Читать книгу The Conquerors: The Pageant of England - Thomas B. Costain - Страница 12

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Nearly twenty years before the Conquest there was at the court of Count Baldwin of Flanders a very beautiful girl, his sister Matilda. Young Duke William of Normandy fell in love with her at first sight. He did not manifest his devotion, however, in the usual ways. There was none of the mooning of adolescence, no shy dancing of attendance, on the part of the determined Norman. He courted Matilda in a forthright way, making it clear that he intended to marry her, come what may. Matilda met his advances coldly.

Her reluctance may have been due to the fact that William’s mother had been Herleva, the pretty daughter of a tanner, and that his father had taken no steps to legitimatize his birth, thereby condemning him for life to the appellation of Bastard. Most likely, however, her coldness was because the image of a handsome Saxon still filled her mind.

Brihtric Meau, the son of Alfgar, lord of the honor of Gloucester, had been sent to Flanders on a diplomatic mission. He was a handsome fellow, tall and straight of back and leg and with such a fairness of skin that he had been nicknamed Snow. One look at the blue-eyed stranger and Matilda fell as deeply in love with him as William had on his first glimpse of her. She took no pains to hide her infatuation for the blond Saxon but followed him everywhere and tried every expedient to win his attention. When the ladies had retired from the Great Hall (which was so large that three hundred people could dine there at once) and the men had settled down to their wine swilling, she would hide on the minstrels’ gallery and watch Brihtric from behind a tapestry hanging on the railing. Finally she took matters into her own hands and went to him with a suggestion. Why must he return to England, which was a poor and barbarous land? Why not remain in Flanders and take a wife? It would not be hard to find one.

Brihtric knew what she meant, of course. Just how he answered her is not on record. He was flattered, no doubt, by the devotion of the highborn Flemish beauty, but he was also a man of firm principles. There was a lady of his choice in England and he meant to marry her on his return. Whatever his manner of phrasing it, his answer to Matilda was a firm no. Soon after, his mission completed, he sailed back to England.

William’s courting of Matilda lasted seven years in all. At the end of that time, in the year 1047, he became so enraged at her continued refusals that he waited outside a church in the city of Bruges, where she was hearing mass, and attacked her when she emerged. He knocked her down, rolled her in the dirt of the street, tore her fine cloak, upbraided her furiously, and then sprang into the saddle and rode away. Perhaps he should have adopted this method of courtship earlier. It produced, at any rate, the desired effect. Matilda gave in.

They were married in William’s castle of Angi, and it was a grand occasion. If the bride retained any regrets for the handsome Englishman who had rebuffed her, she did not show it. She and William, in fact, were quite happy in their marriage. They had a large family, including four sons, Robert, Richard (who died in his youth), William, and Henry. The last two became kings of England. William saw to it that Matilda was the first wife of an English king to have the title of Queen. The consort of a Saxon ruler had been called “lady companion of the King,” but this was not good enough for Matilda. William had a special coronation for her and had a crown placed on her fine dark locks. When she died in 1083 he mourned her the rest of his days. He built a great tomb for her at Caen in Normandy, covered with gems and with an epitaph lettered in gold.

But the story has a sequel. Brihtric survived the Conquest. He was married and had a family and he had become a very wealthy man with lands in Gloucestershire and Devonshire and Cornwall. He had many manor houses, and to the manor of Hanley, where he spent most of his time, a new chapel had been added. Wulfstan, the saintly old Bishop of Worcester, had come to hallow it, and the ceremony was under way when a troop of Norman soldiers put in an appearance. They took Brihtric in charge and threw him into a cell in Winchester. The cell was so deep underground that it had no window and the only sound its occupants ever heard was the ironshod foot of a jailer on the stone stairs. It was damp and cold and filled with rats and toads.

Matilda was not in England when this occurred, and it might have been due to the jealousy of William, who had never ceased to resent her early preference for the handsome Saxon. There is nothing in her record to hint at a strain of vindictiveness in her character, and the fact, moreover, that Brihtric’s punishment was conceived with a thoroughness typical of the Conqueror lends further substance to that view. The unfortunate thane, whose only fault had been his constancy, was kept in his deep, dank cell until he died. His possessions were all confiscated. The city of Gloucester was deprived of its charter and all its civic liberties were taken away because Brihtric was a Gloucester man. His family, penniless, were turned away, to live or die.

But Matilda cannot be cleared as easily as that. It is recorded in Domesday Book that all Brihtric’s possessions were given to her and that she held them as her personal property until her death, when they reverted to the Crown. It seems reasonable to believe, therefore, that this remarkable woman stood at William’s shoulder and whispered in his ear. Certainly she acquiesced in the despoiling and death of the fair-haired stranger she had once watched with worshiping eyes from the minstrels’ gallery.