The Young Lion

by Blanche d'Alpuget

  As the royal party left the Abbot’s bedchamber Eleanor said, ‘Estienne, I forbid you to speak with disrespect to Father Bernard. He’s a living saint and a glory to our realm.’

  The King took her hand. ‘The Queen is correct. That is also my command.’ The rain had stopped but it hung in the distance. A coach was waiting to take them back to Paris. ‘Sleep against my shoulder,’ Louis said.

  ‘I slept earlier in the night,’ she lied. ‘Lay your head in my lap, beloved.’

  The Seneschal galloped ahead and arrived at the palace well in advance of the royal coach.

  News of the Abbot’s death had spread throughout the city and citizens were already dressed in black. Black flags dripped from balconies, and merchants had shut their stalls. After the twelve days of bright clothing and noisy Christmas crowds, Paris felt eerie. In the palace courtyard the festive wreaths and flags had vanished.

  The captain of the guard came running forward to meet the Seneschal.

  ‘What’ve you found?’ the Baron hissed.

  ‘A great deal.’

  The captain led him to the Queen’s apartment. Two guards were posted outside its door. Inside were four more and the bedchamber was a shambles. All the chests stood open, disgorged of velvets, brocades and furs now strewn across the floor. On the bed the wolf-fur rug was askew. The door to her closet was shattered. As Estienne suspected it would be, the trapdoor was wide open: he could see it from the bedchamber. He stepped into the closet and kicked aside some of the Queen’s silk clothing that normally concealed the hook and chain to open the trapdoor. He closed it and pulled the rug across it.

  ‘Where’s the Greek?’ he asked.

  The captain handed him Xena’s note.

  ‘She can write?’

  ‘We think it’s a female hand, sir.’

  ‘Any other notes?’

  ‘We found this beneath the mattress. It’s in some language …’

  ‘It’s in fucking langue d’oc, that’s what it’s in,’ the Seneschal said. ‘This is the Queen’s hand, and her mother tongue. What’s the translation?’

  ‘We haven’t …’

  ‘Take it to a troubadour! There’s a score of the parasites hanging around the servants’ quarters. Fornicating or drunk.’

  While he waited for a translator the Seneschal had three maids who groomed the Queen’s bedchamber brought in. They were older women, some of them employed in the palace since childhood.

  ‘Sit down,’ he ordered them.

  They looked one to the other. ‘We’re not allowed to sit in the Queen’s apartment,’ one said.

  ‘You are if I tell you to.’

  The Baron remained standing, pacing back and forth in front of them. He gave a flick of his arm to the guards, including the captain, to leave the apartment, then he dropped the iron bar over its double doors. He continued pacing in silence, every so often shooting a menacing glance at the women. He was waiting until he smelled fear.

  At length he asked, ‘Which of you will be the first to tell me what marks you observed in the Queen’s bed?’

  They looked at each other. Even they were aware of the stench coming from their bodies.

  ‘Must I take you downstairs?’

  They understood.

  ‘We saw fluids,’ one said at last.

  ‘What date?’

  ‘During December and the Christmas Court, sir.’

  ‘Of course it was during December and the Christmas Court! I don’t expect you to remember what happened before the Queen went to Outremer. Was it after Christmas Eve, perhaps? Or after Christmas night?’

  Another woman said, ‘Both, sir.’

  ‘And before that?’

  The woman who had spoken first said, ‘There were other times …’

  ‘Perhaps following the victory parade through Paris?’ the Seneschal prompted.

  She nodded.

  The women were less frightened, he observed, now they were talking. ‘What else did you find?’ Their faces shuttered. Estienne stopped pacing. ‘I have to tell you why I’m questioning you. On nights when the Queen lay with the King in her bedchamber, somebody stole jewels from the King’s apartment. On nights when the Queen lay with the King in his apartment, somebody – the same man, we presume – stole jewels from her apartment. And performed disgraceful acts in Her Highness’s bed.’

  They gasped, then sighed with relief that they were not under suspicion of a crime. One smiled.

  ‘So what was it that you found beside fluids?’

  ‘Hairs, sir.’

  ‘On a pillow?’

  They nodded.

  ‘Were they unusual?’

  ‘We were surprised, because Their Highnesses’ hair is dark, and these hairs were gold or flaxen.’

  ‘That,’ the Seneschal said, ‘is what I expected. It tells me who the thief is.’ He paced up and down, but spun suddenly. ‘Where are they? One of you has kept the hairs, haven’t you?’

  He could see from their blank faces they had not. ‘You can leave. You’ve been loyal and faithful servants. Tell no one I’ve questioned you.’ He gave each woman a coin.

  When he unbarred the door for them he found the guards’ captain waiting outside with a dishevelled young troubadour. ‘Pulled him off a laundry maid,’ the guardsman said.

  The Seneschal took the captain inside the apartment while the troubadour waited in the corridor. ‘Gather our ten fastest horses and men. They ride for Normandy within the hour. I believe the Duke has abducted the Queen’s maid. She could well have … information.’

  The captain hesitated.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Sir, the maid could also be floating in the Seine. There was a man in the Queen’s closet. He used her privy.’

  Estienne clapped his shoulder. ‘Excellent, Augustin. If we look immediately we may find the body before it sinks. But get those riders off immediately.’

  He did not invite the troubadour to enter the apartment. ‘What’s this poem, boy?’ he asked.

  In his lazy southern drawl the troubadour read out:

  Sweet Golden One

  You call me

  But you do not force me

  You are calling me but

  You give me freedom to decide

  Yearning and seeking

  I long for you

  ‘Did you write it?’

  ‘Nup.’

  ‘Is it the work of one of your colleagues?’

  ‘Doubt it.’ The troubadour yawned. ‘It’s not very …’

  ‘Not very what?’

  ‘Complicated. Look at the metre – blah, blah, blah, blah. Blah. Anybody could write this. It’s a prayer, more than a poem.’

  ‘What’s this at the top of it?’

  ‘A dedication.’

  ‘To whom?’

  ‘Fucked if I know. God, I think.’

  The Seneschal glared at him. ‘Get back to your rutting, lout.’

  The troubadour whistled as he sauntered down the stairs.

  The dedication said: For my beloved G.

  ‘How dare you!’ the Queen said. She stood at the entrance to her apartment looking at the shambles within. She turned, ‘Louis! Look what they’ve done to my clothes! Where’s my maid?’

  The King frowned. ‘Estienne?’

  The Seneschal took him aside, whispering to him what had transpired since yesterday. As he had no evidence, he did not mention the Duke’s hair found on the Queen’s pillows. He handed Louis the letter written by Xena, and the poem in langue d’oc.

  Louis read the letter first. ‘She discovered the trapdoor while looking for a thimble?’ His voice rose with incredulity. ‘Nobody’s found it in more than three hundred years.’ He glanced after Eleanor, who had run across her bedchamber and stepped through the shattered door to the closet. ‘You suspect the maid lay with Normandy? This letter does not make it clear who the man was.’

  ‘I suspect Normandy.’

  Louis turned to the guards’ captain. ‘You have been e
xtraordinarily lax! The Queen’s life could have been in danger.’

  He strode to the broken door. Eleanor could feel her heart pounding and knew blood was mounting to her hair roots. All the windows of her apartment were uncovered. The sky was grey but it was broad daylight and beneath her white headdress her face was scarlet. Louis’s expression was furious.

  ‘Translate this for me,’ he said, handing her the poem. She did so, but omitted the dedication. Eleanor herself had taught him her language when they were first married.

  Louis said, ‘It’s dedicated, I see, to “my beloved G”.’

  ‘It is indeed,’ Eleanor replied. Her glance was downcast; she clasped her hands together.

  ‘Who is G? To whom have you written with such yearning love? Such surrender?’

  ‘The Angel Gabriel,’ Eleanor whispered. ‘I prayed to Gabriel to send us a son – as it was he who announced to the Virgin that she was bearing a son. I put the prayer beneath my mattress, hoping that after you and I had lain together the angel would bring an heir for France to my womb.’ She began to sob.

  Louis was speechless. He crossed himself and muttered, ‘May I be forgiven.’

  ‘For what?’ Eleanor gasped between sobs.

  ‘For the evil thought that possessed me. I thought this was a love poem, written to a man.’

  ‘Oh, Louis. No!’

  ‘Clean up this mess,’ he ordered as he guided her out of her apartment into his own.

  The King’s apartment was much larger than the Queen’s. It had many chambers and dark corners. He locked the door and walked off, leaving her standing in the anteroom. When he returned he was bare-chested and holding something she could not quite see. She gasped when he handed it to her.

  ‘I can’t!’ she said.

  ‘You must. The impurity in me prevents you from conceiving. You must!’

  The scourge was so heavy she had to step back three paces and hold it with both hands to wield it properly.

  Through the door of the King’s apartment the Seneschal and the captain of the guards could hear the Queen screaming at him, and Louis shouting prayers to God. ‘After this, he’ll lie with her,’ Estienne said. ‘Tell the kitchen to prepare dinner for them. They’ll be hungry.’

  He and the captain waited outside the royal apartment napping and talking quietly until dusk drew on. They realised the monarchs would probably spend the night together, and could even be asleep by now.

  As he was about to leave the Seneschal remembered something. ‘How did you know a man used her privy?’ he asked.

  ‘There was the print of a man’s boots, with some straw and dung from the stables. He washed his hands and face in there. We found cloths with mud, blood and horsehair on them. And some hair.’

  ‘What colour?’

  ‘Copper red.’

  ‘Red! You say red?’ The thought struck him like lightning: not the father, but the son! Pissing in her privy! Washing his face and hands in there!

  He himself would never have the effrontery to enter that private, royal space. The fury he felt against the Queen and her Anjevins stung like the bite of wasps. Every grievance in his life flew out of him. I’ll exterminate them, he promised himself. The whole rotten tribe.

  The thought calmed him. ‘You know, Augustin,’ he said to the captain, ‘if we fail to catch them in the next few days – whether they’ve taken the Greek with them or killed her – we’ll get them soon enough. The fifth of March is the date. On that day, France takes back the Vexin. And takes Normandy.’ For the first time in more than a day, he laughed.

  The captain swiftly calculated that the fifth of March would be a moonless night, but wondered if there were another reason for the date. Estienne read the query in his face.

  ‘It’s the day after the son’s seventeenth birthday, when Geoffrey Foulques hands the duchy to young Henry. They’ll all be drunk from celebrating.’

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The tavern where Henry, Geoffrey and Guillaume stayed was across the river from the school of Notre Dame and a haunt for European students. The three men, gowned as students and all with a strong command of Latin, passed as scholars seeking the new ideas and ancient wisdom from Greece and Rome that had set intellects on fire throughout the crusader lands. ‘Thought and knowledge have been reborn,’ men told each other. They worshipped Aristotle as a god.

  The Anjevins kept to themselves as much as possible. The tavern-keeper inquired about the long wooden box in their room. ‘Our books,’ Geoffrey smiled.

  Early on the morning of the Feast of Epiphany, Guillaume had ridden with Henry to St Denis and waited outside the abbey. They returned to the tavern in silence, arriving well before dark.

  ‘I should change my tunic,’ Henry muttered. Guillaume said nothing. Henry shrugged. ‘No point, I suppose.’

  ‘Just put the gown over it and wash your hands,’ Geoffrey said.

  Henry strode to his father. ‘Before I do, kiss Hamelin goodbye.’ He rubbed one bloodied hand then the other down his father’s face. ‘You can enjoy the smell again later, sweet and fresh. Or perhaps I’ll drown her in the Seine.’

  ‘We have to make a decision,’ Guillaume said. ‘I’ll steal the horses, Henry will kill the maid …’

  ‘If you broke her neck it might be better,’ Geoffrey interjected.

  ‘Father, what’s better about having your neck broken rather than your throat cut? You must explain that to me one day.’

  Geoffrey sat staring at the fire. When his sons left he found a looking glass and wiped the blood from his nose and forehead. From ecstasy to hell, he thought. On Christmas night Eleanor had breathed into his ear, ‘Get me with child!’

  Before it was dark, Henry and Guillaume had walked to the palace. Geoffrey had described how to find the correct pillar in the stables, and the code of knocks for Xena to open the trapdoor. When they arrived at the gates they announced themselves to the guards in Latin. They were, they said, clerks of a bishop whose horse had gone lame on his way to the Epiphany feast. They asked if they might enter and borrow a mount. The guardsmen were cheerful from the spiced wine issued at Christmas and waved them through. The brothers embraced at the back of the Queen’s stable, taking care not to frighten the Arabian mare who slept in there. Then Henry clenched his dagger between his teeth and climbed up the pole.

  He said to Xena, ‘I’ll cause you no pain. But the Seneschal and the inquisitor will torture you. And under torture you’ll tell them everything. You’ll even invent stories about the Queen that’ll make her sound more wicked than she is –’

  ‘She’s not wicked,’ Xena said.

  ‘Alright, she’s not wicked. But the Seneschal needs an excuse to confiscate her dowry, because if she manages to persuade the bishops to grant her a divorce, her dowry must be returned to her. The Baron will want proof of adultery so he can legally strip her to poverty. What’s more, if she doesn’t soon produce an heir for France, my guess would be that she’ll suddenly “die of fever”. That’s what happens to sterile queens when stubborn kings won’t divorce.’ He stopped, his smile sardonic. ‘My father is a tree that bears abundant fruit. Your lady was wise in her choice of lovers.’

  ‘My lady is in love with him!’ Xena objected.

  ‘Xena, you can be in love. Troubadours can be in love. Merchants can be in love. Even knights can be in love. But love is unsuitable for monarchs. It interferes with the exercise of power.’

  ‘The King is in love with the Queen.’

  ‘That is exactly his problem.’ Henry’s temper was rising. I should never have started talking to you, he thought. Now it’s even harder.

  ‘You don’t really want to kill me, do you?’ she asked softly.

  ‘Nobody could ever want to kill you.’ His voice was husky.

  He bent to his right boot and from it pulled out a leather sheath. Inside was a long-bladed knife. ‘Lombardis call this Cupid’s Arrow. It reaches the heart more quickly than any other weapon.’

  He put his han
ds on her shoulders and pushed her to the floor until she was kneeling.

  ‘What’s sacred to you?’ he asked.

  ‘My family,’ Xena whispered.

  ‘Vow!’ he said. ‘Say, “I vow by my sacred family I’ll never allow myself to be captured alive.”’

  She repeated the words.

  Henry handed her the stiletto. ‘You hold it like this, under your left breast, between the fifth and sixth ribs. Then give a strong, fast push with the full force of both hands. Adieu! Have you got riding boots?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Hide it inside your boot.’

  He gave her his cloak and threw his student gown over his bloodied tunic.

  When they slid down the pole into the back of the stable Henry glanced around for Guillaume, but there was no sign of him nor of the grey mare. I hope he took the mare, Henry thought. The girl can ride her.

  The rain continued.

  The cloak was too long for her.

  ‘Just hold it up as if you’re keeping it out of the mud. And take longer steps. You’re a man.’ He carried the bundle of her belongings, tied in a cloak they’d snatched from the floor of the closet.

  In the rain few people, mounted or on foot, paid attention to pedestrians. The guardsmen, half drunk now, did not put their heads into the wet to look at Henry and Xena.

  They ran across the bridge to the other island, then crossed the river again and in a dark laneway, stopped. Henry whistled a song Xena had heard the knights sing as the army made its way home. Shortly a loud whistle answered him. Henry said, ‘Straight ahead, then left.’

  When Geoffrey saw that Xena accompanied Henry he beckoned him out of earshot of the students who were crowded inside the tavern to escape the weather. ‘Are you mad?’ he exclaimed in Catalan. ‘Why didn’t you do what you promised? We’ll never escape!’

  ‘One murder in cold blood is enough for me, Father. We’ll take her to Normandy.’

  Guillaume hissed. ‘Brother, they’ll be pursuing us a few hours from now. A woman can’t ride hard enough. And we haven’t got enough horses.’

  ‘You two piss off then,’ Henry said. ‘I’ll take her myself.’