Free Castle of Dreams by Flora Speer Page B

soon weighted down with new jewels and had several gowns made
from some of the many lengths of fine silk William had given
Lionel.
    “And lands,” Lionel exulted. “New honors.
William is making up for all the embarrassment he caused me in the
last few months. I’ve seen to that. No one pleases him as I
do.”
    Isabel said nothing to this. She did not want
to know exactly how Lionel pleased the king. She had come to detest
the tall, brassy-haired ruler, who flattered her until she felt ill
with his falseness, and often made her sit beside him at his
day-long banquets. On those occasions he drank himself into sodden
quarrelsomeness, and all the while his hard blue eyes regarded her
with cold malice, knowing she could not leave her place at table
until he gave her permission. She was sure King William disliked
her as much as she disliked him. She could have forgiven him his
scandalous private life, even though that life included her husband
on the most intimate terms, if only he had been a good king. But he
was not.
    William Rufus believed that England was his
own private preserve. All that was in it, even revenues rightly
belonging to the Church, and all of the people who inhabited
England were, in William’s eyes, his personal property, to do with
as he wished.
    Isabel knew taxes had been raised to
ridiculously high levels, for even Lionel was not exempt from them.
He had complained privately to her that the wealth of Adderbury as
well as his other holdings was being drained away to support
William’s opulent way of life. Other noblemen were enduring the
same strains.
    William was aided in his exactions by his
clever henchman, Ralph Flambard, whom Lionel loathed and who
continually tried to undermine Lionel’s relationship with the king.
Ralph had devised a plan whereby upon each nobleman’s death his
lands were inherited by the king and had to bought back from
William by the dead man’s heirs. Furthermore, widows, daughters,
and minor sons became wards of the king, who not only managed their
properties for them, taking all the revenues for himself, but could
sell off heirs in marriages he arranged, thus increasing the
crown’s income even more.
    “Do you mean, if you should die, I would
belong to King William and could not return to my father in
Brittany?” Isabel exclaimed when Lionel told her of William’s
latest proclamation.
    “Exactly.”
    “And if we had a child?”
    “William would have the marrying of the
heir,” Lionel said. His eyes narrowed, searching her face. “What is
it, Isabel?”
    “Nothing, my lord. I am just so shocked to
hear this news. Will not the barons complain?”
    “They may complain all they want, it will not
change William’s mind. He does whatever he pleases, which is to
say, whatever Ralph Flambard pleases, and we must accept all
because we have given William our sacred oaths of allegiance.”
    “I am afraid, my lord.” It was a momentary
loss of nerve, no more, but Lionel looked at her in surprise.
    “I am amazed to hear you of all people say
that. I thought you had no fear at all. I have my eyes set on great
power, Isabel. One day, I will be the second gentleman of the land,
and you the first lady, since William will never marry.”
    “Surely you cannot hope to surpass the
marcher lords in strength?” The earls of Hereford, Shrewsbury, and
Chester held huge honors along the border between Wales and England
and were the mightiest lords in the kingdom. Even William, with his
increased taxes, had not been able to do more than nibble away at
the edges of their wealth and power.
    “Within the next year,” Lionel said, “I will
convince William to reveal the plan that I have suggested and that
he is now considering, to conquer all of Wales. And there, Isabel,
I shall carve out my own domain, more vast than that of any marcher
lord. My reward for my subservience to William will be all of
Wales. I will be given the title of earl, but I shall be a prince
in Wales before I am