by Lisa Hilton
Slowly, the murmurs rose again, everyone exclaiming as to what the thing could be and where it had come from. A few brave souls even reached out to brush its wrinkled skin. As it approached, the mounted boy, whose head nearly touched the rafters of the salle, produced a long ebony pole and touched the thing behind one of its drooping ears. Slowly, effortfully, the creature knelt down on its forelegs, the little silk house bucking crazily on its back, and lowered its head in obeisance. I stood up, clapping my hands with delight, and Blanche followed my example.
‘See, ladies,’ called the king. ‘Their Majesties are not afraid. This is an elephant!’ The word rolled through the room, people milling the sound around their tongues like an unusual sweetmeat. ‘Sent from Persia, a gift from the Sultan,’ the king continued. ‘And now, a gift from me to my brother of England.’
I flashed a glance at John, whose face was mangled with drink and irritation. What were we to do with such a thing? What would it eat? How much would it cost? I knew my husband’s mean-minded suspiciousness, his quickness to imagine a slight, and fearful that he would give offence, I moved forward, curtsied gratefully to King Philip, and approached the beast myself. Nearby on the table was a dish of baked apples, their skin gilded with saffron and cinnamon. I picked one up and held it towards the creature, keeping my palm flat as though I was feeding Othon, but unsure where its mouth might be.
‘Be careful, madame!’ gasped Princess Blanche.
I didn’t care whether it ate me or not. I could disappear into its maw with my hose sticking out behind like a soul in Hell being swallowed by a demon for all I minded.
‘Here you are, Elephant,’ I whispered.
I recoiled as the huge snout swayed towards me, and then the creature picked up the apple with the end of its nose, and popped it underneath, to where I could see a surprisingly small opening. This time my delight was genuine.
‘Look!’ I cried. ‘It eats apples with its nose!’
The room erupted with relieved laughter, quickly followed by applause. I could hear the remarks ‘How brave she is!’, ‘How charming!’, ‘How lovely!’
Four horses, ridden by young squires in pale blue surcoats showing the French fleur-de-lys, now rode down the salle towards the creature. Ladders were brought, and the ‘knights’ mounted them as though the poor animal was a castle they were besieging, grasped the supporting poles of the structure on its back and brought it to the ground. As the elephant was led away by its tiny rider, the four opened the litter, which, I could see now, seemed to be made all of silver, and began to pull out gifts: saddles with gilt trappings, mail coats which swam from their hands like fish scales, cotte of heavy linen faced with silver, axes with thick ivory handles, knives in curious curved sheaths. One by one, the men stepped up to receive their gifts, making their obeisance towards the dais as they did so. Among them knelt my brother, but I kept my eyes on the elephant and a gentle smile curving at the corners of my lips.
When all the men had received their prizes, the doors of the salle swung wide again, and two pages ran along the length of the hall, laying down a dark blue cloth between them. I could hear more gasps of delight from the crowd outside. John scowled – another unwanted present? Along the waves of cloth came a low cart, bearing a narrow black boat, its prow viciously pointed and mounted with a shining steel horn, close and neat as a coffin.
‘It is one of the boats they use at Venice,’ whispered Louis.
‘How original,’ I managed to whisper back.
The thing sailed towards us on its watery carpet, the cart’s rope drawn by unseen hands. When it reached the dais, I saw that it was loaded with canvas bales, and a figure lying between them. I gasped with surprise as he rose and bowed, swaying a little, for all the world as though he hovered on a real boat on a real Venetian canal, for though his face was lowered, I caught the watery flash of his pale eyes, the colour of the lagoons in my maman’s lost stories. The silk man.
My fingers strayed to the cloth of my gown. It had begun with him, that day when the messenger had overtaken him on the Angouleme Road. Was he part of it, too, his silks stretching about like a net, drawing us closer and closer to the madness that waited at Lusignan? Princess Blanche clapped her hands delightedly, and now the ladies came forward, exclaiming over the bales of airy fabric being unpacked from the boat. The silk man flung them about him like a conjuror so that the space around him became a meadow of improbable silk blooms, turquoise and scarlet, leaf green and dull gold. My mother approached, and as she made her curtsey towards the thrones, I saw her eyes slide to meet the silk man’s subtly expectant gaze. He reached into the boat and handed her two small parcels of white linen. One she offered, with another deep curtsey, to Blanche, and then she turned to me.
‘Majesty.’
‘Lady Mother.’
Our words were hidden under the gasps of the swarming women. The men on the dais looked on, indulgent and slightly bored.
‘I trust you are well, my daughter.’
‘Quite well, thank God.’
‘Would it please you to accept a gift?’
‘Gladly, Mother.’
It astonishes me still, how much suffering the heart can accommodate. Like a swelling muslin bag of cheese in a dairy, it bellies out with pain, bulging and dripping, yet always there is space for more. The cold formality of my mother’s words, the familiar sight of her smooth, lovely face, felt more than I could bear. And yet, I did. As she stretched her hand towards mine, our fingers brushed, and all I wanted to do was hurl myself into her arms and sob out my pain as I had done as a child until she soothed me against her breast and the world was restored to sense. I took the parcel, and a small, mean pleasure, too, in turning my head away, dismissing her.
‘Isabelle!’ she gasped.
Through my teeth, the bright, easy smile still clamped to my face. ‘What is it, Lady Mother? What can you possibly have to say to me?’
‘I sent Pierre to you,’ she tried to reason.
‘Indeed.’
‘And you understood?’
‘Quite clearly. It is so kind of you. My thanks,’ my sarcasm palpable.
‘And your answer?’
One of Blanche’s women stood nearby, holding a length of buttercup sarsenet. I reached out to touch it, murmured something about how pretty it was.
‘I have no answer, Lady Mother. You see, I have nothing to say to you at all.’ I laughed gaily, at nothing, and she returned it so that for a moment our voices rang above the murmur in the salle, lost and bitter and shrill as the voice of a banshee, screaming round a battlement. Then King Philip stood, scattering the ladies before him, and offered me his hand to lead me out to dance.
Only later, when we left the men to their drinking, and I had bidden a courteous farewell to Blanche, after I had been handed into the king’s barge and returned under the curious eyes of the citizens to the Louvre, after I prayed, and had my face washed and my hair combed out and was finally, finally, alone in my chamber with Agnes, did I ask for the parcel to be opened. Under the linen lay a thin red cord, such as I had seen my mother wearing, bound about her leg on the day she went from Lusignan.
‘You must wear it, little one,’ said Agnes tentatively. ‘It is what they wish.’
‘Burn it.’
Agnes’s face worked painfully, she was afraid.
‘Agnes, it is nothing. See?’ I held it up and cast it onto the brazier, where it curled and charred like a cast-off snake skin. ‘It is nothing to do with us. Please don’t be afraid, now. We will have nothing to do with their folly, with their … wickedness. I am queen, and I will keep you safe. Look. It is quite gone.’
‘We should throw away the ashes.’
‘Why, Agnes? In case a witch comes in the night, to take them for a charm?’ One look at her poor old trusting face showed me that this was precisely what she feared. I sighed, ‘Very well. Empty the brazier into the river, then go to your chamber and rest. We go south tomorrow.’
I had kept m
y countenance. I had survived this interminable day. I did not believe what I had said to Agnes, that I could protect her, but I saw that I had, at least, to try. To protect Agnes, and John, and that way, myself. The sun was setting over the city. Glancing up at the casement, I saw a red streak across the sky, in the direction of Normandy, spooling through the clouds like a skein of red silk. I called for a maid, and had her close the window tight.
CHAPTER TEN
THE GATES OF PARIS HAD BARELY CLOSED BEHIND THE last of our baggage trains when we saw the first signs of the Lusignan rebellion. Leaving the royal demesnes of France near Orleans, John planned to traverse the county of Blois towards his own lands in Maine, moving west towards Chinon and then south to Poitiers, where his mother Queen Eleanor had kept her capital. Encumbered as we were by mule carts bearing our furnishings and provisions, our tents where we slept, our kitchens, our regalia, moving at the pace of the foot guards who surrounded my ladies’ litters, we travelled far more slowly than King Philip’s marshals, who paused to pay their respects to John as they passed us on the road. It was only as we approached Le Mans that the captain of my husband’s garrison rode out to explain, fearfully, to John, that Lord Hugh and his brother, Ralph of Eu, had taken their complaint to the French king, demanding the county of La Marche as recompense for my betrothal, and that Philip had declared John’s holdings in France forfeit. The English standard flew alone above the Le Mans keep, fluttering high over the green July country, showing that my husband was in breach of his obligation to his liege lord. If the Lusignans attempted his dominions, the empty space next to the standard declared, Philip was not bound to defend his oath. Philip, who knew nothing more of the Lusignans’ plans than my poor husband, was quite content in his greed for Angevin fields and castles. If the Lusignans made war on John, there would be ample spoils for the French king if he supported them.
I instructed the maids that we would dine quietly in our quarters that day, but even from the distance of my chambers in the tower I could hear my husband screaming, ranting out his fury at the treachery of the Lusignans and the French king. He came reeling and stinking to my bed that night, and vomited in the rushes before falling into a muttering sleep from which I could not rouse him until long after the rest of the household had heard Mass. For days, he continued so, summoning his captains each morning, issuing orders to his seneschals for funds to raise troops, then drinking away all his plans through the afternoon and snoring hopelessly late each morning, clutching me to his sour-smelling body, mumbling of traitors and vengeance. I had the maids lay fresh linen and rushes each day, keep the windows wide to the summer air and burned sweet herbs in my rooms, but nothing could drive the stench of him away, so it seemed as though my own skin was polluted with his folly and helplessness. I tried to be meek and gentle, to speak only soft, encouraging words, and asked Agnes to discreetly command his servers to water the king’s wine, but the longer John tarried, the more fearful I became. Was he intending to let his lands, and me, slip away in his drunken lassitude? As I passed to the chapel or the gardens among my women, I felt the same uncertainty and discontent among the garrison, and I saw in their disgusted glances that they felt I was to blame. What kind of a king was this, whom, when his holdings were challenged by his enemies, preferred to stay swilling and lolling in bed with a woman who was no more than a child?
Each day, messengers poured into Le Mans with news from the south. I was shamed to see them waiting anxiously in the hall as my husband rolled and grunted through his drunken dreams in the tower. Duke Arthur raised his standard in Brittany, calling on his men to defend his title to the English throne, and my husband did nothing. Duke Arthur was at Tours, where the Lusignans declared for him, and my husband did nothing. The lands of the south were in open rebellion, with the peasants leaving their fields before the harvest to join the Lusignan host, and my husband did nothing.
July turned towards August, and, finally, John ordered that we move on towards Chinon. It was a joy, at least, to be riding in the clear air, among the scents of the grass and the hedgerows, but if the king’s household thought they might at last be riding to confront the rebels, they were wrong. John drank all day in the saddle, swigging from a gold-chased horn, and when we pitched camp each evening he had to be helped from his horse. He then staggered around, barking and countermanding orders until his tent was pitched and he tumbled onto his bed in his boots. I followed his swaying progress along the white roads, decorously mounted on a side-saddle, ashamed even to lift my face to the bands of grubby farmers who paused in their work, incurious as cattle, to watch their king pass by.
William Marshal, one of the greatest of my husband’s English magnates, took charge of our progress, sending out the purveyors and working with the clerks, as John was barely capable of speech by noon. He treated me with great courtesy, as though he alone knew that John’s unmanly doting on me was none of my doing, and though I was grateful for his attempts at kindness, my pride throbbed at what he might imagine the king did to me when the curtains of our bed were drawn. For John insisted that I lie with him each night now, as I had done since Paris, and I was torn between revulsion at his clammy, clumsy fumblings beneath my shift, and the hope that he might make me truly his wife now, and save me at least from Pierre’s threat that our marriage was invalid. My only comfort on the journey was Othon’s body, plodding dutifully beneath me, but I felt his frustration, his need for flight, and so many times I came close to throwing my legs astride, touching him with my heels and letting him run us both far away, leaping the white-flowered hedges, until we had fled this moving prison and could be alone again in the forest.
With a day’s ride left before we reached Chinon came the news that Lord Hugh had made his move. Eleanor, the old queen, had left her retired doting at the abbey of Fontevraud and bravely ridden south, towards Poitiers, to do what her lineage as Duchess of Aquitaine still could for the English cause there. The post rider who brought the message to our camp might have been as soused as his king, so dazed and reeling was he after the effort of his flight; his horse was fit for dog meat. He was too exhausted to rise from his knees, coughing through the dust of the road in his throat as he gasped out his news. Lord Hugh and Duke Arthur had approached Queen Eleanor at Mirebeau, near Poitiers, and aimed, it seemed, to take her hostage. The cunning old queen had managed to stay them several days with courtesies, but now she was imprisoned in the keep, and Mirebeau was besieged.
Before my eyes, I watched John transfigure himself. As the poor man croaked out his message, John was calling for his coat of mail and his men-at-arms fastened on their swords. The whole camp was swarming like a beehive, fires being kicked out, horses saddled, my own tent vanishing into a cart like a kerchief in a jongleur’s sleeve. For once, John ignored me. I had to hover at his elbow as he shouted commands to Marshal to send to the garrison at Chinon to muster. I trotted between them, trying to make them listen to me, but they paid me no mind. I knew why Lord Hugh was trying to take the old queen. It would have been a clumsy feint had we been playing at chess.
‘Please, my lord.’
‘Not now, Isabelle.’
‘Please, don’t go. It’s a trap. They are using your mother as bait,’ I warned.
‘She is my mother. I have no choice. Go to your ladies now, I will be quite safe.’
‘It’s you they want to capture, my lord, not her. Your lady mother is a lure.’
‘Isabelle! I said, not now. What can you know of this? Go!’ He had never spoken so harshly to me, and as soon as the words passed his lips, I saw his face soften with remorse. I scrunched my dust-rimed eyelids together to try to force out a few tears, and gave him my most loving look. Gently, I slipped my palm into his, letting him feel how small and soft it was.
‘Then I want to go with you.’
He dropped a kiss on my brow. I hated my own anxious countenance then, even as I feigned, hated myself for arousing his tenderness. ‘My love, you cannot.’ He looked away down the road, ca
lculating. ‘As it is, we’ll have to ride like the Devil.’
‘I can ride as fast as any man.’
‘Isabelle, I forbid you.’
‘If I am alone with my ladies, who will defend me? The king of France might have an army on the road in pursuit of me right now. It could be part of their plan, I will be safer at least with you, my lord.’
He hesitated, still calculating. I showed him the face I wore when I played with his hair in the firelight, the face that made him groan and press me to him and scramble at my flesh in the dark. ‘Do not forbid me, my dear lord. I have not asked anything of you for so long. Please.’
I didn’t wait for his answer. I ran away, back to where my tent had been moments before. Agnes was hustling the maids into a cart, all of them fretting and squeaking as usual. ‘Find Tomas,’ I ordered. ‘Then you will accompany the maids to Chinon.’ I held up my hand, the pearl the king had given me on our betrothal warm on my finger. ‘Any messenger who comes to you must bear this. Pay no mind otherwise. Promise me, Agnes. Now, find Tomas.’
I couldn’t help feeling joyful. As Tomas threw me up onto Othon’s back, my gown indecently hitched up behind, I inhaled the scent of his impatience and buried my face in his neck. ‘See, I promised you, didn’t I? We will have our dream, at last.’
There was no time for the scuttling priest to bless us. The king’s household knights were already hidden in a dust cloud at the far point of the horizon. I had no whip, no spurs, no sword, no flat helm, I might have been a little girl again, playing at Crusaders, but Othon sprang forward at the gentlest touch of my heels, and for eighty miles of delirious flight, we were warriors. I might not be Taillefer, true, but I would ride at my lord’s side, and we would take Queen Eleanor, and I should be safe.
