The Winter Crown (31 page)

‘Hamelin told me about Northampton.’

Alienor was surprised and a little curious. ‘He talks to you of such things?’

‘It helps him to settle his own mind and put his house in order.’ She smiled. ‘I am a good listener for him too.’

A pang went through Alienor that was almost envy. ‘Then I hope he has the wit to use your talent for your benefit and his,’ she said. ‘What happened at Northampton consumes Henry. All I hear about from dawn until dusk is the perfidy of Thomas Becket and what a traitor he is. Henry cannot deal with being defied. I pray that Becket will withdraw from the brink and resign.’

‘Do you think he will?’

Alienor shook her head and looked pensive. ‘I do not know,’ she said. ‘I suspect not.’

In the late afternoon of the eve of the Nativity, Henry’s envoys returned from their petition to Rome and were ushered to Henry’s personal chamber to make their report. Alienor was with her household in the hall, watching an entertainment, but alert to the happenings in the background. Everyone was on edge, but pretending to enjoy themselves, and the entertainment was apt, if incongruous.

A man walked on stilts, another man perched on his shoulders. A voluminous robe covered both players from neck to ground, so they appeared as a single giant. The ‘giant’ held a monkey dressed in a miniature archbishop’s robe and mitre. The creature had been trained to make the sign of the cross on its breast in exchange for almonds. Harry loved that one, the sight doubling him up with laughter. Another entertainer juggled with swords, the blades gleaming blue-silver where the light caught the razor-sharp edges. Richard was fascinated and Alienor made a note to keep an eye on him; it was obvious he was desperate to attempt the trick, and would likely cut himself or someone else into the bargain.

Glancing to one side, Alienor noticed one of Henry’s scribes, two writing tablets under his arm, following a messenger through the chamber. Ranulf de Broc, the doorkeeper, accompanied them, his stride heavy and brutish like the man. By the time the next entertainer had finished making his fluffy white dog jump through a series of hoops, de Broc was back, cloaked and booted for a journey, spurs at his heels, a sealed packet clutched in his meaty hand. A few brusque commands brought serjeants and henchmen from their posts.

Alienor abandoned the entertainment and went to Henry’s chamber, where she found him prowling the room with clenched fists. An open letter lay on the trestle and the scribe was writing busily on a fresh piece of parchment.

‘What has happened?’ she asked.

Henry spun to face her. ‘Becket tendered his resignation, but with all the tricks and dramas you’d expect.’ He indicated the letter on the table. ‘He arrived to petition the Pope on a prancing white stallion with an escort of Louis’s French knights, if you please.’ Henry kicked the floor rushes in disgust. ‘Proclaimed himself the defender of the rights of the Church and told the Pope I was trying to emasculate those rights. Oh yes, he calculated it to the last degree. I should have known what he would do. He’s always had a taste for the grand gesture.’

‘What did the Pope say?’

Henry curled his top lip. ‘The Pope is a two-faced weasel,’ he growled. ‘Thomas went down on his knees, handed him his archbishop’s ring and begged that he be allowed to resign. But the Pope put the ring back on to his finger and refused to accept it. If that was not all prearranged, then God’s a monkey.’

Alienor’s heart sank at the implications. ‘So Becket is to return to England?’

‘No, the Pope has sent him to the abbey at Pontigny with instructions to consider his position and come better to know God.’ Henry snorted down his nose. ‘In other words he has placed him out of my jurisdiction and in Louis’s where Becket can continue to subvert me and there is nothing I can do about it.’ He launched a vicious kick at a stool and sent it crashing over.

Alienor bit her lip. That was certainly not good news. Everyone had been hoping Becket would resign and Gilbert Foliot succeed to the primacy, but as Henry said, Pope Alexander was a weasel. In sending Becket to Pontigny, he had put him where Henry could not get at him, but by saying Becket was in need of spiritual guidance, he avoided the accusation that he was taking Becket’s part.

Henry kicked the stool again. ‘If the Pope believes everything will pass over like a headache on the day after a feast, he is mistaken. Anyone who trifles with me swiftly discovers that I return the favour fourfold. As from now all revenues to the papacy shall cease, and since Becket is going to dwell at Pontigny, his dependants can go there too and let him care for them. I won’t have them in England on my soil.’

Alienor stared at him. ‘You mean to exile his family?’

‘Every last one,’ Henry said grimly.

‘If you do that, there is no way back.’

‘Becket’s behaviour has put him outside the pale. I didn’t start this quarrel. He is the one who has made diplomatic moves against me. I will not suffer a single relative of his to remain on my lands. Let him have them all and find homes and livings for them. It is no good rooting out only one rat from a nest. All must go.’

‘But surely not all to Pontigny? There will not be room!’

‘That is Becket’s problem, not mine. The Christ child was born in a stable; let Becket’s kin sleep in one. Ranulf de Broc has gone to clear them out.’ He wagged his index finger at her. ‘If any of them come crawling to you seeking succour and requesting intercession, do not seek to meddle by helping them. I know your habit of going behind my back and I shall be watching you.’

Alienor drew herself up in regal dignity. ‘Has it come to this then?’ she demanded. ‘Is this all there is left? Suspicion and spying and being so consumed by the desire to win that everything else falls away?’

‘I do not desire your advice or your lectures, madam, only your compliance. I trust that is understood?’

Alienor came very close to loathing him in that moment. Frequently these days she was reminded of her first marriage to Louis and the battles she had endured with him. There was a familiar ring to the argument. It was a man’s place to go his own way and a woman’s to do as she was bidden unless the man asked for advice or gave her permission to speak, and she was sick of it. ‘Yes, sire,’ she said icily. ‘Completely. Do I have your leave to go?’

He gave her one of his bright looks, sharp enough to cut, and she returned it, full on, meeting edge to edge.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘you have my leave, but expect me later in your chamber, madam.’

So, he intended to use her bed to further exert his authority. Alienor disengaged and turned away. If she had had a dagger in her hand at that moment, she would have used it.

Alienor had read the medical treatises of Salerno which said that a woman should wash and perfume her body, including her private areas, if she was going to lie with a man. Waiting for Henry, she was disinclined to prepare herself; yet the political, logical part of her mind told her that a show of compliance would make matters easier. Overcoming her reluctance, she bathed and had her maids comb her hair until it shone in a heavy sheaf to her waist. She dabbed oil of roses at her wrists and throat and between her thighs. Her chemise was soft linen with delicate embroidery, and the sheets were fresh and tight.

When Henry arrived, she greeted him with dutiful courtesy. He gave her a suspicious look and she returned it blandly, and, behind the façade, wondered how far Ranulf de Broc had galloped on his way to London to roust out Becket’s relatives.

‘I have thought again about what you said,’ Henry remarked as he removed his clothes. ‘About turning Becket’s relations out. It is not practical for all of them to make the journey, so I have decided some may stay.’

Alienor stared at him, taken by surprise. Henry seldom went back on his decisions, and was even less inclined to heed her advice.

He pulled her down on to the bed and nuzzled her throat. His breath was warm, his beard raspy and soft at the same time on her tender skin and despite having expected the encounter to be a duty, her body moistened with lust and she gasped with pleasure as he entered her; and when he gave her his seed, she climaxed with him and gripped him fiercely.

He kissed her mouth and patted her hips as he withdrew. ‘There now,’ he said, ‘that was good, wasn’t it? I don’t know why you fight me.’ He turned to dress, making it clear that, deed accomplished, he was not proposing to stay the night.

‘Have you sent a message to de Broc making your intentions clear?’

‘Yes, and by fast horse.’ His tone was cheerful. ‘He has instructions to let anyone stay who wishes to pay a fine of two hundred marks.’

Alienor’s softened opinion of him vanished on the instant. ‘Hardly any of them will be able to afford to pay that!’ As well he knew. The infirm and those least able to cope would still lose their homes.

‘That is their problem, not mine,’ he replied with a shrug. ‘Let Becket and the Church help them out. They’re a merchant community; they are bound to have money hidden under the hearthstone. Becket embezzled thousands of pounds from me when he was chancellor; I am only recouping my losses.’ He pinched her cheek hard, kissed her mouth and left the chamber.

‘Bastard,’ Alienor said softly. Donning her cloak, she left the bed, poured a goblet of wine, and went to sit by the fire. From Henry’s point of view, she could see how everything fitted together perfectly. Becket was punished whatever happened, and Henry stood to gain financially from it. She could not condone Becket’s behaviour, but Henry’s was as bad.

Gazing into the hot embers, she acknowledged that she and Henry had been riding along parallel roads for a long time, but those roads were gradually pulling apart and soon they would be unable to see each other at all.

‘Well, my dear,’ said the Empress, a tremble in her voice, ‘another one to add to your brood. You have surprised me indeed, because I did not think you and my son would engender more children between you.’ She sat at the fireside, wrapped in a fur-lined mantle. A jet-topped walking stick leaned against her chair. She had been sick with a fever and congestion of the lungs, and was only slowly recovering her physical strength. Her mind was as keen as ever, though, and she was conducting business from her fireside with all her usual imperious will.

‘Yes, Mother, I had thought so too.’ Alienor placed her hand on her womb, which was swollen with the child conceived at Marlborough. She had not been overjoyed to find herself pregnant again, but it proved to everyone that Henry was still sharing her bed and that she remained fertile and capable of fulfilling the duties of a queen.

Not that Henry has visited her chamber very often since. She had remained in England while he crossed to Normandy, and her arrival in Rouen for the Easter court was recent. She had also been making wedding arrangements for her eldest daughter. German envoys had visited England earlier in the year with various proposals. Delicate negotiations were still being conducted and Alienor had yet to speak with her daughter about the match, but knew Matilda must suspect something; she was an astute child, quick to understand nuances.

‘Perhaps it will be another daughter,’ the Empress said, ‘to be your companion and consolation when this one goes.’ She nodded at her namesake who was weaving blue and red braid on a small loom and telling her little sister a story.

‘I do not know if that is a thing to wish for or not,’ Alienor said. ‘To raise another girl child and watch her beat her wings against a closed window.’

The Empress nodded, but her eyes, deep-set with age and ill health, were guarded and reminded Alienor to be careful about criticising Henry. His mother was permitted to do so, but not his wife. However, the Empress would sympathise with her about a woman’s lot in society. ‘But’, Alienor added, ‘only a woman can bear sons. A man sows the seed but it is the woman who makes it flesh and endangers her life in the bearing. It is the woman who raises the child until it is old enough to leave the nursery. She has the more enduring strength, because she must.’

‘That is true.’ Her mother-in-law nodded again, this time positively. She continued to observe her granddaughters. ‘I left England for Germany when I was eight years old, the future bride of a grown man I had never met. I was married to him at twelve and became his consort, by which time I spoke fluent German and had been taught the ways of his court. I had come to know him too. She will tread a similar path.’

A pang of loss very close to grief surged through Alienor. ‘I will prepare her as best I can. She will begin learning German – she knows some words already, and she will have a magnificent trousseau and a household of people she knows and likes.’ She bit her lip. These were all practical concerns, but she was going to miss her eldest daughter terribly. It worried her too that the bridegroom was almost thirty years older than Matilda. It was an enormous age gap to cross. She was confident Matilda would rise to the challenge; she had no qualms about her shirking her duty, but her heart still ached at the burden being laid upon shoulders so young.

‘I was deeply unhappy to leave behind everything I had known,’ the Empress said as if reading her mind, ‘but I knew my duty. I did not weep when I bade farewell to my parents because I did not want to shame myself or them, and they did not weep either. I never saw my mother again. My husband was kind, and I became fond of him. Indeed, I came to be happy with my life there.’ Her face tightened with remembered pain. ‘If I had a choice, I would not have returned to wed Geoffrey of Anjou, even if we did make Henry between us – and two other sons, God rest their souls.’ She made the sign of the cross on her breast and clutched the ruby crucifix around her neck. ‘They made little of their lives, and I grieve that they left the world untimely, but Henry has achieved all that I hoped and more, and begotten a generation who will follow and increase his fame. It is to the future we must look.’

Alienor gave an appropriate murmur. Whatever their disagreements, Henry was a determined and remarkable man, and their descendants would straddle the world. The Empress had never spoken about her childhood before. From the way she was looking at her eldest granddaughter, Alienor suspected she saw herself in the little girl, and it had awakened old memories. Indeed, Matilda resembled her grandmother in many ways, being strong-willed and intelligent, with a rigid sense of right and wrong. But she was lively and limber too, and her husband would be many years older than the Empress’s had been.