“Goodbye, then,” she wept into her hands. “Leave me, leave me at the mercy of those who hate me, and don’t trouble yourself about what will become of me!”
“You are not without talents, child,” he answered, his lips twisted in a sneer. “You might try them on your new husband, if you can get his cock away from Harry Plantagenet for long enough.”
Isabel covered her ears, not wanting to hear any more, wishing he were dead, wishing that she was, that the earth would suddenly rise up and bury her. She wept until vomit nearly strangled her, then fell upon the ground shivering and whimpering.
When she finally raised her head Flanders was gone. In her mouth she could still taste him, mingled now with the sourness of vomit. He had left her. Left her alone. Left her without even a decent goodbye. Pulling herself up, she dusted the grass and dirt from her clothes. She could no longer hear the music from inside. There was no sound of voices either. Off to the east she could hear dogs barking.
Clouds had formed over the moon. It was dismally dark in the grove now; dark and suddenly chilly. Isabel started toward the path, shivering in the coolness. When she reached the giant oak she stooped, taking the sprig of mistletoe between her fingers, remembering the legend. The mistletoe must never touch the ground: it was a gift from heaven, sanctified by the gods. She closed the leaves into the palm of her hand and stood up. All gods were beyond her reach now.
On the path back to the palace she met Sully, who had come in search of her. It was a kind act, born of commiseration, but she felt too close to tears again to face him or anyone else.
He bent toward her, taking up her hands. “Child, you should not be out here alone. I’ve been searching for you.”
She gave him a wavering smile. “You are so kind, but you needn’t have worried. I was just walking.” And then she added, “Is the banquet over?”
“Yes.” He took his own cloak and thrust it around her shoulders. “Adele left shortly after you, as did Philippe. I am sure that the quarrel made everyone uncomfortable.”
Isabel hesitated for a moment just beside the row of silver lime trees that bordered the entrance to the grove. The torches that hung above the palace archway quavered light and shadow across his face as she looked up at him. “My Lord Bishop, you must understand that it was not my wish to quarrel with Philippe’s mother. …”
The girl’s face was so very pale, her hair was stringy and disheveled. Sully suspected that she had been crying and his heart ached in sympathy for her. Innocent child! She knew so little of the world; it was cruel of her family to sacrifice her to their own interests. Silently he vowed to look after her. Aloud he said, “Dear girl, your uncle must have warned you against the treachery of that lady. The advice should be well taken.”
The mention of her uncle brought a sting of moisture to her eyes. “I know very little of these things,” Isabel remarked. “I am a stranger here: I fear I shall be a stranger for a very long time.” For just an instant she remained by his side, then looking up into his face she said simply, “I thank you for your kindness to me. If you will excuse me now I think I will go to bed.” She shook the cloak from her shoulders and passed it over to him. Then in a flurry of green and gold she raced off down the path, getting smaller and smaller, until the corridor swallowed her up completely.
IN THE EIGHTEENTH day of September 1180—a fog-shrouded afternoon with no hint of sun—Louis of France died, holding tightly to the hand of Maurice de Sully and whispering repentence for his sins. The king was old and sick—ready to die, if slightly fearful—and Sully’s presence was a comfort.
There were two others in the room. Alike figures, tall and dark, black-visioned. Philippe and Adele stood together very close (ironically so) and thinking identical thoughts. Between his fingers Philippe clutched Louis’s signet ring, taken from the hand still warm.
Sully pronounced Absolution and prayed silently over that prone figure for a few minutes. Then he swept his hands over the king’s face, closing his eyes. Silently, his face tear-moist, the bishop rose to his feet. Mother and son looked at one another, then at Sully. “Is it over?” they asked in unison.
Louis Capet had not wished for a splendid funeral, disdaining even the traditional burial at St. Denis, where most Frankish kings since Clovis were entombed. His body was borne south, down the Seine, and delivered up to the white-habited Cistercian monks at Barbeaux in Melun. Philippe, adorned in the purple of mourning, king at last, and dowager Queen Adele in purest white and cloaked with the assured promise of her legal settlement, accompanied Sully as the chief mourners. Isabel of Hainaut, now queen of a land she had scarcely seen save from her window, was left behind at the Cite Palais in the safekeeping of Lord Chancellor Hughes de Puiseaux.
October came, dressing Paris in a cloak of autumnal fog, by the time Philippe and his mother returned from the south. Isabel had been lonelier than usual. In the afternoons she and Edythe roamed in the garden or played draughts; it passed the time. But Edythe always retired early, leaving Isabel to wander through the passageways alone at night.
Chancellor de Puiseaux had given her permission to study in the dim palace archives library and it was there she spent many of her companionless evenings, reading accounts of the fifth and sixth century Frankish rulers recorded by Gothic historian Jordanes, enthralled by his account of Attila’s invasion of Gaul and the battle of Chalons-sur-Mame with its 300,000 atrocities. Fascinated, Isabel delved even more deeply into time and history; first-century Gaul—Julius Sabinus, the patriot who had called himself a new Caesar, living with his faithful wife Eponina underground in a crypt for nine years, to escape the tyranny of Roman emperor Vespasian. She read of her own great ancestor Charlemagne, and the exploits of his fantastic grandfather Charles Martel.
Isabel, well tutored by her father, uncle, and Gilbert of Mons, combined the skills of her education (she read as well as spoke Flemish, French and Latin) with an incredibly romantic imagination. The tales she read stirred her yearning curiosity, and somehow helped to buffer her isolation.
She was restless, though, and the nights were long and very lonely. She often woke from nightmares or deeply disturbing dreams. Ever since she could remember there had been night terrors; but always there had been her mother and father to sit beside her, smoothing her hair and coaxing the fear away. Now there was no one. The dreams went untold and the uneasiness persisted.
On the evening that the Capetian caravan returned to Paris Isabel waited for hours, hoping that Philippe would come to her room. She wanted to talk to him about the funeral. But when the moon was already high—a milky cyclops eye, white and unblinking—he still had not come. Resolutely she wrapped herself in a grey silk chainse, brushed out her hair, and crept down the corridor to his room.
Isabel had never been in his room, and for a moment her hand trembled against the vivid green drape that covered the archway to his quarters. Hesitating, she drew back, her fingers brushing the soft velvet. Then just as swiftly her mind asserted the action and she pushed past the drape.
The room was surprisingly bright, lit by several hanging torches and the glow of a shimmering fire. Near the far wall was the bed, couched in green hangings, half drawn. Philippe was on the bed—his back to her. He was naked and the light flickering across his body gave a golden cast to his dusky skin. He was hunched over, his body heaving, uttering strangled gasps that sounded like sobs. She knew she was intruding, yet drew nearer, closing the distance between them till she stood at the foot of the bed.
One glance told her that he was not crying. She watched him with fascination. His head was thrown back, his eyes closed. His hands were clasped together at his belly encasing a member of incredible size, his clenched fingers working over the taut flesh in rhythmic strokes. Isabel couldn’t take her eyes from him. He was beautiful, transfigured, lost to outer reality. This was the loveliest sight she had ever witnessed, and without realizing it, Isabel spoke his name aloud.
Immediately he jerked to a sitting position o
n the bed, his eyes staring blindly at her in wordless, furious surprise.
“I’m sorry,” she stammered, suddenly embarrassed. “I didn’t mean to . . her voice whispered off into silence.
“How dare you come in here like this? This is my room! You have no right barging in here to spy on me!”
“I wasn’t,” she argued feebly. “I only came here because,” she looked down at her bare feet, then up at his stricken face, “I wanted to talk to you.”
Philippe jerked the coverlet around him and glared at her. “Well, you certainly chose a poor time.”
“I wanted to ask you about the funeral.”
“What’s there to ask? It was a funeral, pure and simple. What is this fascination you have with my father? You didn’t even know him.”
Her throat constricted in helpless tension. “I’m sorry.”
His black eyes glared at her, his lips drawn into a sneer. “You’re shocked, aren’t you? Perhaps even a little disgusted. In the future perhaps you’ll keep out of other people’s rooms.”
Anger flared her into response. “I’m sorry to disappoint you but I’m not shocked or disgusted. I’m not entirely ignorant of things, Philippe. If you had troubled to know me better you would have learned that by now.”
Philippe tossed her a scoffing sneer. “Don’t toy with me. You’re only a child. You don’t know anything.”
Instinctively she moved closer to the bed, her hands outstretched, petitioning for his understanding. “Appearances may be deceiving. To many people you are just a boy. Does that make it so? I am no more a child than you are. If you were truly the shrewd young genius of whom my uncle speaks, you would have noticed.”
“You’re very snide,” he answered defensively. “How dare you speak to me like this?”
She eased herself onto the bed beside him, her eyes never leaving his face. With every instinct she owned she tried to reach him. “Philippe, we’ve been married four months and we’re strangers. I could be your friend if you’d only let me. I want to be. I want to help you if I can. …”
“I don’t need your help!” he fairly shouted. “What nerve you have!”
“You chose me as your wife. Is it too much to ask that you at least think of me as your friend?”
“I didn’t choose you,” he snapped. “I didn’t even know you were alive till last March. This whole business was your uncle’s idea, to bind me to his will just as my mother tried to bind me to her own. Well, I’m king now and I don’t need any of you. I’m just as sick of you and your family as I am of my own.”
“You married me for my family!” she argued.
“And for all the help they’ve been I could send you back to Hainault tomorrow without a care. You’re as vain as the rest of your brood. Don’t flatter yourself. You don’t mean anything to me. Not anything at all.”
Tears of humiliation threatened in her eyes and voice; she could feel her composure coming apart. “Believe me,” she said between clenched teeth, “it’s no great joy to be here.” She raised her face to the ceiling as though appealing to a Higher Understanding. “God, but the arrogance of men is sickening! If you are unhappy with this arrangement, think of my position. No one cared what my feelings were. You and my uncle forged this alliance and now because you can’t carry out your respective parts in the bargain you blame and harass me!” She waited for his testy expression to give birth to some cutting remark. When he said nothing she continued: “If this contract with me and my family is so loathsome to you, do something about it. Send me home—dissolve this arrangement between us. Sell yourself to some ambitious French girl. Someone who can give you French prestige with your bigoted French barons—French children, and French hell when you present her with things you’ve stolen from the French dowager bitch!”
His hand struck out, slapping her viciously across the face. For a second her features seemed to freeze in disbelief, then the tears came, a wild rush of them. Sobbing, she slumped forward on the bed, her hands covering the scalding sting where he had hit her.
Without a thought, Philippe pushed the coverlet aside and leaned over her, his nostrils smarting at the scent of her perfumed hair. Roughly he pulled her close, his arms tight about her and tangled in her hair. She wept against his chest, but her arms encircled him in an instant, her fingernails digging into his back with painful sharpness. With a free hand he swept her tear-matted hair back from her face, forcing her chin up between tight fingers, making her look at him. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry …” he repeated over and over, stroking her cheek, hot from the pressure of his hand. Oh, Jesus, her beautiful, beautiful face!
Anger and passion and love and hate throbbed in him, colliding, mingling crazily. He could taste her tears and her moist hair in his mouth as he kissed her, holding her so close that it hurt. He felt her hands on his skin, her fingers caressing his shoulders, his chest, moving over his belly and below, grasping at him with so much fervor that he was instantly afraid and tried to push her hands away. Still she reached for him, her fingers soft and delicate on his engorged flesh as she whispered, “Let me, I know how. …”
Thought, reason, all sensibilities numbed, he reeled back against the cushions. Her hands were sweet on his skin, her lips both soothing and exciting. He closed his eyes, reveling in darkness and the incredible pleasure of her touch; and then in a superb moment he felt his passion erupt inside the warm, safe enclosure of her mouth.
Philippe lay panting, his consciousness flowing out like well-watered wine. After a moment he reached down, pulling her up to him, cradling her head on his shoulder. For a long time they were both silent. He was dazed and dizzy and more at peace than he had ever been. “Your father would kill me,” he finally whispered, “and your uncle. They both treasure you so.”
Isabel turned her face into his shoulder and her fingers clutched anxiously at his neck. She thought of her uncle’s final words, his face set in anger; and of her father, plagued by a guilty love yet sacrificing her to a future he himself could not conscience. The two men who had guided her every breath to this time had now seemingly abandoned Isabel to a future of questionable shadows. All alone and comfortless, she had only Philippe—and suddenly he was everything. Impulsively she wept. “Don’t wish you had never seen me!”
He felt her vulnerability and pulled her closer to him. “I don’t,” he promised, “I don’t.” Then after a while he whispered, “But Isabel, we mustn’t tell anyone about this. They wouldn’t understand.”
He could feel the flick of her lashes against his skin. “They all hate me,” she mused sadly, “your mother, your uncles, your cousins—everyone here at court.”
Philippe thought of Midsummer’s Eve, of Adele ripping the shimmering emeralds from Isabel’s throat, of the shocked silence that had followed. Stroking her arm he soothed, “I never told you how sorry I was for what mother did to you that night.”
She struggled to a sitting position beside him. looking down into his face with large somber eyes. “It wasn’t so much the necklace, though I did love it… . It was you and my uncle sitting there, watching and listening. You did nothing. You said nothing.”
He toyed with a sweeping length of her gilt hair that lay twirled over his midsection. “You put us all to shame, standing up to her the way you did. I hated her so much that night I could have killed her. I wanted to say something—I just …” he paused. “But things will be different now that Louis is dead.”
“How?”
He pulled her down next to him. “She’s leaving Paris soon, going back to Champagne to settle up her dotalicium. Everything’s been restored to her, all her lands and titles, her allowance; she has what she wants. She won’t be here, not often anyway. It will be easier with her gone. For both of us. You’ll see.”
“And your uncles?” she asked. “What about them? Can I stand against them? Can you?”
The reminder of reality pinched, but he knew she was right. Drawing her closer, his body half-covering her, Philippe rested his head on he
r shoulder. “I know, I know,” he muttered. “But there’s nothing I can do now, not till I’m older, till I can make everyone take me seriously as a king. I need their support and help. I can’t rule this country alone—I’ve had no experience. My father shut me out from everything.”
Her fingers were very white against the black disorder of his hair as she stroked his temples. “But what about my uncle?” she argued softly. “And de Puiseaux, and Sully? They are all men of learning and experience. They’re on your side. They’ll help you against your family.”
“My uncle William is one of the most powerful prelates in this country as Bishop of Rheims,” he reminded her, “and together my uncles Theobold, Henri and Stephen hold twice as much land as I do. They have formidable armies, and treasuries far larger than anything I have at my own disposal.”
“But you are the king, Philippe,” she protested. “They are your vassals. Any lands and revenues they hold are under your control.”
He shook his head. “No, it isn’t as simple as that. I have angered so many people by this marriage, if I so much as try to oppose my uncles, they and the barons they control will rise up in revolt against me and the whole bloody mess will start up all over again.” He raised his head from her shoulder and looked at her. “Besides that, I signed a treaty promising to maintain peace with my relatives. My hands are tied. I need time. Time to gain their confidence and my own. To get control of things. I can do it, I know I can, but not all at once. That’s what Flanders refused to understand. I didn’t betray him at Gisors, I merely did what I had to do. He didn’t have to negotiate with Henry, I did. Can you understand, Isabel?”
She nodded weakly, seeing the futility he faced.
“Someday,” he muttered, his cheek against her soft hair, “I will rule this land alone and owe myself to no one. In a few years there won’t be a man who can stand against me. Then I can turn my attention to the evil that has plagued France since Henry first sat the throne—the Angevin domination over us in all things. Henry is still powerful, but he won’t last forever. He’s getting old. His sons all hate him. And with them to help me I’ll fight him for every inch of land he stole from my father.”
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