The Stolen Queen (28 page)

All the time my mind was tumbling over itself – why did John wish me at his side in Poitou? Why was I once more being treated as befitted his queen? Not from remorse, or affection, I was sure. He had a use for me. When the lady left me, I pressed her hand kindly and wished for her sons' safe return. I had once thought myself different from other women, from women like her. I had thought myself so different as a child, in my dreams of crusading and then as a queen who could ride into battle, who could destroy a royal duke, who could escape by her wits from the most powerful lords in France, who could birth a king. We were not different, though, she and I. We were women, and at best our part was to wait, and to suffer and endure as the wills that men forced us. What would she have thought, that good lady, if she had seen me just hours ago, filthy and ragged and dazed with misery? I was glad that I had never been permitted to love my daughters, for they should have a part of that misery in time, as I had, as all women had.

Pierre sent a page to ask if I was sufficiently rested after my journey to do him the honour of a few moments' talk. I wondered again at this courtesy from him. Or was it just another wile, to torment me? He knelt when he entered the solar, and the sight of his bright hair pained me. Henry's hair.

‘I should leave you to kneel, Brother. For shame.'

‘As you wish, Majesty.'

‘I should have you crawl on the floor and beg your queen's forgiveness.'

Slowly, Pierre stretched himself forwards until he lay at my feet. He kissed the hem of my dress. ‘Forgive me, Sister.'

‘Rise. You bore me with your play-acting. Tell me why the king has seen fit to release me, and then let me rest.'

‘I bring you a gift, Majesty.' He handed me a small velvet pouch with something heavy inside. ‘From the king.' On one side was an engraving of a woman, robed and crowned, her hair falling in ringlets, holding a flower in her right hand, in her left, a bird. I made out the words etched into the iron: ‘Isabelle: By the Grace of God Queen of England, Lady of Ireland'. The other surface showed the same woman, this time holding a cross with the bird perched atop it. ‘Isabelle: Duchess of the Normans, of the Men of Aquitaine and of Anjou'. ‘It is your new seal,' Pierre said. ‘To go with you into France.'

‘Why? Why should my husband proclaim me when he has imprisoned me and deprived me of my estate?'

‘Because you are Countess of Angouleme in your own right. When Queen Eleanor raised the south in rebellion against her husband, he imprisoned her for nine years. Then, when his lands were threatened, he released her to return to Aquitaine. She was … useful. Her presence encouraged the men to rally to the king's standard. You will do the same.'

‘My husband plans to fight again in France, then? It is true?'

‘You are very ignorant, Sister.'

‘I lay in that rat hole for three years. I had no visitors except you and the king. You know that well.'

And then Pierre told me of what had taken place in the time I had lain at Corfe. My husband had made himself the richest king that England had ever known. He had extorted vast sums from the Jews, from the merchants and moneylenders of
London and Bristol. When a man would not pay, he would be imprisoned, and one of his teeth smashed out each day until he agreed the fine. Lady Maude had spoken to me of the discontent of the barons of the north, and John's avarice had spared his barons no more than the Jews. He had called in their debts and taken their lands when they could not pay, so much so that many of the great landowners had fled to Ireland, to make a kingdom in exile. John had raised a fleet out of Pembroke on his thieved money and swept through that country, not sparing even the wives and children of those who had dared to abandon him to his wickedness. And when Ireland was stilled, John took two campaigns into Wales against Prince Llewellyn, and slashed and pillaged that province into submission also.

‘There is no man in England now who does not obey the nod of the king,' Pierre told me.

‘I wonder why God does not strike him down.'

Pierre raised one beautiful eyebrow. ‘God, Sister? But did you know that God has left England to John's mercy?'

‘What?'

I had wondered, idly, that I could never hear the carillon from the church tower at Corfe, for all that the church lay so close to the castle. John's feuding with the Pope over the appointment of an archbishop to Canterbury had caused the realm to be placed under interdict. The churches were locked up, the only rites that might be served were the unction of the dying and the baptism of children.

‘You thought yourself cruelly served, Sister, but you had the privilege of hearing Mass, did you not?' The hurried, mumbling
manner of the priest, the shabby altar table, my churching in the doorway – all this now had a reason.

‘And the country has changed, Sister,' Pierre continued. ‘With the bell towers silent and the priests and their tales of sin silenced with them, the people are returning to the old faith. There are scarce marriages made, now. Men and women lie together in the fields with no false blessing to unite them.'

I wondered. Could it be that the feeling I had had when I returned to Rouen, that the Lusignan way was the right way, was coming to pass? That what the Church decreed was truly no more than a ledger book, a set of accounts of indulgences and penance for the gain of a crowd of fat priests. God had not heard my prayers from that squalid room, nor yet Lady Maude's. He had not heard the laments of the poor Jews, or the cries of the barons' babies as they were cut from their nurses' arms. Could it be that God was not there, had never been there at all? The thought was so shocking that I gasped aloud.

‘Do not take fright, Sister. Your husband is a great king, now. The greatest of his line, the chronicles will say of him. And now he turns his attention to France.'

‘I want no part of it,' I said at last.

‘I am to take you to Portsmouth, where the king is mustering his fleet. You will sail with him. Does it not please you, Sister? You are going home. John will give your people back their Countess.'

‘I may refuse.'

‘And return to Corfe? You would prefer to share a chamber with good Terric? Or to receive the king's hospitality the way
the Braose woman did? I think not. You will go home, Sister. And if your husband should not return …'

‘Then?'

He reached for the collar of my gown and slowly drew it back. His fingers snaked along my skin, seeking the mark on my shoulder.

‘And then Henry will be king. A Lusignan king. Our king. Who would be more fit to govern while he is still a boy than his mother and his dear uncle?'

I could not dislike the thought, however much I might have wished to. He watched my face, that was his, and I watched his, that was mine. ‘You see, Sister? I have always told you. We are not so very different, you and I.'

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

T
HE COMING MONTHS REMINDED ME OF THE TIME
when I had first come to England as John's bride, as though time were a fairing ribbon unspooling backwards. My journey with Pierre became a progress as we travelled towards the coast with the purveyors ahead and my baggage train behind. I saw, as if for the first time, now, the great contrast between my royal state and the squalid lives of the country people: Corfe had taught me compassion, at least. Pierre had given me a purse of gold as he helped me into my litter when we departed Wareham, by nightfall it was empty, and the next day as we rode out there were people lining the pathways, clamouring for alms and calling blessings on their good queen, as though she had not been locked up for three years and word given out that she was a witch. I marvelled again at the power of money to smooth over memory, not only among the poor men of the fields, whose bodies were misshapen by labour and hardship into squatting gargoyles, their filthy palms emerging crookedly from flapping rags, but between my husband's barons, who had mustered
loyally at Portsmouth to campaign on my husband's taxes as though they had never loathed and planned to usurp him.

My thoughts, though, were all with Henry. Each tread of the horses' hooves on the road brought me closer to him, I hoped. Each long swaying hour in the litter was given up to dreams of seeing my boy again. He would be quite grown now. His hair would have been shorn. Would he remember me? Or had my place been taken by that Angouleme whore? I longed for him so fiercely that when John came out of his tent to greet me, as smiling and civil as though I had been absent for a day, it was easy to make my face light and happy, despite the contempt I felt for him in my heart. We greeted one another as the company looked on, but when I asked after Henry, John's face, which was paler and more hollow than I remembered the last time I had seen it at Corfe, twisted into a familiar snarl, which he suppressed with an equally familiar smile.

‘The prince is at Eltham, my lady, with his brother and sisters. They wish you joy of your … recovery, and send for your blessing.'

‘They are not to join us, before we sail?' I managed to ask, squashing the tears that crammed my throat.

‘I thought it unwise. I should not wish to distress them.'

‘Of course, my lord. You are always so considerate.'

‘You must wish to rest after your journey.'

‘Indeed. I will withdraw, with your permission.'

It was so long since I had walked between bareheaded men on their knees that it might have lifted my heart, to see the barons humbling themselves to me, but I had no mind to consider
even their hypocrisy. Henry was not there. But I should see him again, when the campaign was over, some little time further could not hurt him, after so long. And perhaps John was right: it would be unkind to reunite us only to have me take ship for France. And then, as I tried to comfort myself with these thoughts as I lay on the Turkey cushions of the tent that had been prepared for me, I knew that I was wrong.

If I wanted to see Henry, if I wanted to teach him, to assist him, I would never be allowed to do so in England. I had to prepare myself once more to fight, and even to kill. I saw, as I had seen once at Rouen, what it was that I might do. I had to escape, I had to be free of John, to steal myself away from him, and the only way to do that would be to get rid of Pierre for good. So for now, I had to play again, to be as smooth and emollient as an olive oil salve, to dissemble to buy time, so I might lay my plans for flight. At last, I acknowledged to myself what my mother had been trying to do. It was the old faith that would save me. She had known that I would never make Henry part of it, as I had never accepted it myself. But in sending Aliene, with her awl and her dreams of queenship, she had made Henry my brother's ally, one with him in the shadow of the horned man's antlers. Need. Once again, I would do what was necessary. As the tented fabric above me shifted in the breeze from the sea, I knew that it was time.

*

We sailed two days later, in a great flotilla of ships and barges, paid for with the blood of the English soil. I stood with my ladies
in the stern of the ship and watched the coast of that country recede. I thought that I should hate the sight of those chalk cliffs, so familiar were they from my captivity at Corfe, yet as they fell away in a mist of salt spray, I was surprised to find that I regretted them. England had been my home, after a fashion, the only home I had known since I was taken to Lusignan. I waited until the green brow of the hills blurred into the deep blue of the horizon, and then I crossed to the prow of the ship, where the wind whipped my hair back from my face, and stood there a long while, watching for France.

*

That winter, we kept court at Poitiers, the high-towered city where it was said that old Queen Eleanor had challenged her troubadours to make courts of love that she presided over with her ladies in their old-fashioned wide-sleeved gowns. The brutal strength John had shown in England in the last years had drawn his French liegemen back to him; each day more contingents of lords, knights and squires arrived to pay their respects and promise their swords, and John bade me to entertain them magnificently. There was no mention of Aliene, of her we did not speak; in fact, we barely spoke at all, and John made not even the pretence of coming to my chamber, for which I was thankful. Beyond the courtesies of dinner, supper and Mass we behaved as well-born strangers might, who found themselves obliged to share a tavern room for a night on the road. And since John did not come to my bed, neither could Pierre, and I was thankful for that, also.

I imagined that Pierre, who had never served any interest but his own, was in correspondence with King Philip, but of his plan for a Lusignan kingdom in England he said nothing. He would wait, I supposed, to see which way the first encounters between England and France came out, which way the pieces on the chessboard tumbled, and then, when it suited him, he would move against John or hold his peace. My own unspoken assent to his plan was all that he required of me, and like John, he maintained a civil distance, handing me down at supper when John was too drenched in his cups to do so, sending small gifts and delicacies to my chamber, and dancing with my ladies, who preened and gossiped and wondered which of them the queen's much favoured brother would take as a wife.

I passed my time making the appearance of a dutiful and proud wife who rejoiced in displaying her husband's anticipated glory. I had stonemasons from Germany, to flatter John's alliance with the princes there, at work on a new façade for the cathedral, I had musicians from every part of France to play in the hall each night, I gave the seneschal the liberty of the kitchens, and roast swan and peacock jostled on the trestles, their chargrilled feathers rustling between the great sides of blackened beef that the Englishmen preferred. I sent to Paris for cloth and lace and leather, to Castile for jasmine soaps and bottled peaches, and to Venice for Arab gum and fine woods to be brought across those treacherous winter mountains whose peaks, they said, soared vanishing into Heaven itself, and had John's campaign tent fitted new with stools and chests that smelled sweetly of cedar and sandal. I had the clerks write letters
to my children, asking how they did at their lessons and telling of the great warrior their father should soon prove himself to be. I drank apple cider with the monks of the abbey and spiced wine with the nuns of the convent and granted lands under my new seal to both, in the name of Queen Isabelle and King John, that God might favour his cause when he rode out in the spring. And like a woman, I waited. I waited for one particular thing to emerge among the heaps of goods that the packmen unloaded each day in the courtyards, which made a tumbled market of all the goods of Christendom and proved to the world how rich and mighty my husband was become.