‘Prince Edgar, yes, but he is a babe really, just six years old and a puny thing.’
‘Puny,’ Mabel confirmed with a grey light in her eyes.
Goodness, Mathilda thought, did the woman look to wipe out all those in poor health? She should not meet little Adela; should not have a second chance at her. Mathilda’s only daughter was four years old now but scarcely grown. Her limbs had stretched out, thin and gangling like one of Hugh’s foals, but her body seemed shrunken, as if it struggled to hold on to the vital organs within. She was quiet, too, with none of her brothers’ energy, and her one passion was the ancient texts – Greek and Latin. Her tutor adored her questioning nature and Mathilda knew she should be proud of her early scholarship but with Adela there was something forced and challenging about it. Maybe Mabel would be a mercy for her. She gave an involuntary gasp at her own evil thought and everyone looked her way.
‘Sorry,’ she said guiltily, holding her belly. ‘A cramp.’
Mabel looked over the table at her.
‘I have herbs that can help with that.’
‘No! I mean, no thank you, Mabel.’
The other woman grinned.
‘I can do good, you know, my lady, if you would only let me.’
She curtseyed low and again Mathilda felt nausea rise in her stomach but she could scarcely criticise. Deep inside she knew that although the deed may have been Mabel’s, they were all complicit, all guilty. She thought of the lost prince’s Russian wife, Lady Agatha, alone in a strange court with three young children. What a journey she must have been on, what hopes she must have had.
But we have hopes too, she thought. More than hopes – a promise. With the lost prince dead that promise was alive once more, though it was all too clear that Edward had little intention of honouring it.
And it soon became clear that Edward was not the only monarch opposed to Normandy. For as summer sighed itself out and the court returned to Rouen from the west, a new visitor was blown into court.
‘Raoul d’Amiens!’ William snarled. ‘So, the serpent has crawled out of the heather.’
The men were in the orchard, practising their archery into old shields strapped to the poor fruit-laden trees, but all firing ceased as they clustered around the new arrival. Mathilda, who had been called from the kitchens where she’d been making plans with the chefs for bottling and drying – assuming the apples survived the morning – threaded her way breathlessly to her husband’s side as the handsome Frenchman dared a flourishing bow.
‘Not hiding, Lord Duke, for I did nothing wrong save serve my lord.’
‘King Henri?’
‘The very same. But I am sick of him.’
William leaned forward, his longbow dangling menacingly from his shoulder.
‘You are?’
‘I am. I seek a new lord. Indeed, Duke, I seek you as my new lord and as a token of such I bring you a gift.’ William wrinkled his nose – he had little use for trinkets. ‘A precious gift – information.’
‘Ah. I see. What information? From France?’
‘Yes, my lord. May I draw closer?’
William pretended to consider but not for long. He beckoned Raoul forward as his men formed a circle around them, arrows to hand. Raoul flushed but stood his ground and his voice remained firm.
‘It is King Henri, Lord Duke. He is not happy that the Hungarian prince is dead and is mustering a new force. He means to attack again.’
Mathilda’s heart shook. More war. She felt a fool for happily preoccupying herself with apples and plums as if they were all that mattered to Normandy’s future and for an unseemly moment she longed to take Raoul and push him back through the trees as if she could stem the invasion that way. But it could not be done.
‘From where?’ William demanded.
‘I’m not sure.’
‘You are sure.’
Raoul inclined his handsome head.
‘I might be, my lord, if you were to accept me into your service.’
‘Why, Raoul? How do I know this is not some trick by King Henri?’
‘I have reasons of my own for wanting Henri . . . disadvantaged.’
William’s eyes widened.
‘You have designs on the French throne, Raoul?’
‘Oh no. Not the throne, my lord, though not so far away either. It is something of a more personal nature.’
He flushed and Mathilda stepped forward, her curiosity piqued at last.
‘Your lady has not yet acceded to your love, Lord Raoul?’
Raoul bowed low.
‘She is more than willing, my lady, but she is . . . shackled.’
Something shifted in Mathilda’s mind, like pieces of a broken pot coming together.
‘The queen,’ she said.
Raoul bowed his head and William looked him up and down in astonishment.
‘Queen Anne? Dear me, Raoul, you have set your fancy French cap high.’ He reached up and wrenched an apple from a branch over his head, taking a loud bite of it as he looked to Mathilda. ‘Shall we lend him Mabel, my dear?’
‘William!’ Mathilda took the apple from his hand and threw it to the ground. ‘No Mabel.’
‘No? Ah well, Henri may not survive his impudent invasion anyway, hey, Raoul?’
‘His passing would not, I admit, cause me great distress but you will need to move fast, Lord Duke, for he is on his way.’
‘Where?’
‘My lord . . .’
William sighed.
‘You are welcome at my court, Raoul, and in my army if you so choose.’
‘I thank you. The king plans to attack up the Orne valley and has his sights set on Caen. It is not, I believe, your most loyal city?’
‘No.’
‘And there are, I am told, rebels rising to prepare the way for the French king.’
‘Rebels?’
William groaned and Mathilda felt a rush of anger on his behalf – and her own. Had they not just spent the best part of a month in Caen? Had they not welcomed all the local lords and toured the villages and offered alms to the poor? What did they have to do to win the loyalty of the west? She looked accusingly to Mabel but the other woman threw up her hands.
‘I have been in England, my lady – at your service.’
‘At the duke’s service,’ Mathilda corrected primly. ‘But then . . . ?’
‘It is another close to her,’ Raoul said, ‘a man called Arnold de Giroie.’
‘Arnold?’ Hugh asked. ‘My cousin?’
‘The one Mabel tried to poison,’ Mathilda added tartly but William had stridden away between the trees and did not seem to hear them.
‘I have grown complacent,’ he called back. ‘The wolves never go away, you know, just sleep. Now they are prowling once more and I must sharpen my sword and polish my armour, for it seems Normandy needs me again.’
He drew an arrow into his bow and fired it at the furthest shield. It clanged against the very centre of the boss and Mathilda felt a shudder of desire at this sudden show of strength. William might not be the most romantic of husbands but he could still set her pulse racing, always had. She looked coyly towards him but he was too busy to notice.
‘Caen,’ he said grimly to Raoul. ‘Caen would certainly turn with enough enticement. And a thousand French troops would prove enough, I am sure.’
‘Two thousand, my lord,’ Raoul supplied.
‘Two thousand? Then we have work to do.’
And with that, William squared his shoulders and strode from the orchard, his men following eagerly in his wake as if they might march forth there and then. Left behind, unnoticed, Mathilda looked miserably down at the bitten apple at her feet and pitied her poor Normandy its lost peace. But she pitied the French more.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Rouen, October 1057
The army rode out barely a week later, high in their saddles and whooping with bloodlust. Then silence. Messengers reported that William was letting Henri come, luring his troo
ps out like pieces in a tafel game. They reported also that French intelligence must be good for always they found them faster than expected. Mathilda, lying cold in her empty bed with her belly pushing painfully on her bladder, knew William would suspect treachery and feared it herself. Maybe they had been too ready to trust Raoul who could, after all, be feeding information on the Normans to the French rather than the other way around. That was the trouble with spies – duplicity was sewn into their very nature.
‘What if they lose?’ Cecelia asked one day when dark clouds had settled over a still-empty Rouen and it seemed as if God himself was seeking to crush them. They were in the schoolroom, supposedly supporting Adela in her studies, but the girl needed no encouragement and was poring over a Greek text with her tutor leaving them free to talk. ‘What if William is defeated and King Henri rides into Rouen to claim it as his own?’
‘Not possible,’ Mathilda said stoutly, shifting her heavy body and straining to remember a time when her womb had been empty for more than a month. Sometimes she felt less a woman and more just a receptacle for ducal children.
‘It is possible, my lady. Not likely perhaps, praise God, but possible.’
Mathilda supposed it was, for news had just come in that William was sick of playing cat and mouse with the French and, with winter fast approaching, was to engage them in open battle. He had marched to Varaville near traitorous Caen to meet Henri’s troops at the point where they would have to cross the River Orne. Mathilda had called for maps the moment she’d heard, but a mark on a parchment was hardly a fit representation of the battle site, no doubt alive with men and horses and all the trappings of a war camp, and she had rarely felt so helpless. Roger was in control of matters of state and William matters of defence and she was left with nothing.
Part of her longed to ride forth to join her husband so she could at least be a part of whatever was happening to their people but she only needed to call up a memory of Alençon to send that foolish idea from her mind. War was best left to men but still she felt robbed of the title of regent and trapped in a world of threads and toys and babies, as if she had been in the bower so long she had been woven into one of her own woollens.
‘What would we do if we did lose?’ Cecelia fretted. ‘Would we have to flee? Where would we go?’
Mathilda shushed her. Poor Cecelia had been very nervy recently and Mathilda suspected she missed Emeline, who was even heavier with child than her duchess and so vociferously miserable at her unaccustomed bulk that Mathilda sent her to rest whenever possible.
‘If it came to it, I suppose we would go back to Flanders,’ she said to Cecelia, though the thought filled her with dread. She had pitied Judith her exile with her new husband back in ’51 and had no intention of being so humiliated herself. ‘But it is of no import, Cee. William will win. William always wins. His job is to secure our lands for our children, mine is to give birth to them. And this next one, I fear, is not far away.’
‘Another boy, think you?’
‘Perhaps. Whatever God wills.’
She looked guiltily to studious Adela, unwilling to admit even to Cecelia how much she would love another daughter. Mabel de Belleme had recently birthed her fourth child – a pretty little girl she’d called Sibyl. She’d been swiftly dispatched to the nursery with the other junior Bellemes but not before Mathilda had seen her and felt an ache of jealousy. Adela was a good child but she was undoubtedly fonder of her studies than her family and had little charm. Richard at two was a gentle, sweet-hearted boy and one-year-old William Rufus was a boisterous cuddler, at least for the length of time he could bear to keep still, but Mathilda longed for a girl she could dress up and cosset and dance with – perhaps above all dance with.
And God it seemed saw into her heart, for her fifth baby, born in less than a candle-notch one early dawn a few days later, was indeed a girl, pink as the new sun and kicking out healthily at life from the first moment. Mathilda burst into delighted tears the instant she saw her but had only a few days to enjoy the blessing before the birthing chamber was torn apart with new cries. The loudest yet.
‘It hurts so much,’ Emeline was wailing within barely a handful of cramps.
Mathilda grimaced apologetically at her.
‘Grit your teeth, my sweet, it will be worth it when you hold your child in your arms.’
And it would have been, save that once Emeline was finally holding her tiny daughter the pains started up again.
‘’Tis the afterbirth,’ Della said confidently but just minutes later she was chuckling and looking up from between Emeline’s legs to announce that she was wrong. ‘I’ve never seen an afterbirth with a head of hair before,’ she told them. ‘Push down again, Emeline my dear – you have another on the way.’
‘Trust Emeline,’ Cecelia said but she gladly took the first baby as Emeline bore down to deliver the second.
‘A boy!’ Della cried gleefully. ‘Goodness, woman, you’ve given your lord a full family in one go. What a clutch of babies for him to come home to.’
‘Pray God he does come home,’ Emeline said, gathering her twins tearfully into her arms. ‘I must send word. This time at least, the poor messenger will have joyful tidings to carry back to Varaville.’
The messenger, however, had no time to even depart with the news for they were all awoken the next morning by the clatter of a hundred hooves on the cobbles of the ducal yard. Mathilda yelped for Cecelia to help her climb into a gown, scrabbling to force her hair beneath a headdress fit to receive the soldiers.
‘Are they smiling?’ she demanded, tugging Cecelia to the window even as she clipped the fabric into place. ‘Do they look victorious?’
Cecelia squinted out of the opaque glass.
‘They look tired,’ she said dryly. ‘And hungry.’
‘Can you see William?’
‘He is there in the centre. I’d know that big black horse anywhere.’
‘And Hugh, can you see Hugh?’
‘I don’t know. I can scarce see anything through this glass and with you twitching. You had better go down yourself and find out.’
‘Quite right.’
Mathilda yanked away and made for the stairs, Cecelia running horrified in her wake, still trying to secure her clothing. And so it was that they tumbled into the yard to meet the full force of William’s glare. Mathilda pulled herself up as tall as she could manage and looked up to him, still astride Caesar.
‘Welcome home, Husband.’
‘Thank you, Wife. I see you have scarce been able to sleep for worrying about me.’
She bristled.
‘I have scarce been able to sleep for feeding your new baby, or, indeed, for helping Emeline birth hers.’
There was a gasp from behind William and Hugh leaped from his mount and came running forward.
‘Emeline? How fares she? What has she had? Is it a son or a daughter? Not that I mind, as long as it is healthy, and she is healthy, and . . .’
‘Hush, Hugh. Emeline is very well and has given you both a son and a daughter.’
‘But how . . .’
‘Twins. Just last night. You should probably go and see them.’
‘No need.’
The whole company spun to see Emeline standing in the big doorway of the Tour de Rouen in a light gown, her hair loose and a babe on each arm. She smiled almost shyly at Hugh who rushed forward, ungainly in his armour, and swept them all into his arms.
‘How lovely,’ William rasped. ‘God has been kind indeed.’
Mathilda edged nervously closer to Caesar. She should be used by now to William riding home from campaign in a foul mood but the force of his bitterness surprised her all the same.
‘What is it, my lord?’ she asked. ‘What’s wrong? Have we lost?’ He looked almost blankly down at her. ‘The invasion,’ she urged. ‘Have the French overcome us?’
‘Of course not. I’ve told you before, Mathilda, I never lose. The French are fled.’
‘Fled? That is
wonderful news. The battle then, went well?’
‘Yes.’
No more seemed forthcoming and William made no move to dismount. Mathilda was left floundering in the centre of the yard and was grateful when Fitz stepped in.
‘The duke had our army hidden, my lady, all save a tiny portion which he left in the open, like a goat on a stake to lure the enemy forward. The French could not resist. The water was low enough to ford and not one man amongst them, it seems, knew how fast the tide fills that valley once it turns. Our timing was perfect. Thousands died in the quicksands.’
Mathilda knew this should be cause for rejoicing but balked a little at the thought of all those Frenchwomen even now finding themselves widows.
‘And the king?’ she asked, focusing on the one rather than the many.
‘King Henri was in the rear. He lives, much to Lord Raoul’s chagrin, but he is broken and has run home to Paris to nurse his wounds.’
‘He is injured?’
‘His pride mainly, though word has it he took a sword in the shoulderblade.’
‘As did I,’ said William and all eyes turned his way as he at last swung himself down from the saddle.
‘You are injured?’ Mathilda asked, darting forward but he warded her off.
‘Not in body, no, but in spirit I am, for someone has been working against me, Mathilda. Whatever we did and wherever we went the French found us.’
‘I heard as much. Their spies must be very good.’
‘I agree, Wife. So good as to make one suspect they might be Norman.’
‘You have a rebel in your midst?’
‘I believe so.’
‘But who . . . ?’
William put up a hand.
‘You have birthed me a child, Mathilda, that is good. A daughter, you said?’
She was thrown by the sudden turn of his conversation.
‘That’s right, my lord.’
‘Good. I am glad to have another little princess. You have named her?’
‘I have. She will be Cecily, if it pleases you?’
‘It is a pretty name.’
It was but that was not why she had chosen it. She looked back at Cecelia, at her shoulder as ever.
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