The Rain Maiden

by Jill M Philips

  In the cold morning as fog moved over the land in gauzy tatters, Baldwin said goodbye to his daughter. She and her husband were traveling on to Paris this morning with Philip of Flanders, and Baldwin did not know when he would see her again.

  The lofty towers of St. Denis cast no shadows this day—drizzle cloaked it in an aura of grey. Dwarfed by its magnificence, Baldwin and Isabel walked together toward the little rise which led up to near the chapter house of the cloister, out of the view of the others. Baldwin took hold of her hand and they walked in silence for a bit, aware that the moments were passing swiftly. Isabel gripped his hand more tightly. “We have very little time.”

  They had reached a bench and sat down wordlessly together, their shoulders touching. A stiff gust of wind had come up and Baldwin pulled his own foxfur mantle close about her shoulders. The hood from her azure velvet cape had blown back and her hair, pulled into a elegant braided coif at the back of her neck, shimmered with highlights, and tiny pearl earrings glittered at her ears.

  “Tell me what you are thinking,” she said. “Don’t let us spend our last few moments alone in silence.” And when he still said nothing she stroked his cheek lovingly. “Father?”

  He gave her a look which she could not read; his voice and words were bitter. “I don’t like him. Philip’s trust in that boy is ill-placed. He will never be amenable to our will.” Baldwin shook his head in discontent. “Flanders has truly allowed himself to be out-distanced this time.”

  Those misgivings unsettled Isabel. Philippe’s formidable sense of self-determination had not escaped her notice, and she had wondered often why her uncle thought him so easily bent to the Flemish will. Still it seemed inconceivable that her brilliant and perceptive kinsman could have misjudged Philippe’s character, and so thinking she voiced that to her father.

  “In any case it’s done now,” Baldwin answered, “and I would just as leave I’d never had to meddle in it.” His fine features were paled by strain and unhappiness. “I loathe this—sending you off with him, committing us all to the will and whims of that headstrong brat.” He sounded so angry, even at her, and Isabel felt hurt that the last few minutes they had left together should be spent in ill-favor. She nestled close to him, trying to buoy his spirits though she couldn’t lift her own.

  “I know it was not your wish that I marry Philippe, but as you said it is done now and we must face it bravely and with high hopes. Uncle Philip expects great things of us, father, and I shall do my part. I promise I will do everything in my power to prove to the French that this is a good match.” She gave him the trembling semblance of a smile. “All shall be well. I promise you that.”

  Again he ignored her pleading conciliations. “I should curse myself for the coward I am!” he declared. “Why can I never stand against Flanders? Why do I let him dictate to me?”

  It was a little late for such second thoughts and Baldwin’s reasoning made Isabel feel uneasy. Then suddenly she brightened. “Why don’t you come to Paris with us?” she asked. “Then you can see to it that this new arrangement is commenced in the spirit of good for all concerned.”

  His terse words dimmed her hopeful little smile. “I cannot. I have business with the Duke of Brabant that will not wait. So I will just have to trust to the instincts of my brother-in-law.” He drew out a long, weary breath. “The greatest pain is in losing you. This separation leaves a void in my life which no one else can fill. Above all others in this world I cherish you.”

  Isabel’s voice sounded high and a little off edge. “It is no easier for me, father. It was not my wish to leave you. I will be so lonely … please at least allow me to think that my own sacrifice is worth something to you.”

  His arms went about her, his lips brushing her cheek. Then he straightened his back, looking down into her face. “You have meant so much to me Isabel, so much.”

  Her delicate hand stroked his beard, then came to play lightly at his throat. “You have been everything to me.” She raised her face for his kiss, receiving it first as though it were a sacred thing, a blessing—then pulling him closer she drank in his love hungrily, wanting to prolong every fragment of time no matter how small, when she could rest happily in his arms, knowing that she was loved.

  This moment was precious and she froze it into a memory that she might recall in the days to come. Her gaze carried off to the distance. Montmartre, the Hill of the Martyrs, hid the road that wound down into the valley past the convent of St. Genevieve, past the vineyards and farther south into Paris. It was a calm landscape, but Isabel’s mind was busy and anxious. She had tried very hard to effect a show of optimism, but beneath her frail composure was an unsettling itch of uncertainty.

  Her head made a pillow of his shoulder; her voice was a hush. “He’s going to know, Father. Philippe is going to find out about you and me—how can I keep him from knowing?”

  Baldwin’s fingers cinched her waist, pulling her closer, his senses more intent on her than her words as he answered absently, “He won’t necessarily know, Isabel. It is not always possible to tell whether or not a girl is virginal. Just be certain that your manner bespeaks innocence to the point that it satisfies him. In any case, that worry is a long way off.”

  Her face was pressed to his shoulder so he didn’t see how the frown darted between her eyebrows at his words, but she gave the sniffling sound of a laugh and rubbed her cheek to his chest. “You know me well enough to understand that I cannot suddenly feign innocence in these matters.”

  “If he is anything like his father,” Baldwin commented drily, “he’ll be too innocent himself to realize that you are not.”

  She straightened up, shaking her head doubtfully but saying nothing. For a moment Isabel sat very still, just looking at him, feeling her courage draining away, and all at once separation from him was a palpable sorrow she could not endure. Flinging herself against him, her face pressed to the inner folds of his pellison, she gasped, “When will I ever see you again—and how can I live without you?”

  She let him comfort her with kisses and soft words and discreet caresses, let him pull her hands closer till they rested beneath his bliaud, and she fondled him with piquant skill. When she had finished, she sank to the ground before him, pressing her face to his knee and forbidding herself to cry. After a little while she saw Edythe making her way slowly up the slope, and then Isabel knew that the caravan was ready and it was time to say goodbye.

  Margot was calm as she embraced her daughter; the conflicting emotions showed in her eyes. She loved Isabel but she was jealous too; Baldwin’s unreasonable attachment to the girl was a sharp goad to Margot’s pride. In Paris, with a husband of her own, Isabel would cease to be a problem. Margot gave her a resolute smile. “God and the saints go with you, my dear,” she whispered into her ear and then pressed a small enameled box into her daughter’s hand. “Open it when you get to Paris,” Margot instructed her.

  Isabel kissed and embraced her two little brothers and then Sibylla, taking the weeping girl into her arms. “One day, perhaps soon, father will bring you to Paris,” she told Sibylla, smoothing her sister’s hair, “and it shall be great fun for all of us, you will see. Now, you must not cry anymore. …”

  Philippe, impatient to be on his way, was irritated at these protracted farewells. With no love for his own family, he could not understand Isabel’s obvious affection for hers. His lips grew tight at the comers, twitching in aggravation. Her duty was to him now, not to her precious family.

  “It’s time to leave,” he said firmly, taking Isabel by the hand. He helped her to mount his horse, then hoisted himself up behind her in the saddle. He signaled the bodyguard, and the cortege turned slowly toward the south. Grasping Philippe’s forearm with the fingers of one hand, holding close the enameled box in the other, Isabel turned furtively in the saddle to gaze back at the abbey and at the assembled group of people who stood before it. She waved to them once, twice; then they blurred before her sight as her eyes filled with tears. Is
abel looked down at the arm that circled her waist, then to the side at her uncle, riding stately and proud beside them. Forcing herself to stop the tears, Isabel jerked her face to the front, compelling herself to look ahead, down toward the valley and off to the left, where Paris slept in a silvery mist, waiting for her.

  The Ile de la Cite lay like a tapered boat in the middle of the river Seine. Paris, her new home. It was beautiful. Isabel closed her eyes and nestled the back of her head against Philippe’s chest, breathing in the essence of this moment and feeling somehow comforted.

  Philippe’s hand brushed her wrist lightly, then he pointed ahead to a forbidding slate-grey fortress which rose like a four-storeyed crypt on the azure horizon. “It was built over seven centuries ago by the early Frankish kings—those called the Merovingians,” he explained. “It was erected upon the original Roman structure, a temple dedicated to Neptune.”

  The Cite Palais, home of the Capetian kings. A vague shimmer of excitement flowed over her. To Philippe she said, “Isn’t it spoken that in the days of the Roman occupation in Gaul, Druidic cults worshipped on that very site?”

  He looked down at her with a surprised smile. Isabel had never seen him smile before this; it made his face look younger, more pleasant, yet it did not match with his features. Even as she contemplated this, his face grew sober again as he explained, “It is true enough. Sully has told me that when the foundation for Notre Dame de Paris was being dug many pagan relics were unearthed: a stone altar, a sardonyx drinking vessel, even the ring of a Druid priestess. The ring was so unusual, so beautiful, that I kept it.” He paused a moment, then continued in a somewhat confidential manner. “The old beliefs persisted here for many years, even after Christianity became the established religion of the people. The Druids left no written records of their practices; much of what we know of them is legend except for what Caesar put into his commentaries. But the Druids were a strange people, and they left their stamp upon this land. On cold dark nights the landscape still has the look of the devil about it… .”

  Isabel hung on his words for a moment, absently caressing his hand and wondering at the quiet thrill that had passed between them as he described the scene. Philippe had felt it too; Isabel knew it by the way his fingers entwined with hers. Pagan rituals having unfolded on land now sanctified by a race of Christian kings: it touched a profound nerve of fascination in her. Then Philippe was speaking again. “In the north, in England, the Druids worshipped the sun. Here in France—or Gaul as it was then—they worshipped the rain. They held their rituals in the grove of the oaks and apple trees—the grove still stands in the palace courtyard …” He said no more of such things as their cortege approached the city, but Isabel’s insatiable curiosity had been teased, and she continued to ponder his words in silence.

  The fleeting sense of excitement had ebbed by the time they crossed the Petit Pont and reached the filthy road that led to the northern facade of the Cite Palais. From Isabel’s hilltop view, Paris had seemed tranquil, almost magical. Now, within its raucous confines she grimaced at the clamor of mingled noises and the evil aggregation of odors that greeted her. The palace, looming so impressively from a distance, was repeliingly ugly on closer view. It looked like the ancient sagging ruin that it was: a huge, fantastic hovel rising forlornly above the clotted black mud of the Paris streets. The exterior of the structure was without decoration, its pitted grey facade strung across with dozens of small, irregularly shaped windows.

  The interior was dismal—gaping, near-vacant halls reformed by Romanesque arches sunk in sunless gloom—airless, ugly, foul-smelling. In such a room as this they ate a perfunctory meal comprised of alarmingly poor food, and then, leaving the remainder of the party below, Philippe led Isabel up three sets of dim and twisting stairs to the fourth level of the palace where the family apartments were located.

  At the mouth of the corridor she halted, repulsed at once by a horrible wafting smell. Involuntarily Isabel pulled the flare of her cape about her nose and mouth to shut out the odor and hide her sudden fit of wretching. Seeing her distress Philippe crooked a dark eyebrow and explained, “I should have warned you of that. The servants’ privies are just below, but unfortunately the smell rises and is trapped here. The family uses the ones at the end of this corridor. They are less irritating since the room has a vented glass ceiling. My father’s first wife insisted upon it when the smell from the closed-off room nearly drove her mad.”

  Clinging weakly to his hand Isabel followed him down the corridor, a low-ceilinged. narrow passageway with maze-like turns and twists. She was shivering despite the closeness of the air. Then she realized it was the personality of this place. These walls, which shut out sun on even the brightest days, had hoarded centuries worth of tears and transgressions and too many sleepless midnights. The sticky remains of a spider’s web brushed against her cheek, and the low sibilant sound of a whisper rustled behind her. God, this was an awful place!

  Philippe stopped abruptly before a blue-draped doorway, his arm outstretched. “These are your rooms.” He parted the curtain, indicating that she should enter first. She hesitated. Her mind was a crazy-quilt of senseless, piecemeal images formed into a single rush of panic. Then just as quickly her reason came spinning back. There was no menace here. She was tired, only tired. Isabel stepped boldly into the room. “It is not over-comfortable,” Philippe was saying, “but I am sure you will find it sufficient.”

  She stood beside him, letting her gaze sweep over the room. It was brighter here; an uncovered window splashed pale sunlight across dead grey stones and the edge of a grey patterned carpet. To her left an uncovered archway led to a private chapel; to the right was an even smaller annex—perhaps a dressing chambrette.

  This bedchamber in no way approached the luxury of the rooms she had occupied at her father’s chateaus in Mons, Valenciennes, or Lille. Though she had expected a great show of finery at the royal residence, and was disheartened, she was determined to be agreeable. “It’s very fine,” she answered. “I appreciate so much that you have seen to these arrangements for me.”

  He hadn’t finished disappointing her. “The girl you brought with you from Hainault will have to sleep below. There are no rooms for servants on this floor.”

  More isolation. She turned to him. “Is it not perhaps possible to find a room for Edythe here? She is lame—it is hard for her to climb stairs.”

  He eyed her with a look of cold irritation. “Then perhaps one of the girls who formerly served my mother could wait upon you and Edythe would be spared the trouble.”

  “Oh, but I want to keep her with me,” Isabel responded quickly. “It is only that I would be appreciative if she could be spared too much work. At home my mother used to make her do quite a lot. You see, it is possible that she is also my father’s daughter. Because of that my mother hates her, but she has always been a good friend to me.”

  “It isn’t my wish to deprive you of companionship,” Philippe answered pointedly, sounding almost hurt. “You may keep her here if you wish.” He saw the way in which Isabel scrutinized the room and it aggravated him to know she was comparing it unfavorably with what she had left back in Hainault. “I don’t approve of luxurious living,” he answered to her silent complaint, “and that is only one way in which I differ from my father and mother. I am pledged to economy in this land. You will find our court very spare. I have disposed of all entertainments here. We keep no muscians, no jongleurs or trouveres. We feast no barons or prelates. The money for such fripperies is better spent in giving to the poor.”

  Isabel didn’t care for the way he had said it, his face sobering into dour self-righteousness, but she believed in the spirit of it; in the gesture he was making. If he was truly so prudent, it was nothing he had learned from her uncle. Philip d’Alsace had few enough scruples and none at all concerning spending. Many were the times he had tripled the tax load on his people just to outfit his paladins for a new tournament. He was lavish in all he did.

>   “You’re very wise to have acted as you did,” Isabel finally replied when she realized he was waiting for her comment. Then he nodded curtly to accept her approval and launched into a detailed explanation of his reorganization of the court.

  Isabel stood limply in the middle of the room, her eyes burning from lack of sleep, unspeakably weary from the accumulated excitement and exertion of the past six weeks. The tiresome plod up three long passages of stairs in this inhospitable, four-tiered dungeon had been the final undermining of her endurance. She looked at the blue damask-hung bed, a singular sphere of color in this cheerless room. It seemed to beckon to her. She longed to stretch her weary body in it and sleep the week away.

  She tried to concentrate on what Philippe was saying, shifting on her feet to keep herself alert. Finally, dizzy to the point of fainting, Isabel sank into a chair, covering her face with her hands. “I’m sorry,” she interrupted his flow of words, “I suddenly feel ill. … I suspect I am overtired from traveling.”

  He had been so indifferent, so seemingly unconcerned about her since their first meeting, she was surprised when he came to stand beside her, carefully taking one of her hands in his. “You feel flushed,” he muttered. “Perhaps you need something to refresh yourself.” On a nearby table stood a flagon of herbal tisane and two wooden wine cups. Philippe poured one full and brought it to her, offering it gently. It was the first act of personal kindness she had known from him and it touched her. With a faint smile she took the cup, studying him discreetly as she drank. There was something furtive, mysterious about him; even his careless manner of dress enhanced his moody appearance. He was dark and sullen. Like a gypsy, she thought. She remembered her father’s words and sighed to herself, wishing she did not have to pretend innocent indifference to this beautiful black-eyed boy.