The Young Lion (2 page)

‘Harassing?’

‘Perhaps that’s the wrong term,’ Louis muttered.

‘He’s taking a fortune in levies on our river trade. And he has a dangerous son. In fact, he has a number of them.’ He glanced at the monarch, anxious, suddenly, that he had hurt Louis’s feelings by mentioning sons.

They entered the chapel in silence. Close to the altar Suger turned and made a flicking gesture with his fingers at the throng that followed. The crowd halted. The monarch and the Regent knelt; and like a heavy curtain lowered behind them, the crowd dropped to its knees. The monks began chanting plainsong. As their voices rose, Suger leaned towards Louis’s ear.

‘We cannot allow the son to become Duke of Normandy,’ he said.

Louis slanted his glance down to the Regent’s face. They could both mumble prayers and talk at the same time. ‘It is I who make dukes,’ he said. His voice was terse.

‘Quite so, sire’.
The boy needs to die
. ‘The sooner we attack and overthrow the family, the better. If the son has Normandy he’ll gather the strength to take England: his claim to the English throne is legitimate. King Stephen asks for our help to defend himself. The Crown Prince pesters me relentlessly. We can’t afford another Lion as our neighbour.’

Louis sighed. He did not much like his brother-in-law, Crown Prince Eustace. He was, however, obliged to fight for him although presently he felt he lacked the energy for a day hunting geese, let alone a war against the Duke of Normandy, much as it would be to the detriment of France if Normandy re-conquered England.

Suger feared his homecoming news had been too burdensome for the King. He wanted to cheer him. ‘However, the second son of Normandy is … shall I say … a friend to France.’

‘A good friend?’

‘That is to be tested.’ To date, young Geoffrey Foulques was simply a boy who had provided no information the Regent had not already gathered from other sources. It was possible he did not yet realise his conversations with the Bishop of Sens were reported to Paris.

The Abbot cast his eyes to heaven. ‘Thanks be to God!’ he quavered.

Louis helped Suger to his feet. When he turned to look at his wife he thought he saw a man step quickly away from her, but it may have been a shadow, or one of her knights. She had removed the Duke’s cloak and was now properly attired in her miniver. He placed his bare hand over hers. It was unusually warm, Louis noticed, almost hot, and her cheeks were flushed. The throng parted for them, and together they progressed from the darkness inside to the darker air without. The Queen was smiling to herself again.

‘What amuses you?’ he asked.

‘Our journey has been more difficult than ever we could have imagined. I’m happy it’s almost at an end, sire.’ She turned up her small, exquisite face to look into his. ‘I’ve vowed to be a better wife when we reach Paris.’ Louis felt his heart turn over.

‘Would you like to …?’

‘Not tonight, sweet King. Our accommodation is too disagreeable. But, perhaps … tomorrow? When installed in our own quarters in Paris?’

He risked it. He leaned over and kissed her cheek. She didn’t flinch – in fact, her eyes lingered on him softly.

That night the commander of royal guards brought the King a
milking maid, as he had every night for months. Louis told her to leave. ‘Where does the Queen sleep?’ he asked.

‘Her Highness’s quarters are in the western wing, on the ground floor. She has braziers to warm her chamber.’

‘That southern blood of hers will empty the treasury,’ Louis said in a tone that was almost jovial. He had spent a fortune installing an invention Eleanor had discovered, called a chimney, in every room in every palace and hunting lodge she used. Beneath each chimney was a fireplace, eating up wood. ‘Who sleeps with her?’ he asked.

‘The Greek maid.’

‘What of Normandy?’

‘Back to Rouen. I handed him his cloak and he left with his manservant.’

‘Did he gather much intelligence from our men?’

‘Hard to say. They’re all curious about his chivalry with ladies, so maybe he traded information with some. The maids may have …’

Louis gave a grunt of disgust.

There were two large chambers in the Queen’s apartment, a closet for vestments, a privy and a bathing house.

The main sleeping chamber was richly furnished, with a wide and comfortable bed fit for an archbishop, a velvet-covered prayer-stool and a looking glass from Lombardy. The smaller chamber was suitable for an archdeacon – or a maid. Xena had made its sleeping platform comfortable with pillows and some extra furs.

This more modest chamber opened onto a garden where some evergreen shrubs screened it from an open field and, beyond the field, the oak forest they had traversed that day. There were two
guards outside the door to the Queen’s sleeping quarters but no one guarded the small garden or the maid’s chamber behind it. It was into this garden that the Duke of Normandy stepped while supper was served in the monastery dining hall.

Xena opened the door to him and fled to Eleanor’s bed.

The only light was from two charcoal braziers and a votive candle she had lit and left burning near the doorway to the garden.

Geoffrey’s heart pounded: not long ago, and not far from here, Peter Abelard had been castrated for sexual impropriety. If this is an ambush set by Suger, I’m dead, he thought. Henry, my son, if I’m to die, don’t judge me as the world will judge: as a lecherous knave. Know that what I’m doing is for our cause.

He calmed himself by softly humming the refrain: ‘A brave death, not a coward’s life.’

Momentarily, a shadow crossed the light of the braziers, but whether it was a woman’s or a man’s, it moved too quickly for him to tell.

Neither spoke. Neither could see the other’s face, although occasionally the candlelight struck a gleam from flaxen hair. Hers was too dark for light to catch it.

Soft tears of happiness seeped from her eyes as he departed through the door by which he had entered – an hour? two hours? – earlier.

The Duke’s shadow moved swiftly through the garden. Then there was the dash across the field to the forest where his horse was waiting in the care of his servant, Hamelin.

Once mounted, Geoffrey Foulques did not ride off but bent to rest his forearms along the animal’s neck. ‘Be still,’ he told himself. He tried to listen for a pursuer’s footsteps, but his mind swam with
images of the woman he had just left. Her frame was light; she was delicate and soft, like a cat. Even a bird.

A falcon!

The family name of the Counts of Anjou, translated to French, was ‘Falcon’. ‘Destiny,’ he murmured.

For a moment he traced on his forehead the arch of her dark brows.

He took a long draught from the leather wine flask in his saddlebag and considered more calmly the situation they were in. First, if they were discovered, both could be executed. He’d be burned; she’d have the greater dignity of beheading. At the best, her dowry would be stripped from her and she’d be forced into a nunnery.

Second, he was besotted, enthralled, infatuated. In love. Friendship takes time. ‘Love is instant,’ he said to himself.

He felt exactly as he had when he was a youth of thirteen, on pilgrimage to Compostela, and had fallen madly in love with a local beauty called Isabella, whom he’d persuaded to run away with him. Holding Eleanor in his arms he’d felt the same awed joy of youth – that he was stretching towards heaven through a woman. People said, ‘Love’s an experienced thief: she steals the heart.’ He thought, she’s stolen more than my heart. She may steal everything I’ve worked for.
Or she may
be the key to our triumph.

Two hundred yards away, Eleanor tiptoed back to the archbishop’s chamber and lay beside Xena. ‘Thank you, my Ruth,’ she whispered.

‘My Queen Naomi,’ Xena answered. She stroked Eleanor’s forehead. ‘Are you in love?’

‘I don’t know. How can I know?’

‘Maybe an angel will tell you while you sleep.’

Xena returned to the archdeacon’s sleeping platform, still redolent of the lovers’ bodies. For a moment she recoiled when her hand touched a patch of slime.

Perhaps it was the fever of the times. Two and a half years earlier, in the high summer of 1147, the very moment when the Christian army in France set out with fervent hopes for Jerusalem, a strange event occurred in England. The English had eschewed joining the second crusade because they had troubles enough of their own, especially the King and senior members of the baronage. In the old palace of Winchester that fateful summer morning, King Stephen and his heir, Prince Eustace, answered an urgent warning from a royal guard. The monarch and his son stationed themselves behind two arrow-slit windows to peer down into the palace courtyard. From their positions they could observe, while remaining invisible themselves, two young strangers who had arrived a short time before and were waiting to be invited inside.

They were a well-mounted but travel-soiled pair. One, it appeared, was the master; the other his squire. Both were tall, slim and, despite their youth, already elegantly muscular. The squire was dark-haired while the master had a red-gold mane that flashed like metal in the sunshine. The King felt a chill: he knew that hair. Centuries pass, but Viking blood announces itself like the blast of a trumpet.

Although Prince Eustace was only twenty, his lips had a curl of cynicism. He suspected he knew who these strangers were. Both
were so plainly dressed they could be taken for merchants, even artisans. Except for their fine boots and their horses, no one would believe they were men of rank.

A servant dashed along the stone corridor with a note for the King. Eustace glimpsed the name ‘FitzEmpress’ at the foot of the page and knew his suspicion was correct: their visitors were the terrible brothers, the one with flaming hair, claiming through his mother the ‘Empress’, his right to the throne of England.

Just months earlier he had invaded the south of the country leading a group of young barons and counts, none above the age of eighteen, and two hundred Flemish mercenaries. His second-in-command, ‘the squire’ in the courtyard, was his bastard half-brother, Guillaume, another son of the execrable Duke of Normandy.

My father should kill them both, Eustace thought. ‘That destrier’s worth a fortune,’ he remarked, his eye fixed on a bay stallion the FitzEmpress rode. ‘I wonder from whom he stole it?’

‘Eustace,’ King Stephen tutted.

My father was too compassionate for monarchy, Eustace thought. But it was God’s will that he’d been crowned King of the English when the old Lion died. The Empress Matilda was the only surviving legitimate child of King Henry the Lion – and the old tyrant had forced his barons to swear fealty to her. The thought of a female king made Eustace’s stomach heave. What were they? Druids? True Christians would never countenance such a perversion of the natural order, created by Almighty God. Unfortunately, many did pay homage to her and the disputed crown had led to years of civil war between the ‘Stephen faction’ and the ‘Matilda faction’.

The King did not dare show the letter in his hand to Eustace. The son of the Empress had the gall to ask Stephen, as his kinsman, for money to pay his mercenaries and sail home. ‘He wishes to call on me, to apologise,’ he told his son. ‘Who’s the mother of the other youth, I wonder?’

The Crown Prince snorted. ‘A laundry maid? A countess? One of his own nieces?’

Geoffrey the Handsome, as Matilda’s husband was known, was now thirty-three years old and said to have already sired as many bastards as the Lion. He was known for wearing a sprig of yellow broom in his hat. Stephen thought flaunting a roadside weed as if it were a peacock feather sheer effrontery.

Prince Eustace beckoned a guard and murmured an order. ‘Watch this,’ he told his father.

The guard sauntered out to the glare of the courtyard below, where Henry and Guillaume had dismounted and were now sitting on the horse trough, which like the gateway to the palace and the lintel of its doorway, was inscribed with the initials
HR,
Henricus Rex
. Beside the initials, masons had carved a lion, its body in profile, its huge head turned, eyes glaring. Young Henry took a deep breath. Etched on a wall beside the doorway was a list of his grandfather’s successful battles. He felt naked as he read them, ashamed of his folly in attacking southern England without a proper plan of battle. Failure was inevitable, he now understood.

His ancestors had built most of the palaces that were still in good repair in England, as he had observed when he passed through the countryside, and his grandfather, the Lion, was the greatest builder of them all. ‘I shall build something greater,’ he promised himself.

The thought calmed him a little. He had felt strong and bold as he and Guillaume rode up the hill from the town that morning, its houses still blackened from the fire six years earlier when his mother had captured the Usurper Stephen. To get there she had walked three leagues through snow with her shoes on backwards, had reigned as ‘Domina of the English’ for a few months and almost succeeded in having herself crowned.

The guard Prince Eustace had summoned carried a pitcher of light ale into the courtyard. ‘It’s a hot day. Have a drink, Anjevin
dog.’ He flung the pitcher at Henry’s face. As the boy’s eyes closed to avoid the ale, the guard threw a punch at his nose. But Henry was agile and the blow caught only his left eyebrow. A rivulet of blood mixed with ale ran down his cheek.

Henry turned his back on the guard and Guillaume did the same.

In the dark of the palace King Stephen turned in embarrassment to his son. ‘My dear,’ he said, ‘he’s only a boy.’

Eustace was enraged. He had wanted Henry – as honour demanded he should – to strike the guard back. Members of the regiment would then have had an excuse to beat him properly, there in the courtyard, where everyone could watch. ‘A boy who wants my throne,’ the Prince replied. ‘Your throne, father,’ he corrected himself.

The banners of noble houses hung from the ceiling of the tall, dim audience chamber, the Winchester Palace keep, one floor below. Built of stone, it had resisted Matilda’s fire that had destroyed wooden buildings and it remained cool even in the height of summer. Courtiers and princes of the Church filed in to take their places, according to rank, for the midsummer court. The bishops and a few of the older earls and barons sat on benches, but mostly the court stood. A layer of rushes softened the floor. All the laity were dressed in bright summer colours: greens and pinks, blues and yellows, lavenders and whites. The women covered their hair with veils that matched or contrasted with their gowns. Only the clergy wore sombre garments, although some of the deacons were as gaily dressed as the rest of the court. Young pages stood around, alert for a beckoning finger.

As they’d entered the palace grounds, riding on horseback or in coaches, many courtiers had noted the youths sitting on the horse trough in the courtyard and a few had guessed their identity. A
wave of speculation and gossip reared and crashed against the stone walls. Could it be? Was it really? How dare he! What did he want? What a nerve!

Maybe it’s not him.

Guards preceded the entrance of the King and Prince Eustace down the royal stairway. When they were enthroned, a page, a child of seven, on bent knee offered the Prince a cup of wine. As Count of Boulogne as well as Prince of England, Eustace affected a preference for wine rather than ale. The King waited for a reading plank to be placed across his knees. Then he rolled out Henry’s letter and silently studied it. Morning light from uncovered windows behind the throne fell on the document. The chamber hushed to respectful silence, except for the prelates who fingered rosaries and gossiped quietly among themselves. Courtiers fidgeted and stared at the King, or summoned pages to bring them a fan or a refreshment. Someone trod on a little dog belonging to one of the ladies. It gave a howl and rushed between people’s legs, whimpering. Prince Eustace glared at the woman and whispered something to his page. The child left his side and a few minutes later carried the squirming puppy outdoors where it howled for minutes from the kicking he gave it. The King persisted, although he had now read the letter four times. He sighed and his small pink lips moved as if forming a prayer. The hush evaporated as courtiers, one after another, commented to each other that His Highness seemed worried. At last he looked up.

‘Bring him in,’ he ordered.

The court stared in wonderment. The boy who entered could have been the Lion from fifty years ago, clad once more in the garment of flesh. For some, a frisson of excitement shook them; in others, bowels turned cold.

‘Not even a beard yet!’ men muttered.

‘But a scoundrel, same as his father.’

‘From the Devil, like all the Anjevins.’

Much as they wanted to think of him as a mere lout from Anjou who had failed in his first military adventure, they could not help admiring the confidence with which he strode towards the King. He had bright hair, a copper abundance that fell to his shoulders. In dirty clothes, his face bleeding and ruddy from the heat, he looked more of a prince than pale Eustace, whose robe was edged with ermine, and whose shoes tinkled with jewellery. The courtiers saw the FitzEmpress’s hard jaw and straight blue stare; only his brother saw a heart as awed as an altar boy’s on first entering the gloom of a great cathedral. All Henry’s life his mother had told him about the palace of Winchester where, briefly, she had captured Stephen the Usurper, and had herself been hailed as Domina.

Guillaume murmured in Catalan, a tongue the youths had learned from Guillaume’s mother and were confident none of these courtiers would understand: ‘Don’t make eye contact with them.’

A deacon whispered to his archbishop, ‘He’s actually very nervous.’

‘You read people well, Tom,’ the prelate murmured.

‘And I see Eustace has fixed on that large blue sapphire set in gold on the FitzEmpress’s middle finger,’ he continued.

A few of the older earls knew whose ring it had been, although none had seen it on the hand of its original owner. Prince Eustace stared in disbelief. William the Conqueror, the first Norman King of England, was his ancestor too. ‘How dare you wear stolen goods in my presence?’ he demanded.

Henry smiled slightly. ‘Stolen, cousin?’ He turned away.

He had a straight nose, the audience could see, and straight brows bleached fair by the sun; but he remained standing in front of the King, so mostly they saw his back. Guillaume stood slightly behind him but Eustace pointed to a wall, ordering him
away. As he stepped back, women and some clerks remarked on Guillaume’s modesty and beauty. ‘An exemplar of knighthood,’ they whispered.

Stephen smoothed his silver hair. ‘You wrote this yourself?’ he asked Henry.

‘I did.’

‘Your Highness,’ Eustace hissed. ‘I wrote it, Your Highness.’

Henry ignored him.

Stephen felt his son’s rage as a rising tide of panic within himself. How do they see me, these wild young men, he wondered. Do they regard me as weak?

‘You’ve studied well.’

‘Thank you, uncle.’

‘Uncle!’ The Prince leaped to his feet. ‘How dare you address my father as “uncle” in the presence of his court!’ For a moment his eyes fastened on Henry’s hard blue stare, then he rushed from the audience chamber, his page dashing after him.

Courtiers stopped breathing. Even the bishops were disconcerted. Their fingers hovered motionless over their rosaries.

Henry glanced after Eustace as if at a curiosity one might see at a fair. His cool look was deceptive: he seethed with excitement. At last he had seen the face, and begun to take the measure of the man he must defeat to win the throne.

Now that Eustace had left, Stephen felt more at ease. ‘How old are you now?’ the King asked in French. They had been speaking formally, in Latin.

‘Fourteen, sire.’

Guffaws echoed around the hall. Fourteen. This was the invader who had emptied castles and households from Christchurch to Canterbury as citizens fled before him.

‘And you have the audacity to ask me to give you gold so you can pay off your mercenaries and buy your fare home?’

Henry gave the King a broad white grin. He has the grandfather, but he also has the father in him, Stephen thought. A solution to his embarrassing situation occurred to the King: he would ask the courtiers to decide. Like himself, almost all had owned estates in Normandy before this boy’s father, the Count of Anjou, had seized them for himself three years earlier.

‘My noble lords and ladies,’ he began. ‘Is this not the most brazen, audacious youth any of us has ever seen? He asks me for gold. And why? Because he has spent all his while attacking our kingdom in the south! His grandfather, the Great Henry, would weep for shame, would he not?’

‘Yes!’ the chamber cried.

Henry felt a surge of murderous anger to hear his hero’s name invoked against him.

‘He’s a monster!’ a voice shouted. It was Eustace. I strike fear into the heart of the Crown Prince, Henry thought. Abruptly an antic mood swept through him. He turned to the courtiers with a broad smile and wiggled his fingers above his head. The hall erupted in laughter. Even bishops smiled; the attentive deacon had a fit of giggles. Half turning from them, Henry said, ‘Your Highness, it seems I’ve won my wager.’

‘Your wager, boy?’

‘I wagered with my commander of mercenaries that if I came here this morning I’d bring the joy of laughter to the court of King Stephen Blois.’ He waited for the yells and cat-calls to fade. A few of the older heads thought: this is the mark of a prince; he lives not in service to our expectations, but to a power within him.

‘So, lord King. I’ve given you laughter. Do you give me gold?’

From the corner of his eye Stephen caught the quick movement of Eustace’s page in the doorway. Dissembling is the art of kings, and even those who are uncomfortable with it must practise it sometimes. Stephen practised it frequently, and effectively. He answered calmly,
‘I know who you are, Henry, for we, indeed, are kinsmen. But there are many in this hall today who know only rumours about you. Perhaps you would be so gracious as to explain to the court?’