The hateful judgment of the populace had made Isabel a prisoner of her room, yet she could not withdraw completely enough to escape from ridicule. Even the king’s own bodyguards made sniggering wagers among themselves each day, guessing at the number of visits Philippe would make to his wife’s room before nightfall.
Because her physical relationship with Philippe was the only real pleasure in her life, Isabel thought of little else. There was no lack of passion or excitement between them. With all her worldly, inventive skills, Isabel always had some new erotic sport for them, and Philippe, so smitten by the mere lure of her, needed little encouragement.
Still, Philippe’s libidinous preoccupation with his wife did not blind him to the liability of her public persona, although her sexual talents tempered what might otherwise have been a harsher judgment of her worth. Faced with a constant barrage of resentment and protest against his wife, and fearing that in time it might contaminate his own public favor, Philippe had set about to popularize her image.
He began by giving her a place of honor in his audience chamber where she sat beside him during meetings of the curia regis and public hearings. At first she enjoyed this new prerogative accorded to her, but after a short while Isabel grew dissatisfied with the honor. The proceedings were seldom interesting to her. Isabel would sit passively, exquisitely adorned and bored. After a few weeks she simply stopped coming.
In November of 1182 Parisians celebrated the third anniversary of their young king’s coronation. Philippe, in accordance with his campaign to laud his wife, combined the celebration with a public veneration of Isabel’s own ancestor, Charlemagne. It was the sixteenth anniversary of the beatification of the emperor, and Philippe further commemorated the event by presenting to the sacristy of Notre Dame a signet ring which had once belonged to the great Frankish hero. It was a configuration of gold and rare amethysts, believed to have healing powers. To Isabel, Philippe presented (in public ceremony) an amulet interfaced with braided locks of hair from the emperor’s head; and a pewter bracelet set with rubies, which he placed upon Isabel’s left arm as a public reminder that their queen—like her famous ancestor—was left-handed.
The first week in November was designated for a celebration of the Capet/Carolingian union. There was public feasting for three days on the esplanade fronting the palace. The Sword of Roland was given a dramatic reading by Amaut de Mareuil, a famous Provencal troubador who had spent much time at the court of Baldwin of Hainault.
Philippe’s efforts were poorly rewarded. The Parisians were happy to partake of the free food, but they paid their deference to Adele rather than Isabel. The barons and the petty nobility were pleased enough to sit at the ribbon-festooned tables of honor near their king, but they ignored Isabel’s name when they toasted with their wine cups. The Champagnois sat in stiff communal acceptance of the queen, but they were resentful of Philippe’s purposeful exaltation of her background and, save for Henri of Champagne, they regarded her with rude neglect.
On the final day of celebration, a spectacular tableau vivant depicted the life and deeds of Charlemagne. Philippe had personally selected a group of trouveres from Nantes to perform the drama. He had even arranged for the cloth-makers of Paris to concoct splendid original costumes for them and he had borrowed some of the artisans from Sully’s staff to paint the scenery backdrops.
As it happened the tableau vivant was performed beneath a dismal canopy in a chill drizzle. Miserable and shivering, Isabel sat beside her husband and watched the colors drip dolefully from the canvas backdrops and the players stumble through their speeches, shaking with cold.
The day’s festivities ended with a drenched meal and the suspension of all activities. The king vomited wine which had gone sour and the queen, swooning from weariness and the cold, fainted from her chair onto the muddied grass below.
THE GIRL had been kneeling for over three hours on the canvas-covered floor, tensing only at the intermittent sound of the vespers bell from St. Genevieve up the hill beyond the vineyards. Torchglow gave highlights to her rich brown hair, and sparkle to her serene expression. The artist, watchful, narrowed his eyes and gripped his charcoal stick tighter—scratching it across the surface of his parchment roll. His strokes were studied and distinct, endeavoring to capture the purity of her face.
Her name was Roselyn Hereward. She was the daughter of an English baronial family and well known as a doer of goodly works for the poor and the sick. The French called her Le Donne Rose. She was a pure-faced young woman whose image had been reproduced in stained glass as a madonna figure at Noyers and Chartres. Now the artist was taking her likeness for the windows at Notre Dame.
With hundreds of others, Roselyn was a participant in the making of this great cathedral which had become the virtual focal point of Paris. The building site constituted a city in miniature. It was a spectator attraction as well. So many people crowded into the square each day that had the lie de la Cite truly been the boat it resembled, it would have tipped at its stern and sunk out of sight into the Seine.
People, everywhere. Peering from the windows of cookshops, crowding about cluttered winestalls, gaping from the open doors of wooden dwellings or merchant houses, or stopping for a while at the edge of the square to linger with their wares and baskets upon their shoulders, all of them eager to catch a glimpse of the activity.
It was a colorful spectacle: stout quarrymen, hoisters, and scaffold-setters in their heavy wool tunics and tight leather braies; the artisans—who might be part of several groups of planmasters, designers, sketch artists, sculptors, glass devisors, goldsmiths and color advisers—all in the loose white smocks and leather aprons of their trade. The vigor of their collective enterprise gave the men an aura of virility, and many a Paris maiden stood in the shadows of the cathedral watching, and giggled behind her hands.
And so the crowds came, eager to absorb the flair and creative atmosphere of a hundred skilled craftsmen at their work. Nothing had so unified Paris since the days of Clovis, when a delicate virgin named Genevieve had convened the populace in the streets to pray for deliverance from the Huns.
It was in the midst of such activity that Philippe stood on the afternoon of a ruthlessly cold December day, and waited for Maurice de Sully.
Philippe waited with impatience, warming his hands within the miniver folds of his pellison. Beside him in rows the canvas tents flapped against the poles that tethered them, their stained, sagging roofs bearing evidence of rain and exposure to all weather. The gutted cellar remains of St. Etienne were hardly visible, filled with sand, and topped by piles of grey stone blocks, awaiting use by the ropes, hooks, and pulleys which would place them. The fragmented sounds of chisel, spar, and hammer were everywhere on the air.
Sully came into view, ringed by a dozen followers. His head was bare, white hair blowing in the wind. He called out a few departing instructions, then came briskly forward, taking up Philippe’s outstretched hand and kissing the ring. “My apologies for delaying you,” he professed, and swept open the tent flap for the icing to enter. “The Master of Works had some figure changes that had to be dealt with at once.” Sully followed Philippe into the tent and over to the long table in the center of the enclosure. Atop the table surface was a clay molle in the image of the cathedral design.
A half-dozen artisans left their work to kneel submissively before their king, till Philippe fluttered an impatient hand to indicate they might rise. “Wait outside,” he told them.
“I have some window designs to show you,” Sully said when they were alone. Pushing aside bottles of dye and oxides, he cleared a space, then brought out a shaft of parchment rolls from a deep drawer beneath the table.
Philippe stripped the fur from his shoulders and slung it carelessly to the bench beside him. “I see little of you these days, Sully.” His gaze flitted aimlessly about the room. “It used to be we had much time for one another. Now I see my barber more often than I see you.”
Sully unrolled the crack
ling parchment scroll and smoothed the sheets out upon the table surface. He peered over his shoulder at Philippe. “You are kept occupied in your duties, and I have much work of my own, as you can see. My very household is turned into an annex of this project. I have a half-dozen of my artist-designers living with me at the Episcopal palace. There is a constant noise of people coming and going, so that even my sleep is muddled.” His voice had the high, excited quality of someone who is continuously besieged by activity, and adores every minute of it.
He passed a drawing to Philippe. “It is unfortunate that I have had to decline your last several invitations, but many is the time I have taken my meals here at this table so that I might continue my work without interruption.”
Philippe’s voice hinted at complaint. “Yet you have the time to attend the lord provost at the Episcopal palace.”
Sully bent to his work. “How have I displeased you?”
Philippe dropped himself onto the bench and stretched his long legs out before him, the ankles crossed. “I sent a message to you last week to dine with me at the palace, and you declined. Yet that very night you hosted a banquet for some of my own barons.” He narrowed his eyes. “Did you really think I would not know what goes on beneath my nose?”
Sully’s expression crinkled into little lines of irony on both sides of his mouth. “When your mother leaves Paris and returns to the Loire Valley I shall be glad once again to honor your invitations.”
Philippe looked down at the paper he held in his hand. It was a charcoal sketch with the ink coloring half filled in, depicting Bernard of Clairvaux. The face was unoffending and even cherubic, little like the man whom Louis had called “the greatest maker of sermons on earth since Christ.” Philippe put the paper in his lap and looked up at Sully. “After all these years I would have thought you and Adele could find a means of bridging your differences.”
Sully had brought out several pages of figures and he was studying them now. “She is a headstrong woman,” he muttered. “I wonder that you can endure her as well as you do.”
The bishop’s dislike for Adele was something Philippe had learned to take for granted years ago, and he understood it well enough. Yet mother and son had entered into a period of relatively civil relations recently so Philippe could afford to be lenient in his judgment. “She is no trouble to me now that she has at long last assented to my authority.”
Sully pondered his thoughts, wondering if he should speak. Warily he said, “I only speculate if you have not exchanged the influence of one female for another.”
Philippe pressed the tips of his fingers together beneath his chin. “What do you mean?”
“Your wife is greatly criticized.”
“By many people,” Philippe agreed, “but I did not think you were one of them.”
“She is not what I had expected.”
“Nor I.”
Sully held up his hand in a gesture of truce. “Hear me. When first Isabel was brought to Paris, I felt deeply for her circumstances. I wanted to help her. Yet now it is evident to me that she exerts an unwholesome influence over you, and by means which are indecent, considering her age.”
Philippe’s breath faltered a little in his chest. Now he understood this sense of impending argument, which had strained his relationship with Sully the past few months. Philippe had withstood no end of criticism about the much-despised Isabel from all other quarters, but this source was new. “Look here, Sully,” he said defiantly, “I’ve no doubt you gave ready advice to Louis on private matters, but my life is my own.”
Sully took up the parchment from Philippe’s lap and put it on the table with the others. “Your father was a saintly man. Carnality had no place in his nature.”
“He was a pious fool!” Philippe declared. “And I would not be like him for all I own!”
“I don’t think there is much chance of that,” Sully mumbled.
Philippe dug the heel of his boot into the dirt. “My father had three wives, yet he pleased you well enough.”
“What he did was not for his own pleasure but for the sake of getting an heir, as you well know.”
Contentious, Philippe shot back, “And aren’t I allowed the same rights with my wife?”
Sully’s voice was stiff. “Her age should answer that question.”
“Oh, this is useless!” Philippe’s voice flared into anger. “I came here to discuss matters concerning the cathedral, and nothing else. If you wish only to make a sermon at my expense, I shall wait upon you some other time.”
Sully’s hand was a gentle restraint upon Philippe’s shoulder. “After so many years and all that has passed between us, do you have so little love for me that you would make an end of my company rather than take my counsel?”
Philippe’s lips twisted in petulance. “I do not like to be questioned on private matters.”
The bishop rested a hand tenderly upon Philippe’s head. This was the boy he had baptized and taught to pray; the youth whose coronation and marriage ceremonies the old bishop had solemnized. So much turmoil had gone into the making of this young man, and it was part of his nature. Sully put a balm of kindness into his voice. “I am not blaming you, my son. Women are dark, and darker still are girls who ripen before their time. Who connive to make men sin in their minds.”
Philippe sounded more hurt than angry. “It is not Isabel’s fault that she is beautiful.”
“No,” Sully conceded, “but she flaunts her beauty in ways which are willful. Her clothes, perfumes, and jewels are indiscreet and invite wanton attentions. It cannot have ecaped your notice that half the men in your service are smitten by her. They look at her with lust and whisper vulgar insinuations behind their hands. It detracts from her dignity, and from your own.”
Philippe brushed Sully’s hand away. The truth of the bishop’s words galled him. Philippe had said the same thing to Isabel many times. But for an outsider, even Sully, to voice such a criticism was another matter. Vainly he sought to defend his wife. “It is the nature of women to behave that way. Especially beautiful women. My mother, as you know, has always been much the same. Jewels, perfumes, pretty things—they are all a woman has to amuse herself.”
“And a girl? A child?”
“She is my wife,” Philippe answered sharply, “and she is the queen, despite whatever ill-will you or anyone else may feel toward her. I am sick of hearing criticism against her. Let any man who wishes to dispute her station say it to my face!”
“I am not disputing the legitimacy of her station,” Sully replied. “You know that. I am warning you of her influence over you. You are too aware of her. She has her will of you.”
Philippe thrust out his hands, questioning. “What are you saying? That she influences my decisions? That she thinks for me? Rules for me?”
Sully didn’t flinch. “She doesn’t need to rule for you. She rules you.”
“That’s enough!” Philippe shouted, jumping to his feet at last. “I refuse to listen to any more of your slander. You priests are all alike when it comes to women. You bully and malign them, especially if they are young and beautiful, because you resent them as the one thing which is denied you!”
Sully’s vivid blue eyes gave youth to his face. “You are wrong Philippe, but you can’t see it. Young men think sex is the primary motivation for all emotions. Someday, if you live long enough, you will learn that there are deeper passions than the hot impulses of youth.” He paused, and his expression went sad. “I am an old man now, thank God, and well past the itch of the flesh. I speak to you out of the concern of my love for you, not because I envy your place in Isabel’s bed.”
The deserving reproof embarrassed Philippe, but not enough to subdue him completely. After a moment he snatched up his discarded pellison and tossed the fur recklessly about his shoulders. He fitted his fingers into soft chamois gloves and cleared his throat. “I see that we have nothing to talk about. You have made your comments. Now hear mine. Think whatever you wish of Isabel, but sh
e is my wife. It is for me to mitigate her behavior and discipline her as I see fit. But I never wish to hear you criticize her to my face again.” Indignant, he pushed past Sully and at the edge of the tent stood for a moment, his hand poised on the rough canvas of the tent flap. Philippe’s expression was hard. “Build my cathedral, Bishop,” he hissed over his shoulder. “Leave the domestic matters to me!”
The fire was burning low, fed by intermittent drafts when the wind howled through the chimneys, stirring up the flames. Shadows played on the wall like silent, scampering ghosts when the light wavered and the wind blew.
Philippe and Adele sat alone at the long table in the great hall, lingering over wine in dispassionate silence. The serving girls had taken away the food long ago and tossed the bones to the dogs, who snarled over them in the dark recesses of the room.
Isabel had gone upstairs an hour ago. Adele’s bickering and Philippe’s glum silence had been too much for her. Philippe was in a particularly bad temper tonight. The argument with Sully that afternoon had upset him, but it was not that he was thinking of now.
The Rain Maiden Page 22