Chains of Folly Read Online Free

pleased with the king’s dealing with Salisbury.”
    “Now that is where I get lost,” Diot said. “For what did the king blame Salisbury?”
    “A riot.” Bell sounded grim and Magdalene shivered, remembering how Sir Ferrau had helped foment that riot and then tried to kill her. “Oxford was overcrowded. Salisbury came very late to the meeting and his men had no lodging and it rained, and it rained. Salisbury’s men went to ask Alain of Brittany to share his lodging. Alain’s men said Salisbury’s people had been threatening and offensive. Who struck the first blow depends on which side you question, but soon all the men were involved and Alain’s nephew was sore wounded. The king wished to blame Salisbury, and he did.”
    “Ah, I see.” Diot nodded. “Then Stephen was able to say that Salisbury had broken the king’s peace and no longer deserved to be the chief minister of the kingdom.”
    “That was not all,” Bell said between gritted teeth. “The king also demanded that Salisbury yield all of the castles he had built and what was therein. Salisbury refused and the king had him arrested together with the bishop of Lincoln and Salisbury’s son, Roger le Poer.”
    “But surely Stephen is not so mad as to treat his own brother and the pope’s legate in the same way,” Diot said.
    “God knows,” Bell sighed. “The problem is that my master cannot ignore the affront to the Church.”
    “But is it an affront to the Church?” Magdalene asked. “The king has not seized any of Salisbury’s benefices nor threatened his position as bishop. The only things Stephen wrested from Salisbury are his castles, owned by the man not the Church, his secular offices, his place as justiciar and other appointments. That is surely the king’s right.”
    “But it is not his right to seize Salisbury, Lincoln, and Roger le Poer physically. The person of a man of the Church is sacrosanct, and specially the person of a bishop.”
    Magdalene shrugged. “What did you want Stephen to do? Look the other way while Salisbury and his kin fled into their stuffed and garnished keeps? Come Bell, you are a soldier and know that the king, having exposed to them his suspicion of their treachery, could not let them slip out of his grasp.”
    “It is very strange indeed to hear you singing Waleran de Meulan’s song,” Bell snarled.
    “Why are you angry?” Ella cried, looking from one to the other, tears rising into her eyes.
    “Oh, love,” Magdalene sighed, leaning over to pat Ella’s hand, “we are not angry with each other. We both desire the same thing but are convinced that different ways of obtaining it are best. So we talk quick and loud, but…but we are still…friends…” She took a quick deep breath, glanced sidelong at Bell, and began to laugh, realizing that the word “friend” meant something different to Ella.
    Bell, understanding quite well that to Ella “friend” meant a man you serviced, flushed, and then also laughed. “But in a way you are quite right, Ella,” he said. “There is no sense at all in Magdalene and me quarreling about this because we have no power to change what will happen. My master has decided what he will do, and I am bound to carry out his orders. Besides, what I came for was something quite different.”
    “I thought you came to see us,” Ella remarked, pouting.
    “That was an added pleasure, but not what brought me. I told you that I was here on business.”
    At that moment, Dulcie came from the kitchen carrying a large platter of beef slices swimming in their own gravy and a smaller one on which slices of the smoked salmon were laid out. She went out again, but Bell, stomach growling, drew his eating knife, speared two slices of the beef, and dropped them on the broad trencher of stale bread that marked his place at the table.
    By then Dulcie was back with a deep bowl of greens and another of turnips and carrots. A third trip brought a tureen from which rose the odor of a