The Young Lion (20 page)

From the moment Eleanor had heard Estienne was dead and Geoffrey was alive her fears and feverishness vanished. Waiting in the doorway in a gown of deep rose-pink embroidered with silver thread, she appeared to Louis when he arrived home from Normandy, more ravishingly gorgeous than ever. He had passed through the palace courtyard to the sound of triumphal music and a chorus of forty minstrels –

– and felt abashed at the welcome she had prepared for him.

‘I gave those scoundrels a black eye,’ he said. ‘Reminded them they’re my vassals.’

But the Queen’s relief could not distract her forever. Each day she walked in the park and watched the fishermen on the other side of the river. She thought of the Île and her palace in Paris as a monstrous grey ship caught on a mudbank from which it would never float free. She wanted to go riding in the wood, but Louis forbade it. Her belly had grown but was not yet so large as to make her sluggish or unable to mount a horse. She walked
briskly through the gardens and nearby park, outpacing the retinue of palace ladies who accompanied her, keeping in step with her male guards. One morning beside a flower bed a guard asked her if she would give an audience to a noble prisoner, Baron Richard de Cholet, captured during the war against Normandy.

Her heart skipped. She remembered that Geoffrey regarded Cholet as a trusted friend. And she knew Cholet had spent hours in conversation with Louis and the new Seneschal, Estienne’s eldest son, a courteous knight, highly regarded for courage but the merest shadow of his father. After each meeting between the King, the Baron and the Seneschal, letters went back and forth between Paris and Normandy, or Paris and Anjou – concerning the ransome, she surmised.

‘He may address me,’ the Queen said.

After a greeting in Latin, then pleasantries in French, he shifted to langue d’oc. ‘I knew your father,’ he said. ‘What a man! What a poet!’

He began to hum one of her father’s songs. Watching eyes and listening ears were everywhere. She hummed along with him and for a moment sang two lines of it: ‘Though my heart should break from missing her, yet shall I live in hope the day will come …’

She paused to admire a red rose. ‘Three of them speak our language,’ she murmured into the rose. ‘I’ll get rid of them.’

She summoned the women from Aquitaine and asked them to fetch her cats. ‘Bastet and Sekhmet should walk in the park with us. They’d love to chase those little birds,’ she said.

The Baron said, ‘Your Highness, can you prevail upon your husband over the issue of Normandy? Until that problem is settled a mutual friend of ours has no freedom to pursue his heart’s desire. He’s occupied day and night with dismal matters of administration, when all he craves …’ He bent to the gravel path. ‘I think you
dropped this, Highness.’ He held a scarlet glove. She took it quickly. Richard de Cholet handed her its pair.

Quietly she asked, ‘Is there news of a Greek girl called Xena? She was my personal maid. Is she still alive?’

‘Alive, Your Highness – and, if I may be bold – in a condition similar to your own. Though not so advanced.’

The Queen stopped and clasped a hand against her heart. ‘I give thanks!’ she said. ‘I prayed for her …’

The guards stared and one began to walk towards her. She flicked him away.

‘Whose?’ she whispered.

‘The Young Duke’s.’

‘Oh, no!’ she gasped. ‘He violated her?’

‘Not at all. He loves her more than his right arm. She has become the breath of his body, he says.’

The Queen gasped and pressed a hand to her side. You are the breath of my body were words Geoffrey had used to her.

‘Highness!’

‘It’s nothing. The prince kicked suddenly. Tell me more about Xena.’

‘Because of her, Henry refuses to discuss marriage. He refuses the companionship of his other concubines. His father is at his wits’ end.’

Eleanor became silent and pensive. After some time she said, ‘Perhaps we can play chess this afternoon? The King is hunting in Boulogne and my ladies prefer backgammon.’

Although the day was warm, when she returned to her apartment she complained it was chilly and ordered a servant to light the fire in her bedchamber. In her privy she slowly pulled Geoffrey’s notes from inside the gloves and when she had memorised his words threw the two pieces of parchment into the fire. Her cheeks still flamed with excitement from what he had written.

‘A prayer rises more swiftly to heaven when it’s burned,’ she announced to her attendant ladies. ‘Surely the heir I carry will be sound in all his limbs and faculties.’

‘Amen,’ they said and crossed themselves.

In the library that afternoon she and the Baron played chess. ‘Be quiet!’ Eleanor ordered the chattering women. They moved the backgammon table further away but every so often one of the cats leaped on it and swiped their tokens to the floor.

Cholet held a pawn between his finger and thumb, hesitating on his move. ‘I feel affection for pawns,’ he said. ‘They put me in mind of children. Or babies … Now, should I think of this pawn as the King’s and put it there? Or perhaps … I should move it next to the rook?’

‘My dear Baron,’ she replied, ‘I wish I knew how to advise you. But I cannot. What’s more, you’re not concentrating and I’m about to put you in check.’ She took advantage of her ladies’ outraged cries at Sekhmet. ‘Young Henry must give Louis something,’ she whispered. ‘The theft of his horse is humiliating. There are tavern songs about it that attack the King’s prestige. Louis is angrier about losing Jason than about Estienne’s head.’

Personally, Eleanor hoped Henry would never inherit Normandy. She wished he would die of frustration, of fever, or drowning, or anything, to punish him for his vile behaviour the night they met. But she was a realist and knew that until the issue was settled, war with Normandy would continue. In times past Vikings had reached the gates of Paris. The King of France had been forced to give them the province they now called Normandy so they would leave the capital unharmed. Who could say that, allied with Anjou, Maine and possibly Brittany, their descendants would not be victorious against the House of Capet? But while a state of war continued she had no hope of seeing Geoffrey.

Two weeks later, knights crossed the Norman border at Gisors asking safe passage through the Île de France. There they delivered a large parcel wrapped in hessian, then in linen, then in brocade. Inside was Jason’s caparison. An accompanying letter read:

A scribe had written the message in elegant Latin, its border decorated with acanthus leaves and flowers. It had two wax seals, one with a G, the second an H.

Despite himself, Louis chuckled. He summoned the Baron. ‘I want the rest of my horse,’ he said. He peered at the initials inscribed in wax. ‘Strange quills they use,’ he said. Eleanor, leaning over his shoulder, thought no quill makes a mark so deep. They’ve signed it with the points of their daggers, you dolt.

Soon after, a second letter, bearing the same signatures, arrived to announce that a forester had sighted a glorious steed roaming near the river.
We shall attempt to catch him and return him to Your Highness under the care of a knight
.

‘I want my saddle returned also,’ Louis said to the Baron. To his wife he added, ‘At last they’re serious about negotiating.’

Normandy for a horse? she thought. Louis, you’re a fool. Being King has made you smug, while piety blinds you to the character of men. And women. But she kissed him tenderly, in the presence of Richard de Cholet. ‘Magnanimous King,’ she said.

Already the Baron, whose release was imminent, had taken risks for her, sending a letter to Geoffrey concealed in the lining of a hat, another in the straw of a basket of quail eggs. It was no wonder, he thought to himself – no wonder but a great pity –
that his dear friend had fallen in love with the Queen. She was ravishing to the eye, and as charming and talented a rascal as her father, Duke William. It was known that the old Duke could coax a dove out of a tree and that he never met an attractive woman without his hands ending up beneath her skirts.

Michaelmas came, but no royal child. In October the Queen was delivered of a daughter. Louis wept. As he held his exhausted wife in his arms, she wept too. ‘What is to become of France?’ she sobbed.

Her husband joined his hands in prayer. ‘We shall persist,’ he said. He had called Master Erasmus from his duties at the Guild to attend the royal birth. ‘You did your best,’ he said. ‘My Queen shall conceive once more.’

‘Of course, Lord King. Your wife is a strong, healthy woman of great and vital spirit,’ the physician answered.

Eleanor glared at him. ‘You told me I’d have a son,’ she said. She was thinking, I’ll have no more children with Louis Capet. I’ll get a divorce. I’ll gain my freedom. But since the death of Estienne, it was obvious that Augustin, captain of the palace guards, had taken on the Seneschal’s hatred of her. Although she did not really expect to be poisoned, at random moments she demanded Augustin taste her food.

Henry shared his father’s conflicting emotions when news reached Rouen of the date of birth and the sex of the royal infant. Geoffrey was disappointed the baby was not his, but relieved Louis still had no heir. Heirless, the King could not much longer refuse to accept Henry as Duke without earning himself a reputation for petulance.

‘Unless he plans another attack,’ Henry said. He raised his eyebrows in query at his father.

Henry returned Jason to Louis after the stallion had covered more than a hundred of their Normandy and Anjou mares. The Normandy climate, with its abundant rain and lush pasture, was ideal for horses, and for all agriculture except wine. By the following spring the first of Jason’s foals would drop. In a few more years Henry knew his stables would be stronger than Louis’s, and greater than Stephen’s and Eustace’s combined. With Xena by his side, he walked through the stables inspecting his horses. ‘The foundation of our economic strength,’ he said. ‘As you are the foundation of my happiness.’

It was a good time of year to bag woodcock, so to cheer his father, Henry suggested they go hunting. The meadows around Rouen were windless, with the first orange and yellow leaves of autumn drifting silently from branches at the edges of some fields. They crossed a small forest to reach open ground where their hunting birds could fly. In the wood the softly rotting, humid smells of mushrooms and fungi growing on tree trunks made strolling a relaxation. Tethering their horses, they continued on with two falconers, ten hounds, three falcons and three goshawks.

After a while Geoffrey said, ‘She writes that she longs for me, that only the thought of our being together keeps her from leaping into the Seine. I believe she actually hates Louis now. She signs herself The Prisoner.’

He sat on the mossy stump of a tree. The falconer and hounds had rushed off through the fields, following the falcons that floated in the high blue sky. Geoffrey dropped his head into his hands.

Gradually, Henry realised his father was weeping. He hunkered on the ground beside him. ‘Papa?’

‘She’s told me a secret,’ Geoffrey said. ‘Louis is determined she’ll have another child. He persists in believing he can get an heir on her. But she’s learned from some Greek physician a way to avoid falling pregnant, so she’s certain, with a little more patience,
she’ll win her divorce. The Church cannot go on forever denying an heir to France. The bishops must give way.’

‘But this is good news,’ Henry said. He stared at his father’s heaving shoulders.

At last Geoffrey lifted his head. His broad cheekbones were still wet with tears. ‘Henry,’ he said, ‘you know in what danger heiresses live. The moment she gets a divorce some swine will abduct her and force her to the altar. She must have the protection of a husband. And I can’t give it to her.’

His silent stare turned Henry’s bowels cold. But before he could utter a word, Geoffrey leaped up and clapped his hand across Henry’s mouth. ‘Don’t speak!’ he ordered. ‘Listen to what I say!’ He wept again for a few moments. ‘Henry, in all Europe there is only one prince courageous enough to protect her. That prince is you, and –’ Henry jerked away violently but his father grabbed him by the hair. ‘– and with Eleanor’s lands, you’ll control almost all of France!’

Henry turned and rushed through the trees.

When one of the hounds found him he followed it back on leaden feet to the stump where he had left his father. The falcons and goshawks had been fed and hooded for the journey home. Spread across the autumn leaves were more than forty woodcock, enough for the whole family and senior members of the regiment. When Geoffrey saw Henry dawdling towards him he said to the falconer, ‘Take the woodcocks to the kitchens. My son and I will enjoy the forest a while longer.’

They strolled side by side. Henry said, ‘The answer is
no
.’

‘Why?’

‘She obviously hasn’t told you, which I appreciate. But the fact is, we hate each other.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘Papa, I have a confession. I was unchivalrous to her the night we met. I’d just murdered Hamelin in cold blood and I was about
to kill the maid. I blamed Eleanor. I was so angry I … behaved badly. Ask her.’

Geoffrey walked on in silence for a while, from time to time picking a mushroom to sniff. At length he said, ‘Henry, I realise you are madly in love with Xena, and think of her day and night. But God’s feet, son! She was a slave in the court at Constantinople! However wicked it was that she was sold into slavery, you cannot imagine you can marry – if that’s what you’re thinking – an ex-slave, and be King of England!’

Henry said, ‘Father, do not say one more word about Xena.’ His dagger was in his fist.