Hermann turned to Frederick. “Allow him to rise, Frederick.”
“We beg you, Your Grace,” the Duke of Meran put in, “let the king defend himself standing.”
At length, Frederick spoke. “Rise, traitor,” he said in a voice he didn’t recognize as his own.
With Wilbert’s help Henry managed to stand. Rushes stuck to his cloak.
Frederick signaled to the chancellor, who stepped forward. Siegfried’s voice carried across the hall: “You, Henry of Hohenstaufen, king of the Germans, are accused of rebelling against your father the emperor. You are accused of treacherously taking up arms against your own vassal, the Duke of Bavaria, as well as the Rhineland bishops. You are further accused of having conspired with the Lombard communes against the emperor, and of coveting his crown of Lombardy. What have you to say?”
For a moment, it looked as if Henry would begin to sob anew. Then he straightened his shoulders. For the first time, he raised his eyes.
An image of Constance flashed through Frederick’s mind, her fair hair, Henry’s hair …
“Father, I …” He bit his lip. “I never wanted to betray you,” he said in a barely audible voice, “I just wanted to be king not only in name, but in reality. You and your officials have controlled every move of mine, every moment of my life. I am king, but I have never been allowed to rule.”
Frederick’s lips were pressed together. His finger stroked the armrest of his throne. There was some truth in this. Yet, if only he had controlled him more …
Henry, emboldened by his silence, continued, “I truly wanted to help the burghers. The bishops,” he glared at the bishop of Worms on his left, “the bishops exploit the people. It is they who really rule Germany, father, not you.”
There was truth in this, too. And it stung. But it didn’t justify betrayal. Nothing justified that. “And the crown of Lombardy? You thought to be all-powerful king of Germany and of Lombardy, too?”
“Father, the Lombards, they promised, it seemed so easy, you’re not their king anyway, they’ve always refused you their crown, so I thought—”
Frederick leapt up, his face contorted. “It’s treason, treason of the most abominable kind! Treason of a son against his father is a violation of both God’s and man’s law!” Over Henry’s head he addressed those gathered in the hall: “My son has conspired against my imperial authority and against yourselves. From this moment onward, he is no longer my son or king of Germany. I myself will again assume the German crown.” He gathered his mantle, about to depart.
“Your Grace, you must pronounce sentence,” the chancellor whispered.
“For the sake of his mother’s memory, I will spare his life, but he is to be imprisoned for the rest of his days.”
Henry turned white. “And my wife, my children?”
“They’ll be treated with the honor due their station.”
Frederick stepped down and walked past Henry. Before the doors he halted. He looked back at his son for the last time. Then he strode out of the hall.
FREDERICK LEFT HEIDELBERG CASTLE immediately, and rode back in a pouring rain to Worms. There he went straight to his apartments, giving orders that he was not to be disturbed. His head throbbed so badly that his vision was blurred.
After Mahmoud had divested him of his wet cloak, boots, and gloves, he asked him to leave.
“Would my lord wish for some food or drink ?” Mahmoud asked.
Frederick, holding his hands before the fire, shook his head.
“No, Mahmoud, I have no desire to eat.”
Mahmoud salaamed. “May the peace of Allah be with you.”
“Thank you, Mahmoud, and with you, too.” The compassion in his childhood friend’s voice brought a lump to Frederick’s throat. He too, like Berard, knows of my pain, he thought.
After Mahmoud left, Frederick lay down on the bed, fully clothed. The shutters were closed. He watched the fire, its leaping flames. He should have called for Michael, asked for a draft of henbane. Yet he didn’t want the physician around him. He didn’t want anyone. He wanted peace. The chamber was still and dim. His head felt a little better. Silence always helped. Silence and darkness.
Maybe it was age. Forty was the threshold of old age, yet despite the headaches he had been getting, he didn’t feel any older. It wasn’t so much the physical ravages of age that frightened him. They were part of nature’s cycle. Long before death, things began to wilt, shrivel, draw closer to the earth whence they came. It was the weight of experience that oppressed him. The understanding of others, and of himself.
His stomach was still knotted. In rage. Humiliation. Guilt. And regret. He turned over, away from the fire, and closed his eyes.
Dwelling on the past was the most futile of weaknesses. The heir Constance had born him after long hours of labor on a hot summer’s day in Palermo, the curly-haired indulged boy frightened of horses, the handsome young man who wore his crown with such dignity and so little sense, had ceased to exist. He must efface him from his mind.
He would look to the future instead. To Isabella. To a new son.
THE FOLLOWING MORNING, Frederick, despite a night of fitful sleep, felt somewhat better. He was being shaved by his barber, a fat jolly Saracen named Rashid who had been trained by Mahmoud, when Henry of Brabant appeared in the doorway.
“I beg your pardon. I’ll wait outside.” The duke stepped back.
“I’ll be ready shortly. Sit.” Frederick said, with his head reclining on the back of his chair.
Henry, booted and spurred, gloves in hand, remained standing. The Saracen deftly wielded the sharp shining razor, scraping it with consummate skill over the imperial cheek.
When Frederick finally sat up, Henry said, “We’re about to leave. The others are waiting. We must make haste if we are to reach Antwerp before the princess’s ship.”
“Ah, Isabella.” Frederick sighed. “You have my gifts?”
Henry nodded.
Frederick rose. He was still wearing his mustard chamber robe and curly-toed Egyptian slippers. There were dark shadows under his eyes.
“Have you a message for the princess?” Henry asked.
“Tell her that I await her arrival in Cologne with great impatience.”
Brabant gave him a long look. Frederick twisted his lips. “I’ll get used to her. God knows I need another heir. Thirty thousand marks sterling and an English alliance aren’t to be sneered at either.” He clapped Henry on the back. “Godspeed, my friend. I’ll wait for you in Cologne.”
After Henry had gone, Frederick sat down. He rubbed his forehead with both hands. He didn’t want to think of his son, or of Bianca. Both kept coming back into his mind, however hard he tried to banish them. Henry’s eyes would haunt him forever, just as Bianca’s bitterness on the morning of their parting was etched into his memory. He had written her several letters, to which he had received replies inquiring after his and Conrad’s health and the weather in Germany. Neither had ever understood what he was trying to achieve. Neither understood that personal considerations were of no consequence where the Empire was concerned.
The barber was cleaning his instruments in a corner, packing them into their casket till tomorrow.
“Rashid,” Frederick asked, “tell me, you have a wife?”
The barber turned around. “Two, my lord, in Lucera.”
“And children?”
“Six, my lord.”
“And you can marry another wife any day you like?”
“Yes, my lord. According to the Prophet’s law, a man may have four wives, as long as he can afford to treat them all equally.”
“And the first two won’t make your life a misery because you’ve taken a third wife?”
The barber shook his head. “They they wouldn’t dare to speak against God’s law.”
Frederick smiled. “You Muslims are blessed.”
THE WEDDING FEAST was held in Cologne. Long rows of trestle tables laid with immaculate white napery were arranged under the g
reat stone arches of the covered market. There were more than a thousand guests. The young princes of the Empire served at the high table. Henry of Brabant’s eldest son acted as Frederick’s cupbearer. French troubadours, Sicilian trovatori, and German minnesingers sang and strummed their lutes. Isabella, whose love of music was known, rewarded them with smiles and a gracious inclination of her head.
Frederick observed his new wife. When he had seen her for the first time that morning, he had been taken aback by her fairness. She had a skin like translucent alabaster, hair so blond it was almost white, a pert little nose, and large blue eyes fringed by dark lashes. Her only defect appeared to be crooked front teeth, which she managed to hide most of the time by sketching just the shadow of a smile in a way that was fetchingly mysterious.
If her ancestry was anything to go by, she might prove as spirited as she was lovely. For Isabella Plantagenet carried in her veins the blood of two of the most tempestuous women of the age. She was the granddaughter of Eleanor of Aquitaine, who had wed Louis VII of France and then divorced him to marry Henry II of England.
Her mother, Isabella of Angoulême, eclipsed even her grandmother with the scandals she caused. At the age of eighteen, affianced to one of King John of England’s French vassals, she eloped with the English king when the latter paid a visit to his liegeman. After John’s death the unpopular queen was made to retire to her French domains, where she married Hugh de Lusignan, the man she herself had betrothed to her daughter.
Isabella turned her head and caught his look. Frederick smiled at her, a lingering smile. A shell-pink flush rose from her slender neck to her cheeks. She smiled back briefly and then, with a self-assurance he thought admirable in a virgin, resumed her conversation with the Duke of Bavaria. Not, he thought with a flicker of anticipation, that there was anything virginal about her well-rounded bodice of garnet-colored velvet embroidered with pearls or the sensuous curves of her full lips.
Her trousseau was as sumptuous as the golden crown on her head. King Henry had outdone himself to ensure that his favorite sister would impress her husband. Apart from the thirty thousand marks sterling, Henry had given Isabella chests filled with furs, robes of wool and silk lined with miniver and marten, cloaks of “triple” camel hair from Tripoli, Eastern carpets and silver plates, silken bed hangings and caskets filled with jewelry. He had even included a set of cooking pots of unalloyed silver.
Frederick relaxed against the throne. He raised his cup and drank a silent toast to his new wife. May she be fruitful, he thought. Her potential spirit didn’t disturb him—on the contrary. And if her thoughts should turn to infidelity, like her grandmother’s, or to ambition, like her mother’s, he would soon put them to rest.
* * *
THE CHAMBER WAS in semidarkness, illuminated only by a slow-burning log fire in the fireplace against the far wall. The scents of wilted roses and frankincense filled the air.
Isabella of England lay stretched out on the great bed hung with cloth-of-gold and strewn with rose petals. She was clad in a shift of cream linen embroidered with gold threads.
She shivered. Despite the fire and the July sun that had made Cologne stifling today, the chamber was cold. The archbishop of Cologne and his acolytes had left after blessing the nuptial bed with holy water and praying for her fertility. Her ladies, after dressing her for the night and brushing her hair till her head hurt, had all withdrawn. Margaret, her favorite, had been the last to leave. Now she was alone with the dancing shadows on the walls and the deep silence interrupted by the occasional crackling of the fire.
How much longer would she have to wait? The emperor both frightened and fascinated her. Despite his age, for he was twenty years older than she, there was an undercurrent of feral vitality in him that made her shudder. Some said that he was in league with the devil. She thought uneasily of the ill-fated young queen of Jerusalem, his second wife. Rumor had it that he had her poisoned so that he could carry on with Bianca Lancia, his famous mistress.
Her brother had assured her that those were envious tales put about by his enemies. He was, after all, the greatest monarch in Christendom, a man renowned not only for his crowns, but also for his learning. It was said that he spoke and wrote in six languages, that he could read the stars and chart the heavens, and that he knew every book in existence. He conversed with her in oddly accented, but otherwise excellent, Norman French.
At the wedding banquet she had caught him repeatedly watching her. His eyes, an unusual aquamarine color, had the same intensity as those of the two hunting cheetahs he had sent her brother as a gift. Henry had been so taken by the beasts that he built a special enclosure for them at the Tower. The cheetahs supposedly came from Abyssinia, the land of Prester …
The door creaked open. Her heart began to race. From under half-closed eyes she watched him enter. Unable to take her eyes off him, she followed his movements as he undid first his crimson mantle and then his tunic.
He cast off his clothes with his back toward the bed. For a moment she had a glimpse of his naked body as he turned to pick up a robe. In the glow of the fire his arms and legs seemed cast in bronze. Isabella swallowed. She had never seen a naked man before.
He came toward her with that loose-limbed gait she had noticed before. His wide-sleeved chamber robe was open down the front. Clutching the coverlet, she became stiff as a board.
He sat down beside her and stroked her hair. He smiled. “There’s no need to be frightened.” Then he sought her lips. She turned her head away brusquely.
“I’m afraid this won’t do, my beauty.” With both hands, in a single movement, he pulled her shift up to her neck. He stared at her. “God’s word, Isabella. Do you know how lovely you are?”
He began to caress her stomach with slow, circular movements. “This smooth belly will swell with our sons …” His voice was suddenly hoarse.
She hardly heard his words. She closed her eyes. Flooded with an inexplicable languor, she felt every taut muscle relax. His hand, still stroking, slid lower. Dreamily, she willed him to continue, to continue forever …
Suddenly he stopped. Isabella, startled, opened her eyes. What was wrong? Then she gasped. Despite her shock, she couldn’t avert her eyes. His member had risen as if it possessed a life of its own. Its shadow loomed on the wall.
“Turn over.” He whispered. “Get on your knees.”
Knees? What in God’s name was he asking? Serving maids went down on their knees to scrub floors. Surely he could not, like that … only beasts …
“Come, my sweet, do as I tell you,” he said. “That way I’ll hurt you less. Don’t resist, yield to me, let yourself go, and it will not hurt at all.”
Lulled by his voice, she obeyed. She was yearning to feel his hands on her again, to feel their pressure. There was a quick, searing instant of pain. Then a fierce wondrous warmth filled her belly. Why ever, she wondered, had Margaret told her to clench her teeth?
AFTER THE WEEKLONG wedding festivities, Frederick and Isabella went to Mainz, where he had called a Diet. Among other decrees, the Diet promulgated a law stating that any son who took up arms against his father forfeited his inheritance. The Diet’s last event was the reconciliation between the houses of Guelf and Hohenstaufen. In a ceremony that had many older princes unashamedly wiping their eyes, Frederick passed the territory of Brunswick over to the Guelf heir, making him Duke of Brunswick-Lueneburg.
At the end of November Frederick and Isabella moved to Haguenau, to hold their Christmas court and spend the winter. Frederick found his favorite German palace unchanged. Barbarossa’s marble-floored library lined with book cupboards was just as he had left it fifteen years earlier. The storks, a new young chamberlain assured him, continued to come, nesting year after year in the same west tower.
Every few days, couriers, part of a new postal system, brought news of Sicily. Berard told him in long personal letters much of what the official reports didn’t say. Bianca’s children wrote regularly, in stilted Latin form
ulated by their tutor. Their mother remained silent.
The halls of Haguenau resounded with the voices and spurs of vassals coming and going in preparation for the war against the Lombard League. In threatening to free the German cities and permit them self-rule on the Lombard model, Henry had unwittingly performed a great service for Frederick: the German princes’ old hatred of the Lombard communes had taken on a personal element it had lacked before.
On the day before Christmas, he granted an audience to Margaret of Austria and her children. He received Henry’s wife in private, seated alone in the library. The pale girl with the plucked forehead he remembered from Aquileia had turned into a plump woman with sad eyes and a double chin.
Margaret sank into a deep curtsy. She raised her eyes. “My lord, I have come to beg your mercy. My father and my husband have gravely wronged you, but neither I nor my children have ever been disloyal to you. It is true that by Your Grace’s magnanimity, our lands and titles have been left us, but we are outcasts.” Her voice trembled. “No lord will take my sons into his household. My daughter has no hope of finding a husband when she’s grown. She’ll be condemned to a nunnery …” Margaret began to cry.
Frederick rose. He took her hands. “No Hohenstaufen shall become a nun unless she feels called by God. You and your children shall come to court. I myself will take your sons into my service.”
She wiped her eyes. “Thank you, my lord. I thank you with all my heart.”
Poor girl, he thought. To have a father and a husband who were traitors was a harsh fate indeed. Her father, Frederick of Austria, had sought refuge in a fortress in Graz, from where he dispatched emissaries suing for peace. At first, he suspected that the duke sent his daughter in an attempt to soften him. He didn’t think so now. Margaret’s concern was for her children. In any case, it would avail her nothing to plead for her father.
He pointed with his chin. “Those are your children?”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
“Tell them to approach.”
She turned and beckoned to two boys and a girl clustered beside their attendants.
The Falcon of Palermo Page 41
