by Lisa Hilton
I had been over and over the plan with Agnes. I could see plainly that she disliked it, but I reminded her of what Pierre had told me in Paris. That Lord Hugh wanted John gone, and me married to Arthur, and to rule through the boy, to displace the heir to France and make Arthur king there too, to take an empire in his serpent’s coils. I asked Agnes if she had a better scheme than mine. John’s throne would never be safe while Arthur lived. Poor Agnes had nothing to say, except that she would do as she was bid. I did not tell her that this part, this night, was to be my gift to myself. It helped that the garrison at Rouen had grown slack under my husband’s neglect. He may have believed himself well protected, but in fact I could have walked to his rooms and slit his throat myself: his guards were too occupied with their drinking and dicing, for all that it was Lent, to pay any mind to a serving maid.
I put on a fine lawn shift over my clean body then threw on the greasy woollen gown Agnes had bought for me at the market. It was like nothing I had ever worn before, barely a skirt and bodice, more like a loose cloak with a leather thong to belt the waist. The wool scratched at my wrists and legs, and the gown smelt evilly of old sheep. I smiled to myself. I had had no wedding dress, and now, when I was to meet my lover, I should go stinking of old cloth like a peasant. My lover. I loved the word as I thought it.
‘Won’t you lie down, my lady? Rest a little. There is still some time to pass.’
‘I cannot, Agnes. Tell me again.’
‘There is a brazier ready. Here is the firebox, see, in the bag.’
I took out the flint and examined it. I had watched it done many times, but I had never lit a fire before.
‘And the candles, and the perfume.’
‘All here. I left some cakes in a napkin on a plate, and a jug of wine. I left the cloak wrapped in a sheet.’ The sable my husband had given me for my bed.
‘And you swept it clean, and spread the herbs, as we said?’
‘Just as you said. Oh little one, I could wish—’
‘Don’t, Agnes. Please don’t. Not tonight.’
‘It is a long walk …’
‘I am not afraid of walking. Now, what are you to say should anyone call for me?’
‘That you are gone to the king at his request.’
‘And if the king should summon me?’
‘That you are indisposed and have taken a sleeping draught. That you are not to be disturbed.’
It would have to do.
‘Is it time yet, Agnes?’ The eagerness in my voice reminded me of Angouleme, when I had begged and pestered Agnes to hurry forward a treat.
‘Not yet. We will listen for the abbey bell.’
*
When the hour of compline sounded at last, I hugged Agnes tightly to me, softly closed the door and glided like a spirit through the castle, carrying my riding boots, which were the stoutest shoes I owned. My slippers were all made for rushes and litters and Turkey carpets, tiny embroidered prisons all. Keeping close to the walls, I passed through the inner courtyard, then the outer. The night was cold, most of the men were in the hall or the guardrooms. Instead of going by the gate, which would be manned, I slipped down a paved incline, once used for soldiers to bring their horses up to the keep. At the bottom was a row of privies, a rough wooden hangar covering a long bench with holes over the pit beneath. Holding my breath against the stench of the jakes, I cautiously lifted the latch of the wooden gate used for clearing the night soil. Agnes had oiled it, another of her tasks while her mistress was at Mass. I took a great breath of damp night air and searched the sky above me. There was heavy cloud, only the milkiest flash of star was visible, but below to my left, in the town, I could see a few lanterns, fixed in doorways to deter thieves. Keeping the castle wall at my back, I moved towards the light, which brought me to the bridge to the road. This would be the most dangerous part. There was a dark hood in Agnes’s bag, I muffled my face carefully, so that my hair should attract no light, and trotted softly across the bridge, my spine taut with the expectation of a warning shout. But all was silent. I sped over hard cold dirt until I had to catch my breath, then stooped and put on my boots and felt in my pocket for one last thing: a small, dirty soapstone jar with a seal on the lid. It contained a little of the strange grease Tomas had rubbed on Othon’s hooves the first day I galloped him. I had begged him for it many times, curiously, fearfully, but always because I had hoped to recover the joy of that first giddy flight. He had pushed the little pot into my hand in the last moments before we rode out to Mirebeau. I had hidden it in my bodice then, and forgotten it, thought it lost in the bloody swamp of the battle, until Agnes handed it back to me, when I reclaimed my pearl ring from her, which now shone again on my hand. Perhaps Tomas had given her some of the ointment too. Perhaps he knew that I would need it, the last thing I had left of him. I closed my eyes and sent a prayer to them, Tomas and Othon, thanking them for those hours in the green allées when I had learned, so briefly, what it was to be free. Then I smeared the paste on the heels of my boots, bent my head to the wind, and began to run.
Perhaps I was fevered with eagerness to reach Arthur, perhaps the fear of discovery gave me strength, or, perhaps, there was some potency beyond dark faith in Tomas’s gift, but it seemed that night that I covered those miles in a dream of swiftness, unencumbered by my ugly dress and my clumsy boots, the road clear before my night-blind eyes as though the moon gleamed beneath their lids. Or perhaps something else called to me as I moved through those black miles, the scar on my shoulder throbbing like a new vein, so that I should not have been surprised, or indeed afraid, to find the horned man waiting for me on the road, for I was part of the night then, another twilight-coloured creature who trod softly in its shadows, belonging to the still time between one word and another, belonging to him. Or perhaps that was all my fancy, and I ran towards what I had never known since that time in the forest with Othon. Towards joy.
Arthur was singing, down in the valley by the little tower. I heard the words as I staggered, half-tumbling, down the slope towards the stream. ‘He alouete, Joliete, petit t’est de mes maus.’ I did not stop running until my head was against his breast and his arms were about me, I cared nothing for my filthy gown nor for the scent I had so carefully packed to disguise it, I needed only the scent of him, his hair, lips, hands, eyes. We did not speak. We did not even make a light. We lay down on the chill ground by the water so that our bodies could find one another, and he conjured all my sorrow from me.
Later, when he had laughed at me as I chipped at the flint and lit the brazier himself, when we had spread out the cloak on Agnes’s sweet herbs and taken a little wine, I told him that I had never known the king as a wife, and he fetched icy water from the brook in the cup of his palms, and washed me, and put his mouth there, and stroked me with his tongue until the flame that danced from the coal to the flame in his hair glimmered and twisted deep inside me. And then he came to me again, gently this time, his face resting against mine and his hands tight beneath my body, lifting me onto him, his teeth finding my breast and biting down on the nipple as he moved more urgently so that I cried out with the exquisite pain of it as I felt the flood of him between my thighs.
It seemed that we floated above the world, enclosed in the glowing walls of the abandoned tower, entwined like the curling inks of a monk’s writing. I told him the story of the fairy Pressine and the king, and he told me that he knew it too, that he had heard it from his nurse, and that the shores and coves of Brittany were full of fairy-folk. We could not think of sleeping, although we were weary, it took only the touch of a fingertip, the trail of my hair across the lustre of his marble chest, for our bodies to come together again and again, so that we were dizzied with it, so that our selves were mingled like the moonlight and the silver water which murmured beyond the door. Finally, we lay breathing softly, his eyes on mine gently closing, opening to look once more, and smile, and close again, but just as we were drowsing, I heard a tap at the half-broken door, and Agnes appe
ared, filling that little room with lilac-coloured dawn mist and a sudden cold. Arthur moved to cover himself, blushing so sweetly, but Agnes was as brisk and practical as his own Breton nursemaid might have been.
‘Come, my lord, you must dress and leave. I shall accompany my lady to the first hour at church and we shall return afterwards. You will see her Majesty at dinner.’
Arthur started, as though he had only just remembered who I was, and attempted a bow, tripping over the tails of his shift. I went close to him, not caring that Agnes could see me naked before him, pulling the pearl from my finger and closing it into his hand.
‘Take this, my love. It will be my token to you, now, to my true love. Come to my chamber tonight. Agnes will make it safe. Go now.’
The cloak John had given me was damp and filled with the scent of us. When Arthur had gone I lay down again on my face and inhaled his smell. I heard Agnes moving about, gathering up the jug, the untouched plate of cakes.
‘Leave them, Agnes. We will leave it all. Perhaps some other people might find the things and be glad of them.’
I dressed swiftly in my own things, Agnes quickly braided my tangled hair and covered me with the cloak. She had even remembered our missals. I felt sorry, suddenly, for how frightened she must have been, puffing along that long road in the grey dawn, so anxious and exhausted. ‘You are very brave, Agnes,’ I told her.
‘Perhaps I might have made a Crusader after all, eh, little one,’ she smiled at me. ‘Come now. You cannot weep. Be glad. You have had your happiness.’
As we walked through the glade I paused at the spot where I had lain with Arthur hours before. I squeezed my finger where I had cut it on the flint, until a drop of blood fell to the ground, a benediction for tonight. I could marry him, I thought wildly. I could let John fall and Lord Hugh make his plots, and perhaps there would be a way, when I was Arthur’s wife, to make us safe. We would have beautiful sons, and they would rule … No. I understood my mother then. I saw how she must have hated what she felt herself obliged to do, however contorted her reasoning. No. The drop of blood was a promise.
*
On the second day of Holy Week, I let out a scream from my chamber. When I opened my mouth to cry out I knew that Agnes would already be rushing through the castle, rousing the guard, beating at the locks of the king’s room. It seemed that Arthur had only a moment to look bewildered before my door crashed open and I was throwing myself upon my husband, sheltering myself under his sword arm, yelling that the Duke had tried to force himself upon me. I could not look at Arthur, still naked on my bed, but I heard his words, ‘Isabelle! My Isabelle, no!’ And then I was flung from the room and rushed away by my women with the sound of my husband bellowing for vengeance on my love in my wicked, wicked ears.
It was no difficulty to feign the tears I needed. I was wracked and breathless with sobbing, heaving and gasping for air, so that the maids caught my panic, and one of them fainted, another had to be slapped back into sense. Their shrieking and confusion drowned the noise of Arthur being dragged away, but not his voice, calling my name over and over, demanding his sword, a messenger to his cousin of France, Isabelle, his Isabelle …
When John returned to me I was still insensible, howling and lashing out at anyone who approached me, until Agnes spoke to him and told him that I had to rest before I could speak. He tipped the draught down my throat himself, the draught I had begged Agnes to prepare, that I might have a few hours of oblivion before I began the next stage of my lie.
And when I woke his face was above me. As my eyelids fluttered apart, I saw the pain in his countenance, but I could feel no pity for anyone but Arthur.
‘Isabelle.’ He was white, he had not rested, but he was calm, his rage contained for the present.
‘I cannot speak to you, my lord. I am no longer worthy. I beg you, please to let me leave now.’
‘My love, what can you mean?’ Oh, how I despised him then, for allowing me to deceive him so easily.
‘I wish you to permit me to enter a convent. Fontevraud, in memory of your Holy Mother, or Langoiran, where I was … where I was.’ I feigned to give way to sobs once more, though my throat and my eyes were quite dry.
‘Isabelle! What is this talk? You must tell me, now, what happened? Of course you will not be sent away.’
I sat up effortfully, as though every part of me ached.
‘You are too good, my lord. It is my fault. I believe that I … encouraged the Duke. I thought it my duty, to weave peace between you. I hoped that since he had given up his claim that he might help you restore your lands in France. And then he—’
‘What did he do, Isabelle?’
I looked around, feigned surprise that the room was full of people. Two of the king’s tally clerks were seated on stools, gravely scratching down what I spoke. Several of John’s barons lounged against the wall, grim faced, my maids kneeling in a row like St Ursula’s virgins.
‘Please, I am too ashamed to speak. Agnes can be my witness, if you must have a witness, my lord.’
When the room was empty, I told Agnes to bring the sheet from my bed.
‘The Duke came to my chamber while you were resting. He told me that he and the king of France were planning to besiege you, and that when you were their prisoner they would petition to Rome for the Duke’s right to the crown of England.’
‘Why did you not call for help?’
‘I thought, at first, that he was warning me. That his affection for you was giving us time to fly, to reach the coast. And then he told me that when you were no longer king I should be his queen, instead. And then he …’ I buried my face between my hands and spoke through my fingers. ‘Show him, Agnes.’
I knew that she would be unfolding the thin Flemish linen, holding up the treacherous butterfly-stain we had made there that morning after we returned from Mass. Fowl’s blood from the kitchens. The proof that Arthur had done what in his heart my husband knew he could not. I heard him draw a long, tightly whistling breath.
‘There is something more. The Duke will tell you that I lie, that I beguiled him, but it is not so. He has my ring, my pearl betrothal ring. You will find it with him. He tore it from my hand, before … Before.’
I dared to glance up at John’s face. It surprised me that even then I had it in me to feel saddened as I watched his love for me slowly drain away. I reached a hand to his face, but he brushed it aside, not unkindly, but as though the fingers whose touch he had sought and loved to toy with were slightly troublesome, like a summer fly.
‘You will tell no one of this, Isabelle. Do you understand? No one is to know of your disgrace. You will never speak his name again. Tell me that you understand.’
I nodded as he rose to leave me. He bent ceremoniously over my hand.
‘Take care of her Majesty,’ he instructed Agnes. ‘She will need to recover from this dreadful assault. And I will have your tongue out, old woman, if you ever speak of this.’
Agnes curtsied, and so the man I loved and the man who loved me died together.
CHAPTER TWELVE
AGNES HAD LAID OUT A PLAIN DARK GOWN FOR THE Maundy Mass. Alongside my husband, I would have to wash the feet of twelve poor women of Rouen before distributing purses of alms to those in want. After the last of the service was sung in the cathedral, we progressed into the city square where the paupers were seated facing one another on stools, a basin of water by each pair of filthy feet. The space was packed with worshippers, come to gawp at the wonder of a king kneeling to a commoner. The nuns of the abbey flapped like crows in their black habits as they sang the order.
The April day was leaden and icy, with a thin sharp wind that fluttered the poor people’s rags, so that the stink of their bodies wafted into my face, a bouquet of sweat and dirt that revolted me. John neither looked at nor spoke to me. There was something in his unusually erect bearing that recalled his face at Mirebeau, entirely determined, taut with authority; yet instead of feeling proud, as I had done then, I f
elt only a sick fear that I had to swallow down in my throat like sour vomit. As my women looked on, I set my hand on the brow of the first woman and spoke a blessing in as kind and clear a voice as I could muster. I knelt, averting my eyes from the reddened sores on her unhosed legs, dipped the cloth in the basin and began to wipe the heated water around her feet. I was careful to keep it between her skin and mine, but the water in the bowl was soon clouded with filth. From beneath a cracked layer of mud her feet emerged, the flesh white against a grain of dirt worked so deep into their calloused soles that they might have been striped marble. How could people be so disgusting? Had not God sent rain that even the poorest might cleanse themselves? I reproached myself for such prideful thoughts, rose, blessed, knelt and began on the second woman. This time, I kept my eyes closed, saying the Ave under my breath to remind myself to be humble. When I reached the end of the line of stools, my shoulders were shaking under my cloak and my hands were tight, puffed like fresh bread from the water and the freezing wind. I would ask Agnes to make me a balm, or the skin would crack and look ugly, and Arthur – but of course, that did not matter, now. I would never see Arthur again. I glanced around for Lady Maude. It seemed strange to me that I had once thought of her as my enemy, before I knew what real enmity was. I truly hoped that she would be pleased with me, that I had conducted myself so properly, and done credit to her lessons. But Lady Maude was nowhere among my ladies.
Relieved, I cleaned my own hands with a fresh linen cloth and dropped it into a basin held by a waiting page. It would be a year before I knelt again, except at Mass. John turned and took my arm as we walked back between the stools, handing a cloth purse and a few kind words to each of the paupers. Few of them even attempted to thank us. They looked, if not merely bewildered, actively frightened. I had spent so long despising John that I had forgotten what his power really meant. One word from him and any one of these unfortunate people could be whipped, or hanged. And I had conjured his cruelty like a malicious crone squatting over a cauldron. So Arthur was alone, alone in the dark … I staggered and John gripped my arm more tightly, so tightly that I felt the malicious stab of his nails through the wool of my sleeve.
