The Winter Crown (49 page)

Henry, fully recovered, was restless. He had intended going to England at the same time as his troublesome archbishop, but that had been impossible because on his return from Rocamadour he had had to deal with problems on the French border where King Louis had been fomenting trouble. The dispute was still rumbling on, but a truce had been agreed over the winter. Henry had chosen to spend Christmas at Bures and cross to England in the New Year. Becket was already at Canterbury.

Alienor watched four-year-old John play with some bone discs strung on a wooden frame. He was clacking them across, counting to himself and then counting them back, adding and subtracting, making patterns. Alienor was amused, imagining him like a little clerk at an exchequer board. In typical fashion he was secretive about his play, and not keen to share. He preferred to sit in a corner, his back to the wall, and observe people, and the looks he gave them were intense, calculating and not at all childlike.

Alienor called him over to eat a slice of sugared pear from the box at her side and listen to the tale that Master Matthew the storyteller was preparing to recite. John set his lips and for a moment looked mutinous, but then he carefully hid his toy under a cushion and came to her. Alienor lifted him on to the bench beside her and smoothed his hair in a tender gesture. Joanna pressed against her other side, and cradled her soft cloth doll, a look of anticipation brightening her face as she waited for Master Matthew to begin.

Master Matthew hailed from the Welsh borders and recounted his tales – of which he had a vast repertoire – to the accompaniment of a small boxwood harp from which he plucked notes like clear jewels. He had sparkling brown eyes and a thin, expressive face that could change on the instant to suit his tale, one moment full of mirth as he narrated the story of a talking donkey, but turning to menace as he told another about a fearsome monster that came from the moors and tore people limb from limb before devouring them until finally a hero was found to slay the creature. Joanna cuddled up to Alienor with delicious fear. John was fascinated and alert, but not afraid. He thought it might be interesting to capture and chain such a creature and bend it to his will to use it as a deterrent against others.

When Matthew had finished, Richard came forward, lute in hand, and sang a hymn to the Virgin Mary and the Christ child. His voice was at that deep, bell-toned stage that meant it would soon break and Alienor’s eyes filled with tears. Caught in the fleeting moment between boy and man, Richard’s beauty was heart-stopping.

As the last note thrummed and resonated, her chamberlain tiptoed over to her to murmur in her ear that the Bishops of York, London and Salisbury had arrived and were requesting an audience.

Alienor praised Richard and gave him a gold bezant for his song, which pleased him mightily. ‘Admit them at once,’ she said. ‘It is too foul a day for them to be waiting without a fire. I assume the King has been summoned?’

‘Yes, madam.’

Alienor sent John and Joanna off with their nurses, but allowed Richard to stay. She had a feeling of foreboding because for the three Bishops to have risked a crossing in such difficult weather spoke of necessity. It must have something to do with Thomas Becket, and that was ominous.

The Bishops arrived, saturated from their rough sea voyage followed by their ride in wild weather. Their draggled state reminded Alienor of a clutch of soggy poultry, huddled and muttering. She rose to greet them and ushered them to the hearth, commanding servants to bring towels and hot wine.

Henry strode into the room on a new flurry of cold air from the stairwell and stared at the dripping men in astonishment. ‘What is this?’ he demanded.

Robert of Pont L’Évêque, Archbishop of York, ceased mopping his face with a towel and bowed. In the heat from the fire, his cloak had begun to steam. ‘There are grave tidings from England, sire, and that is why we have been forced to come to you in person.’

‘What sort of tidings?’ Henry snapped. ‘Don’t beat around the bush.’

The Archbishop’s chins wobbled with indignation. ‘The Archbishop of Canterbury has declared us excommunicate. He read out the sentence during his sermon at Canterbury, and to the entire congregation. He has also been putting it about that your eldest son has been falsely crowned and should be deposed. He claims he has authority from the Pope to excommunicate whomsoever he pleases – excluding you and the Queen.’

‘His knights are riding around the country raising sedition,’ Gilbert Foliot interjected. His voice was gravelly with a heavy cold. ‘They have been urging folk to rise up and see justice done.’

Alienor stifled an exclamation of shock. Becket was stubborn and bitter, but she would not have thought him capable of treason.

A muscle bunched in Henry’s cheek. ‘Then by God’s eyes, am I next?’ he demanded. ‘Where does this man stop? Or perhaps he doesn’t?’

The Archbishop of York handed the by now saturated towel to one of Alienor’s servants. ‘We have come to bring you this news all as one, but it is not for us to tell you what to do now. You must take counsel and decide how to deal with the situation. We must go and petition the Pope to overturn the sentence. For now, we are excommunicates and Christian men must shun us or risk excommunication themselves.’

Gilbert Foliot said forcefully, ‘Sire, while Thomas lives, you will have neither peace, nor quiet, nor see good days. He is set on a path of contention where the only rule that matters is his own.’

Robert de Beaumont, the new young Earl of Leicester, who was attending on Henry, spoke out with conviction. ‘The Archbishop of Canterbury has shown he is a dangerous man, sire. He ought to be made an outlaw for this and cast out himself.’

‘Indeed, he should be hanged on a gibbet,’ said Ingelram de Bohun, who was related to the Bishop of Salisbury and plainly appalled at the sorry state of his elderly kinsman. Looking round, he received vigorous nods of approbation. ‘No priest should be allowed to cause insurrection like this. It is treason.’

Alienor’s breathing quickened. If Becket was truly raising riot in England and threatening to depose her son, he had to be stopped.

Henry’s chest inflated and fury blazed in his eyes. ‘What miserable drones and traitors have I nourished at my court who now let their lord be treated with such shameful contempt by a … a low-born clerk! A man I have raised from the dust, who has eaten my bread and grown rich on my largesse. Now he draws up his heels to kick me in the teeth!’

The mood was becoming ugly. Alienor could see men turning dark looks on the three dishevelled Bishops. It would only take one step more to turn them into scapegoats. The tension was such that any churchman was fair game and Henry, in his current mood, would not help them.

‘Come my lords,’ she said, raising her voice above the muttering. ‘I will find you a chamber where you may recover from your journey and your ordeal. I will have food put outside your door. In the meantime, as you have said, the King will discuss matters with his advisers.’

Alienor came to Henry’s private chamber, walking calmly past the squires and attendants who stood outside, looking concerned and uncertain. No one prevented her, but she saw the exchanged glances.

Outside, the rain still spattered against the shutters and the candles guttered in an icy draught. Two had blown out and the smell of singed wick caught at the back of her nose. Henry was pacing the room like a demon. Chest heaving, eyes glittering. She saw the overturned chair and the torn bedcover. A red starburst of wine dripped down one wall, and on the floor beneath it, a dented silver-gilt cup lay on its side.

‘Throwing things around in a temper will not improve matters,’ she said.

‘If you have come to lecture me, then get out,’ Henry snarled.

Alienor picked up the fallen cup and poured wine into it, pretending to be calm, although she was alert to the violence in him. ‘I have long since given up lecturing you; I might as well talk to the wall – and receive the same treatment you have just meted to that cup. This concerns me as much as it does you. I have paid little heed to the Archbishop’s ranting before now, but when he threatens our son and says he will depose him, and when he excommunicates the Bishops who crowned him, then it is an insult too far.’ She gave the cup to Henry and bit her tongue on the admonition not to throw it at the wall this time.

‘He will not rant for much longer,’ Henry growled. ‘I am sending de Mandeville and de Humez to England with their knights to seize him and put him under house arrest. I shall set the thing in motion at first light and Thomas will reap what he sows.’

Alienor gave a cautious nod of approval. Thomas Becket had overstepped the line and had to be contained, but it was a risk because it escalated matters. It was disappointing too; she had thought Henry and Becket had been coming closer to a truce.

‘I gave him the world,’ Henry said bitterly. ‘I raised him from his petty merchant background and he spits in my face and I do not understand why.’

‘He wants what you cannot give him, and you want what he will not give you. But … I sincerely think he has gone mad if what we have just heard is true.’

‘Oh, it’s true,’ Henry sneered. ‘He would do anything to keep a grip on his rights as Archbishop of Canterbury, even down to deposing our son – even down to deposing me!’ He drank back the wine and slammed the goblet on the table this time. ‘I cannot make the man see reason. I need the Pope to revoke that sentence of excommunication and then return him to exile. If that does not happen, I shall confine him so closely that he will never see the sun again. I will not have him and his minions riding around causing sedition.’ He waved his bunched fist. ‘You see what he does to my lawful bishops?’

‘For that I do not care, but I care what he might do to Harry.’

‘You don’t care what he does to me?’

‘No, I do not. You have made your own bed of nails in which to lie; but I do care about the insult to kingship and to our line. The quicker this is dealt with the better.’

They looked at each other, linked in common purpose, but in a bond still rough with the friction of hostility. ‘On the first ship to England on the next tide,’ he said.

There was no reason for her to stay and he did not encourage her. She left him to his business and ignored the servants who knelt in obeisance as she collected her maid and swept past.

Halfway back to her own chamber, she stopped, suddenly aware of hooded figures in the darkness; the clink of sword fittings and rustle of cloth; men talking in low voices. In the smoky torchlight she recognised Reginald FitzUrse and William de Tracy, both of whom had been sworn in service to Becket when he was chancellor. Were they deserting Henry? Plotting treason? They had recently been vociferous in their oaths of support, but that meant nothing. Things were often not what they seemed.

She advanced to block their path and for a moment there was panic as they reached for their hilts, then dropped to their knees, realising whom they faced. The fear in their expressions mirrored her own.

‘What are you about, messires?’ she demanded.

FitzUrse licked his lips. ‘We are on a mission for the King, madam. I cannot tell you what it is.’

Her heart pounded in her chest. An icy draught blew along the ground and fluttered the hem of her cloak. She was cold already, and his reply made her colder still. She considered her options. She could raise the household and make a public outcry. She could march back to Henry and demand to know what was happening, or she could be blind.

‘Go,’ she said with a brusque gesture. ‘We have not seen you.’ She threw Marchisa a warning look.

The knights rose, bowed and melted stealthily into the night. Jaw chattering, Alienor almost ran back to her chamber, where she ordered Marchisa to bolt the door. By mutual assent, neither woman spoke of what they had seen.

In the drear January weather the court moved to Auvergne. It was always dank, never cold enough for snow, but sufficient for icy rain. The days were dark and the light was gone almost before it was born. Most of the shutters remained closed and candles were devoured at a phenomenal rate.

Alienor had not told Henry about encountering his knights on her way from his chamber. Indeed, she had tried to banish the incident from her mind. Clandestine activities abounded at court and, on this occasion, it was safest not to know about them.

The light was as its best in the late morning and she was sitting with Isabel sewing in an embrasure where the shutters had been opened to let in the weak, pale grey light. Isabel was with child again and feeling queasy. She was pondering whether to return to England or go to Hamelin’s estates in the Touraine.

‘I am sick enough as it is without chancing the sea,’ she said, screwing up her face. ‘I think I shall go to Colombiers until late spring. It depends where Hamelin is; I like to be near him.’

Alienor said nothing. She had had enough of Henry and her own intention was to make her way to Poitiers and continue Richard’s education in statecraft.

‘He likes to see me and the children,’ Isabel continued. ‘I sometimes wish we were an ordinary couple; just a merchant and his wife, living day to day with no great cares.’

‘Even if you were a merchant’s wife you would have cares,’ Alienor said, ‘and they would seem no less worrisome to you.’

‘Indeed,’ Isabel conceded, ‘but the fate of countries would not…’ She ceased speaking. The women turned their heads towards sounds of turbulent commotion in the antechamber. Alienor rose to her feet as a servant burst into the room and hastened to kneel at her feet, almost cowering. ‘Madam, terrible news. The Archbishop of Canterbury has been slain in his own cathedral on the altar steps.’

Isabel gasped and put her hand to her mouth. Alienor stared at the messenger in shock. ‘Slain? By whom?’

‘By four knights of the King’s household, madam.’ The young man proceeded to name the men Alienor had encountered slipping through the darkness. That night in Bures-le-Roi she had stumbled upon men intent on assassination.

‘They broke into the cathedral where the Archbishop was hearing mass and they cut him down.’ The man swiped the back of his hand across his mouth and nose. ‘They slashed open his head and pulled out his brains on the edge of a sword and smeared them all over the altar step.’