The Rain Maiden

by Jill M Philips

  He was mentally rereading the message he had received that morning from the Count of Flanders. It had been a repetition of their earlier communications: No Vermandois. Since the mid-August refusal to relinquish the territories, Philippe had sent several messages north and the response was always the same.

  The emperor and Henry of England had remained outside of it all, saying nothing. It was obvious that they were not going to be any help to France. Yet Philippe could not be sure if they had been in contact with Flanders or not. While it was unlikely that Henry would ally with Flanders in anything more than tacit support, Emperor Frederick’s position was a little more difficult to discern. Philippe wanted Vermandois enough to fight a war against Flanders for it, but not if it included fighting the Empire.

  Late in September Philippe had written to Baldwin of Hainault, demanding his father-in-law’s support. No answer had come as yet and Philippe knew why. Baldwin did not wish to invite the wrath of Flanders. He wished to remain neutral, but that was fast becoming impossible. Sooner or later Baldwin—like all of them—would have to choose.

  “You’re very solemn tonight.”

  Adele’s words disturbed his fitful musings. When he didn’t answer she persisted: “You have scarcely moved for the past hour and you’ve said nothing. I have been waiting since morning to speak to you. Do I have your ear now?”

  No peace. Philippe drew a hand across his face. He felt cold and the taste of the wine had gone sour in his mouth. He was tired, yet more willing to slump on this hard wooden bench than trudge up three levels of stairs to his bed. He would almost have preferred to lie down on the straw beside the dogs and pass the night in this room.

  Adele’s voice was shrill with exasperation. “Didn’t de Puiseaux or Clermont give you my message?”

  His hands were covering his face and Philippe’s voice came out muffled and indistinct. “They may have. I don’t remember. I’ve had a busy day.”

  Her nagging was pitiless. “Why do you purposely avoid me?”

  Philippe propped his elbows on the table top with a bang and stared past Adele at the smoke rising eerily from the fire grate in the wall. “What do you want, Mother?” he asked resignedly, and waited.

  Now that he had given her leave to speak, Adele seemed reticent. She fussed with the tassels of her mantle, her pearl-draped wrists making anxious little movements. She was nervous and wary: a dark, sleek cat cautiously circling an intended prey. All at once she looked up. “Have you seen the dispatches sent back from the East?”

  He shook his head. “They were brought in this afternoon just before I went to speak with Sully. I haven’t read them yet. I haven’t had the time. With you and Sully and de Puiseaux and Isabel and everyone nagging at me from every side it’s a wonder I get anything accomplished.”

  She reached across the table for the flagon, lifting it to add a little water to her wine. “You don’t take nagging from any of us. You’ve been especially unpleasant tonight. You had Isabel near tears a half-dozen times during dinner. You’ve taken such pains recently to ensure that the rest of us treat her well. You might apply that rule to your own behavior.”

  “I’ve fought with everyone today, including Sully,” he spat, “so don’t you start in on me. And since when do you give a damn how I treat Isabel?”

  “Your father had a much more even temper than you,” Adele complained. Then under her breath she muttered, “Louis was a good man.”

  Philippe struck the table with his fist. “Goddamn you, woman! I’m tired. I’m in no mood for your wailings. Say what it is you want to say, and be done with it!”

  Once again she distracted herself with her bracelets, then cast her eyes down timidly, a faint and thoroughly female smile curving her lips. He knew this approach. She wanted something from him, and all her overtures to that end were tempered with sex. He bit back his cynicism and said nothing.

  “Philippe,” she began, her voice sweet as honey, “I have had messages of my own. And since you say you have not read the dispatches from the East, I will tell you some news which is of interest to us. Alexius Comnenus is dead.

  Weariness and distraction had dimmed his concentration. “Who?” he asked.

  “The young emperor,” she answered, a note of rancor creeping into her voice. “Your sister’s fiance.”

  He dismissed the news with a shrug. “So?”

  “He is dead. Murdered by his uncle, the infamous Andronicus, who has seized the crown.”

  Philippe took up her cup and drank from it. “So what do the Byzantines want?” he asked, then immediately answered his own question. “I suppose to negotiate some new marriage treaty. Who is offered for Agnes now?”

  Adele came to sit beside him, pressing close, her fingers curled tightly about his wrist, commanding his attention. “The news is worse than you can guess,” she confided. “Andronicus has already declared that he will marry Agnes!”

  Philippe’s expression didn’t change. “I suppose he’ll demand some new dower settlement,” he complained. “Damn greedy foreigners. No doubt whatever Louis provided has long since been used up.”

  Adele’s eyes were bright with frustration. “Don’t you understand? The money isn’t important. He wants Agnes!”

  Philippe eased out of her grip. “What difference does it make? She was promised to an emperor—it seems she shall marry one after all.”

  “That man is over seventy!” she cried.

  Philippe drummed his fingers thoughtfully on the table top, ignoring Adele’s distress. “I remember Louis talking about Andronicus. They met when father was in Antioch.” He cast a sideways look at his mother. “This prospective husband of my sister’s is reputed to be a great lover. Many women, including his own niece, have openly declared their love for him. He sounds very glamorous.”

  “He is old!” Adele shouted. “He is a satyr! I would rather see my daughter dead than the plaything to such a man!”

  His laugh sounded harsh and obscene in the somber room and he jostled her with his elbow. “When did you become so prim? You have bedded enough men to have lost your dainty discretion.”

  Her eyes were black and gleaming. “I’ve never pretended to be virtuous, though you’ve no right to criticize me. In matters of the flesh we are much the same.”

  He twisted around to face her, confronted by the sultry scent of her perfume. “That’s right,” he conceded, fingering the pearl above her breasts, “I am the son of your body …”

  She pulled away from him, misgiving of his attitude because he was drunk, and in a sour mood to begin with. Her expression appealed to his understanding. “Don’t compromise the sanctity of your sister, Philippe. Think of her situation, and have Christian pity for her!”

  Philippe finished the wine in his mother’s cup and poured more. “Don’t be so naive,” he told her. “She’s been living at that debauched court among depraved Easterners for nearly three years. She’s sure to have learned something of the ways of the world. Twelve-year-olds ripen early these days, or hadn’t you heard?”

  Anger hardened her features. “She is an innocent child.” Philippe bared his teeth. “Innocent? Not if she’s anything like you.”

  With a howl of fury Adele slapped his face, her rings leaving a jagged cut above his mouth. For a second he seemed bewildered, as though she had slapped his wits to the winds. It had been a long time since Philippe had been slapped, and never by his mother. His tongue licked away the trickle of blood at the comer of his mouth. He continued to stare at her. “Don’t ever do that again,” he warned.

  “You would do anything, anything, wouldn’t you, just to hurt me!” she cried. “Even abandon your own sister! How you must hate me to be so cruel!”

  “There’s nothing I can do about it!” he shouted into her face. “It’s out of my hands.”

  Furious at his obstinance, Adele flailed out with her left hand, sending the glass porringer shattering to the floor. “You could send word to the pope!” she screamed at him. “He would i
ntervene in this even if you would not. There is not one Christian king in Europe who would not send armies to recapture my daughter rather than deliver her up to this pagan sacrilege!” Her face was contorted. “She is my daughter! Do something!”

  Philippe lunged to his feet, nearly knocking the bench out from under her. “Your daughter!” he taunted. “You were about as loving to Agnes as you were to me. You are a travesty as a mother.”

  He had broken her at last, dissolved her anger into tears. Her chin trembled as she looked up at him. “How can you speak such ignoble words? Being a son is easy. Motherhood is a curse!”

  “Motherhood?” he cried, his expression curdling as he spat upon the floor. “The very word makes my stomach chum. The brothels of Paris are filled with women more fitting as mothers than you ever were.” When she raised her hand to slap him again he caught her wrist in mid-air and twisted it brutally. “You never loved me, you were never a mother to me. Christ Jesus, half the men at court fed at your breasts, but never your son!”

  The lampblack at her eyes had smeared into dark patches upon her cheeks, but Adele, who so loved her beauty, was too despairing to care. “What do you know of motherhood?” she wailed. “I went through hell just to conceive you!”

  He let go of her arm at last, laughing at her pain. “Hell for you? For Father more likely. Spreading your legs is what you do best.”

  She grabbed blindly at him, her bracelets catching in the embroidery of his surcoat. In an instant Philippe pinned her wrists together with a swipe of his hand and held her back. He leaned close, his expression wolf-like. “How many have there been, mother? How many men have tracked their filth through your bed? And when I was a child, how many nights did you spend on your knees before one of father’s soldiers, while I cried myself to sleep, afraid of the dark, with no mother’s arms to comfort me?” With a grunt he shoved her back against the table, pronouncing his words like a curse. “Go peddle your grief somewhere else. I’ve had enough of you for one night.”

  Adele flung herself at his feet. “I gave you life! You owe me something for that!”

  He looked down at her disheveled, submissive form with pitiless austerity. “So you did. Thank you. But you live under the grace of my protection now. Remember that. I bowed to your rank once because I was too young to assert myself. But never again. I am the law.”

  Pride was gone, even anger. All that remained was a tiny flame of loyalty. She sprawled at his feet like a beggar. “Please,” she wept, “don’t abandon your sister! Don’t shame our family!”

  He pushed her grasping hands away with a kick of his boot. “Forget it. Agnes is nothing to me. I don’t give a devil’s damn whom she marries. And don’t get any clever ideas about getting Henry of England involved in this. I’ve had the last of outsiders interfering in French concerns.”

  “I will go to him!” she vowed amidst her sobs. “I will!”

  Philippe laughed. “It won’t do you any good, though, because he won’t be interested in helping you this time. You see, there’s nothing in it for him. And I don’t think your charms would be of any use. He already has all the whores he needs.”

  She felt the rush of cold air as he brushed past her, his boots crunching shards of glass into dust on the stone floor. At the entrance to the hall he turned back once more, his voice echoing through the drafty room. “There is one way in which you may prove useful. Ply your womanly wiles upon the Count of Flanders and get my territories. He might be interested, since you’re about the only bitch he hasn’t bedded.”

  Adele ripped the pearl broach from her shoulder and flung it viciously in his direction. “Go fuck yourself!” she screamed.

  “You first, Mother,” he called over his shoulder, and disappeared into the shadows.

  She sank forward, making a pillow of her arms as she wept into the darkness, still hearing the diminishing echo of his footfalls on the stairs above her. “Satan take your contemptible soul!” she whimpered, but only she heard.

  IN THE WHOLE of an elegant, gamboling Christmas court, Richard Plantagenet felt uncomfortable and remote. He was at a distance from the festivities and from the family members who gathered at Caen, in Normandy, to celebrate Christmas.

  Almost all the family were there: Harry and Marguerite, Geoffrey and Constance, Richard’s sister Matilda and her husband Henry of Saxony, with their children. John too, although he was nearly as glum as Richard. King Henry had recently secured a betrothal for his youngest son. John, called “Lackland” because he had no inherited territories, was dissatisfied with the heiress his father had secured for him. Not only was Hadwisa of Gloucester unsightly, she was a full seven years older than her prospective bridegroom.

  Richard had deeper concerns than marital alliances. Since the past summer he had noted with alarm the cordiality which had sprouted between his brothers Harry and Geoffrey. Richard had no proof that Geoffrey had “arranged” the humiliating events in Limoges, but he had suspicions. In September and November Geoffrey had made trips to visit Harry in Normandy while Richard, far away in Poitiers, had trembled with the thought of what those two dissemblers were planning together.

  Here at Caen this Christmas they were in each other’s company constantly. It seemed that everywhere Richard looked he could see Geoffrey and Harry huddled close in quiet conversation that ceased whenever he approached. They hovered together in the dark spill of shadowed corridors; rode off together in the chilly fog of fierce Norman dawns; retired whispering each night to the same room.

  Bertran de Born, the troubadour-knight, had come to Caen as Harry’s guest, and his presence provoked further malice in Richard. Bertran was a logical suspect of any trouble-rousing. Overlord of a small estate in the Hauteville region of the Aquitaine, Bertran had spent his past twenty years in a limp imitation of Philip d’Alsace’s chivalry, easing himself close to the outer edges of the high nobility with his charm and skill at arms, and as a writer of pithy, sardonic verse. He had great illusions of his own importance, and that made him dangerous. Richard had trifled with him, more piqued by de Born’s skills as a poet than a lover, and the dissolution of their former relationship presaged trouble now. De Born, turned enemy, could prove villainous. His power in the Aquitaine meant little, for many men ranked above him. But his famous sirventes were read and praised throughout the provinces of the continent, and his opinions carried surprising public and political weight. Now he was Harry’s friend, and Geoffrey’s. What did it all mean?

  Richard was sick of the deception. He was not afraid to fight any man face-to-face but he had no stomach for duplicity and faithless friends. Or relatives. That was another sobering realization. It had been many years since Richard had been forced to endure a stretch of seclusion with his family, and he had nearly forgotten how unpleasant they all were.

  There was only one person at Caen that Christmas season with whom he shared any sense of comradeship. He was a Welshman in Richard’s service named Aaron ap Rhys, who in an attempt to disguise the social ignominy of a Jewish mother, had changed his first name to Trevyn. Stocky, blunt-speaking, carelessly dressed, he didn’t fit the mold of Richard’s usual companions. Trevyn had no predilection for chivalry, romantic ballads, or young men. But he was a good friend and jolly, with the typical Welsh exuberance and a nimble way with a tale.

  Everyone kept busy at Caen that season, occupying themselves with the frantic little pastimes of people who are unhappy and not very comfortable with one another. Constance and Marguerite fussed over Matilda’s children. Matilda doted over her depressed husband, who had so recently been deprived of his holdings in Saxony by Emperor Frederick. John amused himself with a laundress on a bed of straw behind the stove. Harry and Geoffrey and Bertran de Born conversed with hushed tones in secret places. Richard and Trevyn sat together in the common hall drinking wine and coriander, exchanging bawdy stories for hours at a time, till the drink vanquished them and the tales played themselves out as mute images in their befuddled dreams.

  Henr
y Plantagenet had little time for court gaieties this season, though it was he who had brought this gathering of his family together. He sat at the council table in his audience chamber, looking out past shaded grey glass at the barren landscape and the scampering snow that covered it.

  Earlier in the month he had met with Philip of Flanders who, eager to keep Vermandois out of French hands, had requested the English king’s help in finding a new bride. Vermandois would be her wedding gift: the final, ignoble signal to France that the Count of Flanders bowed beneath the hand of no man.

  The King of Portugal had a nubile daughter, and Henry was engaged in making terms for the marriage between her and Philip. Having disappointed d’Alsace in the past, Henry would redeem himself with this act. It was flagrantly obvious that Flanders’s feud with the King of France would be a major item of discord on the political agenda for years to come, and Henry saw the necessity of keeping a careful balance. Should he lean too obligingly toward either one, he might upset the delicate equalization of power that existed.

  Henry splattered a thickness of hot wax upon the folded edge of the letter and plunged his signet ring into it. That single act would cause Isabel of Hainault a thousand tears. But Henry didn’t know, and he didn’t care.

  By the end of January Richard was back in Poitiers and there he heard the first faint rumblings of what he had only suspected in Caen. He had been right to mistrust his brothers, he could see that now, and terribly, terribly wrong to put himself at such a distance from them.

  Clever Geoffrey was at the center of this new conspiracy. He had succeeded in puffing up Harry’s pride to the point that Harry actually believed that he (with Geoffrey’s help) could wrest Normandy from Henry and the Aquitaine from Richard. Now there was a plan to topple the balance of power! For without the rich resources of the continent, the power of England would be but a little thing.

  If Richard was attacked by his brothers, the King of England would come to his aid. That was Geoffrey’s reasoning, and his grandiose plan would ensnare them both. In defeating their brother, he and Harry would defeat their father as well. Normandy, Brittany, Aquitaine, Gascony and Maine would belong to Harry and Geoffrey. They had already secured the promised help of Count Raymond of Touiouse and Hugh of Burgundy. That, combined with Geoffrey’s three thousand Brabantine mercenaries, fifteen hundred men-at-arms from Brittany, and Harry’s own two thousand Norman knights, would make a respectable army. And that did not even count the barons in the Aquitaine who would gladly join any rebellion against Richard.