The Rain Maiden

by Jill M Philips

  “I am yours,” she said.

  Two days later, despite her entreaties, she parted with the king. In care of the same monks who had sheltered her on the trip to Lyon, Sibylla set out upon the road back to Paris.

  In a document signed and witnessed to assure its validation, Philippe granted her ownership of the royal residence at Gonesse, just outside Paris. There she would be safe from any eager lords who sought to marry her against her will, Philippe explained.

  Sibylla was grateful. She would live there with her children.

  And anticipate the king’s return.

  KING RICHARD led his men south to Marseilles.

  They arrived at the port city on the last day of July, but to Richard’s fury the harbor was empty. His ships had not come. He waited a week, but in the end he had to hire new ones at a ruinous cost.

  Meanwhile, following mountain roads carved out by Roman legions twelve centuries before, the King of France led his own army through the Alps and down into Italy. Philippe was trying very hard to make the best of this expedition, to bear up like a soldier-king under the rigors of travel.

  But as each day passed he loathed the journey more.

  At Genoa he collapsed with fever and could go no further.

  Certain he was going to die, Philippe lay sobbing in a borrowed bed at the bishop’s palace, wondering why God had abandoned him when he had risked all to the crusade. After a week it became obvious he would recover, but even then Philippe could not be cheered. He was far too weak to travel. He was in a land he hated. He despaired.

  Richard arrived in Genoa in the middle of August.

  He went at once to see his friend. Philippe was glad of his company but lapsed back into melancholy at the news Richard brought to him. Their fellow king and crusader, Frederick Barbarossa, the Emperor of Germany, had been drowned unceremoniously in Asia Minor, and most of his army had been carried off by plague.

  The news of this struck a tremor of superstition in Philippe’s soul. It seemed to him that the enterprise was doomed now and could not be salvaged.

  But Richard only laughed when Philippe told him that. “Soon you shall be strong enough to continue on your way to Sicily,” he remarked, “and then these gloomy notions will disappear.”

  Philippe felt himself grow weaker at the thought of travel. “I don’t see how I shall manage to endure a sea voyage in my condition.”

  “You could go overland.”

  Philippe gasped. “That would be even worse!”

  Richard clapped him on the back. “There’s only one other way to get to Sicily,” he winked, laughing. “You’ll have to swim …”

  It was a joke of course, but a poor one, and the image of the old emperor—drowned and naked—lingered in Philippe’s mind for a long time after Richard left.

  Suddenly he had never felt so afraid.

  The French put into port at Messina on the 16th of September.

  Barely recovered from his illness, Philippe looked thin and very pale in the somber black velvet clothes he had chosen to wear. He seemed so unprepossessing that the group of nobles sent by King Tancred to meet him mistook the far more splendidly outfitted Count of Flanders as the King of France.

  Philippe was humiliated, but he took it with good grace.

  Richard arrived a week later. As he and his retinue moved down the gangplank, there was no mistaking which man among them was the king. He was a gorgeous sight in shimmering blue samite bliaud and surcoat. His mantle was cloth of silver.

  Philippe and Tancred were there to meet him.

  Richard and Philippe embraced warmly. Their kisses, meant to be seen as a ceremonial exchange between two monarchs, were made of more than that. Tancred stood a little to the side and watched.

  He was a quiet, cautious man. Ruthless, some said, for he had seized the throne from its rightful claimant upon the death of King William the Good of Sicily. Though Tancred was eager to make allies out of these two powerful Western princes, there were some difficulties inherent in the plan. Tancred was currently holding Richard’s sister Joanna—the former queen of Sicily—as his hostage. Richard’s main purpose in coming to Sicily was to negotiate her release and claim her dowry.

  The troubles began almost at once.

  Sicily was a Norman state, but its population was a mixture of Lombard, Greek, and Saracen, with the Normans as a powerful but distinct minority. Both society and culture bore the stamp of Eastern influence, which was in opposition to the stern code of feudal rule.

  Pilgrims from the West were not welcome in Sicily; the people hated them. In the past, many crusaders had despoiled their towns, looted their shrines, raped their women. Tancred cast a wary eye on these visitors to his realm.

  Out of kingly courtesy and because he wished to buy their favor, he had made his palace available to Philippe, while a residence of equal dignity was provided for Richard on the outskirts of Messina. But the two armies were relegated to a squalid encampment near the beach. Supplies were already dwindling, so the men were forced to buy most everything: food, wine, even fresh water—all at treacherously inflated prices.

  The crusaders, some of them swaggering bullies, set upon the merchants and townspeople with their swords. The Sicilians retaliated with a raid on the camp. Many of the crusaders were killed in the skirmish.

  Philippe was thoroughly disheartened by these events.

  Blood and corpses. The army hadn’t even reached Syria yet!

  But Philippe was far too politic to meddle. His own men were not punished for their misconduct; neither would he raise a finger against the Sicilians who had provoked them to these deeds. It was too large a problem to be dealt with. He preferred to let it go.

  Not so the combative Richard Plantagenet, who had decided that justice would be done. As usual, his methods were extreme. He had ordered a gallows erected at the edge of the crusader camp, and each day executions took place for all to see. He punished both his own men and local troublemakers; he seemed to see himself as the sole judge of conduct in the land. The townspeople gathered in throngs to watch the daily spectacles, cheering when the condemned was an English crusader, throwing stones when it was one of their own.

  Philippe warned Richard that his acts would raise the whole of Sicily to a revolt against him but the Lionheart would not listen. He was not afraid of Tancred’s army! Let there be war and he would take Messina overnight! Actually, he had given much thought to the conquest of Sicily, for he was angry at Tancred for continuing to withhold Joanna and her dowry from him.

  But there were other motives. Stronger motives.

  This was a rich place: everywhere Richard’s keen eyes searched they looked on gold, jewels, treasure. He could take it as inevitably as a drop of sweat falls in the desert, and all of it would go to pay for his holy enterprise. Well, perhaps some of it—a few trinkets—he’d keep for himself; that was only as it should be; but all the rest would be used to support his army and the greater glory of his God.

  Richard and Philippe had signed a compact at Vezelay, agreeing to divide all spoils of conquest between them. But Richard had decided that no matter how much booty was captured in Sicily, Philippe would get nothing, because nothing was just what he deserved.

  What a poor showing the Capetian had made so far! He didn’t behave like a soldier, let alone a king. He complained endlessly about the heat, the discomforts of travel, the bad quality of wine anywhere outside of France. What kind of crusader spent his days hunched over a desk, assiduously involved in paperwork, recording details of expenditures with all the dedication of a low-born clerk? And instead of spending his evenings in the company of men—as befitted a soldier—Philippe retired to his bed early each evening with the buxom whore he’d brought along with him from Paris. For all the worth Philippe Capet was contributing to this venture, he might just as well have stayed at home within the dismal confines of his palace on the Seine.

  So thought Richard.

  Philippe’s opinions tended toward the opposite e
xtreme.

  Why did Richard have to be such a bully? He had outraged the populace with his overbearing manner and egotistical personality, made an enemy of Tancred, and diminished his own troops by killing them needlessly for acts they would never have committed had he been organized enough to see that they were properly fed and housed. It seemed to Philippe that Richard cared only to make himself feared. And wealthier.

  He could not be trusted.

  That night while Philippe appeased his frustrations with the obliging Fabiana, Richard and a few of his men sneaked into Messina through an unguarded entrance in the wall, then flung open the city gates to let in the English army. By dawn Richard’s flags had been raised all across the battlements. He declared the city his—by right of conquest.

  Philippe was furious. This act of war against the people of Messina was an unbridled and deliberate insult to himself and the French crusaders. He sought Richard out immediately and demanded that the fleur-de-lis be raised alongside the banner of England—for had not the two kings pledged at Vezelay that they would share all honors and all spoils of conquest?

  Richard promptly replied with a litany of Philippe’s failings, till at last, flushed with anger, the French king took to his mount and rode back to the Messina palace. There he stalked the floor of his bedroom, brooding over this latest humiliation suffered at the hands of his royal lover and rival.

  He’d nearly decided to lead his army in an attack against King Richard’s forces—probably he would have done so had not the Count of Flanders intervened. The cool-headed d’Alsace suggested that a meeting be arranged between the two kings, at which time all grievances should be discussed and another treaty drawn up to replace the one made at Vezelay.

  Philippe agreed, but only because he didn’t know what eke to do. The idea of fighting Richard in the field had been a rash and momentary plan, but Philippe knew it to be folly.

  He turned to Flanders. “Very well,” he said, “arrange it.”

  Tancred had taken himself off to Palermo—and when he heard that Richard had captured the city of Messina he was instantly convinced to let both Joanna and her dowry go. If this mad Plantagenet lion could accomplish conquests in so little time, he was truly a man to be feared. Messina itself did not matter so much; it was a small sacrifice to keep the peace. But it was possible the English king had designs on the rest of Sicily as well.

  So Tancred acted speedily and sent off a message to Messina.

  Joanna and her wealth had been set free.

  Richard was jubilant.

  Meanwhile the kings of France and England met, as Flanders had suggested, and in the end Tancred came too, for there was much to be decided. A code of behavior and punishments for members of the army was set down on paper, and for himself Tancred agreed to initiate a practice of harsh punitive measures for all his subjects who raided the crusader camp or did harm to the pilgrims.

  Prices were fixed; gambling and wanton theft banned. Richard demanded and was given full payment of his sister’s dowry, and in return he promised not to attempt the capture of any other towns in Sicily. For this pledge Tancred was exceedingly grateful, for the conquest of Messina had raised fears in him of losing his throne altogether.

  There was even a bonus thrown in to please him. Richard agreed to the betrothal of his ward and heir, little Arthur of Brittany, to Tancred’s youngest daughter. This was pleasant news to Philippe’s ears. Ever since his arrival in Sicily, he’d been plagued by Tancred’s ploy of trotting out his three ugly little girls and trying to interest him in marrying one of them.

  God be praised, that disgusting ritual had been set aside!

  At the close of three days of meetings, the French flags were set beside the English flags at the Messina gates. Philippe and Richard renewed their friendship with a fresh vow of unity and the kiss of peace. It seemed as though the discord between them had been put to rest at last. Both men were happy, and Tancred counted himself a victor too.

  Philippe made plans to set sail for Acre within the week.

  IN PARIS all was business as usual.

  The king was far away, but the government carried on without him. During the ten years of his reign Philippe had organized the daily functions of the state so efficiently that it required little more than an able custodian to oversee them.

  France had three.

  Besides his regular duties as bishop and responsibilities in directing the Notre Dame construction project, Sully now tended to the commerce of the realm. He supervised the collection of all taxes within the royal demesne, saw to the payment of fines, and guarded the king’s treasury with more care than he did his own.

  William of Rheims was the chief magistrate in France during Philippe’s absence. He took petitions and heard high-level appeals by local barons and other members of the nobility. The Bishop of Rheims also handled all matters pertaining to diplomacy between the kingdom of France and other countries, and was responsible for the dispatch of urgent letters to Philippe along various stops of his journey.

  Dowager Queen Adele had duties too. Philippe had elected her as the guardian of his children, but she was also expected to hold court daily, and deal with charters relating to the royal administration of letters, arts, medicine, and education.

  For the first time in years, Adele was satisfied with her life.

  She had power and purpose and a sweet young lover.

  William le Breton was only twenty-four years old and he was a priest—the king’s own chaplain—yet in many ways he was the most suitable companion Adele had ever found in her long search for the perfect lover.

  She lay looking at him as he slept beside her one afternoon in mid-October. She’d known him for little more than eight months, and they had been lovers for nearly three. But sometimes, times such as now when everything was quiet and she was at peace, Adele felt that she had known him all of her life.

  She put her face to his chest and kissed him awake.

  They lay in each other’s arm for a long while speaking only a few words at a time, watching the sunlight fade slowly from the room. “I should go,” William said at last, bending to kiss her.

  Her fingers played over his face. “Is there some urgent work you must attend to?”

  “No,” he admitted, “but I do feel guilty coming to you in dark and daylight both.” He made a move to rise.

  His innocence made her smile. “My sweet,” she offered gently, “it matters not what time of day or season of the year. Your love is precious to me. I want as much of it as you can give.”

  William fell back onto her breast. What strange creatures women were, for they could compel with gentleness, and send a man to his damnation by doing nothing more than uncovering their breasts and bellies. And yet what man—be he priest or pagan—could deny himself such pleasure? It was a weakness born in every man and no threat of hell or promise of heaven could drive it out.

  He’d had women much younger than she; even more beautiful, for she was nearing fifty now, and much of her beauty had faded. Yet William had never known a woman who could inflame a man with as little as a look, or a twitch of her long, elegant back.

  She still had a wonderful body.

  William stroked the smooth, curved angle of her hip and thigh.

  Adele smiled up at him, pulling his hands to her breasts. “I wish you wouldn’t leave now. I still want you.”

  What an appetite she had! It seemed to him no matter how many times he took her, she always wanted more. He tickled her nipple with his thumb. Then, in a voice that sounded almost grim, he said, “I wonder what the king would say if he could see us together.”

  Her laugh was vulgar, full of fun—as if she enjoyed imagining the scene. “My son has enough sins on his own head without condemning others,” she replied. Then she saw the expression that came over his face. “I know what you are thinking: he is a king, he is a man—and that excuses everything.”

  “A man cannot help but be a man,” he remarked.

  She
shifted over on her back, legs parted, her black thicket showing. “And neither can a woman help but be a woman. We are all, in our own way, just as God intended.” She reached for him, and even her voice was tempting. “Stop judging. When you are here in my bed you are not a priest.”

  William was forced to smile at his own piety.

  Of the two of them, she was the more honest.

  Sibylla had come to stay at the Cite Palais for a while, to see her sister’s children, and to enjoy the festival of St. Denis.

  On the morning of her departure for Gonesse, Edythe took her aside. Sibylla thought she looked ill, care-worn. “Will you help me?” she asked.

  Sibylla crooked an eyebrow in puzzlement. “What is wrong?”

  Edythe shifted on her feet, unwilling to answer. Finally she looked down at the floor and asked, “Will you take me to live with you in the country?”

  An odd request. Sibylla blinked, then frowned. “But your home is here, at the palace. Why should you wish to leave?”

  Dismayed by her predicament, Edythe could no longer hold back the truth. “I am pregnant,” she confessed.

  It took a few moments for Sibylla to react. Then all at once a wave of misguided sympathy engulfed her. “Edythe.” she gasped, “who has done this terrible thing to you? You must tell me, and I shall see that he is punished.”

  She had misunderstood, making the situation all the more awkward. “It is not the way you think. I was not forced.”

  Now Sibylla was truly puzzled.

  Could plain, shy Edythe have a lover? It seemed unlikely.

  “When is the child due?” she asked warily.

  The voice quavered just a little. “Near the end of March.”

  Sibylla peered nervously down the corridor to see that there was no one to overhear their words. “But what has this to do with wanting to leave the palace?” Her pretty mouth twitched in irritation. “Can you not force this man to marry you?”