by Lisa Hilton
That knowledge might have driven me mad in time, but it was Angouleme that saved me. Since my Taillefer father’s death I had been Countess of Angouleme in my own right, but I never would return to my city while my mother was there. But Lord Hugh was pressing hard, in right of the alliance of my betrothal, and I knew that my mother would not hold the city against her lover, if he was her lover still. As the riders came daily from Poitou, I began to understand why it was that men could fight for land. Why when everything else was gone, it stayed in their blood and their bones, and why they would kill and die for it. I thought of the water meadows, and the swallows’ nests under the eaves of the cathedral, of the pure silver air and the sound of the wind in the oak trees, and the memory of those leaves coaxed a flutter of feeling in me. When I heard that my mother was gone to Paris supposedly to seek help from the king, but I knew it was really to leave the gates open for Lord Hugh, I felt the beginning of rage.
I tried to beg John to send troops to relieve the men of Angouleme, but even when I tried my prettiest wiles, gritting my teeth as I caressed him, he merely looked at me scornfully and told me that he had already given up everything for me, and what more did I want that he should send men he could not spare to die for a single county? He dismissed me, saying that if I was no use for getting sons I had better be at my prayers, and went back to his wine, only to call for me again when he had drunk enough to rouse his lust. I wanted to hiss at him that I had had the best man in the world murdered for him, but his anger was of no more use to me. I saw that I needed two things: first gold, and then a son.
I had money of my own, why should I not defend my city? My English lands were worth four hundred pounds a year, a huge sum, I thought, enough to pay an army. But who could lead it? So I sent for my clerks and since I had no chancellor, not even a household of my own at Rouen, I instructed them myself. I wished I had paid better attention to my lessons, for I could make no sense of the figures in the account books they showed me, how so many shillings could belong to this manor in Devonshire, or this mill in Bedfordshire, places I had ridden through, perhaps, but never paid any mind. I was not even certain that I knew what a shilling was. I even missed Lady Maude, who might have assisted me in making it out, but she was gone far away, to her husband’s lands on the march of Wales, another place of which I knew nothing.
There was one man who had an interest in defending my abandoned city, one who was wily and slippery enough to persuade the Lusignans to take their soldiers and campaign for other prizes. I gritted my teeth and dictated a most tender letter to my brother Pierre, asking him to be my seneschal in my husband’s name, and promising him the men and gold he would need to hold Angouleme against his father. I thought this very cunning, for Pierre would never fight Lord Hugh. Rather, now Arthur was gone, they would come to some accommodation and work out how they could best make use of me. And if I could keep Angouleme safe for a time, then I might have another use for my brother.
So Pierre became John’s man, and my husband thanked me grudgingly for what I had contrived. I tried to persuade him to go down to Poitou, and confront the Lusignans, but as almost always, he hesitated, and once again gave the advantage to the French king. Philip of France was mustering to attack the Lionheart’s great fortress as Les Andelys, Château Gaillard. I had heard my poor Taillefer father speak of it with awe, this castle raised on a rock within five miles of the French king’s keep at Gaillon, the ‘Saucy Castle’ built as a gesture of defiance when the Lionheart still ruled in the south. Richard had built it in two years, it was perhaps his true love, as his poor rejected Spanish queen had never been, and it had eaten at his coffers like the most jealous of mistresses. My papa said that while the stones of Gaillard rose, blood rained from the skies. Now Philip planned to take it from the English, this last symbol of their martial strength. It was William Marshal who raised the defence, who sent to England for gold to pay the northern mercenaries, who summoned the boats to break the French siege from the river that ran hundreds of feet below Gaillard’s walls. And it seemed as if Melusina, the water spirit, swam to the aid of her Lusignan kinsmen, thrashing the currents of the Seine with her tail, so that the oarsmen lost their time and were swept downstream, losing sight of the soldiers on the banks. When the remains of Marshal’s flotilla were hauled back to Rouen by horses roped to the barges, their shallow keels were still swimmy and stained with blood. It was the last attempt the English made to recover their own.
Marshal gave out that his lord would remain and fight on through another year, but even as he gave his seal to the clerks, our sad household at Rouen was being broken up. Early in December, John told me we would soon leave for England. It would be hard riding, he explained to me, we would have to leave before dawn to make our way to Bayeux, and on to Caen on the coast, but then I took pleasure in that, did I not? His little soldier, he had taken to calling me, carelessly, his pretty squire. I produced a rueful smile and bade Agnes to prepare our trunks. I was glad, so very glad to be leaving this cursed place, I prayed that once in England we should be safe, and I could begin again. I prayed that I might have a son, a son who would be an English king, at least, and even more one day. So I took the enamelled box in which I kept the gifts Arthur had given me, and went down to the river at night one last time. I sent them after his body, all those pretty trinkets, for though I had pawed them over and wept, I knew them to be false, gifts from a boy who had never truly known his love. As I raised myself from the bank I promised that I should cry no more for him, sleeping now at the abbey with my pearl ring on his finger. I should be an English queen, I told myself, the mother of English sons, sons who would fight one day for my city of Angouleme. The Lusignans might triumph in my husband’s lands, but I should deal with them on my own terms, as a queen.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
JOHN GAVE A GREAT FEAST AT OUR RETURN TO WESTMINSTER, as though he returned a conquering king rather than the miserable vassal he was. He summoned the barons of England to attend our crowning ceremony, but it seemed that there was much business in the shires of England that winter, for most of them relayed their compliments and their excuses, and did not appear. They were waiting, I knew. If John had no heir soon they thought to offer the crown to France and be done with this half-man who sat on their throne. And what would become of me, then? While I was queen, I had the means to defend Angouleme, but how could I do so if I had no money to pay for it? Lord Hugh would swallow up my city like a comfit.
Pierre joined us at court a week after our arrival in London. I had summoned him in his role as seneschal, and the report he made to John’s council declared the walls of Angouleme unbreached. I did not care what arrangement he might have made with Lord Hugh, though the reports from my tittering maids on his lavish spending in the city told me where my gold had gone. It was easy enough to avoid him in that sprawling palace, and he did not seek me out. I had no stomach for another of his conversations, and besides, it was not yet time to employ him. I had a gift of game sent to his lodgings, and another of a pair of spurs, but when he sent to thank me in person I replied only with a message and did not invite him to the queen’s chamber.
My husband remained barely a month in his capital before he set off once more to tour his lands, to raise monies and drink and quarrel, which gave him more pleasure than fighting like a king. To my relief, Pierre left too in his lord’s retinue. I had business to attend to in the city: there were the levies of the queen’s gold to be accounted for; there was my dock at Queenhithe, on the banks of the Thames, to be inspected; there was my wardrobe to order; and my ladies to be chosen. John might care to live like a squire, sleeping in a barn when there was no house to hand on his wanderings, but I should keep a gracious court, I thought, a court worthy of a queen from the south. I had a bathhouse built at Westminster, lined in blue tile from Castile, I ordered a great cleaning of all the rooms in the palace and had their walls freshly limed, I sent to the City merchants for silk cushions and new plate, so that while John had ret
urned from France a disgrace to the name of his father and brother, any ambassador who came to him should see that he was a mighty prince, and make report of it. I did not do this for John, though.
There was something else I did, too. There was a woman spoken of in London then, who had been locked up in the Clink prison at Southwark for the making of poppets. She was a whore, they said, a pute from the stews, who had been abandoned by her keeper, a merchant, and she had made small figures of the man, his wife and son, of cloth and wax, and driven pins through them and left them in the churchyard there, where they had been found by the sexton. The woman was locked up against her trial by the bishop’s court, and if she was found guilty, she should burn. I ordered that she be brought from her cell and rowed across the river to Westminster stairs, for the queen had a mind to cast her eye on a witch. My chaplain heard of it and came bustling to see me, daring, if I would permit him, to suggest that it might be a danger to my person to see such a creature, though I knew that what he meant was that it was a scandal for such as I to consort with such as she. Besides, my ladies were as curious as I to see the spectacle of a sorceress, and it would amuse us to view her. I did not care that they might gossip, for I had been capricious when I had first come to London, as John’s bride, and for all the court at Westminster knew, I was the king’s darling still.
The woman was brought to the guardhouse at Westminster in irons. My women clucked and stared, as though she were a wild animal, but beneath the filth of the prison she looked to me like any girl, perhaps of an age with me, and pretty enough, though her teeth were black and her hair was dull with dust and grease. Her name was Susan. As she entered the guardroom she threw herself forward on the ground, crying at the top of her voice that she was innocent, that she had never made any conjurings, and begged me to help her, to speak to the king on her behalf. She had a child, she said, a little baby, who would starve without her. I could not address her myself, but I spoke through my herald, instructing him to tell her that she need not be afraid, that the king was merciful, and that she would not be harmed. I had the irons unlocked, and when the manacles came off the room was filled with the stench of putrid flesh. Her wrists were green under her sorry cloak, where they had lain against the metal. My ladies coughed and stared and held their kerchiefs to their noses.
‘Ask her why she made the poppets,’ I instructed.
Susan did not deny that she had made the creatures. They were to shame her keeper, she said, who had got her with child and then left her. He was a rich man, but he would give nothing for their provision. She had only wanted to frighten him, she and her babe were hungry, but she was no witch, I heard her babble, she was a good Christian girl who knew her Hail Mary and her Pater Noster. She began to recite the prayers to prove it, until the herald silenced her.
‘Who is the man who fathered this woman’s child?’
The keeper of the Clink unrolled a parchment, the testament prepared for the church court, and gave a name.
‘Have him found. Tell him that unless he agrees to sustain his child, he will find himself in the church courts as an adulterer. It is a disgrace that he has charged this poor girl with witchcraft.’
Hearing my meaning, my women muttered virtuously that it was a shame and scandal that such things could go on.
‘Have her washed and fed and brought to me. We will find a place for her where she can care for her child and live decently.’
Susan began to howl, all the fear she must have lived with pouring from her in a gush of grief and thanks.
Later, I waited for her in my small chamber, Agnes at my side. I did not fear that she would understand our conversation. When the girl returned, she looked quite different, in a decent petticoat, with her hair combed. She had even been found a pair of shoes. I saw her eyes dart around the room, absorbing the thick hangings on the walls, the scent of the apple-wood fire and the perfume in the brazier, the thick curtains of Turkey work at the casement. She would never have seen a room such as this.
‘Now Susan, do not be afraid. I am going to find a place for you, far away from London, in a house of good women, where you can take care of your child. Should you like that?’
She nodded, too awed to speak.
‘But first I would ask you something. I know of … how you earned your living, across the river.’
She shook her head as if to deny it, then began to weep.
‘I do not mean to distress you, nor to judge you. I only wish to know something you may have learned in your, your trade?’
Her eyes slid towards Agnes.
‘She does not speak the English tongue. You may answer freely. What I wish to know is that if there is a way you know to be sure of having a child?’
She hesitated. Such things were the province of midwives and wise women, and to claim such knowledge might see her irons replaced.
‘I have a gold piece for you, if you answer me.’
Another nod.
‘Well.’
When she spoke, her voice was raw from her tears and exclamations. I had some difficulty in making out her words in English, ‘Yes, lady. There is a drink. Not harmful. To be taken before the man fucks you.’
I wanted to giggle. No one had ever spoken that word aloud to me, not even John in the worst of his cups. ‘Can you get it for me?’
‘Yes.’
I might have asked Agnes, who was an expert in the herbs and medicines of Angouleme, but I thought that things might be different here in England. And besides, I could not tell Agnes what I was thinking. They made a song on it, how Queen Isabelle saved the witch who was a whore that was sung for years about London. It pleased me, that I had power to be kind to the girl. And perhaps it made the people like me a little. I had a new litter, hung with white satin and carried by four greys, with cushions of saffron-coloured silk, and in the streets they cried, ‘God save the queen,’ as my litter passed through London, when we left the city for the spring.
*
By Lammastide, my court was at Woodstock, not far from the colleges of the city of Oxford. It was one of the oldest of my husband’s palaces, built amidst broad rides for hunting, with a fine garden laid out, they said, by old Henry for the pleasure of his mistress, fair Rosalind. The musicians sang ballads of her, how she had been the king’s true love, instead of his rebellious Queen Eleanor, and how the queen had poisoned her for spite, and how the roses in her garden hung their heads and wept for her memory. It was a sweet story, and I thought of it as I walked in the thickly scented garden with my maids in the high heat of that summer.
John was restless as ever, vanishing for days on end on hectic rides through the country, leaving me to the company of Agnes and my women, which I minded not at all. Agnes was old now. It tired her to stand while she combed out and put up my hair, and for all my teasing she had still never mastered the English tongue. She said it was too late for her tongue to twine itself around those strange harsh words, and it pleased me to hear the soft sounds of my childhood in her accent still, as we sat peacefully stitching beneath a sky the colour of the Virgin’s robe. We would chat until she dozed off, and then I would run to my maids to play at butterfly catching, or to bathe in the river, smiling to think that Agnes could no longer run after me and remind me to be a lady. I could not be happy, not when Arthur’s body still stalked my dreams, but since I had to live, I tried to act as though I was.
We rode to Oxford for the feast of the first fruits, to watch as the priest broke a new wheaten loaf into quarters and placed one at each corner of the church for luck. Afterwards we listened solemnly to a long discourse in Latin from one of the university scholars, and I did not chide my maids for ogling and making eyes at the poor young man. I had couriers from John each day, from Westminster, from Rochester, even from Portsmouth, but so long as he stayed away we were peaceful there together, with our music and our games.
On Lammas Eve, I entertained the Bishop of Oxford to dinner in a white silk tent to protect us from the heat, and after
wards, though we had few gentlemen, I permitted my ladies to dance. I even stepped out with the bishop himself, a dear, gentle old man, who giggled to see himself hitching up his cassock in an estampie. The bishop was mopping his bald head and helping himself to a large bowl of cream cheese with tiny wild strawberries when I heard whispers and laughter from the doorway of the pavilion, and then the familiar rustle of a crowd of women curtseying. I did not need to turn my head to know that it was Pierre. My brother needed no herald, it was enough to follow the sound of women sighing. I stood to receive him as he walked between the stooping flowerbed of bright gowns, a mail coat slung over a yellow mantle as bright as his hair. As ever, I remarked on Pierre’s beauty, and as ever, I hated myself for it.
I greeted him, waited while he washed his hands and was served with cooled sweet wine, blessed by the stammering bishop, asked if he would eat. ‘You are come from my lord the king, Brother?’
‘Indeed. His Majesty is at Eltham, presently.’
‘And so?’
‘And so he is well, Majesty. He asked me to send you his blessing.’
‘Thank you. You may return my blessing to him.’
‘His Majesty instructs me to remain a while. It is so pleasant here. And he fears you might be starved for company.’
