Xena, Isabella and her daughters watched from above the parapet as the roof of Isabella’s home turned to a sea of flames. Their house and the cathedral were the two largest buildings in Rouen, both made of stone. ‘We’ll re-thatch it,’ Isabella said, ‘and hope the roof beams have held.’
By the following afternoon Louis’s army was marching south. Casualties had been reasonable: each side had lost about thirty men killed and several times that many wounded, but French cavalry losses were higher than those of Normandy and the forfeiture of their arms and warhorses was calamitous. The four captured magnates would remain as Henry’s guests until ransom money was paid. The two Anjevin counts were to go as Louis’s captives to Paris. As was customary, the King allowed them to bid farewell to their liege, a protocol Henry also permitted his captives.
A few days after the battle, when the pain from their bruises and cuts was easing, Henry and his prisoners went hunting together, the French delighted by the abundance of game in Normandy. ‘Had I known how good your hunting is, I’d have fought harder,’ the Baron of Argenteuil told Henry.
Geoffrey was happy the Anjevin counts were going to Paris since one was a trusted friend and spoke langue d’oc. The Old Duke – still the Duke, as far as Louis was concerned – was more alarmed by Normandy’s military losses than Henry was. Had the King not fallen into the trap of a negotiation after the shock of losing his Seneschal, Geoffrey believed, France would have won through its strength of numbers. Two hundred extra infantry and some additional cavalry had been sailing upriver at the very moment Henry stole Louis’s horse.
Without telling Henry, he arranged a conduit for bargaining with France. Baron Richard de Cholet was to convey to Louis that Henry would cede half the Vexin in exchange for a treaty of non-aggression and the King’s recognition of Henry as Duke.
Father and son had argued many times about war strategy and tactics, always arriving at the same impasse: Geoffrey believed in the possibility of defeat. Henry, cautious when preparing for battle and anxious to avoid it if he could, once war was inevitable, became incandescent with one idea: I will win.
In parting from Cholet, Geoffrey gave him a pair of gloves of fine scarlet leather fashioned for small hands. ‘Only if you can deliver them without danger,’ he said.
None of the women in the upper chamber saw their men for four days after the battle. During that time Xena and Maria bathed in hot water and washed their hair repeatedly until the tallow stink rinsed out. Servants laundered their clothes and polished their shoes. But confinement drove them mad. They organised races around the parapet walkway and up the turret stairs. Celine, mother of the older Henry and daughter of a mercenary commander, won almost all their competitions. Xena took out the tiny implements, the sponges, pumice stones and cloths impregnated with fine sand that she had brought from Constantinople. She plucked the women’s eyebrows, polished their nails, buffed the skin on their heels, and with two threads twirled quickly together stripped hair from their legs and under their arms. She said, ‘I can also take it from …’
‘I will! I’m brave!’ Celine announced.
Isabella draped a cloth over the Madonna’s face and her own, but the rest of the women were transfixed, watching how it was done. Celine squealed, more with the thrill of novelty than from pain. She had her father’s iron nerves.
A week after their confinement began, Geoffrey, Henry and Guillaume pounded up the stairs to see them. The men burst into the chamber with shouts of excitement. Servants panted behind them bearing furniture and delicacies for a feast. Such an uproar of embracing and laughter and exclamations over the women’s beauty filled the air, Xena wondered if Matilda herself might hear them. Guillaume’s eye was purple. Henry’s leg had a bandage of herbs, and he limped. Geoffrey’s head was wrapped in linen over the wound on his forehead. They tossed the children in the air, then Guillaume took his girl by the hand and led her to the nearest turret. The Henry mothers, Celine and Adele, did not seem put out when, after a perfunctory hug and a kiss to their foreheads, he left them to be with Xena. He took her outside behind a parapet not far from where they could hear Guillaume making love in the stairwell.
‘When?’ Henry asked.
Xena shrank back. She gave a pant of anxiety. ‘I don’t know if I can.’
He lifted her onto the wall, putting them on eye level. ‘I fought every minute with you in my heart. I had the fire of a lion in me. I was fighting for you! You alone! I was in ecstasy.’ He stood back, looking at her. ‘It’s irrevocable,’ he said.
What’s irrevocable, she wondered. Then she realised: in his mind I’m his booty. He’s won me, through courage.
She could not convey what she felt: that he overwhelmed her, that the men she’d grown up with would never touch the doubleheaded axe she’d one day seen him swinging at an imaginary head. ‘I’ve never known a man so rough and brutish, but so utterly to cherish,’ she murmured. ‘You kill people. For some reason you’re still wholesome to me.’ She looked abashed. ‘Your body smells beautiful,’ she added.
‘You love me, Xena!’ he exulted. He kissed the inside of her wrist; he covered her neck with kisses. She wanted to pull away but behind her was a drop of two hundred feet. Between kisses he said, ‘There’s good news. Mother’s leaving tomorrow or the day after. Say you love me.’
‘I love you,’ she murmured.
‘Give me your mouth.’
When their kiss ended Xena felt she had awoken from a deep sleep. ‘When?’ she asked.
He dropped his head against her shoulder and she felt tears running down her neck. ‘Soon. Soon. I weep with happiness.’
Inside the chamber dinner was served. At last, after so many meals taken sitting on the floor, the women could sit on stools at a table. The men described the battle to them, Henry’s trick with the crossbowmen and their new wealth in horses and arms. ‘I’m out of debt,’ Henry said. ‘Paid every sou I’ve owed for four years. And my Jews love me more than ever – their warehouses burned down, but they were empty and they saved all their ships.’
They drank a toast, and another. Then two more. Celine could drink like a man and urged them to keep up with her. They banged their bowls on the table after each toast – until Isabella ordered the servants to stop pouring wine and whispered they were to find wetnurses to feed the babies. Celine left to nap on a floor mattress. The other mothers joined her.
‘Thank God!’ said Geoffrey. ‘I thought she’d drink me under the table.’ Xena had noticed earlier in the meal he was less triumphant than his sons. ‘Louis refuses to recognise Henry as Duke,’ he said, ‘because my darling boy refuses to give him the Vexin.’
Xena, intoxicated with Henry and tipsy from wine, said, ‘I can suggest a solution.’ The others stopped chattering. ‘You could do a double trade. We call it “pushing down”. First, trade the Vexin for the dukedom. So Henry becomes Duke. Then trade with Louis for the Vexin. My uncle, who sold horses, used to do that. It takes a while, but you’ll end up with the dukedom and the Vexin.’
‘I told you!’ Henry said. ‘Xena’s brilliantly clever. Didn’t I tell you, Guillaume?’
‘Many times,’ Guillaume said.
Geoffrey, always cautious in Isabella’s presence not to betray how he first met the girl, listened carefully. ‘You’re from the Greek merchant class, Xena,’ he said, ‘and indeed, merchants are often wiser than we of the baronage when it comes to these issues –’
‘We should marry them,’ interjected Guillaume. Geoffrey gave him a kick under the table.
‘– but the Vexin is the neck on which Paris sits as the head. He who controls it can strangle France. What have we got that Louis wants, for which he’d trade it?’ Geoffrey asked.
‘Only Anjou, Maine, Normandy – and England next!’ Henry said.
Xena ignored Henry and persisted: ‘The Vexin could become a dowry. Louis has a daughter.’
‘He’s betrothed her to a creepy little count,’ Henry said.
Guillaume said,
‘If he has another daughter, Henry, you could offer him Young Geoffrey. Or little William, and get the Vexin back as dowry. Just as Xena says.’
Henry began to pay close attention. ‘I hear,’ he said casually, ‘the Queen of France is with child again.’
Xena marvelled at the straight faces the men kept, although Guillaume turned pale and mute.
‘When’s it due?’ Geoffrey asked. He sounded bored.
‘September. I wager it’s another girl.’
‘Why do you wager that?’ Isabella asked. She had picked up an undercurrent of tension in the conversation. Her tone was sharp.
‘That marriage is cursed,’ Henry and Guillaume answered in unison.
‘Blood’s too close,’ Guillaume added. ‘Despite what the Pope says.’
‘It’s not that close.’ Isabella turned to Henry. ‘You, for example, are closer in blood to the Queen than Louis is. That’s why Father Bernard forbade a marriage between Henry here and Eleanor’s daughter.’
Henry and Geoffrey both took sharp breaths and looked sideways at Xena.
‘What?’ said Xena.
‘I’d just won Normandy,’ Geoffrey replied in a casual tone. ‘It seemed like a good idea to end warfare between our house and the Capets. But Father Bernard, as Isabella says … Louis is her fifth cousin. Henry’s her fourth.’
‘So what are you, Papa?’ Henry asked.
‘Fourth. Fifth. I’ve forgotten,’ Geoffrey mumbled.
Henry muttered an oath. Xena, seated next to him and holding his hand under the table, suddenly screamed. ‘Something’s bitten my shoe!’ A small, demonic face glared from beneath the tablecloth.
The men were on their feet as fast as hounds to a hare, two to one door, Henry to the other. As Guillaume and his father reached their door a tall young man stepped inside.
‘Do join us, dear boy,’ Geoffrey said. ‘I think you know everyone here. Except, perhaps …’ He looked at Xena. Like all the women inside, she had her hair uncovered, for they were en famille. Black ringlets framed her broad cheekbones and fell in profusion over her shoulders halfway to her waist.
‘My niece from Catalonia, the Baronesa Manuela,’ Isabella said.
‘The Baronesa Manuela,’ Geoffrey the Younger repeated slowly, as if to memorise her name. ‘I had no idea the young ladies of Catalonia are so beautiful. I thought Lady Isabella must outshine them all.’
Geoffrey said, ‘And this, Manuela, is the Empress’s second son, whom she graciously named after me.’
‘How do you do?’ Xena offered stiffly, in Latin.
The boy picked up her hand and bowed over it, his back perfectly straight. His manners were as formal as the stiffest imperial courtier in Paris, but his small greenish-grey eyes did not leave her face. Yellow hair fell to his shoulders in elegant spirals that Xena recognised as curled by a valet. He wore a tunic the colour of red grapes, and round his slender hips a jewelled gold belt. She felt as if her own face had turned as red as his tunic.
‘I wondered at your accent,’ he said, in French.
Guillaume and Henry peered down the stairwells, watching for more visitors. They sauntered back to the table and eyed Young Geoffrey with distaste.
‘I’ll shove that monkey up your arse,’ Henry said.
Hambril had rushed to a corner where he cowered, his eyes darting from one person to another. He seemed in a frenzy of malevolent confusion, calculating which of them to bite next. He ducked and weaved his small round head and made gibbering noises.
The chamber fell silent.
‘Do sit down,’ his father invited.
The youth smirked and answered in Latin. ‘No thank you, Father. I fear I’d spoil the celebration with your family.’
He strolled from the table towards the young mothers, two of whom he chucked under the chin. All three glared at him. With a nod to the rest of the company he turned and left the way he had come. Hambril galloped after him then leaped to his bony shoulder.
‘I’ll kill that animal,’ Henry said.
‘The one with a tail, or the one without?’ Celine called from her resting place.
‘We’ll have another cup of wine,’ Isabella announced.
Geoffrey said to Xena, ‘The boy is very caught up with certain churchmen. He’s at an impressionable age and we fear they are …’
Henry finished his sentence, ‘… turning him into a spy for France.’
That night Maria lay on the floor bedding beside Xena. For a while they held hands. ‘Are you in love with Henry?’ Maria asked.
Xena sighed. ‘He’s so beautiful. Inside.’
Maria said, ‘Young Geoffrey is insanely jealous of Henry. He’ll do anything to cause him trouble.’
‘Like what?’
‘If he discovers Henry’s in love with you, he’ll try to do something to you.’
‘Henry won’t let him,’ she murmured.
‘It’s a sign of true love you trust Henry so much,’ Maria whispered. But Xena was already asleep.
The men, including the whole garrison, attended a victory Mass in the castle chapel before the Empress set out for Barfleur in a coach. She was vigorous enough to ride but a coach, although uncomfortable, was more impressive. Its curtains displayed the white unicorns of Scotland, which Matilda considered more refined than her father’s roaring lion. Three years earlier, when Henry had returned from his misadventure in England and insisted the lion was to be his own standard, she had argued with him. Matilda maintained that since she was entitled to use the unicorn, and King David had knighted Henry, it was proper for him to adopt that creature for his coat of arms. ‘Until you actually do something,’ she’d said.
‘When I do, I’ll make the lion rampant!’ he’d shouted at her.
Despite Young Geoffrey’s protests that at fifteen he was old enough to stay, Matilda insisted he accompany her and the younger children to Barfleur. ‘There are lots of horrible things that happen after a battle,’ she said. ‘The garrison is allowed to get drunk and bring low women into the barracks. And they have to boil the bodies, and bury other ones, and there are all those men with wounds …’
‘Most of that has already happened,’ Young Geoffrey objected. ‘The stink!’
‘Precisely. It’s not healthy for you children.’
Despite the stink, Young Geoffrey had watched with fascination as the headless Baron was boiled until his flesh fell away and servants with hooks hauled his bones from scummed brown water, wrapped them in white linen and placed them in a basket. The bones were despatched to his widow, accompanied by formal letters of condolence from the Dukes. Both wrote of the Seneschal’s bravery and his loyalty to France and the King. Henry added, ‘I killed your husband, Baroness. He died instantly, without humiliation or pain. I hope you can come to peace with me one day.’
The Dukes watched the bones loaded onto a cart before they turned indoors to a small chamber on the ground floor furnished with some old couches, comfortable chairs and a writing desk. It was among the most intimate spots in the palace; something about it encouraged relaxation and thought. It had a window that looked out onto the stables’ courtyard, giving a good view of the horses. Both father and son found it soothing to watch the animals walking in slow circles around the yard behind grooms while stable boys mucked out their stalls.
Geoffrey sighed. ‘Peace. If only we could live with hearts at peace.’
He’s pining for the Queen, Henry thought. To distract him he said, ‘You told me the Baroness was pleasant when you met a few years ago.’
His father’s mood lightened. ‘If I’d persisted she would’ve lain with me. But she lived down in Burgundy and had no idea what was going on at court. Who told you the Queen is with child?’
‘The page we have. He got it from a palace cook whom a Greek physician ordered to prepare special food. For a boy. Yours? Or Louis’s?’
‘I have no idea. It torments me. I’m sure it torments her. And that thought torments me further.’
Papa, Henry
thought, our plan was to get a well-placed spy inside the palace. Not put an heir inside the Queen. He said, ‘A son in September will have France at our throats before the Feast of Michaelmas.’
He dumped himself onto a couch and dropped his head in his hands. After the elation of winning a war, spirits always sank – for days, even weeks. ‘Our English allies are on the point of giving up. Not one English fleece has arrived in Antwerp because the wool merchants are too frightened to go to England to buy. The tin and copper mines are closed. There’s no law. There’ll be famine next year. I’ll win a country of paupers.’
Geoffrey groaned. ‘I only wanted to lie with Eleanor to get us a spy of the first rank. It even occurred to me that she was a decoy for an ambush by Suger. But I thought: Death or Glory.’ He added, ‘Now I want to die.’
‘Papa! Don’t say that.’
‘Henry, I do want to die. The only reason to stay alive is to hold her in my arms again.’
‘Hold me,’ Henry said. As in boyhood, he came and sat on his father’s lap and put his arms around Geoffrey’s shoulders.
‘What’s happened to us?’ Geoffrey asked. ‘We loved our comrades in battle – and our families, sometimes. We didn’t expect to love our wives, although some husbands were lucky. We lay with women for sport. Now everything’s upside down. The troubadours’ songs about love. All the new shrines to the Virgin and the Magdalene. The world has changed … Henry, you’re breaking my legs.’
Henry stood up. ‘Mother says I’m thin.’
‘We’re all as lean as hounds; you, me, Guillaume. Now your mother’s gone I can spend a month with Isabella. I’ll just lie in bed with her and eat honey. Where are Celine and Adele?’
‘I sent them home.’
For the first time in days Geoffrey laughed. ‘So, after nine weeks under siege, the Castle of Xena will surrender?’
The Young Lion Page 19