The Rain Maiden

by Jill M Philips

  With Henry’s death the Bretons had thrown off all English influence, and that included Randulf. Constance had no doubt that she was rid of him for good. He would not come back to Brittany now for fear of being killed by the angry populace who hated him, but he had left a memory behind.

  Constance was pregnant with his child.

  She had conceived with him in May, and now it was the middle of December. She hated the life which grew inside her belly. It had been made from Randulf's lust and her own abhorrence. Sometimes she prayed that it would die.

  Constance wanted no reminder of this loathsome marriage; she wanted a divorce. Already she’d petitioned King Richard for consent. He would “take it under consideration,” he had said. There was small security in Richard’s promises; he was a liar like his father had been. But the new king had done one thing to please her: he had named Arthur as his heir.

  Her lips curved in a smile as she considered it. Richard was likely to be away for years; he might never return to England. And if he did not, her son would inherit all. Arthur was not yet three; it would be many years before he reached his majority. But in the meantime Constance was as able as any man to serve as regent. Until the time came there was Brittany to govern, and another childbed to endure.

  Constance wandered over to the window once again. The smell was lighter now, there were only ashes left on the cobbled square. Arthur would rule over England someday. She must remember that as this unloved child grew inside her, reminding her of things best left forgotten.

  The wind caught up the ashes and scattered them amid the snow.

  Too much rain.

  It had rained nearly every day since the beginning of December and the Seine was flooding at its banks once more. The dampness seeped into the grey stones of the palace, and kept everyone close beside their fires.

  Isabel had never felt so isolated. Philippe was away in Normandy seeing Richard, and he would not return till after Christmas. Besides Edythe, who was always busy caring for the queen’s children, there was only Sibylla for company and her mood was as gloomy as the weather.

  Isabel was anxious, fretful.

  She worried that Philippe would be seduced to Richard’s will and agree to follow him to the East. That anxiety was a physical strain which burdened her with sleepless nights and endless bouts of nausea. Her child was not due to be born till middle April and already Isabel feared greatly for her own health in the intervening months. Her strength was wearing thin, eaten up each day by frustration and worry, aggravated by hours of forced idleness.

  Louis had developed a heavy cough and Isabel spent many hours at his bedside. The fear that illness might carry him off was very real to her. She had felt God’s retribution too many times in her life to doubt its power. God was always taking things away from her, Isabel mused bitterly. If He took Louis now, she would turn her back on Him forever.

  All she could do was pace the floor and worry.

  She needed to share the burdens of her life but there was no one she could turn to. Certainly Sibylla was no help. She scarcely seemed to live at all; even her children had ceased to hold her interest. Isabel decided that this attitude of sloth must be stopped.

  “You need to marry again,” she told Sibylla one afternoon close to Christmas, “you have been too long without a husband.”

  The passive expression fell from Sibylla’s face and she looked startled, even angry. “How can you suggest such a thing? I shall never give myself to another man so long as I might live. William is dead, and I grieve for him.”

  “You grieve too greatly,” Isabel replied, sounding matter of fact. “It is not good for a girl of sixteen to retire from life.”

  Sibylla fed a little soup into her mouth, then swallowed it. “I do not choose to love another man.”

  Isabel stirred honey into her wine with brisk strokes and eyed her sister. “You did not choose to love William in the first place. I found him for you, remember? I can just as easily find another man to please you if you’ll give me leave to try.”

  Her voice went low. “It has not even been a year since my husband’s death. My grief is deep. What sacrilege it would be to take another man into my bed!”

  Isabel spilled a little wine on the front of her chainse as she drank. “To make such high-sounding promises of faithfulness to a dead man is the same as throwing your life away. You are too young to go into your bed alone each night.”

  Sibylla stared past her sister’s face into the flames of the fire grate. “I don’t care for such things any more.”

  Isabel flung her spoon aside in irritation. She had heard enough. “What nonsense you are talking! Stop being such a child and you will realize what I say is right.” She looked closer at her sister. “If it is your income you are worried for, you need not fear. I have talked to Philippe about this, and he has said you may retain your rank as Lady of Beaujeu even if you marry.”

  Sibylla threw her napkin to the floor. “Money is no inducement to me,” she insisted, her cheeks coloring. “William’s lands and inheritance are entrusted to me as the guardian of our son. I need no assurance from the king or anyone of my rights!”

  Isabel’s mouth, full and red as a summer poppy, twisted into a petulant expression. “This is more complicated than you know. Without a lord to reign in Beaujolais the revenues will be greatly diminished. Philippe will have to put a seignior in William’s place until your son comes of age. You will have very little influence over what monies are accorded you. But look, with a new husband by your side you could hold in trust all that has been promised to your son, and still be assured of a new title and station.”

  These were practical opinions but Sibylla would have none of them. “You speak of lands and titles,” she complained, “but I care nothing for such things now my husband is dead.” She swept a length of brown hair back from her face. “Can we speak no more of this? I have listened long enough.”

  “Very well,” Isabel answered tightly and drank the last of her wine. “But when you crawl into your bed alone each night, remember what I have said.”

  Sibylla looked up, her hazel eyes alive with puzzlement and innocence. “You talk as if there was nothing worse.”

  Isabel stared down at her folded hands and said not a word.

  It was late December in Normandy, and very cold.

  Philippe had come to Nonancourt on the frontier to meet with Richard, but the reunion between the two men was not as pleasant as either might have wished.

  Richard was a different man now that he was king. His blunt soldier’s manner had been replaced by an attitude of haughtiness, and the subject of money was ever on his mind. He was plagued by details, edgy, tight with his words.

  Philippe had come to pose his objections to the crusade but Richard’s enthusiasm for the venture made it difficult. The two kings fenced with words and made agreements of a general nature, but before very long Richard had divined his friend’s reluctance to go.

  Finally Philippe confessed his unwillingness.

  Postpone for yet another year? Richard was infuriated at the suggestion, insulted that this great adventure meant less to Philippe than it did to him (though he had long guessed as much). What was this new objection?

  He knew in an instant. It was Isabel.

  Philippe relented at the last.

  The lure of Isabel, of her sweet sexual favors, diminished in his mind when he was not with her, and the eloquence of Richard’s fervent pleas had moved him deeply. Thus the two kings made their pledge to one another and signed a compact: they would set out for the East together in late June.

  That night while Richard slept, Philippe lay wakeful at his side, wondering what he would tell Isabel when he returned to Paris in a few days. She would never forgive him for this deception.

  He wondered if he would ever forgive himself.

  Richard lingered in Normandy only a few days after Philippe had gone. He took himself to Brittany to meet with Constance. He wanted to assure her of the inher
itance he had promised Arthur and discuss the divorce she had requested from de Blondeville.

  There was yet another reason. Richard had come to ask his former sister-in-law if she would marry him. Since she wished to divorce her present husband, and since her son was already the acknowledged heir, it seemed logical to him that they should marry.

  It was not a question of loving Constance. He did not love her. He did not love any woman. He certainly did not wish to be a husband, and yet in the past few months his mother had made more than a few intimations that it was time he took a wife. Richard was beginning to believe that she was right. He was a king now and was expected to make an heir.

  With Constance as his wife and Arthur as his recognized heir, Richard would not have to concern himself with begetting a child of his own body. Of course there would be some problems. A marriage between a man and his brother’s widow was only lawful in the eyes of the Church if the pope pronounced a special dispensation to permit it. But Richard was well regarded in Rome, and he anticipated no trouble in securing one.

  But there was a problem with Constance.

  At first she refused to see him, and Richard was told she was recovering from childbed and the stillbirth of her infant daughter. He waited at the court for a full two weeks before the duchess of Brittany received him at last.

  He was unfailingly cordial to her, kissing the pale hand she held out. They passed a few moments in polite talk of trivial matters, but immediately Richard put his suggestion she rebuffed him, indignant that he would even consider her for his bride. The idea that she would tie herself to the Plantagenets again was absurd; surely he must realize how Constance hated all of her late husband’s family.

  How great a fool could the man be?

  But Richard made his courteous proposal all the same, and Constance listened, hating every word he said. She struck an attitude of indifference and insensitivity, then sent Richard away unsatisfied. He did not appreciate her high-handed behavior and would not forget it in the future.

  Geoffrey had been right about her, Richard brooded.

  She was an ice-cold bitch after all.

  January was an even, uneventful month.

  Philippe returned to the Cite Palais following Twelfth Night, full of false explanations for his wife. His participation in the crusade had been indefinitely postponed, he told her. Because she loved him and because she wanted to, Isabel believed. In the end he would have to tell her. Why he delayed it now he did not know. But he could not bear to see the pain in her eyes when she learned the truth.

  He hated himself, but there was nothing he could do.

  Philippe told all of this to his mother, but made her promise she would disclose none of it to Isabel. He would do it in his own good time, he insisted, and secretly hoped for some great crisis to keep him in France before the end of June.

  But there was so very little time.

  February was a month of blessings and long winter days.

  Louis’s cold had gone completely; Sibylla seemed less sulky than before. At the middle of the month Isabel gave a banquet to honor the acclaimed poet, Chretien de Troyes, for he was very near completion of the epic Perceval Le Galois, the story of a knight who searches for the holy chalice of the Last Supper. Chretien had enjoyed the rich patronage of Isabel’s family for many years, and also that of the Champagnois. The inspiration for Perceval had come from a book of legends, given to him as a gift by the erudite Philip d’Alsace.

  “I wish you could have been there,” Isabel said, speaking to her husband of the banquet later that night as they lay in her bed. “Chretien is going to dedicate the finished work to you.”

  Philippe turned on his back and pulled Isabel into his arms. “Then I am afraid it is wasted. I wouldn’t know a poem from a peregrine.

  Isabel left a sweet pattern of kisses on his shoulders and chest. “What docs it matter? Such instincts are for lesser men. You are a poem, my love.”

  There was no woman like her in all the world.

  “No,” he said, “but you are …”

  She felt impermanent in his arms. But her words were strong and carved with meaning, like epitaphs in a slab of stone. “Of a hundred thousand times I’ve said the words I love you, it is a thousand times that much and many more I feel it in my heart …” Isabel clasped his hand and drew it to her breast. “Can you feel it, my darling? Can you feel the love which lives inside me?”

  Philippe fell over her, smothering her breath with kisses. What need for poetry? What use for words? So long as he was hot and hard inside of her, Isabel cared for nothing else.

  A log popped in the fire grate, shooting out embers that smoldered for a little while, then blackened and fell apart like rotting cherries on the cold stone floor.

  ISABEL turned twenty on the 12th of March.

  Twenty! Surely it had only been a year or two ago that she’d been ten, and married, and newly crowned a queen; only yesterday she had looked on Philippe for the first time. But it was half a lifetime ago.

  So the queen was turning twenty. The people, who had come to love her, celebrated in the streets. Adele arranged a banquet and all the nobles of Paris were in attendance to wait upon the pleasure of the queen. Isabel dressed herself in St. Clotilde’s pearls, a chainse of pale grey silk, and ermine mantle. She sat close beside her husband on a raised dais in the great hall, nodding her head as each man raised his henap in a toast to her.

  They all drank wine until the late hours of the night. When it was near to midnight Philippe, who was quite drunk by that time, gathered up his wife and carried her from the room amid the ribald cheers of all who watched. Upstairs he stripped her naked but for the pearls she wore, and left so many kisses on her body that she trembled and begged for him to take her.

  They made love till morning came. Then sleep was sweet.

  Philippe left for Pontoise on the following day, and sometime that evening while he was gone Isabel went to the palace archives library to read a while. It was too dim there, so instead she went to the king’s council chamber, which was spacious and kept lit with torches all the night.

  Strangely, she felt like an intruder here. The room was silent and unattended, filled with a sense of anxiousness and doubt. Firelight trembled eerie patches of shadow on the far wall. Alone on the long and narrow table lay a document, neatly placed, as though waiting just for her.

  Isabel went toward it, hand outstretched. It was in Philippe’s writing, she recognized that at once. She picked it up and read, from a sense of curiosity at first. But it took very little time for her to comprehend the meaning of this single piece of paper.

  The wording was concise, cruel.

  It was an edict, written within the framework of a will. On my departure for the Holy Land in June, this year of 1190, it began, I do place the administration of my realm in the hands of my wife, Isabel; of my mother Adele of Champagne; and Maurice de Sully, who is Bishop of Paris—that they might serve as Regents in my absence, and see to the workings of justice and good government while I am gone …

  There was more, but she did not read it.

  What was the use? Despite all the promises—all the lying I love yous—Philippe had done exactly as he had wished, aligned himself with Richard after all. A betrayal in ink, written down on paper, surely that was worse than any other kind.

  The hateful page slipped from her fingers and disappeared beneath the table. For a moment Isabel could not think; when she did she prayed that she was dead or dreaming; that she was anywhere or anyone save where she was and who.

  Isabel’s breath came in small and shallow heaves. If she even moved so much as a finger now she would faint or vomit. The room began to waver a little before her eyes and a sudden pain leapt in her belly. Sweet Christ! She was alone and Philippe did not love her and the pain of childbirth was upon her now and it was much too soon.

  She screamed and reached out for a hand that was not there.

  Adele was leaning over, her face pinched in a seriou
s expression. She wore a dishabille and her hair was loose, as if she had been called from sleep. “Hush child,” she soothed.

  Isabel squinted up into her face. “Where am I?”

  “Your room.” Adele’s voice was tight. “The household guards summoned me when they found you on the floor downstairs. But now you must lie still and not upset yourself or the pains will return.”

  The awful memory came flooding back. “Philippe …” she said.

  “He isn’t here,” Adele answered, smoothing Isabel’s hair, “he left for Pontoise yesterday, remember? But I can send word to him if you like.”

  Isabel turned sideways on the bed. “He’s gone, he’s gone!” she wept.

  “Only to Pontoise.”

  Isabel shook her head woefully. “The paper …”

  Adele had seen the paper on the floor and understood. She squeezed her daughter-in-law’s hand. “I knew Philippe’s plan but he wouldn’t let me tell you.”

  Isabel began to sob. “He lied to me! He swore he had changed his mind about going to the East. He told me that two months ago when he returned from Normandy. He even repeated his argument with Richard to me, word for word! He let me believe that he would stay with me, yet all the while he was making plans to leave. How could I have meant so little to him for so long, and never realized the truth?”

  “That is not the truth,” Adele insisted. “It is because my son loves you that he lied. He did not wish to hurt you.”

  “He has betrayed me!”

  Adele turned away to hide her own tears of frustration. “If you do not believe me, I will fetch the king back to Paris and you can hear it from his lips.”

  She was about to rise when Isabel pulled her back and gasped, “Don’t leave me now! The child is coming …”