Lady of the English (20 page)

Robert moved closer and dipped his head towards her ear.

“You know I do, and they will bear watching because they will do their best to discredit your suitability to rule England.

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You must be above reproach.” He glanced at a group of nobles talking behind her. Matilda did not follow his gaze but knew he was referring to Waleran, lord of Meulan, who had supported le Clito and been Brian’s prisoner at Wallingford until after le Clito’s death. She also knew that the bishops of Salisbury and Winchester would have their spies here, watching her every move, whom she spoke to and for how long, and reporting back to their masters. It made her skin crawl. Brian must know this too. “They will find nothing,”

she said, “because there is nothing to find, and I will not let them make filth out of service and friendship.”

Robert nodded. “Good, but I had to warn you.”

“And I thank you.” She touched his sleeve. “While you are here, I need to ask a favour. I want you to talk to our father about my dower castles. He is still refusing to hand them over.

If he does not, Geoffrey is within his rights to enter Normandy and seize them. If that happens, it will start a war, and that will jeopardise my claim to England and Normandy.”

Robert looked dubious. “You know how stubborn he is.”

“I am stubborn too when I know I am in the right. I have to press him now, because it will go beyond words if he does not yield, and if that happens, whatever the consequences, I will have to support Geoffrey.”

He shook his head. “I will see what I can do, but I make no promises.”

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Eighteen

Rouen, May 1134

Matilda could hear a church bell tolling. A knell? A call to prayer? The sound rang and rang inside her head until it filled all the space and there was no room left for her.

She felt as if she were drawing breath through a stifling cloth.

A shroud, perhaps, of closely woven linen. There was a deep ache in her pelvis and the tender space between her legs. The birth of her second son had been rough. Her flesh had torn as she pushed him out, and she had lost a great deal of blood while delivering the afterbirth.

The bells ceased and she felt the blessed coolness of a moist cloth across her brow. A baby’s wail filled the space where the bells had tolled, the sound fractious and insistent.

Then a woman’s comforting murmur, and moments later the sound of snuffling and sucking. Matilda forced her lids apart. She was cocooned and supported by a mass of pillows and piled feather mattresses. Beyond the bed curtains cool spring air flowed into the room from an open window and the sky was an arch of sunlit blue. A bowl of frankincense burned on the coffer at the foot of the bed. Near the hearth a woman was suckling a swaddled baby and another nurse was tending to one-year-old Henry, keeping him busy with some wooden animals.

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“Matilda?” Adeliza leaned over her. “Are you awake, my love? Do you know me?”

What a strange question to ask. Matilda licked her lips. They felt as rough and coarse as old hide. “Of course I do,” she said and coughed. Adeliza held a cup to her lips and Matilda took a drink of a bitter-tasting herbal liquid and almost gagged. “Why should I not know you?”

“You have been rambling out of your wits. You did not know me this morning. You have a fever. Drink this, it will help.”

Matilda did as she was bidden and shuddered at the vile taste.

“Am I dying?” she asked. “Give me the truth.”

Adeliza set the cup aside, wrung out the cloth in the cold water, and replaced it on Matilda’s brow. “The truth is I do not know. You are very sick. Everyone is praying for you. You know me now, when you did not before, and that is surely a good sign.”

Matilda stared at the bed hangings. The twists of gold embroidery seemed to writhe like snakes. She could almost see the eyes and the scales. Coiling, winding, glowing with fire. She squeezed her lids shut to blot out the sight. “Even so,” she whispered, “I must make my confession. If I should die, I wish to be buried at Bec. My father will try and insist on the cathedral, but do not let him have his way—not in this. Promise me.”

Adeliza pressed her hand. “Do not speak so. God willing, you will recover.”

“Promise me,” Matilda repeated fiercely.

“Yes, I promise,” Adeliza said with obvious reluctance.

“I want to make my confession and my bequests while I am in my senses. Will you bring Father Herbert to me, and a scribe?”

Adeliza kissed her and left the bedside to give instructions.

Was she dying? Matilda sought inside herself and could not tell beyond the sapping heat of the fever and the strange, vivid flashes of colour behind her lids. Was it all for nothing? Did it 154

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end here? She felt a spark of resentment. She was not ready to die, even if she had to make preparations in case.

Adeliza returned and tenderly wiped Matilda’s face and hands.

“Father Herbert and his scribe are coming,” she murmured.

“I want you to care for Geoffrey and Henry should the worst happen,” Matilda whispered. “You will love them, and make sure they become fine princes and good men.”

“Of course I will do whatever I can,” Adeliza said in a choked voice.

“Do not go all foolish and cry on me,” Matilda snapped.

“What good will that do?” She closed her eyes once more because the embroidery on the bed curtains had started to writhe and glow again.

Father Herbert arrived to hear Matilda’s confession and Adeliza chivvied everyone into the antechamber. Taking the replete baby from his wet nurse, she sat down and cradled him against her heart, feeling a great well of grief and longing.

Henry arrived from his business, stamping into the room with his usual vigour. He glanced at Adeliza cradling little Geoffrey. “I see that the infant thrives,” he remarked. “How is my daughter?”

Adeliza’s chin wobbled. It was all very well for folk to tell her not to weep, but she could not help it. It did not mean she was a milksop just because tears came more easily to her than they did to others. “The priest is with her, giving her comfort and confessing her,” she said.

“Confessing her?” Henry’s gaze filled with outrage. “She cannot be as sick as all that! She has the best physicians and care.

I refuse to believe it!”

“She says she desires to be buried before the altar at Bec-Hellouin,” Adeliza said in a constricted voice. “She asked me to take care of the children.”

“Did she indeed?” Henry stood very still for a moment, and then he started to pace, tapping his hands behind his back.

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“She said you would want her buried in the cathedral.”

“Of course I want her buried there. It’s where all the dukes of Normandy have their tombs, and it befits her status. I’ll have none of this ridiculous Bec nonsense!”

“But if it is her dying wish…” Adeliza protested.

Henry swung round to her, his eyes glittering. “Are you truly so much of a fool, wife? Do you not know my daughter better than that?”

Adeliza flushed at the reproof.

“She is stubborn,” he said. “She will fight me all the way for the right to be buried at Bec. While I refuse her, she has a reason to live. If I give her what she wants now, she might succumb. Once she is on the mend, I may yield to her wishes, but by then, it will not be necessary.”

“And if she does succumb?”

His expression hardened again. “Then she will go to Rouen, because my will prevails. Do what you are best at, wife. Pray and petition God that she survives.”

Adeliza bowed her head and thought that God did not always hear her prayers. She tried to obey His will and be a good wife to her husband, but sometimes it was so hard.

She decided, as she returned the baby to his nurse, that she would indeed make her petition and offer up gifts—but she would make that offering at Bec, not the cathedral, and she would ask for mercy from the Virgin Mary, a woman who knew the pain of labour and childbirth.

ttt

Matilda sat enjoying the sunshine in the garden at her father’s manor of Le Petit-Quevilly. It was two months since she had almost died giving birth to little Geoffrey and her recuperation was steady, but slow. This past week was the first time she had felt more like herself than a shadow. She had her sewing basket at her side, and had brought her penknife, quills, and parchments 156

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so that she could write some personal letters. Earlier she had been out riding for the first time in five months. Her husband had written asking when she would be returning to Anjou, the words couched as a polite, political enquiry, rather than eagerness to have her back. He had asked after his sons and her health and sent her a box of books to read and a beautiful cross on a gold chain enamelled in blue and gold. She had replied that she intended staying in Normandy for the time being to consolidate her position at the heart of the court.

Her father continued to be obdurate about her dower castles, repeating that he would yield them when he deemed the time was right and not before. He had given the custody of Dover Castle to her brother Robert, who was her loyal supporter and kin, but Matilda knew it was as much for Robert’s aggrandise-ment and power as it was for building her a strong bastion of support in England.

Her women were playing a game of hoops and skittles on the path between the beds, taking turns to throw rings made of braided straw over the necks of the wooden posts. Two little girls belonging to the women had joined in too and their giggles filled the air. Henry, a little past one year old, was watching the activity keenly. Wriggling free of his nurse, he toddled forward on his chubby little legs. The woman started after him, but Matilda called her back, because she wanted to see what Henry would do. He picked up several of the withy rings, stooping with laborious determination, and then tottered over to the skittles and carefully dropped a hoop over the top of each one, before turning round to his audience with a beaming smile. Laughing, Matilda applauded him and went to pick him up and hold him on high. “Bravo!” she cried. “See, here is the winner of the game!” And then she kissed his cheek and said softly into his neck, “That’s right, that’s how you win. You go directly to the centre of what you must do and let others strive as they may.”

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Nineteen

Rouen, July 1135

T hat hellspawn husband of yours has burned Beaumont to the ground and given succour at his court to barons in rebellion against me!” Henry snarled at Matilda. He shook the piece of parchment he had been reading under her nose. His voice was thick with rage. “Talvas and de Tosney. I will not have it!”

It was a hot summer evening and the shutters were open to a pale twilight woven with birdsong. Matilda had been summoned to her father’s presence shortly after a messenger had arrived bearing news that Geoffrey had been aiding and abetting Normandy’s rebellious barons. The chamber was sparse because Adeliza had been packing ready for a return to England. There were threats of a Welsh uprising that her father needed to deal with. The fact that Normandy and Anjou were suddenly bucking under him like a pair of untamed horses had turned his impatient bad temper to rage.

“I told you this would happen if you did not give me my dower castles.” She watched him pace the chamber like an angry bear. “Even now, if you handed them over, you could prevent this.”

“No man threatens me!” Henry whirled on her. “And no woman tells me how to conduct my affairs!”

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Adeliza glanced up from supervising what was going into the travelling coffers, and bit her lip.

“I have no intention of giving up my castles to a man who plays host to my enemies in an effort to extort concessions from me,” Henry growled.

“Every other avenue appears to have failed so far,” Matilda said.

“Keep that tongue of yours behind your teeth, or by God I will lock you in a scold’s bridle, my daughter or not. Do you hear me?”

“Better than you hear me, my father,” she retorted because her blood was up. “You call my husband ‘hellspawn’ now, but when you forced me to marry him, he was a gift from God and could do no wrong. You rage as if it is my fault that this thing has happened, when surely it is all of your own doing.”

“By God, you go too far!” He seized his jewelled staff from the side of his chair and advanced on her.

Adeliza was suddenly between them. “No!” she cried.

“Please!” She dropped to her knees in front of Henry, head bowed and one hand extended in supplication. “I beg you, sire, do not!”

Matilda swallowed, feeling ashamed and sick and furious.

Her father stood with heaving shoulders, glaring at her, and then he lowered the rod. “Be thankful that your stepmother has invoked her right as a peacemaker,” he said. “She at least knows her place and her duty.”

Matilda refused to drop her gaze. “Do I have your leave to retire and think on this news?”

“You have my leave to retire and consider your position,”

he said. “As my daughter, I expect you to know where your loyalties lie.”

Matilda made an abrupt curtsey and swept from the room.

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mortified. Adeliza had deflected the blow meant for her and that was something she had never intended. She wanted to shout at Adeliza and embrace her at the same time. And she wanted to take her father’s jewelled rod and break it over his head again and again.

ttt

Adeliza bounced little Henry in her lap, watching as Matilda locked her jewel casket and placed it in a larger wooden chest.