Authors: Blanche d'Alpuget
‘You write to her every day.’
‘What harm is there in a letter?’ His tone was mild.
‘Throughout June you did not write to me!’
‘I was fighting a war against the King of France. I was somewhat occupied. If I slept, it was four hours a night.’
‘But you were not so occupied as to spend three days in Rouen with her,’ Eleanor replied.
He raised an eyebrow. ‘You spy on me?’
‘It was drawn to my attention.’
‘I have family in Rouen. I have a mother, three brothers, nine sisters, a son …’
‘And her!’
Henry was seated at a desk about to write to his mother. He smiled to himself, thinking: keep the falcon hungry.
‘What do you suggest I do about her?’
‘Divorce her!’ Eleanor replied.
He laughed. ‘Lady, you forget I’m not married to her. Therefore I cannot divorce.’ He thought, I’ll not ask her for a penny. I won’t barter for Rachel with this rich harlot.
‘You know what I mean.’
‘I know what you say. Say what you mean.’
‘Get rid of her,’ Eleanor hissed. Before I do, she thought. ‘I saved her from slavery. The ungrateful wretch has rewarded me by stealing my husband.’
‘You’re being ridiculous,’ Henry replied evenly.
Eleanor had no idea how it had happened, but she thought of Henry every waking moment. Of his tousled head of fire, of his hard blue eyes, his sleek animal strength, his sudden gusts of laughter. The way he sat on a horse – the way horses seemed to love him – the way he cast a falcon, the way he called hounds to heel, the sheer vitality of his body, as if he contained a sun within himself – everything, even the black bile of his temper, absorbed her heart and mind and made her bones melt in yearning for him to love her. He was as beautiful as a rainbow, and as unreachable. His virility was like a coat of shining armour. After their wedding night he had shown desultory interest in lying with her, and only if he had drunk wine. On their progress through her southern domains she suspected he sometimes had whores in his bed, and more than once a young countess.
‘Get rid of her,’ she repeated in a quieter tone.
Henry chuckled. ‘You may as well demand I cut off first my arms, then my legs. What troubles you, lady? We married for your
protection, to expand our territories and make ourselves mighty. And to get heirs to carry our line. The fact that my heart and soul belong to Rachel is of no relevance to any of that.’ He stared at her in silence then said, ‘You’ve donated to every church, abbey and shrine that we’ve passed, in order to win moral approval. I think it’s working in your favour. Find yourself a lover.’
His offer, before they married, to allow her freedom had been the answer to a prayer.
‘And be jeered in the taverns again as an adulteress?’ she replied bitterly.
‘Choose someone who arouses no suspicion – but allow no cuckoo in my nest. You’re clever at that.’
They gazed at each other in mutual curiosity. Will it be her favourite troubadour? Henry wondered.
At length Eleanor answered, ‘I’ll consider your offer.’
‘Good,’ he muttered. He’d lost interest in the conversation and was thinking of how to beg his mother for money without inviting the rejoinder that he should ask his wife. Matilda knew the geography of England and understood both military strategy and tactics. He decided to explain his battle plan to her.
From Henry, Duke of Normandy, Anjou, Maine, Poitou and Aquitaine, to his Beloved mother, Empress Matilda, Dowager Duchess of Normandy, Anjou and Maine:
Dear Mother,
Stephen has a stranglehold on our allies in Wallingford and has cut their access to supplies by capturing a bridge across the Thames that was their lifeline. They will starve this winter unless we can relieve them. Our other bases, in Devizes and Bristol, are a long march away through territory already denuded of provisions. Winter rains will make progress difficult if not impossible. I propose therefore to relieve Wallingford by forcing Stephen to leave it, and
come to me to defend himself. His stronghold, Malmesbury, is at the point of a salient that thrusts into the triangle of our strongholds of Bristol, Gloucester and Devizes. Therefore I shall attack Malmesbury and make Stephen the one forced to ride through mud. He will not expect a winter attack, but I plan to sail as soon as the Christmas Court is over. I will need three thousand foot soldiers and a hundred-and-fifty knights. I calculate thirty-six vessels should be sufficient to transport them.
Matilda wrote back:
I’ve pawned two diadems and a necklace. Rachel has been very helpful and we secured a most favourable rate.
She added that she would prefer not to spend the Christmas Court with Henry ‘on account of your new domestic arrangements’, but would like to take Rachel and baby Geoffrey to stay in the castle of Caen with her. She had given Rachel the task, she said, of overseeing the breeding program in their stables
… since her learning in these matters is extraordinary. She works back five generations, allotting each dam and sire a number, and uses an abacus to calculate how their progeny have rated for speed, stamina and courage; based on these figures, she allots certain dams to certain sires. It is most ingenious. The foals out of Jason are doing well, especially the colt from Selama.
Eleanor meanwhile wrote to Master Erasmus in Paris, asking him to come immediately to Normandy to attend her again as personal physician.
The Christmas Court in Rouen was more splendid than anyone could remember. ‘My Duchess is the most gracious of hostesses, is
she not?’ Henry asked his barons and clergy. He was anxious for her to establish herself in their affection. They were accustomed to Matilda’s imperiousness and parsimony and Henry believed that the new Duchess’s beauty and elegance would of themselves bring pride to his vassals. The banquets during the month of Advent and the twelve days of Christmas were perfectly suited to Eleanor’s charm, sophistication and experience in organising lavish, lavish feasts. She brought to every undertaking the panache of her artistic nature: the colours with which she hung the feasting tables, the way she dressed the pages and servants, the decoration of the dishes and the order of their presentation. At every feast there was a pièce de résistance, the most fantastic being a large pie from which twenty-four live blackbirds flew out when the crust was cut. Even Henry shouted with admiration and kissed her fervently in front of all their guests. ‘I persuaded my best chef from Paris to come to work for me,’ she whispered to him. A great many other Parisians had come to Rouen in Eleanor’s wake. Ventadour had accompanied them from the south. His singing entranced not only the palace, but the entire city.
‘You’re the sweetheart of Normandy,’ Henry told his wife that night. She looked at him with melancholy amusement. ‘You are mine,’ he added, tenderness softening his voice. ‘You and I shall enjoy a month of connubial bliss.’ It’s because Rachel’s away somewhere, Eleanor thought.
‘Why have you changed towards me so much?’ she asked.
Henry seemed taken aback. ‘That was our agreement,’ he replied. ‘During the Christmas Court I’m utterly your husband.’ With a grin, he slapped her backside. ‘If you’re not with child by Epiphany, my lady …’
He didn’t wait for it to grow dark. As soon as the noontime meal was over he led her to his quarters. The ducal palace was, she told him, a more comfortable building than ‘that monstrosity
on the Seine’. But Henry remembered the luxuries of her sleeping chamber in Paris. ‘Make any changes you like,’ he said grandly. ‘I want you to feel at ease.’ After supper, he took her to bed again, sometimes not even to bed, but to a stairwell, or up against a row of shields in the armoury, in a closet, or to the hayloft of the stables. Only once had Louis lain with her other than in their beds, and that was after they had agreed to divorce. ‘You’re a satyr,’ she said as he pushed her into the winter hay. The loft was warm from the horses stabled beneath them and the stallions made low growls and grunts. When they sensed the humans mating, they snorted and pawed at their stalls. ‘This is a good place for us, lady,’ Henry said. You can’t pretend you’re still Queen of France while we’re rutting in a hayloft. Despite your sighing and moaning in Poitiers, you only pretended to surrender to me. But lying in the hay, if I move my hand to your thigh your eyes grow fierce with lust. ‘My little falcon,’ he murmured to her. The voices of grooms walking around below, of the horse master, of other people coming and going, of the stallions growling, all intensifies your excitement. You were born for the shallow thrills of adultery, he thought. My Rachel was born for the sublime incandescence of true love.
At Christmas, Eleanor announced with lowered eyes, ‘I’m to make you a father, Henry.’
‘Just as we agreed!’ he said. He slapped her back as if she were a man from the regiment.
She returned to her quarters and wept. She felt as if her dead grandmother were at her elbow. ‘He’ll never love you. Get used to it,
ma petite
,’ grinned La Dangereuse.
When Master Erasmus had first seen Eleanor again, before the Christmas Court, temptation leaped through him like the stab of a
knife. It was not only her beauty that affected him, but her tragic daring. She’s like a moth that flutters around a flame, he thought.
He entered her apartment that night. ‘What was his response when you told him you were with child?’ he asked.
‘He slapped my back as if I were an infantryman.’
Like a man in a desert who, at the point of death, finds a pool of water, with infinite care Master Erasmus took her upturned face between his palms and kissed her mouth.
Two days later, after Mass in the palace chapel, Guillaume joined Henry and Eleanor for breakfast. ‘We’re leaving for a while,’ Henry announced to his wife.
‘You can’t leave me!’ Eleanor looked at Guillaume for support.
‘I’m afraid we have to,’ he answered quietly.
Henry added, ‘The timing’s perfect. Our Duchess is with child!’
Guillaume leaped to embrace his brother and his sister-in-law. She grasped his hand. ‘Make him stay, Guillaume!’ she said. ‘I don’t give birth easily. It’s not right for him to leave me.’
He answered, ‘I’d love to, but …’ He fell silent. Months earlier he and Henry had agreed they would keep their battle plans secret from Eleanor. Her relationship with Eustace’s wife, Constance, had been much to their advantage in the past. It could also work in reverse, Henry thought.
‘It’s something political,’ Guillaume murmured.
‘Political?’ she echoed. ‘Do you mean military? It’s not yet Epiphany. How can you …?’ After a silence she added, ‘I suppose you’ll be going to Caen.’ She had discovered that Rachel sojourned with the Dowager in the castle of Caen.
‘Maybe,’ Henry said.
He wondered, could you be so reckless as to tell Constance that I’m moving towards the coast? It was a short ride from Caen
to Barfleur, where the army and the ships to transport it would gather within the octave of Epiphany. ‘My mother and the rest of my family are there. There are many political issues within a family. My mother, for example …’ He and Guillaume smirked: the Dowager had invited Isabella to holiday with her in Caen.
‘Your mother refuses to acknowledge me as your wife. I’ve written to her, but have not had the courtesy of a reply. What amuses you?’
She looked so shaken Henry felt sorry for her. He walked around the table and kissed her lips. ‘My mother and Guillaume’s mama have been enemies for a quarter of a century. Suddenly, as widows, they’re taking the sea air in Caen together. We poor young males can only observe and wonder at the strange mystery of the female heart.’
Eleanor thought, I know what that thieving old vixen is up to: she’s forming an alliance against me. She intends, as my mother-in-law, to restrict me to child-bearing and arranging festivities.
‘You want to see
her
, don’t you?’ she accused him.
‘Rachel? Of course I do. Now, don’t upset yourself. You carry the bud of a new life. You must think happy thoughts – for him and for yourself.’ He stroked her face. ‘Would you like to return to Poitiers? Would you feel more at ease there?’
‘Probably,’ she muttered.
‘If I know where you are I can write to you …’
‘Why can’t I write to you?’
‘I’ll be moving around … won’t we, Guillaume?’
‘Moving around,’ Guillaume agreed. He rested his gaze on Eleanor and raised a quizzical eyebrow.
She calmed when he flirted with her, and his flirtation amused Henry.
As they cantered over the drawbridge, Henry remarked, ‘I do believe my wife wants to have you in her bed.’
Guillaume slanted his eyes and smiled. ‘While you’ve been practising swordplay with the garrison, I’ve been shaking her tambourine.’
Henry pulled up his horse with such a jolt it reared. ‘You’ve what?’
Guillaume laughed heartily for the first time since Geoffrey died.
‘Swine!’ Henry shouted. He continued to swear at Guillaume for the next half hour, but his brother rode beside him, unsmiling now. He had tried to tell Henry for months that his neglect of Eleanor’s feelings sharpened her jealousy of Rachel and made her even more unpredictable. He believed she had already taken a lover. There was a new sex power hiding in her eyes now, like a wolf in a cave.
‘When’s the baby due?’ he asked.
‘September, I suppose.’
Rachel now understood that the creamy-white castle of Caen was among the most expressive of Norman values. She had been familiar with the decorative colour and feminine style of the buildings in Outremer and at first had found Norman architecture frighteningly austere. But now she saw its majestic virtues. Caen was elegant in line, formidable in size and imperious in its location. Of his many buildings, the Lion was said to be proudest of Caen Castle’s virile beauty.
In Caen, Henry would collect the money Matilda had raised for the war. Mercenaries fought best, he’d discovered, when paid in quarters: he’d pay a quarter on embarkation. The rest he would dole out as the battle against Stephen and Eustace progressed. The Prince, having caused all the mischief he could in France, had
returned to England in November. To avoid Norman territory, according to Henry’s spies, he had made a tiresome overland trip to Dunkerque, then sailed to Dover. Henry’s army would be landing far to the west, but as winter progressed the weather worsened. Nobody could predict what they might encounter a few days hence.
It blew a gale on the first day of the new year. From the upper floors, those in the castle of Caen looked out on a heaving iron sea. Before the wind made outside visits unendurable, Rachel had carried little Geoffrey around the lower walls where she found magical objects to show him: the outline of tiny creatures, like a crab or a fish, embedded in the pale stone. As much as these finds delighted the child, they baffled her, making her wonder if God had not perfectly separated the dry land from the sea. On these occasions she missed her father painfully, for he used to be able to explain everything. ‘We’re strangers in a strange land,’ she murmured to her son.
Henry felt her sadness as soon as he arrived. ‘Is it the time I spent with Eleanor?’ he asked.
‘Partly. She and I loved each other almost like mother and daughter. At least like sisters. Now I feel her hatred for me. But mostly, I’ve missed you, Henry. I kiss your letters at night before I sleep.’
He decided he would send for her as soon as the worst of the fighting was over.
‘You can’t set out in this weather,’ she said.
He laughed. ‘That’s what Stephen and Eustace will think. You forget, darling wife, the sea runs through my veins.’
The night the army embarked the gale was still blowing. At midnight the tide was at its height. Henry shouted to his men, ‘Heaven favours our cause! The wind blows in the right direction! The tide is with us.’ Their ships flew before the southerly gale,
the first of them reaching Portsmouth at dawn. Ranulf and other allies waited to meet them beside bonfires lit to guide the invaders to shore. As his ship approached anchorage, Henry saw, for the first time in his life, famine. Along the seashore and riverbanks scarecrows in rags scavenged in sand and mud for anything edible, swallowing immediately whatever they found, still raw and squirming. Bark and leaves had been stripped from trees. Henry stared aghast at what he thought was a lost hound, but realised was a young woman wandering on all fours. As they travelled towards Malmesbury they saw crows eating what little could be found on the corpses of those who had starved. And everywhere the air smelled of smoke.
‘This famine is not sent by God, but by our King and his Prince,’ Ranulf said bitterly.
Henry’s face was black with rage. ‘Cowardice is the mother of cruelty,’ he answered.
The violent weather caused news of his invasion to take almost a fortnight to reach the King. Stephen forced a march to the banks of the Avon River, already swollen with floodwaters, arriving in late February, but by then Henry had captured the town of Malmesbury and had its castle under siege.
‘The King’s men are so cold and exhausted they can barely hold their weapons,’ a scout reported.
The rival armies faced each other across the Avon, but the merciless rain drowned out their insulting yells.
A bridge across the river was holding. Henry sent a knight over with a fat roast duck for the King’s dinner, but Eustace flung it into the flood. With the nimble wit for which they were famous, infantrymen from Anjou used a forked stick to fish it out. They ate it, making vulgar gestures at their counterparts on the other bank.
‘They’re so dispirited they’re barely pretending to want to fight,’ Henry remarked to Guillaume. It was raining too hard for
either side to do much, the rain making it almost impossible to see. Towards evening Guillaume entered the house Henry had requisitioned, followed by a group of dripping, dishevelled men. They spoke no French and Henry was not yet confident enough of his English to negotiate in that language. Ranulf acted as interpreter.
‘They’re envoys from the barons of the Avon River. They want to make peace.’
‘We must let Stephen know tonight,’ Henry said. ‘My terms are that he destroys the fortifications of Malmesbury castle. When they’re demolished, his garrison may withdraw without attack from us. Meanwhile, he must order Wallingford be relieved immediately.’
Eustace was in such a rage when he read Henry’s terms, he left that night in pouring rain. By the following morning the King had agreed to Henry’s conditions, on the proviso that Wallingford could have six months’ respite, after which he claimed the right to besiege it once more. As dawn broke his engineers began tearing down the castle’s fortifications. Henry watched from the top of his house in the town. He had demanded proof that Wallingford was indeed to be relieved, requiring copies of the King’s letter to his army in the east, and of the pigeon messages that Stephen sent ordering the Wallingford siege be lifted. As he watched Stephen’s men beat down Malmesbury’s fortifications he dictated a letter to his mother.
Not only is Wallingford relieved for a time, I have this morning received a message from Earl Robert of Leicester, seeking to pay me homage and offering thirty castles. By summer, I shall control the Midlands.
Mother, I miss Rachel unbearably. Please send her to me. I think it more prudent for you to keep little Geoffrey with you.
As Rachel speaks no English I ask you to send a translator with her, and four men you trust. Perhaps Isabella would consent to accompany her. The situation in southern England is chaotic and distressing. The suffering from famine causes sights no tender soul can witness without great pain. I have planned a route for Rachel through the less dreadful areas.
From Tutbury he wrote to the Dowager:
I forced Earl Robert de Ferres to submit to me and persuaded the Countess of Warwick to surrender her castle. I had to besiege Bedford Castle, but for only a week. The earls and barons are less than willing combatants for their liege, since they realise that this argument can be settled by negotiation, instead of war. Stephen and Eustace prefer to destroy the entire country rather than negotiate.
She wrote back:
Confront Stephen! You will overpower him if you look him in the face.
Henry replied:
The King will not meet with me. Instead he is drawing a huge army from every corner of the realm to prepare a pitched battle against me outside Wallingford. I’m not such a fool as to accept his challenge and neither are his men of deeper understanding. Even among those who refuse to break their sacred vows to Stephen there is widespread belief that I should be recognised as his legitimate heir. Canterbury has returned from his refuge in Flanders. He and the Bishop of Winchester are our negotiators.
To Rachel he wrote:
My Darling,
Have no fear of the sea but bless the wind and water that will bring you to me. After crossing La Manche you will change to a river boat that will bring you on a longish journey to a town called Coventry. There, my dear friend Ranulf, whom you met, has an excellent manor house attached to a castle. I’ll gallop to meet you. By the time you arrive the air will be full of spring sunshine. I long to take you into a meadow where we’ll look at the sky as we did the first time we opened our hearts to each other. You may not recognise me at first: I resemble a mongrel dog. My hair has grown so long I plait it. Guillaume does the same. He and I have not bathed in two months. In January and February the rain was so abundant we had only to walk outdoors to wash our hands and faces. Ranulf has arranged apartments for us that, he boasts, will not only meet but exceed the standards of Rouen. Please bring me some summer garments. Those who claim to read the weather here say that, after such a terrible winter, spring and summer will be hot.
Ten thousand kisses for you and for our son.
H
He wrote a couple of brief notes to Eleanor, telling her how the war progressed, sending his ‘fond thoughts’ and inquiring about her pregnancy. She replied that her physician, Master Erasmus, ‘allows me to ride out if the weather is fine. If it’s raining, we play chess.’ She added, ‘He reads me the story of the
Iliad
, translating from Greek into French as easily as a bird translates its joy into song. I now love the poetry of Homer.’
Henry passed her note to Guillaume. ‘It’ll be Plato next,’ he guffawed. ‘The chap’s a – what do they call them? – Rumlar? An eastern Greek. She complained to Papa that Louis inflicted him
on her during her last confinement, but he was so disagreeable she sent him away. How does one account for such fickleness!’
‘Not with logic,’ Guillaume murmured. He had again tried to tell Henry that Eleanor was half-mad with jealousy of Rachel. They were in Barfleur at the time. But as he was speaking, Henry had peered out a window into the street below, more interested in whether a fishwife succeeded in selling a basket of crabs to his cook than in his brother’s warning.
Henry also wrote to King David, asking for the support of a company of Highlanders for Wallingford. The King wrote back:
Death dogs me as close as my midday shadow, but I struggle to live and rejoice in the hour when you defeat the Usurper and his vile spawn. You shall have Douglas and his regiment.
Henry, Guillaume and their commanders of knights and mercenaries agreed on a battle plan against Stephen, who was preparing to lay siege to Wallingford again as soon as July arrived. Weeks before then, the Highlanders would be entrenched. They would have slipped south, possibly dressed as pilgrims or clergy, riding old horses or mules. Men who fought with axes had no use for destriers.