King Philip and his court entered with appropriate flourishes and I trowe that his nobles were as great as Richards, though I recognized only the Duke of Burgundy. King Philip ascended his throne opposite our king and waited for his court to find places, then held out his hand for Richard to kiss as he surveyed his person with insolent eyes.
“I hope, dear brother, that you are fully recovered from your recent scourging.”
I looked at King Richard, startled. Who would dare scourge our king?
“Completely, I believe,” he replied in the deep voice I’d so longed to hear.
“Make a second confession for us, please do,” King Philip teased. “All of Messina wants to know what you meant by ‘peccatum illud,’ and so do I. Come now, you’re among your peers, and we have a brotherly curiosity. To stand naked and confess in public, then to leave us hanging, ’tis not kind.”
Naked? Confession? “That sin.” My heart began a foreboding bounce. What had transpired since I’d seen the king? And did it pertain to what we’d done?
“My original statement was perfectly clear,” Richard responded with remarkable calm. “I said that the thorns of my evil lusts had grown higher than my head and there was no hand to pluck them out.”
And I dropped my tray of cakes!
’Twas a dreadful clatter and everyone jumped. For the first time King Richard’s eyes swept past me though without recognition while Sir Gilbert glowered over me furiously. Immediately I plunged to the floor to pick up the cakes and continued to listen. If he mentioned me by name I swore I’d hold my breath and live no more.
King Philip picked up the thread. “Next time, call on me. Nothing would delight me more than to pluck the thorns of your evil lusts. Of course, I would still demand more details.”
“An refert, ubi et in qua arrigas,” Richard quipped lightly.
As I crawled under the table for an almond pastry, I translated: It matters not where and in whom you put it. It mattered to me! I wondered if Sir Gilbert would notice if I just stayed here, but an exploratory kick from his pointed boot assured me he would. Miserably, I stood again.
“Perhaps,” King Philip conceded with the same edged cynicism, “though we might differ on that point. You should have shrived yourself years ago, Richard, and saved all of us grief. Tell me, what moved you to become a penitent now?”
I gauged the distance between me, the door and Sir Gilbert: if the king pointed to me, I was prepared to dash.
Richards smile illuminated the room. “I confessed in order to prepare for marriage.”
To me! said my imbecile heart as I reeled giddily, though I knew it must be to Alais, for he’d cut me out of his life in public confession. Hadn’t told me, hadn’t come to see me all this time, while everyone else knew! Sir Gilbert thrust a jeweled goblet into my hands and indicated that I should serve King Philip.
“Don’t bandy words, Richard, I warn you.” I sidled timorously toward Philip’s throne. “Nothing would please me more than your wedding, but I’ll not be mocked.”
King Richard shrugged innocently, but his smile was close to a leer. “I’ve never been more in earnest. I need your release from my vow to marry the Princess Alais so that I may marry the choice of my heart, the Damsel Berengaria of Navarre.”
King Philip sprang to his feet and shrieked, “Never! Never! I’ll see you dead before you desert Alais!”
On each never his arm swung wildly the second swing catching the goblet of wine I carried and flinging it across the space to Richard where it spilled down his white tunic like blood. Neither king noticed the accident but Sir Gilbert yanked me back by my hair and hissed, “This is your last night as page, you fumbling idiot!” Laudatur, Maria, thought I, then swallowed the bitter bile welling from my spleen and huddled in the enshrouding billows of the blowing tapestries more forlorn than I’d e’er been in my life! I am an aging king and you are a nine-year-old page and I love you. Liar! Liar! The choice of his heart, Berengaria!
King Philip recovered his poise more quickly than I, but then he was more experienced with the English king. He whirled, talked briefly to Burgundy, then presented a face set in wrath but controlled. “Yes, my spies informed me that Sancho the Wise’s daughter traveled in our direction with your Queen Mother Eleanor. I believe they’ve reached Brindisi now. Am I right?”
Richard nodded. “Awaiting my word to come on.”
“So,” France mocked, “‘the choice of your heart,’ is she? About as convincing as your confession, a paltry princess with neither beauty nor land. And for this union you risk certain excommunication. The interdict. Foolish, false Richard, smitten by passion at last, ready to expire for love in true troubadour fashion. Except that Pope Clement will never release you from Alais.”
Deo gratias for the French king, his intelligence, his welcome information of Berengaria’s ugliness.
“If your spies had traveled farther north,” Richard responded smoothly, “you would have learned that Pope Clement has just died.”
Philip gasped anew and ’twas instantly plain that this was a coup for England. Our lords watched the muttering French expectantly, slyly witnessing King Philip’s struggle for composure.
“The oath to God holds,” he replied after only a beat. “And in any case, I will not release you! You will marry Alais, or you’ll marry no one!”
Two bishops now whispered to Richard, but he shook them off impatiently. “I will marry Berengaria and you will release me. You know the reasons.” His pleasant tone had become ominous.
Now I prayed that King Philip would not force the issue, for I saw clearly that I wasn’t yet out of danger, though soothly I didn’t see what Richard had to gain by mentioning me now. However, I understood nothing except that I was betrayed, and that alone made me frantic.
Philip’s voice matched his hard ice-touched eyes. “Take heed that you go not too far, Richard. Some words cannot be forgotten or forgiven.”
Obviously several people knew Richard’s intentions, for he was immediately surrounded by murmuring counselors while the French king sat alone.
“Your last chance, Philip. I will return Alais’s dowry.”
Even that brought no rise from waiting France.
“I cannot marry the French princess because she is not a virgin,” Richard said in cold, measured syllables.
An aspirated moan ran through the room. Not a virgin? Alais? But she was betrothed … Then I remembered the Rules of Love. Doubtless in her long wait for Richard, she’d met some comely knight.
Philip was motionless. “You speak without proof,” he hissed.
Richard countered sharply. “Alais came to our court when she was a child. By the time she was nine, my father King Henry and she were lovers!”
King Henry and Alais! At nine! My present age—supposedly! Deus juva me, and my father’d sent me to seek this Old King’s help. Poor Alais! Raped as a child, forever a child in an old lady’s body.
“A lie! An infamous, venal lie!” King Philip shouted at the whole French court went wild in a babble of protest and the ominous clink of swords.
King Richard’s voice rose. “When she was twelve she bore him a stillborn child and still he stayed with her. He imprisoned Queen Eleanor in order to carry on his unholy dalliance.”
His unholy dalliance! What about Richard’s with me! For that’s what he’d intended, wasn’t it? If I’d borne a child … I staggered and would have dropped another tray if I’d had one. What a dreadful fate!
“If you speak the truth, why did you fight for her?” Philip blazed. “Why did we join arms to force the marriage? Or did you conveniently discover this affair after the king died?”
“I used Alais to make Henry fight. Think you I would make such a tarnished whore my queen? Think you that I would hurt my own mother more than she has already suffered? And drop that sanctimonious sneer, for you, too, had an ulterior motive in our joint rebellion, to divide and conquer England!”
Now they were both enraged and all I
could think of was poor Alais, seduced as a child, ruined at twelve, isolated, hopeless, now a prisoner—and why? Did she ask to go to England? ’Twas easy to shift from this litany to poor Alix—and who knew King Richards present purpose with me?
“And now you use her again to avenge that slut you call your mother!” Philip cried. His indigo robes with their subtle fleurs-de-lis had made his face seem pale when he’d arrived, but now ’twas a flaming red above a dark blue sea. He wasn’t armed but the Duke of Burgundy stood close, his hand on his hilt.
Richard rose, filled with wrath at the slur on his mother. He towered over France, his heavy voice thick with fury. “The Duchess of Aquitaine, the Queen of England, suffered marriage with your eunuchfather, betrayal by your whore of a sister, imprisonment by my father, but that’s all, with God as my witness. You’ll apologize.”
“How can a child be a whore?” Philip ranted. “An old man in his thirties rapes a nine-year-old and she’s a whore? Only a family of devils could see it so!”
I expected King Richard to at least glance at me now after these awful words which fit us so neatly, to gesture some way that it wasn’t true of us, could never be. But no, he hammered back at King Philip. “That whore hasn’t been a child for the last fifteen years. She seduced a powerful old man, tried to ruin his wife, and by God she made me the laughingstock of Europe! Not even a Frenchman would wed such a trollop!”
Abruptly King Philip sat on his throne again, his eyes slits. “I refuse to hear more calumny against my own sister, especially from the lips of such a notorious lecher. Your accusation does not constitute proof.”
Yet I believed King Richard, and I think everyone else did too, even the French. I believed the acts between Alais and Henry, that is, but I didn’t believe the venal motives he gave the French princess. Why did no one mention love? Wasn’t it possible that Henry had loved her and she him? Maybe their passions had outstripped their reason. Deus juva me, I could understand!
“Twelve witnesses—including Queen Eleanor—will give testimony before the new pope unless you release me now,” Richard asserted.
King Philip’s steady stare was chilling.
“There speaks Angevin gold,” he replied. “You have bled your country to bribe and coerce your way to power, even at the cost of humiliating your liege lord. I thank God that my own father is dead, that he’s not here to witness the continued wiles of his adulterous wife and her serpent son. Nor to hear poor Alais’s cruel maligning from a family of child-molesters!”
My own wail was swallowed in the general outcry, Deo gratias, for ’twas now clear that King Philip knew—and therefore everyone must know—about the king and me. The act was bad enough, but to speak of it in public so!
King Richard heard the insult to his person and the line of red whelks began to gleam on his jaw, but calming whispers from his counselors restrained him.
“Alais seduced Henry, by God!”
Aye, I admitted miserably, I seduced Richard as well, by leaning on him and kissing him, but I’d thought he loved me.
“But you twist facts to your own ends. Witness your expulsion of the Jews from Paris in seventy-two on the basis that they were child-molesters.”
“Jews and Angevins,” Philip said, “an apt comparison.”
“After you had appropriated all the Hebrews’ wealth and property,” Richard went on relentlessly, “they were suddenly invited back to Paris. Now you call me and my family child-molesters for a purpose as well. Speak plainly, Philip, what do you want?”
“The Vexin first,” Philip answered.
And I released my breath. How cleverly Richard had led him away from that odious topic of abusing children, though at the same time he hadn’t denied its truth.
“Never the Vexin.” And they were back on familiar ground. “That territory has been English since my brother wed.”
“The Vexin first,” Philip repeated, “and I assure you that it will be mine. Gold for our humiliation and certain guarantees which we will present in our own time.”
Now other counselors joined the argument as I sank into a vision of Richard with horns and cloven feet, for he was cursed, he and his father both. Yet he had lied when he’d said that his father had never had pleasure in children; he’d been betrayed by his sons but Alais has given him carnal pleasure. Benedicite!
King Philip suddenly seemed pressed beyond endurance and abruptly rose to take his leave. Richard stood as well. Once again the French king’s face was marmoreal white, his manner icy.
“Wait, Your Highness,” Richard said. “I’m yet to hear from your lips: ‘I release you from your betrothal vows to my sister.’”
If possible, France paled still more. “With my own lords and bishops as witness, I release you, Richard.” He smiled bitterly. “And I release my sister as well, from her ignominious imprisonment in Rouen tower, from the martyrdom of suffering your debauched person in her bed.”
Our king couldn’t resist. “And me from suffering hers. However, at least she would have received all of England in return.”
Philip swayed as if on a boat. “How little you understand the Capets. Alais cared nothing for the English Empire, never, not when she was a child and not now. She cared for peace—as I do. And with Alais gone from your bed, peace goes as well: first the Vexin, then peace for all time, for mark me well, England, today you have suffered a victory which will haunt you always. If Alais is not your wife, we are no longer brothers and our countries are enemies forever.”
He bowed and walked from his throne but was stopped at the door by Richard.
“One last word, My Lord. Call you this peace? How could it be worse?”
Philip smiled enigmatically. “You will see, Richard, you will see.”
His submerged threat gave me gooseflesh though I had nothing to do with such matters, Deo gratias. I had sufficient problems of my own.
Richard stood silently until he was certain the French king was out of earshot, then turned, clasped Leicester and laughed aloud.
“St. George be praised, we have our way!”
Leicester’s smile was tight. “Indeed, Your Majesty, but ’tis more prudent methinks to await Philip’s terms about the dowry, especially the Vexin; for I fear he’ll change his mind.”
Richard could not be repressed. “Did you see his face when he heard that Pope Clement was dead? Let Philip discover what it’s like to parley without Rome on his side. I’m going to light a candle to Clement, God bless his rotten soul.” And he laughed again.
A bishop glanced at Leicester. “As the saying goes, My Liege, you have won the battle but taken on full-scale war in the process.”
“Nonsense,” Richard scoffed. “France has always hated England, always been at war. This is merely the latest skirmish and the day is ours. Admit it! Banish those long faces!”
The lords and bishops attempted to comply, but ’twas an effort. William de Fortz was the next to express his reservations.
“I fear, My Liege, that he has declared war, is your sworn enemy.”
“England’s sworn enemy,” Rouen corrected him, “which is more serious. Philip’s anger goes beyond a personal vendetta and will last as long as he lives.”
“Then I promise to outlive him,” Richard said lightly. “I’ll wager my span against his, for I am Eleanor’s son.”
And Henry’s too, I thought grimly. Child-molester! I scrubbed at a spot on the table linen, eager to be quit of this loathsome tower and its traitorous king. If only I could steal my writ from Enoch this very night.
“When do you expect the ladies?” asked Gilbert de Vascueil.
“As soon as I can get a ship to Brindisi to transport them; I hope before Lent so that I may wed at once. But if the pope’s release takes some time, I’ll get a dispensation and transport the new queen with me on the Crusade. Think! England’s future heir may be conceived in the Holy City!”
I felt nauseated. Let him procreate in the middle of Jerusalem’s golden streets if that’s wha
t pleased him, so long as I didn’t have to watch. I hated him! Hated him!
After a long, wearisome time the English, too, prepared to depart and me with them.
“Wait, pages,” the king ordered.
I stood behind Antonio who was very tall.
“Thank you for your tactful attendance on this difficult occasion. And I must remind you—especially the new pages—of our rule of discretion.”
Sir Gilbert vowed we’d all be quiet.
“Very well, you are dismissed. All but Alex.”
“I’ll attend you,” Sir Gilbert said eagerly.
“I want a word with Alex.”
Sir Gilbert smirked. “Ah yes, of course, Your Majesty. I have already dismissed him from your service for his gaucheries tonight. I humbly apologize.”
He flourished his way out and I set my jaw, awaiting the worst.
“Don’t make that mouth,” the king said in his old bantering fashion. “I merely wanted to have a cup with you. No, stand still, I’ll serve you—it may be safer.”
He walked to a cabinet, then the trestle, and pressed a thin knobby old goblet of wine into my hand.
“Will you drink a toast to my marriage?”
He drank; I didn’t.
“Alex,” he said sternly.
I looked at his shoes, the same pointed red velvet pair he’d worn at Chinon.
“I hope you’ll be very happy,” I raised the goblet and stopped, fighting a gagging in my throat, “with the choice of your heart.”
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