Crusade

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:

No power of birth, nor beauty, wealth, nor fame

Can grant eternal life to mortal man

And so the Duchess Sybilla, noble, great and rich,

Lies buried here at rest, as ashes now.

Her largesse, prudence, virtue, all are gifts

Her country loses by her early death;

Normandy bewails her Duchess, Apulia mourns her child -

In her death great glory is brought low.

The sun in the Golden Fleece destroyed her here,

May God now be her source of life.

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.

Henry then added insult to injury. He travelled to Normandy unannounced in August of 1104, visited several lords and counts he hoped would become allies and entertained them lavishly from his fortress at Domfront. Finally, he made a move that at first seemed laughably naive, but in fact revealed the extent of his manoeuvring: he let it be known that he was considering convening a court of all the nobles of Normandy to debate the failures of his brother’s rule of the duchy.