The physician thought he saw a smile cross the skeletal face. ‘I believe the struggle to grasp God’s love of sinners keeps me alive.’
The failure of the second crusade weighs heavily on him, the physician thought. He may wonder if God’s love extends to Turks.
The young monk returned with the cask of medicine.
‘You may sleep here for the rest of the night,’ Bernard said. ‘You won’t be needing this medicine for a day or so.’
Isabella and the rest of the family arrived the next morning. They had ridden much of the night, Rachel insisting she was well enough to travel, although Isabella noticed that on one occasion she paused to vomit.
Guillaume held his sister and Rachel back while Isabella entered the bedchamber. Geoffrey was propped on pillows with a sheet covering his wounded foot. His body felt slightly hot. Isabella lifted the sheet to look at the poultice.
‘I want to lie with you,’ Geoffrey said.
They were the same age, thirty-seven. Isabella had borne him eight children – two had died – and had been his closest friend since they were thirteen. Her body was lean and long-muscled and her skin as brown as a nut where the sun touched it. There were lines of laughter around her eyes. Her breasts had shrivelled to little more than dark brown nipples. ‘Your sweet raisins,’ Geoffrey called them. As she stretched herself beside him, Geoffrey felt his heart pierced with love for her. The decades vanished. A special current of gratitude ran through him: gratitude to Isabella for her love for so many years; gratitude to heaven for the spectacular gifts of his eldest sons; the potential in his younger children; and for the hundreds of beautiful and not-so-beautiful women he had loved. He felt gratitude that he had been a duke.
‘I want to lie with you,’ he repeated.
She could see he was too weak. ‘You promise not to get me with child?’ she asked coquettishly.
For a moment his eyes lit with their amused, worldly hauteur. ‘I promise nothing, woman.’
As Isabella caressed him he realised he far preferred her hand and limbs to Eleanor’s. It struck him as ironic that plainer women were usually more delightful in bed than beauties. He wondered if, despite her beauty, in time, he would find Eleanor repulsive. In bed, she was entirely selfish; his only role was to give her pleasure. It was half the reason he so adored her: meeting her demands made him feel as bold and irresistible as the leopards on his standard.
Isabella spent almost an hour beside him before rising and getting dressed. It was still so hot that she and the other women wore nothing but robes of white linen and on their feet sandals of plaited straw and string. When Isabella had dressed and swept her hair up with combs, Geoffrey told her there was something serious he needed to discuss.
‘It’s about Henry,’ he said. ‘While we were in Paris I observed the Queen with your dear friend, Matilda. It was an odd spectacle: like watching two knights sizing each other up for strength and skill and deciding, prudently, not to fight. That’s how they eyed each other.’
Isabella nodded. She had long suspected Eleanor was the woman with whom Geoffrey was in love.
He paused to see if she understood where his thoughts were heading.
She smiled for him. ‘If the Queen can secure a divorce, you want Henry to marry her?’
‘No! I absolutely do not! Matilda may want it, because then she can refuse to pawn her jewels for the war. She’ll insist Henry use Eleanor’s revenue if she’s his wife.’
Isabella had spent many hours in conversation with Baron Richard de Cholet, who had shared with her his views of the royal lady. Isabella had learned that the Queen was accustomed to power; that she loved the exercise of her own will. What frustrated her was that the French court kept her under strict control.
‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘Eleanor is still married. Henry and Rachel adore each other. The little boy is healthy. She’s expecting another baby in February …’
‘He’s cancelled his plans to invade England this year,’ Geoffrey said.
‘He wants you there when he’s crowned.’
She was about to add something soothing when she noticed he was asleep. She lifted the sheet from his leg and looked once more at the bandage over the poultice. A thin red line had begun to creep above it, no more than the length of a fingernail.
By the time the physician returned that afternoon the red line was as long as a finger. He ordered the poultice changed and gave Geoffrey a sip of the medicine from Chartres.
‘Blessed by your old friend, Father Bernard,’ he said.
‘It’s disgusting! Can’t I have wine?’
An hour later, when the red line looked slightly longer, the physician had an idea. He removed the poultice and gingerly poured droplets of the medicine onto Geoffrey’s ankle. The slash from the horse’s shoe was now an open wound and his foot had reddened down to his toes.
‘I refuse to die of gangrene,’ Geoffrey said. ‘If the foot turns black and begins to stink, you’re to bring me a sword and I’ll die like a Roman.’
‘It’s merely inflamed, lord Duke,’ the physician said. ‘No sign of gangrene.’
An hour later he checked again. The red line seemed to have stopped, although his foot was still red. The physician held a conference with Henry, Guillaume and the women.
‘The infection appears to abate,’ he said.
‘I’ll build an abbey to give thanks,’ Henry said. ‘I’ll dedicate it to St Luke.’
The physician remained silent. It was Rachel, schooled by her father in careful analysis of Biblical phrases, who understood the man’s well-chosen words: the infection appears to abate. She clapped a hand across her mouth to stop herself saying what she could see the physician thought. When Henry looked at her she said, ‘The baby jumped.’
At midnight the physician, who slept in a cot in Geoffrey’s chamber, shook Henry awake.
Henry disentangled his thighs from Rachel’s who woke too. ‘You stay!’ he ordered her. ‘Think of our baby.’ She lay with her heart pounding, unable to return to sleep.
Henry woke Guillaume, asleep in a further corner of the chamber, his arms wrapped around the mother of little Guillaume.
‘Will I fetch Isabella?’ Henry asked.
‘Not yet,’ the physician said.
When they entered Geoffrey’s chamber they were astonished to see him sitting up and drinking from a cup. The physician had ordered thirty candles lit so they could see as well as possible. Geoffrey’s face was pink.
‘Papa! Are you drunk?’ Henry asked.
‘I intend to be, very soon,’ Geoffrey said. ‘More lights in here than a church at Easter. It’s blinding.’
‘You’re as hot as an oven,’ Guillaume muttered.
‘But I feel cold,’ Geoffrey said. He had a fur clutched around his shoulders.
The physician pulled back the sheet. The red line ran from his ankle to halfway up his thigh. Geoffrey looked down at it and gave an ironic smile.
‘You see, darling boys: I’m done for. By the time you get an axe to chop off my leg, you’ll have to chop off my groin as well. I’ve never known a man to live with half a groin.’
The physician nodded. ‘Lord Dukes, I’ll speak honestly. You, my noble patron, have another few hours of mental lucidity. After that I can only predict that your mind is likely to wander and your speech will become incomprehensible. It’s important for you now, lord Duke, to tell your sons your will.’ He withdrew.
Guillaume and Henry sat beside their father who shivered uncontrollably while perspiration ran down his cheeks. His hair hung around his face in hanks of yellow string.
He said, ‘Guillaume has all his inheritance already, directly from me, and from his mother. I cannot cede him any of our provinces. You, Henry, have Normandy and Maine. When you take England, I want you to cede Anjou and Maine to Young Geoffrey. Little William should enter the Church. You are to arrange appropriate marriages for the girls.’
Henry nodded.
‘Will you vow to me for Young
Geoffrey?’
‘No,’ Henry said. ‘I need the territory myself.’
‘But it is my will. You must give it to him.’ Geoffrey looked at his son and realised he was defeated. ‘I die unhappy,’ he murmured. Henry’s expression did not soften. Geoffrey changed the subject: ‘I now have a special request to make of you boys. You must keep it secret from Isabella and Matilda.’
Henry dropped his head in his hands. Tears streamed down Guillaume’s cheeks.
‘Oh, good!’ Geoffrey said cheerfully. ‘You’ve guessed.’
They nodded.
Geoffrey grinned, but the poison spreading through his blood made his lips stretch in a sinister grimace.
The young men were so miserable they both wanted to return to their beds and their women, and weep. Henry asked, ‘Would you like us to stay with you?’
‘Why not?’ Geoffrey said. He suddenly recovered his old, sly smile. ‘Once you accustom yourself to its filthy taste, this medicine Father Bernard sent from Chartres is remarkably cheering. My leg is throbbing, demons gnaw on my foot, but I really don’t care. Have a cup.’
They sat each side of him and drank, the liquid burning their throats, but immediately they both felt cheered by it. Geoffrey rubbed his fevered head against one son, then the other as if he were a huge, affectionate cat. ‘What’s the point of sadness?’ he asked. ‘We’re all but guests on this earth for a while. And guests must leave at some stage. I won’t see you on the throne of England but I think, Henry, when I’m dead …’ He took a long swig from his cup.
They waited for the end of the thought but Geoffrey closed his eyes and began to sing in a ragged voice, ‘A Young Lion steps forth from …’
He spoke no words again.
He sang and made sounds but nobody could understand what he said. The priest who came to hear his confession announced he was at peace within himself and with the Saviour.
Exactly a week after he said adieu to Eleanor, on the morning of the seventh of September, Geoffrey died.
Corpse attendants washed his body, washed and combed his hair, shaved him and trimmed his nails. Rachel, Isabella and Maria arranged his hair as it should look, in long thick curls. Rachel rubbed something onto his cheeks and lips that gave them a rosy glow.
When they were done, Henry asked them to leave. He and Guillaume knelt beside the corpse and bent their heads to pray together that their work would be properly done. ‘Go first,’ Henry said.
Guillaume plunged his dagger between his father’s breastbone and upper ribs, cracking them apart. He left it to Henry to reach in, push the collapsed lungs aside and slowly pull out the yellow sack of clotted blood with Geoffrey’s heart inside it. ‘It’s the size of an ox!’ Henry said. They drained the blood into a bowl, then wrapped the heart first in the linen they had soaked in the medicine which, they reasoned, would help preserve it. Around the linen, they wrapped a long strip of brown seaweed, then scarlet silk, then scarlet velvet, then a square of leather. It made a weighty bundle. They stuffed wadding into the hole in Geoffrey’s chest, and pushed the broken ribs and breastbone back in place. It was difficult to pull on his armour over his arms, but eventually they managed to cover his torso, and even to put gauntlets on his hands. ‘We’ll let the corpse-washers dress the rest of him,’ Henry said. Both were anxious that Isabella, Maria or Rachel might knock on the door, curious to know what they were doing. Henry left it to Guillaume to dispose of the blood and the heart sack. He made a dash for the coolest part of the chateau, where wine was stored, and hid his father’s heart.
Geoffrey’s funeral took place the next morning in the Abbey of Fontrevault. Broom flowers grew in abundance around the fields and in the lanes. Henry ordered the casket filled with it so Geoffrey appeared to float on a cloud of gold. His face was at peace and instead of a helmet, he wore his hat at a jaunty angle with a sprig of fresh Planta genista in its band.
Matilda and the younger children had arrived that morning. Matilda wept convulsively throughout the service and that night Henry summoned the physician to give her a calming physic, and sat with his mother.
‘He was the most beautiful boy I’d ever seen,’ she said. ‘He was fourteen, and his cheeks bloomed with roses. And there was I, almost twice his age …’
‘Mama, Mama, don’t upset yourself,’ Henry said. But Matilda was determined to make a confession. ‘I was so ashamed, Henry. Because I was a virgin. I’d been married to the Emperor for twelve years, but he could not … I never told your father, and so from the beginning …’
‘Why didn’t you tell Father?’
‘I felt ashamed for the Emperor. The poor man suffered excruciating pain when he tried …’
Henry gazed at his mother. She was seven years old when she was sent away to live in the court of the Emperor of Germany. All Henry’s life she had beckoned him to her, then pushed him away. Perhaps, he thought, she re-enacts what happened to her. I love her and I hate her. I’ve judged her without knowing why she treated me so capriciously. He mentally paused: she could have controlled herself, he thought.
Matilda was now almost fifty years old. Grey threaded her hair, but her fine-grained skin was without lines.
‘Your husbands are dead and now you’re free,’ Henry said. ‘Mother, enjoy it.’
Suddenly Matilda gave the brilliant smile that had created for her the reputation of being the most beautiful princess in Europe. ‘Thank you, son,’ she said. She turned on her side and went to sleep.
It was inevitable that Henry and Young Geoffrey would argue over their inheritance. Geoffrey had bestowed on his younger son the castles of Chinon, Loudun, Mirebeau and Montsoreau. When Geoffrey had asked Henry to promise that if he became King of England he would give Young Geoffrey Anjou and Maine, Henry had refused until his father lost consciousness. He summoned Guillaume to support his claim that he had not vowed to give Young Geoffrey anything.
‘It’s true,’ Guillaume said. ‘He refused to vow.’
‘You bastard swine! You say whatever Henry asks you!’ Young Geoffrey yelled.
Guillaume stepped back. His arm moved like a ribbon.
Young Geoffrey’s mouth gaped at the sword in Guillaume’s hand. ‘You’d dare …!’
‘You spurned my honesty,’ Guillaume said.
Henry also drew his sword. ‘Geoffrey, our father is not yet cold in his grave. Conquer Brittany if you want territory. Now piss off.’
On the excuse that much had to be done to cancel the planned invasion of England, Henry and Guillaume left Le Mans before dinner. They took four vassal knights and a change of horses.
It was almost twilight when they arrived in the Bois de Boulogne and stopped to ask if anyone knew the whereabouts of the Queen.
‘She’s hawking,’ a forester told them. ‘Been hawking all week with her white gyrfalcon. Hasn’t been back to Paris at all. Stays in her tent at night for feasting and singing competitions. The King complains they keep him awake.’
The brothers got directions for the royal tents, but as they expected, foot guards were posted around the area.
Henry and Guillaume had both changed into their most impressive hot weather riding clothes: white linen tunics embroidered with gold thread, blue cloaks to protect them from the dust, and gold boots. Henry wore a gold hat with a sprig of broom in its band. The sword he had chosen was his grandfather’s, with its rubied hilt. He and Guillaume had ridden into the wood on the black warhorses Geoffrey had given them on their return from England. They were not the fastest of mounts, but they were massive and comfortable, and no man on foot, as the guards were, could feel anything but apprehensive as the horses stepped slowly and purposefully towards them.
A knight announced, ‘The Duke of Normandy requests audience with Her Majesty.’
‘Her Highness is not to be disturbed,’ the guard replied. He was a small, officious man, helmeted, armed with a halberd.
Henry sent the horse an image: snort at him. The horse snorted. Henry sent another: lift your right fr
ont leg. Be ready to strike him. The horse lifted its huge hoof and lunged towards the guard, who jumped backwards. He could kill the horse with his halberd if he struck it just right – but more likely the horse would kill him first.
‘Tell Her Highness the Duke of Normandy, accompanied by his brother, brings her tidings,’ Henry said.
After a short wait several guards returned to conduct Henry, Guillaume and their companion knights to the Queen’s tent. They heard the sounds of revelry long before they arrived. An orchestra of ten musicians played and Ventadour sang. Male and female voices joined him in the chorus, some of them whooping and laughing.
‘They sound drunk,’ Guillaume muttered. He and Henry dismounted and stood beside their horses.
When the song finished, the Queen, accompanied by two court ladies, emerged from the tent. Her face was flushed and her eyes sparkled. ‘Join us!’ she cried. ‘We’ve had the most wonderful day of hawking – my gyrfalcon brought down ten ducks …’
Her giddy mood evaporated. ‘You bring bad tidings?’ she asked.
Henry nodded. He made a small gesture towards the court women.
‘Leave us,’ Eleanor said. Her demeanour changed from its wild, huntress excitement to caution.
‘Where can we talk in private?’ Henry asked.
It was still twilight. She pointed towards the tent set up for morning and evening Mass. It was of a size to accommodate the altar, a few chairs and about thirty people on foot.
‘I would like my brother, Guillaume, to accompany us.’
She nodded. Her glances darted from one man to the other, increasingly anxious.
A young monk was inside the Mass tent, extinguishing its candles. ‘Stop,’ the Queen said. ‘Re-light the other candles, and leave us.’
Guillaume thought she trembled slightly. It was he who carried the bulky leather-wrapped bundle. Every so often she glanced at it. When the monk had left and they were satisfied they were alone Henry said in his softest voice, ‘I bring tragic news, Your Highness.’
The Young Lion Page 27
