by Lisa Hilton
CHAPTER SIX
ALONG WITH MY FATHER’S INSTRUCTIONS CAME LADY Maude de Braose. She was the wife, as she made sure to tell me very soon, of William de Braose, one of the king’s most trusted magnates. She was a strong, thick-armed woman with the carriage of a peasant and a complexion roughened by years of travel on important royal business. She talked a great deal about important royal business. She swept into my chamber during the recreation hour before dinner while I was playing at cat’s cradle with Agnes, clapped her hands to shoo away the maids and dropped a perfunctory curtsey. She wore men’s riding boots under her gown and her upper lip was shadowed with a moustache.
‘Lady Isabelle, we have not much time.’
‘But the Reverend Mother told me I was not to depart for a fortnight. At least allow me to call for some refreshment for you. And then our things …’
‘I’m not going anywhere, Lady Isabelle. I meant we have not much time for you. Now, say goodbye to your nurse.’
‘What?’
‘Your nurse. I am to be your chaperone now. The queen of England cannot have her old nursemaid about her.’
I was astonished. In all my dreams of being queen I had thought on only pleasant things, of how I should have my mother and Othon and Agnes always near me and have marmalade for supper and do just as I liked. I looked at Agnes. To my horror she had moved to the corner of the room where she kept her chest.
‘Come along. Your father’s men are waiting. They will accompany her back to Angouleme.’
I ignored her.
‘Agnes, did you know about this?’
She nodded, her eyes gleaming with tears. ‘It had to come, my lady. You will be travelling to England, and I … I cannot accompany you.’
‘No! No, Agnes! I want you to stay. I … I order you to stay.’
Agnes was silent, merely placing a few objects in her box, her horn comb and her silver spoon with my father’s arms on it that she had had as a New Year’s gift the year I was born. The cat’s cradle strings still trailed about her wrist. I forgot that I had learned to be a lady, now, I forgot the rules of silence and order which had constrained me in the convent and I rushed at Lady Maude, trying to push her out of the door. ‘Go away! I don’t want you! Agnes is not leaving! I will tell my papa, just you see!’
Her hand snapped out to cover my mouth and she gripped me tightly behind my head, so that I stifled and spluttered against her.
‘Hush. You know you are not to speak of your marriage here. You will do as I bid you, on King John’s orders. Now, if I release you, will you be quiet?’
I nodded.
‘Very well.’
As soon as she loosed her grip, I screamed for Mother Helene, for the maids, for anyone who could help me. I kicked as hard as I could and bruised my toe in its thin slipper against her sturdy boot. I beat my fists against her brawny arms and howled at the top of my voice.
‘Stop this! Stop this at once!’ I could hear footsteps in the passage. The maids must have had their ears to the hole of the latch. She grabbed at me again and I writhed in her arms. ‘Stop it. You willful, wicked child!’
‘I am not a child!’
But something stopped me. I had not thought of myself as a child for a long time. I was a woman; I was betrothed. But then I saw the gentleman as I played ball in the garden, with my hair unpinned like a little girl, I saw his face, eager in the firelight as I cut the lock from his hair, I saw Lord Hugh smiling indulgently as I played in his lap. I knew how to manage them, did I not? Just as I knew how to conceal my listening back at Lusignan, and my wild forest flights with Othon. I held out my hand, where the king’s fat pearl glowed against the faint blush of my skin. I made my eyes wide, and spoke in my most innocent voice.
‘Forgive me, Lady Maude. I should not like you to get into trouble. You see, this is the king’s gift. When he gave it me, he said I should have anything I wanted, anything that my heart desired. Anything. I should be very unhappy if Agnes is sent away. Very unhappy. And the king might not like that.’
Once again, her grip relaxed. I could see her struggling and in her face, which was so much more intelligible to me than Lord Hugh’s smooth mask, I saw many things. I saw her ambition and I saw her fear. I saw that she would use me as my father and Lord Hugh planned to, and that she would take everything I loved from me if I allowed it. And I saw that I had never had an enemy except for Hal, and that he had been more of an idea than a foe. And I thought I might enjoy having an enemy, very much.
‘Well, Lady Maude?’ I crossed the room, standing as erect and gracious as ever my mother had taught me, and laid a hand on Agnes’s sleeve.
‘The nurse may stay,’ she muttered. ‘But you will obey me. I am here to instruct you, as his Majesty wishes.’
‘Quite. Just as his Majesty wishes.’
We ate supper together that evening in Mother Helene’s chamber. A sheet had been nailed up over the table to accustom me to the cloth of state, which I had imagined back at Lusignan. Lady Maude played the role of server, showing me when she would kneel, when the dish and napkin would be handed, when I must stand if I dined in state with the king. We went through the ceremony of assay – as I would be royalty, it seemed I might also be the victim of poison. Each dish had to be dipped with bread three times, then flourished over the head of the server, then put to the lips of the chief officer, Lady Maude explained, before a queen might eat. I could see that Mother Helene did not think much of English manners, for all that Lady Maude considered herself so refined. Lady Maude boasted of the size of the king’s palace at a place called Westminster, of the richness of the English pasture land and fisheries, of the abundance of the forests and the wealth of the magnates, not to mention the knowledge and learning of the king.
‘His Majesty owns twenty books, you know,’ she announced.
I did not care very much for books myself, I liked stories better, but I knew that the library at Langoiran contained ten times that number, which Mother Helene had collected from all over France and the wild Arab lands of Spain. On and on she flitted, impressing the honour that had been bestowed on me, but her linen was grubby and she moved like a carthorse: compared with my mother, she looked like a kitchen woman. If Lady Maude was the example of English womanhood to which I was to aspire, I thought I should have no difficulty surpassing it.
*
There was no procession to my wedding such as Blanche of Castile had enjoyed. No thousand liveried servants to escort me on the road, no palfrey with jewelled trappings or white-silk litter lined with cloth of gold. Yet again, I was bundled away, with only Agnes and Tomas from Lusignan, Lady Maude and the ignorant maids for my ladies. There was to be no proclamation of the marriage until the contract was indelibly sealed, so I travelled to Bordeaux through a hot milky summer night with the clouds churning above me like curds in a butter pail, on a flat bottomed barge hauled by carthorses and only a troop of silent guards, who rode next to us on the riverbank with their helmets lowered, as though we only happened to find ourselves travelling the same watery road by chance. And still, I was too excited to sleep as I lay among the cushions, the scents of orange flower and summer jasmine and tar from the boat’s seams clear and pure in the night air. I should see the sea, and I should see my mother again, and I don’t know which made me happier.
We were lodged at the archbishop’s house on the evening before I was to be married, the last day of July. My mother was waiting for us. She too had travelled quietly, as a private lady, and I was taken to her chamber without ceremony in my plain tan travelling cloak. When I saw her all the sadness of our last meeting came over me, all the boredom and aloneness of the months at Lusignan and in the convent, and I went to jump into her arms and drink in her beloved smell, but she checked me, sinking gracefully to her knees before the astonished goggling of the maids, and addressed me as ‘Madame’.
I felt my face crumple like a jelly. ‘Maman?’ I ventured.
She gently shook her head. I swallowed hard, bi
ting the inside of my mouth to keep my lips from trembling and extended my hand. ‘You may rise, Lady Mother.’
I was not married as a queen. Just as there had been no wedding procession, so there could be no great ceremonial Mass for a stolen bride. My mother and Agnes hurried me through the streets of Bordeaux just after dawn; I stumbled on the hem of the pale blue gown my mother had lent me, one of her own that I was till not tall enough to wear. Until we came to the open space where the great façade of the cathedral reared up at us, no one could have known that this shuffling child would in a few moments be England’s queen, but the cathedral square was full of grim-faced guards, positioned ready in case the Lusignans had news of the ceremony and tried to steal me back. That, at least, made me feel important. John awaited me at the door, plainly dressed also, only the white fur of his mantle and the gold circlet on his head indicating that he was no ordinary bridegroom.
My father stood next to him, and it was all I could do not to fling myself into my papa’s arms for joy. When he took my arm to give me away, he bent down and whispered, ‘See, Isabelle. I have even combed out my beard, now that you shall be such a great lady.’ I tried to smile at him, but even the sight of his grey-red beard, coloured like a partridge’s wing, all tamed and groomed with oil so it shone like Othon’s mane could not cheer me. Papa was delighted at our success, I could see that, and I tried to make my thoughts dutiful. Marriages such as mine brought peace, did they not? Surely my father, who had fought so powerfully and so bravely for his liege lords, for Angouleme, should be allowed peace, now that his sword arm grew weary? But the herald who announced John’s titles did so in a hushed voice, as though this were a shameful thing, and I could not share my papa’s evident joy.
I repeated the words the archbishop said to me, as I had done to Hal at Lusignan, and then John took my hand, and we were married. Such a small moment. There was no Te Deum sung, no coins cast to cheering crowds of townsfolk, no chorus of silver trumpets to hail the queen of England down the nave. It was Lady Maude, not my mother, who carried the grubby train of my dress as we left the church, and that was my marriage done.
*
Our wedding feast, too, was kept quietly. We dined together in the archbishop’s garden, and it was not so very different from the time when we had sat beside the fire together after leaving Lusignan. Even in the high-summer heat, the king kept his mantle about him. Lady Maude and my mother attended us. It was so strange to see them kneeling silently side by side, like novices in the convent, as I played with a dish of peaches and a chilled lemon posset. The king hardly ate, just drank cup after cup of sweet white wine, his eyes never leaving me, avid. Then it was time to go to bed. The archbishop led us to his own chamber and blessed the sheets, my mother handed me my shift and my father the king’s, his face stern and impassive. The bed was so high he had to lift me into it. The archbishop was still muttering away in Latin as my new husband bared one pale and skinny leg, whorled with dark hair and placed it between the sheets. Then he set a kiss on my brow and the men withdrew, leaving me alone with my mother in the mauve twilight.
‘Am I married now?’ I asked. I felt hectic and bewildered, drained yet wakeful.
‘Almost,’ she replied. ‘There is something else to be done.’
She said it grimly, but I thought I knew what I should have to endure. I had not been afraid. I knew what happened between married people. Agnes had told me what would be expected when I was bedded with the king, while over the years I had heard enough of the maids’ gossip to know how babies came. But the king had not removed my nightgown or lain on top of me, so how could it happen?
My mother combed out my hair again and braided it. Her hands shook.
‘Don’t you want me to be married, Maman?’
‘Of course I do. It is a wonderful match for you and for Angouleme. You are a queen, my little love.’
‘Then I command you to stop pulling those knots,’ I said over my shoulder.
She smiled, a tired, gentle smile, and put away her comb.
‘Very well, Majesty. Try to rest now, Isabelle. Come. You must be very tired, little one,’ whispered my mother.
She climbed into bed beside me and for a while I knew again the scent of my mother’s skin, the caress of her smooth hair, the gentle hum of her heart. We lay twined together like a kernel in a nutshell, fitting smoothly, as once I had lain inside her body. I was awakened by a scratching at the door, as though a rat were scrabbling under the lintel. I opened my eyes, but all I saw was blackness.
‘Maman?’
‘Shhh.’
I felt her move beside me and heard the floorboards give as she made her way lightly across the room. The door opened silently, a servant perhaps. I shifted and clutched the bolster to me, drifting off into the warmth my mother had left on the pillow.
‘He sleeps?’ Her voice was low, apprehensive.
‘He will not wake soon,’ the low burr of a man’s tone.
‘Come, then.’
The blurred yellow light of a tallow lamp lit the room. I half sat up, pushing the hair from my eyes. A tall figure in black stood over my mother. As he turned, with a finger to his lips, I saw it was Lord Hugh. How could he be in the palace? My wedding was supposed to be a secret, kept from the Lusignans as part of whatever charade my father was playing out. How could he have got past the guards? Had he come to kill my papa? Or my mother and me? I gasped and pulled myself to a corner of the mattress, gathering the coverlet about me as a shield. Lord Hugh approached the bed. ‘Don’t be afraid, Isabelle.’
‘How did you get here? I don’t understand.’
He smiled teasingly, ‘I flew, of course.’ I caught the glint of the serpent brooch at his throat. Had he whisked through the night on a fairy dragon’s tale?
‘Sit up, Isabelle.’ I obeyed dumbly. My mother reached and unlaced my shift, puffing my hair over my naked shoulders. Her fingers moved to my back and found the tiny mark there, the scar from the night of my dream that I thought I had forgotten. It throbbed at the touch of her hot fingers. ‘Turn her.’
Just a push and I toppled like a rag doll, my face buried in the bed linen. Just before she blew out the lamp, I saw there was a shadow on the wall before me, a rearing, pointed shape: the horned man. I wanted to scream but my mother’s fist was between my teeth. The sheet was lifted from my bared body, a draught fingered across my flesh. The bed gave as the creature moved over me, and then Lord Hugh did what he had come to do, and all I can say for him is that he did it quickly.
CHAPTER SEVEN
SO WHEN AT LAST I SAW THE SEA, IT LOOKED TO MY EYES as dank and sour as a stagnant millpond. I wished I could be blinkered like Othon and the other horses. I wished that I could stuff my nose and ears with wax so as not to smell the salt mist or hear the waves. To Agnes’s puzzlement I asked to be taken below deck as soon as we stepped onto the ship and I did not stir from my bed all the time it took to make the crossing. Lady Maude ordered basins, and screens around my face, for it would never do for the queen of England to be seen puking, but I had no need of them, I was dry and hard within, and I lay on my couch as still as my own effigy. Lady Maude tried to rouse me, thinking that I was so overwhelmed by my new station that I was afraid to speak, and Agnes, more sensitive, merely sat by me and stroked my hand, but my throat seemed full of the feathers from the bolster where my face had been pressed. If I tried to speak I knew that my voice would grate my tongue to shreds. A day and a night I lay there, and when we docked at Portsmouth, the first town of my strange new country, I suffered myself to be sponged and scented and dressed in silence. The king had travelled on an earlier tide, it was bad luck for us to sail together, and I was to join him at his capital at London, where I would make my entry as queen.
We journeyed along high narrow roads, the horses picking their way carefully through the flint-strewn soil. I watched endless green hedgerows through the curtains of the litter, so that England seemed to me a country of green shade and grey stone, a damp mossy
hollow where I had been rolled like a pebble. Perhaps if I had moved even slightly I should have seen the leafy pelt of the trees rippling against the sky, the spires of churches or even the faces of the people who Agnes and Lady Maude assured me had travelled for miles to glimpse their new queen, but I did not look up. I turned my head away from the food offered me, which smelt coarse and rancid. I accepted only a few sips of a brown drink called ale. I closed my eyes when I was lifted for the litter at night and carried to my bed in the township of tents erected for the queen’s passing and let Lady Maude give out that I was ill, overwrought by the journey. I could see that she and Agnes had formed an unlikely alliance, each praying for her own reasons that I should survive, and they changed roles, Agnes scolding and Lady Maude awkwardly coaxing, but I could not eat even when I heard the pain in the feigned sharpness of Agnes’s tone. As the days passed, I grew dizzy, fuddled by the shifting green shadows creeping into the litter, sometimes sobbing silently into my fists, often drifting and dreaming and waking in a moment that had lasted a morning.
To say that I did not care if I lived or died would suggest I had thoughts of either. Rather, I thought nothing, felt nothing. I paid no mind to my wedding, to my arrival in London, or the coronation that would be expected of me. I had no wish, as I grew daily weaker and Agnes and Lady Maude more frantic, beyond the green shadows of the roadside, the calls of the birds and the shuffle of the shifting leaves, that I might eventually slip away painlessly to meld with them and simply be no more. Until we broke our journey one evening in a clearing where there was a half-ruined chapel, its rounded arches recalling to me the lines of the old cathedral at Angouleme, whose bones were built into the newer apse erected in my grandfather’s time. Dully, I thought that it must be very old.
