by Tracey Warr
‘Yes.’
‘I hope Isabel is not too disappointed over Amaury de Montfort?’ I knew that de Montfort had thrown over his longstanding betrothal to Isabel to marry Richildis de Hainaut whom he had since repudiated and was now married into the powerful Garlande family who served the French king.
‘Certainly not. Isabel is with the King in Normandy. At his side.’
I frowned. ‘With the King …?’
‘In brief, you have to hear it sooner or later, Nest, the King loves Isabel.’
I stared at her. ‘Isabel is Henry’s mistress? She is a child.’
‘She is a woman.’
‘I do not understand why have you allowed that. Surely Isabel could have made a splendid marriage.’
‘She will make a splendid marriage.’
‘You can’t think – Elizabeth, he won’t marry her.’
Fury whipped up stormy in Elizabeth’s turquoise eyes. ‘Why not! I am descended from Charlemagne and the granddaughter of a King of France,’ she reminded me unnecessarily. ‘Why shouldn’t he look to Isabel for a wife? She is young and fertile and will bear heirs to the throne.’
‘He cannot take your daughter as queen when you are widely known as an adulteress, no matter how noble, and Isabel is herself known to already be his mistress outside marriage. The church would see these facts as taints that would disqualify any heirs the King might have by Isabel.’
Elizabeth turned her face from me. I clamped my mouth up. There seemed little point in arguing with her but I felt certain that Henry would not marry Isabel. There was not enough benefit for him in that. I was surprised that Elizabeth did not know Henry well enough to realise he would never allow Warenne to have that much power, or perhaps she knew it but chose to ignore it in her desires for her daughter.
She saw my disagreement even though I kept silent. ‘You are jealous, Nest.’
‘No.’
‘I’m sorry. Isabel is seventeen and you are what, forty now.’
‘Thirty-seven.’
‘The King loved you once but he needs a young, childbearing woman.’
‘I’m not jealous, Elizabeth and I am still a childbearing woman, by the way. I am fond of Henry and always will be but I am not jealous. I have not expected anything more from Henry for myself for a long time but I am concerned for Isabel. I am certain that he will not marry her. Why do you think he would? What political benefit is there for him in it? What necessary allegiance does your family bring to him?’
‘You are wrong!’
I decided I could not, in politeness, continue this argument further in her house and I kept my thoughts to myself. I was appalled that she, as a mother, would countenance her young daughter bedding the King who was more than fifty years old.
Hearing our raised voices, Warenne sauntered into the room, and looked from one to the other of us. I kept my peace and so did Elizabeth. ‘Lady Nest, I have a letter for you from Sir Haith,’ Warenne told me.
‘Some business concerning his work at Pembroke, I expect,’ I said.
Neither Elizabeth or Warenne took any notice of correspondence between Haith and myself. To them he was merely a factotum and they had no suspicion of a relationship between us. I pushed the small roll of sealed parchment into the sleeve of my dress.
Back at my own house, I impatiently pulled at the small wax seal and unrolled Haith’s letter. I read it rapidly. He wrote to tell me the King had refused permission for us to marry. I closed my eyes, quelling my disappointment, my fingertips touching his writing on the parchment as if I were touching Haith himself. He could ask again. I could ask when I got an opportunity to see Henry. It was not final.
When I returned to Amelina at Carew, I discussed the King’s refusal of my marriage with her. ‘When Henry returns from Normandy,’ I said, ‘I will go to court and persuade him to let me marry Haith’.
‘Same persuasion methods as before?’ she asked, archly.
28
On a Parapet
At Breteuil, Henry was slowly recovering and the extent of his collapse remained a secret known only to Haith and Benedicta. With reassurances and rest, he gradually grew able to appear in public again, at first for very short periods of time, which gradually lengthened each day. Benedicta schooled him to say, ‘I have taken note of what you say and will consider on it,’ instead of trying to make decisions when his mind was in such a welter.
It was a hard test for Benedicta and Haith to keep the King’s condition from his extensive curia. There were so many cartularies and title deeds to keep in order. Luckily Robert, the keeper of the King’s seal and the master of the royal scriptorium, was used to the King conveying commands via Haith. There were constant requests for decisions and signatures from the King’s staff: Robert de la Haie and Robert de Courcy, his seneschals; Henry de la Pommeraie and William Fitz Odo, his constables. William of Glastonbury, Geoffrey de Clinton or William of Tancarville, his chamberlains, might opportune for an audience; or there were requests for decisions from Wigan, the marshal; Robert of Évreux, the treasurer; William d’Aubigny, the butler. Benedicta felt overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of the business that the King must usually conduct, even as she at least could approach it with a calm and stable mind. She found herself having to decide, on behalf of the King, how to take surety from the disturber of a group of monks, confirming a lord’s right to receive the entertainment of a man and a horse from an abbot, and whether or not to allow a duel to be waged with champions in a dispute. Reports came from the king’s justiciars concerning writs they had issued, sureties they had taken, pleas they had heard.
‘I was thinking, Sire,’ Benedicta told the King, as Haith assisted in dressing him, ‘that I might write to Bishop John today, tell him you have had a coughing sickness that has set the work of your chancery and treasury back somewhat, and you would value his assistance for a few weeks.’
Henry nodded. ‘Yes. Do that. I will not forget how you have helped me, Benedicta. You and Haith.’
Benedicta did what she could to organise the backlog of correspondence before the Bishop’s arrival. After days of gentle dialogue with the melancholy King, she began to draw both the work and the man back into some order. It became possible to admit the King’s chaplain, John de Bayeaux, to him without de Bayeaux noticing anything amiss. He was able to speak with his eagle-eyed courtiers now at least, without their noticing any great change in him. ‘But the change will remain,’ Benedicta said to Haith, ‘underneath his usual demeanour.’
The King’s granddaughters could never regain their sight, but between them, Benedicta and Henry ensured that they had every comfort to live as they must now live. Advised by Benedicta, Henry provided the finest music teachers for them, and since they were young, they swiftly learnt to feel their way around the castle, to cope with their physical change. Benedicta was pleased to see that Mahaut spent time playing and talking kindly with the girls, undeterred by their injuries. Eventually the bandages could be replaced with silken strips to match their fine dresses, but beneath the silk, their faces would always be a horrible mess of scarred and empty eye sockets. Tending to them, Benedicta felt again the conflicts of her situation. She admired, pitied, and loathed the King in equal measures. The balance was tipped because of Haith, and for Haith. And she had compromised her own honesty, her own vows for the King’s cause that now seemed so soiled.
In the war between King Henry and de Montfort and William Clito, the tide turned again when the young Count Baldwin of Flanders died from a festering injury he had taken in the fighting the previous year. He nominated his cousin, Charles, as the new count of Flanders, and Charles was known to be sympathetic to King Henry, although not sympathetic enough to hand William Clito over to him. King Henry made peace with Fulk d’Anjou, and Haith told Benedicta in confidence that an enormous chest of silver pieces had greatly aided that conversation. At last, Mahaut could be married to the King’s son, William Adelin. They heard that the Prince had just arrived on the Norman coast an
d was making his way to Lisieux for the wedding.
Benedicta travelled with her excited charge to Lisieux and to the cathedral of Saint Pierre in June. She watched the solemn procession of monks swinging censers and intoning prayers and saw Mahaut looking so small but so brave as she stood with her new husband before the Bishop at the altar, for the blessing. Her young charge was enacting such an important role in the peace-making, and Benedicta hoped that she could be of assistance to Mahaut as she prepared to become a queen. Benedicta, nevertheless, felt continuing misgivings at the temperament of the girl’s new husband. Mahaut was twelve and William Adelin was sixteen, both young yet, and so perhaps there was hope that William would grow to be a pleasant man and a good king.
Mahaut’s father, Fulk d’Anjou, left on pilgrimage to the Holy Lands after the wedding ceremony. Since the threats from King Henry’s two neighbours – Anjou and Flanders – were now allayed, Henry hoped to reach peace with those rebels who held out against him, those allied with King Louis and William Clito. Henry did all he could to ameliorate the enmity against him, pardoning lords such as Robert Giroie, and restoring the fortress of Bellême to Robert de Bellême’s heir, William Talvas. Despite Henry’s efforts, Amaury de Montfort would not come to terms. Henry gathered his army again and Haith rode out with him, leaving Benedicta, Mahaut and the other wives and female kin of the King’s commanders in the safety of the household of Bishop John in Lisieux.
Benedicta waited anxiously for news of Haith and King Henry, and, she admitted reluctantly to herself, of Amaury de Montfort. The Bishop of Lisieux was Henry’s chief deputy in Normandy and everything that occurred passed across the Bishop’s desk. She should be able to follow events from here at least, rather than waiting in a nunnery for stale news that was months old.
‘Benedicta! The Countess de Perche has some new songs, just copied for her,’ Mahaut exclaimed, running into the chamber where Benedicta was peacefully reading. ‘She invites us to hear them at a party in the garden this afternoon!’ Matilda FitzRoy, Countess de Perche, was the eldest of King Henry’s illegitimate daughters.
‘Then we should find you something appropriate to wear, Mahaut.’
They chose a red gown that King Henry had given to Mahaut after her wedding, and Benedicta ushered the girl to the Bishop’s garden where wooden benches had been set up in a square beneath the shade of a green canopy. In the centre of the square, perched on a three-legged stool, was the Countess’s minstrel. Benedicta took a deep breath, enjoying the scents of the flowers and the sound of water trickling into marble basins. She looked around and found her gaze inadvertantly alighting on a life-sized, antique statue of a naked man. She had no idea the Bishop would have such objects in his garden and wondered if she should allow Mahaut to continue here.
‘I am not sure these songs are fit for the ears of such young ladies, Countess,’ the minstrel said, interrupting Benedicta’s doubts about the statue. She saw that he was jerking his head meaningfully at Mahaut.
‘I am a married lady and old enough for anything!’ Mahaut declared, her face pink.
‘Get on and sing us the songs,’ Countess Matilda told him. Benedicta took her seat amidst the gaily dressed young ladies feeling like a black crow amongst jewels. The other guests were Matilda de Blois – Etienne and Thibaut’s sister – who had lately married Richard, the young Earl of Chester, and Amice de Gael who was betrothed to King Henry’s illegitimate son, Richard. All the young ladies’ husbands and betrothed husbands, were like Mahaut’s, with Henry and Haith at the battle camp.
‘Stop swinging your legs, Mahaut,’ Benedicta whispered. ‘You are making the bench rock on the uneven ground.’ Countess Matilda was close to her half-sister, Juliana, and Benedicta supposed that she organised such entertainments to distract herself from her sorrow for her sister and her mutilated nieces.
‘These songs are written by Peter Abelard, a canon at Sens and school master at Notre-Dame in Paris.’ The minstrel cleared his throat. ‘They are love songs to a young lady named Heloise d’Argenteuil.’
‘Love songs, Sister!’ Mahaut declared, clapping her hands. ‘My husband is in love with me.’
‘For sure he is, but sit quietly now for the songs, like a grownup lady.’
‘I have heard of this,’ Matilda de Blois whispered behind her hands to Amice de Gael. ‘Abelard and Heloise. It is a great scandal in Paris!’
‘Abelard writes how first his aim was simply to seduce the lady,’ the minstrel explained to them, ‘to steal away her virtue in a cold and calculating act, but then he was caught in his own snares when he fell entirely in love with the young lady.’
Benedicta was lulled by the strumming and the minstrel’s voice, the heat and the buzz of bees, and she allowed her thoughts to stray to Amaury. Real life was not a song. No cold seducer found themselves transformed into a hopeless and passionate lover – at least not her own at any rate.
There was a fair in Lisieux, and Benedicta went with Mahaut and Matilda de Blois to look at the wares. Benedicta loved the colourful melee of a market: the multicoloured awnings, the creative hawkers’ cries, the cloths laid with jewels and shoes and belts. She took a deep breath and wished she had not done so. Mahaut held her fingers to her nose, pinching it closed. They stood next to a fish stall festooned with the scaley glints of tentacles and dead eyes. ‘Urgh!’ said Mahaut. ‘Can’t we move?’
‘I’m trying,’ said Benedicta but the crush of the crowd held them immobilised, keeping them at close quarters with the slither of a squid and the scents of the sea. There was a commotion ahead and the people squeezed together in the tight spaces between the stalls heaved this way and that, squashing them even further towards the slimey fish stall.
‘What is it?’ asked Mahaut.
‘I can’t see yet.’ Benedicta pushed past a fat, sweaty man and backed up onto the church steps where she could get a better view over the heads of the crowd. The crowd had parted for the arrival of a royal herald. His horse’s sides heaved for air, its mouth was flecked with white foam. ‘I think it’s news from the battlefield.’
‘Oh I must know if my husband is injured or victorious,’ said Mahaut urgently, and she and Matilda stepped up onto the steps beside Benedicta, craning to see what was happening.
‘Citizens of Lisieux,’ declared the herald in a stentorious voice, ‘listen!’ After the initial heaving and buzz of the first response to his arrival, the crowd fell silent. ‘King Henry is victorious!’ he declared. Mahaut smiled up to Benedicta. ‘In the month of July, Henry’s army sat in siege before Évreux, the stronghold of the rebel lords, Amaury de Montfort, and his nephews Philip and Florus, sons of Bertrade de Montfort, former Queen of France.’ There were gasps from the crowd. ‘The King’s army broke through the defences of the city and burnt it to ashes but the citadel withstood them.’ The crowd broke into loud conversations and exclamations at the awful reduction of the city of Evreux. Benedicta heaved a silent sigh of relief at the thought that Amaury had not been taken.
The herald held his hands up for hush, indicating that he had more to announce. ‘The King then raised siege at Évreux and marched to meet King Louis of France in battle at Bremule, with the young prince, William Adelin, at his side.’
Mahaut bounced up and down in excitement at this declaration. Henry would have kept his heir well back from any real danger, Benedicta knew. She prayed, meanwhile, for the safety of her brother for she knew it was unlikely the herald would give any special note to Haith’s fate.
‘The French King is defeated!’ yelled the herald and a great shout of approbation went up from all the people pressed there, and Mahaut joined in with the cheering and hollering.
‘Hush! You are a princess, not a hooting peasant!’ Matilda de Blois told Mahaut, but laughed as she said it.
When he could make himself heard again, the herald declared, ‘King Henry’s battleplans were wise, whilst the French king’s attacks were reckless and disordered. William Crispin struck a blow to King Henry’s
head!’ The herald was winding up the suspense for his audience but the merchants were beginning to mutter at this long-winded interruption to their business. ‘Roger de Clare knocked Crispin from his horse and then must fling himself over Crispin’s prostrate body to prevent the King’s friends from killing that traitor. King Louis and the pretender, William Clito, evaded capture, turning tail so fast they left their horses behind them. Courteous King Henry sent King Louis’ fine charger back to him, and William Adelin, following his father’s polite gesture, returned William Clito’s mount to that lord.’
The herald’s recital ended abruptly when a group of merchants anxious to keep their sales flowing without more interruption, offered to slake his thirst. Mahaut, Matilda, and Benedicta made their way back from the market, their servants loaded with purchases for the young ladies.
A few days later, Benedicta was reassured to receive a letter from Haith, telling her that he was safe and King Henry continued robust. He reported that Amaury de Montfort had not been present at Bremule and that whilst William Clito and William Crispin had fought alongside King Louis, a number of other lords had chosen to sit on the fence, or rather on a hill, where they could watch the progress of the battle, but stay aloof: Stephen of Aumale, Hugh of Gournay, Helias de Saint-Saëns. No doubt, wrote Haith, they would have swooped down to join the victory if the battle had gone in favour of Louis and William Clito, but instead Henry carried the day and they turned tail like roebuck bouncing white-rumped in the field.
In September, a group of travelling merchants arrived at the bishop’s palace and regaled the Bishop and his guests with the latest news from the conflicts in Normandy. Amaury de Montfort, they said, had raised a huge army and marched on Breteuil intending to take it back for Eustace and Juliana, but this army was ill-trained. The Breton commander King Henry had left at Breteuil, Ralph de Gael, Amice’s father, thumbed his nose at de Montfort. Ralph de Gael had emerged from the fortress and not even bothered to close the fortress gates behind him as he repelled the attack. Soon after, the valiant young commander, Richard FitzRoy arrived to give de Gael aid, and King Henry arrived a few hours later, so that de Montfort was forced to withdraw in failure. Doubtless the merchant knew that he was addressing an audience that included the kin of the victors and embellished his account to suit their side, thought Benedicta.
