The King raised an eyebrow. ‘Well. You’ve been silent as a tomb through supper. What is your important news?’
Becket repeated word for word what his spy had told him. The King listened, then clenched his fist and slammed it onto the dining board. Two wine cups fell over. ‘The idiot! That letter from the cardinals was merely a safeguard. My prince is five years old. The French girl is two and a half.’
‘After learning about it from the Pope, Louis is now so jittery, he believes the worst of you in everything.’
‘Toulouse,’ Henry muttered. ‘My greatest miscalculation.’
‘Henry, Louis may attack you before the end of the fighting season. I suggest you have the royal children married as soon as possible, and seize the Vexin castles as Princess Marguerite’s dowry.’
‘Of what rank was the person who brought this news?’
Becket decided to lie. ‘A royal page.’
‘From what county?’
‘Blois.’
‘Blois! They’re strangers to truth. It’s a trick to test my will.’
‘How?’
‘Surely, Bec, you see that such a marriage will be considered outrageous if for no better reason than it’s without precedent. Obloquy will fall on my head in the minds of every French and English bishop.’
Henry tossed and turned all night. In the morning he announced, ‘We’re moving closer to Paris.’ Post riders set out for Barfleur, the closest point for crossing to England, with an alert to Eleanor that she, the Crown Prince and his French fiancée should be prepared to sail to Normandy at short notice.
That same morning, the Queen of France could not eat her breakfast. Louis summoned the palace physician. ‘Her Highness has indigestion,’ he said.
Constance whispered, ‘I’d like to go to the chapel.’
Louis summoned a priest. ‘Gather as many bishops as you can. They’re to say a special Mass for the safe delivery of an heir for France.’
By dinner time, the Queen was still unable to eat. Ten bishops enjoyed a hearty meal before being robed for another Mass at vespers. Among them was the English Bishop of Winchester, Henry, a baron of the mighty clan of Blois. He happened to be visiting the new Pope to inform His Holiness of issues surrounding the vacant Canterbury see; these included a dreadful rumour that in his final agony, Theobald had gone mad and urged the King to promote a vicious layman, Thomas of London, to succeed him.
His Holiness was delicate in response. ‘You, dear son, as brother of the former King of England, Stephen …?’
‘I’ve got no chance,’ Winchester answered. ‘Our King would as soon see a monkey on the throne of Canterbury.’
The Sienese maintained a thoughtful silence. His assistant murmured in their dialect, ‘Perhaps that’s what we will see, Holiness.’
When Winchester arrived at Louis’ palace, the King had already ordered the bishops’ orisons to concentrate on making the infant a prince. ‘May I suggest we chant from the Book of Isaiah?’ Henry of Blois said. ‘A beautiful verse in chapter six announces, “For unto us a child is born. Unto us a son is given.”’
Louis nodded. Very shyly, Constance took her husband’s hand. ‘All these months, sire, I’ve prayed to give you an heir. Surely my feeling of weakness is due to the strength of the prince inside me.’
Since she had been sent to him as a girl of twelve, Louis had never told Constance he loved her. Aged eighteen, she had given him a daughter. She was now nineteen and her belly was huge. He gazed down on her pale, innocent face. Her black eyes glittered. ‘I love you, dear child,’ he said.
‘I’ll die happy,’ she murmured. He folded his hand over hers.
When she was forced to live there, Eleanor used to describe the main residence of the kings of France as ‘a monstrous ship caught fast on a mudbank’. Its construction had begun centuries earlier as a fortress for the Merovingian kings on an island in the Seine, the river forming a natural moat for the stronghold. Despite extensions and the efforts of generations of French monarchs to civilise it, the brutal practicality of an army barracks still clung to its grey stone walls.
In the darkest hour of night, thousands upon thousands of stars glittered in a black autumn sky. A barefoot countess ran shrieking along a corridor crying, ‘Help! Help for my lady!’
Guards heard the screaming. They disobeyed protocol to burst into Louis’ bedchamber shouting, ‘Highness! Your Queen!’ A valet wrapped him in a cloak, and Louis ran the few yards from his quarters to his wife’s.
At her doorway, he stopped. Her screams were those of men in battle when speared through the intestines. The sound froze his heart. ‘Where are the clergy?’ he demanded.
‘Coming, sire,’ a page whimpered.
A bishop and several priests were running up the stone stairway, turning to each other to ask, ‘Do you have the oil?’ ‘Who’s carrying the holy water?’
The Queen’s torment, the shock of being woken in the middle of the night and the dread in his soul made Louis tremble so violently he had to clench his fists. A birthing tub stood in front of the fireplace, its flames throwing hellish shadows around the walls. Constance lay not in the tub but propped against pillows on her bed. Suddenly her screams turned to groans. In the silence, the prelate’s soft shoes made a noise like slithering vipers.
Louis turned away. ‘Cover her,’ he ordered the midwives. ‘A bishop is here.’
‘Sire, we may be able to save—’
‘Well do it, woman.’ He rounded on the junior clergy. ‘Assist His Grace.’
The youngest priest retched. ‘So much blood,’ he whispered. ‘Our Lord could not have … I mean, He must have—’
‘Shut up,’ the bishop said. ‘Pass the oil.’
He waited until the infant was dragged out of the blood gushing from between its mother’s legs. One midwife held its waist; another slowly raised its arms from its sides towards its head. ‘Breathe!’ she whispered. ‘Take a breath.’ She lowered its arms and raised them again. The baby, so dripping with gore no one knew whether it was male or female, suddenly filled its lungs and wailed. ‘Good! Good!’ the woman urged. ‘Again, little one.’ The baby’s pink gums opened; again it snatched life into its small, battered form and let out a yell that made Louis fall to his knees.
Queen Constance gave a long sigh. The terror that had distorted her lovely face softened. ‘You have a son, my lady,’ the countess whispered. Everyone knew Her Highness was already dead.
‘Do I have a son?’ Louis murmured.
A midwife answered, ‘It’s a princess, sire.’
He turned and left the chamber. ‘My life lies in ruins,’ he remarked to no one in particular as he made for the chapel. Inside, monks were still chanting. ‘Silence!’ ordered the King. ‘Fetch the Book of Job.’ As he waited for the scroll to be located, he kneeled on the flagstones. An oblate ran to push a cushion beneath his knees. ‘My God, why have your forsaken me?’ Louis shouted to the domed ceiling. ‘In twenty-three years, with two wives, you give me no son …’
The monk had found the correct book and began to read. When he reached the third chapter, Louis cried out, ‘Stop. Like Job, I curse the day I was born. And yet …’ He dashed tears from his eyes. ‘And yet I have faith in Him.’
The Bishop of Winchester arrived and kneeled beside him. ‘God will never abandon France, Your Highness. France defeated the Moors. France carried the cross to Outremer and conquered Jerusalem for our Saviour.’
Louis glanced at him. His tears dried. He nodded. ‘I’d like to speak to you after breakfast.’
Deep in the bowels of the palace, in the servants’ quarters, the uproar that had begun an hour earlier ebbed and flowed in a confusion of grief and conjecture. Dawn approached. From the small church on a nearby island in the river came the mournful tolling that announced, ‘Our Queen is dead.’ Within hours, bronze tongues would cry her death from church, to abbey, to priory, to cathedral, the whole length of France, through Flanders and Burgundy, into the lands of the
Holy Roman Emperor.
A kitchen hand, so insignificant and thin-shouldered nobody noticed if he were present or not, left his quarters and dashed to a secret spot behind the servants’ latrines where he kept three pigeons. He could write a few words and had been supplied with ink, quills and scraps of parchment for his task. He clamped his tongue sideways to help him move his unsteady hand. Q dead. Fem baby live. He tied two horse hairs around the three scraps of parchment before attaching them to the pigeons’ legs. He held each bird, enjoying its soft, restless body for a moment, before tossing it and its tiny message into the dark morning sky. All three were from the pigeon loft of the palace of Rouen.
Henry, William, Hamelin, Becket and a small group of knights were hunting boar before breakfast. Hamelin first detected the bells. ‘Brother!’ he shouted. ‘It’s happened! The Queen of France is dead.’
Henry rode to him and grabbed the mane of his horse. ‘You said you saw the prince and his fiancée sailing for Normandy. Not the French Queen dead.’
His brother closed both eyes. ‘My guides show me more pictures. I see Louis closeted with a bishop—’
‘Bishop! Of course he’ll be with a bishop. William and Thomas, you’re to leave for Paris as soon as you’ve breakfasted and packed mourning clothes. Your escort must be at least one hundred knights, to show our respect. In my own hand I’ll write my condolences to Louis that you, personally, will pass to him.’
On finest white vellum he wrote a brief and intensely expressed letter to my dear, grieving brother, Louis. He had a scribe wrap it in black samite and then a layer of black leather. That done, he and Hamelin went to the royal bath chamber, where servants had already heated water and filled the oak tub. They stripped off their sweat-soaked hunting clothes and together slid into the soothing warmth. Henry was still edgy, but Hamelin lay against the staves with a long, contented sigh. Servants scrubbed their backs, limbs and feet with pig-bristle brushes, using badger fur on their faces.
‘Your hair needs washing, Copper Top,’ Hamelin murmured.
‘So does yours, Magpie.’
Viscount William and Becket were already on the road – they would bathe on arrival in Paris – with their huge, hastily assembled escort. Now is my chance to question him about the secret woman, Thomas thought. But William remained aloof, spending the ride chatting in Angevin to a couple of knights who were, it seemed, old friends.
Richard has poisoned his mind against me, the Chancellor decided. At this notion, terror gripped him. If that was so, what about the King? What could the fiend have told him?
In his private apartment the King of France held the hand of the Archbishop of Sens, who, through an oddity dating back to Charlemagne, had Paris in his diocese. They prayed together for guidance from the Saviour and from the Guardian of France. Is this another sign of the end? Louis wondered. For half an hour they sat in silence, Louis sighing, the prelate fingering his rosary. At last there was a knock on the door. ‘Highness, the English Bishop of Winchester requests audience,’ a guardsman said.
Henry Blois bowed his respect first to the King then to the senior French prelate, who raised an eyebrow to indicate his displeasure at the Englishman’s presence. ‘Highness,’ Winchester said, ‘I believe the Virgin speaks to me.’
Louis became alert.
‘She indicates a third wife for you.’
‘Who?’ croaked the King.
‘Adela of Champagne, twenty years old, hale in body and of shrewd intelligence.’
The face of the Archbishop of Sens turned red as a battle flag. ‘She’s of your family, is she not?’
‘Indeed, Your Grace. Her brother is Theobald of Blois. I’ve known Adela since she was a child.’
‘There’s no rival claim on her?’ Louis asked.
‘None, Highness.’
‘Her brother has left it rather late to marry her …’
‘He has refused many offers. Among close family members it’s known that as a child, Adela announced that one day she would be Queen of France and mother to a great king. The intensity of this conviction has kept her chaste.’
Louis crossed himself. ‘She is blessed.’
‘I believe so, sire.’
What you believe, the Archbishop thought, is in worming your way closer to the French throne because Henry of England distrusts you.
The King leaned back and looked long into Winchester’s eyes. Both men understood the issue left unspoken: that the blood feud between the House of Blois and the House of Anjou meant that a marriage to Adela would enrage Henry Plantagenet. Eventually he turned to address Sens.
‘Your Grace, I am no longer a young man. When do you judge the Church would consider it appropriate for me to remarry?’
‘Five weeks from now.’
‘There’ll be an outcry.’
‘We’ll manage that.’ The Archbishop eyed a flask of wine beside some gold cups chased with silver doves.
‘I beg your pardon,’ Louis murmured. ‘The Virgin has brought great tidings to comfort my broken heart. We’ll drink. Our Queen is dead. Long live our Queen.’
All three made the sign of the cross over the goblets before lifting them to their lips, murmuring, ‘To the Queen.’
News of the impending nuptials arrived at the palace of Rouen within a week, courtesy of a young priest from the church of St Denis. Henry was incredulous at first, then furious. Once his anger had cooled to a dangerous calm, he sent a churl to summon Hamelin to his private audience chamber.
The day was hot. The red canvas blinds that in winter made the room as comforting as the interior of a rose were furled against the ceiling. The wooden shutters had been lifted from the windows so that air and light streamed in, along with sounds from the courtyard outside. Henry paced back and forth, waiting for his brother. At last the merlin arrived and draped himself along a couch.
‘Horizontal Hamelin,’ Henry muttered. ‘Louis plans to marry the niece of the Bishop of Winchester within a month. God’s feet! A month! Constance won’t be cold in her grave and he’ll be rutting the Champagne girl. Lecherous swine!’
Hamelin managed not to laugh. His brother ranted on.
‘Eleanor told me that Louis closes his eyes when he has a cock stand, “to avoid the sight of impurity”.’
‘He’s changed, my dear. He’s forty. He’s finally escaped the shadow of his father, the cloister and his elder brother. He now feels himself king in his own right. You have a rival worthy of your kingcraft.’
‘Shut up! Now I understand the meaning of your vision of our Crown Prince and his fiancée sailing to Normandy. It fits with something Bec told me that I didn’t completely believe.’ He began to laugh. ‘The minute Princess Marguerite is married to my Crown Prince, I get the Vexin castles.’ Seated at his desk, the King leaned back, his hands locked together behind his head. He grinned. ‘I love the way Louis signals weeks in advance that he’s planning to attack me. Our informant says he’ll marry Eleanor’s two daughters to Theobald of Blois’ brothers. So the whole litter of Blois pigs will move into Louis’ sty. Where’s Bec? I sent for him half an hour ago. Is he pleasuring himself with a boy?’
The Chancellor, who only that morning had returned from delivering Henry’s condolences to Louis, had just arrived. From the open doorway of the chamber he overheard this last remark. ‘I’m here, sire.’
‘So you are. Good man. Someone fetch William and Richard.’
Becket gave a slight bow. ‘Sire, I heard news about this scandalous marriage to the girl from Champagne. I’ve refreshed my memory on the agreement concerning the royal children. I urge you to marry them at once.’
Henry nodded. ‘I regret I doubted your spy, Bec. What you say about the children’s marriage is excellent, and accords with my own thinking.’ He eased from his thumb the huge aquamarine ring. ‘With my gratitude.’
As Becket took the ring, the King closed his large hand over the Chancellor’s. Becket felt as if lightning rang through him. He treasures me again! He push
ed the ring over his own thumb, his heart on fire.
William arrived, Richard at his heels. Evidently they had been at swordplay together.
‘Brother, I can’t leave France at this delicate time. You’re to go to England and fetch my wife, the Crown Prince and his fiancée. Now!’
The Viscount knew that Isabel had returned to England after her visit to Toulouse. He hoped that in the time it would take for clothes to be packed, the weather assessed for conveying a precious cargo and that precious cargo delivered to a ship, he might have a moment to see her.
Becket exclaimed, ‘My prayers are answered! I longed to see the darling child once more, and now I shall.’
The King said, ‘Chancellor, you’re to arrange his wedding.’ He and Louis had agreed that the most trusted men in Christendom were to guard the Vexin’s castles. He glanced at Richard. ‘You, Lout, are to ride to the Vexin today with a letter to the Knights Templar.’ He paused. ‘No. They don’t need a letter. Just tell them I want them here in Rouen by tomorrow night.’
‘All the Knights Templar in the Vexin, sire?’
‘Of course not all of them! The two who hold the keys.’
The sun was sinking and the early autumn day was in its last flush of heat by the time Henry and Hamelin, in loose linen gowns, sauntered together to a private supper.
‘So?’ Henry said. He spoke Latin because churls were serving their venison, eggs, bread, butter, apples and wine.
Hamelin shrugged. ‘You’re at your best when you’re on your mettle, Henry.’
‘How gratifying to know that a life of difficulty is to be welcomed.’
‘When a man comes face to face with his destiny, his heart should rejoice.’
‘And what is my destiny, according to the Bullfrog and his invisible friends? I imagined I was to rule my domains in France with justice and to bring prosperity and the rule of law to England. The rule of law! A land must have it, brother, or sink into the barbarism of petty warlords and relentless fighting.’
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