by Norah Lofts
He said, ‘I am sorry to have disturbed you at breakfast.’
I said, ‘Richard, the sight of you does me more good than any food in the world. Eleven years,’ I said. ‘You have grown from boy to man. Eleven whole years.’
‘Yes, yes,’ he said, a little hastily, as though suspecting a rebuke, ‘I should have come. I would have come—but always there have been things in the way. I sent messages—’
‘I always received them.’
‘And I yours. And the gloves.’ As he spoke he held out the gloves I had made for him out of goatskin and a whole string of pearls. And as he held them out I realised that they were the only thing of any quality about him. If he had taken off his clothes and thrown them into a corner they might have belonged to any common archer. Against the worn, scuffed leather hose and jerkin the fine pearl-encrusted gloves struck a note of incongruity. Not that it mattered what he wore; he had no need for the outward display of rank or state; he would never be overlooked or underrated in any company.
Looking at him thus, I realised that the warmth of his greeting to me, the emotion of the moment and the pleasantries had been overlaid upon something very different. The whites of his eyes were streaked with red and the pulse in his neck beat hard. I recognised these signs of temper. Connecting them with this sudden visit to me—at the end of a week—I judged that he had yet again quarrelled with his father. Egoistically I thought that it might be about my presence at the wedding. Maybe Henry didn’t want me and Richard did. A quarrel and then this sudden early-morning visit. It fitted. Well, I would say that I didn’t want to go to the wedding, that I didn’t feel well enough. After all, I was supposed to have been an invalid for sixteen years!
‘I must talk to you, Mother,’ Richard said, beginning to walk about the room and slapping the gloves against his hand.
‘I know,’ I said helpfully. ‘About your wedding.’
He swung round abruptly and said, ‘You knew, then?’
‘I guessed. Henry doesn’t wish me to be present and you do and you’ve had another quarrel about it. Dear Richard, always so loyal! But this time it does not matter. I’m an old woman now; the journey would tire me and the falseness of my position would be irksome. I am delighted that you are to be married at last and I hope Alys will be brought to bed of a son within a year but I shall be happy not to be present at the wedding.’
They were beginning to call him Lionheart, Richard the Lion, Coeur de Lion; but there were times when, despite his size, he seemed to me to resemble more a red fox. When he was angry or carried away by enthusiasm he gave the impression of blunt honesty or reckless candour or transparent honesty; but there were other times when he looked secretive, wily, foxy. He wore that look now as he turned in his pacing, stopped slapping the gloves and instead drew them very slowly through his closed palm.
‘And is that all you have to say about the—wedding?’
Was his father’s sentimental streak yeasting in him?
‘Naturally I hope that you will be very happy,’ I added. ‘I never cared greatly for Alys myself—but then, in the circumstances, I was hardly likely to. And it is years since I saw her. Besides, Richard, any woman would be clay in your hands.’
He gave a short sharp bark of laughter.
‘And that is all you have to say?’
‘What do you wish me to say?’
‘Have you ever wondered why, whenever the matter of my marriage to Alys has been brought up, some reason, always a fresh one, has been found for the postponement? Answer that honestly, Mother.’
I answered him honestly. ‘Many times—with each postponement. At first I blamed you—not too hardly, Richard; you are young and many temptations, I am sure, come your way. And I am not sure in my heart that it is a good thing for both bride and groom to be innocent and untried. I was content that you should have your fling… More lately, I must admit I have begun to cherish a suspicion.’
‘Yes?’ he said, looking at me closely, with caution.
‘I have sometimes suspected that it would suit Henry very well if you got yourself killed before you had bred an heir. He dotes upon John. And if someone let daylight into you, Richard, as you are constantly inviting someone to do, before you had a son, then Henry could leave his crown to John and die happy. If during this past week you have made your peace with him and are now his friend, I apologise for speaking so bluntly; but why else has he hindered for years the match which he himself made when Alys was a child and you little more, a match in every respect most suitable?’
‘And that is the darkest suspicion you have ever harboured? My poor mother! Well, it isn’t news that I would willingly bear to you and I hoped that some inkling of it might have reached you even here. Hasn’t it? Hasn’t it?’ His stare bore down on me.
‘Once,’ I said, ‘Alberic did bring me word of rumour that was going round London—to the effect that since you were not anxious to marry Alys it might be well to let John do so… But nothing came of that,’ I added hastily.
‘What Alberic and the London gossipmongers didn’t know I must tell you now, Mother. My father and my betrothed are paramours!’
If a mangonel had hurled a great stone into the room I should have been less surprised. Surprised, not shocked. I was not shocked for I did not then believe it. But I could see that Richard did.
‘That,’ I said, ‘is the most malicious piece of gossip I ever heard. And it isn’t true. I don’t care who told you, Richard. It isn’t true. Do you think I should not have known? How could such a thing be kept secret? Besides, Henry wouldn’t dare. The princess of France, sent over here as a child and entrusted to Henry to bring up his son’s betrothed! Why, such a scandal would rock Christendom. No, Richard, whoever dropped that poison in your ear was acting from some ulterior motive, anxious to set you against your father again. Though it confounds me,’ I said after a second’s reflection, ‘to name anyone who could have thought of such a story. Unless it was John. Was it John, Richard?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Nobody told me the story; I discovered the fact for myself with some slight help from a French lute player who never guessed what he was about. The evidence of my own eyes, Mother, does that convince you?’ His lips drew back from his teeth and his eyes glinted in a grimace that I recognised as his angry grin. ‘As for your not knowing, there is the best of reasons for that! Even if all England knew—which isn’t this time the case—the old devil would have taken care to keep you in ignorance. He hasn’t been outstandingly lucky with his lights-o’-love, has he, Mother?’
Not even at that moment was I going to admit anything. Not even to Richard. The stairs of Haverford Grange had collapsed under Huldah of Leicester and the woman they called Sweet Edith of Ely had eaten oysters that had been overlong on the road from the oyster beds at Colchester. Rosamonde Clifford had died suddenly but there were physicians who had attended her for the lung rot ever since the birth of her second son. I looked Richard straight in the face and said:
‘That sounds like a cheap balladmonger’s gibe, Richard. I hope you didn’t intend it so.’
Richard looked straight back and retorted, ‘When I made the discovery I remember thinking, even in the midst of my rage, that you must be either ignorant or very helpless or there’d have been some strange porridge brewed for that little drab.’
‘I should be interested to know how you happened to make the discovery.’
‘It’s a long story,’ he said impatiently. ‘I came over to please Philip. I want him with me on this crusade and he wants Alys married. So I came, meaning to despatch the matter as quickly as possible. His Majesty received me very genially. Mother, you know his way when he chooses, smooth and slippery as oil. He began by suggesting that I should go to Windsor; he talked of hunting, as though I were here for pleasure. I made myself plain about that. I explained about Philip and told him why I had come. He then said that the princess was sick; she had a rheumy cold and had been abed for a week or more. But God gave him those eyes, Mo
ther—clear as Venetian glass, aren’t they? The deceit looked straight out at me! I countered with deceit; I changed my mind; I said I’d go to Windsor—she being ill and unable to receive me. So I left him. In the evening I went to William’s Tower, where she lay, and it was true, she was abed with a cold. But they let me in, all fluttered and excited—you know how women are. And I had presents for her from Philip. Two of her ladies were there in the bedchamber—and we talked. I gave her the presents and we talked about where and when the wedding should be and who should be invited. Very proper and formal. I took the opportunity of looking at her; I’d never seen her since she was full-grown, you know. A pretty wench, even with a gruesome cold—all that yellow hair. But uneasy. Very pleasant, agreeable to everything, but very uneasy and anxious to have us all away—not only me—all of us. One of the ladies yawned and she seized on that. I left her with them, setting things in order for the night.
‘In the anteroom there was this lute player, very softly trying over a new song. He said that sometimes he went in and played for her until she fell asleep. We talked for a little and then I borrowed his lute and went back. The women had gone and when I opened the door she thought I was the boy and said, ‘I don’t need you tonight,’ and then saw me and was most mightily confused… Oh, why am I spinning this long yarn? Mother, there is a secret door to her room, opening on steps from the river, and before I had played three stanzas he came in by it, cock aloft, if you will forgive the expression! And she began to scream. What she said in fear and what he said in rage made it all perfectly clear.’
‘You mean they admitted—Richard, surely you must be mistaken. Alys was almost a baby when she came here. He’s always regarded her as a daughter, like Joanna. I find it difficult to believe even now. Look, Richard, are you quite sure? You have never much wanted to marry Alys; if you had you would have done so years ago. Now Philip has tried to force your hand. Are you sure that you are not seeking an excuse and finding one because you looked so hard?’
‘I want Philip’s allegiance. For the crusade. Should I jeopardise that because of what I imagined? You, Mother, shrink from believing this because it is too shameful. If you could have heard them, she squalling like a scalded cat and he raving… And now at last I have a grudge against him that will bring all Christendom to my side. Even that pious half monk, Philip, who thinks it such a pity that a son should raise hand against his father—though he hates Henry as the devil hates holy water—will see the justice of my cause.’
‘If he believes it, which he won’t. Richard, I know Henry—he’s faithless, he’s lecherous. I hold no brief for him at all but even I have the greatest difficulty in believing that a combination of circumstances and your state of mind haven’t led you to a mistaken conclusion.’
‘There’s no mistake. If you could have seen and heard them. Not that I grudge him the white-faced, yellow-headed little whore. He’s welcome to her—as I told him. What angers me is that he should plan that I should marry his leavings. It’s all of a piece with his behaviour. Anybody’d think he was God Almighty. Always the same. Henry, Geoffrey and me. Duke of this, Duke of that—fuel for his vanity, titles and nonsense, none of it real. Always one of his long-nosed Normans hanging on our elbows, telling us when to go to bed, when to change our linen… All false! And this is the ultimate falsity. He counts his sons so little that he thinks he can take first cut at my joint and that I shall not mind. Well, at least I gave him to understand that I do not take his leavings—even though it costs me Philip’s friendship. And between him and me there will be war henceforth until one of us is dead. The world shall know why. All Christendom shall know what a lecherous old—Henry the Lawgiver—Lawgiver, forsooth—is.’
With that I pulled my muddled, shattered mind together and began to think quickly.
I still found it incredible that Henry and Alys should be lovers and not a whisper of the fact have stolen out. But Richard was prepared to believe it, did believe it, and was about to shout the dreadful news to the whole world.
For myself I minded little if at all. There had been Huldah and Edith and Rosamonde… Men whispered that I had poisoned all three but they were whispers, not shouted accusations. And it was one thing for a king to take a mistress, quite another for him to debauch a young girl, his ward, committed to his care as the betrothed of his son. That fact, bruited abroad by the son himself, would have results horrible to contemplate.
There had been a time when, if I saw something more clearly or more quickly than other people, I let fly straight at the bull’s-eye of the argument, rapping out my reasons. That way I had gained the hatred of two husbands, reduced one son to spineless subjugation. Now I was wary and cunning.
‘It is a horrible story,’ I said. ‘And if you proclaim it, Richard, everyone in the world will think your quarrel a just one. And how they will laugh!’
‘Laugh? By God’s toenails! Why should anybody laugh?’
‘Because everybody dreads old age, Richard; therefore, anything that diminishes the value of youth is pleasing to them. Have you never noticed how, if an older man unseats a younger in the lists, men laugh? I have. And the prospect of a father cuckolding his son—for that is what it amounts to—will make them laugh till their ribs crack.’
He stood stock-still and glared at me; then he said sullenly, ‘That’s true. I hadn’t thought of that.’
‘You’ve had little time for thinking,’ I said.
He brooded for a second or two and then burst out with renewed savagery: ‘But I wanted a good excuse against him. He’s played the injured father often enough. “A nest of rebellious vipers”—that’s what they say of us. “Honour thy father,” they prate. And,’ he added, turning on his heel and slapping the gloves again, ‘I’ve Philip to think of. I never was sure of that unclipped monk’s allegiance, even when I was going to marry his sister! Now I’m in worse case. If I don’t marry her and don’t give the rightful reason, the shifting poltroon will be making terms with Henry within a week.’
I spoke slowly, gently, adding word to word as though the thought I uttered had just occurred to me; concealing from Richard the fact that my mind had run ahead of his, for that is a thing, I had learned, that men abhor.
‘I think you should tell Philip. And, if you pretended that you concealed the truth from the rest of the world out of chivalry, that would be an excellent thing. That would appeal to Philip. But for the rest, for many reasons, I would leave them guessing. For one thing the sight of two princes, father and son, squabbling over a girl’s body is not a very edifying spectacle.’
I could have said much more but I waited.
‘He said that,’ Richard muttered. ‘He offered me the satisfaction of meeting him in single combat. I told him I wanted a fuller revenge than the making of a hole in his great carcase would afford me. He also offered—if I kept silence—to withdraw all supervision from my duchy. I told him that any man of his who showed his face in Aquitaine after this would withdraw without waiting for his order. I meant to expose him, shame him before the world. And now—if I must hush up the story…’ His face darkened ominously.
‘There’s no must,’ I hastened to say. ‘But there is another reason for keeping silence. Will you be offended if I explain it to you?’
‘When you offend me, Mother, I’ll tell you. I’m not Harry, you know.’
‘Poor Harry, God rest him,’ I said, and spared a thought for my eldest son who, entirely intractable towards everyone but me, had been pliable as thread in my hands. But Harry was dead and this angry man before me was the heir to England—it was to him I must speak.
‘These English of yours, Richard, are a peculiar people. Coarse, ignorant, bloodthirsty but very moral. And this country is English now, not Norman any more. William conquered England but he did not vanquish the English people; a few retained their manors; many women married Normans and imposed their peculiar standards upon their children. They’re sly and they love to cloak a practical expediency with a well-sounding
idealism. I realised that long ago and knew that if half Henry’s misdoings were noised abroad there were many men who would rise up and say, ‘Shall this fornicator rule us?’ And they’d really believe that it was the fornication and the adultery that they hated and not his Angevin blood and his reforms of law. And the English are very susceptible to the rule of women; look how they rallied to Matilda; look how they still sentimentalise about ‘Good Queen Maud.’ Any time in these last twenty years, Richard, I could have raised a queen’s party in this country and had all the best men in England on my side, joined by every little tyrant whose castle Henry has dismantled and every noble whose authority he has undermined.’
‘And I wonder you haven’t,’ Richard said. ‘By the Rood, in your place I would.’
‘And to what end?’ I asked. ‘To what end? To set all England in a ferment of a Saxon revival? To make smooth the way for the kin of the Atheling? No, I wanted England for my son. Once—before I acquired wisdom—I tried to take it by force. I misjudged the time. I thought that Harry and I—But that is old history and I have paid the price of my mistake. Sixteen years, Richard, I have been confined here and I shall stay here until I die or he does. And I have learned wisdom. We must wait now and let him rule England, whole and entire, until he dies; and you must survive him and you must get you an heir. You can rise against him in Aquitaine, where men are sensible, if rise you must; but do not speak the word which might make your moral English say, ‘All these Angevins are evil men!’ Leave England intact, for this small island is the brightest jewel in your crown. Aquitaine, dear to my heart, Gascony, Brittany, Normandy are great and glorious; but they are vulnerable, always dependent upon the good will or the weakness of their neighbours. England is, or could be, an impregnable fortress that could defy the world.’