The Winter Crown (59 page)

Facing the shuttered window, she fell to her knees, put her hands together and prayed in the weak ray of light slanting through a gap where the slats had warped apart. She prayed to the Virgin and Saint Martial for herself, for her sons and for their deliverance. She prayed too for the strength and fortitude to bear what was to come.

She was still on her knees in the almost darkness shivering with cold and shock many hours later when a servant accompanied by two hefty guards brought her a bowl of broth and replenished the oil and wicks in the cresset lamp. She was given items from her baggage – a clean chemise and gown, a comb and a wimple. There were no jewels, no unguents and perfumes: none of the items Alienor had always taken for granted.

‘Am I not to have a maid?’ she demanded.

No one spoke, and their action was her reply before they went out, once more locking her in solitude.

Alienor had often thought that her life was a prison, but with freedom gone and no one to answer her smallest command, she realised how much worse it might yet be. She told herself she was still a duchess and a queen. No matter what Henry did to her, he could not take that away.

She rose from her stiff, aching knees and drank the broth, cupping her hands around the bowl for warmth and comfort. She changed into the dry chemise and gown, wrapped the blanket around her from the bedding and returned to her prayers, entreating God’s mercy, for she knew Henry had none in him.

In the morning a different servant brought her more bread and wine and cold water in which to wash her hands and face. She was not hungry but she forced down the food and performed her ablutions. There was no one to comb her hair smooth and straight and she had to do the best she could before plaiting it and concealing it under her wimple.

She heard the tramp of hard footsteps on the stairs, the scuff of shoes outside her door, the turning of the key, and the door opened upon Thierry de Loudon and two guards. They were not wearing mail shirts now, but all had swords at their hips and grim faces. ‘Madam, you must come with us,’ said Thierry. ‘The King awaits you.’

She faced them with her head up, but her heart was pounding. Without a word she stepped from the room. One soldier went ahead of her down the winding stairs, dark save for the weak illumination of a single squint light. Aware of the men following her down, Alienor’s shoulder blades prickled.

They crossed the courtyard where a long gallows had been erected. Four corpses swung, hands tied behind their backs, necks tilted obscenely to their shoulders. Men of her escort, including the young lad who tended her mare, their only sin being loyalty to her service and lack of value in ransom. Her stomach lurched with nausea. Now she truly knew where she stood.

On entering the great hall, her vision blurred and she staggered. The soldiers grabbed her to hold her up and although she tried to shake them off, they held her fast and marched her towards the dais at the far end where Henry waited, sitting on what was to all intents a throne of judgement with statues of gilded leopards either side. He wore his coronation robe of embroidered crimson wool, and clutched a gilded staff of office in his right fist. His hair, once as red as a squirrel pelt, was the colour of dusty tow and thinning. She saw the weariness in him, the bitter, querulous anger – and the power. She had steeled herself to be unafraid, but, seeing him now, the fear still came, and the need to be as far away from him as she could.

Henry beckoned the guards to bring her to the foot of the dais, and forced her to her knees before him.

In the long silence that followed, Alienor stared at the steps, her mind and body numb.
Only let this moment be over
.

When he spoke, his voice was harsh as if his throat was filled with gravel. ‘Do you kneel before me now, madam? You have been brought here to answer for your betrayal and treachery. Your perfidy in turning my sons against me.’ He drew a breath, but it was swift and left Alienor no place to speak. ‘You have thwarted me at every turn and despised the rule of law.’ He clenched his fist on the chair finial. ‘You deserted your own husband and now you desert your duchy to fraternise with my enemies and drive my sons deeper into rebellion. You should have stood by me and defended our lands against all comers. In defying me you have lost the right to govern those lands ever again. You have disgraced the honour of your own sons.’ His fist came down and his voice grew raw and cracked.

‘You are a termagant and a liar. You have concealed things from me and gone behind my back. You have used information like a knife to cut me open and then turn the blade in the wound when you should have been my helpmate. You should have been my honour and you have become my dishonour.’

He paused again to pull air into his lungs. Alienor’s own chest was hollow; she could not breathe because he was dragging the life from her with each statement and from the surrounding silence she knew that all were listening with a mingling of relish and shock. She withdrew into herself, folding herself around her soul to protect its flame. Not Aquitaine, God have mercy, not Aquitaine.

‘All that I can salvage from this is to thank God that He has given me the chance to run you down like a common criminal and give you the dues you so dearly warrant.’ His tone crawled with revulsion and he gestured to the guards. ‘Take her away. I no longer want to look on her and what she has become.’

Once again Alienor felt the hard grip of the soldiers’ hands on her arms as they jerked her to her feet. As she rose, she looked Henry in the face and saw the implacable eyes of an enemy. The eyes of the man who had sent Thomas Becket to his death. The eyes of the man who would hold on to everything in those knotted fists until death melted his strength.

Henry compressed his lips and, still holding her with his gaze, raised his hand and commanded his musicians to play.

Alienor was escorted from the hall to the sound of harp, tambour and lute, the latter beloved of her southern lands. He had done it intentionally to intimidate her and show her that she did not matter, that the life of the court would continue unchanged.

Pushed into her prison chamber, she was again left with her slop bucket and a single candle. There were no attendants, nothing to pass the time save her thoughts, and those were unbearable. She lay down on the thin straw pallet and stared at the chamber ceiling. Her eyes were dry; the wounds inflicted by Henry’s words had gone too deep for tears. She pressed her hand to her stomach where there was a vile pain, as if everything had been ripped out of her, creating a hollow cavern surrounded by a brittle shell.

Later in the day a surly attendant brought her a bowl of thin onion gruel, half a loaf of stale bread and a jug of sour wine that was almost vinegar. When she protested that it was undrinkable, he gave her a blank look and backed from the room.

She was considering whether to drink the wine or pour it in the slop bucket when the door opened again and Henry walked in. He gazed round the chamber and sniffed the damp stone air in a disparaging way. A scribe had followed him in, bearing a lectern and his writing effects.

‘You will write to our sons,’ Henry said without preamble. ‘You will tell them of my displeasure at their continued defiance, and you will order them to yield immediately.’

Alienor’s hands were shaking and she folded them at her waist so he would not see how cold she was, how distraught and afraid. ‘You think they will listen?’ She almost laughed from suppressed hysteria. ‘They are becoming men. If you don’t listen to me, Henry, why should they? You think I planned all this? That I betrayed you?’ The laugh escaped and with it all the words that had been burning inside her for days, months and years. ‘You purblind fool. You betrayed yourself when you sent me down to Poitiers and then tried to make me and Richard vassals of the English Crown. When you treated me and your sons as pawns on your chessboard – the same way you treat everyone. I tell you this for a certainty – you will die alone, unmourned and uncomforted. Your archbishop will be lauded and you will be vilified!’

Henry clenched his fists. ‘Dictate the letters and be done, you virago.’

Alienor gave him a look of utter loathing. She felt sick with tension and fear, but there was a dark, miserable triumph in answering back to him. ‘You need light and heat for your scribe to see to write and to hold the pen,’ she replied. ‘Although perhaps letters like this should be composed in the cold and the dark.’

Henry sent for more candles and a brazier because obviously she was right, but he bit out the commands with suppressed fury. Once the scribe was ready, Henry turned to her. ‘You inveigled our sons into this, now you will put a stop to it.’

‘I did not inveigle them,’ she said wearily. ‘You pushed them to rebel by your own deeds and now your birds are coming home to roost. You think them too young? How old were you when you took up the fight for your inheritance? You were younger than Richard, much younger than your heir. I did not turn Harry against you; and it is not my influence that keeps them in Paris. Do you seriously think I would collude with Louis?’

‘I no longer know what you would do,’ he snapped, ‘but you will dictate those letters and you will put your seal to them, and you had best pray that they heed them, because I have you in my custody and at my mercy.’

She curled her lip. ‘You think that threat means anything to me?’

‘I would hope it means something to them.’

‘Then you hope in vain, sire, if you believe it will bring them to heel, but since you desire these letters, you may have them. I care not.’

She dictated to the scribe, warning Richard, Harry and Geoffrey of their father’s anger and saying that it was incumbent upon her to demand they return and face him. She was honour bound in her role as mother and queen to be a peacemaker. She hoped that her sons were sharp enough to take her meaning.

The ink dried, the letter was folded and Henry produced the seal he had taken from her confiscated strongbox and pressed it into the melted wax.

Henry sent the scribe away to make another copy of the letter from the rough draft on his wax tablet. As the door closed behind him, anxiety tightened Alienor’s throat. Henry approached her with slow deliberation intended to intimidate, until he stood over her, close enough to steal her breath. Reaching out, he ran his hand down her arm.

‘There was a time when you were very desirable to me, my lady,’ he said hoarsely. ‘When I would as soon bed you as look at you and when my blood burned at the very sight of you. I would imagine your sleeves trailing over my body, and I would grow hard at the very thought. It is such a shame that those days are gone.’

Alienor swallowed. Her back was to the wall and there was nowhere to run.

‘Yet, make no mistake, I will have my way when I want it and you will render to me the marriage debt because that is the law between husband and wife.’ He rubbed his hand at her waist, then down her leg and between her thighs, pressing hard to hurt, and then he dragged her to the pallet and pulled up her skirts.

Alienor chose not to fight him. She could have raked his face with her nails, she could have tried to bite him, but he would only take more pleasure in bending her to his will. Instead she gave him indifference and lay passive, gazing at the rafters as he pressed her into the mattress. It was painful because she was dry, no love or lust to moisten the channel, and he was vigorous and violent. The episode was conducted in grim silence except for his grunts of exertion and the stifled sounds she made in her throat. And then she felt him jerk and flood her with his release.

‘There,’ he said, panting, his hips still bucking. ‘You are still good for one thing even though you can no longer conceive a child. But then I look at the sons you have given me and turned against me, and I think it a blessing.’ He withdrew from her with such force that she almost felt dragged inside out. ‘We will talk again,’ he said as he left the bed and adjusted his garments, ‘but for now I shall leave you to ponder the error of your ways.’ He thrust his face close to hers and seized her jaw. ‘Be thankful I have not beaten you witless or thrown you in a dungeon, but I tell you this much: you will never see Aquitaine again as long as I live. You betrayed me and for that I shall never forgive you.’

After he had gone, Alienor lay on the bed for a long time, taking shallow breaths because she knew if she drew deeper ones they would become sobs. The place between her legs was on fire and she felt defiled by his seed, where once she had been exalted. He had committed this act, this rape, to show he was the conqueror, the all-powerful virile king and that she was subject to his will.

She vowed that if he attempted to take her again, she would have a weapon ready, even if only a hair pin to pierce his throat. One of them would not survive. She hoped her sons would understand the underlying message in the letters and not yield to their father; yet, if they did not, what did it say about the value they set upon her person? However she looked at the situation, the future was bleak. She closed her mind. If she thought about the situation too hard, she might end up like Petronella, driven mad by the lies and perfidy of men.

One day blended into the next for Alienor. From Chinon Henry transferred her to Falaise and once again incarcerated her near the top of the keep, her only access to the outside world via the clergy who came to pray with her, although the chaplains were always of Henry’s choosing. She was not permitted to speak to anyone who might tell her what was happening beyond the walls. If she asked questions, she received either bland replies or no reply at all. The guards were changed every couple of days, making it impossible for her to form a rapport with any of them, and she thought she would indeed go mad; she was not meant for the hermitage.

She had been permitted needlework to pass the time, but it was penance sewing of chemises and shifts for the leprous poor, not embroidery, and all she had to work upon was plain grey linen and matching thread. It was worse than dwelling in a nunnery, for even nuns had recourse to a cloister, and all she had were four bare walls and a narrow window that showed her nothing but a thin sliver of sky.