Lady of the English (13 page)

Henry turned to look at him. “I have not decided yet,” he said. “That is a tale for another day.”

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Twelve

Angers, Anjou, Summer 1129

G eoffrey was drunk again. Matilda clenched her fists as she listened to him roistering with his companions in the antechamber. She tried to ignore him and to keep her life separate from his, but he refused to leave her in peace. He was always swaggering about, showing her up, belittling her in front of his cronies. Recently his behaviour had deteriorated as she remained barren despite his taking her every day that she wasn’t menstruating or that wasn’t banned by the Church. He would hit her and bellow when she tried to discuss the business of ruling with him. With his father now king of Jerusalem, Geoffrey was count of Anjou and had no intention of sharing his power with a wife, especially one who saw fit to argue with him and contradict him.

He staggered into the chamber, a wine cup sloshing in his hand, his cheeks flushed, and his eyes glazed. He had grown again in the year since their marriage and broadened out. The bones of his face were more prominent and masculine, but the expression cladding them was still that of a petulant adolescent.

“You will curtsey to me because I am your lord and husband,”

he slurred at her when she did not rise from her seat in the window embrasure.

Rage and defiance welled up within her. “You are a foolish LadyofEnglish.indd 96

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boy,” she retorted with contempt, “and I do not bow my head to infants.”

“And you, madam, are a hag too old for child-bearing,”

he sneered. “Or perhaps you do not quicken because your mannish attitudes prevent you from being a full woman. And I am saddled with this travesty!”

“No more of an abomination than me being made to wed an idiot who is as far beneath me as a pile of dung under the sky,” she flashed back.

Geoffrey lurched over to her and struck her back-handed across the face. Matilda welcomed the sting of the blow as it spread across her cheek, because it confirmed her feelings about him. “You unman yourself,” she scorned him. “You may be my husband, but you will never be my lord and master and you will never amount to anything more than a scrawny cockerel on top of your little midden heap! I shall never yield to you, never!”

“By Christ, you bitch, you will!” He struck her again and she leaped to her feet and struck him back with the full force of all her misery and frustration. The sound of the blow was a sharp crack. The edge of one of her rings caught the corner of his eye. He gasped and recoiled, cupping his face, and then lowered his hand and looked at the blood on his fingers.

“By God, you have gone too far!” He seized her arm and began to beat her with his fists, pummelling into her with all of his own young man’s rage, made the more potent for his being drunk. At first she fought back, kicking him, raking him with her nails, drawing blood, but he was stronger and faster.

He knew where to land his blows to make them count and he felled her, and then kicked her in the ribs as she lay on the floor until she could barely breathe and the world closed into red darkness around her. She was barely aware of him dragging her to the bed. The awful thought blossomed that he was going to rape her in front of his cronies. His wine-sodden breath sobbed 97

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in and out of his lungs as he unfastened his belt and proceeded to tie her hands around the foot of the bed. “You will learn to do as you are told!” he panted. With a final kick to her ribs, he strode to the door and flung it wide so that all the court could see her. “No one is to help her or touch her or talk to her!”

he snarled. “Do you hear? No one, or they shall be dealt the same treatment!” He shoved his way through them, cuffing at the blood trickling down his face. People made way for him, some with expressions of deep shock on their faces, but many nodding with approval. An unruly wife ought to be put in her place, no matter her rank.

Matilda lay amid the rushes. She could feel blood dribbling from her cut lip. One eye was swelling shut and each breath she drew was agony. She did not weep. It would have hurt too much to cry and she was too shocked to do so even had she wanted.

Lying on the floor, listening to the babble of noise beyond the open door, a part of her wished to die from the shame and humiliation, but anger kept her afloat. She could hear the snig-gers from some of Geoffrey’s cronies, but knew there would be others looking upon this moment with disgust. A man was entitled to beat his wife if she transgressed, but, in the end, one who went too far only succeeded in emasculating himself.

Matilda concentrated on drawing one short breath after another. She didn’t know which part of her hurt the most: her face, her ribs, or her arms. The belt with which he had tied her chafed her wrists and her hands tingled and then grew numb.

She vowed that she would survive. No matter what Geoffrey did to her, he would not win. The voices in the antechamber faded and silence descended. One of the castle mousers padded into the room and, sitting down near the hearth, began to wash itself thoroughly with a rough pink tongue. She watched its sinuous contortions and wondered if she would ever be able to move her own body so much as an inch again.

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ttt

Geoffrey returned several hours later, by which time she had stiffened and to move at all was agony. He swaggered over to the trestle, poured himself more wine, and, coming to the foot of the bed, crouched down and touched the swollen side of her face. “Now,” he said softly, “yield to me and be a good wife and we will say no more of this.” He propped her up against the edge of the bed and she could not prevent herself from crying out. Geoffrey studied her and bit his lip. “What am I going to do with you?” he asked, his tone reasonable, full of sorrow. “All I want is a little deference and respect, and you turn on me like a madwoman.”

She said nothing. She was not the one who was mad, and she was not the one who was disrespectful.

Without untying her he offered her a drink from the cup to show that he was in control. Matilda took a mouthful, rinsed it round her cut, swollen gums, and then, drawing in a breath that tore through her chest like a knife, spat the wine full into his face. “I would rather die first!” she gasped.

Geoffrey wiped wine from his dripping, nail-striped face, and his eyes flashed green in their depths. “Be careful what you wish for, wife, because I might just grant it!”

“Do it!” she croaked. “Do it and may your soul be damned!”

Abruptly he threw the cup aside and drawing his knife from its sheath, thumbed the blade and looked for the fear in her eyes, but found only defiant rage, and beyond that, a strange blankness that froze his marrow. “You are not a proper wife,”

he said hoarsely. “You have reneged on all of your wedding vows and I will stand no more. Go from here back to your father. I repudiate you. You sicken me.” Stooping again, he slit the belt binding her wrists. Matilda gave an involuntary moan.

“I will see to it that your baggage is packed.” His voice was cold. “I want you gone when I return from hunting.”

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He turned on his heel and strode out. In the antechamber she heard him whistling to his favourite dog and speaking to it with cheerful affection as if he were the kindest person on earth.

Matilda swallowed her nausea, knowing that if she did vomit her diaphragm would shatter. Using the edge of the bed, she levered herself to her feet, hardly able to stand because of the pain in her ribs. “I will never give in to him,” she choked.

“Never.” The word came from a distance and meant everything and nothing.

Her women entered the room, casting frightened glances over their shoulders. When Uli took her arm, Matilda suppressed a cry.

“Come, madam, we’ll put you to bed and send for a physician.” Uli waved frantically at another maid to close the door Matilda shook her head. “No,” she said in a laboured voice.

“He says he wants me gone, and I will do as he bids me. I will not stay here.”

“But, madam, you are in no state to go anywhere!” Uli’s soft brown gaze widened in concern.

“Even so, that is my order.” Matilda struggled to talk and breathe. “Pack my chests. Do it now. My husband has ordained that I leave him and for once I am inclined to obey.”

Uli looked aghast. “But, my lady, you are in no fit state to ride!”

“Saddle up the white ambler,” Matilda gasped. “His pace is smooth…” She paused to gather herself. “Set fleeces upon and around the saddle. Tell the grooms…” Each breath was agony. She curled her spine and hunched herself protectively.

Uli coaxed her to sit on the bed and sent a page running to find Drogo.

He was absent in the town and by the time he arrived, Matilda’s women had already packed half of her chests.

“Dear Christ!” His expression filled with horror.

“I am leaving,” Matilda told him weakly. “See that the 100

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horses are saddled and an escort prepared. I will need a cart for my ladies and my belongings.”

“What has he done to you?” Drogo’s mouth curled with revulsion.

“He has set me free,” Matilda replied, and a feeling of relief juxtaposed her despair. As if she had grown wings through her wounds.

“Where is he?” Drogo set his hand to the place where his sword would have been, except that he had come from prayer in the cathedral and was unarmed. “He has gone too far.”

“Let it be,” Matilda warned. “It matters only that he is out of the way. You would just get yourself killed or flung into a dungeon. Do as I say and see that all is made ready.”

Drogo bowed and strode out to make arrangements, snarling at the servants to do as they were bidden and laying about him in his anger and guilt. A page received a sharp cuff for being tardy. Matilda closed her eyes and bowed her head. Her entire world seemed to consist of hitting and blows and miserable lashing out.

In the courtyard, the strong grey cob had been made ready for her. The horse regarded her out of placid dark eyes, its tail swishing rhythmically to deflect flies. A groom’s little girl was winding a daisy chain around his breast-band and singing to herself. Matilda had given the child sweetmeats in the past and now received a curtsey and a beaming smile, revealing gaps where the little girl’s baby teeth had recently fallen out. “God speed you on your journey, madam,” she lisped.

Tears filled Matilda’s eyes at such sweetness. “And God bless you,” she whispered and had to look away. She was aware of people staring as Drogo helped her on to the horse. Some faces were shocked, others held contempt. One of her Angevin chamber ladies, Aelis, looked almost smug. Matilda averted her gaze from the young woman’s sharp vixen features and lithe 101

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body. She was welcome to Geoffrey if she wanted to climb into his bed.

Drogo tucked fleeces around Matilda for support. “I should have stayed,” he muttered. “I should not have gone to church.”

“It would have made no difference,” she replied wearily.

“It was always going to happen.” Grasping the reins, she summoned her will and, as the cob clopped out of the courtyard, she lifted her head to depart with pride unbowed. She did not know how she was going to manage this journey, but the taste of freedom encouraged her as she rode out under the archway. No more would Geoffrey beat and belittle her.

No more would she be treated without respect. Her father might need this marriage for the security of his borders and the weaving of his policies, but there had to be a way round, and she would think upon it later. For now her goal was enduring to the next bend in the road, the next tree, the next house, each one a marker that took her further away from the hell of her marriage to Geoffrey of Anjou.

ttt

Adeliza sat in the queen’s chamber at Windsor, listening to Herman her chaplain reading from a bestiary while she worked on a section of altar cloth for the abbey at Reading.

“‘Hear of the hedgehog,’” he said. “‘What we understand by it. It is made like a little pig, prickly in its skin. In the time of the wine harvest, it mounts the vine where the clusters of grapes are growing. It knows which are the ripest and knocks them down, then it descends from the tree and spreads itself out on the grapes, then folds itself up on them, round like a ball.

When it is well charged and has stuck its prickles into all the grapes, it carries them home to its children.’”

Adeliza first laughed at the charming picture the words created in her head, but then sobered. That was a tale to tell to infants, and she could imagine the actions to the story, but it 102

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had religious significance too, the hedgehog being a symbol of the Devil carrying off men’s souls.

As Herman paused for breath, Henry blew into the room like a storm. He had been hunting and the scent of horse and sweat surrounded him in a pungent miasma. His grey hair stood on end where he had pulled off his hat and he was clutching a half-crumpled piece of parchment in his clenched fist. Adeliza could almost feel the anger steaming off him like hot vapour. “My dear lord, what is it?” Swiftly dismissing Herman, she went to him.

“Read for yourself,” he snarled, thrusting the parchment at her. “My daughter is in Rouen and the Angevin whelp has repudiated their marriage.”

Adeliza gasped in shock. “But why?” As she read the words, she covered her mouth with her hand. “Dear Jesu, why would he do that?” She raised her eyes to him in bewilderment.

“Now read this.” He handed her another letter. “The messengers almost clashed on the road. It’s from Angers.

Geoffrey says he has sent her away because she is wilful and disobeys and insults him at every turn.”