For the King's Favor (15 page)

“Like your toil to regain the earldom that was your father’s?”

“That is not the same,” he said, but smiled.

“Only in the way that a grain of sand is not a beach.”

His smile deepened. “Then mayhap you are right,” he said. “And one day in the future I will show you beaches stretching as far as the eye can see.”

They walked around the pool and he crouched to dip his fingers in the water. The fish were slow to rise now the weather was cooler. “So,” he said. “If we are set upon a match, we must see to the formalising of contracts and agree things in law…and choose a day.”

“Let be done whatever is needful,” Ida replied, adding on a rush, “and let it be soon.” He looked up at her and she blushed again. “It will be a new life for me—a new start, and such a thing cannot come too quickly.”

He shook the water from his fingers, causing droplet rings to ripple and overlap on the surface of the pond. “Shall we say early December? Then we have time before the demands of the Christmas court, but also time to arrange a fitting marriage.”

She nodded gravely, although she wanted to laugh and dance and twirl…and perhaps pinch herself to prove that this was truly happening. He rose to his feet and now he offered her his arm and she laid her hand along it and shivered a little.

“Are you cold?”

Ida shook her head. “No,” she said. “I am happy.”

She had to swallow and blink. He would think her foolish if she cried.

“One day, if God is good, and I scatter enough grains of sand to make a beach, you will be Countess of Norfolk and lady of a great estate,” he said as they completed the circuit of the garden.

Ida was tempted to reply that she did not need these things, but she was sensitive and understood his need to say them. “And you will be an earl,” she told him, smiling. “Our sons will follow in your footsteps and our daughters will know how fortunate they are in their father.”

She heard his breath catch in his chest and saw the colour rise in his face again. The look in his eyes made her own breathing quicken. “I must return,” she said, with a glance towards the main building. “We have been gone a while and they will be wondering about me.”

Amusement glinted in his eyes. “I think you are wise. We have broken propriety enough for one day, and those women will be anxious to know how you fared and whether to don mourning or begin stitching a wedding gown…unless you already have that in your coffer too.”

“My lord, I would not presume,” she said modestly.

He took her hand and kissed the back of it. His lips were soft and she shivered at this, their first touch on her skin. How would it be to feel them on her mouth—where Henry’s had once been. He didn’t have a beard like Henry and his lips were fuller and smoother because he was a younger man. Taking his hand, she echoed his gesture, leaving him a similar memento, then disengaged and hurried towards the door. At the threshold, she turned and gave him a dazzling smile over her shoulder. It was a trick learned at court—it was artifice, but she meant it with the full sincerity of her heart too. She swore to herself that she was going to be the best wife in the world. She owed it to the man who was going to remove her from the limbo she currently occupied and with whom she would make her life anew.

Woodstock, November 1181

The November evening was dank with fog, and darkness had set in early. All the shutters were barred against the bone-gripping chill. Fires blazed in the hearths, supplemented by charcoal braziers and lamps and candles added coronets of light and warmth to the rooms.

The King had been hunting venison for the table and, having returned with corpse-laden pack ponies, was in high good humour despite the inclement weather. A good dinner enhanced by some excellent entertainment in the form of tumblers, fire dancers, and a troubadour who had sung a scurrilous ditty about the French had further augmented Henry’s good mood.

Roger had joined the hunt and had enjoyed the gallop amongst the misty trees, his courser pounding through the forest mulch. It was good to ride hard, and even in the still air to feel the wind of speed flowing against and through his body.

Replete with food, laughter, and the satisfaction of a day enjoyed, he dallied with Ida in a corridor away from the main hall. His fur-lined cloak enfolded both their bodies in the delightful pleasure of courtship. Not that Roger was taking any serious liberties for he knew the boundaries and had no intention of emulating Henry. Everything would be done properly in its due course and, in the meantime, there was the pleasure of anticipation. Ida was eager to share his warmth under the cloak, to hold his hand, touch his face, breathe his breath, but she refused to let him see her hair unbound because that was a husband’s privilege; nor would she open her mouth when they kissed. He was careful to keep his hands at her waist so that touching her was a display of tenderness not lust. While desire rode him hard, there was less than a month to wait and then he could have all he wanted.

“I have to go,” he said with a reluctant sigh, but even so, he lingered. “The King expects me in his chamber.”

She ran her thumb over his palm. “Do you know what he wants?”

“To discuss the morrow’s business with his counsellors. He hasn’t yet spoken to me of our match. I thought he might do so at the hunt but his mind was on the chase.” He raised her hand and set a kiss at the base of her wrist. “There is no need to look anxious. I’ve not seen him in so fine a mood for a long time.”

“Bringing down deer does that to him,” she said as she slipped out from the enveloping warmth of his cloak. “I’ll talk to you on the morrow.”

He bowed to her; she flourished him a curtsey, then blew him a kiss. Mutual smiles on their faces, they each went their way.

***

Henry handed Roger several sheets of vellum, closely written in the elegant dark brown script of one of the court clerics. “This is pending business,” he said, “but if you cast your eyes over it now, it will advance matters later on. On the issue of Ida’s marriage, I gift you with the return of three of the manors that were your father’s. I think you know their worth. I have also instructed that debt of five hundred marks you owe at the exchequer is to be cancelled.”

“Thank you, sire.” Roger studied the list. Acle, Halvergate, and Walsham combined were worth well over a hundred pounds. The manors were three over which he was in dispute with his half-brothers. For Henry to bestow them on him was a positive sign as well as a gift. Perhaps this was the first opening of the door, and his marriage to Ida was going to prove more fortuitous than he had ever hoped.

“Your future bride is worthy of such a marriage gift,” Henry said. “I would see her well settled.” He gave Roger a hard stare. “Take care of her, my lord Bigod. I am giving Ida into your safekeeping, but you should know that she is precious to me.”

A feeling of danger prickled between Roger’s shoulder blades. On his own part, he felt indignation and more than a twinge of jealousy, but concealed them behind an impassive facade. The marriage wasn’t accomplished yet and these charters had not been sealed and ratified. “She will be precious to me too, sire…she will be my wife.”

Henry gave him a close, assessing look as if sizing up a potential enemy rather than an ally. “There is one particular detail that is not negotiable.”

Roger’s heart sank. He had known there would be a catch somewhere because Henry never gave anything with open generosity. There were always caveats. “Sire?”

“When you take Ida to wife, you take her alone. My son remains in my custody. He will be raised in a manner fitting to his station.”

The news hit Roger like a fist in the solar plexus. For himself, he was not overly concerned because he didn’t know the infant and a baby was a baby. But Ida…Dear sweet Jesu, what was this going to do to her? “Sire, his mother will be grief-stricken…”

Henry spread his hands. “It will sadden her, I know, but that cannot be helped. She has too tender a heart and I have let her affection for him grow too deep. I should have given him to a wet nurse as soon as he was born.” He shrugged as if shaking off an irritant. “I have no doubt she will bellow for a while like a cow after a calf, my lord Bigod, but I expect her to be distracted by her marriage bed and your heirs in due course. I imagine you’ll be swift enough to the pleasure of that duty and you’ll find her a sweet and compliant bedmate,” he added with a taunting gleam in his eyes.

Roger was tempted to take hold of Henry by the throat and throttle him into silence.

“Only peasant women rear their own. You and Ida will start afresh. Let everything that has been remain in the past. She will see him at court betimes.”

Which would be like rubbing salt into a raw wound and would only exacerbate the pain, Roger thought.

“Besides,” Henry said, “I’m fond of the little chap and unlikely to beget many more. I sired him; I’m entitled to dispose of his future as I see fit. He’s mine, of my loins. His mother was only the vessel.”

Roger managed to prevent himself from making a reply that would destroy his chances of ever regaining his earldom and rebuilding Framlingham, but the unspoken words created a sour taste in his mouth.

Henry gave him a bright look. “Do you have any bastards, Bigod?”

“No, sire.”

Henry ran his tongue around his teeth. “Well, at least you know your future wife is fertile and a breeder of men children.”

The words might have been mere pragmatic comment, or they might be a needling hint that Henry had proved his virility by fathering a son on Ida and that if there was any problem, it would lie with Roger’s seed. Roger clung to control, reminding himself that he was being given three manors and pardoned a substantial debt and that everything had its price.

“I will give the order tomorrow when I see to your charters and the cancelling of your debt.”

“What about Ida?”

“I will tell her now,” Henry said, and dismissed him.

Leaving the royal chamber, Roger’s heart was heavy and the charters in his hand seemed to weigh like lead. There was nothing he could do about the King’s decision to keep the child at court. He had seen the finality in Henry’s eyes; battling him would only make things worse for Ida and himself because they could not win. She would be distraught and it was going to cast a shadow over their marriage even before it was begun. Grimacing, Roger began to see his father’s belligerence towards the Crown in a more sympathetic light. He wondered how many straws a camel could have piled upon its back before it broke. What was the number of the final one?

***

Ida watched William at play with his new wooden horse, making it gallop across the sheepskin rug on the floor. Her blood was a frozen river and an icicle had pierced her heart. There was simultaneous numbness and pain, the disbelief of someone mortally injured who had only just begun to die.

One of Henry’s chaplains had come to her last night, not even Henry himself, and told her that when she went to her marriage, her son was to remain at court and be raised in the royal household. Henry couldn’t do this to her, but he had—given her the world and then crushed it in the same instant with a single command. She was to leave Woodstock early tomorrow for her brother’s manor at Flamstead, her custody and person bestowed upon her family until her wedding. And William was to stay here.

“Look, Mama, horse.” He came to show her his new toy and laughed at her with his two rows of perfect milk teeth.

Ida swept him into her arms and held him tightly, as if she would absorb him back into her body and thaw her veins. Oh God, oh God. She couldn’t let him go. It would be like tearing a hole in herself too great to heal. Roger might be her future husband; she might feel things for him she had never felt for anyone before—but she had carried William in her womb, had felt him kick and turn against the palm of her hand in joyous quickening. She and Roger would become one flesh upon their marriage, but the binding of words was not the same as the tie of the birth cord. And as she thought this, the pain came, almost like the pangs of labour.

She tightened her grip and William wriggled in her arms, squealing in protest. Ida let him go, watched him toddle away to his other toy animals and stand them all up in a line. His hair gleamed like dark water; his profile of soft curves, his sooty lashes, and the tender fold of his mouth made the pangs worse and she doubled over, clutching her midriff, sobs wrenching from deep inside her as the grief cut and severed and tore.

“Oh, there now, there now, my love!” Hodierna, who had been fetching her a tisane, put the steaming cup to one side and hastened to enfold her in a maternal embrace.

A wooden animal in each hand now, William ran to show them to one of the other ladies.

“Don’t you fret, my love. You’ll still see him when you come to court. You’ll still be able to visit the nursery.”

“But I can’t have him!” Ida gasped between spasms. “Someone else will kiss and hold him, and soothe his hurts. Someone else will see each change in him as he grows and applaud his achievements. I will be robbed of all that, yet I am the one who should be most attached to those things.”

Hodierna rubbed Ida’s back. “He will have a royal upbringing and the chance to become a great man,” she said. “He will never lack for anything, you know that.”

William toddled back to Ida and plumped down in her lap with a loud sigh. Ida curled her arms around him again. “Except for my love,” she choked. “Except for his mother. You cannot replace such things with worldly goods.”

“He will be well looked after,” Hodierna said firmly. “He will be with his father and it is good that the King takes responsibility for him. Would you deprive Henry of his son when you can go on and have others with the man of your choosing? I know it is hard, my love, and I may sound cruel, but you must think about it in those terms because you have no alternative.”

“I could have chosen not to wed…” Ida whispered.

Hodierna made an exasperated sound. “Indeed, and eventually the King would have settled someone else on you—someone not to your taste. At least the little one is still too young to realise what this means and that is a blessing for him. That he won’t remember you is your curse, but the longer you leave it the worse it will be for all. You must look to the future and your new duties.”

“I can’t.” As William ran off again, Ida pushed away from Hodierna and curled herself in a foetal ball of misery and grief. “I can’t, I can’t!”

***

“Demoiselle, you can go no further, the King is busy and he will not see you.” John Marshal barred Ida’s way to Henry’s chambers.

“But I have to see him.” Ida’s voice cracked. “It’s about my son.”

“That is not possible, demoiselle, but I will give him your message.” The marshal’s face was expressionless. She had seen this polite exterior before, bestowed upon supplicants who had no chance of being granted the King’s ear.

“Then I will wait for him…”

“You would do best to return to your women.”

She raised her chin and stood her ground and wondered if he would order his men to carry her off by force. There was no precedent for what she was doing but she was so far beyond the bounds of propriety, she was in the wild territory where a map-maker would have written Here Be Dragons. Behind the marshal, the door opened and Henry emerged at his usual breezy walk followed by the barons with whom he had been in discussion and several scribes and clerics. Ida darted around the marshal before he could catch her and flung herself on her knees at Henry’s feet. “Sire, I beg you!” she cried. “If there is mercy in your soul, don’t part me from my son. Let me have him!” Under her fingers, she felt the embroidered gold knots on his tunic, the soft edge of his thick woollen cloak, the hardness of his legs. There were hands on her, trying to pull her away from Henry, but she tightened her hold and pressed her head against his legs. They would have to cut her off him.

“Let her be,” Henry commanded, raising his hand. “All of you leave us.”

The hands relinquished her, although an imprint of bruising pain remained. People departed, and there was silence.

“Take care of your lady, my lord Bigod,” Henry said as Roger emerged from the chamber clutching a handful of freshly sealed charters and stared at the sight.

Documents rustled as he handed them over to someone else and then he was stooping at her side and his own hands were gentle.

“No!” she moaned.

“Ida…” Roger’s voice was soft at her ear. “Ida, get up. There’s nothing you can do lying on the floor like this. Come…”

Because it was Roger, because despite her wounds she was still fighting on, Ida accepted his support and allowed him to lift her to her feet. “Please,” she implored Henry in a breaking voice. “Please don’t do this. Give him to me.” She tried to make him meet her eyes. At first, he looked away, but when he finally answered her, his gaze was set and stony.

“The decision stands, Ida,” he said. “My son remains with me and will be raised in my household as befits the son of a king.”

“And how often will he see you? How often will you visit him? Once a year? Twice?” She bared her teeth. “Whom will he know to call mother?”

Henry’s nostrils flared. “Your fuss is unseemly. You have my answer and it is for the best even if you cannot see it now for the blindness of your womb.” He cut his gaze from hers as if severing a thread and focused on Roger. “My lord Bigod, I leave Mistress de Tosney in your care.” He strode off. The clerk who had been holding the bundle of charters mumbled an apology and, leaving the documents on the wall bench in the corridor, hastened away.