Authors: Blanche d'Alpuget
Rachel and Isabella arrived at Coventry in May.
Hearing they were nearby, Henry and Guillaume galloped two days to reach the town.
‘You’ll have no strength left for Rachel,’ Guillaume said.
‘Your concern is touching, brother. How long since you’ve had a woman?’
‘Not since we left Normandy.’
‘Me neither,’ Henry said. ‘I could ride this horse and my filly for a month.’
‘You ought to consider washing your face.’
They laughed when they looked at each other.
The city walls came into view and Guillaume asked, ‘Should we find a public bath in the town? Ranulf’s wife and daughters have not met us before. If not for Rachel and Mama’s sake, it would be polite to our hostess.’
‘No!’ Henry said. ‘I can’t wait a minute longer. I warned Rachel you look as disgusting as a horde of vandals at the gates of Rome.’
Ranulf’s castle and manor house were set among soft meadows, with a small lake in front, an oak wood at the rear and flower gardens around the manor’s tall doorway. All the plants were in bud, some already blooming. The river ran nearby. After being cooped up on a boat for weeks, Rachel and Isabella would have enjoyed a walk, but Ranulf met them with a carriage.
‘Dear ladies!’ he exclaimed. ‘My wife and daughters cannot wait to meet you. I’ve told them so much about each of you.’ Not only his wife and four daughters but two lines of servants waited to welcome them, arranged with males on one side, females on the other, both in descending orders of age and height, the youngest being a girl of no more than five. They stared at the blue headdress with which Rachel covered her hair and shoulders. Isabella wore a lace mantilla. The Countess, Ranulf’s second wife and as lively as he was sober, had her hair covered in a concoction of feathers and flowers, an amusement rather than an article of decorum. The daughters, most of them blond, were bare-headed. Rachel found the pale-blue eyes of the English strange, almost like blind people. While Ranulf led Isabella indoors, the Countess took Rachel’s arm. Inside the tall, cool chamber to which they were escorted, Rachel undid her headdress. The women gasped as her black ringlets bloomed around her face and down to the centre of her back.
‘I told you!’ Ranulf said. ‘Have you ever seen such glorious hair?’ And such horribly dark skin, they thought.
The girls wanted to stroke Rachel’s arms, which to them were the colour of a labourer’s, but silken to touch. ‘They think we’re Nubians,’ Isabella muttered in Catalan.
In their apartments they rested from the journey while servants unpacked and arranged their clothes. Not knowing what to expect of English hospitality during a civil war, Rachel had brought riding clothes and robes for banquets, as well as Henry’s linen shirts, tunics and cloaks. The apartment Ranulf had set aside for them was on the ground floor of the manor, with a garden of sweet-smelling herbs directly beneath its windows. There was one huge bed, several small-paned mirrors, and behind a wooden screen painted with Ranulf’s crest of a black swan and a fiery yellow phoenix, an oak tub for bathing, very deep and large enough for two. A second, small door opened into this area and led to a corridor along which servants would cart hot water from the kitchen. Rachel hunted the walls looking for the latrine and found its door concealed by a tapestry. It was a double seater, which would gratify Henry, because he liked them to shit together in the morning. A pail of water stood in front of the seat, and soap, but no little cloths, she noted with disappointment. Bunches of rosemary and dried lavender hung around its walls, something she had not experienced in France nor in Isabella’s house where the latrine, able to accommodate four in a row, had its own building set at a good distance from the main house. On winter nights Henry pissed out the window onto a lemon tree and encouraged Rachel to do the same, holding her steady on the sill. She made a mental note to warn him against doing it here, because urine killed some plants.
‘Do you speak French?’ she asked the skinny child who, under the supervision of an older woman, was unpacking her clothes. The girl, whose skin was white as milk, shook her head.
‘I speak little,’ the woman answered.
‘Please arrange my shoes against that wall.’
The woman spoke to the child who moved the shoes and Rachel’s boots from where she was placing them, beneath the window, to the wall opposite the bed. She noticed the girl stared when Rachel’s riding boot stood straight. She and Isabella had debated if they should take weapons. Isabella had said, ‘We’re going to a country at war. I think we should.’ She had equipped herself with the small blade she could hide in a sleeve. ‘I’m frightened of that thing,’ Rachel said. ‘I’m sure I’d drop it. Or cut myself accidentally.’ Instead she slid inside her riding boot the stiletto Henry had given her the night they escaped Paris.
The girl pulled the sheath out of the boot, apparently wondering if it were something she needed to place separately. ‘Don’t touch it,’ Rachel said to the woman, who nodded with incomprehension and told the girl to put the thing back where it was.
At dinner time Henry, Guillaume and their escort knights arrived, filling the hall with shouts of excitement. All six of them were sweaty, dirty and joyful.
Henry picked up Rachel and whirled her around. Guillaume did the same to his mother, who cried, ‘You stink! All of you!’
‘But we stopped and cleaned our teeth,’ Henry said. ‘So we could kiss you.’
Ranulf, his wife and their daughters crowded around the visitors. ‘We’ll go immediately to the chapel,’ Ranulf announced.
The chapel was up a few flights of stairs that the men, pumped with excitement, took three at a time. Henry picked up Rachel again and carried her, covering her face with kisses at each stride. The chapel had its own priest, who waited at its open oak doors to greet them. Against his white robes the soldiers looked even dirtier, but the cleric was gracious as he ushered first Henry, as most senior noble, then Ranulf, then Guillaume – whom all called ‘lord’ – towards the altar. Henry had set Rachel on her feet again.
‘Just copy what I do,’ he said in Catalan. They knelt. In a slightly quavering voice the priest sang thanks to the Almighty for their safe arrival ‘in these troubled times’. They crossed themselves and said, ‘Amen.’ He flicked holy water over their heads. ‘That’s it. We stand up now,’ Henry told Rachel, but he held her back as the others left the chapel. ‘Am I imagining it or …?’
‘I’m five months with child,’ she said.
Tears jumped into his eyes. He took her face in his grimy palms and kissed her repeatedly. Standing at the doorway, the priest seemed to guess the situation. When they opened their eyes he was making the sign of the cross over them.
Downstairs they washed their hands in bowls of warmed water, and Ranulf thanked God for their food. The men sat at one end of the table and the women at the other, but after they had eaten the main part of the meal that, to Rachel’s relief, appeared to contain no pork, Henry asked if he could sit next to ‘my wife’. The Countess’s eyebrows shot up. Ranulf said something to her in very fast English that Henry did not understand, but presumed it referred to his marriage to Eleanor that, in England, was as much a source of gossip for the baronage as it was for all ranks of men and women in France.
‘The kitchen will heat bath water for you before supper,’ Ranulf announced.
‘That is a great joy to hear,’ Rachel said. ‘My Henry …’
‘Here’s to Henry!’ Ranulf cried. ‘Here’s to our next King!’
They drank a toast.
‘And here’s to my wife’s child that now grows within her!’ Henry said.
After many exclamations and a second toast, Henry held up his hand.
‘My darling Earl,’ he said. ‘I will fall on my sword at this table if I don’t have the services of a barber, a bath servant and someone
to scrub my feet and trim my nails. My brother feels the same, I believe.’ In Catalan he muttered to Guillaume, ‘When you’ve had a bath all these young ladies will immediately be wanting you to beat their tambourines. You lascivious swine.’
Isabella said, ‘Henry!’ adding to the Countess, ‘These boys tease each other constantly.’
Ranulf looked crestfallen. ‘I’ve arranged musicians for you,’ he said. ‘But you’re right. First make yourselves comfortable. We’ll have music during supper this evening.’
It took the barber and another servant skilled in paring nails more than an hour to groom Henry. ‘Only just below my shoulders,’ he insisted. ‘No shorter.’ The Plantagenets’ vanity about their hair amused Rachel. She recognised it was a question of rank, but for Henry, Guillaume and Geoffrey, beautiful male hair seemed almost an issue of morality. She had grown up with men who could not care less. It was six years since her birth family had died, but of recent weeks she remembered them more and more frequently. Because I’m with child again they draw near to me, she thought.
Henry sat on a stool in the apartment for grooming, while she bathed in the tub behind the screen. They spoke to each other in Catalan. ‘It’s just a precaution,’ Henry said. ‘We don’t know these servants. But I do know Eustace has spies looking for me everywhere. Ranulf realises he’s put his household at risk by having me stay here.’
‘Coventry is peaceful,’ she said. Her voice, coming from the bathtub, was dreamy.
‘Did you smell smoke while you travelled?’
‘I thought it came from cooking fires, but then we saw whole villages in flames and heard people screaming.’
‘How can a prince claim to be the protector of his people if he kills them himself!’ Henry spoke with such vehemence he
overturned the basin of shaving water. ‘Eustace is murdering his own people.’
Rachel hummed. ‘I can’t wait for you to join me in this tub.’
‘Stop it!’ he said. ‘My tunic looks like a kitten is jumping around beneath it.’
She dressed inside the screen and emerged, fragrant and glowing, wearing a blue linen gown and a garnet-coloured robe. He could now see her slightly rounded belly and full breasts. The barber and the nail groom finished their work in a hurry.
Rachel called for more hot water. A male attendant washed Henry’s hair and scrubbed him all over with brushes made from the bristles of different animals: badgers for delicate skin, horsehair for the feet, pigs’ bristles for limbs. ‘Adonis,’ Rachel murmured as he stepped from the bath. ‘My Adonis.’ She held out a linen towel.
They lay together all through the hot afternoon and into the twilight. As the sky turned grey, Guillaume knocked on the door. Rachel pulled the sheet up to her chin.
‘Supper has been ready for almost an hour and we’re all starving,’ Guillaume said. He perched on one corner of the bed. He, too, was once more the Plantagenet lord people recognised. But instead of being clean-shaven, like Henry, a very fine black beard outlined his jaw.
‘That beard makes you look like a Parisian whore-monger,’ Henry said. ‘Tell them I fell asleep.’
Guillaume snorted.
‘Alright. Say we’ve been rutting all afternoon and we have to wash our private parts before we can join them for supper.’
‘Excellent! And diplomatic,’ Guillaume said. ‘Actually, brother, you do smell like a bucket of eels.’ He looked at Rachel. ‘You, darling sister, always smell like a flower.’ He took her hand and kissed it. ‘I’m to be an uncle again. Thank you.’ His eyes were lustrous. His family had seemed to him perfect before she had arrived three and
a half years earlier, but Rachel had brought something into their lives none had experienced before. Guillaume was not sure what it was, beyond the love she had kindled in Henry. If someone pressed the question on him, Guillaume would say Rachel was the gentle wisdom one found inside a well-tuned lute.
‘Stand and look out the windows so my wife can dress,’ Henry said.
Guillaume strolled to the end of the room. ‘Will I shutter them for you?’ The apartment was so large there were six windows in a row.
‘Maybe just three. How many of Ranulf’s daughters are in love with you so far?’ Rachel asked. She thought Guillaume’s beard made him even more handsome – and knew Henry did, too.
‘All, I think.’
‘You’re too modest, brother.’
‘Well, yes,’ Guillaume drawled. ‘There’s also the Countess.’ He lifted a second window shutter into place then drew a quick breath. ‘What language were we speaking?’ he asked in Catalan.
‘Catalan.’
‘I think I saw somebody in the flower bed outside.’ His hand went to the knife under his tunic.
Henry grabbed his own dagger and dashed across the room. Side by side they squinted into the darkening air, but could not see anyone.
During supper Henry asked Ranulf if he would mind posting a guard outside their window. ‘Of course! Would you like some elsewhere?’
‘Maybe one outside the door to the apartment itself, and the bath chamber.’
‘My dear liege, as many as you like.’ A group of musicians sang for them, but Ranulf fidgeted during their performance. ‘Where’s the little songbird?’ he whispered to his wife.
‘She’s out of voice,’ she whispered back. Turning to Guillaume she said, ‘Forgive me, lord. We have a wonderful singer, whose voice we wanted you to hear. But she strained it this afternoon while practising.’
Guillaume said, ‘I’m out of voice myself tonight. I’ll sing with her tomorrow.’
It was almost too hot to sleep and after supper the party took a stroll together in the grounds. The men walked separately, discussing the war. Ranulf’s sons were fighting with the rebels – and all were in high spirits, they reported to him. The Countess walked arm in arm with Isabella; her eldest daughter with Rachel.
‘Are you a princess?’ the girl asked.
‘Henry says I am,’ Rachel replied gently. ‘But … life is different in Outremer.’
‘How?’
‘It’s very hot. Twice as hot as here, but a dry heat, which is not so tiring. The roofs of our houses are flat and at night people take their mattresses onto the roof and sleep under the stars. We love to study the stars. And we have different food from here: figs, for example.’
‘Figs?’
‘Maybe you’ve read about them in the Bible?’
‘Oh, yes!’ The girl, aged twelve, was as pious as her parents. The thought that she was speaking to someone who had lived in the land of the Saviour so thrilled her she felt dizzy. The whole day had been astonishing: the arrival of the exotic black women; then the man whom her father said would be King, and his half-brother, the most handsome man she had ever seen; and now, walking arm in arm with a princess from the Holy Land. ‘I’ll never forget this night,’ she said. ‘I only wish you’d heard our singer.’