The Conqueror's Queen

by Joanna Courtney

  ‘Don’t go too fast, Mathilda. Patience.’

  ‘Patience?! He has been here several months.’

  ‘King Edward said he could not declare an heir until death was close, remember? These Saxons are curiously subtle beasts. They are like horses, Mathilda – better coaxed than coerced.’ He turned to the ragtag crowd. ‘A toast!’ he roared. ‘To friendship, to alliance, to the future!’

  The men and women of Rouen took this up gladly, then William was, to Mathilda’s great surprise, calling for minstrels.

  ‘Will you dance, Harold?’ he asked and for a moment Mathilda thought the two of them, dark and fair, would step out together, but instead William lifted her own hand and placed it in Harold’s.

  ‘Will you, my lady?’ the blonde Saxon asked.

  His fingers tightened slightly and, the past swirling dizzily around her, she rose.

  ‘I will.’

  They took to the floor, all eyes upon them, and immediately Mathilda could feel the pulse of the dance – the insistent thud of heart against heart, the light turn of the reel lifting her high onto her richly slippered toes, the sweeping assurance of strong arms.

  ‘Normandy has been good to me, my lady,’ Harold said, his words whispering across her cheek like butterflies, trailing blushes.

  ‘She has,’ she agreed, clinging desperately to the present, ‘so I hope you will be good to her in return?’

  He smiled at that and his fingers tightened just a touch around her own. He lifted her closer to his broad chest and then, with a low laugh that laced dangerously through the feast-smoked air, spun her until her royal blood pulsed against her skin as if trying to escape and Normandy was, for a moment, forgotten.

  The rush of the reel was a potion stronger than any wine and she felt suddenly as if she could dance forever, dance out of Normandy and out of England and out of all the crazy mangle of promises and duties. The music thrilled through them – the merry melody of the fiddle, the trill of a tiny flute and the pulse of the drum beneath. She could smell the low scents of war upon him, horse and metal and warm musk, now mixing with the meaty smoke of the fire. And she could see his eyes, Saxon blue, like summertime skies as they bore into her own, all laughter gone and in its place a rich, deep intent.

  ‘I fear, my lady, that I cannot repay you well enough for your kindness this spring but I suspect that it always came with too high a price.’

  Other dancers had joined them now, laughing, circling, creating a safe swirl of bodies. But then he moved her to the edge, beneath the shadow of a pillar, and she felt sixteen once more, small and giddy and breathless. He leaned over and asked suddenly: ‘Why, my lady? Why England?’

  She did not want the question; it felt wrong. She looked up at him.

  ‘Your eyes – they are encircled with gold.’

  ‘Bronze more like. Why England, Mathilda?’

  ‘It was promised,’ she stuttered.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  She frowned. With every year that passed that mysterious, shifting Yule in Westminster seemed less and less real and now, here, in this intimate dance, nothing was certain.

  ‘I am sure,’ she forced out, knowing she did not sound it. ‘You know what William wants of you?’

  ‘My oath to him as King of England.’

  ‘Will you give it?’

  ‘Should I?’

  ‘Why would you not? Would you be king yourself?’

  ‘Should I?’

  His voice was so calm, so warm, so strong.

  ‘You would be a good king, Harold.’

  There was a rustle behind them, a low rumble, almost a growl. She turned, scared, and in that moment Harold stepped away.

  ‘But not as good as William,’ she panted but Harold was gone, melted into the crowd leaving a single blonde hair on her shoulder. She snatched it away and suddenly he was back, looming over her, only when she looked up it was not Harold but Fitz. And his eyes, his dancing, ever-friendly eyes, were black with fury.

  ‘Where is your loyalty, Mathilda?’

  Her words to Harold screeched through her guts like a butcher’s knife. Her head spun and she scrabbled at the wall to drag herself out of the mist Harold’s Saxon arms had weaved around her.

  ‘You misheard, Fitz.’

  ‘I heard very clearly. After all William has done for you, Duchess? After all he has given you, all he has trusted you with – you would do this? Has he turned your head, the golden Saxon? Or have you been working for him all the time?’

  ‘No! I told him – I told him William would be better.’

  ‘Too late,’ Fitz snarled, the dear hound showing his teeth at last and all the more fearful for the change.

  ‘Perhaps,’ Mathilda cried, putting up her hands to ward him off, ‘but I meant it no less. William is my husband, Fitz.’

  ‘But not the first man you loved.’

  ‘What? No . . .’

  Fitz advanced on her.

  ‘Brihtric, wasn’t it? A pretty Saxon, my lady, yes, like this pretty Saxon? Is that why Adela is not to marry Harold, Mathilda? Do you want him, perhaps, for yourself?’

  ‘No!’ Mathilda grabbed at William’s steward’s tunic, clawing at him. ‘Does William know?’

  ‘That you support Harold as King of England?’

  ‘No! I do not. I mean Brihtric. Does he know of Brihtric?’

  Fitz just laughed.

  ‘Of course he knows. Your father’s precious chamberlain, Lord Bruno, told him years ago.’ Mathilda sucked in an angry breath but she was hardly in a position to judge. ‘William knows everything, save perhaps that his wife is a traitor.’

  Mathilda felt faint. She longed to run to her chamber and hide beneath her covers but they were William’s covers too. She was not a child any more but a woman – a mother, a wife. She must stand strong.

  ‘Fitz, please, you know me.’

  He looked briefly lost.

  ‘I thought I did but now I am not so sure. To speak so to the Saxon . . .’

  ‘Was foolish perhaps, but no more.’

  ‘It was more, Mathilda, much more – it was disloyal.’

  That word again, that dread word. William’s speech at Alençon ricocheted through her memory and she flexed her wrists as if the axe were already upon them.

  ‘I swear, Fitz, it was not that way. I sought only to gain information. Do not tell William of this. It is nothing, a woman’s error. I am behind my husband in everything, you know I am.’

  ‘With all your heart?’

  ‘Yes,’ Mathilda cried but she heard the wobble in her voice and knew Fitz must have heard it too.

  He looked to the rafters.

  ‘I will not tell him,’ he said eventually.

  ‘Thank you. Oh, thank you, Fitz.’

  ‘I do not do this for you, Mathilda, but for him for it would break his heart. But know that I am watching. Now go – he waits for you.’

  She needed no second urging but turned and ran to her husband, ducking frantically between the dancers, disgusted suddenly by their carefree turns and twirls.

  ‘Let us retire,’ she begged William. ‘Let us slip away, as we always do. We must be fresh for the morrow. We must pin Harold down. We must make him swear – swear out loud, before witnesses. We have lived too long on secret promises, William. Harold must declare for you.’

  ‘Steady, my Mora.’ William kissed her. ‘Why such passion all of a sudden?’

  ‘Because time is slipping away, William. Harold is slipping away and with it England – do not let him fail you.’

  As you have failed him, a voice rasped in her ear and she welcomed it.

  ‘God forgive me,’ she whispered but God, it seemed, was not in a forgiving mood.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Bonneville, May 1064

  They prepared to make Harold swear. They dispatched him to Bonneville to inspect his ships under an ‘escort’ led by Hugh, then sent for every holy relic in Normandy – the bones of St Rémy, St Philibert, St
Barbara, St Eternus and St Maximus. Mathilda amassed them, carefully folded in finest silk, inside a carved casket and they set out to bid Harold farewell.

  She and William approached Bonneville from the west, reaching the port before the castle. Several long jetties stretched out into the shallow sea and many boats bobbed along their edges as men ran back and forth from the long wooden sheds lining the shore, carrying goods to and from trade vessels or tools to do repairs. Mathilda looked for Harold’s ships but it was high-masted Spanish ones that she saw first.

  ‘Adela!’ she breathed.

  William, true to his word, had arranged for their troublesome older daughter to be married to Alfonso, son of the King of Leon and Castile, a fiercely ambitious youth who had earned himself the byname El Bravo for his fighting against the Moors. It had been Mathilda’s hard duty to see her furious daughter kitted out with bridal finery and dispatched under poor Roger de Beaumont’s care to the ships the young prince had sent for her – the very ships in front of them now.

  ‘Why is she still here?’ William snapped.

  ‘She definitely sailed,’ Fitz said from behind them. ‘La Barbe saw her himself. He told me that just before she went on board she kicked him so hard in his bad leg that it’s not stopped aching ever since. He was glad to see her sail away.’

  ‘Then it seems,’ William said grimly, ‘that she has sailed back.’

  He kicked his horse into a canter and Mathilda exchanged glances with Fitz before, just a step behind, they both did the same. They had made a tentative truce since the terrible night of her dance with Harold.

  ‘Adelisa says I was wrong,’ Fitz had told her the next day, seeking her out in private. ‘At least, she says I was hasty. I can, you know, be a little hasty. I may possibly have read too much into your conversation with the Saxon.’

  ‘You did, Fitz, truly. I was just trying to draw him out.’

  ‘That’s what Adelisa said. It seems a funny way to go about it to me, though.’

  He was right. Mathilda had been doing nothing so sane for she had been lost in her past but admitting as much would help no one.

  ‘To me too now, Fitz. It was a strange night.’

  ‘These are strange times. Do you want to be Queen of England, Mathilda?’

  ‘That’s a strange question too.’

  ‘Just an honest one.’

  Had it been a test? She hadn’t been sure but she was taking no chances now and, as ever, she needed exact truth less than these black and white Normans she called her own people.

  ‘If William wants to be king, I want to be his queen,’ she had told the faithful steward stoutly.

  ‘He’ll be a good king,’ he’d replied, ‘for it means so very much to him.’

  That she had agreed with wholeheartedly, though occasionally she wished they had thought to direct their royal ambitions south to France. Had William only pursued Henri when he’d had the cheek to invade, he could have claimed that crown, but William’s loyalty to his overlord, despite his betrayal, had prevented it and she should respect him for that. Even so, France would have been so much simpler a country than England, wrapped in its own precious customs and antiquities. But they must go forward, not back, and if forward was over the Narrow Sea, so be it. Fitz, William’s guard-dog, was watching her still, she knew – though not as sharply as she was watching herself. She was determined to secure Harold’s oath for her husband, but first, Adela.

  She reached the ships just as William was striding up the first jetty and leaping aboard.

  ‘William,’ she cried, ‘should we not first check . . .’

  But her warning was cut off by a shriek as loud as a mating owl’s, and suddenly a loose-robed figure flew at William, hair streaming and nails out. William, warrior-swift to react, planted his feet wide and caught his daughter’s wrists so that she flailed uselessly before him. He looked back to Fitz and Mathilda.

  ‘Stay there. Do not come aboard. She is hot as the sun.’

  ‘Hot as hell,’ Adela screamed at him, kicking out with bare feet. ‘This is God’s punishment on you for sending me away.’

  ‘On me?’ William asked mildly. She screamed again. ‘Perhaps, Adela, it is God’s punishment on you for being disobedient to your father and to Normandy.’

  ‘A curse on Normandy!’

  ‘Adela!’ William looked back to Mathilda. ‘Was there ever such ingratitude?’

  Several servants had come running, scrambling aboard, babbling in a mix of French and Spanish. There had been a fever on board, Mathilda gathered, straining to understand. Spanish had not been one of the languages her mother’s tutors had taught her but it was like enough to southern French to seize some meaning. Several sailors were ill, no, they were muertos – dead. They’d been killed by a terrible pain in their stomachs she gathered, more from the elaborate gestures than the words, and been thrown overboard.

  The sailors had brought the princess back, terrified of losing her, but as Mathilda looked from them to her daughter, now babbling more than the men, she feared they were too late. She should run to Adela, she knew. If it were Cecily, she would run to her, or Maud or Constance, but any of them would welcome her. Adela, however, was spitting poison and raging as if the devil did, indeed, have her in his clutches. And then, before Mathilda could make herself move, the girl gave a sudden piercing cry, shook like a sapling in a winter storm and went limp.

  Mathilda ran to the boat but William shouted her back.

  ‘Is she . . . ?’

  His eyes when they found hers said it all – Adela, poor awkward, struggling, bitter little Adela, was dead and suddenly, painfully, Mathilda knew she’d been waiting for this moment all her daughter’s troubled young life. Always she had feared that Mabel had poisoned her in the womb, forcing her out too early. Possibly the poor child had been carrying that poison ever since. She forced herself to breathe as William laid Adela gently on the deck. He took off his rich scarlet cloak and wrapped it softly around her, smoothing her matted hair from her face before, finally, covering it over.

  ‘Order a coffin,’ he said to Fitz, ‘a fine one. We will see her buried in honour.’ He turned to the cowering sailors. ‘I thank you for your care; you will be rewarded.’

  Mathilda saw them glance, stunned but delighted, at one another and felt a rush of new warmth for William. He rewarded loyalty as generously as he punished treachery. She shivered at the thought of how close she’d come to such a charge and crossed herself. She looked at her daughter’s motionless form beneath William’s cloak, still so slight as if she had never quite found the strength for this world. Mathilda could scarce blame her for that; some days she could hardly find the strength herself. This day, though, this bitter day, she must, for it was far from over yet.

  Harold had heard of Adela’s death by the time they rode through the decorated gates of Mathilda’s favourite fortress. Clearly he had spies too, or maybe the garrison was just reverberating with the delicious gossip of it. Mathilda and William accepted his condolences gravely but declined his oh-so-generous offer to forgo the farewell feast.

  ‘We must swear on our friendship,’ Mathilda insisted, fired with a flaming determination that her daughter’s hideous passing had only fuelled more strongly.

  ‘Our friendship? Of course, my lady.’

  He looked at her askance and shifted his big feet nervously.

  ‘And our intent,’ she pressed.

  ‘Intent?’

  ‘Fret not,’ William said, stepping in. ‘I have had the words written; you need only say them. You can read?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Good. I cannot. I have never seen much need for it. I am more eloquent with a sword than with words – as are my men.’ The said men moved forward a little. Harold glanced around him. ‘Shall we get on with it? Here, maybe?’

  He gestured to a little table set up on the dais at the top end of the stone hall. It was covered in a soft linen cloth of sumptuous purple and beneath it, Mathilda knew, sat t
he casket of relics.

  ‘Shouldn’t we tell him?’ William had asked when she’d suggested this.

  ‘Afterwards.’

  ‘Very well.’

  Harold, Mathilda noticed, had lost his customary ease. His laughing eyes were shadowed and no smile cut across his beard. He was no longer the teasing dancer and she was glad to see it for she had been teased enough. She watched coldly as he looked to his men but they were flanked by William’s and he was trapped – a tafel defender surrounded by attacking pieces and forced to surrender.

  Mathilda would have felt cruel but it was not their fault if he ducked and twisted and dissembled. Harold had tried to play her, tried, even, to seduce her in some subtle Saxon way, as Brihtric had seduced her too many years ago to remember. He deserved all he got. Besides, William was right – a man should say what he meant and now, at last, Harold of Wessex would have to mean what he said. She watched intently as William took Harold’s great hand and placed it on the cloth.

  ‘Read it, Harold,’ he instructed as a man unfurled the parchment and held it up before the earl. Still Harold hesitated. ‘Read it! It says nothing more nor less than you have been promising these last months of “friendship”, and nothing more nor less than King Edward vowed to in 1051. It does not ask you to deny your king but simply to acknowledge his successor. In return, I acknowledge you as Earl of Wessex and my senior councillor. It is, Harold, to the benefit of us both. Now, read it!’

  And read it Earl Harold did:

  I, Harold, Earl of Wessex, do acknowledge thee, William, Duke of Normandy, as the rightful heir to the throne of England on the death of King Edward, whenever that might be. I swear to uphold that claim and to support you with my voice, my person and all the forces at my disposal should they be necessary. God grant us King William.

  He did not falter, though his hand shook. He spoke bravely, regally almost, and finally it was done, done fully, before witnesses and on holy relics. Harold paled when the casket was unveiled.

  ‘You tricked me,’ he hissed at William.

  ‘Only as you have tricked me, Harold. But come, this is the start of our friendship, not the end. And who else, really, could be king?’