The Young Lion (43 page)

Instantly, the Prince began to breathe fast again, but remained silent. Henry shook him very slightly. You probably don’t realise I can kill you with my bare hands without leaving a mark on your body, he thought.

William took a long, deep, ragged breath. ‘Henry, they want me to lead you to the bridge. I’m to invite you to cross before me, because you are heir. When you die, they’ll proclaim me King.’

Henry made a low growl in the back of his throat and lay back on the bed. He took William’s hand, so they lay side by side, looking at the candlelight dancing on the ceiling. ‘Is our father party to this?’

‘I dare not ask.’

‘You’d be a puppet king, doing the bidding of the magnates here, and before too long, of France.’

‘I can’t imagine anything more disgraceful and vile.’

Henry rolled on his side and kissed William’s lips. ‘I believe you,’ he said. ‘How many men are involved?’

‘Half a dozen. All members of the baronage, including a prelate.’

‘I can guess their names already. So when is this to happen?’

‘On the last Sunday in January, unless it’s sleeting. We’ll attend Mass in the abbey, then ride up to Wallingford. Accompanied by the King.’

So Stephen is involved, Henry thought. ‘Sweet brother, you’ve risked your life to warn me. We’ll never speak of it again. But have no fear. Heaven has not gone to so much trouble to get me to this point to drown me in the River Thames.’

‘Socrates believed in life after death, and rebirth of the soul in a new body,’ William said suddenly. It was a question framed as a statement.

‘I don’t believe in life after death,’ Henry said. ‘I know it to be true. As to rebirth: Socrates’ argument is impeccable, is it not?’

They embraced once more and as softly as he’d entered, Prince William left.

On the last Sunday in January the winter sky lay as grey as a wolf over the spires of the abbey – a wolf that has killed and eaten, and is resting on its prey. There was neither snow, wind nor rain, just the ominous wolf sky whose light dulled the windows of the abbey and seemed to make the candles reek. Henry took communion after the King and before William and all the other nobles. As he returned to his place, wine still on his lips, a page wormed his way through the throng. The child handed Henry a note.
Be quick. The tide is right to sail.
Henry gasped and looked around him. With a hasty bow to the King and a genuflection towards the altar, he strode from the abbey and in the courtyard shouted for his horse.

Before the Mass concluded he was aboard the boat Guillaume had waiting for him at the London docks. ‘Tricked ’em!’ Henry said and they roared with laughter.

‘Find that page!’ Stephen ordered. But the child, like the heir to his throne, had vanished.

Guillaume had returned to Normandy before Epiphany, to spend the last of the Christmas Court with Eleanor and his own family. The Duchess, he found, was vigorous once more, riding each day to parts of the duchy she had not seen, and accepting the homage of vassals. Often he was her escort and they stayed away two or three days at a time. As they rode together he’d tell her the family background of the men and women they would meet and make suggestions about what she should say to enchant
them. The Normans, she found, were unlike the people of France or Aquitaine. More hard-headed and straightforward than the French; less reckless than the men of Aquitaine.

‘I find them trustworthy,’ she said after a few weeks of personal meetings.

‘If a Norman trusts you, you’re completely safe,’ Guillaume replied.

‘And if he doesn’t?’

‘If you raise his Viking blood, he’ll go berserk and kill more ruthlessly than the men of Aquitaine. But he’ll bide his time. And give no warning.’

She was silent as they rode home. When the dark form of the castle of Rouen came into view she asked, ‘Will you take supper with me?’

While their wine was served Guillaume waited for her to voice the question she had been wanting to ask all day. Instead, she chatted about inconsequential things, poked at the fire and played with her unveiled hair, lifting it off her slender neck and twirling it on top of her head. A nurse knocked.

‘My lady, would you like to say goodnight to your son?’

Eleanor’s eyes softened as she looked at the bundled-up infant. She gave him a lingering kiss on the forehead. ‘Take him over and show him to his uncle,’ she told the woman.

‘What do you think?’ she asked her brother-in-law as the woman carried the bundle to the other side of the supper table.

Guillaume had not seen little William for months. He had grown to a small, but not too small, five-month-old baby, who gurgled in his nurse’s arms. The baby’s eyes opened wide in the candlelight and he tried to grab Guillaume’s hair. His uncle, as he looked into the small, smiling face, felt a stab of nausea. He grabbed his wine cup and drained it to cover his confusion. Eleanor, he realised, was watching him closely.

‘He’s beautiful,’ he said. ‘Like his mother.’

She gave a small smile. ‘You think he looks like me?’

Guillaume replaced his wine cup on the table with the care of a commander who rests on the earth the lifeless but sacred head of one of his men. He looked back into Eleanor’s wonderful face. ‘No,’ he replied, a coolness settled in his tone. ‘Your old Aquitaine servants say he resembles your father, the Duke. I choose to believe them.’

We stand on the edge of a precipice, he thought, as they ate the rest of their supper in silence.

Eleanor organised the celebrations for Henry’s twenty-first birthday to be held over the month of March in large castles and small towns across the duchy. She wrote to her sister, Petronilla, ‘I never imagined I could love a child as much as I do my son. With great anguish I leave him for this long time, to perform the duties of a wife.’ Escorted by a retinue of more than one hundred knights, the Duke and Duchess made progress through their territory from north to south. But instead of setting out from Rouen, Henry insisted they begin at the great elm in Gisors and visit the Vexin garrison before turning south.

The men were delighted to meet their Duchess for the first time. She rode among them with a falcon on her gauntlet. ‘What man will out-fly me?’ she cried. Several took up the challenge, but after an hour she was declared the winner, and presented to the other contestants the six pigeons her bird had brought down.

‘A lady worth fighting for!’ they congratulated themselves as she and Henry rode away. In large towns, if the weather was fine and warm enough, there were birthday banquets in the square, or in the cathedral if it rained.

In Limoges, the Abbot waited on foot at the gates to welcome them, gingerly pointing at the new city walls.

Henry clapped him on the back. ‘Now, let’s see if you can cook.’

The feast Limoges prepared was fit for a Roman emperor: a river fish the size of a man, stuffed with delicacies and broiled on charcoal; dishes of little birds, large birds, frogs – and to Henry’s great anger, although he smiled and said nothing, two swans.

‘One should never eat swan,’ he told Eleanor that night.

‘Why not?’ she asked in surprise.

‘It’s disrespectful. Like shooting an eagle.’

She sent urgent messages to Poitiers that the roast swans be cancelled.

Their progress meandered out to the coast and inland again. In Bordeaux, Henry looked carefully at the women and the men and saw in their bone structure and colouring faint traces of the beauty of his wife. So, it’s true, he thought. She is mostly Visigoth. On the return journey north, in the castle of Caen, he arranged a surprise for her: a meeting with his adoptive brother, Prince William. William had sailed to Barfleur, been seasick all the way, then stayed a few days in the chateau of his Aunt Matilda before travelling by coach to Caen. Like everyone who saw the castle, he was awed. His new sister-in-law galloped into the courtyard, her headdress flying, and sprang to the ground. He’d heard she was beautiful, but it was her vitality that swept his heart into his mouth and made him stammer, ‘The g-g-goddess Diana could not b-b-be so glorious!’

‘Your new brother is a scholar,’ Henry told her. He wrapped William in his arms. ‘He reads Greek philosophy. He argues as crisply as Socrates. Aristotle is mere –’

William blushed. ‘No, no, Henry. I find Aristotle a challenge.’

Henry turned to Eleanor. ‘What do you think of such a man?’

‘Admirable indeed.’

‘My wife loves scholars,’ Henry added with a smile.

Did I imagine that remark was sardonic, Eleanor asked herself. Her heart raced. I must appear to believe my husband flattered me.
She nodded graciously to Henry, but his expression was serious, his mind had moved on.

‘We endow churches and shrines and abbeys everywhere. Don’t you think, brother, we should spend something on secular scholarship?’

‘I do,’ Prince William replied.

‘I do too. And when it pleases God to gather your father to heaven, if I’m fortunate enough to become King, I intend to ensure that we have an English academy that studies the Greeks and the new works on mathematics and geometry and Hippocrates and Galen. As well as canon law.’

‘You make me feel as if it’s my birthday, not yours.’ William turned and signalled to a servant.

Into the courtyard trotted an enormous black and white bull.

‘I love it!’ Henry yelled. ‘We need better bulls.’

The bull lowered its head and looked at him, breathing heavily, working itself towards snorting, and beginning to paw at the cobblestones. Eleanor clasped a hand against her heart. ‘This is ridiculous!’ she said. ‘It can escape from that groom in an instant.’

Henry lowered his own head and looked at the bull. He drew a circle in the air with his finger; a second larger circle; then a third. The beast began following the circles with its gaze. A few moments later Henry could scratch it between its horns.

‘Come, brother,’ he said to the Prince. ‘The bull has turned my wife the colour of parchment.’

It was a few days later that Henry invited Eleanor to join him in a flowering meadow not far from Caen. Since early morning they had been hawking together and had enough game for a dozen guests. ‘Let’s just you and I eat some roast pigeons here,’ he said.

He had lain with her rarely since his return from England, and sometimes she overheard him talking to Rachel. She knew he had the daily embraces of various young women, some of whom were former concubines. There was one called Celine, a mercenary’s daughter, who could fight with a short sword; sometimes Eleanor had glimpsed Henry and Celine at the back of Rouen Castle, fighting each other with baffled weapons.

This day she hoped from the tenderness in his voice he intended, after their dinner, that they should enjoy each other. Once they stretched out on the grass he felt for her hand. ‘You’ve been a triumph with the people,’ he remarked. ‘And with my new brother, William. He has never seen such a noble woman. None in England compares to you.’ But his tone contrasted with the pleasantness of his words.

She felt a stab of anxiety: out-of-doors, away from the ears that were everywhere inside buildings, was where he would choose, if that were his real intention, to confront her over baby William.

He took her in a rough embrace. ‘It’s been too long since you’ve been in my bed,’ he muttered. ‘My English relations and that infant have taken you away from me.’

A tremor of fear ran through her. Will he say more? ‘He’s not robust yet,’ she answered coolly. ‘He came early. But he’ll get stronger. I’ve devoted myself to that.’

Henry pulled away from her. ‘Yes, he came early. Unlike your children with Louis.’ His voice matched hers in coldness.

‘But they were daughters,’ she replied evenly. ‘Young dukes are much more headstrong. You cannot tell them when they should enter the world.’

He grunted. ‘I learn something new from you every day.’ Suddenly he stood. ‘It’s chilly, cousin. Let’s return indoors.’

Eleanor rode beside her husband in silence as they returned to the castle. I’m a vessel adrift in unknown seas with no one
to turn to, she thought. In the depths lurks a reef that can shipwreck me.

Inside the palace Eleanor excused herself while Henry joined his new brother for a discussion of English politics that lengthened into the night.

It was another three months, and the height of summer, before Henry invited her to lie with him outdoors again. I must disarm him, she thought. It’s the only way I have to protect my son.

‘Cousin, your caresses are sweeter than honey,’ Henry murmured. ‘Why have you never loved me so tenderly before?’

‘You never gave me the chance.’

‘Now I demand it.’

Afterwards, she invented an excuse for returning to the south. There, in the midst of her noble female companions, servants, reeves, treasurers, vassals, banquets, visits from bishops, abbots and abbesses, her world seemed far removed from her companions and their mundane concerns. She lived in the world of Love. She wrote to her sister, ‘I feel no need for my husband, now I have my chou-chou. Of course, I do need Henry and I’ll have to return to normal life, but for these few weeks – perhaps months if I’m lucky – I live in a kind of heaven.’ She considered adding, ‘My husband is dangerously unpredictable. His temperament causes me to fear he may take a dislike to my son,’ but decided to omit this confession. Even in Aquitaine, she knew, Henry had already developed a network of spies.

From the summer afternoon spent with him in a meadow in Normandy, she was pregnant again. Each day her spirits veered between anxiety and excitement. ‘I have another child for you,’ she wrote to Henry. ‘Come at once!’ he wrote back. She travelled
north to Rouen with baby William, an escort of Aquitaine knights, destriers, ladies in waiting, servants, falcons and hounds, arriving in late October at the ducal palace.

Her husband ran to the gatehouse to embrace her. The Empress, however, waited for her to step into the audience hall before offering any welcome. Matilda’s jewelled fingers held the small, plump hand of Henry’s bastard. She rose slowly to greet her daughter-in-law, doing so as formally as if they were at the court of the German Emperor.

Two can play games, Eleanor thought. ‘Darling!’ she cried, holding her arms open to little Geoffrey. He glanced up at his grandmother who released him to run to his stepmother’s embrace.

Standing behind Eleanor, a nurse rocked her chou-chou. Matilda moved forward to peer at the infant, her large, shrewd eyes speculative. ‘Very sweet,’ she murmured. ‘But such black hair.’

‘Like little Geoffrey’s,’ Eleanor replied calmly.

The Empress sighed. ‘Little Geoffrey’s mother was dazzlingly beautiful, although she was dark-skinned. She came from Outremer, you know.’

After this greeting, Matilda was too busy to breakfast, dine or take supper with her daughter-in-law. ‘The old sow,’ Eleanor confided to baby William. Her son squeezed his eyes shut in delight whenever his mother came near him. ‘She’s jealous of you. She wants the bastard to be Henry’s heir. But he won’t be, sweetheart. You will! Mama will defeat her.’

Five days later, less than a year after he had adopted Henry as his son and rightful heir, King Stephen died. Bells tolled in mourning. The cry went out the length and breadth of England: ‘The King is dead! Long live the King!’

In the palace of Rouen, the monarch-to-be closeted himself with his mother, discussing the protocols for assuming the English throne. Later that night, for the first time since Eleanor had arrived, Matilda joined her son and daughter-in-law for supper in the dining hall. She seated Henry’s bastard on her lap and ordered the rest of her children and step-children to where each was to sit. Even Isabella joined the festivity, seated as far as possible from Eleanor.

‘Where’s your baby?’ Matilda asked.

‘Asleep.’

‘I wanted another look at him – to show him to Isabella. Didn’t I, Henry?’

Henry inclined his handsome neck. ‘Indeed. I too have not seen much of him. He is always asleep, or being fed or bathed.’

You’ve avoided him with every imaginable excuse, Eleanor observed to herself. ‘My lord King – if I may address you so – once we’re in England you’ll see him much more.’

‘Good.’

Eyes of iron, she thought, as her husband and his mother exchanged glances.

With five hundred knights the family sailed from Barfleur in early December for a coronation in Westminster Abbey twelve days later. Matilda, seated in the front row of the abbey, placed the bastard on her lap. She’d had fashioned for him a wooden crown, painted gold, with geometric shapes in the colours of gems.

Above the throng in the abbey, enthroned on a dais surrounded by clergy, Henry and Eleanor sat side by side, waiting for the ceremony to begin. The Duke of Normandy reached for his wife’s hand. ‘I’ve kept my side of our bargain, have I not?’ he asked.

She smiled at the glint in his eyes. ‘It’ll take a few years, but you’ll be the greatest king in Europe, Henry.’

‘Thank you, cousin.’ He gripped her hand. ‘And you’ll give me many sons. The House of Plantagenet will overwhelm the House of Capet with boys from your womb.’

Both looked at her belly of seven months. ‘It’s another prince. I know it,’ she declared.

Below them the Empress glanced along the row of seats reserved for members of the royal family. Next to Guillaume, an Aquitaine nurse rocked Eleanor’s small, dark-haired infant in her arms. Matilda’s glance flicked back up to her son and daughter-in-law on the dais, holding hands like lovers.
He’s decided to give the harlot the benefit of doubt, she thought. It’s common sense. He can’t afford a scandal at the beginning of his reign. But
I’ll
make sure that cuckoo never becomes Crown Prince.

The man who would soon be king smiled at his wife. ‘A new day of hope dawns for England,’ he said. ‘I want my subjects to love you.’

Eleanor lowered her eyes to hide the triumph singing inside her. ‘Amen to that, dear husband,’ she replied.