Longchamp had no interest in prisoners other than his king and he shrugged. He’d never dreaded anything so much as what he must do now. “Sire . . . I must tell you about the events that resulted in my exile from England.”
Richard already knew. It had taken months for letters to reach him in the Holy Land, but eventually they did. Longchamp had been resisted from the first by men who scorned him for his low birth and misshapen body and arrogance, but it was his own misstep that would bring him down. Richard had commanded his brothers John and Geoff to stay out of England until his return, although he later relented at his mother’s urgings. Longchamp had not believed Geoff had been released from his oath, and when the archbishop landed at Dover, the castellan of the great castle, wed to Longchamp’s sister, had ordered his arrest. Geoff had taken refuge in St Martin’s priory, and after a standoff of several days, he’d been taken out by force and imprisoned in the castle. Longchamp himself had not been in Dover at the time, and when he’d heard, he’d ordered Geoff’s release. But by then, it was too late. People were horrified that an archbishop had been treated with such disrespect and the sanctuary violated, especially since it had been barely twenty years since the Archbishop of Canterbury had been slain in his own cathedral. The other bishops had united against Longchamp, John had proclaimed himself the champion of the half brother he’d always despised, and the chancellor’s belated attempts to placate his foes were for naught. Stripped of his high offices, he’d had to take refuge in the Tower of London, and his chancellorship came to an ignominious end.
For Longchamp, even worse was to come. He’d always shown considerable courage for a man so physically vulnerable, but he briefly lost his nerve and sought to flee England in defiance of the great council’s ban. Richard had heard several accounts of his disastrous escape attempt, one that he’d donned a monk’s habit and the most popular version—that he’d camouflaged himself in women’s clothing. But he’d been apprehended, his identity revealed, and the most virulent of his enemies, Hugh de Nonant, Bishop of Coventry, had circulated a scurrilous, hilarious letter that purported to describe Longchamp’s misadventures on a Dover beach, accosted by a lustful fisherman who’d taken the disguised chancellor for a whore.
Whatever the truth of these stories, Richard had no intention of making Longchamp humiliate himself by recounting any of them. “I already know what happened, Guillaume. I will not deny that you made some grave mistakes. Nor was I happy to learn of them, although I never doubted your loyalty. But you were not entirely to blame; there is plenty of that to go around. It is clear now that my brother Johnny had it in mind to sabotage your efforts from the outset. As for my brother Geoff . . . well, that one will be arguing with St Peter at Heaven’s gate.”
Richard reached out and patted the other man on the shoulder. “What’s past is past, and we need not speak of it again.” But instead of the relief he’d expected to see, Longchamp’s face showed only misery.
“Sire . . . there is more. I have long been slandered and defamed by my enemies. It is true I come from a modest background, but I am not the grandson of a serf, as the Bishop of Coventry claims; my father held a knight’s fee of Hugh de Lacy. Nor did I disregard the advice of my fellow justiciars or live as lavishly as they say. They scorned me as an ‘obscure foreigner’ and detested me for not being English, but their real grievance was that I was not meek and obsequious and that I dared to challenge my ‘betters.’ I do not deny I sought to advance my kin and I may have relied too much upon my fellow ‘foreigners,’ filling posts with men from my native Normandy.”
“I know of the complaints made against you,” Richard said, somewhat impatiently, for he saw no reason to dwell upon this now.
Longchamp’s cheeks had gone scarlet. “But you do not know of the worst accusations, my lord king, spread by that son of perdition, the Bishop of Coventry. I myself did not hear of them until recently. They are vile beyond belief. Hugh de Nonant and his lackeys say that . . . that I have committed the most grievous of sins: that I have taken young boys into my bed.”
He’d been staring down at his clenched hands as he spoke, but he forced himself to look up now, to meet Richard’s eyes. “My liege, I swear to you that these are wicked, despicable lies. I would never, never indulge in such a perversion, such a—”