumn of 1103. He too was given the name William, and the suffix Adelin, a corruption of Atheling, in recognition of his English pedigree.

Whether the birth of the young prince was the catalyst, who thus supplanted Robert as heir to the English throne, or Robert’s grieving over Sybilla, which left him paralysed as an effective leader, or Henry’s latent Norman predilection for more and more power and glory, it was difficult to tell, but it soon became clear that Henry was going to break the Treaty of Alton and that he probably never had any intention of honouring it in the first place.

Henry started to turn the screw.

Firstly, he failed to forego his holdings in Normandy and found various excuses for not paying Robert his annual tribute. Then, in 1104, Henry moved against William, Count of Mortain and Earl of Cornwall, the man whose father had been at Ely and who had taken care of Estrith and Gunnhild so well. The Count was Robert’s leading ally in England and a man widely respected by his peers. When Henry claimed some of his lands in the south-east of England, the Count took offence, which the King interpreted as treason, and used it as an excuse to seize all his holdings in Cornwall, forcing the Count to flee to Normandy.