The Rain Maiden

by Jill M Philips

  So with Godfrey removed from Lincoln, Henry had to find a replacement, and for this he selected a most remarkable man. Hugh of Avalon was unique among churchmen. He had no interest in ecclesiastical advancement. He was a monk at heart. A member of the Carthusians—a humble, contemplative order—Hugh would have preferred to labor in his work unnoticed by the world, but Henry had changed all that a decade earlier.

  He had first met the Burgundian monk at the Grande Chartreuse in France. Perhaps something in the personality of this slight and quiet man recalled in Henry the memory of Thomas Becket, for immediately the king had decided to take him into royal service. In Hugh’s honor Henry had founded Witham Abbey in the county of Somerset, planning to raise him higher at some later date. When Godfrey saw fit to resign from Lincoln, the perfect opportunity revealed itself. That was Henry’s view. Hugh had another.

  There were many months of negotiations. Hugh simply did not want the job, but Henry would have no other in his place. Try as he might, and he tried mightily, Hugh could not sway the king from his adamant intention, so in September of 1186 he was named Bishop of Lincoln. Ironically, Hugh was not the only one to raise objections. Half the English clergy were outraged that the king should have chosen him. The see of Lincoln was most desirable to any man who wished to make a place for himself in the world.

  That was not the only comic element adrift in this touchy situation. Since Lincoln Cathedral lay in ruins from the earthquake, Hugh’s new domain was little more than a gigantic heap of stones standing high above the city! For this reason it was decided that he be invested of his duties at London. A great procession was arranged to travel from the priory at Clerkenwell, southward through the city to the king’s residence at West Minster.

  Tales of Hugh’s goodness and charity had preceded him and so the poorfolk of the city thronged the streets to see him as he passed by, riding his spotted palfrey, with a small bundle of all his earthly goods strapped to its saddle. Hugh was dressed simply in coarse wool and sheepskin, while all other men in the procession—soldiers and members of the clergy—wore fine silks and many jewels.

  The contingent of the bishop’s escort blushed deeply with embarrassment: why would a man who had been raised up so high in the great world dress like a beggar? The king’s soldiers found it comical and they sniggered behind their hands. A few of them even drew close behind the bishop’s mount, using their swords to try and unloose the ropes which held his pack, so that the sight of him, riding with his belongings tied to his own horse, would not shame them in front of the king.

  But Henry, who was equally unpretentious, was gladdened by Hugh’s modesty and welcomed his new bishop with a warm embrace. Together they stood on the steps of the royal residence, waving to the cheering crowd and tossing handfuls of silver pennies into their midst. Hugh, in all his humility, blushed at the ovation.

  Slack-jawed and bored, young Johnny stood off to the side a little, smiling a crooked, hypocritical smile. All of this silly fuss annoyed him, made him tired. He had no part in it; he was just an onlooker, never more. He drew in his breath and winked at a pretty girl who stood on the edge of the crowd. Henry was putting the mitre upon Hugh’s head. Ho hum, more bother. John wished that this ceremony would end, so he could go indoors and have his supper.

  Geoffrey’s death had done terrible things to Philippe.

  Four weeks had passed since that awful day in August and in that lime he had refused to leave his room, to eat, to bathe. Grief had made a ghost of him. It was as though he had ceased to live at all.

  Isabel had deliberately stayed away from him the first two weeks or so, knowing he needed to be alone. Now every day for the past ten days she had brought a tray of food to him, but he would only take a little bread sopped in wine. It was barely enough nourishment to keep him alive, and each day he grew thinner.

  When she talked to Philippe he never answered, except to curse her and order her from the room. She tried her best to cheer him, bending close to mouth mild words of comfort in his ear, but he only turned his back on her and said he wanted to be left alone. Nothing she or anyone else could do or say would restore his rationality.

  For some reason that Isabel could not understand, Philippe had chosen to blame her for Geoffrey’s death. You are to blame. He had never actually said the words, but they were in his eyes each time he looked at her. There was a deeper message, one she hardly dared to comprehend, because it was worse than anything that had ever passed between them, spoken or unspoken. I wish it had been you, it said; I wish that you had died instead of him.

  It did no good to tempt him back to reality with his little daughter, because Philippe wouldn’t see her. He would not go to the nursery, nor would he allow Isabel to bring the child to his room. He didn’t care about her now, any more than he cared about Isabel or his mother or the men who worked for him. Geoffrey was dead, Geoffrey, his only friend. Nothing else mattered, no one.

  Isabel feared for his reason more than his health. He had lost the will to live, the ability to function. Day after day he sat on the floor of his room, his shoulders covered with one of Geoffrey’s cloaks, staring wordlessly into the ashes of the fire grate. Was he going to grieve forever?

  “I’ve brought you some food,” Isabel said, setting a tray on the floor in front of him, just as she did every morning. She stood for a moment looking down at his crouched form, her heart aching in pity for him. He looked terrible! His eyes were ringed with shadows, and his neat beard had become a thick black stubble that accentuated the thinness of his face. “Please eat something,” she begged, “you can’t go on starving yourself.”

  He looked at her with dead eyes, then turned his face away. “I don’t want anything from you,” he answered. “Just take the food and go.”

  She knelt beside him, her hand a gentle pressure on his knee. “Philippe,” she said quietly, “you have to stop this, you must! If you don’t wash yourself, and get some rest, and eat, you are going to die!” She tried to kiss his hand but he pulled it away. A single tear faltered on her cheek. “Treat me however you like, but have a care for yourself for God’s sake!”

  His voice was hollow, emotionless, and he looked at her as though she were a stranger. “Why do you come here every day when you know I can’t stand the sight of you? I’ve told you that I wish to be left alone. I have nothing to say to you. I don’t want to see you. Go away.”

  Isabel got to her feet, smoothing her hands over her hips. “Will you at least talk to Sully?”

  “Why?” he asked, twisting the word, making it sound ugly.

  She swallowed. “Because he can help you.”

  “No one can help me,” Philippe answered. “No one.”

  Tension had thinned her voice to a high-pitched, tiny sound. “Jacquie-Marie?”

  “I don’t want to see her either.”

  For a moment Isabel wavered between tears and anger, then just as suddenly she was furious with him, and stamped her foot hard upon the floor. “Then are you going to sit here forever, until you die of filth and starvation? Look at you! The poorest wretch in the street looks more a king than you do! Scour off the dirt and see if somewhere beneath it you can still find yourself!”

  Even her anger could not move him and he spoke without looking up. “If the smell offends you, go and douse yourself with perfume.”

  “It is your behavior that offends me, Philippe,” she said in a quieter voice. “It offends everyone, and it offends God.”

  Now he did look at her, staring incredulously into her face. “God,” he repeated slowly. “How can you dare to mention God to me? I had God’s favor once, but you drove Him away with your wickedness.”

  That was too much to take from him, and Isabel began to cry. “I’m not wicked, I’m not! How can you say that to me when all I want to do is love you and help you.”

  “You can’t help me!” he shouted.

  “Why?” she shouted back. “Tell me the reason!”

  “YOU!” he screamed, “you
are the reason! God is punishing me because of you, can’t you see that?”

  So he had said it at last; still she couldn’t believe it. Isabel folded her arms across her breasts and gave him a pitiless look. “Because of me? What have I done to call God’s judgment on you? I’m your wife. I love you! How can that be wrong?”

  The outburst had unsettled his frazzled nerves and now Philippe began to tremble. He gripped his hands together in his lap to steady them and spoke to the fire grate instead of her. “Sully was right about you. You are dark. You put ideas into my head I never had before. You enslaved me with your body, with your beauty. That’s what you did, and that’s why God is punishing me now.”

  She could have laughed at the absurdity of his words but they were too hurtful, and her only recourse was to hurt him back. “And what about your love for Geoffrey?” she asked, her voice sharp with a bitterness she had never felt until this moment. “Was that such a pure, unsullied thing compared to what you feel for me? Is your reason so clouded you can honestly believe that God would punish you for loving your wife, and bless you for loving another man?”

  Philippe waited a long time to answer. He was laughing, laughing wildly, his head thrown back like a jackal screaming at the moon. Isabel moved a few steps away from him, afraid, a tight feeling of sickness growing in her stomach. Then at last he sobered, and faced her with glowing, fevered eyes. “Don’t confuse my love for Geoffrey with what I feel for you. He was my friend, and the only person on earth who ever truly loved me. You’re just the painted strumpet your uncle picked for me to marry. Do you really think God credits lust and fornication between people just because they are man and wife? That’s all it has ever been for us, and it makes me sick to realize it at last. I don’t love you. I never have.”

  It took a moment for the barbarity of his words to take hold of her. then she merely bowed her head and muttered, “Oh.”

  “Oh!” he mimicked cruelly, then under his breath mumbled, “Stupid bitch.” He buried his face in the folds of Geoffrey’s cloak. “Go away, Isabel. Don’t come back tomorrow, or the next day, or the next. I don’t want to see you.”

  She had heard enough and turned away, taking slow steps toward the door. Then she paused, her back still to him, and said, “I am going away, tomorrow. I’m going to Beaujeu to see my sister. Edythe is staying behind to look after Jacquie-Marie.”

  He didn’t answer.

  Isabel turned around and looked at him. He was staring straight ahead. She waited for him to say something but when he didn’t she said, “Constance is leaving too, did you know that? She is leaving for Brittany tomorrow morning.” Another pause. “Philippe, did you hear me?”

  “I heard.”

  Her voice and her attitude begged for his attention. It was degrading, but she couldn’t help it. “Won’t you at least say goodbye to me, Philippe?” Isabel made a little sniffing sound that was meant to be a laugh. “Well, I know one thing. If you had been the one to die, instead of Geoffrey, he wouldn’t be sitting here like this, sunk in despair, wasting himself!” But it was no use; she was only provoking him. Her voice went lower. “I love you Philippe, if that means anything at all.”

  He wasn’t listening; it was impossible to reach him now. He had withdrawn into his own secret world of brooding and Isabel had no door to follow him. She fingered the grey silk skirt of her chainse, then turned away. “Goodbye,” she said and pushed the velvet drape aside.

  His voice made her hand stop, white and still upon the green of the material. “And how long will you be away, Isabel?” he asked.

  It was only a tiny piece of hope but she clutched at it. “I don’t know, a month. Maybe longer.” She tried to make her voice sound sweet.

  Philippe turned his face; he grinned at what he was about to say. “Good. Make it as long as you like. In fact you can’t stay away long enough to please me.”

  “Oh God …” she muttered in pain, as though he’d hit her. After a second she ran crying from the room. Philippe listened to her fleeing footsteps, laughing till they dulled to a faint echo. Then he began to cry.

  With Isabel away from Paris, Philippe was truly alone.

  Hardly anyone came to his room now, only a kitchen steward once a day to bring him food, though he seldom ate it. Weakness made him shiver; he felt close to death. Wine was the only thing that gave him strength now, and he emptied the porringer at his elbow.

  It was early October, and cold. A fire was laid in the grate of his room and Philippe sat staring at the flames as the hours of each dark night passed. His behavior, all he was doing, was wrong, he knew that—but it didn’t help him to know. Without Geoffrey, without the promise of Normandy and all that they had planned together, Philippe was lost.

  The flames kept him company and Philippe stared back at them, trying to make sense of it all. Nothing could ever bring Geoffrey back. Not all the love and need in the world could do that. Philippe needed someone else to take his place, another ally, someone he could trust. Maybe someone he could love.

  Where could he find such a man?

  The silent answer came to him from the darkened corners of the room. Henry Plantagenet had yet another discontented son.

  That night, for the first time in nearly five weeks, Philippe ate a full meal, then climbed between the covers of his bed to sleep. When he dreamed, it was not of Geoffrey.

  Isabel had taken a small contingent with her: twenty soldiers of the household guard, ten mounted knights, a half dozen pack horses, and a traveling companion—Henri of Champagne.

  In the royal residence at Melun, one day out from Paris, Isabel waited till all the household was asleep, then slipped unnoticed into Henri’s room. They made love beneath the same bed hangings that had covered Abelard and seven Capetian kings. When Isabel fell asleep at last in Henri’s arms and dreamed, it was not of Geoffrey.

  Clear weather and a swift horse brought Isabel and her party to Beaujeu early in October, where she was happily reunited with her sister.

  Four months of marriage had transformed Sibylla into a radiant young woman who laughed easily and flushed with pride at the mention of her husband’s name.

  “… and he’s so good to me,” she told Isabel one morning as they sat amid the dying colors of the garden, “I have only to request a particular wine or a certain kind of food and it is put before me. I have dancing and entertainments and fine clothes to wear. And best of all I have a good and loving husband.” As she talked Sibylla dangled a length of yam above her kitten’s head. “I’d always thought you were the lucky one Isabel, to have our uncle arrange such a worthy marriage for you. But now you have done the same for me. William may not be a king but I could not wish for a finer man, and I have you to thank for giving him to me.”

  Puzzlement and a little bit of envy. That’s what Isabel felt, instinctually. Poor Sibylla. So happy. She was as fragile and unknowing as the pretty yellow butterfly that hovered in the space between them. Isabel reached out to touch it, but it leapt from her outstretched fingers and rose high above their heads.

  Sibylla folded her hands across her abdomen and smiled a timid, secret smile. “Darling sister, I have another reason to be happy. I am carrying William’s child, due to be born in the spring, at Eastertide.” She patted the blessed area of her body. “God has been so good to me. Thank Him, Isabel. We are both so lucky.”

  Tears—for whatever unnamed reason—dimmed her eyes. “Sibylla,” she said, and that was all Isabel could say. She opened her arms wide.

  While Isabel remained at Beaujeu. Henri went ahead to Troyes to wait for her. Maybe she would come to him there. She would come. Henri believed that with all his heart, and it was all he thought of. He sent his wife to Chalons, with most of their household. He ached for the time when he could take Isabel in the bed which should have been hers as a bride. Sweet blood of Christ, he ached for her.

  Isabel left Beaujeu after two weeks.

  “When the child is born, come stay with us in Paris for a while,” s
he told her sister as they said goodbye. Sibylla promised, then she and William stood close together in the pearl grey dawn, and waved to Isabel as she rode away.

  There was such joy in her body, such joy as he held her close.

  “I love it this way,” Isabel told him, stretching her legs farther apart to span his hips as she sat upon his knees.

  “I love it any way with you,” Henri answered, painting the skin between her breasts with his tongue. “I’ve never wanted it so much with anyone; never enjoyed it with any other woman as I have with you.”

  She teased his beard with her teeth. “Because you love me.”

  “Yes, because of that, and other things.” Henri took one of her breasts between his hands, sucking at it like a fruit.

  Isabel unloosed her hair and draped it about his shoulders, dressing him in it. “And what about your wife? Does she give you all you want?”

  They kissed rapturously, one breath upon the other, then Henri whispered in her ear, “Blanche does it as a duty, nothing more. I don’t believe she ever feels anything.”

  “Then she’s such a fool,” Isabel said, and her words were etched with meaning, “and worse, she’s a fraud. A woman who cannot make her lover happy is no woman at all.”