The Winter Crown (26 page)

‘The Archbishop has ruled that the proposed match between you and William FitzEmpress is consanguineous and he will not be issuing a dispensation.’

Isabel gasped.

Alienor curled her lip. ‘Of course the Archbishop’s reasons are mostly not concerned with accommodating my plea, but still, he has seen fit to block the proposed match.’ She smiled to see the change in Isabel as realisation dawned and her face flushed with colour.

‘Thank you, madam!’ Tears welled in Isabel’s eyes. ‘Thank you! I dared not hope for a reprieve.’

‘I said I would do what I could.’ Alienor grasped Isabel’s hand. ‘The King has not taken this defeat well; you must be careful around him. I do not think his brother will be sanguine either, so you had better keep to the bower until the storm passes.’

Isabel nodded and wiped her eyes on her sleeve. ‘I owe you a debt I can never repay.’

‘Let there be no talk of debts. I did little enough but write a letter.’

‘Even so, madam, I am grateful – and even if you say there is no debt, I still hope one day to repay you,’ Isabel said stoutly.

‘You can do that by living the opportunity you have been given to the full,’ Alienor said, a bleak look entering her eyes. ‘With all your strength and without looking back. So few of us are permitted that grace.’

‘He cannot do that!’ William FitzEmpress shouted in furious disbelief. ‘He cannot ban my match with Isabel de Warenne on the grounds of consanguinity!’

‘He can and he has,’ Henry said, tight-lipped.

‘Why?’ William demanded. ‘And why didn’t you stop him?’ He crashed his fist down on the table, causing the goblets on it to leap and the wine to slop on to the board. ‘You said everything would be simple once Becket was Archbishop of Canterbury, so why isn’t it simple now?’

Henry’s face reddened. ‘I was not to know that becoming an archbishop would addle his wits.’ He waved his hand impatiently. ‘You will just have to take a different bride. I will find you one.’

‘From where?’ William spat. ‘Out of thin air? There are no other women with lands or connections comparable to hers. You promised her to me. Are you going to let an upstart like Becket get away with this? Appeal to the Pope; get a dispensation from him!’

‘I have greater concerns than that with the Archbishop,’ Henry replied. ‘It will be for the best if you do marry elsewhere; I have made up my own mind on this; accept it and be done.’

‘I will never accept it!’ William shouted. ‘Becket is a common huckster’s son who winds us all around his precious archbishop’s crozier, a crozier you gave to him. Mark me, he will bring you down if you do not stop him. You are his dupe, brother. Do not expect me in my turn to be yours!’

‘I have heard enough,’ Henry said. ‘Get out.’

‘Enough, mayhap, but this is not the end.’ William strode to the door. ‘We shall see!’ He banged from the room, yelling for his squire.

Seated at the long dining trestle on the high dais, Alienor looked out on the gathered clergy and nobles. Archbishop Becket had blessed the bread, and servants were bringing the first-course dishes of roast venison, roast capon and spiced frumenty to the high table. There was an empty place halfway along the board that should have been occupied by Henry’s brother, but he had not been seen since storming out several hours ago calling for his horse to be saddled.

At a brusque gesture from Henry, a steward quietly removed the setting and everyone eased along on the bench so there was no gap to show that a place had been laid for the King’s brother at the high table. Harry sat between his parents under the gilded canopy as a special honour. He was boosted to the height of the adult company with the aid of several silk cushions and his eyes shone with pride and a certain smug pleasure. His siblings all had to sit with their nurses at a different table, their presence emphasising the virility of the royal bloodline, but keeping them separate. They could gain experience and learn their manners without being a nuisance to the adults. Richard kept glowering at Harry, his jealousy plain to see, and Harry responded to it by smirking and preening in his fine new clothes.

Henry’s mood was dour and he barely spoke to the Archbishop. He tapped his fingers on the board; he fidgeted, and ate his food with the deliberation of a soldier on campaign, champing through it without enjoyment.

Alienor could see that more trouble was brewing between the men. Henry intended to raise taxes and Becket had been objecting on behalf of the sheriffs. The Archbishop had also been insisting that the barons still holding Church lands they had seized during the civil war, now ten years over, should disgorge their gains. There were numerous bitter disputes over the issue with claims and counter-claims clogging the courts. Becket was insisting on observing the minutiae and Henry thought there was no good reason for Becket’s obstruction beyond high-handed power play.

There was the additional matter of criminous clerks, which Henry had hoped to tackle with Becket in the dual roles of chancellor and archbishop, but that strategy was now as defunct as a mill with a boulder thrown into the cogs.

Henry’s opinion, widely shared, was that every crime in the country should be tried in a secular court. Becket, however, insisted that clerics must be tried in the Church’s own courts, in keeping with current practice. Henry wanted the law restored to that of his grandfather’s time, when everyone, whatever their occupation, had been tried by the ancient customs of the land. Too many concessions had been made to the Church in moments of need, and it was time for everything to be put back as it was. Henry and Becket were like dogs circling each other with raised hackles but tails still wagging; however, Alienor suspected that a full-blown fight was about to ensue.

The formal meal ended with a serving of ginger comfits, spiced wine and sweetmeats. Henry retired to his chamber to drink hippocras and socialise with a select group of courtiers that did not include his archbishop, the strongest sign yet that all was not well between them.

The chosen group talked, played games of hazard and chess, and listened to Henry’s Welsh harpist coax glorious rills of music from his instrument. Alienor moved among the gathering flirting lightly with a turn of her wrist and a gesture of her sleeve. Smiling, engaging in conversations, collecting impressions and information without being obvious. Promising to take someone’s nephew into her household as a page; talking to a knight recently returned from a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Alienor’s diplomatic smile froze on her lips as Henry’s youngest brother staggered drunkenly into the chamber, his hand clamped around the wrist of one of the more notorious court whores. She was drunk too, but less than he was; she was hanging back, but unable to free herself from his vicious grip.

William reeled up to Henry. ‘I’m going to marry this one,’ he slurred, lurching and swaying. ‘No … consang … consag … consanguinity here. Thomas can’t complain about her. She started out from the Bish … Bishop of Winchester’s brothel in Southwark. What do you say? Will she make a good wife, d’you think?’

‘You can’t marry her, Will lad!’ yelled a courtier who had also imbibed too freely that day. ‘She’s already had the King in her burrow; it’d be incest!’

A horrified silence fell. Then someone stifled a guffaw. William let go of the whore and attacked the courtier with a roar of rage, fists flailing. The man, one of Richard de Lucy’s household knights, lurched, blood bursting from his split lip. William pursued him and they grappled against the sideboard, knocking over flagons and cups. The whore took her opportunity and fled the room, and two of Henry’s knights stepped in to drag William off his victim.

William stood swaying, barely able to stand. ‘All women are sluts and whores!’ he panted. ‘Queen or countess or common Southwark bath girl. They are all faithless harlots who lead men on with their cunts!’ He glared at Alienor and Isabel.

Henry made a sharp gesture and the knights dragged William, cursing and swearing, from the room.

‘Well,’ Henry said, addressing the shocked gathering, ‘an interesting piece of spontaneous entertainment. I am sure the good Archbishop’s chambers are dull by comparison.’ He looked at the courtier with the bloody lip. ‘Let that be a lesson to you, Saer. It’s what you get for spouting inanities – blood for your words.’

Uneasy chuckles followed Henry’s pronouncement, and conversation resumed, limping at first, but gradually rising to a normal level. Isabel quietly retired, accompanied by Marchisa, but Alienor had no such option as Henry joined her and gestured to a vacant chessboard in the embrasure. ‘Madam, will you play?’

She was aware of everyone watching to see how she would react to William’s outburst. To silence the gossips and deny them the satisfaction of seeing the King and Queen at odds in public, she smiled at Henry and acquiesced with grace, although she felt far from gracious towards him.

She arranged her pieces on the board with elegant movements that emphasised the beauty of her hands. ‘That was interesting,’ she said, speaking quietly but with excoriating scorn. ‘I did not know you had added her to your tally.’

‘That is because I was not foolish enough to waft her under your nose. She is nothing, a slut from the stews who can as easily return there. What happened a moment ago was unfortunate but of no consequence.’

‘Ah yes, of course. And now your brother has cast slurs on myself and Isabel and ranked us alongside the Southwark whores!’

Henry folded his arms and leaned over the board. ‘The Countess de Warenne is the cause of all the trouble in the first place, madam. If she had accepted my brother as was her duty, the situation would never have arisen, would it? She has been indulged and allowed to make a meal of her grief. She should have been married long ago.’

‘And what a husband your brother would have made for her,’ Alienor retorted. ‘Wearing bruises with dignity is always difficult for a woman because they make her feel ashamed, even while they shame the man.’ She took a silver coin from her purse marked with Henry’s head on one side and an incised cross on the other. ‘Which side, my lord? King or cross?’

Henry waved his hand. ‘I yield my potential advantage, madam. You make the first move and I will watch you. I prefer to observe which way the land lies, rather than leave it to chance, contrary wives and archbishops.’

Alienor gave him a caustic smile. ‘Well then, do not complain when you lose.’ She made the first move.

‘Vixen,’ he said with dour amusement. ‘William will be all right when he has sobered and has had time to consider. I am sending him back to our mother and she can talk sense into him for a while in Rouen.’

Alienor raised her brows. ‘Or he might try to talk her into negotiating with the Archbishop to change his mind? That is sly, my lord.’

Henry shrugged and did not deny it. ‘My mother has a certain way with recalcitrant men of the Church.’

Alienor contemplated her next move. ‘She won’t succeed. The Archbishop will break before he will bend.’

‘Then if it becomes necessary, I will break him,’ Henry answered, his mouth a straight, tight line.

The game ended in stalemate as Alienor had known it would. He was determined to defeat her and she was equally determined that he would not win. They retired to bed to continue the battle. When it was over with no one victorious, but both of them gasping and mauled, Henry got dressed and left her, and Alienor did not know whether to be thankful or depressed.

Leaving the bed, she went to the garderobe to clean herself with a damp cloth, and as she performed her ablutions, saw the blood. Her flux had begun; there would be no child from this sowing, and all she felt was glad that she had a reprieve from the battlefield for at least another month.

She sent one of her women to bring soft rags and donned a pair of old braies under her chemise. And then she went to find Isabel.

She was not abed, but sitting over a candle hemming a chemise. It was servant’s work, but easy to see in the dark, and Alienor knew how soothing the repetitive action could be – a way of ordering one’s thoughts, or of banishing them to limbo.

‘Are you all right?’

Isabel nodded. ‘Thank you, madam. I am sorry the King’s brother took the news so badly, but it only reinforces to me that I could not be his wife. Without the Archbishop’s intervention I might have had to wed him; I would have done my duty while praying for release every moment.’ Her face clouded. ‘I am sorry for what happened in front of the court. It was not seemly.’

‘And not your fault.’ Alienor’s eyes brightened with anger. ‘Never take that blame on yourself. What William did is upon his conscience, not yours. Like a winter storm it will blow itself out.’ She shifted on the bench in discomfort as her womb cramped. ‘What will be left is a new shore with clean sand and you can make any footprint you desire.’

Alienor looked up from the letter she was reading as her chamber door opened and Harry entered with his father. ‘What’s this?’ she asked in surprise, because Harry should have been at his duties among the Archbishop’s pages and squires.

‘I am taking our son out of Becket’s tutelage,’ Henry said, an angry glitter in his eyes. ‘That household is proving no fit place to educate a future king. God knows what seditious notions that man is planting in my son’s skull.’

Alienor stood up as Harry knelt to her and then raised her son to his feet and embraced him. ‘It didn’t occur to you before that he might plant them?’

‘Why should it?’ Henry snapped. ‘He served me diligently until I made him archbishop. Now he has chosen to interpret his post as a challenge for power, not partnership.’ He stamped around the room, picking things up, banging them down. ‘If I could undo his office, I would, and give the responsibility to Gilbert Foliot, but since I cannot unless Becket resigns as archbishop, I must bring him to heel by other means. There are plenty of better tutors who can educate our son.’

‘I liked it in the Archbishop’s household,’ Harry said, and then shrugged, ‘but it was boring sometimes.’

‘Did the Archbishop say anything to you about me?’ Henry asked suspiciously.