Lady of the English (31 page)

“Your letter reached me in the field with the king,” he said.

“This is almost the first time since midsummer I have been out of my armour—and I do not suppose it will be for long.”

An attendant brought them wine and napkins containing dainty hot wafers sprinkled with rose water. The breeze ruffled the leaves of the cherry tree and the scent of lavender and gillyflowers wafted from the borders.

“Were you at Shrewsbury?” she asked in a tight voice. “Is that where my letter found you?”

He grimaced. “Yes it was. I know your connection to the place, and I am sorry. The king had reached the end of his patience.” He stared into the distance, and his eyes grew bleak.

“These are difficult times. I want to protect you and keep you safe.”

Adeliza looked down at her cup. “But the walls of Shrewsbury castle were no defence for its garrison, were they?”

“They were soldiers who took their chance, not women,”

he said. “They had rebelled against the anointed king.”

A usurper king, she thought, but said nothing. Something must have shown in her expression, because he said, “You wrote to say you had decided to accept my offer of marriage.

Have you then changed your mind?”

She could feel his tension and her own matched it. Even now, even when she had committed herself in written words, she was still unsure.

“I swear if you accept me, I will do everything I can to be fair and just.” He took her hand in both of his, making a warm, enclosing shell.

She shook her head. “I have not changed my mind. I have asked God for His advice and He has sent you to me. I have 242

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thought about taking holy vows, but there are things beyond the cloister that I must do.” She gave a troubled frown. “It is such a difficult step to leave these walls and take up the reins again.”

He stroked her captive hand with a gentle movement of his thumb. “My own choice was very simple,” he said.

After a moment, she raised her free hand to touch his face in a gesture as light as a breath. “Then I hope you have made the right one.”

“I am certain of it.” He took one hand from hers and curved his arm around her shoulder, and she felt herself fit into the cup of his palm as if it was meant to be. Tentatively, she leaned against him.

He continued to stroke her hand as he gazed across the tranquillity of the sunny courtyard. “We will have days like this, together,” he said. “You and me, and our children. I promise you that.”

She made a small sound in her throat. “If you can give me those things,” she said, “then indeed I will know my choice is the right one.”

ttt

Adeliza gazed down at her shoes. They were of soft lilac fabric with fashionably pointed toes and were stitched all over the surface with silver thread and gems. The shoes of a queen. She had not worn them since the last occasion she and Henry had sat together in state at a court feast before he left to go hunting and never returned.

She had spent the morning in prayer with Herman her chaplain before the altar in the chapel at Arundel and, although she had risen from her knees, she was still praying now. “God help me in this,” she whispered. “Help me to heal my heart and do the right thing.” She was still uncertain about becoming a wife and mate again. At the time, she had not fully appreciated how Matilda felt when she was sent to marry Geoffrey of 243

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Anjou, but now she understood a little more, and it wasn’t a comfort, because she had seen what had happened to Matilda and Geoffrey’s marriage.

She took a step, and then another, watching her shoes appear and disappear beneath the flaring hem of her silver silk gown.

This was the path God wanted her to take, or else He would not have sent Will to her. He was a good man, even if he was loyal to Stephen. It was up to her, with God’s help, to find a path through this. Will had promised her days of peace and offspring to fill them. The notion of the latter both spurred her forwards and held her back. She was desperate to conceive and at the same time terrified she would not. Fifteen years of being a barren wife to a man who had been siring bastards almost until the moment of his death had flattened her expectation and left her with terrible scars.

Will was waiting for her at the church door with the barons and knights of the Albini household and a host of gathered wedding guests, including the king. The bishop of Worcester was present to conduct the ceremony, his surplice shining as white as a gull’s breast in the sunlight and flashing with thread of gold. Head high, eyes downcast, Adeliza made herself keep walking.

Will stepped forward to take her hand in his and, as in the garden at Wilton, she felt the warmth and vitality emanating from him and surging into her. When she raised her eyes to his, the intensity of his stare was almost too much to bear. Henry had not once looked at her like that.

“You will always be a queen,” he said, his gaze leaving hers to rest upon the delicate crown set upon her veil of light silk.

She felt herself blush like a girl despite being a mature woman of five and thirty.

The marriage took place outside the church door in full public view, and then the guests entered within to celebrate 244

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the wedding mass. Many of the same people who had attended her marriage to King Henry were present now. The same faces had been at Reading for his funeral, but she would not think of that. Today was a time of celebration.

At the formal feast following the mass, she accepted the congratulations of the guests, and wished she were somewhere else. She wondered if the smiles on people’s faces were genuine.

Were they happy, or was it just an act for them too? When they turned their backs did they still smile?

“I am pleased for both of you,” Stephen said, kissing her on either cheek. “William D’Albini is a fine man and you will be well protected by my new Earl of Lincoln. Eh?” He gave Will a slap across the shoulders.

Well guarded was perhaps closer to Stephen’s meaning, she thought, concealing her antipathy behind a wan smile. Well, they would see. He might have Will’s oath of fealty under his belt, but he did not share his life, his bed, and his board as she was about to do. She looked into Stephen’s face. His geniality was strained and his features wore new lines of tired experience.

Perhaps he was discovering that wearing a crown was a heavier burden than he had expected. Perhaps he did not sleep well at night. Whatever he did, he would never fill Henry’s shoes in terms of ability. “Indeed, sire,” she said.

Stephen’s wife, Maheut, small and dumpy, kissed her too.

“Life will seem very different to what it was before,” she said.

“But I know you have the fortitude to adapt.”

Adeliza murmured a bland reply, her stomach tightening.

Once Maheut’s power had been hers as queen of England, but now it was all diminished. Of the things particularly dear to her that had been taken by this small, tenacious terrier of a woman, the patronage of Waltham Abbey was still the main hurt. Maheut now had it as a reigning queen’s privilege, and Adeliza no longer had the influence to fight that corner.

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More people spoke to her informally and she smiled until her cheeks were stiff and she felt as if that smile would drop off and be trampled underfoot.

Brian FitzCount was kind to her and one of the few to understand how difficult it had been for her to leave Wilton and rejoin the world. “I often think I would have taken to a life in the cloister,” he said. “My father was in two minds whether to give me to the Church when I was a boy, but then the king took me because he wanted youths to raise as companions for his son. If not…” He spread his hands.

Adeliza managed another smile, this time less strained. “You would doubtless be an abbot by now—or a bishop.”

He shook his head and his peat-brown eyes were pensive. “I am not sure I would be worthy of such robes.”

“Then that in itself makes you fit.”

He looked wry. “Madam, you always think well of people.”

He lowered his voice. “I am glad you will be at Arundel.

Perhaps, if you are still a patron of the arts, you will permit me to write to you sometimes?”

Adeliza dropped her gaze. She knew what he meant and he was not talking about the books and works of poetry she had sponsored in the past as queen of England. Brian was a skilled poet and writer of tales that had been read out at court of an evening, but he was not intending to send her stories or poems now. “Providing the content is suitable,” she said.

“I would send you nothing of which anyone could disapprove.” He inclined his head and still in a lowered voice asked,

“Do you ever receive news from the empress?”

Adeliza risked an upward glance and saw the anguish in his eyes. “Yes,” she said. “She is my family still.” She laid a sympathetic hand on Brian’s arm. “I know your loyalty, but keep your vision clear.”

“Madam.” He bowed to her, his colour high.

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His wife arrived fresh from a conversation with Waleran de Meulan about hunting dogs. Her face was as shiny as a new apple, and wisps of grey hair escaped out of the side of her wimple, which was slightly lop-sided. “My lord of Meulan says he has a fine black alaunt dog that he’ll lend us to breed greater size into the pack at home,” she said, loud with enthusiasm.

“Two of the bitches are due in season any day.”

Brian looked mortified. Unabashed, his wife addressed Adeliza. “Do you hunt with hounds, madam?”

Adeliza shook her head. “I do not have a pack,” she said faintly, “but I believe my husband does.”

“Well, if he needs advice on breeding, you must let me know.”

Adeliza promised she would and made her escape. Brian FitzCount’s quiet request had flustered her. For the moment she knew she must keep it to herself until she had had time to work upon Will. And then there was the troubling matter of allegiance. She had vowed a wife’s loyalty to Will, but before that, such loyalty had been to Henry and she had sworn an oath before God to uphold his daughter.

During and after the wedding meal, there was music and entertainment. There were tumblers and jugglers, singers of songs, tellers of tales, and dancing too. For Adeliza it was like being at court again but it was also very different. She could almost feel Henry standing just beyond the reach of fire- and candlelight and it gave her a frisson of unease as she imagined what he might think of all this—none of it positive.

The time arrived for the bedding ceremony and suddenly Adeliza’s hands were icy and her chest so tight that it was difficult to breathe. Memories of her first wedding night surged over her. The crowds in the chamber, the stares, the comments.

She sensed the current speculation, and branching off from it, the curiosity and voyeurism of people wanting to see her 247

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unclothed. She could not bear to think of being thrust naked into a bed with Will D’Albini in front of all these people. She was a dowager queen, yet she felt as powerless as a chicken being chased round the yard because someone wanted it for the pot.

As she and Will were tumbled into their chamber by a merry crowd of revellers, she seized his arm. “Get rid of them!” she hissed. “I cannot bear this. It is too much!”

He gave her a perplexed frown. “They are not causing harm.”

Adeliza shook her head. “I cannot,” she repeated. “I will run mad. They have escorted us here, and they have all seen the bed. Let that be enough. What else is there to see?”

“It is tradition,” he said, eyeing her as if she was making an unnecessary fuss. “It will soon be over.”

She tightened her grip. “Please. For my sake.”

He looked at her a moment longer; then his gaze softened and he sighed. “For my sake too,” he said with a small shake of his head. “I do not want a madwoman in my bed tonight.”

Turning, he spread his arms and began gathering up and ushering the guests from the room, thanking them for their good wishes, being by turns assertive, polite, jesting, and rueful, but never taking no for an answer until the cloak of the last one had flipped out of the door and he was able to close it behind them and shoot the bar across. Leaning against the wood, he folded his arms. “There,” he said. “Is that better?”

“Thank you, yes.” She gave him a wan, grateful smile. “I thought it would not matter, but suddenly I could not face the thought of them all staring at us. It brought back too many memories.” She shivered and, rubbing her arms, went to the hearth.

“Now they will speculate to themselves,” he said, adding wryly, “undoubtedly led by Lady Maude of Wallingford. Small 248

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wonder that my lord FitzCount used to spend so much time at court.”

“You should feel sorry for her too,” Adeliza said. “She and Brian FitzCount are as mismatched a pair as were ever yoked to an ox cart.”

“And what of our own ox cart?” He checked that the door was secure and took a few steps towards her before stopping again, as if she were a wild creature and he was unsure how best to approach her.

“If I did not think we might manage to draw a straight furrow between us, I would never have consented to wed you.”

“I want to make new memories for you,” he said softly. “If you will allow me…but I do not know where to begin.”

She looked at him standing there, doubtful now, when a few moments ago, for her sake, he had driven everyone from the room with authority. “Then let me help you.” Facing him, she unfastened the brooch at the neck of her gown, and then the one lower down. She lifted her arm and showed him the tight lacing from armpit to hip.

“My hands are too big for such a delicate task,” he said gruffly, but nevertheless came to unfasten the ties.