Lady of the English (18 page)

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Sixteen

Le Mans, Anjou, June 1132

S tanding in Geoffrey’s chamber, Matilda compressed her lips as she read the letter that had arrived from her father in England.

“Well?” Geoffrey arched his brow.

“He says he is considering,” she replied with angry disappointment. She felt betrayed. She had sent to her father asking him to hand over the castles of Argenten, Montauban, Exemes, and Domfront in southern Normandy, which were pledged as part of her dowry, but he had declined to do so and it was a slap in the face.

“There is nothing to consider,” Geoffrey snapped. “All the old spider wants to do is keep everything in his own hands and yield not one iota of power or control to anyone. It was the same when my sister was your brother’s widow. He refused to return her dowry. He swallowed everything into his stout belly and there it sits. When he dies, everyone will be tearing him open with knives to get at their share.”

Matilda shuddered at the image. “He has ever been thus. My stepmother says we should be patient a little longer. She will do what she can on our behalf.” She did not add that Adeliza said her father was disinclined to hand over anything while she and Geoffrey had no heirs.

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“He will not heed her,” Geoffrey said curtly. “She does not have that kind of power over him. She is thistledown. Your father ignores people unless they sing his tune—and very few know what his tune is because he changes it at his whim, and tells no one what the notes are. He has had his barons swear to uphold you as queen one day, but be assured he will not have abandoned other plans.”

Matilda said nothing because Geoffrey was right. She did not trust her father, especially when he refused to hand over her dower castles, but where else was she to turn? To Geoffrey?

Their interests were mutual in many ways, but she did not trust him either. Her brother Robert might speak for her—he often knew her father’s tunes. And Brian might if he deemed it right, although he was strongly committed as her father’s man. But Robert and Brian were far away and her only influence was the written word, which would have as much impact as spitting in the ocean.

She made to leave and return to her own chamber, but Geoffrey caught her by the waist. “Perhaps he would be more amenable if we provided him with an heir?”

Matilda pushed against him. “Not now,” she said impatiently. “I have things to do.”

“But surely none more important that begetting offspring to inherit,” he said. “If I ask you to render the marriage debt, you must obey.”

Matilda remained rigid in his hold for a moment, but as he began to kiss her, she set her irritation aside and gave in to him.

Geoffrey knew how to arouse her and the pleasure was often more intense when she was irritated or angry—like scratching an itch. He drew her to his bed, kissing her, awakening her desire. She felt his hand on her inner thigh, and then between her legs, stroking, rubbing, questing. Then he hissed through his teeth, but not with lust.

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“What’s this?” he demanded and, pulling back, held up the piece of moss she had inserted as a matter of routine that morning at her ablutions.

She stared, sick, horrified, and angry that she had been found out, but strangely relieved too. “Nothing,” she said. “It is a woman’s matter.”

“A woman’s matter?” he repeated. “I will know what it is, by God.”

“It’s a protection when the womb is delicate.”

“I know what this is,” Geoffrey snarled. “It’s a whore’s trick to prevent conception, isn’t it? I have heard of such things, but I did not think to find you engaged in such foul subterfuge!”

He hurled the moss across the room.

Matilda swallowed and said nothing, waiting for him to hit her. He would beat her for this. Perhaps he would kill her, and that might not be such a bad thing. Or perhaps he really would seek annulment this time.

“Why?” he snarled, setting his hand around her throat and rolling over on top of her. “Why do you do this? To spite me?

Do you really hate me so much that you would deny me an heir? Do you think that God will forgive you for this? Who taught you these things? Your stepmother? Is that why she is barren? Is she a lying bitch too?”

“No!” Matilda gasped, choking at the constriction of his hand. “Adeliza knows nothing of this! It is of my own doing!”

And yes it was in part to spite him and in the hopes of annulment, but she was not going to say so with his hand around her neck and his body shuddering over hers with incandescent rage. There was another reason too; one that made her eyes flood with tears. “I…my first son…He was…” She swallowed against his hand. “He was born deformed and I almost died in his bearing…I could not endure that again…”

He removed his hand and bowed his head into the space 138

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between her shoulder and throat. She felt his body heaving against hers, and the slam of his heart against her ribs. “Your first husband was an old man,” he said after a moment. “I am not and my seed is potent, although you have been denying it ground to grow. If it is God’s will that you die in childbirth, then it is God’s will, but I will have sons of you. You will not deny me the right.”

He pushed her skirts out of the way and entered her in a swift, hard thrust. “You will bear my son,” he said.

When he had finished, Matilda lay on the bed and stared at the canopy while he panted beside her. She wasn’t sore because she had been ready, but she had taken no pleasure from the encounter. Did that mean she was safe this time? Did it mean her seed would not descend and mingle with his? Now he had found out, she was open and vulnerable. She had lost this particular battle and must prepare for the next one. If she did get with child, then she might die in the bearing, but at least it would be an honourable death, and while she was carrying, Geoffrey would not dare to touch her. The latter, at least, was an advantage.

He rolled over and sat up. “Take off your clothes,” he said, his eyes bright and predatory.

“What?” She looked at him in dismayed surprise.

He gestured to the open shutters. “It’s pouring down,” he said. “What better way for you and me to spend a wet afternoon than on the business of governance and making future policy?”

ttt

Outside the lazar hospital at Fugglestone, built in close proximity to the nunnery of Wilton, Adeliza stooped to the final leper in the line and placed a loaf of bread in his bandaged hand.

The man bowed and thanked her with a crooked smile. A cloak of strong brown twill embraced his shoulders, fastened with a handsome bronze clasp. He had a new tunic, hose, and shoes, 139

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all of the queen’s bounty, and now bread to eat, and a jug of good ale awaiting him on a trestle outside the door.

Adeliza was the patron of the leper hospital attached to the nunnery at Wilton, and she had paid out of her own funds from her rents at Shrewsbury for the provision of more beds, care, and clothing for the patients suffering from the debilitating affliction. Her predecessor, King Henry’s first wife, had been wont to wash the feet of the lepers, kissing their sores and drying them with her unbound hair. Adeliza had never quite reached that level of piety. She believed it better to gift these poor souls with practical items such as clothes and food and a roof over their heads, and to pray for them to be healed.

Duty accomplished, she dined with the abbess at Wilton before retiring to the guest house. The nunnery was a peaceful spiritual retreat from the cares of the world. Henry was in the throes of an affair with a new mistress, the buxom flaxen-haired sister of Waleran de Meulan and his brother Robert, and Adeliza had chosen to look the other way and visit Fugglestone with her women while the affair ran its course. Henry would bed Isabelle de Beaumont, grow bored, and move on. He always did.

She sat down on the padded window seat and looked out at the abbey buildings. Sometimes she dreamed about wearing the veil and habit of a nun, a crucifix on her breast and an open prayer book in her hands, and at those times she felt immensely sad, but peaceful too.

As usual, William D’Albini had headed her escort on her journey to Fugglestone. She had heard him outside talking to the soldiers, and now he entered the guest hall, followed closely by his small black and white terrier dog, Serjeant. He glanced in her direction and bowed, but did not join her, and she was grateful because for the moment she was content to be solitary and she had a letter to read.

A messenger had arrived with a missive from Matilda while 140

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Adeliza was at the leper hospital. Adeliza had set the news aside until her duties were finished, because letters from Matilda were always a treat. Savouring the moment now, she broke the seal, opened the parchment, and began to read. A few moments later, she gasped softly and sat upright on the window seat, pressing one hand to her flat belly. Matilda wrote that she was with child and that it was due in the early spring. Tears filled Adeliza’s eyes.

She was joyful for her stepdaughter, but felt grief for herself and even a touch of resentment that Matilda had quickened while she remained barren. Her envy made her feel guilty and sinful.

“I am so pleased you have been blessed,” she said aloud, to try and banish the negative emotions washing over her.

“Madam, are you unwell?” asked Juliana, one of her chamber ladies. “Do you want something?”

Adeliza shook her head. “No,” she said, waving her away. “I will call if I have need.” Juliana retreated, looking concerned, but Adeliza was too preoccupied to notice. Henry would be delighted, she thought. Finally his plans would begin to move forward. She knew he was considering other candidates to succeed to the throne as month on month there had been no news from Anjou. He had made men swear to Matilda, but he had put his eggs in numerous baskets just in case his daughter proved as barren as his wife. Adeliza pressed her lips together.

She had come to Wilton to do her duty to the leper hospital and seek spiritual refreshment. Matilda’s news was joyful; she would fix on that and she would write a reply filled with love and congratulation. But still Adeliza felt sadness settle upon her, like a layer of fine, grey gauze.

ttt

Matilda closed her eyes, gripped the hands of the birth attendants, and pushed as the next contraction surged through her body. She knew the sensations because she had experienced them before in Speyer when she had laboured for two days to 141

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birth her deformed and stillborn son. She was terrified now, but not showing that fear to anyone. During her pregnancy and confinement she had read as many books and treatises concerning matters of childbirth as she could persuade physicians and churchmen to part with. She had studied the
Tractatus
de egritudinibus mulierum
, the
Liber de sinthomatibus mulierum
and the
De curis mulierum.
She was determined to know as much detail as her physicians did, because such knowledge might aid her survival. An experienced soldier did not go into battle without armour. If she was going to bear this child and survive, she had to be as prepared as possible. On the day Geoffrey had discovered the piece of moss in the passage to her womb, she had had to adapt and change her focus. This child, if it lived, would be heir to Anjou, Normandy, and England and she had to do her best.

During the last three months, she had eaten a diet of light, digestible foods: eggs, chicken and partridge, plenty of fish. She had taken constant baths in sweet-scented water and anointed her skin with oil of violets to keep it supple. Having accepted the inevitability of her pregnancy, she had done everything within her own power to ensure that the carrying and bearing of this child went to plan. The rest was in God’s hands. She had been labouring since the early hours of the morning, and it was now a little past noon. Outside she knew Geoffrey was pacing. He kept sending a servant to find out how the birth was progressing. She knew it was not concern for her that drove his anxiety, but for the safe delivery of his heir.

Her entire lower body felt as if it were being wrung inside a giant fist. She wondered how the baby felt, being squeezed and pushed towards the moment of birth.

Geoffrey’s servant knocked again. Matilda closed her eyes and endured the contraction, pushing down with all her might, grunting and straining. Vaguely she heard the midwife’s 142

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attendant telling the man that the babe was almost born. Within the hour, if all continued well.

Matilda gave a humourless laugh. “He is afraid I will birth a girl child,” she gasped. “Before I entered my confinement he was constantly worrying at the possibility like a dog with fleas.

He says I would do such a thing just to spite him and my father because I am contrary. It would serve them both right if I bore a daughter.” She bit back a cry as the next contraction started to build. “The books say that a woman is a vessel in which the man plants his seed, so how can a woman be to blame for the sex of a child?”

“Sometimes a woman’s seed is stronger than the man’s, and then the baby is a girl,” said the senior midwife. “That is the lore.”

“In that case, all my children will be daughters!” Matilda panted.

On the next contraction the baby’s head crowned at the entrance to the birth passage and emerged, followed by slippery little shoulders and crossed arms. Matilda closed her eyes, pushed again, and felt a warm, wet slither between her parted thighs.

“A boy!” The midwife beamed from ear to ear. “Madam, you have a son, and he’s perfect.”