The Winter Crown (12 page)

Hodierna sat on the settle before the fire, cushions under her arms as she suckled two babies, one with downy hair of copper-gold, the other soft brown. Richard was latched on to her right breast, and her own son Alexander on her left. The room filled with the sound of their guzzling and it amused Alienor greatly to hear them. ‘Heaven help the cellars when they move on to wine,’ she said.

‘At least I have an excuse to eat well at table, madam.’

Alienor laughed. Richard was already much bigger than his milk brother, although both babies were thriving. He was going to be tall and strong: a long-limbed warrior like her father and her uncle Raymond, once Prince of Antioch.

Alienor turned back to her seamstress. She was having some new gowns made for the Christmas feast, which was to be at Lincoln this year. Wearing their crowns, she and Henry would preside over a vast gathering of barons and clergy, and she intended to be magnificent in silk and fur, gold and jewels. The queen of an empire stretching from the Scottish borders to the foothills of the snow-clad Pyrenees.

Richard’s birth had done much to improve her relationship with Henry. She had been churched just over a month ago and their reunion in bed had been mutually satisfying. She did not resent Henry as much while they were both in England because this was his birthright, and she did not have the same ache in her soul when he took command of ruling it. She still had her own roles within the curia as diplomat and peacemaker, and she had a busy family household to oversee. The children had nurses and wet nurses to attend to their needs, but she had to keep an eye on those women, and even if her duties took her away from her offspring at regular intervals, she was often in the same room and keeping a watchful eye on their development.

Little Henry had recently begun pointing to his chest and referring to himself as ‘Harry’, which was often how the English servants at court rendered the name ‘Henry’. He was a good-natured, charming child with thick golden-brown hair and striking grey-blue eyes. He was swift, intelligent and vastly curious, his constant chatter punctuated by numerous questions. Where did the sun go at night? Why did dogs wag their tails? Why didn’t babies have teeth when they were born? He had a particular rapport with Isabel, who was endlessly patient with his demands and would play games with him and tell him stories when he was tired.

He loved his siblings too, and constantly wanted to kiss them. Alienor suspected that such behaviour would change in time, but for the moment at least, all was sunshine, except when he poked the sleeping Richard and woke him up. She was relieved that Henry’s bastard son had remained in Normandy with his grandmother. As yet no other by-blows had been presented at her chamber door, although she was constantly waiting for it to happen. Henry’s sexual appetite was voracious and he bedded other women in the same casual way he used food for sustenance.

She was studying a bolt of ruby-coloured silk when Henry breezed into the room. Picking up his heir, he swung him in his arms. ‘Well, my young man, what have we here?’

Harry giggled, showing two rows of perfect milk teeth, and reached up. ‘I want your hat!’

Henry removed his blue woollen cap and plopped it over his son’s head. ‘There, now you look very fine indeed, my boy. The apparel of a king suits you well.’ Turning to Alienor, he eyed the bolt of red silk cast across the trestle in shimmering ripples. ‘Fit for the Queen of England herself!’ With a beguiling grin, he seized Alienor round the waist and danced her around the room together with Harry, the latter wearing the blue cap covering his face as far as his nose. Alienor began to laugh, her emotions bright with pleasure.

‘What has put you in such a good mood?’

Henry set his son back on his feet and lifted little Matilda instead. He swept her in a swift circle, kissed her cheek, and returned her to her nurse. ‘I have just heard that that Louis’s wife has borne a daughter,’ he said, grinning. ‘By all accounts the mother has survived and the baby is healthy, but it confirms that Louis cannot beget sons. Even given a meek and biddable wife he still cannot accomplish a man’s task in her bed.’

Alienor spared a brief moment of pity for Louis. He must be beside himself. The news made her think of the two daughters she had been forced to leave behind when her first marriage had been annulled. Children she had barely known, yet at the same time had nurtured in her womb, flesh of her flesh for nine months. Marie and Alix were being convent-raised until they were of an age to marry the men to whom they were betrothed – Theobald and Henri, brothers of the powerful house of Blois–Champagne. Alienor had schooled herself long ago not to think of the daughters she had borne to Louis, but occasionally the memories would surface and take her unawares.

‘Does the baby have a name?’

‘Marguerite,’ Henry said, with the shrug of such a thing being of no importance.

‘Saint Margaret is often invoked by women with problems in travail,’ Alienor said thoughtfully. ‘A child named in her honour might be a sign of gratitude for surviving a difficult birth.’

‘If so then Louis is on the horns of a dilemma. He has to decide whether to bed her the moment she is churched and try for another son, or let her rest for a while longer and regain her strength. For now all that concerns us is that Louis still does not have a son, and we have two.’ He looked at her with a gleam in his eyes. ‘And after last night, perhaps three.’

Alienor turned back to the red silk, a rueful half-smile on her lips. She wouldn’t be surprised either. Certainly he had not given her time beyond her own churching to recuperate and he was always at his most eager in the weeks when she returned to her marital duties after leaving confinement.

Henry retrieved his hat from his heir, tucked it in his belt, and departed about his business. Alienor pressed her hand to the soft curve of her belly. Never again would it be as flat as a girl’s; sometimes she envied the narrow waists and high firm breasts of nubile young women, but then fecundity had its own areas of advantage, and it was better to be an experienced doe in the forest than a youngster, easily chased into a trap by men and brought down.

For once Henry had taken a moment away from throwing himself at life to sit and relax with Alienor in the domestic chamber. The morrow was Easter Sunday and they were to attend a celebratory mass in Worcester Cathedral followed by a banquet. Being a formal occasion, they were both obliged to wear their crowns.

Henry’s remark in November about begetting another child had been wrong, but only by a month. Once again, the Christmas celebration had resulted in a pregnancy and yesterday Alienor had felt the child quicken. Richard would only be a year old and still taking sustenance from Hodierna when the new baby arrived.

‘I have been thinking about the crown-wearing,’ Henry said. ‘About having to do this four times a year. All the expense and ceremony and the weight of the thing. Everyone knows I am king by now.’

Alienor rather enjoyed the crown-wearing ceremonies, but Henry was always impatient, bored and restless, tapping his feet, drumming his fingers. ‘So what do you propose?’

‘That we leave our crowns on the cathedral altar in permanence and only wear them on exceptional occasions. I am tired of the fuss every time. The man should wear the crown, not the crown the man.’

She could tell from his demeanour that he intended to push through the idea whatever the objections. She supposed it showed he was sufficiently secure in his authority not to need the physical trappings of kingship, but others expected it of royalty. ‘What will your mother say? You know how set in her notions she is. She won’t be overjoyed to learn you are dispensing with the crown-wearing ceremony, especially since she fought so hard to obtain you that crown in the first place.’

‘My mother is not in England,’ Henry said dismissively, ‘and while I value her advice, I do not always take it. She has her ways of governing, and I have mine. I have no need of embellishment. Let others parade silks and furs in my stead. My chancellor has proven himself more than adept; he enjoys such spectacles. Why have a dog and bark yourself?’

Alienor made no reply; there was no point in arguing a decision when Henry had made up his mind. He was right about Becket. While many were uneasy at the sums the Chancellor spent on lavish clothes, entertainments, hawks and hounds, Henry was amused and indulgent, like a rich sponsor watching an impoverished child stuffing itself at his table. He teased him sometimes – once riding into Becket’s dining hall all sweaty from the hunt and tossing a gutted hare on his trencher, and another time forcing Becket to hand over his new cloak to a street beggar – but mostly he saw the largesse as a just reward for what Thomas was able to do for him in terms of raising revenue and putting forward ideas; and as he said, why should he bother with the fuss of ceremony when he didn’t enjoy it and his chancellor did? A man who could indulge one of his servants thus was surely magnificent in himself.

At mass on Easter Sunday, Henry and Alienor placed their coronation crowns on Worcester Cathedral’s high altar. The diadems rippled with gold and red reflections from candles and lamps, as if flickering with the energy of regnal power. A king and a queen side by side. Three-year-old Henry reached to grip the silver-gilt coronet on his own head, his bottom lip quivering and his eyes big with tears.

‘What is wrong, my little man?’ Alienor stooped to ask him. He had stood proudly at his parents’ side, a symbol of their fertility and the secured succession, and had behaved beautifully, but Alienor knew the mercurial characters of small children and how everything might change in an instant. She cast her gaze round in search of Hodierna.

‘I don’t want to put my crown on the altar,’ he said, articulate and forceful. ‘It’s mine.’

Alienor’s lips twitched at his possessiveness. ‘Well, then it is a good thing you do not have to. Only kings and queens may do that, and you are still but a prince.’ She shared a moment of suppressed laughter with Henry.

‘A strong sense of possession never did anyone harm,’ Henry said. ‘But mark my words: you will have to wait a long time before you wear that crown, my boy, and then you will discover just how heavy it is.’

Henry sat before the hearth with his chancellor, drinking wine and fondling the ears of a dozing hound. Earlier he and Thomas had played chess together and satisfied honour by winning one game each – which meant losing one game each too. Now they were discussing the business of the realm and finishing off the flagon at the end of a highly agreeable day.

Thomas said thoughtfully: ‘Seeing your heir with that coronet at his brow today made me think.’

‘Oh yes?’ Henry eyed him. Thomas had pushed back his sleeves as if preparing to do business. They were edged with a thin line of blackest sable and behind the fur were stitched pearls and gemstones. Henry knew that if Becket had been king, he would not have put his crown on the altar. He would have taken it to bed with him and slept with it under his pillow and paraded it at every opportunity. ‘What scheme do you have in mind now?’

‘I was thinking of the little Princess of France, Marguerite, and wondering if it is too early to consider a marriage alliance.’

Henry’s gaze sharpened and he sat up. He enjoyed these late-night talks with Thomas. You never knew what he was going to come up with. As a promulgator of ideas, and as a man capable of implementing them, he had few equals. ‘You mean a marriage alliance with my son?’

Thomas took a sip of wine from his silver cup. ‘You would b-be able to settle the matter of the Vexin territory by a marriage treaty and it would foster peace between you and France. If Louis continues to beget daughters or has no other children, then in the fullness of time, Marguerite’s husband could become very important indeed. You have nothing to lose, sire, and everything to g-gain.’

Henry chewed his thumb knuckle and rose to pace the room while he considered. He imagined his eldest son riding out as a glorious young man, his standard-bearer carrying the double banners of England and France on his spear. Suddenly that moment in the cathedral earlier, when the child had desired to hold on to his coronet, seemed like a portent. ‘The idea has potential,’ he agreed, ‘but will Louis be willing to consider this, or will he reject it out of hand?’

‘Sire, I would not have broached the matter if I did not believe it was tenable. If we go about the proposition in the right way, then the King of France will see advantages in the alliance just as we do. His daughter will be Queen of England and his grandson may well sit on the English throne, just as yours may sit on the French one.’

Henry lifted one doubtful eyebrow at that, knowing French law, although he was smiling. ‘We would need to take her for fostering and raise her in our traditions so that she cleaves to our ways.’

‘Sire, that goes without saying. If we undertook such a scheme, it would also prevent the King of France from wedding her to someone who might cause damage to our interests.’

‘I am not blind, Thomas,’ Henry said, casting his chancellor a dark look. ‘It is a good plan. I put it in your capable hands to make overtures, but keep me informed.’

Thomas bowed. ‘I shall do so, sire.’

Henry paced the room and turned. ‘If we do go forward with this, I want discretion. There is no need to raise the issue with the Queen or court her opinion until we know whether there will be a positive outcome to the discussions.’

Becket’s gaze was knowing. ‘I understand perfectly, sire,’ he said with a bow.

‘You always do, Thomas.’ Henry clapped him on the shoulder and saw him out of the room. Then, rubbing his hands, he sent one of the doorkeepers to fetch the new girl he had noticed recently among the court whores. Her hair had a way of rippling like ripe wheat when she walked, and he had been saving her as a reward for himself. Tonight he would thoroughly enjoy harvesting her field.

Alienor stood at her chamber window and inhaled the fresh April morning. In the fourth month of pregnancy she felt bloated and ungainly. There had been no time for her body to recover from bearing Richard before she was with child again, and it seemed to her that she was a plodding beast of burden.