The Winter Crown (21 page)

Matilda removed his shoes and sat cross-legged like a little tailor to study them. She fiddled about, folding and unfolding the vamp and chattering to him earnestly as she pretended to make his shoes. Henry raised his eyebrows. ‘So this one’s future is as a leather worker,’ he said to Alienor.

‘It runs in the family, does it not?’ Alienor replied and Henry gave a shout of laughter because William the Conqueror, his great-grandsire, had been the grandson of a common Falaise tanner. He was secure enough in his own manhood to find the detail a source of grand amusement.

Matilda trotted off to a corner with the shoes, saying she had to attend to them in her workshop.

Henry drank his wine and when he and Alienor looked at each other it was with reciprocal mirth. Children as well as dividing a couple could bring them together.

‘Ho, mistress, are my shoes ready?’ Henry shouted.

‘Nearly, Papa! You have to wait!’

‘You don’t know how impossible that is for your father,’ Alienor said. ‘I don’t think anyone has ever dared say that to his face before.’

Henry raised his goblet in a sarcastic toast. ‘I can bide my time if I must.’

Matilda returned to him, pink in the face. Each shoe now had a large green cross stitched in embroidery wool to the vamp strip down the front. ‘Here you are, Papa,’ she said. ‘They’re all new now.’

Henry’s chest heaved with suppressed laughter. ‘I can see that they are. No one else will have any quite like this.’

‘No, Papa, they cost five marks.’

Henry choked. ‘Who have you been taking lessons from, mistress? You should ask my chancellor to buy them if you’re demanding that sort of sum!’

‘But they’re special, Papa!’ Matilda explained. ‘You can wear them this way, or that way.’ She folded the vamp over to demonstrate the attractions. A long trail of green thread dangled from one of the shoes. She knelt and placed them back on his feet with comical seriousness.

‘She gets her shrewdness and powers of persuasion from me,’ Alienor said, her shoulders shaking.

‘Oh, very well,’ Henry capitulated. ‘But you will still have to ask my chancellor for the money because he has the keys to the strongbox. But you may have this as a token of my faith.’ He tugged a small gold ring off his little finger and presented it to her.

Matilda took it from him with a curtsey and then backed away with a mercantile flourish that made Henry snort. He signalled to her nurse and the woman came from her seat near the door to take Matilda off to bed.

Henry readjusted his shoe, but made no attempt to remove the awkward big green stitches, and Alienor’s heart was warm that he should do that and not mind; indeed that he should take time to play with his daughter.

‘If only you were always like this,’ she said softly.

He raised one eyebrow. ‘You likewise, my love.’

The door opened to admit a chamberlain, ushering before him a chaplain from the household of Theobald of Canterbury. Alienor marked their progress across the room. The chaplain’s expression was grim, and his face grey with tiredness. She also noted the mud-spattered hem of his cloak.

With an effort he knelt to Henry and Alienor. ‘Sire, madam, I bring you grave and sad tidings. It grieves me to tell you that my lord the Archbishop of Canterbury gave up his soul to God at sunrise on the feast of Saint Apollonius.’

Alienor was saddened, but not surprised by the news. The elderly Archbishop had been ailing during her last visit to him in England before she returned to Anjou. The difficulty now would be finding someone wise enough to replace him from the candidates who would hope to be chosen. The Bishop of Hereford for one, and Robert of London for another. She was not particularly fond of either man, but then again, the see could be left vacant for as much as a year while candidates were considered. What they needed was a primate who would serve both Church and State with a tactful and even hand, and that was not going to be easy.

Isabel was sitting in a window embrasure, her sewing tilted towards the light, when William FitzEmpress strolled up and sat down beside her. She shifted on the seat to put space between them, her stomach clenching. She had noticed him looking at her recently like a cat biding its time at a mouse hole.

‘You spend a great deal of time at such toil,’ he commented.

‘I enjoy the work,’ she replied, ‘and it is practical.’

‘But surely it is not all your life.’

‘Indeed not.’ Isabel was flustered. ‘My life is full. I attend upon the Queen and I have my own duties as a countess.’

‘But surely not full enough. It must be empty for you without a husband to protect and advise you – and give you heirs for your earldom.’

Isabel lowered her gaze to her needlework, worried at the course the conversation was taking. ‘I mourn my husband deeply, even now,’ she said. ‘And since I am under the Queen’s protection and have loyal people to serve me, I have not considered the matter.’

He shrugged. ‘But you must turn thought to it in the near future. It is a year and a half since you were widowed.’

Isabel pressed her lips together. His words had formed a knot of fear in her belly as she remembered what had happened to her sister-in-law. The former Abbess of Romsey was now wed to Matthew of Alsace and pregnant with his child. The King could do anything he desired and no one could stop him.

Across the hall a sudden vicious sibling fight broke out between three-and-a-half-year-old Richard and six-year-old Harry. The small boys rolled about on the floor, punching, kicking and yelling. Their sister Matilda tried to pull them apart and was sent flying by a wayward blow.

Hamelin FitzCount, who was on his way through the hall, diverted to drag his nephews off each other and stand them at arm’s length, giving each of them a good shake. ‘Enough!’ he roared. ‘Is this the behaviour of royal heirs?’ Their sister sat on the floor crying and rubbing her arm.

‘I must see to my lady Matilda,’ Isabel said, relieved to have a reason to leave her place. ‘You will excuse me, sire.’

William rose to his feet, taking his time. ‘We shall talk again, my lady,’ he said.

Isabel murmured an inanity and eased past the small space he afforded her, making her focus the sobbing little girl and not his predatory smile.

‘Come, come,’ she soothed, stooping to Matilda, ‘brothers are not worth shedding tears over, and this is but a graze.’ She kissed the angry red stripe on Matilda’s forearm.

Having confiscated the toy sword over which his nephews had been fighting, Hamelin stuck it in his own belt.

‘You make a good nursemaid,’ William sneered, sauntering over with folded arms.

‘I learned from my childhood mistakes,’ Hamelin said and turned back to Richard and Harry, who were both glaring at him, united against a common enemy. ‘You can have this back when I see fit. Now go, and if you must fight, do it somewhere you’re not going to be a nuisance to others.’

Isabel folded a comforting arm around Matilda and took her upstairs to Alienor’s chamber to find some salve for the graze. Halfway there she realised she had left her needlework behind but wild horses could not have dragged her back to retrieve it while William FitzEmpress remained in the hall.

Alienor was busy dictating a letter to her scribe when Isabel and Matilda arrived.

‘Richard and Harry were fighting over a sword,’ Isabel told her, ‘and Matilda tried to stop them.’

Alienor sighed. ‘Harry and Richard would fight over anything, and it won’t be long before Geoffrey is joining in. I sometimes believe the tales about Angevins being born of the Devil are true. The males of the line certainly seem to have the Devil in them.’ She stroked her daughter’s hair as Isabel searched in a casket for a pot of salve. ‘It is the task of a woman to be a peacemaker,’ she told Matilda, ‘and a very important one it is too. Kingdoms have been won on the diplomacy of a woman’s work, but she should also know when not to waste her time on a lost cause.’

‘Richard and Harry are lost causes,’ Matilda said, putting her nose in the air.

‘Yes, they are.’

Isabel had just finished rubbing salve into Matilda’s grazed arm when Hamelin arrived to take Emma to visit their father’s tomb while the court was still in Le Mans. Isabel eyed the disputed toy sword still stuck through his belt. Hamelin followed the direction of her gaze and gave a dry smile. ‘I shall keep this safe for the time being,’ he said. ‘I’ll think about returning it later if my nephews are polite to me. In the meantime I have something for you, my lady.’ He produced her sewing from under his cloak. ‘I don’t mind wandering the court with a toy sword stuck through my belt, but a piece of lady’s needlecraft holds its own set of dangers. You left it behind and I thought I would spare you or your maid the trouble of fetching it.’

Isabel felt her face grow warm. ‘Thank you, that was kind of you.’

‘I could see you were done with the company,’ Hamelin replied with a quirk of his eyebrow. He bowed to her and departed with Emma. Isabel saw to Matilda and then took her sewing away to a quiet corner. She felt unsettled and a little weepy. All the feelings about losing Will washed over her again. The guilt that she had been unable to help him; that she had failed as a wife. She didn’t want to think about making another match, but knew she was on borrowed time.

Alienor joined her on the bench. ‘You have come here to hide,’ she said. ‘This corner is far too dark for sewing. What is wrong?’

Isabel shook her head. ‘I was thinking of my husband,’ she said. ‘The King’s brother came to me in the hall and said it was time I thought about remarrying.’ A tear plopped on to the fabric. ‘But when I try to imagine myself as another man’s wife, I cannot.’

Alienor set a gentle arm around her shoulders. ‘You will have to wed again at some point,’ she said. ‘It is inevitable; you know that. You have a duty to your lands to give them an heir.’

‘But not yet!’ Isabel’s voice grated with panic. ‘Let me stay in your household a while longer.’

‘Oh, now you are being foolish,’ Alienor said with exasperation. ‘I will make sure you are not pestered, but it cannot be forever.’ She gave her a firm look.

Isabel swallowed. ‘I understand that, madam,’ she said, but her heart quailed at the thought of being tied to William FitzEmpress. ‘I just need a little more time.’

Holding a bowl filled with gobbets of raw rabbit flesh, Alienor fed the white female gyrfalcon perched on the hawk stand in her chamber. La Reina was old and no longer ruled the skies as she had done in her prime. Alienor had a new young gyrfalcon in training, but she kept La Reina as a pet, and still flew her in the exercise yard on bright days when the sun was warm on the bird’s gleaming white feathers. The falcon seized a lump of meat from Alienor’s fingers and gulped it down. In spite of her years she still had a voracious appetite.

Alienor glanced round as Henry arrived. ‘Your brother is paying court to Isabel de Warenne,’ she said. ‘I assume he has your permission. When were you going to tell me?’

‘I thought you knew,’ he said blandly.

‘Your mother dropped hints when last I saw her. I suppose you were using her as your filter to avoid broaching the matter with me in person.’ She pursed her lips and made a smacking sound to the bird. ‘Perhaps I have someone else in mind. She might settle very well with one of my own barons.’

‘But her keeping is not in your gift,’ Henry said. ‘It is for me to decide.’ He removed his cloak and tossed it across an oak chest. ‘My brother is the son of an empress and the grandson of a king, and that matches with what she had before. Why should I want to give one of your barons influence in England? My brother already has English estates and this will suit him very well.’ He picked up the toy sword lying on the hearth bench. Hamelin had earlier restored the weapon to Harry and Richard following a stiff lecture about actions and consequences.

‘But you put your men in positions of authority in my household,’ she retorted. ‘My chancellor and my steward are both your choices. Why should I not reward one of my own? I am sure you could afford one switch of affinity. There are plenty of other women your brother could marry.’

Henry scowled. ‘That is not the point. William will marry Isabel de Warenne: I have promised him; you will not fight me on this.’ He cut the air left and right with his son’s sword. Swish, swish.

Alienor fed the gyrfalcon another gobbet of meat and stroked her snowy breast. ‘Isabel is not ready for remarriage. I cannot see the need for haste when the revenues stay in your hands while she remains a widow. No one is going to abduct her out of my household. She is safe and she will still be of childbearing age even if you delay another year. Let your brother bide his time a while longer and I will encourage Isabel to take a more active part in the life of the court.’

Henry gave her a dark look. ‘I will not wait forever on this,’ he said. ‘When I give the command, it shall be done.’

‘Indeed, as you say.’ Alienor was prepared to be conciliatory now she had at least the hint of a concession.

Henry gave a brusque nod, put down the sword and went to pour himself a cup of wine.

‘Your sons were arguing over that toy and Hamelin had to sort them out,’ she told him. ‘Brotherly love does not extend to sharing possessions.’

‘Brotherly love is rarer than daylight in December,’ he said with cynical amusement. ‘If it was over a weapon, I expect Richard started it.’

Alienor wiped her bloodied fingers on a napkin. ‘He is very forward for his age. He learns swiftly and he is dextrous. He doesn’t see himself as smaller than Harry.’ She felt a quiet glimmer of pride. She loved both of her sons, but Richard was the one she had marked out.

‘But he will have to learn his place in the family nonetheless, and that is subordinate to Harry as the heir.’

Alienor said nothing. Richard would not view himself as subordinate to anyone and she had no intention of dampening his spirit.

Henry took a swallow of wine and after a long moment said: ‘What would you say if I told you I was thinking of making Thomas Becket Archbishop of Canterbury?’

Alienor turned and stared at him in astonishment, and then disbelief. ‘I should say you were utterly mad! He is already the chancellor. Why would you want to give him more power than that?’