The Rain Maiden

by Jill M Philips

  Geoffrey had worked out the details of the rising with the exactness of a torture master. There were to be two seats of the rebellion: Tours and Limoges. Harry would bring his men south from Rouen to Tours; Geoffrey’s would come east from Rennes. At the same time, Burgundy and Toulouse would march their men to Limoges where they would meet up with Geoffrey’s hired mercenaries. Cut off from his father’s forces in Normandy, Richard would be trapped. Before Henry could send for his reinforcements from England, it would all be over.

  It was mid-February before the news of impending revolution reached Henry’s ears in Normandy. He was not surprised. There was always some trouble brewing in the south, and he felt certain that if war did come, Richard would put an end to it. He turned his attention to other concerns.

  By March Limoges was in tumult and Harry was holding the city against its own barons. Alarmed, Henry gathered up two thousand soldiers and came to Limoges, hoping to reconcile his sons to some peaceful settlement. But when the king reached the outskirts of the city he was met by insurgent troops and he barely escaped injury from a shower of arrows.

  He made his stand outside the city, and for the next several weeks messengers shuttled back and forth between his camp and that of his sons, bearing the fluttering white banners of uneasy truce. With Richard cut off in Poitiers, where his armies were fighting Geoffrey’s mercenaries, the English king was determined to achieve a settlement with his two perfidious sons.

  Yet he seemed unwilling to see the seriousness of this affair. It had happened so many times before. He had brought his sons to heel for their transgressions in the past, and he would do it again. Henry refused to see that this was no longer a matter of youthful caprice on the part of his sons; they were not merely rebellious boys under the troubling influence of some outside antagonist. They were the dangerous purveyors of malice and treason, and they wanted Henry’s blood. Some of the king’s closest advisers had warned him of this many times, but he would never listen.

  Shortly before Easter, Richard successfully disbursed the Brabantines and marched his men south to Limoges. Panicked by this turn of events, Harry presented himself suddenly in Henry’s camp, terrified and servile and begging for mercy. At last seeing an end to this miserable affair, Henry kissed the boy and pardoned him in the presence of all those assembled. A general truce was called for the observance of Easter, and the king made plans to return to Normandy the following week.

  Once again he had misjudged the ability of his sons to hurt him. After Easter Harry retreated to the rival camp and there, upon a bitter scolding from Geoffrey, he fell back into his role as rebel and traitor.

  The news of Richard’s southwest progress induced Harry to send Marguerite north under guard to Paris, with a message for her half-brother. So far Philippe Capet had remained discreetly outside of the tumultuous events taking place on the fringe of his demesne. The rebels sensed that he had no wish to become personally involved. Yet his antagonism toward the English king was well known, and it was upon this fact that Harry was depending. Philippe didn’t disappoint. He gave sanctuary to the distressed Marguerite, and immediately dispatched 400 men-at-arms to Harry’s aid.

  It was too late. The fantastically concocted conspiracy was coming apart. In Brittany, Constance refused to answer Geoffrey’s demands for more money. The Brabantines, beaten back by Richard’s men and unpaid for many weeks, had retreated to Angouleme. Cheated of payment, they would withdraw from the revolt, or worse, turn on the rebels themselves. The revolt would never succeed without them. They would have to be paid.

  While Geoffrey stayed at Limoges to hold off Richard’s army, Harry traveled south in search of booty. Town after town went over to the side of the rebels: Aixe on May 23rd, Uzerche three days later. The crowds went wild at the sight of young Harry, splendid in his violet silks, his golden hair kissed by the light of a summer sun. The barons, weary of Richard’s ruthlessness, willingly swore a new allegiance to Henry Plantagenet’s first-born son.

  At Rocamadour Harry and his band of brigands looted the rich shrine of St. Amadour, stealing the jeweled reliquaries, the gold crosses, and all else of value. With his own hands Harry took the sword of Roland from the sacristy to pawn as payment for his troops.

  It was his last act of sacrilege. On June 3rd, feverish and puking and barely able to sit his horse, Harry started north once more. Illness had made him eager to reach Limoges, but he only got so far as the vineyards outside Martel when, shaking with dysentery, Harry collapsed from his horse onto the dusty road.

  They carried him by litter to a farmhouse and somebody sent for a priest. A bishop came with two pious nuns to pray for the young king, but everyone knew he was dying. At long last, fearful for the state of his soul, Harry asked that he be clothed in hiscrusader’s cloak and set upon a bed of ashes to signal his repentance.

  William Marshal held his young lord’s hand and wept without shame. Only he knew that the messenger dispatched to the English king at Limoges had been rebuffed. Henry had finally stopped deluding himself that his sons could be faithful. Surely this latest news of Harry’s illness was yet one more trap to deceive him.

  It was June 11th, the jewel-bright morning of a summer’s day, when Harry Plantagenet, who was not yet thirty, gazed wanly out the open window up into the last sky he would ever see, and whispered his father’s name.

  In a woodcutter’s shack at the edge of the forest outside Limoges they found the King of England sprawled over a plump redhead upon a bed of straw.

  Five Norman knights jostled their way inside, nearly filling the tiny room. Henry sat up, roused by the noise, and got to his feet, knotting a dirty blanket at his waist to cover himself.

  William Marshal pushed in past the others and stood for a moment looking at the king. From beneath his arm he withdrew a folded garment and put it into Henry’s hands.

  The king stared down at the fine white linen cloak with its emblazoned red cross visible by but a single bar of scarlet. Wailing, he threw his body to the ground, concealing his face in the dirt, rending the earth with his fingers. Hell would hold no surprises for him. Powerless, the King of England raged into the dust.

  Now every grief and woe and bitterness,

  The sum of tears that this sad century’s shed

  Seem light against the death of the young king

  And prowess mourns, and youth stands sorrowful

  No man rejoices in these bitter times.

  “All pride in battle, skill in song and rhyme

  Must yield to sorrow’s humble threnody.

  For cruel death, that mortal warrior,

  Has harshly taken from us king of knights;

  Beside him charity itself was mean,

  And in him every noble virtue shone.

  “So pray we all that God in His sweet grace

  May grant His pardon to the young English king,

  Who yesterday was valiant knight;

  Now he is fallen to the great lord Death

  And leaves us naught but sadness and despair …”

  Bertran de Born

  June, 1183

  The messenger accomplished his business quickly and rode away soon after, so that the queen might shed her tears in private. But Eleanor did not weep. She sat for a long while in the close confinement of her little garden at Salisbury, absently drawing the woollen wrap closer about her shoulders, because it was so cold for June.

  Anger sat close upon her sorrow. Henry was to blame for this! All her troubles had begun with him. There had been years of frustration and boredom during her first marriage, but all the pain had come later, with Henry. Louis had been a bauble, something to trifle with and toss laughingly away. His adoration had offended her because y she could never return it, and she had despised his willingness to accept her abuse.

  She thought of him often these days, preferring to recall a life before Henry. She had known little satisfaction as Louis’s wife, but she’d been younger then, and life had been more pleasing. Poor foolish
Louis. His love had engulfed her like a stifling perfume. It had been easy, even tempting, to hurt him. Yet there had been some moments of pleasure between them… .

  She reached up, brushing her fingers against a low-hanging branch of her peach tree, remembering a time over thirty years ago and far away in the East. Louis had not wanted to take her on crusade but her charms had bought his favor. Eleanor had envisioned a heroic adventure in romantic settings but from the beginning the great endeavor had been a series of misfortunes… .

  Eleanor had come to hate the crusade, their marriage, him. All seemed bogged down in fraud and failure. Then had come the surprise attack at Mt. Cadmos, and for a few hours Eleanor had waited in terror at the camp with the other women, fearing that Louis was dead. All her indifference toward him had paled beside that fear. On her knees she had implored God to spare his life.

  Dawn had pronounced a safe return: Louis, wretched and bloodied and soaked with sweat, leading his pitiful band of scavenger knights back from Mt. Cadmos. God had chosen to give Eleanor another chance.

  She had bathed the blood from her husband’s body with her own hands, bandaged his wounds, and massaged his flesh with oil of herbs. Then beneath the pink blossoms of another peach tree Louis the warrior-king had made love to her savagely, and for the last time. What a man he could be when he forgot that he was king, and God’s anointed!

  For a few days Eleanor had loved him with her whole soul. Then the demands of life and circumstance had overtaken her once more, and the love had died forever. Shortly after that they had separated: Louis going on to Syria, she returning to France. When Louis returned to Paris, the remnants of a failed crusade behind him, they had talked seriously of divorce for the first time. Then had come her meeting with young Henry of Anjou, and after that nothing Louis could have said or done would have kept her interest or her heart… .

  At last the tears came, making little splashing patterns on her folded hands. Even near the end of their marriage Louis had been amenable to her advice, knowing she was cleverer than he. But Henry—so greedy for every crumb of power—had never consulted her in matters political or personal. The first years of their marriage she had borne him sons with dutiful regularity while he was busy making a pet of his chancellor Thomas Becket, and sporting openly with any woman who took his fancy.

  Wasted and abused, her offering of love to Henry had decayed into malice. Deceptions had grown into confrontations. Arguments had escalated into wars. All her energies were bent toward destroying the only man she had ever loved.

  It was not enough for her alone to hate Henry. Gleefully she had weaned her sons away from him, cosseting them in the cultured surroundings of her palace in Bordeaux. There she had sung them songs and taught them poetry, but between the music and the laughter she had whispered tales to them of their father’s treachery, until she saw her own bitterness mirrored in their eyes.

  The hate had grown in her till it was all she knew. It had cost Eleanor her marriage, her peace of mind, her freedom, and now even her son. She looked down at her tear-splattered hands. Henry had done all of this.

  It was all lost to her now. She had nothing to show for the efforts of her grand, gay youth: only the trinkets of petty affections and one horrendous love, spent, and all in vain. It was past—the reckless flirtations, the wide-eyed idealism, the secret glint of pleasure winking back from within the silver circlet of a teasing mirror. She would never again command a man’s favor or bargain for it by using the loveliness of her face or her body. Only her wily intelligence remained to serve her now.

  For all that she had been forced to endure, Eleanor would have her revenge. Someday, perhaps soon, Henry would be dead. Richard, her best-beloved child, would sit upon the throne of England. That would be her reward for grim years of waiting. She lifted her face and stared ahead into the setting sun.

  A group of heretics live in France. They have named themselves Capuciati, the white-caped Friends of Peace.” They preach the brotherhood of Man and clothe themselves in humble raiment, but they are heretics all the same.

  These apostates are led by a simple carpenter who names himself Durand Dujardin. It has been said of him that he preaches according to Christ’s own words, yet he sins against that same Christ by denying the power of the Church which Christ Himself did ordain during His time on earth.

  Why a man does evil may be difficult for all but God to know. Dujardin may wish only to make his name a famous thing, or he may be a misguided visionary. Yet, already, hungry and power-seeking Flemish mercenaries have clustered about him and his Capuciati, eager to enforce this “brotherhood” with their swords. For the security of the church on earth, politics and heretics make an uneasy brew.

  In Paris the King of France has spoken out against all enemies of the Church, must especially the Albigenses. Yet his queen, who is a Fleming, has sent a pearl and ruby ring to the Durand Dujardin, as if to denote her favor to his cause. What say the king of France to this treason?

  Godfrey of Lincoln

  August, 1183

  Philippe’s temporary accommodation of Marguerite was exhibiting all the signs of becoming a long-term arrangement. After months of wrangling he had been unable to renegotiate her dower settlement with King Henry. Harry’s death had now voided the prior contract, and restored the Vexin to France. Henry was unwilling to part with it and had thrown up a number of legal and administrative roadblocks in Philippe’s way. Until such time as that matter was resolved, Marguerite would remain a ward of the French crown.

  Her tenure at the Cite palace worked no hardship upon Philippe, who had grown to like her. Accustomed to the complainings of his wife and mother, he found his half-sister’s uncritical disposition a gratifying change. Marguerite had no intellectual pretensions, and she was an eager, solicitous listener to his every word. Knowing well where her own best interests lay, she had cultivated Philippe’s confidence, and agreed with each opinion he expressed.

  Isabel was thoroughly provoked by Marguerite’s presence at court and resentful of Philippe’s indulgence of her. She had borne the insult in grudging silence for a while, but by the end of August she had lost all patience with the situation. It was as if Philippe was deliberately baiting her. Whenever they fought now, and it was often, Marguerite’s name was never far away.

  “When is she going back to England?” Isabel asked one night when he came to her room. It was late. Once again he had lingered too long downstairs over wine and conversation with Marguerite. Once again Isabel had chosen to spend the evening alone in her room.

  It was not the sort of greeting Philippe appreciated, especially since he was still smarting from his wife’s unwise involvement with the Capuciati. Godfrey of Lincoln’s words had been circulated throughout the city, doubtless at the prompting of Isabel’s enemies among the nobility. The episode had caused Philippe considerable embarrassment and he had not yet forgiven his wife. Isabel knew his feelings and yet she refused to let the matter rest. Only someone with her colossal nerve would dare to anger him further.

  “It’s hot in here,” he said, and crossed abruptly to the window, thrusting aside the heavy tapestry which covered it. He stood there for a while, looking out over the slender, curving line of the river. Tiny boats floated on its even surface like decorations made of paper. Stray sounds mingled, hanging on the thickness of the night air. Barking dogs. A child crying. At the far end of the bridge a lolling soldier laughed with his companions and threw pebbles into the water.

  Philippe turned from the window and began pulling off his clothes. “Why didn’t you come down to dinner tonight?” he asked.

  She rested limply back on the bed and closed her eyes. “You know the reason. I’m sick of her. When is she going back where she belongs?”

  He tossed his boots to the floor and came to sit beside her. His voice was tempered with restraint. “I don’t know. But until Henry agrees to furnish some means of subsistence, it is my duty to provide for her. And there is still the matter of the Vexin
. Now it belongs to France again, I must do all I can to keep it. Henry wishes it to be settled on Alais as a part of her dower, yet he delays her marriage to Richard for reasons of his own. He will learn he cannot have his way in both matters.” Philippe looked down into her placid face, interpreting her silence as indifference. “I am boring you with talk of politics,” he observed.

  Her wrist lay lightly across her breast where it rose and fell with her breathing. A bracelet shone there, its rubies rare and blushing. “Politics don’t bore me,” she snapped, “for it is mother’s milk to my family.” At last she opened her eyes. “Philippe, I know the Vexin is important, but you’ll never keep it if Henry truly wants it back, so why all this useless delay involving Marguerite? The sooner you settle it all, the happier I will be.”

  “You could be kinder to her,” he protested. “She is, after all. a widow, bereft of home and station. In her place you would wish for the same courtesy.”

  Those heedless words brought Isabel to a stiff sitting position. “You dare to reproach me, when for years I have lived here friendless as a beggar? What great pains have been taken to assure my ease of spirit? Who has shown me courtesy?”

  He was trying to control his temper. “I was not making comparisons, only suggesting that you make her feel as welcome as my mother and her family should have made you feel.”