‘This was my father’s great palace of Westminster. That’s what they call this place – the West Minster. As you see parts of the palace burned down. I am sorry, madam, I cannot offer you the luxury you have doubtless been used to, but as my wife you must go where I go.’
I reassured him that wherever he chose to lay his head would be sufficient for me but he wasn’t listening.
‘When we have more time I will show you the chapel I am building here. It will be dedicated to Saint Stephen and will outshine your brother’s Sainte-Chapelle.’
He looked well pleased as he said it and I realised it mattered greatly to him that his building would be more magnificent than my brother’s. We inspected the outside of the new palace and then my husband took me down to the muddy foreshore behind the halls.
We sat on our mounts looking out across the slow-flowing waters to the far bank where I could see nothing but mud and reeds and tussocks of marsh grass. There was a gap in the rushes where horses gained access to the ford but I couldn’t see where the road went as it was masked by the grey sedge.
‘When the tide is right and the river low you can take a horse across here, but you’ll need to tuck up your skirts or you’ll get wet.’
He chuckled at some pleasing memory then wiped the smile from his face. He was like an autumn day, one minute sunny, the next covered in cloud anticipating rain. He turned his horse and I followed. Together we left the Island of Thorns, crossing back over the bridge, making for a large building, half-hidden behind stone walls. The gate was guarded by several of my husband’s men so I presumed this would be where we would rest.
‘This is where I lodge when I am at Westminster,’ said my husband. ‘It belongs to my friend Thomas de Corbridge, archbishop of York. But he never comes here so he is happy for his king to borrow it.’
‘How kind of him.’
‘Kind? It isn’t kind. It is his duty. Those dammed clerics in their own little worlds have too much money and too much power. All they do is to make trouble.’
Every conversation was like stepping across a meadow of thistles. I never knew what to say which would not annoy him. I thought perhaps I’d best be silent.
That same night, our first in the archbishop’s house, he seemed returned to the husband of our wedding night. Instead of the perfunctory coupling of the past week he wanted to engage me in conversation as we lay in the semi-darkness, hidden behind the thick curtains.
‘You will come with me to York.’
This was not a question but a command.
‘I will follow you wherever you wish, my lord. I am your wife and desire to serve you well.’
He looked at me closely as if trying to understand meanings beyond my words. He hadn’t touched me since he’d got into my bed, but was lying on his side looking at me, frowning slightly. I lay as still as possible not sure what he wanted of me and fearful of saying the wrong thing.
He sighed. ‘A husband wishes for a dutiful wife, my dear, but he also wishes for one who is loving, one who cares for him as a man.’
‘Am I not loving?’ I asked anxiously. ‘I try to be. I’m sorry if I have failed. I will try harder.’
He reached out and touched my face with his fingers, gently stroking my cheek. He pulled off my night cap and then slowly un-plaited my hair so that it fell across the pillows. With the utmost care he wound his fingers into the strands pushing them away from my face. Leaning across, he planted a gentle kiss on my lips, brushing them with his own. His face was only inches from mine and I could feel the warmth of his breath. With one of his hands, he lifted the hem of my nightgown and began to stroke my belly and my legs.
‘Take it off,’ he whispered into my ear. ‘Then I can see all of you.’
I sat up, undid the ribbons and struggled out of the silk folds. I lay down again and waited, wondering if he found my nakedness pleasing to him. He lay watching me, idly stroking my breasts.
‘Your skin is beautiful,’ he said, running one finger up to the tender spot at the base of my neck. ‘It is soft and smooth like velvet, and pale as a moonbeam. They named you well, my little French pearl.’
He carried on stroking me. ‘Do you like this?’ he asked, not moving his eyes away from my body.
‘If you wish me to,’ I said quietly.
I felt as tightly strung as a bow, unsure whether my paramount feeling was one of fear or desire. I wanted to respond, to melt under his touch, but something held me back. I was terrified of displeasing him.
‘How about this? Do you like this?’
He was stroking the hair at the base of my belly.
‘I don’t know, my lord. Do you wish me to open my legs now?’
He sighed and withdrew his hand.
‘Submission is not the same as love, my dear,’ he said. ‘I don’t wish you to endure what passes between us, I need more from you.’
‘Everything I have is yours,’ I said in bewilderment. ‘What more can I give you, my lord. You have my body. It is yours to command. I shall do whatever you ask.’
He looked at me in despair and I couldn’t think what I’d said to displease him.
‘I could command the bodies of a dozen willing women. Believe me, they’d tumble over themselves to share the bed of a king. And there are men who would further their own ambitions by thrusting their wives between my sheets in the hope of finding favour with me. So you see, my dear, I am not bereft of a woman to warm my bed. But you are not just any woman, you are my wife. We shall, God willing, share a bed for many years and I don’t wish to pass my nights with someone who merely endures my attentions. I want a wife who desires her husband.’
‘But I do desire you, my lord,’ I protested. ‘It is a wife’s duty to desire her husband.’
‘Duty?’ he said harshly. ‘Forget duty and all those pretences your mother taught you and look at me. Now, forget I am your husband and look at me as a man.’
His eyes glittered in the half-light. They were dark and devouring, almost frightening in their intensity. I saw lust there, lust for my body, but not love. Never love. For this was a man who, it was said, had loved his first wife devotedly and had sworn to love her forever. I’d been told by several well-meaning women how he’d shut himself away with his grief when she died, and how he had built magnificent monuments to her memory, one in every place where her body had rested on its final journey to the abbey on the Island of Thorns. She was lying there now, waiting for him to join her in death. I wanted to be a good wife but I knew I could never touch his heart. It was already safe in her keeping.
‘I do desire you,’ I said quietly, praying that God would forgive me the lie. ‘You are the only man I will ever love. I knew it when I pledged myself to you on our marriage day. For as long as I live, you are the only man I shall desire.’
I closed my eyes as a panic rose in my breast. To be truthful, I had no idea how to show a man I desired him but if my marriage was to succeed I would have to be brave. I remembered clearly what my mother’s friend had told me to do, how a wife could increase her husband’s passion. My husband needed to know, not how much I cared for him but how much I desired him, and as the stirrings of desire were still only part-woken in me I would have to use subterfuge.
For the first time, I touched his body. I felt him shiver as my fingers caressed his skin.
‘I want you,’ I whispered, trying to make my voice sweet and honeyed but fearing I sounded foolish. ‘I want you to hold me and touch me. I want you in every way that a woman wants a man.’
That night he was even more desperate in his lovemaking as if every thrust would take him closer to his total possession of me and closer to his heart’s desire - another child, another son. And afterwards, when it was all over, he lay on his back with his eyes open, staring at the night lamp but not speaking. I wasn’t certain if I had deceived him and was unsure if he was thinking of a child, or
me, or the rebellious Scots and I didn’t dare ask.
A week later, my husband left me at the archbishop’s house with my women while he journeyed down river to the Tower, the old fortress on the eastern edge of the city. I seldom asked where he was going or who he was meeting. It was not my business. Likewise he showed no interest in my doings. My sole duty was to give him an heir and beyond that, provided I conducted myself discreetly and didn’t bother him with trivialities, I could amuse myself.
He had not been gone half a day when I had a visitor. I was trying to learn a new song while my women provided some accompanying music, but it was going badly. My voice was not particularly tuneful and I was only too happy to lay aside the manuscript. To my delight, it was Lady de Monthermer with her daughters.
‘I was visiting a friend and was told that his grace, my father, was at St Thomas’s Tower and I thought you might care for some company.’
‘You are very kind,’ I said. ‘And I see you’ve brought your girls to brighten my day.’
Lady de Monthermer inclined her head and signalled for her daughters to come forward.
‘This is Eleanor, my eldest de Clare daughter,’ she said holding the hand of a pretty young girl in a yellow gown. ‘She’s nearly seven. These are Margaret and Elizabeth, her sisters.’
The de Clare girls were very alike with their red-gold hair, pale skin and wide-set eyes, but they none of them looked like their mother so I presumed their father, “Red Gilbert” had been named for his hair. The youngest child, dark-haired and shy, peeped out from behind her nursemaid’s skirts.
‘And this is Mary, my de Monthermer daughter. There is another but she is still in the cradle and too young to come visiting.’
After I had greeted the girls and made a fuss of them, Lady de Monthermer bade the nursemaids take the children out to play in the gardens.
‘Don’t take them near the river,’ she instructed.
‘They are lovely girls,’ I said. ‘You must be proud of them. Eleanor is as sharp as a needle. She will be a clever young woman when she grows.’
Lady de Monthermer, laid her hand on my arm. ‘I thank you, you are kind to praise them. But I came today because there is a favour I have to ask of you, well two favours really.’
I was intrigued. She was so poised and confident I wondered what she could possibly need from me.
‘First, may I call you Marguerite? I wouldn’t want to call you mother as I was not inclined to have warm feelings for my own mother, and my lady seems very formal when you are now family. And please would you call me Joan? I’m sure some would say I should wait for you to ask but as you’re many years younger than me, I presumed to take the lead.’
‘Nothing could give me greater pleasure - Joan.’
I gathered her hands in mine and then leaned forward and kissed her cheek. She flushed slightly but I could tell she was grateful.
‘What is the second favour?’
‘I need someone to speak for me to his grace, my father. He hasn’t forgiven my husband for marrying me. He’s still hostile and I’m not sure how to improve matters. He’d like to be rid of Ralph completely but that would be an impossibility. He needs him as a captain for these interminable Scottish campaigns of his, and when all is said and done, Ralph is my husband and the father of two of my children.’
‘I’ve not met your husband yet,’ I said.
‘No,’ she said drily. ‘He’s not welcome here.’
‘Why is his grace so unwelcoming?’
‘Oh,’ sighed Joan. ‘It’s an old story. Gilbert, my first husband was chosen for me. He was thirty years older than me and a hard and violent man. It wasn’t a happy marriage and when he died I was determined to marry to please myself. Ralph was ten years my senior and a squire in my late husband’s household. I’d known him all my married life and an affection had grown between us. He would not have been deemed suitable by his grace, my father, because Ralph is base-born. But I didn’t care. So we waited a year for the sake of decency and then I married him.’
‘And his grace was angry?’
She laughed, smothering the sound with her hand.
‘Angry? He was incandescent with rage. He’d been planning to marry me to the count of Savoy. Negotiations for the marriage were well advanced and it must have been acutely embarrassing for him.’
‘What did he do?’
‘First he confiscated my lands so I had no income. Then he had Ralph arrested and thrown into prison.’
‘Sainte Vierge! How dreadful! What happened?’
She gave a low throaty laugh. I could see what an attractive woman she was. It was no wonder her late husband’s squire had been prepared to risk so much to marry her. It wouldn’t have been only her worth as a countess which would have attracted him.
‘I gathered up his grace’s grandchildren and confronted him, prostrating myself on the floor and pleading for my husband. There is nothing like a penitent daughter and four beautiful wide-eyed innocents to melt the snow round a grandsire’s heart. My son was six and a straight-backed little image of his father. I instructed the older children on what to say and with the bishop of Durham to give me support, I succeeded in having Ralph released.’
‘And his grace accepted your marriage?’
She laughed and patted her belly.
‘His grace could see I was well advanced with young Mary. He didn’t want more of a scandal than he already had.’
‘But all is not well?’
‘No. His grace is ill-disposed towards my husband. He won’t allow him to carry my title, so Ralph is not earl of Gloucester as he should be. He won’t have him at our Christmas celebrations and worst of all he will have nothing to do with Ralph’s children. I don’t wish there to be a chasm between my de Clare children and their half-sisters. You’ve seen little Mary today and how well she does. It would be unfair if she was punished by his grace’s stubbornness.’
I thought of young Mary de Monthermer, all dark curls and plump legs, and promised to do what I could to mend the rift between father and daughter. After that we spent the remainder of Joan’s visit watching the older girls and idly gossiping. I learned a lot about my husband and probably more than I wanted to know about Eleanor, his first wife.
‘She had eyes for no-one but her husband and ignored her children.’ This was Joan’s assessment of her mother. ‘I was too young to know if it was coldness on her part or if desire for his grace occupied all of her affections but certainly she showed none to me. As an infant I was left with my grandmother who was kindness itself so I had no desire to return to England and see my parents. I was seven years old when I next saw either of them and what I remember of our meeting is my mother chastising me for my behaviour.’
‘It is a mother’s duty to show her daughters right from wrong,’ I said. ‘I’m certain she cared for you.’
‘I am certain she did not,’ replied Joan, shutting her mouth firmly as if to indicate the subject was closed.
She departed late in the day with a gift of some cloth and little trinkets for the girls. It had been a welcome diversion and I was sad to see her go.
My husband returned in a bad temper. I had no idea what had happened to cause his ill mood but he was shouting at the servants and finding fault with everyone. When it was time to retire I was unsure whether he would come to my chamber or not. No word had been given to expect him so my women prepared me for bed in the usual way. They were busy chattering of this and that, folding up gowns and tidying away books and games when a hurried knock at the door gave us only a moment’s warning of the king’s arrival. He burst in with a couple of nervous attendants. I could see he was very angry.
‘Out!’ he roared at my women. ‘And you!’ he barked at the hovering men behind him.
Before the door had even closed on his valet he had taken three strides towards the bed where I stood, still
wrapped in my mantle. I expected a roar of fury instead his voice was icy calm and all the more frightening.
‘Did I not give you instructions that I would not have that bastard’s children in my house? I leave you alone for a day and what do I find? The minute my back’s turned you open the door to them. How dare you forget yourself. This is not your brother’s house where no doubt you did what you pleased. Here, you are my wife and you will do as I say. Do I make myself clear?’
I shrank back against the bed, frightened he would strike me.
‘Yes, my lord,’ I said softly, surprising myself at the calmness of my voice. Inwardly I was quaking with fear.
‘Well?’ he said. ‘What do you have to say for yourself?’
‘Welcome back, husband. You’ve been gone a while and I’ve missed you.’
He was so surprised he just stared at me. I think he expected me to crawl on the floor and weep at his feet in abject apology or be like his children and put on a show of defiance, and because I did neither he was caught off guard.
‘Would you care for some wine?’ I enquired. ‘It is your favourite.’
‘Wine? Yes. Thank you.’
He went to the chair by the fire and sat down heavily, rubbing his eyes and running his hand through his hair. I fetched the cup and knelt in front of him.
‘Here, my lord.’
He held the cup to the candle, watching the jewels flashing in the reflected light, then emptied the contents in one go.
‘What am I going to do?’ he sighed.
‘Do, my lord?’
‘With you, with my barons, with those wretched children of mine? Everyone delights in defying me, and I won’t have it.’ He banged the arm of the chair. ‘If I am ruler of this realm I have the right to be obeyed and those who cannot bring themselves to do so will feel my wrath.’
The Pearl of France Page 8