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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: St. John, Katherine, 1979– author.
Title: The siren / Katherine St. John.
Description: First edition. | New York : Grand Central Publishing, 2021. Identifiers: LCCN 2020053572 | ISBN 9781538733684 (hardcover) | ISBN
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In the future, everyone will want to be anonymous for fifteen minutes.
Banksy
March 2, 2019
The Biz Report
The first film slated for production by Cole Power’s fledgling Power Pictures will be a thriller starring Power, written and directed by Power’s son, Jackson Power. The younger Power is a recent graduate of AFI whose thesis film has been racking up accolades on the festival circuit this year. Also joining the cast is Stella Rivers, who starred opposite Cole Power in 2006’s box office hit Faster. The two were married from 2006–2007. Power Pictures is independently financing the venture, and Taylor Wasserman (formerly of Woodland Studios) has been brought on to produce.
The Siren follows a photographer (Power) married to a model (Rivers), living an idyllic life in the islands until they hire a beautiful young nanny to look after their baby. The nanny replaces the wife as the photographer’s muse, sparking a war between the women that eventually brings them all down.
The film is slated for production over six weeks beginning in June, on the southern Caribbean island of Saint Genesius, west of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, where Cole Power owns the exclusive Genesius Resort, made famous as the on-screen resort owned by Power’s character in the Gentleman Gangster series. Power purchased the resort and the neighboring film stage last year after wrapping the fifth installment of the wildly successful Gentleman Gangster series, shot partially on the island.
PART I:
The Calm before the Storm
Taylor
Sunday,June16
She was perched on a rock like a siren the first time I saw her, face upturned to the sun, copper skin wet with sea spray. Her toes dangled languidly into the mottled azure water while palm fronds fluttered overhead, casting pom-pom shadows on the powdered sugar sand.
I wondered who she was, how she’d gotten in. I’d personally vetted every member of our cast and crew, and she wasn’t one of them. Even from fifty yards away I could see she was a stunner, with curves in all the right places and an angelic face framed by jawskimming brunette waves and a heavy fringe of bangs. No, this girl wasn’t one of ours. Perhaps she was an employee. A desk clerk or maid, tanning on her lunch break. We’d reserved the entire resort and it was gated, secured by uniformed guards with giant guns slung casually over their shoulders as they ate brown-bag lunches in the shade, so she had to belong.
The beach was so shockingly vibrant it bordered on lurid. A postcard-perfect crescent of bleached pink sand swaddled the ultramarine sea, rimmed by an assortment of palms and trees with waxy green leaves that concealed pathways to the pool, spa, and restaurant. Ripples tickled the shore of the tranquil bay, which, according to the island guide in my glorious over-water bungalow, was protected from the surf by coral reefs just beyond the outcropping of rocks where the girl lounged. All up and down the shore, our crew frolicked in the sultry Caribbean sun, tossing
Frisbees and floating on their backs in the crystal-clear bay as if they were in a Corona beer commercial.
This was the sort of island paradise featured on office screen savers, where rich people came to decompress in seclusion and honeymooners could enjoy the ocean without ever leaving the privacy of their luxurious accommodations. Nature was king, the rhythm of the day was determined by the weather, and no one was in a hurry.
I would’ve been bored to tears if I weren’t producing a movie.
What can I say? For better or worse, I’d never known what to do with myself in the absence of a mission. Everyone talked about the importance of meditation or yoga to relieve stress, but I found stress useful. Pressure kept my feet on the ground—without it I feared I might float away. My therapist had tried in vain to convince me otherwise in recent months, but what did she know? I could only assume the entertainment industry was far more cutthroat than the mental health industry.
At any rate, I simply wasn’t made for a tropical environment like rock girl obviously was. My curly mop of dark hair didn’t do that beachy wave thing; it frizzed. My lily-white skin didn’t bronze; it burned. Also, I was allergic to sundresses, especially those in bright colors.
“You’re staring.”
I spun to see Jackson Power’s lopsided grin. A pair of black Wayfarers slid down his nose, revealing mirthful muddy green eyes.
“Hard not to,” I admitted.
“I’ll say.” He dropped his backpack and towel on a lounger under one of the ten or so straw umbrellas that dotted the beach and pulled his T-shirt over his head, revealing sun-kissed olive skin. Jackson was skinny, to be sure, but not unattractive. He was our director though, and I would never cross the line with someone I was working with.
Never again.
“Why didn’t you come fishing with us yesterday?” Jackson asked. “I get seasick,” I lied.
Jackson watched our mermaid stretch her long limbs out like a
cat, her chestnut locks tousled by the steady midday breeze.
“Who is she?” I asked.
“Stella’s new assistant.” He tossed his sunglasses into his bag. “She always did like the pretty ones.”
I opened my mouth to inquire what he meant, but he was already off, diving horizontally into the shallow water.
Annoyed Stella had somehow hired an assistant I knew nothing about, I collapsed on a chair in the shelter of an umbrella and gladly shed the black sun hat I’d thought ideal back home in Los Angeles last week. I’d since come to understand why everyone wore light shades in the tropics, but the appropriate hats in the gift store were so exorbitantly priced that I had yet to bring myself to buy one. I blew down my black T-shirt and tugged at the damp waistband of my jean cutoffs, which I’d taken scissors to only this morning. Denim: also inappropriate for the Caribbean. My suitcase of dark Tshirts, jeans, and cargo pants was going to have to be amended.
I’d slathered myself in SPF 70 and worn a sporty black one-piece beneath my clothes in hopes of perhaps going for a swim, but as I gazed upon the goddess on the rock, I thought better of it. Not because my sense of self-worth was tied up with my physical appearance—which it wasn’t—but because I was only human, and while the curves on my vertically challenged frame were kept mostly in check by daily CrossFit torture, I knew when I was out of my league. Not that anyone was looking. Not that there was anyone on the island I’d have wanted to look. Still, vanity.
Was vanity permissible these days? I wasn’t sure. I knew I was supposed to be self-assured and body-confident, everyone else be damned—and that sounded fantastic—but it was also a tall order for a girl who’d grown up in millennial Hollywood (oh, the midriffs!) with a misogynist father. So I buried my shameful insecurity beneath an industrial-strength steel facade and didn’t let anyone in. According to my therapist.
I observed from behind my Ray-Bans as Jackson and the girl pretended not to notice each other out in the bay. Assistant, my ass. This chick was an actress preening for the director if ever I saw one. And I’d seen plenty.
A soccer ball landed next to my chair with a thwack, sending sand flying. Even in my foul mood, I could see it was a sign too obvious to ignore. It wasn’t the crew’s fault I hadn’t been invited fishing yesterday; I shouldn’t take my anger out on them. Anyway, I enjoyed soccer.
Gathering my wild curls into a ponytail, I dribbled the ball over toward a sound guy, two grips, a PA, and an electrical engineer. “Room for one more?” I asked, squinting into the sun.
“You’re on our team,” Sam, the scrawny sound guy, called. “That’s our goal.” He indicated two orange plastic cones about fifty feet away.
I threw a thumbs-up and kicked him the ball. I hadn’t played seriously since high school, but I was a decent defender and could pull off a few tricks that made me look cooler than I was. In no time I was sandy and sweaty, my foul mood forgotten.
We’d stopped for a water break when I saw my boss emerge bare-chested from a pathway cut between the red-flowering trees. Cole Power, the Sexiest Man in Hollywood twice over: first after his breakout role at twenty-five—thick dark hair falling in front of stormy blue eyes, cigarette dangling from pillowy lips, T-shirt sleeves rolled to display bulging biceps—and again three years ago at forty-six, in a slim-fit black suit this time, close-cropped hair accentuating a square jaw, and one of the most recognizable faces on the planet, made only more desirable by age. A distinctly male advantage.
These days the hair was back, and thicker than ever. Navy board shorts rode low on his hips, threatening to slide off as he sauntered along the shoreline toward me, his bronzed chest cut by minimum two-hour workouts with his trainer every morning. He was a gorgeous man with charisma to spare, not to mention an icon: the original Outsider, a rebel artist with a dimple and a penchant for fast cars, expensive wine, and beautiful women. But I’d been working for him only three months, and his mercurial charm had already worn thin, revealing an ego larger than his home state of Texas lurking just beneath the surface. It wasn’t his fault, per se. If I’d had the entire globe sucking my dick on command and blowing sunshine up my ass for more than half my life, I’d probably be a narcissist too.
The immediate problem though—the problem that made me want to run and hide in my beautifully appointed bungalow—was the question I needed to ask him and the embarrassment it would cause me. He wouldn’t spare me any shame—I knew him well enough to know that. But time was running out.
I signaled my teammates to play on without me and joined Cole beneath the shade of a thatched umbrella, where he flopped down on a lounger and groaned. A lanky waiter in a pink polo shirt with a name tag that read “Jamal” appeared holding a menu and a large bottle of spring water, which Cole immediately grabbed and began chugging.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Power,” Jamal said. Like most of the staff, he was African-Caribbean with a lilting accent so musical, I could listen to him read the phone book. “What else can I get you?”
Cole wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, his eyes fixed on a cruise ship on the horizon. “I need a shoulder massage. From a woman.” He threw Jamal a pained smile. “My head is pounding. Had a little too much fun in Gen Town last night you know how it goes.”
Jamal nodded, clearly pleased Cole had acknowledged him. “Yes, Mr. Power, I know how it goes.”
Jamal turned and mimed a shoulder rub to a similarly dressed female employee hovering in the shade of the thatched snack shack at the edge of the tree line. She grabbed a bottle of lotion and started across the sand on sturdy legs, her arm raised to shield her eyes from the blazing sun. There went my opportunity to speak to Cole in private.
“Can I get you anything from the menu?” Jamal asked.
“A green shake,” Cole replied, enveloping Jamal in the warmth of his famous crooked grin. “And Tylenol. Thanks, man.”
“No problem.” Jamal returned his smile. “Anytime.”
“Good afternoon, Mr. Power,” the female employee said, stepping under the shade of the umbrella. I scanned her name tag. Tina. I liked to learn names. It came in especially useful working for Cole, who loved to think he knew everyone’s name but always got them wrong, and no one ever corrected him. He had confidently called me Tyler for the first month I worked for him, which I guess would have
been an understandable mistake if I were a guy.
“Mr. Power needs a shoulder massage,” Jamal told her before departing in the direction of the snack shack.
“Certainly.” Tina displayed a gap-toothed smile. “How do you like the pressure?”
“Gimme everything you got. I can take it.” Cole dazzled her with his brilliant baby blues before flipping onto his stomach.
Flustered, Tina sank to her knees in the sand and began rubbing Cole’s shoulders. “You guys have fun fishing yesterday?” I asked.
He grunted confirmation. “Bartender last night just about killed me though. Kept making specialties he thought I’d like. He was right.”
From what I’d seen on our golf cart tour when we arrived the day before yesterday, “town” on this tiny island was nothing more than one cobblestone road lined with local shops painted in bright Caribbean colors, anchored by a concrete-block post office so miniature it looked like a children’s playhouse. “There are bars in town?”
“One. If it’s still standing after last night.”
“I’d have loved to join you boys,” I said pointedly. “On the fishing trip, too.”
“I didn’t think you’d want to come.”
I bristled. “Why, because I’m a girl?”
“Because you’re a vegetarian.”
“I’m pescatarian. And anyway, Francisco’s vegan and you invited him.”
“He is? I didn’t know that.”
I sighed. What could I do? At the moment I desperately needed the admittedly liberal paycheck that no one else was willing to give me, so I was stuck with him, and he knew it. Anyway, this certainly wasn’t the first time in my career that I’d been excluded due to my extra X chromosome. Not so many years ago, I’m sure he would’ve said it outright (and would have also likely hired strippers). But times had changed: these days I wasn’t explicitly uninvited; I was just left in the dark—a miscommunication, if anyone raised eyebrows. This move would have been impossible if the handful of other women on
the crew were around, but their departments—wardrobe, makeup, script supervisor, and a lone female electrician—didn’t arrive until today.
“You’ll need to call the bar and give them a card. I didn’t have one on me,” he continued.
I was his producer, not his personal assistant, though he rarely seemed to know or care where the line was. Everyone in Cole’s orbit simply did whatever he asked, no matter whether or not it fell within the jurisdiction of their job description. But a night on the town wasn’t in our film budget. “Ben has your personal cards,” I returned.
“It’s a film expense.”
I took a controlled breath. “This is an independent film. You know we’re on a tight budget. Anything you spend on things like fishing trips and bar tabs, it comes out of what goes on-screen.”
His laugh had an edge to it. “You gotta stop worrying about money, half-pint.”
I hated the way he called me half-pint, but he claimed the nickname was a term of endearment and found it hilarious. “It’s my job to worry about money.”
He propped up on his elbows, his lips curled into a smile. “It’s my money,” he said lightly. “Just pay the tab and raise the budget. The more I spend on this movie, the less I pay in taxes. You have any idea how much I pay in taxes?”
“Roughly half, I’d guess,” I muttered.
He chuckled. “Not if you have the accountants I do.”
“If we’re raising the budget, I have a list about a mile long of things we actuallyneed that got cut after Steve—”
He held up a hand. “Enough about fucking Steve.”
I bit my tongue. Fucking Steve was the line producer hired before I was brought on. He’d been used to working on much higherbudget films and had so grossly overpaid for everything at the top of the list that he ran out of money long before he reached the bottom, leaving us scavenging for crumbs to make up the rest of the cost. I’d recognized the problem early on and had wanted to replace him, but he and Cole had been “mates” (Steve was British) for years, and Cole wouldn’t hear of it. In fact, Cole was so adamant that I had to
wonder whether Steve had some kind of dirt on him that demanded Cole’s loyalty. Suffice it to say that Cole was extremely protective of his image. Unfortunately, the satisfaction of being proven right about Steve’s incompetence was far outweighed by the stress of having to clean up his mess.
Cole flopped back onto his stomach. “Get your thumbs between my scaps,” he instructed Tina. “Yeah, that’s it.” He groaned. “You’re an angel. Right there. God, I love a woman with strong hands.”
I imagined her strong hands around his neck, squeezing.
But it was his money—all of it, including the part that paid my salary.
I’d been recruited to produce TheSiren mainly because Cole had gotten flack in the media for his entertainment company being a boy’s club, which it was. For my part, I’d gladly accepted Cole’s offer not only because it was generous, but because it was the sole offer I’d fielded in the half a year since I’d been unceremoniously dumped from my prior job, and I was running out of money, not to mention losing my sanity to a deadly cocktail of inertia and depression.
Power Pictures was smaller than customary for entertainment companies owned by stars of Cole’s stature and was yet to deliver anything when I came on board. He handed me The Siren—a lowbudget, complicated, truly independent passion project without studio involvement or even outside money—while the rest of the team stayed in LA to develop bigger things.
Why Cole had given his son, whose life he’d never much been involved in as far as I could tell, a three-million-dollar budget to direct a movie as his film school graduation present was beyond me. He and Jackson were far from chummy, and it was certainly a lot of trouble to go to for a tax benefit. But then, God only knew how much he had in the bank after the box-office-smashing success of the Gentleman Gangster series. (The fifth installment, for which he’d been paid thirty million plus an unheard-of percentage of the back end, had opened last month to even bigger numbers than any of the previous four.) The world was head over heels for the vicious yet charming anti-hero Gentleman Gangster. In a time of ever-declining ticket sales, Cole Power was one of the few movie stars whose name
still drew a crowd.
Not only was father-of-the-year Cole Power financing The Siren, but in an even curiouser move, he’d agreed to star in it. It would be the lowest-budget film he’d done since before his first turn as Hollywood’s Sexiest Man. Of course, his appearance in it all but guaranteed the film’s success, which boded well for me and everyone else working on it, so I wasn’t protesting. I was now one of the many, many people whose livelihood depended on audiences continuing to fork over their hard-earned cash to see Cole Power smolder “Agentlemannevershootsamanintheback.”
Tina continued to rub Cole’s shoulders as he squinted across the water at the siren on the rock, now leaning out over the water to converse with Jackson, her breasts dangling before him like ripe grapefruits. “Who’s that?”
“Stella’s new assistant.”
“Of course.” He sniggered.
“Funny. Jackson had the same reaction.” I raised my brows.
“Did he?” Cole eyed the two of them, the corners of his mouth downturned. “What else did he say?”
“Nothing.”
I contemplated. I’d just pissed him off by reminding him the movie had a budget, and I certainly couldn’t care less about Stella’s preferences, but if a known pattern indicated there might be a problem, as producer I needed to know. I’d had a hell of a time getting Stella insured to play Cole’s wife after her checkered past, and the insurance had caveats—like her staying sober. “Is there something I should know?” I ventured.
“No.” He suddenly rose to his feet, leaving Tina kneeling in the sand with no shoulders to rub. She looked to me for direction. I knew he’d probably want her to hang around, but I saw a chance to handle my sticky business with him and decided to take it before we were interrupted again.
“Thank you.” I dismissed her with an apologetic smile, pressing a fifty into her hand. Cole had an accurate theory that people rarely had anything bad to say about stars who were generous, so he insisted everyone around him always have cash on hand to grease
the wheels.
“Hey, handsome!”
“Speak of the devil,” Cole said under his breath. Seriously? Was I ever going to get a moment alone with him?
Stella traipsed across the sand toward us, her slender frame clad in a turquoise caftan, wide-brimmed white sun hat covering her expertly highlighted honey-and-milk-chocolate waves. She was still beautiful at what she claimed was thirty-six but I knew from processing her paperwork was really forty, her heart-shaped face and delicate features offset by large, come-hither green eyes. I also knew after seeing her barefaced at the makeup test that even with the aid of fillers and Botox, the years of partying had taken a toll. She’d mastered the art of camouflaging the fine lines around her mouth and the hollows beneath her eyes with foundation and contouring, but our cinematographer would have to be incredibly careful how he lit and shot her.
Cole fired up his megawatt smile. “Stella! Gorgeous.” He slid his arm around her and gave her lingering kisses on each cheek. “Good to see you. Mmm, you look good enough to eat.”
“Oh, stop it!” Stella swatted at Cole. “You know you’re more gorgeous than I am.”
Stella and Cole had been an item way back when, and the scandal surrounding their breakup had been massive, but that was a long time ago and Cole was so insistent on hiring Stella that I’d figured they must have made peace since. Anyway, as skeptical as I was about casting her after her multiple, very public breakdowns, she’d been nothing but agreeable thus far. It had been nearly a decade since her last stint in rehab, and all her party-girl friends seemed to have gotten it together and moved on with their lives. Maybe her troubles really were in the past. She and Cole certainly appeared chummy enough now, play-fighting about whose abs were tighter.
I stood outside the circle of mutual admiration sweating in my inappropriate clothes, my curls sticking to the back of my neck. “Glad you finally made it,” I said. “How was the flight over?”
“That little plane, my God! I don’t think I’ve ever flown on anything that small… Landing on the water was crazy. I thought I
might die.”
Cole snickered. “Glad to hear your flair for the dramatic is intact.”
“This place is amazing.” Stella swept her arm toward the horizon. “The water is just…so blue. I can’t even. I’ve always wanted to live on an island, drink from a coconut. So romantic. I love it.”
Out in the bay, Jackson splashed the girl on the rock, eliciting a cascade of squeals. We watched as she stood, laughing, then dove into the sea.
June 2, 2006
Celeb Spotter
StoleGettingMarried?
It was a wet-n-wild weekend for Stella Rivers, 27, and Cole Power, 36. The two, who have been hot and heavy since playing opposite each other as star-crossed lovers in the film Faster, were spotted Saturday in Miami, lounging on Power’s yacht. Rivers flaunted her toned figure in a barely there white bikini, while Power helped lube her up with sunscreen [picture]. Later that night, “Stole” were spotted in the VIP room of Thrive nightclub’s annual white party, dancing the night away to the sound of DJ Hall with a group of friends that included actress Hannah Bridges and her boyfriend, Chad Young. But the biggest news came on Sunday, when Stole were spotted canoodling at brunch at hot spot South Shore, Stella wearing what appears to be a square-cut diamond solitaire on her ring finger [pic]. According to our source, the ring is startlingly similar to the engagement ring Cole’s character gives Stella’s character at the end of Faster. Could wedding bells be in their future?
Stella
Felicity!” I called, waving my hand overhead. She glided in with the surf like Aphrodite, only way hotter. I’d seen the paintings—I knew. One wealthy Austrian I dated in my early twenties who shall remain nameless even had a museumquality Dianahanging in the entry hall of his country estate, by one of those famous Renaissance artists whose objets d’affection were always depicted as lumpy and pale—a reflection of the beauty standards of the time I’m sure, but Fee! My God. Greek goddesses had nothing on her. She was TV pretty. Though these days it did seem like every casting wanted “real people.” As if having a symmetrical face and a trim waist somehow made you not a real person.
People might think I’d be jealous of my young assistant—and I’m sure some actresses would be—but you can’t hold youth against the young. I am an Aquarius, after all; I’ve always valued aesthetics. And I understood what it was like to be splendor in the springtime of life. I was a girl like her not that long ago: hot without caveat. I knew I was still beautiful—it would be ungrateful and disingenuous to pretend otherwise—but I had to admit I was always a little thrown when I looked in the mirror these days. Like, Who is this womanstaringbackatme?
As much as I’d have loved to imagine myself aging gracefully like a sexy French dame, I lived in Hollywood, where women were put out to pasture at forty. Which is why I couldn’t let anyone know I’d just turned forty. Forty! Lord, it sounded so old. The problem was, I’d been acting since I was a child, so it was hard to lie believably
about my age. And it didn’t help that I had to dye my hair every three weeks to keep the grays at bay. I did it myself so no one would know. You can’t trust hair stylists. At least I still had my “captivating emerald” eyes (September 2005 Vogue’s description, not mine), though the crow’s-feet drove me nuts, and I was afraid to get injections around my eyes for fear of looking frozen. C’est la vie.
I stepped beneath the shade of the thatched umbrella and fanned myself with my hat as Felicity sauntered across the pale pink sand, her thin beige bikini clinging to her curvy wet body like a tan line. I couldn’t help but notice Jackson pretending not to watch from out in the bay. Ooh…theywouldmake a cutecouple.MaybeIshouldplay matchmaker. I did want to help her any way I could. Contrary to popular belief, I was actually quite generous. “Come meet Cole,” I continued. “And—” Oh hell, I’d forgotten the producer girl’s name again. “And everybody!”
Felicity fluffed her bangs and ran her fingers through her short brunette waves, flashing a smile that warmed her cat-like dark eyes. “I just have to hug you,” she purred, throwing her toned arms around Cole’s neck. Accustomed to but never bored by the attention of beautiful girls, he inhaled her like a wolf would a rabbit, his hands on her back as she pressed her damp skin to his. “BadBoy got me through high school.”
“Glad to be of service.” He fixed her with his mesmerizing gaze.
“I’m Taylor,” the producer girl chimed in, extending her hand. Wait a minute—thiswas Taylor? Surely she couldn’t be the same Taylor the wardrobe girls were dishing about at my fitting. She certainly didn’t look like a “devious little slut.” She was diminutive and pale with messy black hair and brown eyes, wearing an unflattering mix of knee-length cutoff jean shorts and a bulky T-shirt that seemed specifically designed to repel any romantic interest.
The wardrobe girls were shocked I hadn’t heard about the scandal—something about her being fired for embezzling from the studio run by her father while having an affair with a coworker—but after all the hurtful things printed about me over the years, I never read gossip. Which of course meant I shouldn’t believe it either. So maybe this Taylor wasn’t a homewrecking embezzler after all. But I
Another random document with no related content on Scribd:
of Archbishop Adaland of Tours and his brother Raino, who, however, was bishop of Angers, not of Orléans as the treatise says. The passages in the Tours chronicle where Ingelger is described as count of Anjou are all derived from this source, and therefore prove nothing, except the writer’s ignorance about counts and bishops alike.
The mention of Archbishop Adaland brings us to another subject— Ingelger’s marriage. Ralf de Diceto (Stubbs, vol. i. p. 139) says that he married Ælendis, niece of Archbishop Adaland and of Raino, bishop of Angers, and that these two prelates gave to the young couple their own hereditary estates at Amboise, in Touraine and in the Orléanais. The Gesta Consulum (Marchegay, Comtes, p. 45) say the same, but afterwards make Raino bishop of Orléans. This story seems to be a bit of truth which has found its way into a mass of fiction; at any rate it is neither impossible nor improbable. The author of the De Reversione is quite right in saying that Archbishop Adaland died shortly after the return of the relics; his statement, and those of the Tours Chronicle, that Adaland was consecrated in 870 and died in 887, are borne out by the same charters which enable us to track the career of Fulk the Red. As to Raino—there was a Raino ordained bishop of Angers in 881 (Chron. Vindoc. ad ann. in Marchegay, Eglises d’Anjou, p. 160). The version which makes Orléans his see is derived from the false Cluny treatise.
Fulk the Red was witnessing charters in 886 and died in 941 or 942. He must have been born somewhere between 865 and 870; as the traditional writers say he died “senex et plenus dierum, in bonâ senectute,” it may have been nearer the earlier date. There is thus no chronological reason why these two prelates should not have been his mother’s uncles; and as the house of Anjou certainly acquired Amboise somehow, it may just as well have been in this way as in any other.
N B.
THE PALACE OF THE COUNTS AT ANGERS
Not only ordinary English tourists, but English historical scholars have been led astray in the topography of early Angers by an obstinate local tradition which long persisted in asserting that the counts and the bishops of Angers had at some time or other made an exchange of dwellings; that the old ruined hall within the castle enclosure was a piece of Roman work, and had served, before this exchange, as the synodal hall of the bishops. The date adopted for this exchange, when I visited Angers in 1877 (I have no knowledge of the place since that time) was “the ninth century”; some years before it was the twelfth or thirteenth century, and the synodal hall of the present bishop’s palace, with its undercroft, was shown and accepted as the home of all the Angevin counts down to Geoffrey Plantagenet at least. The whole history of the two palaces—that of the counts and that of the bishops—has, however, been cleared up by two local archæologists, M. de Beauregard (“Le Palais épiscopal et l’Eglise cathédrale d’Angers,” in Revue de l’Anjou et de Maine-etLoire, 1855, vol. i. pp. 246–256), and M. d’Espinay, president of the Archæological Commission of Maine-et-Loire (“Le Palais des Comtes d’Anjou,” Revue historique de l’Anjou, 1872, vol. viii. pp. 153–170; “L’Evêché d’Angers,” ib. pp. 185–201). The foundation and result of their arguments may be briefly summed up. The first bit of evidence on the subject is a charter (printed by M. de Beauregard, Revue de l’Anjou et de Maine-et-Loire, as above, vol. i. pp. 248, 249; also in Gallia Christiana, vol. xiv. instr. cols. 145, 146) of Charles the Bald, dated July 2, 851, and ratifying an exchange of lands between “Dodo venerabilis Andegavorum Episcopus et Odo illustris comes.” The exchange is thus described:—“Dedit itaque præfatus Dodo episcopus antedicto Odoni comiti, ex rebus matris ecclesiæ S. Mauricii, æquis mensuris funibusque determinatam paginam terræ juxta murum civitatis Andegavensis, in quâ opportunitas jam dicti comitis mansuræ sedis suorumque successorum esse cognoscitur
Et, e contra, in compensatione hujus rei, dedit idem Odo comes ex comitatu suo terram S. Mauricio æquis mensuris similiter funibus determinatam prænominato Dodoni episcopo successoribusque suis habendam in quâ predecessorum suorum comitum sedes fuisse memoratur.” As M. de Beauregard points out, the traditionary version —whether placing the exchange in the ninth century or in the twelfth —is based on a misunderstanding of this charter. The charter says not a word of the bishop giving up his own actual abode to the count; it says he gave a plot of ground near the city wall, and suitable for the count to build himself a house upon. Moreover the words “sedes fuisse memoratur” seem to imply that what the count gave was not his own present dwelling either, but only that which had been occupied by his predecessors. There can be little doubt that the Merovingian counts dwelt on the site of the Roman citadel of Juliomagus; and this was unquestionably where the bishop’s palace now stands. That it already stood there in the closing years of the eleventh century is proved by a charter, quoted by M. d’Espinay (Revue historique de l’Anjou, vol. viii. p. 200, note 2) from the cartulary of S. Aubin’s Abbey, giving an account of a meeting held “in domibus episcopalibus juxta S. Mauricium Andegavorum matrem ecclesiam,” in A.D. 1098.
So much for the position of the bishop’s dwelling from 851 downwards. Of the position of the count’s palace—the abode of Odo and his successors, built on the piece of land near the city wall—the first indication is in an account of a great fire at Angers in 1132: “Flante Aquilone, accensus est in mediâ civitate ignis, videlicet apud S. Anianum; et tanto incendio grassatus est ut ecclesiam S. Laudi et omnes officinas, deinde comitis aulam et omnes cameras miserabiliter combureret et in cinerem redigeret. Sicque per Aquariam descendens,” etc. (Chron. S. Serg. a. 1132, Marchegay, Eglises, p. 144). The church of S. Laud was the old chapel of S. Geneviève,—“capella B. Genovefæ virginis, infra muros civitatis Andegavæ, ante forum videlicet comitalis aulæ posita,” as it is described in a charter of Geoffrey Martel (Revue Hist. de l’Anjou, 1872, vol. viii. p. 161)—the exact position of a ruined chapel which was still visible, some twenty years ago, within the castle enclosure, not far from the hall which still remains. A fire beginning in the middle
of the city and carried by a north-east wind down to S. Laud and the Evière would not touch the present bishop’s palace, but could not fail to pass over the site of the castle. The last witness is Ralf de Diceto (Stubbs, vol. i. pp. 291, 292), who distinctly places the palace of the counts in his own day—the day of Count Henry Fitz-Empress—in the south-west corner of the city, with the river at its feet and the vineclad hills at its back; and his description of the “thalami noviter constructi” just fits in with the account of the fire, the destruction thereby wrought having doubtless been followed by a rebuilding on a more regal scale. It seems impossible to doubt the conclusion of these Angevin archæologists, that the dwelling of the bishops and the palace of the counts have occupied their present sites ever since the ninth century. In that case the present synodal hall, an undoubted work of the early twelfth century, must have been originally built for none other than its present use; and to a student of the history of the Angevin counts and kings the most precious relic in all Angers is the ruined hall looking out upon the Mayenne from over the castle ramparts. M. d’Espinay denies its Roman origin; he considers it to be a work of the tenth century or beginning of the eleventh—the one fragment, in fact, of the dwelling-place of Geoffrey Greygown and Fulk the Black which has survived, not only the fire of 1132, but also the later destruction in which the apartments built by Henry have perished.
N C.
THE MARRIAGES OF GEOFFREY GREYGOWN.
The marriages of Geoffrey Greygown form a subject at once of some importance and of considerable difficulty. It seems plain that Geoffrey was twice married, that both his wives bore the same
name, Adela or Adelaide, and that the second was in her own right countess of Chalon-sur-Saône, and widow of Lambert, count of Autun. There is no doubt about this second marriage, for we have documentary evidence that a certain Count Maurice (about whom the Angevin writers make great blunders, and of whom we shall hear more later on) was brother at once to Hugh of Chalon, son of Lambert and Adela, and to Fulk, son of Geoffrey Greygown, and must therefore have been a son of Geoffrey and Adela. A charter, dated between 992 and 998 (see Mabille, Introd. Comtes, pp. lxx–lxxi), wherein Hugh, count of Chalon, describes himself as “son of Adelaide and Lambert who was count of Chalon in right of his wife,” is approved by “Adelaide his mother and Maurice his brother.” Now as R. Glaber (l. iii. c. 2; Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. x. p. 27) declares that Hugh had no brother, Maurice must have been his half-brother, i.e. son of his mother and her second husband; and that that second husband was Geoffrey Greygown appears by several charters in which Maurice is named as brother of Fulk Nerra.
It is by no means clear who this Adela or Adelaide of Chalon was. Perry (Hist. de Chalon-sur-Saône, p. 86) and Arbois de Jubainville (Comtes de Champagne, vol. i. p. 140) say she was daughter of Robert of Vermandois, count of Troyes, and Vera, daughter of Gilbert of Burgundy and heiress of Chalon, which at her death passed to Adela as her only child. But the only authority for this Vera, Odorannus the monk of S. Peter of Sens, says she was married in 956, and Lambert called himself count of Chalon in 960 (Perry, Hist. Chalon, preuves, p. 35 See also Arbois de Jubainville as above), so that if he married Vera’s daughter he must have married a child only three years old. And to add to the confusion, Robert of Troyes’s wife in 959 signs a charter by the name of “Adelais” (Duchesne, Maison de Vergy, preuves, p. 36). What concerns us most, however, is not Adela’s parentage, but the date of her marriage with Geoffrey Greygown; or, which comes to much the same thing, the date of her first husband’s death. The cartulary of Paray-le-Monial (Lambert’s foundation) gives the date of his death as February 22, 988. If that were correct, Geoffrey, who died in July 987, could not have married Adela at all, unless she was divorced and remarried during Lambert’s life. This idea is excluded by a charter of her grandson
Theobald, which distinctly says that Geoffrey married her after Lambert’s death (Perry, Hist. Chalon, preuves, p. 39); therefore the Art de vérifier les Dates (vol. xi. p. 129) proposes to omit an x and read 978. Adela and Geoffrey, then, cannot have married earlier than the end of 978. Geoffrey, however, must have been married long before this, if his daughter Hermengard was married in 970 to Conan of Britanny (Morice, Hist. Bret., vol. i. p. 63. His authority seems to be a passage in the Chron. S. Michael. a. 970, printed in Labbe’s Bibl. Nova MSS. Librorum, vol. i. p. 350, where, however, the bride is absurdly made a daughter of Fulk Nerra instead of Geoffrey Greygown). And in Duchesne’s Maison de Vergy, preuves, p. 39, is the will, dated March 6, 974, of a Countess Adela, wife of a Count Geoffrey, whereby she bequeathes some lands to S. Aubin’s Abbey at Angers; and as the Chron. S. Albin. a. 974 (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 20) also mentions these donations, there can be little doubt that she was the wife of Geoffrey of Anjou. M. Mabille (Introd. Comtes, p. lxx) asserts that this Adela, Geoffrey Greygown’s first wife, was Adela of Vermandois, sister of Robert of Troyes, and appeals to the will above referred to in proof of his assertion; the will, however, says nothing of the sort. He also makes the second Adela sister-in-law instead of daughter to Robert (ib. p. lxxi). It seems indeed hopeless to decide on the parentage of either of these ladies; that of their children is, however, the only question really important for us. Hermengard, married in 970 to the duke of Britanny, was clearly a child of Geoffrey’s first wife; Maurice was as clearly a child of the second; but whose child was Fulk the Black? Not only is it a matter of some interest to know who was the mother of the greatest of the Angevins, but it is a question on whose solution may depend the solution of another difficulty:—the supposed, but as yet unascertained, kindred between Fulk’s son Geoffrey Martel and his wife Agnes of Burgundy. If Fulk was the son of Geoffrey Greygown and Adela of Chalon, the whole pedigree is clear, and stands thus:
1 Lambert = Adela = 2 Geoffrey
Adalbert of Lombardy = Gerberga Fulk
Otto William
Agnes = Geoffrey.
The two last would thus be cousins in the third degree of kindred according to the canon law. The only apparent difficulty of this theory is that it makes Fulk so very young. The first child of Adela of Chalon and Geoffrey cannot have been born earlier than 979, even if Adela remarried before her first year of widowhood was out; and we find Fulk Nerra heading his troops in 992, if not before. But the thing is not impossible Such precocity would not be much greater than that of Richard the Fearless, or of Fulk’s own rival Odo of Blois; and such a wonderful man as Fulk the Black may well have been a wonderful boy.
N D.
THE BRETON AND POITEVIN WARS OF GEOFFREY
GREYGOWN
The acts of Geoffrey Greygown in the Gesta Consulum are a mass of fable. The fight with the Dane Æthelwulf and that with the Saxon Æthelred are mythical on the face of them, and the writer’s habitual defiance of chronology is carried to its highest point in this chapter. From him we turn to the story of Fulk Rechin. “Ille igitur Gosfridus Grisa Gonella, pater avi mei Fulconis, cujus probitates enumerare non possumus, excussit Laudunum de manu Pictavensis comitis, et in prœlio superavit eum super Rupes, et persecutus est eum usque ad Mirebellum. Et fugavit Britones, qui venerant Andegavim cum prædatorio exercitu, quorum duces erant filii Isoani
(Conani). Et postea fuit cum duce Hugone in obsidione apud Marsonum, ubi arripuit eum infirmitas quâ exspiravit; et corpus illius allatum est Turonum et sepultum in ecclesiâ B. Martini” (Fulk Rechin, Marchegay, Comtes, p. 376).
Whoever was the author of this account, he clearly knew or cared nothing about the stories of the monkish writers, but had a perfectly distinct source of information unknown to them. For their legends he substitutes two things: a war with the count of Poitou, and a war with the duke of Britanny. On each of these wars we get some information from one other authority; the question is how to make this other authority tally with Fulk.
1. As to the Breton war, which seems to be the earlier in date.
No one but Fulk mentions the raid of Conan’s sons upon Angers; and M. Mabille (Introd. Comtes, p. xlviii) objects to it on the ground that Conan’s sons were not contemporaries of Geoffrey.
Conan of Rennes was killed in 992 in a battle with Geoffrey’s son. He had been married in 970 to Geoffrey’s daughter Hermengard (see above, pp. 121, 135). Now a daughter of Geoffrey in 970 must have been almost a child, but it by no means follows that her husband was equally young. On the contrary, he seems to have been sufficiently grown up to take a part in politics twenty years before (Morice, Hist. Bret. vol. i. p. 62). It is certain that he had several sons; it is certain that two at least of them were not Hermengard’s; it is likely that none of them were, except his successor Geoffrey. Supposing Conan was somewhat over fifty when killed (and he may have been older still) that would make him about thirty when he married Hermengard; he might have had sons ten years before that, and those sons might very easily head an attack upon their stepmother’s father in 980 or thereabouts. Surely M. Mabille here makes a needless stumbling-block of the chronology.
If no other writer confirms Fulk’s story, neither does any contradict it. But in the Gesta Consulum (Marchegay, Comtes, pp. 91–93) an exactly similar tale is told, only in much more detail and with this one difference, that Fulk Nerra is substituted for Geoffrey Greygown, and
the raid is made to take place just before that other battle of Conquereux, in 992, in which Conan perished. The only question now is, which date is the likeliest, Fulk’s or John’s? in other words, which of these two writers is the better to be trusted? Surely there can be no doubt about the choice, and we must conclude that, for once, the monk who credits Greygown with so many exploits that he never performed has denied him the honour of one to which he is really entitled.
Fulk Rechin’s account of Geoffrey’s Breton war ends here. The Breton chroniclers ignore this part of the affair altogether; they seem to take up the thread of the story where the Angevin drops it. It is they who tell us of the homage of Guerech, and of the battle of Conquereux; and their accounts of the latter are somewhat puzzling. The Chron. Britann. in Lobineau (Hist. Bret., vol. ii. col. 32) says: “982. Primum bellum Britannorum et Andegavorum in Concruz.” The Chron. S. Michael. (Labbe, Bibl. Nova, vol. i. p. 350; Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. ix. p. 98) says: “981. Conanus Curvus contra Andegavenses in Concurrum optime pugnavit.” But in the other two Breton chronicles the Angevins do not appear. The Chron. Namnetense (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. viii. p. 278) describes the battle as one between Conan and Guerech; the Chron. Briocense (Morice, Hist. Bret., preuves, vol. i. col. 32) does the same, and moreover adds that Conan was severely wounded in the right arm and fled defeated. This last is the only distinct record of the issue of the battle; nevertheless there are some little indications which, taken together, give some ground for thinking its record is wrong. 1st There is the negative evidence of the silence of the Angevin writers about the whole affair; they ignore the first battle of Conquereux as completely as the Bretons ignore the unsuccessful raid of Conan’s sons. This looks as if each party chronicled its own successes, and carefully avoided mentioning those of its adversaries. 2d. In the Hist. S. Flor. Salm. (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 260) is a proverb “Bellum Conquerentium quo tortum superavit rectum”—an obvious pun on Conan’s nickname, “Tortus” or “Curvus.” It is there quoted as having arisen from the battle of Conquereux in 992—the only one which it suits the Angevin writers to admit. But this is nonsense, for the writer has himself just told us that in that battle Conan was defeated and
slain. Therefore “the crooked overcame the straight,” i.e. Conan won the victory, in an earlier battle of Conquereux.
But how then are we to account for the Chronicle of St. Brieuc’s very circumstantial statement of Conan’s defeat?—This chronicle—a late compilation—is our only authority for all the details of the war; for Guerech’s capture and homage, and in short for all matters specially relating to Nantes. The tone of all this part of it shews plainly that its compiler, or more likely the earlier writer whom he was here copying, was a violently patriotic man of Nantes, who hated the Rennes party and the Angevins about equally, and whose chief aim was to depreciate them both and exalt the house of Nantes in the person of Guerech. So great is his spite against the Angevins that he will not even allow them the credit of having slain Conan at the second battle of Conquereux, but says Conan fell in a fight with some rebel subjects of his own! He therefore still more naturally ignores the Angevin share in the first battle of Conquereux, and makes his hero Guerech into a triumphant victor. The cause of his hatred to Anjou is of course the mean trick whereby Geoffrey obtained Guerech’s homage. There can be little doubt that the battle was after this homage—was in fact caused by it; but the facts are quite enough to account for the Nantes writer putting, as he does, the battle first, before he brings the Angevins in at all, and giving all the glory to Guerech.
2. As to the Poitevin war. “Excussit Laudunum,” etc. (Fulk Rechin, Marchegay, Comtes, p. 376. See above, p. 137).
The only other mention of this war is in the Chron. S. Maxent. (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 384), which says: “Eo tempore gravissimum bellum inter Willelmum ducem et Gofridum Andegavensem comitem peractum est. Sed Gaufridus, necessitatibus actus, Willelmo duci se subdidit seque in manibus præbuit, et ab eo Lausdunum castrum cum nonnullis aliis in Pictavensi pago beneficio accepit.” M. Mabille pronounces these two accounts incompatible; but are they? The Poitevin account, taken literally and alone, looks rather odd. William and Geoffrey fight; Geoffrey is “compelled by necessity” to make submission to William—but he is invested by his conqueror with Loudun and other fiefs. That is, the practical gain is on the side of
the beaten party On the other hand, Fulk Rechin, taken literally and alone, gives no hint of any submission on Geoffrey’s part. But why cannot the two accounts be made to supplement and correct each other, as in the case of the Breton war? The story would then stand thus: Geoffrey takes Loudun and defeats William at Les Roches, as Fulk says. Subsequent reverses compel him to agree to terms so far that he holds his conquests as fiefs of the count of Poitou.
The case is nearly parallel to that of the Breton war; again the Angevin count and the hostile chronicler tell the story between them, each telling the half most agreeable to himself, and the two halves fit into a whole.
M. Mabille’s last objection is that the real Fulk Rechin would have known better than to say that Geoffrey pursued William as far as Mirebeau, a place which had no existence till the castle was built by Fulk Nerra in 1000. Why should he not have meant simply “the place where Mirebeau now stands”? And even if he did think the name existed in Greygown’s day, what does that prove against his identity? Why should not Count Fulk make slips as well as other people?
The date of the war is matter of guess-work. The S. Maxentian chronicler’s “eo tempore” comes between 989 and 996, i.e. after Geoffrey’s death. One can only conjecture that it should have come just at the close of his life.
N E.
THE GRANT OF MAINE TO GEOFFREY GREYGOWN.
That a grant of the county of Maine was made by Hugh Capet to a count of Anjou is pretty clear from the later history; that the grant was made to Geoffrey Greygown is not so certain. The story comes only
from the Angevin historians; and they seem to have systematically carried back to the time of Greygown all the claims afterwards put forth by the counts of Anjou to what did not belong to them. They evidently knew nothing of his real history, so they used him as a convenient lay figure on which to hang all pretensions that wanted a foundation and all stories that wanted a hero, in total defiance of facts and dates. They have transferred to him one exploit whose hero, if he was an Angevin count at all, could only have been Fulk Nerra—the capture of Melun in 999. An examination of this story will be more in place when we come to the next count; but it rouses a suspicion that after all Geoffrey may have had no more to do with Maine than with Melun.—The story of the grant of Maine in the Gesta Consulum (Marchegay, Comtes, pp. 77, 78) stands thus: David, count of Maine, and Geoffrey, count of Corbon, refuse homage to king Robert. The king summons his barons to help him, among them the count of Anjou. The loyal Geoffrey takes his rebel namesake’s castle of Mortagne and compels him to submit to the king; David still holds out, whereupon Robert makes a formal grant of “him and his Cenomannia” to Greygown and his heirs for ever
On this M. l’abbé Voisin (Les Cénomans anciens et modernes, p. 337) remarks: “Cette chronique renferme avec un fonds de vérité des détails évidemment érronés; le Geoffroy d’Anjou, dont il est ici question, n’est pas suffisamment connu. C’est à lui que Guillaume de Normandie fait rendre hommage par son fils Robert; c’est lui, sans doute, qui, suivant les historiens de Mayenne, fut seigneur de cette ville et commanda quelque temps dans le Maine et l’Anjou, sous Louis d’Outremer; au milieu d’une assemblée des comtes et des barons de son parti, Robert l’aurait investi de ce qu’il possédait alors dans ces deux provinces.”
The Abbé’s story is quite as puzzling as the monk’s. His mention of Robert of Normandy is inexplicable, for it can refer to nothing but the homage of Robert Curthose to Geoffrey the Bearded in 1063. His meaning, however, seems to be that the Geoffrey in question was not Greygown at all, but another Geoffrey of whom he says in p. 353 that he was son of Aubert of Lesser Maine, and “gouverneur d’Anjou et du Maine, sous Louis IV. roi de France; il avait épousé une dame
de la maison de Bretagne, dont on ignore le nom; il eu eut trois fils; Juhel, Aubert et Guérin; il mourut l’an 890.” This passage M. Voisin gives as a quotation, but without a reference. He then goes on: “Nous avons cherché précédemment à expliquer de quelle manière ce Geoffroi se serait posé en rival de Hugues-David;” and he adds a note: “D’autres aimeront peut-être mieux supposer une erreur de nom et de date dans la Chronique” [what chronicle?] “et dire qu’il s’agit de Foulques-le-Bon.” There is no need to “suppose”; a man who died in 890 could not be count of anything under Louis IV. But where did M. Voisin find this other Geoffrey, and how does his appearance mend the matter? He seems to think the Gesta-writers have transferred this man’s doings to their own hero Greygown, by restoring them to what he considers their rightful owner he finds no difficulty in accepting the date, temp. King Robert. But the Abbé’s King Robert is not the Gesta-writers’ King Robert. He means Robert I., in 923; they mean Robert II., though no doubt they have confused the two. In default of evidence for M. Voisin’s story we must take that of the Gesta as it stands and see what can be made of it.
In 923, the time of Robert I., Geoffrey Greygown was not born, and Anjou was held by his grandfather Fulk the Red. In 996–1031, the time of Robert II., Geoffrey was dead, and Anjou was held by his son Fulk the Black. Moreover, according to M. Voisin, David of Maine died at latest in 970, and Geoffrey of Corbon lived 1026–1040.
From all this it results:
1. If Maine was granted to a count of Anjou by Robert I., it was not to Geoffrey Greygown.
2. If it was granted by Robert II., it was also not to Geoffrey.
3. If it was granted to Geoffrey, it can only have been by Hugh Capet.
There is one writer who does bring Hugh into the affair: “Electo autem a Francis communi consilio, post obitum Lotharii, Hugone Capet in regem ... cum regnum suum circuiret, Turonisque descendens Cenomannensibusque consulem imponeret,” etc. (Gesta Ambaz. Domin., Marchegay, Comtes, p. 160). He does not
say who this new count was, but there can be little doubt it was the reigning count of Anjou; and this, just after Hugh’s accession, would be Fulk Nerra. On the other hand, the writer ignores Louis V. and makes Hugh succeed Lothar. Did he mean to place these events in that year, 986–7, when Hugh was king de facto but not de jure? In that case the count would be Geoffrey Greygown.
The compilers of the Gesta, however, simplify all these old claims by stating that the king (i.e. the duke) gave Geoffrey a sort of carteblanche to take and keep anything he could get: “dedit Gosfrido comiti quidquid Rex Lotarius in episcopatibus suis habuerat, Andegavensi scilicet et Cenomannensi. Si qua vero alia ipse vel successores sui adquirere poterant, eâ libertate quâ ipse tenebat sibi commendata concessit.” Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 76.
London, Macmillan & Co.
Wagner & Debes’ Geogˡ. Estabᵗ. Leipsic.
CHAPTER III.
ANJOU AND BLOIS.
987–1044.
O of the wildest of the legends which have gathered round the Angevin house tells how a count of Anjou had wedded a lady of unknown origin and more than earthly beauty, who excited the suspicions of those around her by her marked dislike to entering a church, and her absolute refusal to be present at the consecration of the Host. At last her husband, urged by his friends, resolved to compel her to stay. By his order, when the Gospel was ended and she was about to leave the church as usual, she was stopped by four armed men. As they laid hold of her mantle she shook it from her shoulders; two of her little children stood beneath its folds at her right hand, two at her left. The two former she left behind, the latter she caught up in her arms, and, floating away through a window of the church, she was seen on earth no more. “What wonder,” was the comment of Richard Cœur-de-Lion upon this story; “what wonder if we lack the natural affections of mankind—we who come from the devil, and must needs go back to the devil?”[293]
[293] Girald. Cambr. De Instr. Princ., dist. iii. c. 27 (Angl. Christ. Soc., p. 154).
One is tempted to think that the excited brains of the closing tenth century, filled with dim presages of horror that were floating about in expectation of the speedy end of the world, must have wrought out this strange tale by way of explaining the career of Fulk the Black. [294] His contemporaries may well have reckoned him among the phenomena of the time; they may well have had recourse to a theory
of supernatural agency or demoniac possession to account for the rapid developement of talents and passions which both alike seemed almost more than human. When the county of Anjou was left to him by the death of his father Geoffrey Greygown, Fulk was a child scarce eight years old.[295] Surrounded by powerful foes whom Geoffrey’s aggressions had provoked rather than checked—without an ally or protector unless it were the new king—Fulk began life with everything against him. Yet before he has reached the years of manhood the young count meets us at every turn, and always in triumph. Throughout the fifty-three years of his reign Fulk is one of the most conspicuous and brilliant figures in French history. His character seems at times strangely self-contradictory. Mad bursts of passion, which would have been the ruin of an ordinary man, but which seem scarcely to have made a break in his cool, calculating, far-seeing policy; a rapid and unerring perception of his own ends, a relentless obstinacy in pursuing them, an utter disregard of the wrong and suffering which their pursuit might involve; and then ever and anon fits of vehement repentance, ignorant, blind, fruitless as far as any lasting amendment was concerned, yet at once awe-striking and touching in its short-lived, wrong-headed earnestness—all these seeming contradictions yet make up, not a puzzling abstraction, but an intensely living character—the character, in a word, of the typical Angevin count.
[294] “Fulco Nerra” or “Niger,” “Palmerius” and “Hierosolymitanus” are his historical surnames I can find no hint whether the first was derived from his complexion or from the colour of the armour which he usually wore (as in the case of the “Black Prince”); the origin of the two last will be seen later.
[295] This is on the supposition that Adela of Chalon was his mother; see note C to chap ii above
For more than a hundred years after the accession of Hugh Capet, the history of the kingdom which he founded consists chiefly of the struggles of the great feudataries among themselves to get and to keep control over the action of the crown. The duke of the French
had gained little save in name by his royal coronation and unction. He was no nearer than his Karolingian predecessors had been to actual supremacy over the Norman duchy, the Breton peninsula, and the whole of southern Gaul. Aquitaine indeed passed from cold contempt to open aggression. When one of her princes, the count of Poitou, had at length made unwilling submission to the northern king, a champion of southern independence issued from far Périgord to punish him, stormed Poitiers, marched up to the Loire, and sat down in triumph before Tours, whose count, Odo of Blois, was powerless to relieve it. The king himself could find no more practical remonstrance than the indignant question, “Who made thee count?” and the sole reply vouchsafed by Adalbert of Périgord was the fair retort, “Who made thee king?” Tours fell into his hands, and was made over, perhaps in mockery, to the youthful count of Anjou. The loyalty of its governor and citizens, however, soon restored it to its lawful owner, and Adalbert’s dreams of conquest ended in failure and retreat.[296] Still, Aquitaine remained independent as of old; Hugh’s real kingdom took in little more than the old duchy of France “between Seine and Loire”; and even within these limits it almost seemed that in grasping at the shadow of the crown he had loosened his hold on the substance of his ducal power. The regal authority was virtually a tool in the hands of whichever feudatary could secure its exercise for his own ends. As yet Aquitaine and Britanny stood aloof from the struggle; Normandy had not yet entered upon it; at present therefore it lay between the vassals of the duchy of France. Foremost among them in power, wealth, and extent of territory was the count of Blois, Chartres and Tours. His dominions pressed close against the eastern border of Anjou, and it was on her ability to cope with him that her fate chiefly depended. Was the house of Anjou or the house of Blois to win the pre-eminence in central Gaul? This was the problem which confronted Fulk the Black, and to whose solution he devoted his life. His whole course was governed by one fixed principle and directed to one paramount object—the consolidation of his marchland. To that object everything else was made subservient. Every advantage thrown in his way by circumstances, by the misfortunes, mistakes or weaknesses of foes or friends—for he used the one as unscrupulously as the other—was
caught up and pursued with relentless vigour One thread of settled policy ran through the seemingly tangled skein of his life, a thread never broken even by the wildest outbursts of his almost demoniac temper or his superstitious alarms. While he seemed to be throwing his whole energies into the occupation of the moment—whether it were the building or the besieging of a fortress, the browbeating of bishop or king, the cajoling of an ally or the crushing of a rival on the battle-field—that work was in reality only a part of a much greater work. Every town mirrored in the clear streams that water the “garden of France”—as the people of Touraine call their beautiful country—has its tale of the Black Count, the “great builder” beneath whose hands the whole lower course of the Loire gradually came to bristle with fortresses; but far above all his castles of stone and mortar there towered a castle in the air, the plan of a mighty political edifice. Every act of his life was a step towards its realization; every fresh success in his long career of triumph was another stone added to the gradual building up of Angevin dominion and greatness.
[296] Ademar of Chabanais, Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. x. p. 146. The date seems to be about 990; but Ademar has confused Odo I. of Blois with his son Odo of Champagne.
Fulk’s first victory was won before he was fourteen, over a veteran commander who had been more than a match for his father ten years earlier. The death of Geoffrey Greygown was soon followed by that of Count Guerech of Nantes; he, too, left only a young son, Alan; and when Alan also died in 990, Conan of Rennes, already master of all the rest of Britanny, seized his opportunity to take forcible possession of Nantes,[297] little dreaming of a possible rival in his young brother-in-law beyond the Mayenne. While his back was turned and he was busy assembling troops at Bruerech, at the other end of Britanny, the Angevin worked upon the old hatred of the Nantes people to the house of Rennes; with the craft of his race he won over some of the guards, by fair words and solid bribes, till he gained admittance into the city and received oaths and hostages from its inhabitants. He then returned home to collect troops for an
attack upon the citadel, which was held by Conan’s men. Conan, as soon as he heard the tidings, marched upon Nantes with all his forces; as before, he brought with him a body of Norman auxiliaries, likely to be of no small use in assaulting a place such as Nantes, whose best defence is its broad river—for the “Pirates” had not yet forgotten the days when the water was their natural element and the long keels were their most familiar home. While the Norman ships blocked the river, Conan’s troops beset the town by land, and thus, with the garrison shooting down at them from the citadel, the townsfolk of Nantes were between three fires when Fulk advanced to their rescue.[298] Conan at once sent the audacious boy a challenge to meet him, on such a day, in a pitched battle on the field of Conquereux, where ten years before a doubtful fight had been waged between Conan and Fulk’s father. This time the Bretons trusted to lure their enemies to complete destruction by a device which, in days long after, was successfully employed by Robert Bruce against the English army at Bannockburn; they dug a series of trenches right across the swampy moor, covered them with bushes, branches, leaves and thatch, supported by uprights stuck into the ditches, and strewed the surface with ferns till it was indistinguishable from the surrounding moorland. Behind this line of hidden pitfalls Conan drew up his host, making a feint of unwillingness to begin the attack. Fulk, panting for his first battle with all the ardour of youth, urged his men to the onset; the flower of the Angevin troops charged right into the Breton pitfalls; men and horses became hopelessly entangled; two thousand went down in the swampy abyss and were drowned, slaughtered or crushed to death. [299] The rest fled in disorder; Fulk himself was thrown from his horse and fell to the ground, weighed down by his armour, perhaps too heavy for his boyish frame. In an instant he was up again, wild with rage, burning to avenge his overthrow, calling furiously upon his troops. The clear, young voice of their leader revived the courage of the Angevins; “as the storm-wind sweeps down upon the thick cornrigs”[300]—so their historian tells—they rushed upon the foe; and their momentary panic was avenged by the death of Conan and the almost total destruction of his host.[301] The blow overthrew the
