Matilda Empress

by Lise Arin

  The Plantagenet sat unmoving before the blaze, staring into its orange glare. “Bah! Louis dismissed the pathetic oaf, for he would respect the claims of a king before those of a landless knight.”

  Eleanor tapped her ringed fingers upon the armrest of her wooden seat. “You should not discount my experience in these continental matters. I know Louis’s policy well. He recognizes the shortcomings of the French military, the laziness of his soldiers, and the ineptitude of his generals. He always prefers to parley with the powerful, rather than to fight them. Thus he retains his nominal authority and receives the willing oaths of stronger neighbors. You have no need to secede from Anjou, for Louis will never force you to do so. Besides, Anjou connects your Normandy to my vast territories.”

  His Majesty’s expression softened at this display of political prowess on his wife’s part.

  I spoke, although the king had not given me permission to interfere. “You might consider, sire, the possibility of paying your brother an income; his vitriol must stem from his poverty. There is no question of granting him the Angevin fief. The vow that you took on the corpse of your father is invalid, for it was sworn under duress and in ignorance of its eventual repercussions. The pope will certainly agree to annul it.”

  Eleanor reached out her hand, and ran it along her beloved’s sleeve. “Perhaps I have some troublesome nobleman in Touraine or Poitou, whose fidelity is suspect. Invest his castle, and give his liberties and titles to your degenerate brother.”

  I have no pride in my Henry’s disloyal sibling. “You have received an appeal for help from the citizens of Nantes, who wish to be free from the cruel overlordship of the Duke of Brittany. You might make your brother the Count of Nantes. Without any warring, you placate an intemperate foe and infiltrate another province. Gift Geoffrey the County of Nantes!”

  The Plantagenet stood up, and admonished us all. “I have waited all my life to be great; I find that I am greater even than my dreams. Worthily, I shall steer the ship of state with a firm grasp on the rudder. I shall not be any woman’s creature, nor any puffed up historian’s. I shall see everything, hear everything, and be master of it all, by right and justice.”

  There was a brief spell of silence. Then Eleanor essayed to beguile her husband. “Your Majesty, I take my only joy from you. I would have it mixed less with consternation. I would love more lightly.”

  The king relented. “Mother, did you hear my siren’s call?”

  I sighed. Once I was a young swallow, pulsing wings a blur in the morning sky, whistling sweetly from my vibrating throat. Now I am an old crow, idly circling in the dusky void, mute before the dying day.

  †

  Passionate Marie pledges herself to the convent of Shaftesbury in Dorset. Trailing her idol to Britain, but finding him lifted so far above her, and herself unremembered, she sequesters all her unrequited emotions in a nunnery.

  A provincial clerk, attached to her sisterhood, shuffles into my presence with an elegantly inscribed note.

  My private distress subsides, and I do not wish to turn my back on every past tie. I hope that we may correspond in the years to come, when both of us shall be at a remove from the ostentatious hub of civic affairs.

  For too long, I grieved too pointedly, and groaned aloud with longing, and clutched my breast, and found nothing worth the wretched trouble of arising from my bed, but now my heart gladdens to think myself engaged to be a bride of Christ. With patience and forethought, I await the day when I shall make my vow.

  There is no more perfect groom than the martyred Son of the Eternal King. If I am not to wed your Henry, then I am satisfied. I shall rest forevermore untouched, and love purely.

  Will Marie profit from her seclusion, and fill as many parchment scrolls as I have? The Lord gifted her with a quick wit and a silver tongue, the better to voice his Holy wisdom. I predict that she will come to be known as a troubadour, or rise to the rank of abbess.

  It would console unseemly, depraved Denise to retreat from the pestilence of the world, but she declines to do so. As the proverb says: “A woman must have a husband, or a wall.”

  †

  Resigned to the course of events, and pleased by my son’s preeminence, I have arranged to retire with Gerta to the monastery of Notre-Dame-du-Pré, outside Rouen. I rise up from the gaming board of life, tossing aside my dice, prepared to devote the rest of my earthly time to the sacred way. The cloister shall be my framework, as if I were a cramped creature carved and docked into the stone lintel of a church portal. Yet, so circumscribed, my soul will expand, until it is immense and harmonious.

  Gerta does not sink into dejection. She is mollified to quit trouble, worry, and intrigue for the tranquility of the priory and its royal park. She predicts that the Lord will hear the plea of a suppliant handmaiden, and, in His wisdom, will pardon her multitude of offences. She names her art “natural magic,” feats in keeping with His commandments, pious miracles welcome to his notice. She denies having practiced any criminal, demonic sorcery, capable of perverting heaven’s will. Too old to change her ways, she wraps a clump of heliotrope and a wolf’s tooth in laurel leaves, and stuffs the twisted bundle under her girdle. For the most part, she trusts that God will not strike her down with wrathful affliction, but prefer to take her as on as His servant, thus preserving her soul. She will be redeemed alongside me, not tested.

  I am satisfied that Mother Mary, who joined us together throughout our lives, does not think to part us now. One must seek to be always in the company of those whose merit is tried and true. I have Gerta and she has me; of this we shall be possessed.

  King Henry approves of my plans, for I shall function as his regent in Normandy, allowing him to prevent the rise in status of any one vassal in the duchy. He fears his brother Geoffrey too much to trust William with authority over the province. Henry plans, instead, to grant his youngest brother the island of Ireland, once it should be conquered for Christendom.

  And so it is. In my abdication, I will not be completely the nun, but rather the sometime duchess, a person of consequence. If His Majesty is not to do it, then I shall see that it is done.

  †

  Enraptured, we cannot fully comprehend the Plantagenet; he is too awesome, amazing, inexplicable. His Majesty is already a figure of the minstrels’ fables, already a legend. They call him a panther, strong and lithe; he snarls, poised and primed to pounce, but exudes some alluring, mesmerizing fragrance.

  As she who begot him, I am famed for my potent beauty and my masculine spirit. The jongleurs insist that I am fortitude itself, that my spirit is all vigor, without weakness. They misunderstand me, a princess made entirely of love. I sing to you my entire history, and it is the work of love, first of a perfidious love and then of an authentic one.

  At the end of a broken, divided life, all I yearn for is a unified soul. In prayer to the Virgin, I remake myself whole and undefiled, as everything divine is stable and entire. Am I not greater now than I was before? The three kings were my framework, and held me in place. But you who have read or listened to my true account can acknowledge my own claims. I, too, was a king, courtly, good, and wise, somehow refuted by naysayers and rebuffed by betrayal.

  I was nailed upon a cross until I undertook a great forsaking, two resignations, of passion and ambition. It comes to pass that the only throne I shall ever see is the shining seat in paradise, the perennial chair before the hearth of the perpetual fire. Yet, in this seat, as Mary’s first and highest acolyte, I am at my zenith, towering above the complacent princes, bombastic knights, supercilious barons, obsequious minstrels, and slavish priests who promised me power or snatched it away from me.

  You, chivalrous, noble, discerning, generous listeners, have unspooled my epic story of sin and atonement, resurrection and coronation. You have appraised the worth of my treasure stores, and counted the tolls and fees that I have paid. You, who have looked deep into my mirror, will not forget to hail and salute the Holy Mother.

  Some
Notes on Matilda Empress

  Many of the events depicted herein actually occurred, particularly those of historical significance. Taking artistic license, I have tampered a bit with chronology, conflated some secondary characters, invented a few minor players, and completely imagined all the private moments unlikely to have been recorded for posterity. This is a novel, not a history textbook, and the “true story” is still somewhat obscured by gaps in the historical record and centuries of conflicting interpretations of the surviving documents. Overall, I have used the most interesting “facts” to construct a solid framework for my house of fiction, then fashioned its more fluid walls with a tangled thatch of love, ambition, honor, duty, resignation, and faith.

  Matilda, a real person and a real empress, inherited a great realm from her father, King Henry I, but struggled and failed to attain her rightful throne. Her disloyal cousin Stephen, who stole her crown, had been her childhood playmate, and sworn to her service. At the time, there was idle curiosity and a hint of gossip about the complex nature of the relationship between these two, and a few historians, from the thirteenth-century onward, have debated the question, wondering if they were lovers, but only in the time before Matilda’s marriage to Geoffrey of Anjou. Most academics discount the idea that Henry II could possibly have had every right to be King Stephen’s heir, and insist that the usurper’s “adoption” of his successor at the end of the civil war was merely formulaic. Henry II is never spoken of as “illegitimate,” and, if Matilda and her cousin were perhaps briefly entangled, the idea of a lifelong love affair between the antagonists in a great civil war is a fabrication of my own.

  I have read widely in my attempt to absorb and recreate the atmosphere that set the stage for the adventures of Matilda and her circle of friends and foes. Contemporary letters, annals, chronicles, epics, liturgies, memoirs, poems, and romances have stimulated my flights of fancy. Among the many modern titles that I have consulted, I am most indebted to Marjorie Chibnall’s thorough, scholarly The Empress Matilda: Queen Consort, Queen Mother and Lady of the English (1991), Nesta Pain’s engaging Empress Matilda: Uncrowned Queen of England (1978), Joachim Bumke’s comprehensive, absorbing Courtly Culture (1991), Madeleine Pelner Cosman’s inspiring Fabulous Feasts: Medieval Cookery and Ceremony (1999), and Richard Kieckhefer’s fascinating Magic in the Middle Ages (1989). I am grateful for their research and analysis, their anecdotes and data, their maps and footnotes. All errors of understanding and perspective are my own.

  Acknowledgments

  Matilda Empress has been my hobby for more than twenty years, starting with my first early draft in 1996 through its countless revisions. I always intended the story to be more than just a private exercise, so finally sending it out into the world brings me enormous satisfaction.

  I could not have spent so much time living in the twelfth century without the patience and support of my family. My husband’s firm conviction that the novel would appear someday in a bookstore, if I just kept at it, sustained me when my own assurance flagged. My children, for their part, put up with stacks of research, piled high, even in their bedrooms, and often discovered that I had poached their private stash of post-it notes or red pens. All of their delight in Matilda Empress’s publication, after so many years of working and waiting, magnifies my own.

  I would also like to thank my earliest readers: Amanda Brainerd and Kristin Hohmann. They graciously implied that I was a real writer before I could rightfully claim the title. Stephanie Cabot’s insights and suggestions made the novel stronger, and the heroine more accessible. Melissa Barrett Rhodes and Ivan Shaw went out of their way to help me secure a beautiful cover image. Eric Brown has been a wise counselor, especially given my status as an absolute beginner. And Jesseca Salky made the introduction that has made all the difference.

  I’d still be daydreaming about this career were it not for the good faith and enthusiasm of her friends at Archer Lit. Tyson Cornell, Lisa Weinert and the Archer/Rare Bird team, notably Alice Elmer, Julia Callahan, Hailie Johnson, and Andrew Hungate, have returned Empress Matilda to the public stage, smoothed her rough edges, talked her up, and made her timely. I am very grateful for their offer to take me on, and for their belief both in the project and in me.