The Young Lion

by Blanche d'Alpuget

  At Christmas, Eleanor announced with lowered eyes, ‘I’m to make you a father, Henry.’

  ‘Just as we agreed!’ he said. He slapped her back as if she were a man from the regiment.

  She returned to her quarters and wept. She felt as if her dead grandmother were at her elbow. ‘He’ll never love you. Get used to it, ma petite,’ grinned La Dangereuse.

  When Master Erasmus had first seen Eleanor again, before the Christmas Court, temptation leaped through him like the stab of a knife. It was not only her beauty that affected him, but her tragic daring. She’s like a moth that flutters around a flame, he thought.

  He entered her apartment that night. ‘What was his response when you told him you were with child?’ he asked.

  ‘He slapped my back as if I were an infantryman.’

  Like a man in a desert who, at the point of death, finds a pool of water, with infinite care Master Erasmus took her upturned face between his palms and kissed her mouth.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Two days later, after Mass in the palace chapel, Guillaume joined Henry and Eleanor for breakfast. ‘We’re leaving for a while,’ Henry announced to his wife.

  ‘You can’t leave me!’ Eleanor looked at Guillaume for support.

  ‘I’m afraid we have to,’ he answered quietly.

  Henry added, ‘The timing’s perfect. Our Duchess is with child!’

  Guillaume leaped to embrace his brother and his sister-in-law. She grasped his hand. ‘Make him stay, Guillaume!’ she said. ‘I don’t give birth easily. It’s not right for him to leave me.’

  He answered, ‘I’d love to, but …’ He fell silent. Months earlier he and Henry had agreed they would keep their battle plans secret from Eleanor. Her relationship with Eustace’s wife, Constance, had been much to their advantage in the past. It could also work in reverse, Henry thought.

  ‘It’s something political,’ Guillaume murmured.

  ‘Political?’ she echoed. ‘Do you mean military? It’s not yet Epiphany. How can you …?’ After a silence she added, ‘I suppose you’ll be going to Caen.’ She had discovered that Rachel sojourned with the Dowager in the castle of Caen.

  ‘Maybe,’ Henry said.

  He wondered, could you be so reckless as to tell Constance that I’m moving towards the coast? It was a short ride from Caen to Barfleur, where the army and the ships to transport it would gather within the octave of Epiphany. ‘My mother and the rest of my family are there. There are many political issues within a family. My mother, for example …’ He and Guillaume smirked: the Dowager had invited Isabella to holiday with her in Caen.

  ‘Your mother refuses to acknowledge me as your wife. I’ve written to her, but have not had the courtesy of a reply. What amuses you?’

  She looked so shaken Henry felt sorry for her. He walked around the table and kissed her lips. ‘My mother and Guillaume’s mama have been enemies for a quarter of a century. Suddenly, as widows, they’re taking the sea air in Caen together. We poor young males can only observe and wonder at the strange mystery of the female heart.’

  Eleanor thought, I know what that thieving old vixen is up to: she’s forming an alliance against me. She intends, as my mother-in-law, to restrict me to child-bearing and arranging festivities.

  ‘You want to see her, don’t you?’ she accused him.

  ‘Rachel? Of course I do. Now, don’t upset yourself. You carry the bud of a new life. You must think happy thoughts – for him and for yourself.’ He stroked her face. ‘Would you like to return to Poitiers? Would you feel more at ease there?’

  ‘Probably,’ she muttered.

  ‘If I know where you are I can write to you …’

  ‘Why can’t I write to you?’

  ‘I’ll be moving around … won’t we, Guillaume?’

  ‘Moving around,’ Guillaume agreed. He rested his gaze on Eleanor and raised a quizzical eyebrow.

  She calmed when he flirted with her, and his flirtation amused Henry.

  As they cantered over the drawbridge, Henry remarked, ‘I do believe my wife wants to have you in her bed.’

  Guillaume slanted his eyes and smiled. ‘While you’ve been practising swordplay with the garrison, I’ve been shaking her tambourine.’

  Henry pulled up his horse with such a jolt it reared. ‘You’ve what?’

  Guillaume laughed heartily for the first time since Geoffrey died.

  ‘Swine!’ Henry shouted. He continued to swear at Guillaume for the next half hour, but his brother rode beside him, unsmiling now. He had tried to tell Henry for months that his neglect of Eleanor’s feelings sharpened her jealousy of Rachel and made her even more unpredictable. He believed she had already taken a lover. There was a new sex power hiding in her eyes now, like a wolf in a cave.

  ‘When’s the baby due?’ he asked.

  ‘September, I suppose.’

  Rachel now understood that the creamy-white castle of Caen was among the most expressive of Norman values. She had been familiar with the decorative colour and feminine style of the buildings in Outremer and at first had found Norman architecture frighteningly austere. But now she saw its majestic virtues. Caen was elegant in line, formidable in size and imperious in its location. Of his many buildings, the Lion was said to be proudest of Caen Castle’s virile beauty.

  In Caen, Henry would collect the money Matilda had raised for the war. Mercenaries fought best, he’d discovered, when paid in quarters: he’d pay a quarter on embarkation. The rest he would dole out as the battle against Stephen and Eustace progressed. The Prince, having caused all the mischief he could in France, had returned to England in November. To avoid Norman territory, according to Henry’s spies, he had made a tiresome overland trip to Dunkerque, then sailed to Dover. Henry’s army would be landing far to the west, but as winter progressed the weather worsened. Nobody could predict what they might encounter a few days hence.

  It blew a gale on the first day of the new year. From the upper floors, those in the castle of Caen looked out on a heaving iron sea. Before the wind made outside visits unendurable, Rachel had carried little Geoffrey around the lower walls where she found magical objects to show him: the outline of tiny creatures, like a crab or a fish, embedded in the pale stone. As much as these finds delighted the child, they baffled her, making her wonder if God had not perfectly separated the dry land from the sea. On these occasions she missed her father painfully, for he used to be able to explain everything. ‘We’re strangers in a strange land,’ she murmured to her son.

  Henry felt her sadness as soon as he arrived. ‘Is it the time I spent with Eleanor?’ he asked.

  ‘Partly. She and I loved each other almost like mother and daughter. At least like sisters. Now I feel her hatred for me. But mostly, I’ve missed you, Henry. I kiss your letters at night before I sleep.’

  He decided he would send for her as soon as the worst of the fighting was over.

  ‘You can’t set out in this weather,’ she said.

  He laughed. ‘That’s what Stephen and Eustace will think. You forget, darling wife, the sea runs through my veins.’

  The night the army embarked the gale was still blowing. At midnight the tide was at its height. Henry shouted to his men, ‘Heaven favours our cause! The wind blows in the right direction! The tide is with us.’ Their ships flew before the southerly gale, the first of them reaching Portsmouth at dawn. Ranulf and other allies waited to meet them beside bonfires lit to guide the invaders to shore. As his ship approached anchorage, Henry saw, for the first time in his life, famine. Along the seashore and riverbanks scarecrows in rags scavenged in sand and mud for anything edible, swallowing immediately whatever they found, still raw and squirming. Bark and leaves had been stripped from trees. Henry stared aghast at what he thought was a lost hound, but realised was a young woman wandering on all fours. As they travelled towards Malmesbury they saw crows eating what little could be found on the corpses of those who had starved. And everywhere the air smelled of smoke. />
  ‘This famine is not sent by God, but by our King and his Prince,’ Ranulf said bitterly.

  Henry’s face was black with rage. ‘Cowardice is the mother of cruelty,’ he answered.

  The violent weather caused news of his invasion to take almost a fortnight to reach the King. Stephen forced a march to the banks of the Avon River, already swollen with floodwaters, arriving in late February, but by then Henry had captured the town of Malmesbury and had its castle under siege.

  ‘The King’s men are so cold and exhausted they can barely hold their weapons,’ a scout reported.

  The rival armies faced each other across the Avon, but the merciless rain drowned out their insulting yells.

  A bridge across the river was holding. Henry sent a knight over with a fat roast duck for the King’s dinner, but Eustace flung it into the flood. With the nimble wit for which they were famous, infantrymen from Anjou used a forked stick to fish it out. They ate it, making vulgar gestures at their counterparts on the other bank.

  ‘They’re so dispirited they’re barely pretending to want to fight,’ Henry remarked to Guillaume. It was raining too hard for either side to do much, the rain making it almost impossible to see. Towards evening Guillaume entered the house Henry had requisitioned, followed by a group of dripping, dishevelled men. They spoke no French and Henry was not yet confident enough of his English to negotiate in that language. Ranulf acted as interpreter.

  ‘They’re envoys from the barons of the Avon River. They want to make peace.’

  ‘We must let Stephen know tonight,’ Henry said. ‘My terms are that he destroys the fortifications of Malmesbury castle. When they’re demolished, his garrison may withdraw without attack from us. Meanwhile, he must order Wallingford be relieved immediately.’

  Eustace was in such a rage when he read Henry’s terms, he left that night in pouring rain. By the following morning the King had agreed to Henry’s conditions, on the proviso that Wallingford could have six months’ respite, after which he claimed the right to besiege it once more. As dawn broke his engineers began tearing down the castle’s fortifications. Henry watched from the top of his house in the town. He had demanded proof that Wallingford was indeed to be relieved, requiring copies of the King’s letter to his army in the east, and of the pigeon messages that Stephen sent ordering the Wallingford siege be lifted. As he watched Stephen’s men beat down Malmesbury’s fortifications he dictated a letter to his mother.

  Not only is Wallingford relieved for a time, I have this morning received a message from Earl Robert of Leicester, seeking to pay me homage and offering thirty castles. By summer, I shall control the Midlands.

  Mother, I miss Rachel unbearably. Please send her to me. I think it more prudent for you to keep little Geoffrey with you.

  As Rachel speaks no English I ask you to send a translator with her, and four men you trust. Perhaps Isabella would consent to accompany her. The situation in southern England is chaotic and distressing. The suffering from famine causes sights no tender soul can witness without great pain. I have planned a route for Rachel through the less dreadful areas.

  From Tutbury he wrote to the Dowager:

  I forced Earl Robert de Ferres to submit to me and persuaded the Countess of Warwick to surrender her castle. I had to besiege Bedford Castle, but for only a week. The earls and barons are less than willing combatants for their liege, since they realise that this argument can be settled by negotiation, instead of war. Stephen and Eustace prefer to destroy the entire country rather than negotiate.

  She wrote back:

  Confront Stephen! You will overpower him if you look him in the face.

  Henry replied:

  The King will not meet with me. Instead he is drawing a huge army from every corner of the realm to prepare a pitched battle against me outside Wallingford. I’m not such a fool as to accept his challenge and neither are his men of deeper understanding. Even among those who refuse to break their sacred vows to Stephen there is widespread belief that I should be recognised as his legitimate heir. Canterbury has returned from his refuge in Flanders. He and the Bishop of Winchester are our negotiators.

  To Rachel he wrote:

  My Darling,

  Have no fear of the sea but bless the wind and water that will bring you to me. After crossing La Manche you will change to a river boat that will bring you on a longish journey to a town called Coventry. There, my dear friend Ranulf, whom you met, has an excellent manor house attached to a castle. I’ll gallop to meet you. By the time you arrive the air will be full of spring sunshine. I long to take you into a meadow where we’ll look at the sky as we did the first time we opened our hearts to each other. You may not recognise me at first: I resemble a mongrel dog. My hair has grown so long I plait it. Guillaume does the same. He and I have not bathed in two months. In January and February the rain was so abundant we had only to walk outdoors to wash our hands and faces. Ranulf has arranged apartments for us that, he boasts, will not only meet but exceed the standards of Rouen. Please bring me some summer garments. Those who claim to read the weather here say that, after such a terrible winter, spring and summer will be hot.

  Ten thousand kisses for you and for our son.

  H

  He wrote a couple of brief notes to Eleanor, telling her how the war progressed, sending his ‘fond thoughts’ and inquiring about her pregnancy. She replied that her physician, Master Erasmus, ‘allows me to ride out if the weather is fine. If it’s raining, we play chess.’ She added, ‘He reads me the story of the Iliad, translating from Greek into French as easily as a bird translates its joy into song. I now love the poetry of Homer.’

  Henry passed her note to Guillaume. ‘It’ll be Plato next,’ he guffawed. ‘The chap’s a – what do they call them? – Rumlar? An eastern Greek. She complained to Papa that Louis inflicted him on her during her last confinement, but he was so disagreeable she sent him away. How does one account for such fickleness!’

  ‘Not with logic,’ Guillaume murmured. He had again tried to tell Henry that Eleanor was half-mad with jealousy of Rachel. They were in Barfleur at the time. But as he was speaking, Henry had peered out a window into the street below, more interested in whether a fishwife succeeded in selling a basket of crabs to his cook than in his brother’s warning.

  Henry also wrote to King David, asking for the support of a company of Highlanders for Wallingford. The King wrote back:

  Death dogs me as close as my midday shadow, but I struggle to live and rejoice in the hour when you defeat the Usurper and his vile spawn. You shall have Douglas and his regiment.

  Henry, Guillaume and their commanders of knights and mercenaries agreed on a battle plan against Stephen, who was preparing to lay siege to Wallingford again as soon as July arrived. Weeks before then, the Highlanders would be entrenched. They would have slipped south, possibly dressed as pilgrims or clergy, riding old horses or mules. Men who fought with axes had no use for destriers.

  Rachel and Isabella arrived at Coventry in May.

  Hearing they were nearby, Henry and Guillaume galloped two days to reach the town.

  ‘You’ll have no strength left for Rachel,’ Guillaume said.

  ‘Your concern is touching, brother. How long since you’ve had a woman?’

  ‘Not since we left Normandy.’

  ‘Me neither,’ Henry said. ‘I could ride this horse and my filly for a month.’

  ‘You ought to consider washing your face.’

  They laughed when they looked at each other.

  The city walls came into view and Guillaume asked, ‘Should we find a public bath in the town? Ranulf’s wife and daughters have not met us before. If not for Rachel and Mama’s sake, it would be polite to our hostess.’

  ‘No!’ Henry said. ‘I can’t wait a minute longer. I warned Rachel you look as disgusting as a horde of vandals at the gates of Rome.’

  Ranulf’s castle and manor house were set among soft meadows, with a small lake in front, an oak wood at
the rear and flower gardens around the manor’s tall doorway. All the plants were in bud, some already blooming. The river ran nearby. After being cooped up on a boat for weeks, Rachel and Isabella would have enjoyed a walk, but Ranulf met them with a carriage.

  ‘Dear ladies!’ he exclaimed. ‘My wife and daughters cannot wait to meet you. I’ve told them so much about each of you.’ Not only his wife and four daughters but two lines of servants waited to welcome them, arranged with males on one side, females on the other, both in descending orders of age and height, the youngest being a girl of no more than five. They stared at the blue headdress with which Rachel covered her hair and shoulders. Isabella wore a lace mantilla. The Countess, Ranulf’s second wife and as lively as he was sober, had her hair covered in a concoction of feathers and flowers, an amusement rather than an article of decorum. The daughters, most of them blond, were bare-headed. Rachel found the pale-blue eyes of the English strange, almost like blind people. While Ranulf led Isabella indoors, the Countess took Rachel’s arm. Inside the tall, cool chamber to which they were escorted, Rachel undid her headdress. The women gasped as her black ringlets bloomed around her face and down to the centre of her back.