The Holy Thief

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IN THE HEIGHT OF A HOT SUMMER, in late August of 1144, Geoffrey de Mandeville, Earl of Essex, deferred to the heat of the sun, and made the final, fatal mistake of his long and opportunist career. He was engaged, at the time, in planning the destruction by siege of one of the circle of improvized but effective fortresses King Stephen had thrown up to contain and compress the depredations of Geoffrey’s host of outlaws, rebels and predators in the Fen country. For more than a year, from his elusive bases in the Fens, Geoffrey had so devastated the countryside as to ensure that not a field should be safely planted or reaped, not a manor properly tended, not a man with anything of value to lose should be left in possession of it, and not one who refused to surrender it should be left with even a life to lose. As the king had wrested from him all his own relatively legitimate castles and lands and titles, none too legally if the truth be told, so Geoffrey had set to work in defiance to do as much to every man, poor or rich, who got in his way. For a year, from the borders of Huntingdon to Mildenhall in Suffolk and over much of Cambridgeshire, the Fens had become an enclosed robber kingdom in spite of King Stephen’s head, and though his hasty ring of castles had done something to prevent its further enlargement, it had not hampered the earl’s movements greatly, or brought him to the battle he was expert at avoiding.

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