The Young Lion (23 page)

Aelbad arrived in Rouen and found a place near the wharves where he could lock his travel bag of herbs, pastes and his pet viper. The viper needed a mouse every few days, but luckily crossing the Channel Aelbad had found a rat for it. It was now so replete it would not need food for another week.

Aelbad was a tidy boy. When his closet was in order and the viper hidden away in its canvas bag beneath the sleeping platform, he wandered the town. He noted the merchants’ houses, the cathedral, the churches. He was taken aback to see how comfortable the ordinary person was in Normandy. Sailors crowded the wharves, loading barrels of wine and salt, unloading precious cloths and spices. Merchants wearing clothes of fine wool, some with fur collars and hats, stood in groups to watch their cargoes, sometimes shouting orders to a ship’s commander. This country is much richer than ours, he thought. But that, he knew, was because of the civil war.

The castle loomed on a hill in the centre of the river. He squinted up at it to see what standards flew from its turrets, but there were none. A man approached him, big-bodied, with coarse features and thick dark hair.

‘You’re not from Rouen, are you?’ he inquired.

Aelbad gave his most coquettish smile. ‘How did you guess?’

It was his milk-white skin and pale eyes: one only saw that in boys from across the Channel. ‘You’re very pretty,’ the man said.

‘Would you like to buy me dinner?’

Before they had sat down, Aelbad had calculated the man’s weight and tallied it against his supply of henbane, death angel mushrooms, wolfsbane, monkshood, thorn apple and the pastes he had made from the powdered roots of aconite and hellebore. This man, he realised, was too large and vigorous to waste his supplies on. He decided to adopt innocence, so while they ate, he told of his vocation to help lepers. There was a lazar house outside Paris, he had heard, and it was to that place he was travelling. ‘We don’t have leprosy in England,’ he said.

Feeling ashamed of his earlier intention, the man said, ‘Why don’t you visit the leper house here in Rouen? It’s over on that hill, the Mont-aux-Malades. Augustinian fathers run it.’

When Aelbad presented himself to the monk who stood at the door of the leper house, a strange sensation overcame him. He felt faint, as if he were a puppet and the strings that held him upright had suddenly fallen from the hand of the puppeteer. He stumbled in the doorway and collapsed. The monk stood watching him. As he revived, Aelbad began his story: he had a vocation to cure lepers … The monk listened in silence. When Aelbad had finished the monk said, ‘Leprosy comes from God as a gift, because through leprosy God calls the sick and the sinful to holiness. Man cannot cure it.’ He continued looking at Aelbad.

‘I dreamed last night a demon would come to this house,’ the monk added. ‘And that around his neck there would be a coiled viper. Although you are so young and your face so beautiful, when I look at you, child, I see a viper coiled about your neck. Leave this place. It is not for the un-Godly.’

Late that night Aelbad again toiled up the Mont-aux-Malades, but this time he was prepared. He checked its doors and gates
were locked, then set fire to it. He watched as its roof, walls and inhabitants vanished in the carnival of red serpents that danced against the sky.

Henry had the lazar house rebuilt before the onset of winter.

From Rouen, Aelbad took a riverboat to Paris and there was received as Robert, orphan of a man who had carried the cross, who yearned to ease the suffering of those with the holy disease. The monks were happy for another set of hands and, at Aelbad’s suggestion, set him to work in the kitchen. He had been so frightened by the Augustinian in Rouen that he delayed for months before he spooned the saliva of a rabid dog into the soup of four of the strongest lepers. Until this time he had killed them off one by one, and only once a month, on the full moon. The holy fathers believed it a sign of divine mercy to die when the moon was full. ‘Christ’s face shines strongly on man when the moon is His reflecting glass,’ they said.

He made precise, coded notes of the quantities of his poisons, how best to disguise their taste, and at what time of day to administer them to achieve the greatest effect. His viper, meanwhile, grew. He burned its shed skin in the kitchen oven. It was a languorous viper, content to sleep all day as long as it had enough mice and the occasional frog Aelbad caught for it in a stream that ran nearby the lazar house. To keep it lively he would let it loose in his cell at night so it could chase the live mouse or the frog. After the excitement of catching its prey, it would, with just a gentle patting on the floor from Aelbad, crawl back into its canvas bag. From his instinct for self-preservation he always wore a pair of heavy padded gauntlets before he handled the snake. On cold nights he lifted its bag into his bed, but the bag quickly became smelly. Every few weeks he asked those lepers who could still use their hands to stitch him a new bag, explaining that he needed it for his herbs, berries and roots. The lazar house was
richly endowed by the families of men who had gone on crusade and contracted the holy illness in Outremer.

‘I grow in wisdom,’ he wrote to Eustace.

‘Grow in observation,’ his lord wrote back.

By tradition, seven days after the birth of a son, a woman could lie with her husband. Henry was so eager to resume physical relations with Xena that before dawn on the seventh day, as soon as she had fed the baby, he persuaded her to welcome him again. She had already agreed with Isabella to breastfeed only another three weeks. After that she would drink herbs, her breasts would be bound and a wetnurse would take over. On this, the morning of the seventh day, her body was to be bound from beneath her breasts to her hips. Henry jiggled his palm on her slack belly. ‘It’ll be tight again soon,’ he said. ‘But I want to suckle longer. I want to suckle forever …’

When they woke again later that morning and made their ablutions, he said, ‘Put on your prettiest robe and veil. We’re going to the cathedral.’

‘For what?’ she asked.

‘For the baptism. Guillaume will be godfather. Maria will be godmother. Papa and Isabella are coming too.’

She stared at him. ‘But you promised me he would be circumcised! He must be circumcised. Tomorrow is the eighth day!’

Henry stroked her cheek. ‘Beloved,’ he said, ‘first he’ll be baptised a Christian. When he’s older if he wants to become a Jew, he can make that decision himself. Hasten. Get dressed.’

‘You promised me!’

‘A promise extracted under force is invalid,’ he replied. His tone was gentle but Xena could see the iron behind his eyes. ‘You
and the baby were in danger of your lives. I’d have promised you anything. Now don’t be unreasonable.’

‘Why must he be baptised?’

‘Because a Jew can’t be an English prince. Or a French prince. Or any kind of prince. And I’ll make him a prince.’ Since she continued to stare in stubborn silence he asked, ‘Would you prefer him to be a horse-trader?’

When she refused to reply he said, ‘I’ll send in Isabella and Maria and they’ll bind you and help you choose a robe.’

Henry, Geoffrey and Guillaume wore gold boots to celebrate the occasion, and although it was midwinter and a little snow fell during breakfast, a sprig of broom, from pots he grew indoors, enlivened Geoffrey’s hat. One of the gardeners knew how to coax the plants to flower even at this time of year.

‘Are there any more?’ Henry asked when he saw the yellow flowers. ‘Guillaume and I can wear some too.’

Geoffrey sent for some more and after Guillaume had threaded the sprig into the band of his hat and surveyed his father and brother, he announced, ‘Here stands the
Planta genista
tribe.’

Henry shouted, ‘That’s it! I have my own son. I need my own name. Plantagenet! What do you think, Papa?’

‘It’s one of the names Estienne de Selors called me behind my back.’

‘Why not be proud of it?’ Henry cut in. ‘It’s a vigorous plant that colonises everywhere. Broom, I like that.’

Geoffrey shrugged. ‘I’m happy to change from Foulques. Plantagenet feels right.’ He looked to Guillaume, who nodded. They shook hands on it.

They entered the cathedral and Henry took the baby from Rachel.

‘What is this child to be called?’ the priest asked.

Henry replied, ‘Geoffrey.’

‘No other name?’ the priest asked.

‘Avram,’ Rachel said.

The priest looked at Henry. ‘I think I misheard the mother …’

‘You did,’ Henry said. ‘His name is Geoffrey. If you want a family name, it’s Plantagenet.’

The priest waited with folded hands by the font. Henry said, ‘This infant is Geoffrey Plantagenet, son of Henry Plantagenet and Rachel Plantagenet, grandson of Geoffrey Plantagenet, Count of Anjou and Maine and Duke of Normandy. Baptise him in those names and write them in the record book. Is the water warm?’

‘Yes, lord Duke.’

‘It better be.’ Henry dipped his spare hand in the font. ‘It’s too cold,’ he said. ‘You’re not to immerse him. Just sprinkle a bit on his head. And don’t frighten him.’

The priest did as Henry ordered and made the sign of the cross over the infant. Isabella and Maria held Rachel’s hands to try to stop her crying. Henry pretended not to notice.

They had arrived in two carriages: Isabella, Geoffrey and Guillaume in one; Henry, Rachel, the infant and Maria in the other. On the ride home Maria swapped places with Guillaume to ride with her parents.

Rachel stopped crying but stared out the window.

‘Darling,’ Henry said, ‘it’s just a ritual. We have to do it, because if anything were to happen to him, people would say, “His soul is in limbo. Henry allowed his baby to go to limbo.” Don’t upset yourself.’

‘But you lied to me!’ she said.

‘Rachel, I did not lie. You extracted a promise from me under duress. That is not a lie.’ His face was colouring with anger. The baby began to cry. ‘There! You’ve upset him!’ He glanced at Guillaume for support.

Guillaume hissed, ‘Just apologise!’

‘Apologise for what?’ Henry muttered. ‘Saving her life and our baby’s? You know how much we’ve got to organise before September! I won’t waste time arguing over …’ He looked again at Rachel’s stricken face. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. I did lie. But I lied for you. I lied for him. I lied for us.’ He took her chin between his thumb and forefinger and turned her face towards him, but something in her had vanished. She no longer trusts you, a voice said to him.

Henry closed his eyes and rested his head on the cushioned backing of the carriage. Guillaume sang to the baby but none of them spoke for the rest of the journey.

In the other carriage Geoffrey and Isabella spoke rapidly to Maria. ‘You’re her closest friend. You must explain to her Henry is acting in the best interests of the infant. He’s thinking ahead thirty years.’

‘Maybe she’s thinking ahead to eternity,’ Maria replied.

‘Oh, no!’ Geoffrey exploded. ‘Don’t tell me she’s been talking theology to you …’ He fell silent with shock.

Isabella said, ‘Maria, obey your father. If you need arguments to present to Rachel, come to me, or to Papa, or Guillaume. We can all give you reasons. We can tell you the problems that Jews have in England. People say that circumcision is to get a baby’s blood, and they use the blood in some disgusting practice. I really don’t know. But it’s a serious issue.’

‘Politically, very serious,’ Geoffrey said. ‘God’s teeth, Maria, just ask her this: why has she pretended for more than a year that she’s not a Jew? Why has she pretended her name is not Rachel filia Avram? It’s because somebody told her that in a Christian country she would be in danger if she let people know she was a Jewish orphan.’ He gave a long sigh, apparently of irritation.

‘Papa,’ Maria whispered, ‘she has asked Henry to marry her.’

Geoffrey sat up. ‘Maria, don’t talk nonsense! They
cannot
be married. They
cannot
marry for the simple reason that
I will not
give consent
. Until Louis accepts homage from Henry, I’m his liege. He must ask my permission to wed. And I certainly won’t give permission to wed the daughter of a rabbi and a horse-trader. Beautiful, intelligent and noble-spirited though she be.’ He turned to glare at Isabella. ‘Henry’s almost nineteen. Was I so stupid when I was nineteen?’

‘I don’t recall,’ Isabella murmured, but thought, you could have been slaughtered when you climbed in the window of that countess in Burgundy and her husband found you in her bed.

The post-baptismal dinner was subdued but for their toasts to ‘Plantagenet’.

The three men ate quickly. They had little to say beyond sweet nothings to the new mother and the other women, and they left the table as soon as they had consumed the poached winter pears.

In a chamber set up for war planning, the Treasurer and the Seneschal of Normandy were inside warming their backsides in front of the fire. There was no scribe present. For a meeting such as this, they wrote their own notes.

The Seneschal had laid out maps of the south coast of England on a long oak table.

‘I need two hundred ships by the first week of September,’ Henry said.

The Treasurer pursed his lips. ‘In that case, my lords, we had all better go to Rouen immediately.’

Henry and his father exchanged glances. ‘Do you know if Mama left her jewels there?’

‘We could look,’ Geoffrey said. He knew Henry would pawn Matilda’s jewels if he could find them, but it would be he, Geoffrey, who would have to listen to hours of her abuse. Not that either man considered the jewels belonged to Matilda: both knew they were probably the property of the new German Emperor, who repeatedly demanded their return. ‘If only he would ask
politely …’ Geoffrey sometimes remarked. ‘Louis was polite in his demands that we return his horse.’

The whole party arrived in Rouen two days later. Back in their dwelling Isabella let Rachel and the baby sleep late the next morning. ‘Don’t disturb them. They will be tired after the long journey,’ she’d said to Maria. Isabella waited almost until dinner time before knocking on Rachel’s door. Inside the chamber was empty, Rachel’s clothes gone. She ran to the kitchen. ‘Go count the horses in the stables,’ she instructed a maid.