Lady of the English (15 page)
“Madam, you will need to ride pillion.”
Adeliza looked startled for a moment, but then nodded.
“Help me down.”
D’Albini did so, his face and throat suffusing with colour.
Eyes lowered, he put her horse on a lead rein attached to his mount’s crupper and returned to boost her on to the handsome grey. Adeliza remained gracious and proper, thanking him with detached courtesy, and expressing concern for the injured horse. Having made sure she was secure, he mounted in front of her, his face still red.
They returned to Le Petit-Quevilly with the winter dusk gathering around them like a grey woollen cloak and their 111
LadyofEnglish.indd 111
6/9/11 5:35 PM
Elizabeth Chadwick
breath clouding the air. Matilda’s thoughts strayed to Brian FitzCount doing the same for her on the road to Rouen and her own complexion grew warm. Remembering Brian was like the winter ache in a wound. Time and distance had removed them from each other’s proximity, which was perhaps a prudent thing, but there remained a quiet pain. She missed him. He had written letters offering his help should she need it and she had replied in formal words thanking him, not daring to let anything of self find its way from her mind to the vellum.
On their return, William D’Albini helped Adeliza to dismount, bowed, and went to deal with the lame horse himself.
Adeliza glanced in his wake, appreciating his kindness, and then she dismissed him from her thoughts to focus on the messenger who was standing at the manor door, drinking from a pottery cup, his satchel slung at his shoulder while he talked to an usher. Seeing the women approach, he hastily knelt. Matilda recognised him. Absalom of Winchester was one of her father’s busiest couriers.
“What news?” Adeliza gestured him to rise.
Absalom looked uncomfortable. “Madam, I am on my way to England with letters under seal from the Count of Anjou. I will rest here the night and be on my way tomorrow.”
“And do you know what these letters say?” Matilda demanded.
Absalom cleared his throat. “Only the gist, domina.”
“Which is?” The frosty air was chilling Matilda’s bones, but she would not enter the hall until she knew. “Tell me.”
“The Count of Anjou says that he is considering his position…and that he is content for you to make an extended visit to Rouen.”
Matilda snorted. Considering his position indeed! “As I am content not to be in Anjou,” she snapped. “I will have letters of my own to send with you to my father on the morrow. Come to me before you leave.”
112
LadyofEnglish.indd 112
6/9/11 5:35 PM
Lady of the English
“Yes, domina.”
She eyed him. “How did the Angevin court seem to you?”
Absalom shuffled his feet. “I saw no difference to any other court ruled by a young lord, domina. There is much sport and hunting and boisterous play of an evening…”
Matilda winced at the memory.
He hesitated, and then said, “I will tell you because you are bound to find out anyway. The count’s mistress is with child and flaunts herself at court as if she is his countess.”
“His mistress?” Matilda stared.
“Her name is Aelis of Angers, domina. She parades around court with her hand on her belly and the count lavishes her with silks and jewels.”
“It did not take her long to usurp me,” Matilda said with contempt. “Let her make her bed and lie in it. They deserve each other.”
Dismissed, Absalom bowed and went to find food and a place to sleep. The women continued to their chambers to prepare for their vigil in memory of the drowned young prince.
“Something must be done,” Adeliza said angrily. “This is a disgraceful state of affairs. Your father has mistresses; he is a man of strong appetite in that part of his life; but none have ever been allowed to behave like that at court, even if they have borne him children.” Her voice wobbled on the last word and she raised an index finger to silence Matilda as she started to speak. “Do not say you care not, because it is a lie. You do care and you should, because of the slight to your honour and your standing.”
“Truly it does not matter,” Matilda replied shortly. “I have told you; I am not going back to him. Let him kennel with whores as much as he likes.”
ttt
In the cathedral at Rouen, the women attended a mass for the soul of Matilda’s brother, dead nine years now, his bones fathoms 113
LadyofEnglish.indd 113
6/9/11 5:35 PM
Elizabeth Chadwick
deep under the seas off Barfleur harbour. Matilda pressed her lips to the filigree cross that the archbishop presented for her to kiss. She was struggling to keep her own head above the waves as she struck out for the shore, but she did not know where the shore was. Her own boat had been wrecked when Heinrich died, and when she thought of getting into the one crewed by Geoffrey, she knew she would rather drown, because it wasn’t rescue he was offering.
Her prayer beads slipped through her fingers like smooth, cold pebbles. Beside her, she could hear Adeliza murmuring under her breath and the soft click of her own beads. Was Adeliza in the water too? Counting through her hands the months and years that she had failed to conceive? Moisture glistened on her stepmother’s cheeks, illuminated like clear pearls in the candle glow. Drowned sorrows. Matilda put her head down and closed her eyes.
114
LadyofEnglish.indd 114
6/9/11 5:35 PM
Fourteen
Angers, June 1131
G eoffrey winced as his one-year-old daughter howled in her nurse’s arms. Her hair was like his, a sun-gold mass of coppery ringlets. Her eyes were hazel-green like her mother’s and tightly squeezed shut as she screamed to be put down. She had been named Emma for Aelis’s mother and was an engaging little thing when she was not raising the rafters.
She would be useful when it came to cementing a marriage alliance. King Henry of England had more illegitimate daughters than fingers and had married them all to good political advantage. There was something to be said for a quiver full of bastards.
Aelis, who was breeding again, had been mortified to bear him a daughter and was insisting that the baby swelling her womb was a boy this time. She would soon go into confinement for the birth and Geoffrey was glad because it would give him respite from her querulous demands. His patience was wearing thin, but at least her fecundity was proof that his seed was potent.
She stood before him now, one hand on her gravid belly.
Every finger glittered with gold rings and her gown trailed behind her in a mute display of extravagance.
“You cannot go to Compostela,” she pouted.
LadyofEnglish.indd 115
6/9/11 5:35 PM
Elizabeth Chadwick
Geoffrey had been toying with the idea of a pilgrimage.
The shrine of Saint James at Compostela was one of the holiest places in Christendom and petitioning the saint for guidance appealed to his sense of irony since Saint James held particular meaning for his wife and his father-in-law. Matilda had misap-propriated the hand from the imperial treasury and her father had presented it to Reading Abbey. Geoffrey doubted Saint James would ever lie intact, but then for a saint who had performed a miraculous translation from Jerusalem to Spain, he supposed a few scattered bones did not matter. “Why not?” he replied impatiently. “You will be in confinement, so you will not see me anyway. My soul will benefit from the prayer and my body from the exercise.”
“Sire, you should not go,” said Engelger de Bohun, one of his knights. “Not while you do not have a legitimate heir and the matter of your wife is still in debate.”
“I will not be told my business,” Geoffrey snarled. His
“wife,” he thought bitterly. To his consternation he found he missed her. He needed to be the winner but she had bettered him. He wanted to dominate her and wear her on his arm like a tamed goshawk. He wanted to see the envy in other men’s eyes that he had an empress at his beck and call. Aelis bored him because she was no more than a silly, twittery garden bird with false gaudy feathers, while Matilda was the genuine article. He was caught in a cleft stick. He could not afford to alienate Henry of England by seeking an annulment because when Henry died, a kingdom and a duchy would be his for the taking. He had to accept the bitch back if he wanted power.
Aelis said in a wheedling voice, “At least wait until after your son is born, my lord, or send someone with prayers in your stead.”
Geoffrey shot her an irritated glance and compressed his lips.
His daughter continued to roar and, losing patience, Geoffrey 116
LadyofEnglish.indd 116
6/9/11 5:35 PM
Lady of the English
gestured the nurse to take her away. As the woman left the room with her wriggling, red-faced charge, an usher made his way over to Geoffrey and bowed. “Sire, a messenger is here from England bearing letters from King Henry.”
“Bring him to my solar,” Geoffrey said. “I will see him alone.”
“Sire.”
Clicking his fingers to his favourite hound, Bruin, Geoffrey left his courtiers and his sulking mistress and climbed the stairs to his chamber on the floor above, where he conducted his business. Rolls of parchment and ledgers lined the open shelves.
A book box stood on the tiled floor filled with various volumes both secular and religious. A lectern was placed conveniently in front of a cushioned bench. This was Geoffrey’s sanctuary and reminded him of his father because they had so often worked here together on the business of the domain. Geoffrey had even hung one of his father’s cloaks on a peg near the door, and took comfort from its presence. The messenger carried letters but no verbal communication beyond a formal greeting. Geoffrey dismissed him and gazed at the square of parchment, the seal of England, rendered in brown wax and attached with strips of red and green braid. Eventually he picked up the penknife from the side of the lectern and cut it open. The dog flopped at his side and, with a sigh, rested its nose on its paws.
The usual salute met his scrutiny
. Henry by the Grace of God,
King of England and Duke of Normandy, greetings.
The body of the letter, written by a scribe, was a list of the terms Geoffrey was required to fulfil before Matilda would agree to return to him and they made Geoffrey suck in his stomach. Henry did not know what he was asking even though he ought to. An old man, he thought, doting on his daughter, and thus made foolish. He read the lines again, still more than half disbelieving.
Stand her always in good stead in her own household, with servants
of her own choosing around her. Aelis of Angers is not to be present at
117
LadyofEnglish.indd 117
6/9/11 5:35 PM
Elizabeth Chadwick
court or in any place that the empress may inhabit.
Geoffrey clenched his fists either side of the parchment. “I will do as I see fit in my own domain!” he snarled.
That her household be in her own governance and that she be entitled to all her own correspondence both to and
from the said household.
That gave him a burning sensation in his chest, because how could he trust her if he did not know what she was writing?
That she be treated with due respect in public and on
state occasions. That she be given her own space and escorted everywhere
by ladies of her own choosing.
That you be frankly forbidden to harm her
in any way whatsoever, unless it be by the will of full Church attorney.
Geoffrey’s jaw was so tight that his whole face began to ache.
And still it continued. That Geoffrey was answerable to Henry for Matilda’s safekeeping and she was to be treated in every respect as the daughter of a king. In return, Henry would see that the oath of allegiance to Matilda was retaken by his barons and reinforce to his daughter that she must know her place as a wife and be obedient to her husband.
And in holding you to these
terms, I applaud you as my son-in-marriage.
Geoffrey crumpled the parchment in his fist and threw it at the wall. He certainly did not applaud what he had just read as the wisdom of a king. They were the words of a fool. And yet a fool who expected to be obeyed.
Geoffrey strode from the chamber because he needed space to expel his anger. Bruin followed him, tongue lolling. He was a dog; his faith and obedience were unconditional. “Rather a dog than a wife,” Geoffrey said, and bellowed for someone to go and order his horse saddled up because he needed the speed of a fast, hard gallop to give him the illusion of freedom.
ttt
“It is settled,” Henry said. “You will return to your husband.
He has agreed to all the terms I put to him on your behalf.”
He handed her the sheets of parchment he had been holding in his mottled fist.
118
LadyofEnglish.indd 118
6/9/11 5:35 PM
Lady of the English
Matilda’s heart sank as she took the pages. Here in Rouen she was the happiest she had been since leaving Germany.
Her chambers were comfortable and she had the spiritual sustenance of the abbey at Bec. People respected her and her life was sailing on an even keel. She had prayed for an annulment, but it was unlikely to happen now that Geoffrey had proven with a bastard daughter that his seed was not barren.
She had hoped too that Geoffrey might make the repudiation official and seek to end the marriage, but plainly he felt there was more advantage to him in keeping their union intact. She read the words written in a scribe’s formal script. Geoffrey’s seal hung from the bottom, the image punched forcefully into the wax. At least she would have the buffer of her own household and they would be people of her choosing, but it was not her choice.
“But not immediately yet,” her father said. “Certain bishops and barons have complained that the oaths of allegiance they took to you at Westminster were invalid because your marriage was not debated in council as it should have been. I want everyone to swear again before you return to Anjou. You will come with me to England and all will be done according to the law.”