by Lisa Hilton
‘You are well, my lady?’ There was sneering, not solicitousness, in his voice.
‘Quite well, my lord.’
‘Then come. Let us dine.’
*
‘Why did Lady Maude not attend Mass?’ I asked Agnes as she laced me into a fresh gown.
‘She is gone.’
‘Gone? Gone where? It is the crown wearing on Easter Day, she ought to be here. Had she bad news of her family in England?’
‘They left this morning, she and her husband. He was some time first with the king.’
‘Find out then. Find out why they have left.’
For the first time in several months, I dined that day at Rouen without Arthur. Only in his absence did I notice what a mean, grim place our court had become. So many of my husband’s household knights had slunk away, some pleading business on their lands elsewhere, others merely taking horse without leave and riding south to the rebels. I had been so taken up with my game with Arthur that I had barely listened as John fulminated against one weak-minded traitor after another, but now, seeing the empty places in the hall, I said their names over to myself, appalled at how many we had lost. And of course, Arthur’s absence glared among those who remained; I could see the speculation in the low murmurings of the men, their watchful glances at the king. I felt as fearful as the paupers in the town square. John barely touched his food, staring dully in front of him and emptying cup after cup of wine, his arm rising steady and regular as a woodsman’s axe. I pushed a grey morsel of salt fish around my plate with a lump of bread. At least we would be relieved this dreary diet in two days’ time. Abruptly, my husband turned to me.
‘Have you dined, my lady?’
‘Yes, my lord.’ I was agonized by the coldness of his tone, desperate for some softening, something that would absolve me of what I had done. Even now it need not be too late.
‘My lord, I would speak with you. Perhaps I might come to your chamber?’
He would never have refused such a request, before.
‘Leave us.’
‘But my lord…’
‘I said, leave us.’ The words came out like iron pebbles, spat with disgust.
Though I could not see them, I could feel the shock of his tone in the swift intake of breath among the women kneeling to my right, spreading out along the trestles and down the hall. Even when foully drunk, John had never spoken to me discourteously. What new scandal was this? Had the little Angouleme baggage lost her charm? I didn’t need to look to know that some of the ladies would be preening themselves already, dipping glances beneath their lashes towards the king. Had he not already put aside one childless wife? Had I not reminded him myself that wives could always be got for kings? And there were several of them, I was sure, who would have been content to be less than a wife if there was a chance of getting a royal bastard. ‘You chose this, Isabelle,’ I told myself. ‘You chose this.’ I made a beautiful curtsey to John and walked from the hall with my head held proudly erect.
When we reached the antechamber, I turned to them. ‘I think it would be fitting if all of us ladies sewed for the poor this afternoon. The maids have an ample supply of coarse linen. I shall work in my chamber, until the king joins me. I will have the cloth sent to the dorter. I intend to fast this evening, in preparation for tomorrow. I suggest that you join me.’
It was a pathetic little show of power, but was that not what they coveted? To receive curtseys, give orders, and spoil other people’s pleasure on a spiteful whim? And they would still covet, even if they knew the truth, for what was Lord Hugh not prepared to do for the chance to control a crown?
Although it was just a few hours after noon, Agnes had already lit the lamps in my chamber. The morning’s wind had blown in a heavy twilight of dull cloud. How cold Arthur must be, locked away in the dark. But I must not think of him. I could not.
‘What news of Lady Maude? Don’t tell me Sir William has turned his coat too?’ For a moment I tried to believe that this was the reason for John’s silent rage, though I knew it could not be so.
‘I asked among the maids. Lady Maude’s tiring-woman was furious. Off to the coast, and barely a minute to pack the baggage. She had to leave a feather bed behind …’
‘Yes, yes, Agnes, but why? Why so suddenly?’
‘Because Sir William had the charge of Duke Arthur. And because after what his Majesty spoke of last night, he felt he could no longer in honour keep his charge.’
‘You mean he refused to do what my husband asked?’
‘How could I know? How could Lady Maude’s tiring-woman know of such a thing? No one knows.’
‘Except us,’ I said.
‘Except us. And perhaps Sir William, now. They will be at Honfleur soon, to take ship for England.’
‘So it will happen?’
‘As it must.’
‘Then we must pray, Agnes. There is nothing else we can do. We must pray for forgiveness. Put out the lamps. We shall not need them.’
I knelt and began to mutter the Pater Noster. In a while, I no longer felt the cold stone beneath me, and in a while longer, stupefied by the low hum of my own frantically repeated words, I felt nothing at all. I must have prayed myself to sleep, for when I woke, Agnes was sleeping beside me, still in her gown, and the sky outside the casement was black. I listened for a few moments, but all was silent. There was no noise from the hall below, the men must have retired to the guardrooms, or be sleeping among the rushes. It took me a few moments to ease my stiffened joints into suppleness, then I stepped quietly to the door. The latch would not lift. It was locked – John’s doing. I tapped softly on the wood.
‘Is anyone there?’
Silence, and then a stirring, the bang of a scabbard on stone.
‘Yes, Majesty.’ No voice I recognized, though he was not a Rouen man; his tone, though thick with sleep, carried the light clear accent of the langue d’oc.
‘Why is my door locked?’
‘The king’s orders, Majesty.’
‘Open the door.’
‘Majesty, I cannot.’
‘I said, open the door!’ I hissed.
‘Forgive me, Majesty. I cannot disobey the king.’
‘And I am your queen!’ Even to my ears, there was no threat, only shrill petulance. Then I had an idea. What was a man of the south doing here when all of his countrymen had fled? I heard him settle his weight against the door, imagined his hand poised on his sword. ‘What is your name?’ I whispered.
‘Gilbert, Majesty,’ he answered reluctantly.
‘Then, Gilbert, open the door. Not in the king’s name, but for the old ones. I have their mark on me.’
I heard a sharp intake of breath, then nothing. He was shocked, and he was thinking.
‘I do not know what you speak of, begging your pardon, Majesty.’
When I spoke again, I did not know where the words came from. They twisted out of me, supple as a serpent’s tail.
‘Yes you do, Gilbert. Yes you do. And you shall see it too, when Duke Arthur is come into his own again. You shall see it on my naked flesh at the sabbat. It’s just … here.’ I scrunched my gown against the keyhole so he could hear the rustle of fabric. ‘Just here, on my shoulder, where the horned man placed it. Shall you kiss it then, Gilbert? Shall you?’
The bolt slid smoothly open. As I came into the passage, he was on his knees. I bent and allowed my lips to brush his hair. ‘Thank you. I shall not forget,’ I breathed.
As I skittered down the staircase to the hall, my slippers silent on the stone, I saw a light through one of the arrow slits set into the wall. Rouen was an ancient fortress, built for the first Viking dukes of Normandy. In places the walls of the keep were ten feet thick, with passages cut into them like wedges of cheese to allow bowmen to defend it. I paused, listened, then hauled myself onto the ledge and followed it to the opening. I put my face against the stone, worn smooth with hundreds of years of salt rain, and breathed the cold air off the river. Something was
moving on the bank, a humped shape silhouetted by a lantern. Just for a moment, the heavy cloud moved, and I recognized a bending figure in a shard of moonlight. John. I knew him from the white surcoat he had worn to the Maundy service, gleaming briefly until the clouds banked once more. At the same time, it was as though a cloud that had been across my mind since Paris shifted. I had not cared since then, I saw, whether I lived or died. My savage joy at Mirebeau had come from that, my reckless pleasure in Arthur, too. I lived now, and Arthur was dead, so I had stopped Lord Hugh. Even if I was killed by one of the castle guards, I would have stopped Lord Hugh. I had chosen Arthur for my sacrifice, and only God knew how easy it would have been for me to sacrifice myself in his place. I did not pretend to myself that I had been courageous. I had committed a foul, foul sin. I had not always wished to live. Yet when I had prayed to God to end it, when Lord Hugh raped me, when Pierre blackmailed me, all He had shown me was more death. Very well. Let it come now.
Although I had put on flesh during my brief, happy time with Arthur, it was easy enough to work my way through the tall arrow slit and onto the ledge. The drop to the riverbank on this side of the keep was no longer than a tall man, so I peered down into the darkness, trying to spy a shrub or young tree by which I could lower myself. The bank seemed clear below me; John must have had the ground cleared in case of attack. I twisted myself around, worked my body downwards until I was clinging to the ledge with my hands, and allowed myself to drop. I landed heavily, sinking ankle deep in freezing, reeking ooze, yet I was unharmed. My feet would look like a pauper’s, now. Cautiously, my hands stretched out before me, I half walked, half slid towards the river’s edge, where I had seen the muffled light.
It was John. John and another man, both of them filthy, dragging a bundle between them down to the water’s edge. I crouched down, low to the ground. They did not speak, merely grunted occasionally with effort. The second man held the light awkwardly in one hand, using the other to drag at the bundle, while John held the other end. Briefly, in the glow of the lantern, I caught sight of a bare leg. So it was done. I had driven my husband to this. I squinted into the dark, trying to trace the line of Arthur’s body beneath John’s straining shoulders. Maybe I could catch one last glimpse of his poor innocent face. Then the clouds opened once more, and I wished that I had not looked, for Arthur had no face, any more. John had not even allowed him to die by the sword, like a man.
The two burdened figures were staggering into the shallows now, the Seine flowed swiftly here and the second man was struggling to keep the lantern upright.
‘Hold still, curse you,’ hissed John. ‘Take it in your teeth. We need to swing it.’
As the man raised the lantern to his mouth by its leather strap the light showed more fully. Arthur was naked, as naked as I had last seen him, and all of him so clean and lovely, his limbs marble-bright. The lantern bearer had a purchase on his shoulders now, and together they swung the body, once, twice, three times, releasing it to fall with a low splash into the black water.
‘It is done then, Majesty?’
‘It is done. You have seen nothing, do you hear? Nothing.’
‘Of course. As Majesty wishes.’
His speech was blurred by the lantern still caught between his teeth. John was behind him in the darkness, he had no time to turn around as my husband came up behind him, close, too close. The pale wool of John’s sleeve drove up against his back, the last thing I saw before the lantern was quenched, he grunted and toppled, a louder splash here in the shallows, then fell forward. John kicked him savagely … wet thumps, holding his boot, or a knee, on his back as he thrashed like a fish on land, until the waves of his dying ceased to sound.
‘Good,’ John muttered to himself. ‘You saw nothing.’
I rose from the mud, ‘Will you kill me, too, my lord?’
‘Isabelle?’ John shuffled towards me, the marshy bank sucking beneath us. Then his arms were about me, and for a moment my heart clutched inside, a faint wren flutter of fear, which passed before I felt his right arm move, replaced only with a great exhaustion.
‘Do it, then, John. Kill me too, if you must.’ I closed my eyes and breathed deep. I could feel myself shaking, but it was only the damp cold. I was ready. I did not believe any more that God cared me to make my peace with Him. I had been ready for so very long. But John’s arm was about my neck, steadying himself as he pulled me towards him, he was holding me tight against his wet body, his mouth buried in my hair, his throat tight with sobs.
‘Isabelle. What have I done? Oh Isabelle, what have I done?’
PART TWO
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE FISHERMAN WHO FOUND ARTHUR’S BODY KNEW him by the ring. My betrothal pearl was jammed tight on the stump of his smallest finger, so tight that it had remained when John tried to slice it off, so tight that it stayed embedded in his softening flesh as he floated in the Seine like so much discarded bait. And for a jewel on a dead boy’s finger, the castles of Normandy fell at the king of France’s touch like a column in a game of tiles. First Conches, then Le Vaudreuil melted at the very sight of his troops as though they were built of sand, while my husband’s liegemen scuttled away like white-bellied crabs before the tide. So many of them had sworn to defend their king to the death, but now they preferred the shame of breaking their oath than that of fighting for a murderer.
The fisherman hauled the corpse to the nuns at Notre-Dame-des-Prés, and it was only when the good sisters fearfully cleansed the body that they found the ring. The king and his fellow assassin had done their work well. Arthur’s strong Plantagenet features were a mangled lump, his breast a sponge of stab wounds. Had it not been for the ring, they would have buried the body quietly, believing the poor youth a traveller, perhaps, the victim of vicious outlaws. The countryside was swarming with thieves at that time, desperate men driven half-mad with hunger as the lords’ wars were burning their crops and starving their children. Yet one of the sisters recognized Queen Isabelle’s ring, that pure, priceless pearl, and they sent word to Philip. I had thought to protect John, to provoke him to such enormity only to finish the Lusignans once and for all, I had given my love as a sacrifice, and yet in the time after Arthur’s death, as the couriers came and went and the whole of the Angevin lands were raised against John, I saw that I had not escaped Lord Hugh’s bond over me. I had taken Arthur as my lover, and had him killed, and the horned man was well pleased.
I feared at first that my husband would revenge himself on the sisters of the abbey, like Geoffrey Spike-Tooth in my mother’s long-ago story of Melusina, but the rage I had stoked in him was quenched the night he cast Arthur’s body into the Seine, and he moved about his own castle like a ghost, no longer ranting or carousing, no longer even calling for wine, but slumped in a lassitude from which nothing could rouse him, not even the news of the crumbling of his father’s empire. Lackland, they had called him once, when he was nothing but the younger son of great Henry, and, it seemed, the name was apt. William Marshal, still the most loyal of my husband’s magnates, did what he could to dismiss the news of Arthur’s death, calling it a foul calumny, but Philip of France returned calmly that if John of England wanted peace, he had only to produce his living nephew, and that, of course, John could not do.
Brittany was irreparably lost, Poitou, stirred up by the Lusignans, slipped further from John’s control by the day, and Philip’s men gnawed at the fringes of Normandy like so many rats. When Philip went to receive the fealty of his vassals in the south, he travelled down the Loire by barge, through what had once been the heart of Angevin territory, and there was not a man who came out to challenge his right.
We remained at Rouen from Easter until harvest time, a dragging, grey season. To me, it was as though the sun had been buried in that black water, bound in Arthur’s red-gold hair. I had nothing to do but walk, and pray, and mourn, and the only mercy was that John’s anger against me had vanished too in that murderous blaze which had consumed my beautiful boy. T
hat time on the riverbank, in his desperation, was the last time my husband called me ‘love’. I knew that there were women who lay with men for money, and I knew the name for them, too. Whore. That was what they called a woman who was paid to have a man between her legs. The barons had whispered it of me before, when it seemed that John preferred to loll abed with his bride rather than fight for his lands, and now it was true. I had known that John would never forgive me for shaming him by losing my maidenhead to Arthur, for all he believed it had not been my will, yet this had seemed a tiny loss in comparison to what I knew I must do to Arthur himself. Enduring John was a fit penance, perhaps, for what I had done to Arthur, my love. His manner to me was respectful enough in public, as befitted his own dignity, but when we were alone in his chamber, whence he summoned me each night if he was not too far gone in drink, he adopted a falsely jocular air, treating me as if I was no more than a tavern wench. I cannot speak of the things that he made me do, though his fumblings and his filthy satisfactions left me as much a maid as if Arthur had never touched me, while they seemed to please him well enough. I pitied him. He sought to humiliate me, for the private knowledge of what I was not, yet the insults he wrought on my flesh were nothing to me, I had no more feeling, then, than a corpse.
And even death had abandoned me. To live, it seemed, was my punishment. To live through the dull aching cruelty of every dawn, when I opened my eyes beside John’s lumpen form and saw Arthur. Arthur riding next to me, Arthur opening his arms joyfully, Arthur’s lips above mine as his body moved inside me, Arthur broken and white, cast endlessly into the freezing river that pumped relentlessly through my veins. I grew thin again, and my husband whispered spitefully that I was a scrawny bitch and when would I get him a child? I cared nothing for him. My heart was no longer made of rushing nerves and taut sinew, alive for Arthur, rather it was dull and ugly as a lump of kitchen tallow. I thought that one day it would just stop beating for despair, and that I would fall to the ground like a log, but I could no longer even hope it. I had done what I had done to prevent more hateful bloodshed, such as I had seen at Mirebeau, but now I knew with a keening grief that I had been wrong, that I could have eloped with Arthur and married him and been duchess and queen at his side and found another way to thwart the Lusignans. It would have brought war, true, but it seemed that all men were insatiable for war.
