The Royal Griffin (The Plantagenents Book 2)

by Juliet Dymoke

  'One can't wrest blood from a stone, I know that, but whereas the Count has no money, my landowners have and they are naught but a pack of skinflints.'

  'They will do well enough when the day comes. I hear talk of a pageant on the river and other festivities. Your bride will not be shamed.'

  'I do not know how you hear all these things.'

  'I listen,' Richard said, 'which is sometimes more to the point than talking. Well, I can lend you a thousand pounds, Harry, for' – he paused thoughtfully – 'shall we say the castle of Wallingford?'

  'Agreed, agreed. You are a true brother, Richard.'

  The Earl of Cornwall smiled. 'Not so true perhaps. I have you in check.’

  The King, in high good humour, conceded the game. Any other meaning to his brother's words eluded him.

  The wedding was magnificent. Eleanota La Belle had a breath-taking beauty that raised vociferous cheers wherever she went. At the wedding in Canterbury Cathedral she wore a shimmering gown that drew gasps of admiration from all the ladies there. 'Paid for, or not paid for, by our King,' a cynical voice was heard to mutter, but the occasion was too romantic and exciting for the kill-joys to be listened to.

  They rode on to London and down flag-hung Chepe and Ludgate Hill towards Westminster and her crowning, a procession of prominent citizens greeting them in finest array led by the King's purveyor of spices who fancied himself as a dancer and a wag in his less serious moments. The banquet that followed the setting of that rich diadem on the young Queen's dark head was perhaps the most spectacular ever seen in St Stephen's Hall, every man who had any part in it rewarded with one gift or another. The London citizens claimed the right to cook the royal food while others passed wine in golden cups and country girls brought in wreaths of holly and ivy to decorate the ball, and at the end, every article used was carried away by some delighted attendant.

  Gilbert Marshal, who had further quarrelled with the King by wedding that very Princess Marjorie of Scotland with whom Henry had once imagined himself in love, was permitted, in the general flush of goodwill, to carry out his duties as Marshal while the Earl of Leicester discharged his office of Steward for the first time.

  Simon appeared in ceremonial robes carrying a golden ewer, a napkin over his arm, for the King to wash his hands and he supervised the serving of the banquet, seeing that the richest dishes went to the most high-born guests. The choice of these dishes had been his prerogative and as he was keenly interested in food and especially in the choice of wine with a flair for the unusual, the banquet drew exclamations of appreciation from the guests. There were peacocks roasted, and served redressed in their own colourful feathers, swans' flesh sliced in a succulent sauce, sturgeon boiled and decorated with olives, oysters and lampreys, and a concoction of eggs and rice coloured with saffron and spiced with ginger. Pastries of all sorts, bowls of almonds and raisins followed and there was marchpane coloured and formed into the shape of bells and flowers and bridal wreaths. When the Earl sat down in his place beside the Princess Eleanor she congratulated him on the achievement.

  'Thank you, lady. I wish only to please his grace.’

  'You told me once you would make yourself an Englishman. I think you are succeeding.'

  He smiled and she thought how it illuminated his face. 'I have grown to love England, and not just those of my own rank here.' He had slipped easily into an assumption of the position that went with his title, his days of empty pockets forgotten. 'My people at Leicester are greatly to my liking. There is something about English yeoman who loves the land that endears him to me. He is like your sturdy oak trees.'

  'I'm glad,' she said and added, glancing along the high table, 'I doubt if the Queen's relations regard England in that way. They seem to look down their noses at our customs – but of course they will be returning to Provence after the celebrations.' Simon followed her gaze and his smile faded. The Queen had brought a vast train with her, not only of servants, chaplains, cooks and grooms, but also three uncles, and in the days that followed it seemed that the King was enchanted by them. Instead of sending her escort home he kept his beautiful bride's entire retinue at court. 'More mouths to feed,' was Richard's practical comment, but Henry refused to listen. One uncle, Peter, he made Earl of Richmond and gave him a piece of land on the river not far from Westminster where he set about building himself a palace which he named the Savoy. Another uncle, Boniface, darkly handsome and with an overbearing manner, had been made a bishop while still a very young man but he seemed to care nothing for this. He had wanted to be a soldier and came to his niece's court to delight her with his bold wit and charming manners and to annoy the King's English courtiers with equal intensity. Henry now did nothing without the advice of the Queen's uncles and filled the lesser offices at court with other hangers-on to the disgust of those dismissed. 'Jesu!' Earl Ferrars remarked to his brother-in-law. 'Is England to be ruled by these improvident Provencals?'

  'It seems so,' William de Braose agreed in his harsh voice. 'The King is besotted by them, but they're nothing but a pack of singers and versifiers. I'd send the lot packing.'

  Gilbert Marshal was standing with them in the Courtyard waiting to ride out with the King, and on this January day he wrapped his furred mantle closer about his shoulders for the wind was icy, stirring the ragged ivy leaves against the palace wall. 'I would turn every foreigner out of England,' was his comment, 'not just the Queen's train. Did ever a woman have so many uncles and cousins? And I'd include the jumped-up so-called Earl of Leicester.'

  'Why?' Earl Ferrars raised his sandy eyebrows. He was not a man of great intelligence but he worried at a matter until he understood it. 'Sir Simon has not made himself obnoxious as they have. True, he has the Beaumont holdings, but after all his aunt was Countess in her day, and old Chester, Jesu rest his soul, thought him worthy of them.'

  'I do not like the way he looks at my brother's' widow,' Pembroke said grumpily. 'Have you not noticed how often he sits beside her or brings his horse alongside hers?'

  Ferrars shook his head and de Braose said, 'I'd not noticed it either. You are over-suspicious, Gilbert, and choleric since the King quarrelled with your brother.'

  'Quarrelled! He had my brother murdered and "then begrudged me my inheritance. It was more than a quarrel, my friend!'

  'Hush,' Ferrars broke in, 'or you'll find yourself in a cell in the ground – or under it. I doubt the Princess Eleanor would consider marriage again, and in any case don't make an enemy of Simon de Montfort. He has the King's ear.'

  'Another damned foreigner!'

  'Not now,' Ferrars said. 'Get yourself an heir, Gilbert, and look to your own affairs instead of worrying about your brother's widow.'

  'God, am I not trying?' Gilbert retorted in exasperation. 'I sport myself every night until my wife begs for sleep and still she is not pregnant.' He thought briefly of his elder sisters and their anxiety about that old bishop's curse. What nonsense! He would show them he had a man's loins.

  De Ferrars was still thinking about the earlier conversation. 'I wonder what the Princess Eleanor thinks of our new Queen. My lady says La Belle is very proud for a mere penniless count's daughter, and the Princess is put out of countenance.'

  'Eleanor does not confide in me,' Gilbert said. 'Perhaps my sister Isabella could tell us, but she is so busy with her new son she thinks of naught else.'

  Isabella could indeed have told them had she wished to confide in her turbulent brother and brothers-in-law for Eleanor came to see her and they sat over the babe's cradle, gossiping and playing with him. He was a lusty boy named Henry after the King, and for a while they talked only of him; of the care of babies and the golden future Isabella planned for him.

  But presently when she spoke of everyone's hopes for an heir to the throne before too long she asked Eleanor whether she liked her new sister-in-law.

  Eleanor lifted her head. 'I do not like to sit on a stool while she sits on a throne beside Henry. Nor do I like that uncle of hers, Boniface. H
e wormed the story of my vow out of Archbishop Edmund and suggested a nunnery might be more to my taste than court life. If he was not the Queen's uncle I'd have him whipped for that impertinence. The Queen is – oh, pleasing I suppose, but in such a condescending way. One forgets she's as young as I was when I wed William. If he had lived how different it would all have been.'

  Isabella settled the baby in his cradle. 'It's a lonely life you've condemned yourself to.'

  Eleanor sighed, a sound that seemed to come from deep within, expressing so much. 'I think I shall become like the Maid and I used to pity her.'

  'God forbid!'

  'Nevertheless I must bear it. And you have known sorrow too.'

  'To lose two brothers and two babes?' Isabella looked down at the sleeping infant as if willing him to survive the hazards of childhood. 'And Richard has taken the Cross, did you know? He and a dozen others, including Sir Simon de Montfort. At least it means he won't be forever at Henry's side, for a while anyway.'

  'You don't like Sir Simon?'

  'A cold man,' Isabella said, 'and set on his own gain. Oh, he has charm enough, I grant you, but though Henry has not confirmed him in his title yet, he calls himself Earl of Leicester.'

  'He has the Leicester lands.'

  'Do you defend him, another foreigner? I thought you did not like him either?'

  Eleanor shrugged. 'I don't think about him one way or another,' she said and at the back of her mind knew that it was a lie. 'You will miss Richard.'

  Isabella looked over her head to the window. 'Yes. He will go to fight in the Holy Land and I shall lie in bed at night and fear for him. What it is to love a man so much that to be without him –’ she broke off. 'Forgive me, I should not have said that. I would not hurt you for the world.'

  'If I had borne a child –’ Eleanor began and then stopped for she saw an odd expression on her sister-in-law's face.

  'It is strange,' Isabella said. 'William had no child, nor my brother Richard's lady. Did you know that once in Ireland after a quarrel, an old bishop cursed my father and swore none of his sons would have heirs of their body? Neither William nor Richard had seed of their love, nor Gilbert as yet and he has been wed these two years, yet we five sisters have all borne healthy babes; though' – she gave a laugh – 'Sybilla with her five daughters would give much to have a son. Of course Waiter and Anselm are not yet married, but I believe the curse will be on them too. Ireland is a strange country, full of weird prophets, bishops though they may be.'

  'William never told me,' Eleanor said.

  'I think he’d not want to believe it, nor wish to worry you, but I believe now it is true.'

  'At least it did not extend to you,' Eleanor said, surprised at the seriousness with which the practical Isabella took the meanderings of a long-dead old man. 'Henry is as healthy a babe as I have ever seen. What will you do when Richard is away? Will you go to one of your sisters? Or stay at Wallingford?'

  'Matilda wants me to spend some time at Norwich with her. She is not well and would welcome my company, but Richard will leave me in charge of so many affairs. He is so clever with business and my head must work for his.'

  'I have been meaning to ask the King for an establishment of my own now that the court has a Queen. If he agrees, will you come and help me to put it to rights?'

  'Willingly,' Isabella said and added, 'I thought you would soon wish for it. One court, one Queen!'

  It was not, however, until after a summer occupied by bridal visits, processions round the country that all might see their new Queen, that Henry gave Eleanor a castle for her sole use. During the summer she had attended the Queen and they were much together but even Henry, besotted as he was, could not fail to observe that there were small frictions between sister and sister-in-law. Eleanor had been too long the first Princess in the land and she found it hard to step down, while the Queen, flushed with the brilliance of her marriage, was too preoccupied and too lacking in tact to be as careful as she might with the King's widowed sister, still so young and beautiful. The observant Richard pointed out to Henry that it would be wise to give Eleanor what she wanted, and the King, daily falling more and more in love, agreed. With a gesture of genuine affection he offered the castle at Odiham with the manor and park and all hunting rights. It was an almost equal distance between Winchester and Windsor.

  'Most suitable,' the Queen said and added, 'You will be able to visit us often. But I expect you will be much occupied there, dear sister.'

  There was nothing in her words that could be misconstrued but Eleanor sensed a meaning underneath, a hint that her visits need not be too frequent.

  'As your grace says,' she agreed. 'I have of course been all my life so much at court, as befits my station, that it will be a pleasant change to be quiet at Odiham.'

  The Queen coloured a little. She did not like being reminded that Count Raimond could not compare as a father to a King of England, even if that King were John Lackland. 'Naturally, your position as vowed to perpetual widowhood would make you prefer retirement,' she said. 'You must find our frolics tiresome.'

  'Not at all. I have no wish to cast a gloom upon your grace's nuptials.' Eleanor's tone was smooth. 'Especially as our life here is so new to you.'

  These barbs passed unnoticed by Henry and he merely added cheerfully, 'Well, do not stay away too long, sister, and when all is set to rights we will come and visit you. I shall give you that fine black palfrey the Archbishop of York sent to me – she is too light for my weight but she will carry you well.'

  It was after Christmas when at last Eleanor journeyed to inspect her new home. The frost and snow of the twelve days of Christmas yielded to a milder spell and she and Isabella rode there together accompanied by Isabella's fourteen-year-old son by her first marriage. Richard had not yet departed on his crusade but he was busy about numerous affairs and agreed to part with his wife while he went abroad to visit his brother-in-law the Emperor Frederick.

  The young Richard de Clare, temporarily free from his guardian Gilbert Marshal, enjoyed accompanying his mother. He was growing into a slender youth, proud of his looks and his figure, though he overrated the effect of his long angular face and fair hair that would undoubtedly thin with age. He was very much aware of his position as Earl of Gloucester, Clare and Hertford, titles he had held since he was eight years old; he was enormously wealthy and owing to the wise advice of his stepfather and the jealous guardianship of his uncle, money slipped daily into his coffers. He bore himself dutifully towards his mother but Eleanor suspected that a great deal went on under that cultivated charm. She also had a suspicion that there was a slight tension between mother and son, but she had too much else on her mind to dwell on it.

  The castle of Odiham was not long built, with an eye to comfort rather than defence. The octagonal keep was near a small meandering river and the moat, so far from being considered an obstacle to would-be besiegers, was used as a fishpond.

  'We'll eat well during the Lenten fast,' Eleanor said laughing.

  'I can see a great many pike, and roach too, swimming there, and I don't envisage having to hold my castle against marauders!'

  The hall was small but of sufficient size for her retinue, many of whom she had sent on ahead under her steward, Sir John Penrose, to see that all was in readiness for her. Craftsmen had glazed the windows of the hall and there was a fireplace set in the centre and a fire burning there against her arrival. She stood warming her hands while an usher hurried to bring hot spiced wine for her and the Countess Isabella.

  In the bedroom above there was also a fire, a new chimney set into the wall and a great bed where she would sleep, and Isabella too for as long as she remained a guest there. Doll and Megonwy were in their element unpacking their lady's toiletries, setting her jewel boxes on a table, her gowns in a long chest where the materials would not crush.

  Supper was served in the hall, trestles set up for the household, a dozen knights and their ladies attending the Princess, while the young E
arl of Gloucester served her and his mother on his knee. Eleanor's minstrel, whom she and William had brought back from Nantes long ago, sang to them and she sat at the centre of the table on the dais, glad to have her own establishment again.

  After a week Gloucester left them, returning to his guardian Gilbert Marshal, and on the afternoon of his departure Isabella sent their ladies out of the room and said abruptly, 'I wished to speak to you privately.'

  'I thought something was amiss,' Eleanor nodded. 'I could not help noticing – '

  'It is Gloucester.' Isabella never referred to her son other than by his title. 'You know that some years ago, when I first wed your brother, I sent the boy to St Edmund's Bury to study? My lord de Burgh's wife, the Princess Margaret, was there also with her daughter Megotta.'

  'I remember. My lord Hubert was shut up in Chepstow then, and sent them both into sanctuary.'

  'Well, Gloucester was still technically under their guardianship, although Henry misliked it, and while he was there the Princess, whether on Hubert's orders I know not, arranged that Gloucester and Megotta – indeed I hardly know how to say it, and what your brother will do I cannot imagine!'

  'Isabella! What are you trying to tell me? That Princess Margaret betrothed those two children?'

  'Worse than that! She had them married by her own chaplain.' Isabella's face was pale with anger as she came out with the plain truth.

  'But how could that be, without Hubert’s consent, let alone my brother's?'

  'Oh, she must have persuaded the priest into it and in Hubert's place she had some authority over the boy. Sometimes I think our way of sending our sons to be brought up by others is a foolish thing to do, albeit they find less softness than at home with a doting mother.' A faint smile crossed her face but disappeared almost at once. 'I am so distressed about the whole affair and I do not know what to do. My son seems not to think it a matter for such concern, but then he does not know what the King's anger can be like.'