The Young Lion

by Blanche d'Alpuget

  ‘Her understanding of politics is admirable,’ Henry said, grinning. The grin was to hide his thought: such a woman is capable of any treachery.

  ‘You’ll come to respect her intellect. And no man can ignore her beauty.’

  ‘Of course, Papa,’ Henry murmured.

  Xena, with Isabella, Guillaume and the girls had all moved from Rouen to a house in Le Mans that Geoffrey had given Isabella. Once the Dukes’ duties as hosts to their most senior vassals were over and they had attended the Shepherd’s Mass and the Mass of Christmas morning, father and son rode down to their womenfolk. Xena was now eight months pregnant, and to Henry more beautiful than ever. She had told him, ‘The day the baby first kicked inside me, such an abundance of love flowed I felt transported to sublime peace.’ Her large, dark eyes were as soft as a fawn’s. When Henry looked into them, his companion star of war faded and he was overcome by war’s deepest yearning. ‘You bring me peace,’ he murmured.

  Xena no longer wore her hair tied tightly, as she had when he first knew her. If she were indoors she wore it loose like the other women, only veiling herself when she left the house. On the afternoon of Christmas Day, Henry pushed aside black ringlets from her ripened breasts to suck on them. He made love in a frenzy of tenderness, holding his strength in check. Through the early months of her pregnancy he had caressed her only with his tongue, sliding it into her fragile, flowering body. She shuddered with delight as he licked inside her toes, her thighs and the soft flat daisy that slept between her buttocks.

  ‘If it’s a boy,’ she said quietly, ‘I want him circumcised.’

  Henry pretended he had not heard. He mumbled some endearment that could have meant anything.

  Xena had never corrected the general assumption that she was of the Greek Orthodox faith. She prayed in secret, keeping her Torah in a small sandalwood box, which was constructed as a puzzle. She’d had it with her the day the Christian knights had burned the synagogue.

  ‘I want to name him Avram, after my father,’ she added.

  Women have strange notions when they’re with child, Henry thought. It hurt him deeply that she could want the baby to be separated from him, by being Jewish with a Jewish name. But he believed that in another few weeks, when she had given birth, she would think differently.

  ‘And if it’s a girl you want to call her after your mother?’

  She looked uncertain. ‘Isabella has become my mother. Maybe …’

  Henry sighed with relief and laid his ear against her belly. ‘The baby’s singing!’ he said.

  ‘Don’t be silly.’

  ‘I can hear it sing, “Hello Mama. Hello Papa …”’

  She said, ‘If you let me sit up I’ll sing for you.’

  He lay with his hair trailing over her thighs, gazing up at her rounded honey-coloured belly within which so much of his future hid. How the womb torments a man, he thought. We all fear women because of it. Even when we adore them.

  She was singing in a language he didn’t know. It was the song for Hanukkah, a couple of days late.

  Two bedchambers away Geoffrey said to Isabella, ‘Promise me something. Henry is determined Xena’s baby will be born in the Le Mans castle, as I was and he was. I think he’s superstitious and believes if it’s born there, it’ll be a son. I’ve persuaded Matilda to go to Caen so you, Xena, Maria and the midwife can stay in the castle. But Isabella, if it’s a boy you must not let Xena take him anywhere unaccompanied for the first couple of weeks.’

  She lay back on the pillows and studied him with her grey eyes. She knew Geoffrey was still infatuated with another woman and suspected he had held Christmas in Le Mans because it would be easier for him to see her, whoever she was. But she felt happy for him. In the past couple of months he had rejuvenated. He was like a man ten years younger than his thirty-odd years.

  ‘If it’s a boy …?’ She turned her deep Catalan gaze on his clever green eyes. ‘If it’s a boy Xena will want him circumcised on the eighth day. Is that it?’

  Geoffrey shook his head in disbelief. ‘She told you she’s a Jew!’

  ‘Oh, darling – when we went to the markets she would ask the butcher to bleed the chickens and geese, and she’d say a little prayer as he cut their throats. The sight of the pig-meat stalls made her ill. Haven’t you noticed we’ve not eaten pork for a year?’

  ‘God willing, the baby will live and prosper. But, Isabella, the English barons will never accept a Jew among them. So you must, my dear …’

  The Mass of the Magi was that afternoon and down the corridor Henry pulled on his riding boots. ‘Come and sit on my knee,’ he said. He lifted her hair away from her ear and whispered, ‘The moment I saw you, in Paris, a voice inside me said, Behold! This is the woman you will always love.’ He had tears in his eyes.

  ‘So that night, when we fled and the French nearly captured me … you would have fought them for me?’

  Henry’s tears vanished and he laughed. ‘Fought them? I’d have cut them to ribbons!’

  ‘There were ten of them!’

  ‘But they’d be fighting me!’ Henry said. ‘I summon an army to my fist. If I’m outnumbered I charge as if I had a thousand knights behind me. And you know? The enemy turns into chickens: cluck, cluck, cluck.’

  She laughed with him but after a few moments became serious. ‘If you love me so much you’d risk your life for me, why don’t you marry me?’

  Henry turned his face away, then looked back at her. ‘You’re not serious, are you?’

  ‘I’m completely serious.’

  ‘Well, Rachel, I told you something the night we met: that love is unsuitable for kings. And I shall be a king.’

  ‘You’ll marry for money and politics?’

  ‘I have to.’

  She nodded. ‘We believe that such a union, without love, is an offence to God. And that the offspring of such a union …’ Slowly she raised her heavy-laden body from his thighs. ‘Good night.’

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  When Prince Eustace received a letter from his uncle announcing he desired to stay with him for a few weeks, he was in a quandary. The Bishop would never forgive him for the disaster at Carlisle. He had upbraided his nephew, ‘We had a simple plan that you complicated with all kinds of foolery: attempts on his life in the tournament, persuading Edith to try to seduce him …’

  Eustace’s face burned with embarrassment as he recalled his uncle’s glance of disgust.

  Now there were commotions in the district, he would prefer to keep Aelbad out of sight.

  Animals, mostly hounds and dogs, were disappearing then returning to their owners blind or showing the effects of unknown but eventually fatal afflictions. The peasants were whispering a werewolf was abroad, and it would be only a matter of time before a child became its victim. Local priests and monks were in a panic because despite prayers and exorcisms the strange deaths continued.

  Then one day the villagers’ fears were realised. A little girl was found dead but with the unmistakable signs of having drunk poison.

  Eustace summoned Aelbad before him.

  ‘I’m sending you to France,’ he said. ‘It’s the answer to that dream you spoke of, in which you were ordered to attempt to find a cure for lepers. The lepers live in a colony administered by monks just outside the walls of Paris. In daylight, in good weather, on a strong mount you could cross the border from there to Normandy in a few hours.’

  ‘Not even a change of horse?’

  ‘Indeed. Or you could first go by ship. There’s more river traffic up the Seine than on the Thames. In fact, if you wish, you may sail from Portsmouth to Rouen, and spend a day or so there before continuing to Paris.’

  ‘When do I leave, sire?’

  ‘Before the Bishop arrives,’ Eustace said. ‘A scribe is writing to the holy fathers advising them of your vocation – and that, young as you are, you have already worked on curative potions for leprosy. I mention that your name is Robert and you’re the orphan of a man who carried
the cross but died of fever in Outremer. You know little about him because on learning of his death, your mother died of grief. You were very young.’

  ‘So I was,’ Aelbad said.

  ‘You may, if you think it essential, confess that your further aim is to study at the school of medicine in Salerno. But you do not feel worthy yet.’ The Prince looked hard at Aelbad. ‘Nor are you. You’re worthy of nothing.’

  The youth dropped his gaze. ‘No, lord Prince,’ he murmured. ‘I owe everything to you.’

  Eustace beckoned him forward. ‘I’m fond of you, you know. Give me your hand.’ He slipped a ring onto the child’s stained and warty forefinger. Aelbad’s expression lit with glee.

  ‘It bears your crest, sire!’

  ‘You will remember me and the work you do for me, will you not, every time you look at it, my son?’ For a moment he thought he saw a glistening in Aelbad’s eye. ‘Pack all your herbs and other bits and pieces,’ he added. ‘The Bishop arrives in five days. Such a Godly man will have success, I’m sure, in exorcising the demons that have been abroad in this region.’

  Aelbad studied his shoes.

  ‘I need some fresh air,’ Eustace said. Turning to a guard he ordered, ‘Fetch me a warm cloak and one for my foster son.’

  The garden was laid out in the French manner, not in the messy confusion that the English found agreeable for their plants and trees. Eustace reverted to Latin. ‘Are you telling me you think the Bishop will fail?’ he asked.

  ‘No, sire. But five days is cutting things fine.’

  ‘How many more unfortunates will there be?’

  ‘Two women and a man, sire. The difficulty is the correct dose: too little, and there is merely a belly ache or a trembling hand. Too much, and the creature dies on the spot. I’ve had to bury five hounds, at night.’

  ‘So the man and the two women?’

  ‘I’ve begun work on them. I need to give them an extra dose over the next four days, so that on the fifth …’

  ‘We can’t wait five days! It would be unconscionable if the Bishop were to exorcise the villages and towns, and men and women were to die afterwards. My uncle must have success. Give bigger doses. Get it over with.’

  He paused beside a well-shaped juniper tree and crossed himself.

  ‘God knows, Aelbad, this work we do is for England, not for ourselves. Regnum defende.’

  ‘I know, sire,’ Aelbad answered, and also crossed himself. He plucked a handful of berries from the juniper and slipped them inside a pocket.

  When she arrived in Poitiers, the Queen discovered she had left her estates too much in the hands of others. Although they had been diligent and vigilant in the upkeep of her palace, vineyards, livestock and tilled land, she had to make scores of decisions and hand down judgements on disputes. A stream of vassals rode up to the palace seeking audiences, bearing their dues and gifts for the Princess Alix. They declared Alix the most beautiful child on earth then presented to the Queen a list of problems. ‘I’ve delayed too long,’ she sighed often. Louis grew anxious that she did not feel relaxed.

  ‘Summon Ventadour,’ he ordered. The King still did not approve of troubadours, but he knew they were good for his wife.

  Gossips said that Ventadour was Eleanor’s half-brother, son of the Old Duke, but her father had assured her they shared no blood, and it was his friend, the Viscount Eble, who had sired the poet on a girl who worked in a pastry shop. That was a relief, since everyone in Poitiers knew that Bernard de Ventadour was madly infatuated with the Duchess.

  His arrival on the eve of Epiphany transformed the court. ‘He brings magic in his songs,’ people said. He had a song for the new Princess, a song of welcome home to the Duchess/Queen, a song of celebration for the King’s victory in Rouen. But most of all, he sang love songs – songs so stirring the servants said they had seen one of the ancient Roman statues in the garden shedding tears as the troubadour sang.

  ‘How different from a year ago,’ Eleanor said. She was lying in Louis’s arms. ‘That terrible night when Abbot Suger …’

  ‘Shhh,’ he murmured. Her dark hair flowed over the pillows; her features, broadened and smoothed from lying on her back, made her face almost child-like. Louis gazed down on her surrendered beneath him and wept into her neck. My Magdalene, he thought. It delighted him, that, thanks to all her exercises since the birth of Princess Alix, her body was as tight as on their wedding night.

  ‘I’ve overdone it,’ she said. ‘Please help me, Louis: use this goose grease.’

  ‘You’re like a virgin,’ he murmured.

  ‘How many more days can you stay with me?’

  ‘Three? Four?’

  ‘Four! Please say four.’

  He agreed to spend four more nights in Poitiers. He had calculated that by then, surely, she would be with child. Or they would have to wait for another auspicious date: Easter or Pentecost. The Rumlar had told him that pregnancy was most easily achieved according to the Queen’s cycle, not the Church calendar. Louis had refused his advice. ‘Our children are of royal blood. They are holy and must be conceived on holy days,’ he’d replied.

  The Queen and the new Princess would stay in the south: Eleanor to attend to her vast domain, the Princess because the warmer climate and drier air were better for her than the damp of Paris. The Queen would return to the capital in the summer, although the weather would be barbarously hot. But the court calendar was filling with royal duties at which her attendance would be, if not obligatory, certainly appreciated. Louis confided that one of them was accepting homage from the new Duke of Normandy.

  ‘I can’t tell you the tantrum I had from Eustace when he and Constance visited just before Christmas,’ he said. ‘I mentioned as a possibility that I’d hold the ceremony at Easter, but Eustace went into a rage. He said he and his father did not have the resources for a spring and summer campaign, and that out of love for him I should delay until late August. That would put off an attack from Normandy for another year. The Prince was in a pandemonium about it. I sometimes think he is not of sound mind. But Constance assures me he’s a perfect husband. He keeps not a single concubine, nor has he sired any bastards. He treats her with great courtesy, she says.’

  As dull a husband as Louis, Eleanor thought. And a liar. From her spies she knew he had two concubines and three bastards. She listened in silence, her violet eyes filled with sympathy. ‘Have you informed the Anjevins?’ she asked in a gentle tone.

  ‘I’ll let them wait until the last minute, then send an urgent summons.’

  ‘Wise King,’ she murmured. ‘So they’ve returned the Vexin?’

  ‘Yes. That is, yes and no. They’ve returned it on condition that it will be dowry for one of our Princesses. When the new Duke has a son, that son has the right … My dear, the mind boggles at the subtle cunning of their minds. Anyway, the short answer is yes. We’ll have it back for a time. I tell you, Eleanor: with Henry, nothing is clear-cut.’

  ‘We all know what Father Bernard said of him,’ she muttered. ‘“From the Devil.” My poor Louis.’

  She stroked her fingers through his hair which, she noticed, was thinning a little. She felt a certain pity for him because in five days he would be on his way back to Paris and affairs of state, and she would be preparing her bed for Geoffrey. And not just any bed. She had refurbished the Tour Maubergeonne.

  For Eleanor, no place held such romantic thrall as the round, steep tower of La Dangereuse. The ducal palace, standing on a plateau above the rivers of the Boivre and Clain, looked down on their flowing waters and the town. Above the rivers rose the tower the Old Duke had built to house the beautiful viscountess whom he had stolen from her husband. He had frescos painted on its walls that depicted the happy couple at play together: as Adam and Eve entwined; as David watching the naked Bathsheba from his window; as Danae with the shower of gold in her lap; and one – Eleanor’s favourite – of Leda enraptured beneath the beating wings of the swan. Not every trace of civilisation had vanish
ed after Rome fell, as the Church liked to assert: in scattered palaces and great houses artists and scholars had survived the centuries of barbarism, pinpricks of light in the black night. They shone beauty and mystery into the lives of the aristocrats who nurtured them.

  The swan fresco was on a wall opposite the bed, between two windows that looked out onto the fertile land below. Even in January Eleanor believed she could feel her vineyards pulsing back into life following the frost that had crisped the ground just before Epiphany.

  When she was first married to Louis, he had inspected these lands that, thanks to her, he now controlled. He had entered this bedchamber, looked around for less than a minute and fled down the stairs. He ordered the tower be permanently closed. On return from Outremer, Eleanor had sent word to her Poitiers household that it be re-opened, refurbished and kept in good repair.

  Geoffrey spent three days riding from Le Mans. It was a mild winter, but January was always cold and windy inland from the coast. He travelled in the guise of a penitent on his way to a shrine in the south, with only his squire and Richard de Cholet aware of his identity. To their other companions – one of Richard’s sons and four of his vassal knights – he was just a traveller with whom they had struck up acquaintance on the road. His hooded grey wool cloak was of modest appearance, but inside it was shimmering fur. Only his red boots of fine-grained leather suggested he could be a magnate.

  Richard de Cholet’s face was now so familiar to Eleanor’s guards that gaining entrance to her palace presented few problems. She greeted him as an old friend and welcomed his party as house guests.

  ‘I negotiate with Her Highness over my son’s ascension as Duke of Normandy,’ Geoffrey said to his squire. ‘This is a secret, you understand.’