The Young Lion

by Blanche d'Alpuget

  Henry gave him a curt nod. He and Guillaume strode through the audience chamber where waiting knights rose in commotion. In the courtyard Henry ordered: ‘Our mounts.’ The Normans who had escorted them that morning scrambled after them.

  ‘Two men only. The rest of you, stay here,’ Henry commanded. He and Guillaume clattered off into a black November night.

  ‘The tavern?’ Guillaume asked.

  The entrance of the noblemen caused an uproar among the patrons. The proprietor, wearing a long dirty apron, ran to the door to welcome them. ‘My lords, please, please …’

  ‘Ale for everyone,’ Henry announced. ‘Large or small, whatever they like.’

  Fifteen minutes later when two Saxon knights arrived in the doorway and looked inside they could barely see through the throng of people who had come rushing to the tavern to see ‘the Anjevins’ but more importantly to drink free ale. The Saxons shouldered their way through to the centre of attention, a bench where Henry sat and Guillaume, having been handed a badly tuned citern, had begun to sing.

  Behind the burly Saxons, his head turning left and right as if he had suddenly woken to find that while asleep he had landed on the moon, was Prince William. ‘Great Prince of England! William! My darling friend!’ Henry shouted. There was stunned silence throughout the tavern. After a moment people turned to each other. ‘The war’s over!’ they whispered. Then they yelled, ‘The war’s over!’ Men kissed each other. Women began to cry.

  Henry jumped onto a tabletop and clapped his hands. ‘People of England! Peace has won her victory!’ he shouted. ‘England has peace with honour!’

  As the words left his lips men ran outside to the hitching post to mount their horses; others to the cathedral. Bells began a wild, joyous pealing of hope, praise and joy. People in other towns heard them and men on horses galloped from village to village, spreading the word. Soon all the bells within a hundred leagues pealed the news. All night they rang, a fire of chimes across the country, spreading in every direction until people’s ears buzzed. ‘Peace has come! Praise the Lord! THE WAR IS OVER!’

  After half an hour in the tavern, Henry and Guillaume had walked together through the town with Prince William, telling him of their adventures in Winchester when they were lads. A curious crowd trailed after them. ‘Let’s find the barn,’ Henry said.

  ‘I’d prefer to find the girls,’ Guillaume answered. He glanced at the Prince, whose eyes were white on four sides of his pupils. ‘Fancy a Winchester girl in a barn, Your Highness?’ he asked.

  The Prince looked around. ‘All these people!’

  ‘Our guards will keep them at bay.’

  The Prince giggled. ‘I’ve never … I mean, I’m not a virgin. But I’ve never …’

  ‘They do smell sometimes.’ Henry turned to a Norman guard. ‘Fetch us three pails of warm water, some cloths and a pitcher of honey,’ he ordered. To William, in Latin, he said, ‘Give her a spoon of honey. It makes her mouth taste nice and her breath good.’ He and Guillaume surveyed the crowd, searching out pretty faces.

  ‘How about those two?’ Guillaume suggested.

  ‘And the dark one over there,’ William added. He felt drunk with excitement as his Saxon knights led the young women forward.

  Henry bowed. He now spoke English fluently. ‘Ladies, your beauty dazzles us and steals our hearts. Does any one of you find herself inclined …?’ The young women’s eyes moved from the gorgeously attired foreigners to their own Prince and back again.

  ‘What if they’re married?’ William whispered in Latin.

  ‘Husbands regard it like putting a fine stallion across an ordinary mare. They boast of being cock-brothers with nobility.’

  Guillaume smiled reassuringly at the slender youth.

  ‘I want him!’ the dark girl cried looking at Guillaume.

  ‘Beautiful lady,’ he answered, ‘His Highness the Prince will honour you far more than I. Be as wise as you are lovely.’ He grabbed William’s wrist and held his hand to her.

  ‘Are you really William, son of our King?’ she whispered. He nodded. Henry and Guillaume could see he was so timid he might bolt. They grabbed a woman each and headed for the barn.

  ‘Is any one of you a virgin?’ Henry asked. They all shook their heads. ‘Are you with child?’ They shook their heads again. ‘And you are all eager to play with us?’ Their eyes shone with excitement. Henry motioned to the Saxons to close the barn doors behind them. ‘Are you bleeding?’ he asked as an afterthought.

  ‘I’m bleeding a little,’ Guillaume’s girl said ruefully.

  ‘I don’t mind at all,’ he answered and kissed her forehead.

  ‘I’ve never done this before,’ William said. ‘Father will kill me.’

  Henry clapped him on the back as they undressed. ‘On the contrary. He’ll be delighted. You’re helping to seal the peace.’

  What Henry and Guillaume knew, but were too polite to mention, was that Eustace’s destruction of St Edmund’s Abbey had been not just a wicked crime, but among the ordinary people of England a disaster for the House of Blois. Curses had been uttered from pulpits. Women spat on Eustace’s standard. Men openly urinated on his tomb.

  When his son returned after dawn the next morning the King looked as dour as a wet cat.

  ‘Where’s your other shoe?’ he asked.

  ‘Forgive me, Father …’ William began.

  ‘No! I don’t forgive you!’ the King shouted. ‘You’ve spent the night rutting with female villeins in a barn! An orgy, with those Anjevin louts. Have you gone mad?’

  ‘They enjoyed it,’ William answered.

  ‘Who enjoyed it?’

  ‘The townspeople. They spent the night outside the barn, making wagers.’

  Stephen pressed his fingers to his eyebrows so the heels of his hands covered his mouth. Behind his palms he could not stop smiling. If I’d planned a way of announcing the war was over, and of cheering the souls of the common people, I could not have invented something better myself, he thought. ‘This is a disgrace to the House of Blois. And your reputation,’ he said.

  His son looked affronted. ‘But I was the winner. The blacksmith carried me around the town square on his shoulders and everyone cheered.’

  ‘May God have mercy on you! It’ll be dog-fighting and bear-baiting next. Go and bathe. Then attend chapel.’

  Had his father not been so sour-faced, William would have told him that the people had cheered, ‘Our Prince! We love our Prince William!’ But his father knew this already and was well pleased.

  The story of the Winchester barn turned into songs that began, ‘Prince William, Duke Henry, Lord Guillaume, ho-ho!’ and spread through the taverns of England.

  At midnight on Christmas Eve, King Stephen announced: ‘I present to you my son and heir, Prince Henry of England and Duke of Normandy.’ He embraced his adopted son. Henry embraced Prince William. A thousand people cheered. In their hearts many uttered curses.

  Henry wrote to Eleanor:

  Dear Wife,

  Every day Stephen and I have shouting matches about the illegal castles. He summons his barons and magnates to browbeat me. But I am adamant. When the magnates leave I tell him, ‘One is either a king or a nobody.’ He knows I speak the truth. On some days I experience a sort of filial affection for him. But on others we fight like bulls, and he accuses me of all sorts of crimes, including the corruption of his son. He wants William to enter the Church. William has confided he desires only to study. I encouraged him to this course. When he told the King, Stephen screamed at me and summoned the Bishop of Winchester to support him. Winchester is shrewd, intelligent and dangerous. He studied in Rome and his mind is well trained. He listened to Stephen’s case, then mine. ‘My nephew has no vocation for the Church, but he does for the academy. Better a happy scholar than a sour-hearted priest,’ he said. Stephen was so angry he smashed a wine cup on the floor.

  I shall return in time for my twenty-first birthday. A thousand kisses to you, baby Will
iam and little Geoffrey.

  Your loving husband,

  H

  He did not burden Eleanor with intelligence that his new brother, William, had given him.

  One night after supper in the palace of Bermondsey there had been a quiet tapping on Henry’s door. William stood outside, shoeless to conceal the noise of his footsteps. He slipped into the chamber and only when the door was closed by the Norman guard posted outside it and he had peered around to make sure they were alone, did he speak.

  ‘Henry,’ he whispered urgently, ‘you’re to be assassinated.’

  ‘Where and when?’

  ‘You’ll be invited to ride to Wallingford, and past all the castles you destroyed in the valley of the Thames. It will be framed as “a victory parade” for you. But when you get to the small bridge that was the life-line into Wallingford, your escorts will motion you to cross it first. It will have been weakened overnight and will collapse. You and your horse will fall into the river.’

  ‘Is that the only plot?’

  ‘There may be others.’

  ‘Poison?’

  ‘I don’t think so. They want an assassination that appears to be an accident, something that happens in broad daylight.’

  Henry was silent. Is this a trap? he wondered. Has William changed his mind about rejecting the throne? The Prince’s breathing was fast and shallow. Henry invited him to sit beside him on the bed. He placed his hands on the slender shoulders and looked into his face. He slowed his own breathing until he saw that William’s breath had fallen into rhythm with his. ‘Brother,’ he said, ‘have you told me the whole truth?’

  Instantly, the Prince began to breathe fast again, but remained silent. Henry shook him very slightly. You probably don’t realise I can kill you with my bare hands without leaving a mark on your body, he thought.

  William took a long, deep, ragged breath. ‘Henry, they want me to lead you to the bridge. I’m to invite you to cross before me, because you are heir. When you die, they’ll proclaim me King.’

  Henry made a low growl in the back of his throat and lay back on the bed. He took William’s hand, so they lay side by side, looking at the candlelight dancing on the ceiling. ‘Is our father party to this?’

  ‘I dare not ask.’

  ‘You’d be a puppet king, doing the bidding of the magnates here, and before too long, of France.’

  ‘I can’t imagine anything more disgraceful and vile.’

  Henry rolled on his side and kissed William’s lips. ‘I believe you,’ he said. ‘How many men are involved?’

  ‘Half a dozen. All members of the baronage, including a prelate.’

  ‘I can guess their names already. So when is this to happen?’

  ‘On the last Sunday in January, unless it’s sleeting. We’ll attend Mass in the abbey, then ride up to Wallingford. Accompanied by the King.’

  So Stephen is involved, Henry thought. ‘Sweet brother, you’ve risked your life to warn me. We’ll never speak of it again. But have no fear. Heaven has not gone to so much trouble to get me to this point to drown me in the River Thames.’

  ‘Socrates believed in life after death, and rebirth of the soul in a new body,’ William said suddenly. It was a question framed as a statement.

  ‘I don’t believe in life after death,’ Henry said. ‘I know it to be true. As to rebirth: Socrates’ argument is impeccable, is it not?’

  They embraced once more and as softly as he’d entered, Prince William left.

  On the last Sunday in January the winter sky lay as grey as a wolf over the spires of the abbey – a wolf that has killed and eaten, and is resting on its prey. There was neither snow, wind nor rain, just the ominous wolf sky whose light dulled the windows of the abbey and seemed to make the candles reek. Henry took communion after the King and before William and all the other nobles. As he returned to his place, wine still on his lips, a page wormed his way through the throng. The child handed Henry a note. Be quick. The tide is right to sail. Henry gasped and looked around him. With a hasty bow to the King and a genuflection towards the altar, he strode from the abbey and in the courtyard shouted for his horse.

  Before the Mass concluded he was aboard the boat Guillaume had waiting for him at the London docks. ‘Tricked ’em!’ Henry said and they roared with laughter.

  ‘Find that page!’ Stephen ordered. But the child, like the heir to his throne, had vanished.

  Guillaume had returned to Normandy before Epiphany, to spend the last of the Christmas Court with Eleanor and his own family. The Duchess, he found, was vigorous once more, riding each day to parts of the duchy she had not seen, and accepting the homage of vassals. Often he was her escort and they stayed away two or three days at a time. As they rode together he’d tell her the family background of the men and women they would meet and make suggestions about what she should say to enchant them. The Normans, she found, were unlike the people of France or Aquitaine. More hard-headed and straightforward than the French; less reckless than the men of Aquitaine.

  ‘I find them trustworthy,’ she said after a few weeks of personal meetings.

  ‘If a Norman trusts you, you’re completely safe,’ Guillaume replied.

  ‘And if he doesn’t?’

  ‘If you raise his Viking blood, he’ll go berserk and kill more ruthlessly than the men of Aquitaine. But he’ll bide his time. And give no warning.’

  She was silent as they rode home. When the dark form of the castle of Rouen came into view she asked, ‘Will you take supper with me?’

  While their wine was served Guillaume waited for her to voice the question she had been wanting to ask all day. Instead, she chatted about inconsequential things, poked at the fire and played with her unveiled hair, lifting it off her slender neck and twirling it on top of her head. A nurse knocked.

  ‘My lady, would you like to say goodnight to your son?’

  Eleanor’s eyes softened as she looked at the bundled-up infant. She gave him a lingering kiss on the forehead. ‘Take him over and show him to his uncle,’ she told the woman.

  ‘What do you think?’ she asked her brother-in-law as the woman carried the bundle to the other side of the supper table.

  Guillaume had not seen little William for months. He had grown to a small, but not too small, five-month-old baby, who gurgled in his nurse’s arms. The baby’s eyes opened wide in the candlelight and he tried to grab Guillaume’s hair. His uncle, as he looked into the small, smiling face, felt a stab of nausea. He grabbed his wine cup and drained it to cover his confusion. Eleanor, he realised, was watching him closely.

  ‘He’s beautiful,’ he said. ‘Like his mother.’

  She gave a small smile. ‘You think he looks like me?’

  Guillaume replaced his wine cup on the table with the care of a commander who rests on the earth the lifeless but sacred head of one of his men. He looked back into Eleanor’s wonderful face. ‘No,’ he replied, a coolness settled in his tone. ‘Your old Aquitaine servants say he resembles your father, the Duke. I choose to believe them.’

  We stand on the edge of a precipice, he thought, as they ate the rest of their supper in silence.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Eleanor organised the celebrations for Henry’s twenty-first birthday to be held over the month of March in large castles and small towns across the duchy. She wrote to her sister, Petronilla, ‘I never imagined I could love a child as much as I do my son. With great anguish I leave him for this long time, to perform the duties of a wife.’ Escorted by a retinue of more than one hundred knights, the Duke and Duchess made progress through their territory from north to south. But instead of setting out from Rouen, Henry insisted they begin at the great elm in Gisors and visit the Vexin garrison before turning south.

  The men were delighted to meet their Duchess for the first time. She rode among them with a falcon on her gauntlet. ‘What man will out-fly me?’ she cried. Several took up the challenge, but after an hour she was declared the winner, and presented to th
e other contestants the six pigeons her bird had brought down.

  ‘A lady worth fighting for!’ they congratulated themselves as she and Henry rode away. In large towns, if the weather was fine and warm enough, there were birthday banquets in the square, or in the cathedral if it rained.

  In Limoges, the Abbot waited on foot at the gates to welcome them, gingerly pointing at the new city walls.

  Henry clapped him on the back. ‘Now, let’s see if you can cook.’

  The feast Limoges prepared was fit for a Roman emperor: a river fish the size of a man, stuffed with delicacies and broiled on charcoal; dishes of little birds, large birds, frogs – and to Henry’s great anger, although he smiled and said nothing, two swans.

  ‘One should never eat swan,’ he told Eleanor that night.

  ‘Why not?’ she asked in surprise.

  ‘It’s disrespectful. Like shooting an eagle.’

  She sent urgent messages to Poitiers that the roast swans be cancelled.

  Their progress meandered out to the coast and inland again. In Bordeaux, Henry looked carefully at the women and the men and saw in their bone structure and colouring faint traces of the beauty of his wife. So, it’s true, he thought. She is mostly Visigoth. On the return journey north, in the castle of Caen, he arranged a surprise for her: a meeting with his adoptive brother, Prince William. William had sailed to Barfleur, been seasick all the way, then stayed a few days in the chateau of his Aunt Matilda before travelling by coach to Caen. Like everyone who saw the castle, he was awed. His new sister-in-law galloped into the courtyard, her headdress flying, and sprang to the ground. He’d heard she was beautiful, but it was her vitality that swept his heart into his mouth and made him stammer, ‘The g-g-goddess Diana could not b-b-be so glorious!’

  ‘Your new brother is a scholar,’ Henry told her. He wrapped William in his arms. ‘He reads Greek philosophy. He argues as crisply as Socrates. Aristotle is mere –’

  William blushed. ‘No, no, Henry. I find Aristotle a challenge.’

  Henry turned to Eleanor. ‘What do you think of such a man?’