The Autumn Throne (14 page)

‘They
say the tunnels go for miles and you can walk all the way out of the city if you know the way – and under everyone’s feet without them ever knowing.’ For an instant his air of world-weary cynicism was replaced by one of fascinated speculation. ‘Truly there could be enemies under your bed … or even in it.’ He turned towards her.

A frisson of fear and something less easily defined shivered down Belle’s spine. It was indeed unsettling to imagine a dark, subterranean world underfoot. She gazed round the irregular circle of the cavern. A stone plinth ran round the edge almost like a bench. ‘It’s boring.’ She affected disdain. ‘There weren’t any prisoners chained down here; it’s just an old storage room.’

She made to push past him and return the way they had come, but he blocked her path, holding out his arms. The lantern swung and the shadows climbed the walls.

‘Even so, people have come down here, unsuspecting, and never been seen again.’

‘Let me past.’ She pushed at him, beginning to feel afraid. ‘I have had enough of your folly.’

He gave a soft laugh. ‘Is that what you think? But surely you were the foolish one to come here in the first place.’

‘John, I mean it; let me go.’ Panic started to rise within her.

‘Or what? You’ll tell your papa? What will you tell him?’ He watched her, eyes avid like a cat playing with a mouse.

Belle felt queasy with fear but there was a strange, sweet heaviness in her loins.

‘He will not let you out of his sight ever again if you cannot even be trusted to go walking with your cousin without causing trouble.’

She gasped at the unfairness. ‘How dare you!’

‘Because I am a prince, the son of the King!’ He lifted the lantern. ‘When the prisoners were kept down here, they had no light; they were kept in pitch blackness. Did you know that, cousin?’

‘There weren’t any prisoners, you’re lying!’

He pointed to a chain secured high up on the wall and, attached
to it, a fetter cuff. ‘No? If you were taller, your wrist would fit in it. Do you wonder what it would be like? You do, don’t you?’

Belle glared at him, trying not to show her fright. ‘Don’t be stupid.’ She shouldered past him into the corridor.

In a sharp puff of breath he blew out the lantern and plunged them both into blackness. The scream left Belle’s throat before she could prevent it. The darkness was absolutely black, like thick smothering cloth.

‘Now who is stupid?’ John purred.

‘I want to go back.’ Her fear was becoming terror. John, with his aptitude for trickery, might go on ahead and hide somewhere further up the tunnel in order to leap out on her, or he might just abandon her here.

‘Do you think this is what it is like to be eyeless?’ he mused. There was a clink as he set the lantern down.

‘I mean it,’ she quavered. ‘I want to go back.’

His voice came to her, soft and husky. ‘When you have no eyes, you have to rely on your other senses.’ She felt his fingertips lightly brush her cheek, and then trail down her throat. ‘It is my thirteenth year day today, will you not give me one kiss and see how it feels?’

Belle trembled, balanced between terror and a surge through her body of different physical sensations. Outside in the daylight she would have had control and perspective, but here in the pitch dark, he was in command.

‘Just one,’ he coaxed, and his hand whispered over her breast and came to rest at her waist. ‘And then we’ll go. No one has to know; this is a place for secrets, and this one will be ours.’

She stood very still. Should she run and hope to find her way out on her own, or should she yield? Her mother would be horrified, but then her mother was horrified at everything, and what did she know? At home she was the good girl, the darling, but her compliance masked a simmering discontent. That was what attracted her to John: the danger on the edge. Someone
who would dare her and say, ‘Do it, there is no harm.’ Someone who would leave her in darkness and threaten her with ‘just one kiss’. If she yielded then everything would change, and at the same time, because it was a secret, all would remain the same – on the surface. One life in the light, and another underground.

Belle groped in the dark until she found his face, and then she curled her hand round the nape of his neck, pulled him in close to her and pressed her mouth to his. His lips were soft, tender almost, and the feel against hers was not unpleasant. It was like kissing a warm, slightly moist cushion. His hand tightened at her waist and he held her, but by mutual consent not constraint, and the kiss lengthened.

Eventually Belle drew away and gasped for breath. ‘There is your kiss and more. Now take me out of this place.’

She felt the rapid rise and fall of his chest, heard his ragged breathing, and was empowered and emboldened.

‘And if I don’t?’

‘Then I will find my own way, and I will tell my father, and who do you think he will believe?’

‘Hah, you would do it too, wouldn’t you? Papa’s perfect daughter. Come then.’

He took her hand in his and together they felt their way back along the passageways towards the light, bumping against each other, half playful, half challenging. Each time his body touched hers, she felt the contact like a lightning jolt, and she thought it must be the same for him. He was the one who had asked her for a kiss after all. He took her hand and squeezed it hard enough to make her gasp, but then she pinched him, using her fingernails, and he writhed away with an involuntary yelp before rounding on her and pushing her up against the cave wall and snatching another kiss. This time she bit him, but not too hard.

‘You like games, don’t you?’ he said.

‘It’s not a game.’

Belle could see the entrance, smell the rainy air. Nearby a
dog was barking. She shoved him away and walked briskly now towards the normality of the mundane. And then from a walk to a run. She expected him to chase after her, but he didn’t, and she emerged into the cold late December afternoon alone. She raised the back of her hand to her lips, fancying she could still taste him, and looked over her shoulder, but still he did not come.

She had no intention of waiting until he did, and returned to the domestic chamber, slipping quietly into the room, removing her cloak, going to kiss her father on the cheek. He was playing a game of chess with Henry, and patted her hand with dismissive affection. She joined her mother and the other women who were sewing and gossiping and became that perfect demure daughter with downcast eyes and a modest expression, enhanced by the slightest curve of her lips. Glancing at the other women she thought that they didn’t know a thing about desire and all the delicious, disturbing feelings that such darkness aroused. She pitied them and was scornful too, and perhaps a little afraid because her world had changed irrevocably. This year at least, the Christmas feast was not going to be boring.

The door opened and Alienor looked up in surprise as her gaoler Robert Maudit entered the room followed by several servants bearing sacks and chests. Accompanying him was a robust young woman with an olive complexion, red lips and lustrous dark eyes. She dropped a deep curtsey and bowed her head.

‘What is this, messire?’ Alienor rose to her feet.

‘Gifts from the King, madam,’ Maudit said neutrally.

Trying not to look astonished, Alienor left the window and
came to appraise the goods. One chest held panels of furs including sable and squirrel from the lands of the Rus. Another was piled with bolts of fabric for winter robes. There were scarlet bed hangings and candlesticks of enamelled silver. A large brass bowl. Chess sets, dishes, and even a chest of books.

Alienor studied the largesse with suspicion. Why would Henry relax his austerity? She did not believe he had suddenly forgiven her and mellowed. Until recently he had still been trying to make her agree to take vows and become Abbess of Amesbury.

‘Who are you?’ She gestured the young woman to her feet. ‘Speak, mistress.’

‘Madam, may it please you my name is Belbel de Rouen,’ she answered in a musical voice, deep for a woman. ‘I am a seamstress and lady of the chamber sent by the King to attend on you and fashion new garments for your wardrobe.’

Two perspiring servants hauled another chest into the room, followed by a man bearing a saddle of red leather and a matching bridle gilded with silver.

‘The King of his clemency says you have leave to ride out suitably escorted, madam,’ Maudit said, ‘and provides you with the necessary harness.’

Alienor noticed the flicker in his cheek and almost felt sorry for him. She was mystified as to why Henry was doing all this, but whatever the reason, she was delighted.

Once Maudit had departed about his business, Alienor turned to the matter of her new maid. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘it pleases me to have another attendant to grace my chamber, especially one with the capability to improve my wardrobe.’ She regarded her narrowly. ‘But why are you really here?’

The woman curtseyed again. Her gown of deep red wool was plain but exquisite and enhanced her figure without being tasteless or lewd. ‘Truly, madam, I am to serve you in any way you wish, but my particular skill is with the needle and that was the King’s intention in appointing me.’

‘He chose you personally for this task?’ Alienor raised a
cynical eyebrow. She would not put it past Henry to have engaged this woman as a spy, and wondered what his relationship with her was, although she seemed a tad too old and voluptuous for Henry’s usual tastes.

‘Yes, madam.’ The woman was unfazed by Alienor’s stare. ‘I was employed to make a tunic for the King and he was greatly pleased with my work. He said he was of a mind to have new gowns made for you and that he would provide the cloth and the seamstress.’

‘That is interesting, since my husband has a singular disregard for his appearance. I have known him go to church still bloody and mired from the hunt.’

‘I understand he was pleased because the tunic flattered his girth,’ Belbel said steadily.

Alienor was amused. Last time she had seen Henry, his barrel chest had been spreading south to include his gut, and that might be a point of concern to a man eager to keep up with younger men. ‘Well then, let us hope you can perform similar miracles for me and restore my figure to what it was thirty years ago.’

A spark kindled in Belbel’s eyes, composed of humour and acceptance of a challenge. ‘Madam, it will not take much work, but it will be a pleasure.’

‘Then I am immediately wary of a flatterer!’ Alienor retorted, but smiled. ‘Amiria will find you sleeping space and show you where to put your belongings.’

In the weeks that followed Alienor decided that Belbel was a godsend. She was vivacious, intelligent and perceptive. Alienor played chess and backgammon with her and enjoyed an astute opponent who gave of herself honestly and without deference. Belbel had a forthright personality, yet knew when to be silent and was tactful when the occasion demanded. She was as content to sit and quietly sew a seam with Amiria, or pray in church, as she was to accompany a heavily escorted Alienor for rides on the Downs.

Belbel’s
supreme skill lay in her ability to assess fabric and turn it into beautiful garments. With clever cutting and stitching, she created gowns that delighted Alienor with their stylish elegance. The drape and the arrangements of the laces did indeed restore Alienor’s waistline and lift her breasts, giving her a defined figure without making her look like an older woman desperately chasing her youth. The clothes made Alienor feel powerful and attractive, reminding her of what had once been hers to command. She was still baffled, however.

‘I do not understand why the King has sent me all this largesse,’ she said to Belbel, who was kneeling at her feet to adjust the hem on the latest gown of green silk, patterned with gold. ‘He must have an underlying motive.’

‘Perhaps he thinks it is time to mend the breach between you, madam.’

Alienor tried to gauge the nuance beneath the words. Belbel had rarely spoken about how she came to work upon a tunic for Henry, other than having been recommended to him by other clients. ‘Did you ever hear him say as much?’

Belbel set a silver pin into the gown and sat back. ‘No, madam, but I think he was lonely.’

‘Indeed?’ Alienor raised her brows.

‘He has his courtiers and companions, but it is not the same as having a queen. At times I thought him a little lost.’

Alienor moved away from Belbel and walked to the window to look out on the cloudy September daylight.

‘Forgive me, madam, if I have spoken out of turn.’

‘No,’ Alienor shook her head. ‘Rather you have given me food for thought.’

Henry as a lost soul. She had often thought that, and damned him to perdition. But somewhere deep within her that hard knot of resistance had become less tight of late. If he was thinking of conciliation, then perhaps she might consider being more amenable herself – something she would not have contemplated even a few months ago, but things had changed. Louis had been consigned to a living death by the seizure he
had suffered, Belbel had arrived with these chests and trinkets, and their son Geoffrey had married his bride Constance of Brittany, who perhaps even now was with child. The passage of time was like a brush, sweeping and blurring what had once been clearly defined.