The Rain Maiden

by Jill M Philips

  Tears of rage and humiliation burned in Adele’s eyes. “You are a traitor to your own flesh and bone,” she shouted. Then she screamed at Flanders, “You are a man of base interests, a false knight! I shall take my case to Henry of England and he shall grind you both into the Flanders bog!” She urged her horse forward with a jerk, pushing through the ranks of Philippe’s bodyguard. Flanders raised his arm signaling the men to stop her, but Philippe motioned the hand aside, declaring, “Let her pass.”

  “She will go to the palace and seek the king’s ear,” Flanders objected.

  “She will seek,” Philippe said smugly, “but she will not find. I have given orders that she be turned away.”

  “But bribery,” Flanders reminded him. “She may find a willing enough accomplice.”

  “No,” Philippe answered again, “for her wealth is within my keeping now and whatever baubles or trinkets she has on her person will not be tempting enough. Besides, I have instructed Sully and de Puiseaux to see that my wishes are obeyed. We need have no fear in our absence.”

  Flanders gazed with hearty admiration at Philippe. How a couple as unlikely as Louis and Adele had managed to bring forth this amazing boy was unimaginable. Years ago, when Philippe was only a child of four, Thomas Becket had written of him “.. . truly he is a child of remarkable gifts and strange wisdom. …”

  Flanders gave Philippe’s shoulder a gentle nudge. “What a marvel you are,” he exclaimed. “I would to God you were my own son!”

  Philippe’s lips curved in just the slightest suggestion of a smile. Within the space of a few weeks he had turned his life around completely—made the pact with Flanders, turned his back on mother and uncles, forged both a marriage and a political agreement, and still managed to carve out a promising future territorial gain for his realm. He had even succeeded in astounding the magnificent Philip d’Alsace with his abilities. It was the headiest moment of his young life. “We shall be kin, shortly enough,” he commented crisply to his mentor, then urged his horse on across the bridge.

  When the time came it was less awkward than Flanders had anticipated. After a few words with Baldwin, Flanders took Philippe and Isabel aside and in the garden, holding them both by the hand, he introduced them for the first time. Radiant and beautiful in ruby-colored silk, Isabel was outwardly serene, and Flanders felt pride in her. There was no giggling, girlish embarrassment in her manner as Philippe Capet took her hand and kissed it gently, symbolically sealing the agreement as he knelt modestly before her.

  The wind teased Isabel’s hair, trailing it out in strands of tangled golden floss. For a moment Flanders stood as though apart from this tableau and as he watched he sensed a current of wordless fascination pass between Philippe and Isabel. His spirits soared with his ambition. He had been right after all. This would be a remarkable match on all levels.

  “God bless you, my dearest darlings,” he told the two. Then he kissed them both.

  Valdwin and his family celebrated Easter at the chateau in Mons with Philippe Capet as their guest. The following morning, under the grey cover of dawn, their caravan began its southwesterly journey toward Bapaume, where Philippe and Isabel would be married.

  Traveling with them was Gilbert of Mons, Baldwin’s young chancellor. Gilbert was precisely the type of subordinate favored by men like Baldwin and Philip d’Alsace: educated, sharp-witted (with a useful intelligence more creative than academic in nature), assertive, courtly, vigorous, adroit, and good-looking. Gilbert was only twenty-nine yet his career had been an interesting climb to prominence. Brought up in the cloister at Valenciennes, he had trained for the priesthood but had soon left that calling to follow a path of secular advancement (though in deference to Gilbert’s religious training, Baldwin had since created him titular provost of St. Germanus in Mons and St. Alban in Namur). Facile, with a gift for languages, Gilbert enjoyed considerable freedom in his position: dabbling in law. diplomacy, politics, economics, and arts, and the business of teaching Baldwin’s children—it was to his tutelage that Isabel owed a great deal of her elaborate learning. The Count of Hainault treasured Gilbert’s advice and respected his judgment: it was the chancellor who had finally reconciled Baldwin to Philip d’Alsace’s tempting alliance with the French crown… .

  From Bapaume the group would continue on to Sens (south of Paris) where Philippe and Isabel would have their coronation together on Whitsunday, the Feast of Pentecote, June 8th. Such were the provisions which Philippe had made for his prospective bride.

  Philip of Flanders, anxious about the delay, impulsively changed the coronation date to May 29th, Holy Thursday—the Feast of the Ascension. He also selected St. Denis for the coronation ceremony; it was only a few miles north of Paris. In Flanders’s reasoning it was urgent that Philippe and Isabel establish their presence in Paris as soon as possible. His concern was not without foundation. Isabel was under the permitted age to marry, according to Church Law. It was a technicality only, winked at many times without consequences. But Flanders was afraid that those powerful French barons who resisted a Franco-Flemish alliance would use the six weeks between Isabel’s marriage to Philippe and her coronation to take up the matter with the pope and perhaps win him to their side. It would be a simple matter for Rome to sever an unconsummated union between a ten-year-old girl and a fourteen-year-old boy—it was another matter entirely to unseat the girl who had already been consecrated as the future Queen of France. The idea of having Philippe recoronated had also been Philip d’Alsace’s: it would reflect honor upon his niece. For as always, Flanders courted logic and expediency.

  The eighty-mile journey from Mons to Bapaume was slowed by intermittent rains and difficult roads. During the week-long procession Baldwin, Flanders, Philippe and Gilbert of Mons were in constant, animated discussion while Isabel suffered the belated pangs of homesickness; keeping to herself, she contemplated her future. She would be lonely at first, she knew. For all of her short life she had basked in the pleasurable shelter of a devoted and loving family, in the approval and pride of her parents and uncle. Now she would be cut off from them (and for who knew how long?) with only the company of Edythe to remind her of home.

  Isabel wondered endlessly in silence about Philippe. His manner toward her was stiffly formal, bordering on coldness, but his appearance fascinated her. She had prepared herself not to expect much in the way of his physical appeal, dispiritedly envisioning a gawky, pimple-ridden adolescent, and so her first glimpse of him had been a kind of reward. Philippe Capet was tall, well-built and sullenly beautiful. His skin was dusky and unmarred; the features of his face sharp and strongly set in brooding sensitivity. Extravagant hair, wild and wavy and raven-dark, framed his face. But it was the eyes which riveted Isabel: inviolably black, sloe-shaped and unremittingly severe.

  They had spoken only a few times—he was a stranger to her, and an enigma, it was impossible at this point to decide whether or not she liked him. Certainly he seemed self-possessed and much older than his almost-fifteen years. Yet under the careful reserve Isabel sensed another personality: one with the barely restrained anxiousness of a nervous charger. She had the image of an inherent, elemental flame burning at his core. And then she thought: He’s like me. Somewhere down very close to his soul he is like me. And he knows. But only a little.

  ON THE EVENING of the sixth day they reached the cloister at Bapaume, which lay just outside a thickly forested area. The sun had forsaken them throughout the journey. This last day they had been slowed by roads which were nearly impassable.

  The ordeal of the trip and a growing shadow of apprehension that had no recognizable form had exhausted Isabel to the fainting point. Stoically she endured the wedding supper, which was a brief affair held in the monks’ dismal soup kitchen. There had been plans for a flower-decked pastoral celebration but the weather had interceded and Flanders wanted no further delay. Already the poor travel weather had cost them two days. With every passing hour the situation in the South became more tenuous. Fland
ers did not want the ignominy of seeing his spirited coup capped by a rebellion among the French barons. So despite their late arrival, the wedding was hastily scheduled for the following day.

  Isabel sat passively with the others in the dingy room, untempted by the food before her. The continuous tedium of the week’s travel had afflicted her with a restless boredom. Her eyes burned, her lids were heavy. She swooned in weariness, half-asleep from being stared at. All around her she could feel the eyes watching her, judging her. She longed for sleep though right now there was nothing so sweet as sitting still, so she made meaningless conversation and distracted herself by wishing away the next few weeks.

  During the meal Flanders presented her to Maurice de Sully, who would preside at the ceremony the next day. He had a kind face and a gentle manner—nobleness was evident in his character. But though he spoke to her kindly, Isabel could feel the indulgence in his voice and his eyes, the lofty condescension of a learned man to a child.

  When she was finally allowed to go to bed it was very late, but now the dim unfamiliarity of the small, low-ceilinged room kept her wakeful. The storm disrupted any attempt at sleep, but it was better than silence and chased away some of the disconcerting thoughts in her mind. Hainault. Home. Her own room.

  She tried to see ahead, to picture her future, but she could not. Weariness swallowed her concentration. Dizzy, dream-soaked, her mind throbbed with images, obscure and unrelated. Formless phantoms, dark galloping mists, wells of blackness. Then falling. Sleep. Dreams …

  … she was an uneasy traveler in the land where nightmares begin, trapped in a maze of unyielding dark where flashes of light taunted her in leaping flames of green. All around her were the eyes, emerald and luminous, dragons’ eyes fading to a horrible chartreuse. Imprisoned in sleep she fought against green tides swelling up around her. Green. The color of jealousy, suspicion and mayhem. Bile. Gangrene. Corpse color. Great flapping wings enveloped her—choking and stagnant—pulling her down into a morass. Strangling, drowning. She tried to scream before the wash of slime covered her… .

  Thunder muffled her cry as Isabel jerked to a sitting position on the bed. Shivering, she drew the harsh brunette coverlet around her. The horror swarmed about the room in choking blackness till a glare of lightning froze the scene into white terror. Trembling with cold and panic she crept down beneath the covers whimpering, the sour taste of vomit rising in her throat.

  Terrified and feeling suddenly powerless to avert a predestined calamity, Isabel sobbed in secret, crying for the warmth and safety of her father’s arms. She was alone, and feared now that she would always be alone. The dark was evil and she loathed it, but it was her only defense against tomorrow, and morning, and all that threatened her. Still whimpering, and shrouded in the anxiety of her ill-omened dream, Isabel trembled into an exhausted sleep, pursued by storms.

  Cold morning.

  The earth still sodden from the rain smelled lightly of the grass and flowers but under it all was the deeper, faintly disturbing scent of wet clay.

  A cheerless gust of wind buffeted the procession as they made their way across the road from the cloister to where the abbey stood. It was a small group: Philippe and Isabel, her parents and uncle, Gilbert of Mons, and Sully. Philippe wore a samite gown of darkest blue covered with the red cape of State. Isabel, in her thin chainse of grey silk, felt cold, gripping her hands together before her as she walked. Involuntarily she shook a bit, her body and spirit weak from sleeplessness. The muscles worked in her throat, fighting to swallow the fear, but that put it in the pit of her stomach, which made her feel instantly and irrevocably sick.

  Beside her walked Philippe, looking ill-slept and haggard this morning. Isabel supposed that, like her, he was tense, feeling the strain of this day. She had heard rumors of French nobles rebelling in the South protesting this marriage, of King Henry of England marshalling his men on the Normandy border.

  Then she no longer had time to think, for they had reached the entrance to the abbey—Sully was pronouncing the premarriage blessing. Philippe took her right hand in his and placed a ring on her middle finger. Isabel stared down at it: a huge grey opal in a rich Byzantine setting.

  Then they were inside and kneeling piously before the ornate altar, the smoke from the candles stinging her nostrils, bringing tears to her eyes. She heard Philippe repeating his vow in halting, stilted Latin, and though a part of Isabel’s mind was totally distracted the rest was clear enough to invoke the use of her tongue and she could hear her own voice, quiet and precise. The blessing: Sully’s rich voice rising like incense to the vaulted ceiling. The Sacrament, a final prayer, and they were free to go. Without a word Philippe turned to her, taking hold of her hand. His hand felt cold and unaccustomed to her touch.

  Outside it had started to rain. Isabel had to grasp the train of her gown with her free hand to keep it from trailing in the mud. But she nearly slipped as she lurched to keep from stepping on the object which loomed suddenly in her path. Leaning on Philippe’s arm she righted herself, side-stepping the wilted mound of feathers. A dead hawk, half-eaten, nestled paltry and brown against the radiant green of the grass. For a moment she regarded it with a sense of revulsion. The half-remembered dream flooded back to her and the ominous night message pressed closer. Then she walked on, shivering under her skin… .

  Later there was another hurried meal with little talk and even less celebration. Isabel spent her wedding night alone, in the same bed where she had dreamed so uneasily the previous night. Their entourage would spend the next week in this place before traveling south once more, toward the abbey at St. Denis where Isabel would be crowned with her husband.

  She knew that she would see very little of him till they came to Paris; it was likely that for the time being she would remain a chaste bride as dictated by her age. But Isabel’s chronological age and that of her rapidly maturing body were many years apart. And though Philippe affected an outward show of chilliness there was no doubt in Isabel’s mind that he burned with an inner fire as fierce as her own. She was still unhappy at having to part with her family, and especially her father—but the sudden terror of that one night was gone. She would not always be so alone. For if Isabel’s instincts told her that Philippe would be indifferent for a time—they also told her it would not be for long.

  At the hour when the sun rose over the Hill of the Martyrs—the day being Holy Thursday celebrating the Ascension of Our Lord Christ into His Heaven—Isabel de Hainault, newly taken as wife by Philippe of France—was consecrated Queen of the French beside her husband at the altar of St. Denis and by the hand of Guy of Noyers. In accordance with ritual the girl-queen bared her breast to receive the Oil of Sanctification—the Sacred Chrism—that which Our Lord sent to this earth to Clovis the Frank, first Christian king of this realm. Isabel then prostrated herself before the altar to receive about her neck the pearl cross of her own ancestor Charles the Great, which was given to him by the Pope. At this time she and her husband were summarily crowned, cleansed in spirit with the Sacrament, and given Holy Blessing. After which commencing, a procession was made to the highest point of Montmartre, and while the prelates sang Ascendit Deus in Altum Alleluia, five thousand birds were released in the air, to symbolize our Christ, who did fly to His heaven in Glory… .

  Gilbert of Mons

  May, 1180

  Though the description of Isabel’s coronation by Baldwin’s chancellor was a means of communicating Flemish propaganda, it was essentially a correct representation of events from which several important dictums could be drawn. The fact that she had received her crown at the hand of Guy of Noyers (a close friend of Philip d’Alsace) and at St. Denis, was a direct challenge to the Champagnois. Rheims was the logical coronation site, and its bishop was William, Philippe’s Champagnois uncle.

  Flanders’s idea of having Isabel consecrated as well as coronated was significant in the extreme. Consecration implied a divine right, rather than the mere ceremonial ritual of becoming a q
ueen through marriage. The Salic Law prevailed in France—there was no possibility of Isabel achieving any power through her office. Yet the act of consecration gave her an implied and symbolic significance which Philip of Flanders could exploit as an obstacle to further encroachment by the Champagnois, or any outside interference from Rome.

  The evocation of Charlemagne’s remembered glory was yet one more vindication of the Flemish cause. (Flanders was lucky in this respect: had Isabel’s marriage involved an English, rather than a French, heir to the throne, the Count of Flanders could have pulled the name of another convenient ancestor—Alfred the Great—from his bag of tricks.) The life and deeds of Charlemagne had already passed into the perspective of legend, and his beatification in 1166 had established a modem cultus. There was little hope of those barons loyal to the Champagnois being receptive to such an obvious lure, but the petty nobility of France would find it hard to ignore the importance of a dynastic link to Charlemagne established through Philippe Capet’s marriage with one of the emperor’s descendents.

  In the seventh generation of the Capet royal line, an heir would be born whose mother bore a blood-tie to Charlemagne. The prophecy had been widely circulated by Flanders ever since the concoction of his bold new initiative. To all but the most cynical, Philippe and Isabel’s marriage would seem a mystical and divine inevitability: the fulfillment of a prearranged covenant.

  Philip of Flanders was brazen but he was no fool. He knew the magnitude of the opposition he faced. Adele and her brothers were not only powerful, they were popular with the French nobles and uncomfortably close to many of the Burgundian barons. Adele had threatened to enlist Henry of England to her cause. Philip had known Henry for many years; they were distantly related by way of the Anjou line. They had been adversaries, they had been friends. So far as this matter was concerned, Philip could not be sure which way the King of England would turn… .