The Rain Maiden

by Jill M Philips

  She was in too much pain to care where Philippe was.

  Heavy rain splashed against the grey walls of the Cite Palais.

  It was evening. Isabel had labored for a dozen hours but the child would not be born. The midwives prodded her mercilessly with their rough, untidy hands till she felt they would tear her apart. She had screamed so often her voice was nearly gone, and now she could only whimper.

  Adele had stayed close beside her all the day—Edythe too—and Sibylla paced the room, anxious and fearful. Giles de Jocelin, the king’s physician, had come in the afternoon to give Isabel an herbal potion to relieve the pain, but it only made her vomit. He took Adele aside. “Bring Bishop Sully here,” he instructed, “for if the child does not come by nightfall, the queen will die.”

  Adele nodded grimly and sent for Sully. She also dispatched Philippe’s young chaplain, William le Breton, to Pontoise with a letter describing Isabel’s condition, and urging the king to return at once to Paris. On her way back to Isabel’s room Adele met her nephew Henri of Champagne in the corridor. He was wild-eyed, and his face was very pale.

  He grabbed Adele’s arm. “I just saw de Clermont in the street. He told me you have sent for Sully to perform Unction on the queen. What has happened?”

  “It’s the child,” Adele explained, wiping a weary hand across her face, “I fear it is already dead and that is why it cannot be born.”

  “And the queen?”

  Adele pulled away from him. “She is dying, Henri.” He stared at her for a moment, then fell to his knees and began to sob. “Oh Christ no, no!”

  Adele looked down at him with pitying eyes. She understood. Her nephew’s affair with Isabel was no secret to her. “Calm yourself,” she said and stroked his hair. “I’ve sent for Philippe, and when he returns he must not see you in this state.”

  “I must see Isabel!”

  Adele bent down and helped to pull him to his feet. “Later,” she said, “when I can get the others from the room.” She looked at him for a moment, then kissed his mouth. “Till then just wait outside.”

  She was gone before Henri could say another word.

  Sully gathered up his instruments of Absolution and hustled to the palace, remembering a Christmas night eight years ago when he’d waited at the bedside of the child-queen Isabel, expecting that she would not live. She had seemed innocent and helpless then. Later he had learned what subtle sorcery she could work on a man’s mind; how her beauty and body could enslave a king.

  How willfully she flaunted her female magic!

  Often, when she caught the bishop’s eye, she would smile her teasing, half-seductive smile as if to say, You cannot fight me. He had said more prayers on her behalf than he could count. He had feared for her salvation. But surely now Isabel would be different. She had seen death’s intimidating face.

  As Sully came into her room the midwives were just wrapping the second of two dead infants in a woollen coverlet. Isabel was propped in a sitting position on the bed. Her head was thrown back and she was sobbing—from exhaustion, from pain, from grief. When the women made a move to take away the bodies of her dead sons, she screamed and had to be restrained.

  It was Adele who managed to subdue her, ordering the midwives to leave the room. Then with her own hands she placed the two tiny bundles at the queen’s feet. “No one will take them from you,” she soothed Isabel. Then she beckoned to Sully.

  He came to stand beside the bed and Isabel looked up at him. Her voice was hoarse and faint. “If you have come to baptize my sons you are too late, bishop.”

  He took hold of her hand. “I have come to pray with you.”

  A bead of blood slipped from the crack in her bottom lip. “To pray over my corpse, more likely. Tell me Sully, am I going to die?”

  She was haggard from hours of suffering, and yet she was so lovely! Even Sully’s dispassionate eye was struck by the unearthly beauty of her face. He tried to give her an encouraging smile. “We are all going to die, my lady.”

  Her eyes were luminous, all-seeing. “If you cannot spare my life, don’t trouble to spare my feelings, Sully. I know now that I am going to die.” Her hand slipped from his hand to the bed.

  Isabel watched as he performed a useless baptism on the two infants. When he was finished she asked, “Have you a wafer and a bit of wine for me? Take it away if you do, for I do not want it.”

  Sibylla rushed to her sister’s side. “Please Isabel, do as the good bishop directs. He can help you.”

  Isabel pushed her away. “No one can help me,” she hissed, “him least of all. Go away, all of you, and let me die in peace.”

  Sully bent close, pressing a cross of holy water to Isabel’s forehead. “You must consider the state of your soul.”

  “I don’t care about my soul!” she screamed at him. “Let God take it, or the devil, it makes no difference to me.”

  Sibylla began to weep, and Sully’s hands were trembling. He felt a keen responsibility for this girl’s salvation. He could not let her die in the heat of her sins. “Pray with me,” he said and clasped her hands firmly, “it will ease your mind.”

  She tried to pull away from him. “I don’t want to pray! I want the taste of Philippe in my mouth, not your sacred wine of Absolution.” She shook off Sully’s hold and turned her face away and wept. “Leave me to my misery and pronounce your prayers when I am dead. I have nothing more to say.”

  Adele came forward and spoke to Sully in hushed tones. “Go downstairs and wait a while. She is too distraught to heed your words now, but later she will have need of you.”

  He nodded grimly, then left the room.

  Adele came to the edge of the bed. She smoothed the blanket over Isabel’s legs and asked, “Do you want me to bring the children to you now? Are you feeling strong enough?”

  Isabel wept into her hands. “What choice do I have? If I am to see them again this side of the grave, I must see them now.”

  Tears of pity wetted Adele’s eyes. “My dear girl,” she said, “don’t dwell on these things. Save your strength, and you may yet recover.” She lowered her voice. “We are all praying for you.”

  It meant more to hear those words from her than from all the bishops on earth. Adele was a worldly woman who did not pray from habit. Isabel reached out and grabbed hold of her hand. “Mother,” she said.

  Sibylla watched as the two women wept in each other’s arms.

  It was close to midnight when the children were taken away.

  Isabel kissed them both, then watched as Edythe and Sibylla took them from the room and out of her sight forever. Goodbye my little son, my daughter. I hope you will be happier than I was.

  When they had gone Adele brought Henri in. “I cannot keep Sibylla out for very long,” she whispered to him. “You have very little time.” She squeezed his hand, then slipped discreetly from the room.

  They looked at one another across the distance of the ill-lit room. Then Henri rushed to her side, dropping to his knees beside the bed. “Isabel,” he sobbed against her arm.

  She kissed the top of his head and stroked his hair. “You are the only man who ever truly cared for me. How fitting that you should be here at the last. …”

  He tilted his chin to look up into her face. “I do not wish to live without you. I cannot live without you!”

  She pulled him closer so that his head nestled on her breast. “My babies were born dead, and now I know Philippe does not love me. He swore he would not leave, yet all the while he was making plans for the crusade.” The tears fled down her cheeks and splashed onto his face. “Oh, Henri, God is always taking things away from me, and now He is punishing me with death.”

  They clung together like a pair of children frightened of the dark. “If He takes you, I shall curse His name forever!” Henri vowed. “You must fight, Isabel! You must not die!”

  Her eyelids fluttered. She felt weak and helpless. “It doesn’t matter anymore,” she said. “I’ve lost the need to live.” />
  He stayed with Isabel until she slept and Adele came to lead him from the room. Outside in the corridor he fell to his knees and sobbed, beating his fists on the stone floor. Then at last, exhausted, he crawled away to a dark comer near the stairs, and vomited, and prayed to die.

  Isabel slept and woke then slept again as the dark hours of the night passed and rain splashed on the courtyard stones beneath her window. She was conscious of movement in the room, of hushed voices and whispered prayers. Whenever she cried out for Philippe there were hands to soothe her and quiet promises spoken in her ear that he would soon return.

  Isabel knew he would not come. She knew it with all the instincts left to her. It was too late now; death was very near. She wanted to cry out against it, to push it away. But it hovered close upon her body like a greedy lover.

  There was such despair within her, a sense of so much foolishness and loss. It would have been a little solace to her now if she could hate Philippe, but instead she wanted him more than she ever had. She loved him, that was the lesson of her life. It was all she had ever learned—and it had brought her nothing.

  Sully came back sometime close to dawn. This time Isabel did not refuse his office. She mumbled her offenses and meekly drank the blood of Christ, but she could not taste salvation, only the bitterness of hope that had been lost. She lay with her eyes shut, listening as the bishop spoke a blessing. He was giving her to God. Soon they would shut her up in stone and darkness. They would perform obsequies, and they would weep. And then they would forget.

  All wasted, all in vain!

  Isabel was angry and it gave her strength to fight against this pious ritual of death. She cursed wildly and called out foul praises to her absent husband. There was a gentle hand stroking her forehead and she pushed it away. Why didn’t all these mourners simply go and leave her here to die?

  Suddenly there was another face above her.

  Philippe? She squinted up, trying to divine his features.

  Geoffrey Plantagenet stood there instead, looking handsome and amused. He toyed with a length of her hair, caressing it. Isabel tried to say his name but could not, for he leaned close and pressed his lips to hers. Excitement, thick and hot, burned in her blood and spread through all her body.

  Was this death? It felt more like passion.

  His kiss was cold and took her breath away.

  Isabel died in the early hours of March 15, 1190.

  She was twenty years old.

  FOR AN HOUR Philippe lay beside the body of his wife. He could not believe that she was dead.

  He had wept and spent his futile passion, he had cried out for her to set him free. Yet she would never let him go, for she had sworn she would not.

  You are mine until the grave makes ghosts of both of us.

  He kissed her parted lips once more, then left the room.

  Sibylla was waiting for him in the corridor. He nodded and passed by her, but she grabbed his sleeve and pulled him back. “I am told by your mother that you have dismissed me from the court.”

  He glared down at her. “That is true, my lady. The sight of you offends me.”

  Her laugh was hard-edged by malice. “I offend you because you cannot hide the truth about yourself from me. I have always known you are a devil, and by your recent actions you have proven it to all the world.”

  His fine mouth twisted in a sneer. “What are you saying?”

  She screamed the words as if she wanted God Himself to hear. “You killed your wife! You killed my sister!”

  Philippe grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her till she begged for him to stop. “Why do you keep saying that to me?” he shouted into her face. “I did nothing to harm her, NOTHING, do you understand?”

  “I understand that you plotted to abandon her, even while you promised you would never do so,” Sibylla sobbed.

  He loosed his grip on her. “What are you talking about?”

  “Your commitment to the crusade.”

  “How did you hear about it?” he asked warily.

  She shook off his hands. “What difference does that make? I heard. So did Isabel. That is enough.”

  Philippe was beginning to understand. “ … and you told her.”

  Sibylla looked up into his face and pronounced the words with mingled bitterness and triumph. “I didn’t have to. She found this instead.” From her sleeve Sibylla pulled the rolled parchment that Isabel had seen in the council room, and thrust it into Philippe’s hand. “The betrayal was too much for her, and so she died.”

  Philippe’s heart was beating faster. “Isabel died in childbirth,” he scoffed.

  “Yes,” Sibylla conceded, “but her labor came weeks too soon and that only happened because of this!” She snatched the paper back from him.

  Sweet Christ, could it be true?

  He had killed her after all.

  “I loved her too much to tell her I was leaving.”

  “Love?” she sneered. “That word is a travesty on your lips. Isabel knew you cared nothing for her! She begged to see you before she died, but you betrayed her in even that!”

  “I came back to Paris as soon as mother’s message was put into my hands!” he cried out in frustration.

  She flew at him. “Yes, you came back to rape a dead woman!”

  Philippe lunged at her and this time his hands were on her throat. “You jealous, prying little bitch! How dare you throw accusations in the face of a king?” He flung her against the wall and leaned down close to her. Their faces were nearly touching. “You are the one who doesn’t know what love is, girl, so mind your tongue when you speak of such things to me!”

  The strength of Philippe’s fingers was brutal on her slender throat. Sibylla pushed hard against his chest, trying to free herself, but his grip was far too powerful to fight. Finally he took his hands away, but his eyes still held her with vehemence.

  “You are a demon!” she panted.

  “Think what you like,” he growled, “but keep your distance from me.”

  She inched along the wall, away from him, the rough stones scraping at her back. “There is no power in all the world could command me to do otherwise!”

  His voice was even colder than his eyes. “Good, then at last we understand one another.”

  “I hate you,” she said, and turned her back on him.

  Philippe wept into his folded arms all that night.

  It tore his heart to think of what her last hours must have been. Thinking he had lied to her out of malice, when he had only kept the truth from her out of love.

  But she would never know that now.

  Sibylla was right, he had betrayed his wife. Isabel had died believing that he did not love her. She had been afraid, in pain; she had needed him and he had not been there. It was the most terrible thing he had ever done.

  Forgive me, Isabel.

  Philippe slept, the tears still wet upon his face.

  Down the corridor, Edythe, with the help of Adele’s servants, bathed the body of the dead queen, and prepared it for burial.

  Sweet narcissus.

  It was all around him. Even here—in the chancel of the uncompleted Notre Dame cathedral, below the master altar—Philippe could scent her perfume.

  It was evening. A thousand candles cast trembling light across her face. Tomorrow the priests would shut her body up in stone and place it in the crypt below. But for tonight her beauty still belonged to him.

  They had dressed Isabel in rubies and red silk at his command. A circlet of blushing stones banded her forehead like a crown. Her hair was combed out to its full length, nearly reaching to the tips of her gold damask slippers. Between her hands rested a prayer book, which she herself had made.

  The banner of Hainault—a black leopard rampant, set within a field of gold—lay at her feet, together with a flag of French significance, inscribed by the Capetian badge of gold fleur-de-lis. Beside it lay her little silver seal, bearing its crude likeness of her face.

  Philippe
had ordered the St. Clotilde pearls, those which had caused so many ruinous tongues to wag, be buried with her. They had been stitched at the sides of her low-waisted chainse, encasing her hips like a girdle. The memory of the times she’d worn them, privately and for his pleasure, caused an ache in Philippe’s groin.

  But there was one relic Isabel would not take into the tomb.

  With his own hand Philippe had removed the Druid ring and its chain from around her neck and placed it on his own, silently vowing he would wear it till his death. There was no better symbol of their love than this pagan ring he’d given Isabel on the first night she had come into his bed.

  What prayer to say for her?

  No words came to his mind save hot, excited words passed between them in dark or daylight. From his sleeve Philippe drew a sprig of mistletoe which he had taken from the grove of oaks and apple trees in the palace garden. He kissed it, then pressed the greenery between her stony breasts. That was epitaph enough. Philippe crossed himself, then turned abruptly on his heels and walked away.

  Behind him the candle flames trembled a little at his going.

  The maid is not dead, but sleepeth.

  Sully’s voice rolled in vibrant accents to the ceiling.

  Outside, the citizens of Paris pressed close to listen as the bishop solemnized the burial of their queen.

  Some wept, remembering her many gifts of money to the poor, while others whispered bits of curious gossip, and a few chuckling men made lewd comments behind their hands. All were waiting for the king and his nobles to come out and distribute silver coins in honor of the queen’s passing.

  Inside the cathedral Sully was preaching his sermon.

  Frightened by the large assembly and wondering why his mother was not there to comfort him, Louis sobbed throughout the service, while Jacquie-Marie, who was old enough to understand, sat quietly, holding tightly to her father’s hand.

  Philippe stared at the flickering candles on the wall.