‘He is well. I pray for his safe crossing.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ she said. ‘You never pray unless you’re worried. Where is he?’
‘He returns to us. He’ll be home in three days.’ Geoffrey stood and swept his long fingers through his blond hair, dragging it away from his eyes.
Scoundrel, his wife thought. There was little about her husband that pleased her. Not his magnificent bearing, nor his eye for elegance and beauty, nor the art treasures he collected, not even the way he played the lute. Especially she disliked the fact that he was of the Foulques clan. When her father told her the identity of the second husband he had arranged for her, she tore her hair. ‘Anjevins are thieves, barbarians and priest killers!’ she had wailed. ‘And he’s of the Foulques! Foulques the Black murdered two wives.’
‘He discovered his second wife riding a shepherd,’ the Lion replied irritably. ‘I have a border dispute with Anjou. This will end it. The Anjou lad is fertile. He already has a son. You need a fertile husband, after that …’
The Lion could not bring himself to utter the name of her first husband, a man who had Matilda in his bed from the age of twelve to twenty-four and had produced nothing. Not even a miscarriage. His plan to encircle France had spent itself between those sterile sheets: his legacy now depended on Matilda and the youth from Anjou. He knew the boy had seduced the wife of a baron when aged only thirteen. The story reminded the King of his own younger days. ‘They say he’s charming,’ he added with a smile.
For his part, Geoffrey Foulques was dismayed at being married off to a woman eleven years his senior, reputed to be as haughty as a pharaoh. She was tall, with large, intelligent eyes of slate-blue. She wore her light brown hair in the German manner, plaited on the crown of her head, falling at the back to her broad, straight shoulders. A diadem of jewels held her veil in place. She demanded Geoffrey address her as ‘Empress’, and to show her displeasure spoke to him in German, a language he barely understood.
As she stood now in the chapel glaring at her husband, he thought, if only you were not perpetually, invisibly, armoured in chainmail. He could have loved her, perhaps. But in their years of marriage she had never once surrendered to him. His father-in-law had warned: ‘She’s wilful. You may need coercion.’
At age fourteen Geoffrey had considered himself well-endowed, but his bride had stared at his erect penis in horror. He blushed. Maybe the Emperor of Germany had equipment much larger than his own. ‘Does it displease you, lady?’ he’d asked.
‘Displease me? It’s hideous!’
He was not yet full grown; she was taller than he, but being male, he was stronger. ‘Am I too … small?’
‘Small? It’s too big!’ she’d cried. ‘I don’t want that monstrous thing inside me.’
‘Like it or not, it’s going in.’ He rammed his elbow between her breasts, into her chest, and with his free hand guided his penis into his wife. The encounter was so chaotic, hasty and unpleasant it was not until the next morning when he saw the sheets that Geoffrey realised his wife had been a virgin. Her Emperor husband had used a finger, for what reason Geoffrey could never discover from her, only that she felt grievous shame, for all her outward pride as an Empress.
After a few months he left her. When the Lion threatened war on Anjou if he refused to take her back, Geoffrey calculated his chances as the now seventeen-year-old Count of that province against one of the greatest warriors and richest kings in Europe. The following summer he returned to marital duty and within weeks Matilda was pregnant.
But every child he sired on her he sired through force. ‘You make me feel like a dog let in to rut on a bitch hound,’ he complained. He noticed, however, that in violation she experienced a bolt of fear and self-loathing so intense it released her into sweet catharsis. She babbled endearments to him in German, French, even Anjevin. She stroked his face and hair.
At first he was disgusted that he had to rape his wife to give her pleasure. But he was a reflective young man, and on consideration he felt the kind of compassion extended to a person born blind, or imbecile. By the age of twenty he could ravish her with calm. An understanding sprang up between them: wordlessly they agreed their bed was a stage and what they did on it was unrelated to their daily lives. He tied her wrists together and her legs apart and called her names he would not spit at a pig. Matilda gave birth to son after son after son. And as many daughters.
While her married life remained for her a shameful secret, her husband had one attribute she could publicly applaud: he knew how to fight. He had taken Normandy from the English and much of the Vexin from France. This was no small achievement, for with Normandy came the estates of earls and barons who had broken their vows to have her as the English monarch. And with the Vexin under the swords of their garrisons, the family controlled the western river trade to France. When she was in a generous mood, Matilda could also admit her husband was well educated. She approved the practical side of his education – for example that he had discovered how to capture the castle of Montreuil-Bellay through his reading of the Roman writer Vegetius Renatus. These matters aside, Geoffrey and Matilda shared only the sting of social condescension and its counterweight, vigorous ambition.
Standing in the chapel, Matilda repeated: ‘You say he’ll be home in three days?’
Geoffrey rose up and glared back at her. ‘Correct, my lady.’ Three days was a guess.
You’re lying, she thought.
Three days later, at dawn, Geoffrey climbed five storeys to the uppermost turret of the ducal palace of Rouen and stationed himself at the spot from which river traffic sailing in from the sea was most easily seen. Beside him were his two finest archers. The three men squinted into the mist that hung above the Seine.
‘M’lord, what are we looking for? How big a ship?’
‘Quite small, I think. A fishing boat, perhaps.’ May he be alive, Geoffrey prayed. May he not have lost an eye. Or a limb.
‘There’s one!’
Geoffrey’s vision was good but he could see nothing. His archers had the eyes of hawks.
‘There are people waving at us!’
‘Where?’
‘There, lord. Just two hundred yards away. I can see …’
‘What!’
‘Someone waving to you. He’s waving a piece of cloth.’
‘It’s a … red flag! M’lord, there’s a funny animal on the flag.’
‘It’s a horse,’ the other man said.
‘Can’t be! Legs are too short.’
‘It’s a gold horse.’
‘Man, your eyes have gone! It’s a lion.’
‘A lion?’ The Duke, taller than all his vassals, put his arms around their shoulders. ‘Can you see anyone’s face?’
They squinted with the concentration of taking aim.
‘Lord Guillaume, sir! He’s waving at us. And the Young Duke is beside him!’
Geoffrey was down the stairs and galloping to the town wharves before the ship had berthed.
He embraced Henry then Guillaume. ‘Go home to your mother,’ he said to Guillaume. ‘I’ll deal with you later.’ Turning to Henry, he shouted, ‘If you ever do anything like that again, I’ll kill you.’
Henry was too surprised to speak.
‘Where’s your destrier?’ his father demanded.
‘Stephen confiscated him,’ Henry mumbled.
The Duke made a noise of disgust. ‘Where’s your great-grandfather’s ring that you took from your mother’s apartment without asking permission?’
Henry fished out the leather pouch from inside his tunic. ‘Why didn’t you send me money when I begged for it?’ he burst out.
This was the opening to a conversation Geoffrey had dreaded. He did not reply.
‘And you sent word to Earl Robert, telling him not to help me!’ The fury of injustice gathered in Henry’s face.
‘Correct.’
‘I was fighting for my mother! But you and she would leave me to die in England!
’
The Duke gave an angry smile. ‘We knew you’d find a way out. You’ve got more tricks than your mother’s monkey.’
‘But what if I hadn’t?’ Henry persisted.
His father rounded on him. ‘You whine like a ten-year-old. If you don’t stop, I’ll thrash you like a ten-year-old.’
From the castle Matilda watched her eldest child ride home on the back of his father’s horse. Perched on her shoulder Hambril, her monkey, rubbed his small round head against her hand as she stroked him to calm herself.
‘Where’s your destrier?’ she asked Henry as soon as they walked inside.
‘He had an accident,’ the Duke replied.
‘I didn’t ask you. Henry, where’s the destrier your father gave you for your birthday?’
‘He hurt his leg.’
‘I know when you’re lying. Answer me truthfully!’ she said and stamped her foot.
The turbulence between the Duchess and her impetuous son distressed the household, even the monkey, who jumped to the ground as Matilda’s anger rose. Geoffrey excused himself and gave Hambril a swift, surreptitious kick. Everyone, except Matilda and Hambril’s paramour, a languid black-and-white cat, hated the monkey.
‘Where did you get the money to go haring off in the first place?’ his mother continued.
‘I borrowed it in town.’
‘You went to the Jews! Fourteen years old and already in debt to them! They kill Christian boys for their blood, don’t you know that?’
‘That’s rubbish, Mother. I asked Uncle Robert when I saw him. He said it was a story some English merchants made up to avoid paying a debt.’
‘Oh really? For your information, the Jew was tried, convicted and burned!’ She was almost shouting.
‘That doesn’t mean he was guilty,’ Henry muttered, but his mother was not listening. He took a step towards her and put his arms around her waist. He was already her height. She allowed him to hold her a moment, then pushed him away.
‘Come, baby, come to Mama,’ she said to Hambril. The monkey leaped to her shoulder and bared his small brownish teeth at Henry, hissing at him.
‘I spent two days with Uncle Robert,’ Henry said. ‘He asked me to give you a message: “What is said, is true.”’
Unexpectedly, his mother gave a sob. Her illegitimate half-brother, Robert Earl of Gloucester, was the one man she loved unreservedly. For ten years he had led the fight for her right to the English throne, but recently the war had not gone well. His son had defected to Stephen and rumours swirled that Earl Robert was dying of a broken heart.
‘We’re beaten. The Usurper has won. England was my dowry but it’s been stolen for all time. You’ll never be King.’
Henry’s face burned. Through the uncovered windows of Matilda’s apartment they could look down on the town, the wharves and warehouses along the river, and beyond the river to fields of flax and wheat, orchards, a forest and plains that stretched all the way to the Île de France, that scrap of land to which everyone of significance west of the Rhine owed homage.
The Normandy apple trees had flowered and now their fruit was setting. The scent of apple blossom that for six weeks each year perfumed Rouen like Eden’s garden was replaced by smells of ripening grain and grass heating in the sun.
‘My dowry!’ Matilda wailed. Her eyes were lustrous with tears. ‘Now you know, Henry, why your father has never respected me, why he runs to other women,’ she said. ‘I lost my dowry. Your father would have been King Consort …’
‘Mother, Mother. You …’ She could put him in a turmoil in minutes. ‘Sit down, Mother,’ he said.
A servant brought cider, coarse bread and cheese: it was past breakfast time but too early for dinner, and Henry was hungry because the food on the fishing boat was horrible, and he’d had to hold Guillaume’s head while he was seasick.
He ate in morose silence.
‘My life is ruined,’ Matilda went on. Henry wanted to comfort her, to say, ‘I missed you. I was frightened, I thought Prince Eustace would have me put in irons.’ But instead he wrapped his arms around her waist again and laid his head on her breast.
‘What are you doing?’ she demanded. ‘You’re too old for that nonsense.’
He drew back, threw the rest of his cheese on the platter and stood up. ‘I’m going to see the new puppies,’ he said.
‘Puppies! We’re defeated after fighting ten years for justice, for myself and for you to reign after me, and all you can think of is puppies! You should know the bitterness of being born into this world as a woman, Henry.’
His dark blue eyes were as hard as his grandfather’s. ‘I do,’ he said. ‘You never let me forget it.’ He walked out.
Geoffrey was seated on a stone bench reading, enjoying the feeling of sun on his broad back. ‘We’ll go to the kennels,’ he said. ‘We’ve some fine new deer hounds and sixteen wolf-hound pups.’
Henry had to lengthen his stride to keep abreast with his father, who had nothing more to say to his son. As they approached the kennels the hounds – more than two hundred of them – began emitting long, musical cries of excitement. They leaped from their wooden platform, a living flood pouring over the lip of a dam.
The hounds master stood aside to let the Duke and his son through a gate in the osier fence then took them to the whelping kennel. Eight bitches lay on straw. Some suckled young pups, others stretched their long, flexible limbs while their offspring climbed and toppled over each other. Henry picked up a wolf-hound aged about eight weeks, a squirming hot little bundle that licked his nose and gave puny yelps of love.
His father, hands resting on his hips, watched with scepticism. He and Matilda had expended every effort on this son, the hope of the royal line. Born a darling, Henry had stayed a darling: spirited, quick-witted, humorous, arrogant, over-confident, self-centred, rebellious. In short, he was set to dissipate all his potential and all their hopes.
Geoffrey wanted to say, ‘I adore you, Henry. I love you more than my life.’ But he remembered himself at this age, raging at his father over the arranged marriage to Matilda, announcing he would run away and join the army of the Saracens.
At length he said, ‘You have severely embarrassed us, Henry. To launch a campaign certain to fail, then beg for money from the Usurper …’
Henry put the puppy down. ‘Forgive me, Papa,’ he began to snivel. ‘I didn’t …’
‘Stop snivelling! Our family does not indulge in such weaknesses. What matters is that you’ve learned a lesson about war.’
Henry checked himself. ‘I need the authority of knighthood to be able to command men. If I’m to be King, I must first become a knight,’ he said. He had regained his cockiness.
‘You must be a knight!’ Geoffrey echoed with laughter. ‘You think knights grow on mulberry trees?’
He pointed to the ground and shoved Henry to his knees on the straw of the kennel. The Duke snatched a leather switch from a groom who was chastising unruly hounds. ‘I’ll knight you right now!’ he said and smacked Henry hard on each shoulder, and then across the face. ‘You know how I won my knighthood? I impressed the Lion! He summoned me – I was your age – and he questioned me for an hour. Then he took me boar hunting. I had to make the kill alone, on foot, with a spear. When I’d taken its tusks he said, “You’ll do. I’ll knight you, and you can have her.” ’
He stood back, a look of disgust on his face, while Henry remained kneeling, his mouth slightly agape. His mother had whipped him often, but in his whole life his father had neither mocked nor struck him. He felt he had never met this man who loomed above him; whose green eyes, usually laughing and sly, were ferocious, hard, contemptuous and ruthless. This was the other face of the Duke of Normandy. This was the man who had inherited little but through cunning and courage had won much. As if he read his son’s thoughts Geoffrey added, ‘I earned my title and estates.’
Henry’s eyes filled with tears. ‘Papa!’ he gasped.
‘Papa!’ Geoffrey minced a
t him. ‘Have I forced you into marriage with some heifer whose dowry would pay for my garrison in the Vexin? No! Have I forced you to do anything but study? No! Have I taught you horsemanship, swordsmanship, hunting, hawking and swimming? Yes! Have I taught you good sense, family honour and filial duty? Not very well, it seems.’
The bitch hounds cringed against the straw. Those suckling stopped their milk, bringing feeble squeals of protest from their speckle-bellied pups.
The kennel groom judiciously stepped outside.
His son tried again, ‘Am I of such little value to you, Father –?’
‘Shut up! Don’t try twisting my feelings for you. You’re a disgrace.’ Geoffrey turned away, pale with anger and self-reproach. He wanted to say, ‘Henry, I lifted you onto a horse before you could walk. I played tossing a ball to you. As soon as you were competent I took you to the sweetest women to school you in the arts of love. I did everything I wished my father had done for me.’
He said none of this.
‘Henry, you are to become Duke of Normandy before I turn thirty-six. Your days of irresponsibility are over.’ He strode from the whelping kennel.
Outside in the fresh air, the gentle eyes of the hounds and their velvet tongues on his hands and arms calmed his thumping heart. He could hear Henry sobbing inside the kennel.
Geoffrey wandered around, inspecting the hounds’ platform, their water troughs and anything else he could think of. He struck up a conversation with the kennel master. At the master’s whistle, the animals surged back onto their benches where, once settled, they watched the humans so attentively it was difficult not to believe they understood speech. They were creatures of elegant conformation, many sitting with their front paws crossed like well-bred children at a banquet.
In the yard an elm tree grew where small birds annually built their nests, but this year ravens had killed the nestlings. One perched above them now, its sleek black head jerking left and right as it focused a rapacious yellow eye on the humans. ‘Bring a falcon from the mews,’ Geoffrey told the hounds master. ‘There must be one that’s over its moult. We’ll get rid of that thing.’
When the man left, Geoffrey returned to the kennel to check on his son. Henry lay asleep on the straw beside a bitch hound. As the Duke’s shadow fell across his face he opened his eyes and smiled. ‘I was dreaming I was in Scotland,’ he said. ‘My Uncle David made me a royal knight. And I saw …’ His face was as tranquil as the dawn.
The Young Lion Page 4