The Winter Crown (6 page)

Alienor gripped her hands together. ‘You can do something, can’t you?’

He gave her an impassive look. ‘My best,’ he said. ‘I can do no more. I will not lie to you; this is a serious condition. We are in the hands of God and we must pray for His divine mercy.’

Throughout the night Alienor sat at Will’s side, powerless to do anything as his condition worsened despite everything Master Radulf tried. He vomited up the potions administered to ease his pain; he was bled to cool his raging blood, but to no avail. At first he kept up a constant high-pitched wail like a citole bow sawing across a string that was about to snap. But towards dawn that stopped, and instead he flopped in her arms as unresponsive as a hot rag doll. The blotches melded together, becoming a livid purple patchwork covering his arms and torso.

Alienor prayed in desperation, asking God’s mercy and knowing that, as her son deteriorated further with each frail breath, God was not listening. For whatever reason, He was choosing to punish her and Henry by taking their child.

Every single member of her household from knight to slop boy knelt in prayer, and the chamberlain’s lad flung the shutters wide to admit a bright May morning, the fresh air bursting with the scent of growing life.

Alienor’s chaplain, Father Peter, administered the last rites to the limp, barely breathing scrap in Alienor’s arms. She held him to her and watched the erratic rise and fall of his chest. A day since he had hurtled from his bed, his toy sword in his hand, ready to seize life with every particle of his being.

Hearing snuffling and sobs, she rounded on her women. ‘Cease your noise!’ she hissed. ‘If he can hear us, I will not have him subject to such sounds!’

Emma detached herself from Alienor’s ladies and, choking, fled the room, her hand pressed to her mouth. Alienor pushed the matted hair away from Will’s brow. ‘Come, little one, my brave one,’ she said. ‘Mama is here. Hush, don’t fret, all is well, all is well.’

The little boy’s chest rose and fell, rose again, shuddered and was still. Alienor stared, willing him to take another breath, but the moment drew out, stretching into eternity. His eyes were almost closed, just a faint glitter under the lowered eyelids. The dreadful patches of fever had not touched his face, which was pure and perfect, but the rest of his body looked as if it had been ravaged by a demon.

‘Madam.’ Her chaplain gently touched her shoulder. ‘He has gone to join his Father in heaven. God will care for him in His mercy.’

Alienor was numb. Somewhere within her, grief was gathering, waiting to rend her apart, but this moment was the space between the slice of the knife and the realisation of a mortal wound. ‘Why could he not stay with his mother on earth? Why take him?’ Anger sparked through the numbness. Why not take the other child, who was the fruit of fornication? It was a dark and terrible thought, a sin, but she could not prevent it.

‘It is not ours to question,’ the chaplain said gently. ‘We cannot know God’s plan.’

Alienor pressed her lips together before she uttered blasphemy. Her child’s soul was on its journey and she dared not hinder his path by railing against God. She continued to hold him against her, folding him into her body. Even though she knew it was over, she kept waiting for him to draw another breath. He had been hers to care for and protect, and it was all her fault that his bright little life had been snuffed out. But what more could she have done? What would Henry say? He had left the children in her care as her responsibility and she had proven unequal to the task. She gave a low moan and would have doubled over, save that the child in her womb made it impossible. The new life kicked within her, even while she gazed on death.

‘Madam…’ She felt the gentle pressure of Father Peter’s hand on her shoulder. ‘Come, I will send for someone to wash and prepare him.’

‘No!’ Alienor thrust him off. ‘It is my duty and my right. No one else shall have this task and do what must be done. I am well enough for this.’

The following hours lasted for an eternity to Alienor, and at the same time the passage of light to dark seemed as swift as the blink of an eye. There was so much to do to arrange the funeral rites and decide on the burial. To dictate letters so that messages could go out to those who had to know of the tragedy. All the practical details setting the seal on the brutal fact of Will’s death. The letter to Henry was the hardest. She was too shattered to find the words and the letter she sent was that of a queen to a king, not of one grieving parent to another.

Washing her son’s lifeless, blotched body with rose water, she remembered the joy and triumph of his birth on an August morning in Poitiers. All the joy, all the hope and expectation. Cradling him in her arms, and later presenting him to Henry as a wonderful gift when he returned from campaign. A golden child bouncing on her knee, vibrant as the sun with life, arms around her neck in a tight squeeze. All now to become corruption and dust. She whispered under her breath as she worked, telling him she was here, that everything was safe and all right, even though it wasn’t.

Isabel and Emma took the baby and Jeoffrey elsewhere lest whatever ill vapours had invaded Will’s body affected them too. Father Peter and Alienor’s advisers tried to make her leave, but she refused, growing angry when they persisted. Let the room be fumigated with incense and let the shutters remain open to allow the spring day to flood the chamber, because she wanted to remember her son as a being of light, far removed from the suffocating night hours and the terrible fever that had burned him up before her eyes. Alienor’s numbness intensified as the hours passed until it was like a heavy iron lid covering a cauldron simmering with grief and guilt and fear. She dared not lift the lid because she knew the resultant burst of emotion would kill her too.

By the time evening came round again, Will had been stitched in a shroud of the finest linen, double-wrapped and then enfolded in a length of red silk, but with his face exposed. A small coffin had been swiftly prepared and he was placed in it with rose petals and his favourite toy sword that only a day since had been killing imaginary foes in the garden, while death waited its moment in the shadows.

Will lay in state in Windsor’s chapel surrounded by a blaze of candles and lamps, in order to hold the light as the sun went down. Alienor insisted on kneeling in all that hot shimmer to keep vigil throughout the night. Isabel and Emma stayed at her side throughout, and neither woman spoke out to try and dissuade her because they loved her and they knew the strength of her will.

At dawn, following a requiem mass, Will’s coffin was borne from the chapel and placed in a cart decked with royal shields and rich cloth to be taken the seventeen miles to Reading Abbey where he was to be buried at the feet of his great-grandsire, the revered King Henry I.

Father Peter tried to dissuade Alienor from accompanying the cortège, saying she had already endured too much, and for the sake of her unborn child she should remain at Windsor and let others attend to the burial, but Alienor was adamant. ‘I will be with him when he is buried,’ she said. ‘I am his mother, and he remains my responsibility, even if he breathes no more. You will not sway me from this course, so do not try.’

Heavily pregnant, unable to ride a horse, she travelled in a litter. The road between Windsor and Reading was sound and they made steady progress. With the litter curtains drawn shut, Alienor tried to rest and gather herself for what had to be done. Her womb continued to contract and relax at regular intervals, although without pain. The journey was a risk, but she could not have let her little boy go alone into the dark. It would have been different had Henry been here, but he wasn’t and the responsibility was hers – all of it. She had to see it through, on this bright spring morning, to its bitter end.

The weather changed for the return to Windsor next day. Clouds covered the sky from horizon to horizon and heavy rain turned the road into a patchwork of sludgy puddles. The going was slow and behind the litter curtains Alienor counted her prayer beads through her fingers and saw images of the candles ranked around the tomb of King Henry I, and the darkness of the hole into which they had lowered her son. Not three years in the world and already finished with it. The chanting of monks; the scrape of a shovel tip on slate and soil; the weeping of her women. Alienor had not cried. That response was buried under a slab of numb disbelief.

Two days ago people had run to line the road to watch the funeral cavalcade pass by in brilliant sunshine, expectant of receiving alms, curious, but respectful. On the return only a few hardy or desperate souls braved the waysides, bundled in hoods and cloaks, hands outstretched. Alienor did not part the hangings to investigate, but she heard their voices raised in supplication. The rain thudded on the roof of her litter and a few cold droplets splashed in her lap, almost like proxy tears for the ones she could not shed.

By the time they arrived at Windsor, the sporadic contractions of her womb had become regular cramps and she knew that she was in the early stages of labour. Marchisa took one look at her as she stepped from the litter and summoned the midwives.

The pangs of full labour crashed over Alienor and she clenched her fists, certain she was going to burst. The midwife bathed her forehead with cool herbal water. ‘Madam, all is progressing as it should,’ she said in an encouraging voice. ‘Soon you will hold your new babe in your arms, and he will take away the pain and ease your loss.’

The seal over Alienor’s numbness weakened and cracked, allowing rage to boil through. ‘How dare you say that to me?’ she panted. ‘No child will ever take my son’s place! He was everything!’

The woman curtseyed and dropped her gaze. ‘I only sought to comfort you, madam, forgive me.’

Alienor was incapable of reply as the next pain surged through her and with it the tears in gut-wrenching spasms. The baby slithered from her body in a welter of blood and fluid, and as it drew its first breaths and began to bawl Alienor convulsed and howled her own grief to the rafters. She didn’t want this child; she wanted Will.

‘It is a girl, madam; you have a daughter.’ The midwife’s tone was subdued as she held the squalling infant aloft, still attached to Alienor by the umbilical cord. ‘A lovely baby girl.’

Alienor’s body convulsed in a fresh paroxysm of grief. Looking worried the midwife cut the cord and quickly gave the baby to an assistant. ‘The Queen’s womb has displaced itself; she is in grave danger,’ she said. ‘We must return it to its rightful place immediately, or there is no hope.’ She rummaged among her nostrums, emerged with an eagle feather and thrust it into the flame of the nearest candle until it began to smoulder. Swiftly she turned and wafted the acrid smoke under Alienor’s nose.

The powerful, bitter stench made Alienor choke and recoil. The terrible spasms became a fit of coughing interspersed by retches, and when finally she was able to breathe properly again, she lay gasping like the mauled survivor of a shipwreck washed to shore. Her tears became a softer weeping and Isabel de Warenne folded her in a firm, sympathetic embrace and rocked her like a child.

The labour pangs began again and the afterbirth slithered into the midwife’s waiting bowl. Alienor was no longer numb, but wretched and sodden with grief. Even as she bled from the birth, it seemed to her that she was bleeding for her lost son too.

The baby, freshly bathed and wrapped in a clean towel, was presented to her. A daughter. In a way it was a blessing because no one would ever see her as a replacement for Will. Even with the marks of her birth still upon her, she was beautiful with a heart-shaped face and a quiff of soft, dark hair that reminded Alienor of her sister Petronella, who was in fragile health and being cared for at the convent of Saintes in Poitou.

‘How is she to be named?’ Emma asked.

‘Matilda for her grandmother the Empress,’ Alienor replied in a fractured voice. ‘That was the King’s wish should it be a girl.’ If a boy he had told her she could have the naming, but it was a moot point. The messengers would bring him the news of his daughter’s birth, following on the heels of that of Will’s death.

A sense of failure swept through her. There would be no bells rung in joy for this child, for they were all occupied in tolling the demise of the heir – and it was all her fault.

At Chinon on the Loire, Henry was in a good mood. He had finally brought his brother Geoffrey to heel and seized the castles of Mirebeau, Chinon and Loudon that had been in rebellion against him. Chinon had capitulated at dawn that morning and Geoffrey had bowed his head and accepted the inevitable, if not with good grace, then with dour resignation. It was the second time he had rebelled against Henry. The three castles were a bone of contention between the brothers that was not going to go away. Geoffrey insisted their father had willed them to him, but in using them as centres of rebellion, he had made it impossible for Henry to let him keep them.

‘Sire, if I may make a suggestion?’

Henry turned round from the embrasure and eyed his chancellor. Thomas had proven invaluable during the weeks on campaign, dealing with routine matters and keeping the coffers full. He was also a convivial and cultured companion with a shrewd eye for an advantage. ‘By all means.’

‘It seems to me that your b-brother will continue to be a thorn in your side for the foreseeable future. The moment you turn your back, he will be fomenting rebellion.’

‘I do not intend turning my back,’ Henry said, ‘but go on.’

‘Perhaps if he were to have lands of his own – something he can carve out of another estate that might benefit you also?’

Henry rubbed his forefinger across his beard. ‘You had in mind?’

‘Brittany, sire. They have recently rebelled against their count and with a little persuasion might be prevailed upon to consider your b-brother to replace him? He would be occupied keeping the Bretons in check and at the same time he would bring B-Brittany into your sphere of influence. It would also fulfil his desire for a title and elevate his standing.’