Lady of Hay by Barbara Erskine (reading an ebook TXT) 📕

"Of course not. " William smacked the palm of his hand with the rolled parchment. His jaw was working with agitation. "God damn it, Giles"—for a moment he forgot his son's exalted calling—"he came to Will's wedding. He gave him rubies and emeralds for a wedding gift. Would he have done that if I had displeased him?" He strode back and forth across the floor excitedly.

"Perhaps it is merely routine demand from the exchequer. The king may not even have realized from whom he was ordering the money. " Giles hesitated. "I suppose our mother... ?"

"Oh, yes!" William whirled around. "Your mother! She might well have something to do with it! She was antagonizing the king deliberately. I've seen it coming. If she's said something else to make him angry... "

"No, Father. " Giles's cool voice cut across William's outburst. "I was going to suggest you ask Mother whether the Welsh lands might not produce some of the money to pay off a little of the debt. She is renowned, in the March, you know, for her husbandry. " He smiled. "She is your best steward,

Father. I don't think sometimes you realize how hard she works. "

William snorted. "Well, if she's hoarding my money—"

"Not hoarding, Father. She takes a pride in her herds and her lands. She loves the Welsh hills. I hear people speak of her with awe and respect and love. " Seeing his father's expression, he hastily changed the subject. "I am sure you can have this demand postponed, Father, if you go to see the king again. Why not ask him directly? Take him a gift—a new book for his library is a sure way to win his favor back, you know that as well as I do. Wait on him as soon as you can. "

William looked hopefully at his son, a little reassured by Giles's calm words. The demand had worried him. A year earlier he would have laughed it off and stuffed the parchment away among a hundred others in his own chancery office, confident in the king's total goodwill. Nothing obvious had happened to shake his confidence and yet there was something, an uneasy feeling gnawed at the back of his mind, a suspicion that the king was not quite as friendly as before; a hint here and there among his friends that he should tread warily. Nothing had been said; nothing done. But William had felt a sudden chill hover over him.

Matilda was appalled when she saw the size of William's debt. "Have you paid nothing to the king since his coronation?" She scanned the parchment and looked up from William to Giles to Will, who was leaning by the chancery window, his arms folded, a worried frown on his face; behind them the scribe and William's clerk sat at the high desk, their pens at the ready. Why? Why the sudden demand after all these years? She had a vision of John's face in the chapel and she closed her eyes, trying to steady the sudden irrational wave of fear that had filled her and the thought that the demand might not be unconnected with the fact that the king had seen her hand in that of Richard de Clare.

"We must pay something at once, William. " She beckoned her own steward, who was waiting with an armload of rolled parchments. Then she stopped. "I thought you were told originally to pay the taxes for Limerick to the Dublin exchequer. Why does Westminster suddenly want them?"

William shrugged. His shoulders drooped a little.

She gave an exasperated sigh. "Here. " She pulled a parchment from her steward's hands and scrutinized it closely. "I can find about seven hundred marks. Those will be sent to the exchequer straight away. See to it, " she directed William's steward, who bowed and began to scribble as she felt for the keys at her girdle. "It is lucky, William, that we had so good a year in the March. I was able to sell cattle and there is money in the coffers. " Giving one of the keys to her steward, she directed him to fetch the gold. "It is not safe to be so much in the king's debt, William. " She put her hand on his arm gently. "We must pay it off. "

William laughed. The whole episode had frightened and annoyed him, and his family's reaction to the size of his debt had first worried and then irritated him irrationally, but now that some money was to be returned, and so easily, he felt completely happy again. "That'll be enough for the king, " he replied, shaking off her hand. "I'll have a word with him. I'm sure it's all a mistake. "

But it was not a mistake. The king had, it appeared, every intention of holding William to the repayment of his debts. He accepted the carefully chosen, exquisitely illuminated volume of Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the British Kingdom and within two weeks William had received a further demand from the exchequer.

Early the following year the next blow had fallen. William was ordered to give up his lordships of Glamorgan and Gwynllwg to one of the king's new favorites, an adventurer named Fawkes de Breaute.

"Christ's bones, Moll. What will he want next?" William had ridden in desperation to consult his kinsman William, Earl Ferrers, who remained high in the king's favor, and he had returned with vague assurances of friendship from the young man but with the same advice—pay up as much as you can and keep a low profile until the king's displeasure was dissipated.

"He wants money, William. You've got to accept the fact and we've got to find it. " Matilda forced herself to continue studying the embroidery before her, feeling the tightness of fear close across her chest like an iron band. "You cannot get out of it. He will not be fobbed off any longer. John is getting angry. "

Again and again William begged and pleaded with