Thereafter, on occasions and for what he feels to be good reasons, hemay break the rules. He will never transgress against the Rule, andnever abandon it.

Ellis Peters 1988

A LIGHT ON THE ROAD TOWOODSTOCK

TheKing’s Court was in no hurry to return to England, that lateautumn of 1120, even though the fighting, somewhat desultory in theselast stages, was long over, and the enforced peace sealed by a royalmarriage. King Henry had brought to a successful conclusion hissixteen years of patient, cunning, relentless plotting, fighting andmanipulating, and could now sit back in high content, master not onlyof England but of Normandy, too. What the Conqueror had misguidedlydealt out in two separate parcels to his two elder sons, his youngestson had now put together again and clamped into one. Not without ahand in removing from the light of day, some said, both of hisbrothers, one of whom had been shovelled into a hasty grave under thetower at Winchester, while the other was now a prisoner in Devizes,and unlikely ever to be seen again by the outer world.

The court could well afford to linger to enjoy victory, while Henrytrimmed into neatness the last loose edges still to be made secure.But his fleet was already preparing at Barfleur for the voyage backto England, and he would be home before the month ended. Meantime,many of his barons and knights who had fought his battles werewithdrawing their contingents and making for home, among them oneRoger Mauduit, who had a young and handsome wife waiting for him,certain legal business on his mind, and twenty-five men to ship backto England, most of them to be paid off on landing.

There were one or two among the miscellaneous riff-raff he hadrecruited here in Normandy on his lord’s behalf whom it mightbe worth keeping on in his own service, along with the few men of his