Chapter 5
1139–1140
For the second time in her life Matilda de Risle was married at Hatfelde. Everybody at the feast table was tipsy, except Matilda who was not a winebibber at the best of times. And this, in her opinion, was not even a good time.
With her wedding wreath jammed firmly on her head and a look of disapproval she kept herself aloof. Especially from her husband. She didn’t like him much. From the loftiness of her nineteen years he seemed a child, undersized, pustulated and tremulous. He wasn’t healthy. His shoulders were hunched, he gasped and had a blue look to his lips. There was nothing wrong with his appetite, however; he stuffed down a sample of everything with the gusto of one who has lived too long on convent meals.
“You don’t talk to your bridegroom, my lady.” Waleran nudged her. “Do you keep your sweetness for the honeyed moments to come?”
“Honeyed moments,” muttered Matilda with venom. She jerked her head round to the boy and barked: “You didn’t take your final vows then?”
Some chewed pork fell out of the boy’s mouth and he blushed. “No, no.” He leaned towards Matilda yet kept his face mercifully away, as if speaking to a woman was disobedience. “My lord abbot said God had preserved me for duty elsewhere. He said I could enhance the abbey more by marriage than by chastity.”
“Not with my lands, you can’t,” thought Matilda.
Vincent’s prominent Adam’s apple bobbed. “Shall I read you the Song of Solomon tonight?”
“Eh?”
“You know… tonight… my lord abbot says it’s preparation for… you know… the marriage bed.”
“Yuck.” She was nauseated by this youth and his steamy old abbot for whom the highest eroticism was dirty bits from the Bible.
A strong voice behind them said: “Vincent, it’s time to pay your respects to the company.”
“Yes, father.” Vincent rose obediently and Serlo of Luard took his place. Under other circumstances Matilda might have liked Serlo, as she liked men of power as long as they didn’t threaten her own. He was short, strong, dark-haired and had intelligent, acquisitive brown eyes. But he did threaten her because his control over his son, and therefore Matilda and Matilda’s estates, was absolute. There was an uncomfortable sexual frisson to him as he insisted on using “we” when he referred to his son. It was as if she’d married them both.
“My only regret on this happy occasion, my lady,” he was saying, “is that our little stepson cannot be here with us. Where is he?”
She’d always known she’d have to tell him where. She crossed her fingers and made her eyes anxious. “He is sickly, my lord, and the doctors advise against travel. He is at my manor in the Fens. Not much of a place, I fear, but there is a wise woman there in whom I have faith. She feeds him poppy juice when the pain gets too bad.”
And she knew she was right about Serlo. He relaxed immediately, one of the cares on his busy mind eased. He would not hurt the child: neither would he protect it. If Matilda was fool enough to put her ailing son into what all right-thinking men knew to be a noxious quagmire in the care of some crone, Serlo of Luard wouldn’t deliver him from it.
His face showed sympathy that was not all feigned. “God save him, madam. You and I know what it is to have ailing children.” Two wives had given Serlo five sons of whom Vincent was the only survivor.
“But tonight,” he said, “we’ll make more and stronger. With you, my lady, we shall begin a line to shake the world.”
“My line,” retaliated Matilda with dignity, “has already shaken it.”
She and Vincent were taken off separately, undressed with giggles and attired for the night before being popped into the bed of the bridal chamber and the covers pulled up to their necks so that their nightcapped heads stuck out like a pair of lollipops. The boy’s cold, bony foot touched Matilda’s leg and she jerked it away.
The men swayed, hiccuping the old, old jokes and staring at them with the jovial hostility of wedding guests everywhere. Serlo’s eyes took away Matilda’s personality, turning her into a mere receptacle for his son’s semen. To him the bed was a forge on which to found a lineage.
“Smile, cousin,” said Waleran of Meulan. “Or can’t you wait for us to go?”
Matilda stretched her lips. Her rebellion, her symbols of revolt against the lot of them, were tucked into the pillows and under the mattress. Before Berte had gone to the Fens she’d made up sachets of vervain to guard against Matilda conceiving. “That’ll take the stiffness out of that young man’s old man,” she’d said. “We don’t want no babies taking the place of our Edmund.”
By God, they didn’t. And by God, if Matilda had anything to do with it, there wouldn’t be any.
Serlo stayed till last, glaring, as if he could impregnate her with his eyes. “Wield your sword well, my son,” he said as he went. From behind the door came Waleran’s voice: “Don’t be afraid to hit below the belt.” The door closed.
Vincent muttered some prayers and sat up to find himself regarded by two pairs of cold eyes, Matilda’s and the dog Fen’s. “Does she have to be here?”
“Yes.”
“Shall I begin then?”
“I suppose so.”
Serlo stayed outside the door of the chamber for a long time, not because he was salacious, but because he couldn’t bear to leave the field of this vital ploughing. From inside came the sound of his last remaining son apparently reciting in a high, breathless voice. He was talking, Mother of God; what was he talking for? If it had been himself in there with that fine young woman he wouldn’t have been talking, by all Christ’s saints. He cursed himself for having miscalculated and grabbed his latest wife, a very minor heiress, before his friendship with Waleran had entitled him to something better. If he’d waited it would have been him in there. As it was he was stuck with this Number Three who showed no signs either of dying or delivering him anything but daughters. “Take her, boy, take her.”
Inside the chamber Vincent’s voice rose with his excitement. “…thy belly is like an heap of wheat set about with lilies. Thy two breasts are like two young roes…” He looked up. “Can’t you make her lie down?”
“Lie down, Fen.”
He returned to the Song of Solomon, unable to believe that it could not be bringing Matilda to the same fever pitch.
Outside the door Serlo clenched his fists: “Take her.”
At last his son’s voice trailed away. There was silence, then snuffling, then the sharp, clear voice of his daughter-in-law. “Not there, you stupid boy. There.”
* * *
Just as it had been necessary to introduce Sigward to her Normandy estates so now a similar tour had to be made with Vincent. Serlo went too. Matilda was disconcerted by the presence of her father-in-law but not surprised. Vincent was merely a nuisance at nights. Serlo was the real lord of the marriage.
From the first he made it clear that while he would not interfere with the state she kept – her magnificence reflected on the Luards – she kept it by his permission. On the second day of the honeymoon he went through the accounts with her and her household steward.
“Sixpence a week for a saucer. That’s what a man-at-arms gets in war. What’s a saucer?”
“Someone who makes sauces.” Matilda was bored. “A man-at-arms can’t make sauces.”
At each new estate there was a similar inquisition. He had to know every tithe, every custom, every rent. At Pardieu the swords came out. “My lady, we should render to God material thanks for your marriage with my son.”
“How material?” asked Matilda, suspiciously.
“We should give the hamlet of Bois-Barbot to the Abbey of Fécamp whose lands it adjoins.”
“Bois-Barbot?” shrieked Matilda. “It produces the finest calvilles in Normandy.” Suddenly the little grey, fennel-scented apples which were part of her childhood were the most precious things in the world. They must be safeguarded for Edmund.
Fécamp. Of course. The abbey that had re
ared Vincent. The abbot was to be paid for his favour in releasing the boy. “I should be failing in my duty to the young lord of this land if I let any of it go without profit to him.”
“Indeed you would.” Serlo was hearty. “His soul shall be prayed for every day by the Fécamp monks.”
They quarrelled. At least, Matilda quarrelled: Serlo remained calm, reasonable and obdurate. He won that and every following argument.
Matilda panicked as she realised the only counter she had against him was guile, which was against her nature. But she was learning.
Her triumphs became dirty little victories achieved in the dark. However many battles with Serlo she lost, if she did not conceive she’d won the war. So far there was no chance of that. The boy got so het up with his reading of the Song of Solomon – Matilda nearly knew the damn thing by heart – that his orgasm came before he could penetrate her. Matilda put it down to the vervain, though her own cheerlessness in bed might have had something to do with it.
Serlo was avid to know if she was pregnant yet but couldn’t ask right out. “I hope my son pleases you?” he’d say and Matilda would reply, “Why shouldn’t he?” which got him nowhere.
She would dearly have liked to confide in someone but Berte was not there, Ghislaine and Flore had gone home to be married themselves, the ladies who replaced them were as yet unknown and Adeliza was too innocent. Besides, she did not know polite phraseology for premature ejaculation and felt that to describe it was beneath her dignity.
So she waged her secret war alone. After a while it became obvious to both her and Serlo that there was a term to it. The battlefield, Vincent, would not live long.
At first she thought his gasping was post-Solomon exhaustion. But one night he clasped his chest and she saw in the moonlight that his face was blue. She raised the castle – they were at Port Motte – and the infirmarian of the local priory was called. Vincent was thoroughly bled and given powdered St. John’s wort mixed with raw eggs. He endured it with passivity but was obviously afraid. “Is it punishment for marrying?”
Serlo was sternly comforting. “It was your duty to God and your house.”
The infirmarian took Matilda and Serlo to the other side of the chamber, carrying a pot of Vincent’s urine in his hand. “I will not trouble you with medical terms. Put simply, his blood is too thick. I recommend the three great doctors, Dr. Purge, Dr. Diet and Dr. Rest.” He was a jolly man.
“Will he recover?”
“No reason why not, no reason.” The infirmarian remained jolly. “But he should avoid strenuous activity… and his chaplain should stand by at all times.”
This was bad. They looked at the bed where the boy’s newly shaved head stuck out at one end and his skinny feet at the other. His chaplain stood beside him reciting St. Anselm’s prayer for When the Mind is Anxious with Fear. Vincent’s purple lips shaped the words after him. For the first time Matilda saw him not as a husband who’d been foisted on her but as a bewildered, bullied human being.
She looked round at her father-in-law and saw there such panic and aggression that her pity faded and self-preservation took its place. Serlo knew, he had seen too many sons die not to know, that Vincent would die. The period until that death would be a race to perpetuate the Luards. Matilda’s job would be to see the race was lost.
Serlo took the infirmarian’s arm and led him away, muttering. Matilda knew he was asking whether the boy could safely continue marital relations. She saw the infirmarian shrug.
Vincent recovered; or, to be more exact, he did not die that time.
One beautiful autumn morning when the air was clear and chill over still-warm grass so that the scent of deer was beckoning to the hounds like an animate creature, and the bucks in the forested hills behind Harfleur were begging Matilda to come and kill them, she swept back into the manor and confronted Serlo. “You ordered my horse unsaddled. Why?”
“Hunting is dangerous for a lady in your condition.”
“Condition?” Matilda’s voice quivered the antlers on the walls. “I am in no condition.”
Serlo had been brooding over a mug of wine. She saw he’d gone vicious, like a dog. “Then you should be.” He flung the mug at her. It missed, spattering her with wine as it passed over her shoulder. “Too much activity in a female stops conception,” shouted Serlo. “And anyway, why should you hunt when your husband cannot?” He looked up and said clearly: “It is a matter for complaint.”
She picked up the mug and flung it back at him, also missing, then stamped back to her chamber. “A matter of complaint” was a warning. If the Luards could justify a charge that she was neglecting her wifely duties they could repudiate her. Stash her away, control her lands until Edmund was of age – by which time the lands would be stripped of all profit.
She felt again the panic when she’d thought she was barren during her marriage to Sigward. But this time not only would she suffer, so would the little boy growing up in the Fens. She was the only soldier in his army.
“Mother of God,” she moaned, “you didn’t have to fight off St. Joseph’s advances to stop yourself getting pregnant again.”
Then, with her hand on the latch of her chamber, Matilda paused. What about James the brother of Jesus? Dear, dear, had the Virgin not remained virgin? They didn’t mention that, these churchmen. She’d have to find out about it. Meanwhile…
She crashed into her chamber and her face could have ripped the bandage off a wound. She shouted: “I’ve come to minister to you, my lord.”
* * *
In the unceasing war Matilda and Serlo waged over Vincent there were moments of truce in which they discussed like partners such intelligence as each gleaned about the political situation. For the Normandy they had both known was changing. In the areas they travelled it was outwardly peaceful, but it was a sickly peace such as had settled over England six hundred years before, when Rome withdrew her legions. There was the same feeling of approaching doom.
Serlo’s intelligence came from other men. Now that Earl Robert of Gloucester had abandoned Stephen and gone over to his stepsister, he had given her control of Caen and Ouistreham, providing her with an embarcation port from which to invade England. It also gave her husband, Count Geoffrey, a spearhead in the north. From his position in the south he could use it to divide Normandy in half.
While the nobles were telling Serlo all this in the hall, their ladies in the solar with Matilda were imparting much more. They talked of “Which way up the wind’s blowing”, of secret journeys by trusted envoys to the Empress’ camp, of quiet alliances and promises not to oppose Count Geoffrey if he let them keep their lands. Matilda didn’t blame them. She too would treat with the Devil if it kept Edmund’s estates for him.
“If I was blasted in charge,” she thought, “I’d be doing the same. But Serlo won’t. He’s too loyal to the king and Waleran.”
Vincent was not only repulsive to her now, he was horrible. The panting from his heaving chest seemed to dominate all sound. His uncut fingernails clawed at her at night and the blue lips swelled to become rolls of liver in her dreams. Worse, the boy was beginning to smell. He’d taken to wearing a hair-shirt which caused a weeping rash but which he refused to take off, just as he refused to wash.
Matilda, who regarded personal hygiene as the prerogative of her class, bathed every Friday and used the resources of her immense household to keep her clothes scrupulous. Her hints, then pleas, then demands that Vincent wash were ignored.
The truth was the boy was in torture. Had he been left in his monastery he would have passed his life as an unremarkable monk, moving to the command of bells and being promoted on death to Heaven to sing happily among the lower angels.
But they had popped him in bed with a woman and told him to fornicate with her. While the woman’s body made his senses squeal with pleasure, her sharp face and even sharper tongue inhibited him.
He longed for the sealed fountain of the Song of Solomon, the honey and milk, the mountain
of myrrh. But he had been taught that the wickedness of women was greater than any other wickedness, that their bodily beauty was only phlegm, blood, bile and the fluid of digested food. He was being crushed between the millwheels of desire and abhorrence and neither would stop their grinding.
On the morning that Serlo came to his decision Adeliza, Matilda and Vincent were in the solar of her manor at Haut-des-Puys. Although it was chilly Matilda had opened the windows because of Vincent’s smell, which not even the cherry logs burning in the grate could dispel. She was sewing up the jesses of her favourite hawk and wondering if she would ever fly him again and Vincent was treddling Adeliza’s spinning-wheel making it squeak.
Serlo sent a request to be received – he was scrupulous in such matters – but his arrival was ebullient. “I come to apologise, madam.” He was almost shouting and he clapped Vincent on the shoulder. “My son, we have been selfish, unthinking men, monopolising our dear wife’s company, keeping her from her intimates.” Matilda’s eyes widened: she had seen a lot of her intimates lately. But Serlo went on: “We have been talking war while she has wished to talk babies and fashion with her cousin.”
“What cousin?”
“The Empress.”
Matilda was puzzled. Her relationship with the Empress was distant. Then she got it. He was going to use her, Matilda, as a line of communication with the enemy. He couldn’t go himself; it would be treachery to Stephen, so he would use her to open a dialogue. Serlo didn’t like the look of things in Normandy; he didn’t want all his eggs in Stephen’s basket, he was going to put a couple in the Empress’, just in case. Jesus and Mary be thanked, she was going to get away from Vincent.
Her smile was pure pleasure. “How thoughtful you are, my lord. What do you want me to say?”
With relief, Serlo got down to brass tacks. She was not to treat with the Empress, that would be treachery and Serlo was still Stephen’s man. As he put it: “Indicate that while we are loyal to King Stephen we are not… well… irreconcilable to her cause should it prevail.”
The Morning Gift Page 9