The Spirit and the Flesh

by Boyd, Douglas

  The bedclothes thrust back, he felt against his naked body the velvet of her garment and tried gently to undo the waist. It would not come undone, but the top was open and the breasts were free and thrusting at him urgently. He caressed them, feeling their soft fullness and the swift hardening of nipples that invited his lips. As he took them in his mouth, another moan of pleasure as his face was crushed against her breasts so hard that he could barely breathe. Her fingers explored the back of his neck, feeling for the scar behind the ear and slipping down his spine, kneading the flesh over his shoulder blades.

  Slowly at first but with increasing urgency, they explored each other’s bodies in the dark. And then her lips found his again and bore him back into the pillows. Her hair fell over his face, her perfume was in his nostrils. They rolled, first one on top and then the other, touching, exploring and tantalising with lips and hands, Merlin was surprised by her aggression as she straddled him and raised his hands to cup her breasts, then sank down on his belly, impaling herself, spreading the skirt and burying him in folds of velvet. Her restless fingers explored his face, his neck, his chest, his arms, like a blind person trying to ‘see’ a statue.

  He felt her lift herself, pulling the garment off, then her nakedness covered him, her nails raked the skin of his ribs and found his nipples, to pluck them in time with the thrusting of her belly muscles, raising Merlin to a peak of sensation he had never known before.

  Each time he approached climax, she stilled him artfully and then commenced again with kisses and caresses, thrusting her body against his fingers, his mouth, his chest, his belly. And when at last he groaned aloud, it was with pleasure spiced with pain from her nails raking his chest as she rode him to a small death in ecstasy.

  Chapter 8

  ‘You’re winning,’ said Queen Eleanor.

  ‘I always win,’ King Henry lifted her second bishop off the board.

  They were alone in the queen’s apartments of Salisbury Tower. A huge fire of oak logs burned in the wide hearth but the high-ceilinged room was cold. The king was drinking mulled wine which Eleanor had prepared the moment she heard the commotion late at night in the castle courtyard. During the long years of her confinement, that meant only one thing: the arrival of England’s unpredictable king and his hard-riding court to pay respects to the queen he kept in prison.

  The royal couple had exchanged greetings and fenced awhile as they always did: Henry wanting a favour in the lands that were hers across the Channel; Eleanor trading it for a privilege in return. Then they settled to a game of chess, which was one of the king’s passions, as Eleanor knew well. Outside her windows, the hubbub of horses’ hooves, shouts and the creak of wagons continued as the last stragglers from the king’s baggage train arrived and men fought with words and sometimes blows to find food and rest before the restless king’s fancy should be to leave again, which might be in an hour or not for three days.

  ‘I always let you win,’ she smiled.

  With an oath, he rose and leaned over the board to menace her. ‘I win, Madam, because I’m the better player. I’m a king. If I can’t play chess on a board after playing it daily across a kingdom with living bishops, knights and real castles, who can?’

  Henry swept her ivory pieces from the board inlaid with aromatic woods and mother of pearl. They fell and scattered on the stone flagged floor. He stomped heavily across the room to the fireplace, bandy-legged from spending more time in the saddle than on his own feet.

  ‘It’s an interesting philosophy,’ Eleanor followed him and poured more wine into his cup. Baiting her husband’s volatile Angevin temper was still her favourite sport. ‘And who taught you the game, Henry?’

  ‘You did.’ He watched her suspiciously over the rim of his cup. ‘But many a pupil comes to out-fight the man who taught him sword play.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, looking meek for a moment as she put the jug down close to the fire. ‘Of course you won. Or you had my queen trapped, which comes to the same.’

  ‘I’m good at trapping queens,’ he laughed.

  It was perhaps a cue. Eleanor never let one pass. ‘You’ve had me locked up here for long enough, Henry,’ she pleaded. ‘Fifteen years is a lifetime for a woman past sixty. By now you’ve made your point, so let me go. I’ll give you promises to cause no more trouble, in England or in France.’

  ‘I’ll keep you here until you die,’ he growled.

  ‘You’re making yourself look ridiculous.’ She laughed at him, the humble posture thrown away like a pawn that cost nothing. ‘I’m an old woman, a grandmother, and you treat me as though …’

  ‘Haven’t you heard?’ Henry came close to give himself the pleasure of his own reflection in Eleanor’s wide, unblinking eyes. ‘Those I hold dear are more precious than gold, so I lock them up securely. And since you are my queen, and thus the dearest of all my subjects, you must be guarded best of all.’

  ‘Divorce me then and free yourself from this onerous chore.’

  ‘Never!’ he laughed. ‘Even at your age, once free you’d roam Europe and set all the dogs in Christendom at my throat! No, by God, that was poor stupid Louis’ greatest mistake. To be rid of a wife who was a pain in the arse, he let you go. But though I’d piles and ten of you to grieve my backside each time I climb into the saddle, I’ll keep you wife until you die.’

  ‘You’ll die first, Henry.’

  ‘I wouldn’t give you the pleasure.’

  ‘There won’t be any,’ said Eleanor. ‘I’ll mourn you with more tears than the little whore you keep at Woodstock. From what I hear, her bed will not long be cold after you’re gone.’

  Henry flinched as though she had hit him. ‘You didn’t know then that she’s dead, my Rosamund?’

  ‘Poor Rosamund,’ she mocked. ‘Dead in that pretty bower you built her at Woodstock – your palace of love? And you couldn’t bring yourself to tell me? Oh Henry, how cruel for you, to lose your one true love.’

  ‘Aye,’ he mocked her mockery. ‘Poor Rosamund is dead. You knew, you bitch. You always know everything, no matter how I keep you close-confined. You have spies that work for you yet.’

  ‘I have no spies. I’m an old woman, abandoned and forlorn.’

  ‘You?’ the king laughed at her denial. ‘No spies, you say? Then, by God, you’re a witch.’ He dragged her to the narrow, glazed window, thrusting Eleanor’s face into the moonlight. ‘Did you know that people say you fly on moonlit nights to rut with the devil at Stonehenge, you old hag?’

  ‘Have they seen the horns?’ Eleanor asked, ignoring the pain where he gripped her arm so viciously. ‘And if they did, horns don’t make a devil. You should know, Henry. I put horns on you times enough and still you came back for more, till you grew tired of me and took … Who was the first, Henry? Was it Alais, that poor child you bedded when she was but one week past her twelfth birthday? Say, where is the Princess Alais now? Do you still keep her locked up somewhere too, Henry?’

  ‘I must,’ the king growled. ‘Who marries Alais, gets her dowry of the Vexin, and that’s a piece of land I must have, to keep the French king uneasy in his bed.’ He drained his cup and pulled a fur mantle over his shoulders.

  To detain him, Eleanor said, ‘You’re never sure about me, are you, Henry? Whenever your court is within a day’s ride, you come to visit me, to make certain I’m still securely locked up here in Salisbury Tower.’

  ‘I come to see you because I still care,’ he said. He reached for the queen’s arm again, but this time in a half-caress. ‘If you hadn’t set my sons against me in rebellion, I’d not have locked you up, though you goaded me beyond endurance, as you always did.’

  ‘Come now.’ Eleanor touched his face. Her voice softened. ‘I made you what you are, Henry. And you’re not so ungrateful as to overlook that, whatever I’ve done since.’

  ‘You witch! You bitch!’ he laughed, letting go of her. ‘God made me king, not you.’

  ‘I made you king, not God,’ she contradicted. �
��The throne of England is not your Plantagenet birthright, Henry. If I had not chosen you, you’d still be the Count of Anjou, a mere vassal of my sometime husband Louis of France. It was my dowry of Aquitaine and Poitou, added to your own possessions, that tipped the balance and gave you the advantage over the other claimants to the English crown.’

  ‘I’ve ridden far today,’ he yawned. ‘You take advantage of a man who’s tired.’

  Eleanor stood looking down at the chessmen he had spilled in his tantrum. ‘My dowry won you England,’ she repeated. ‘As it was your queen that won the game for you tonight.’ She stooped swiftly and picked the piece up off the floor, holding it in front of him. ‘Do you remember, Henry, when first I taught you this game that I had learnt from the Saracen in the Holy Land? In those days, the pieces all had Oriental names.’

  The king was wary of her now. ‘So I recall,’ he grunted.

  ‘Shakh mat we called the game then. It means in Persian, The king is dead. But this piece …’ She held the queen in front of his eyes and rolled it between thumb and fingers as the tired king watched through narrowed lids.

  ‘This piece was then called firz, Henry,’ she continued smoothly, lulling him with her voice that was still musical when she chose to make it so. ‘The Saracens said it was the chess king’s vizier or adviser, and so exempt from all the laws that bind the lesser pieces. Only thus can it outmanoeuvre all threats to the king and secure the final victory for him.’

  ‘What’s in your head, woman?’

  ‘Firz,’ she said. ‘Which in French was mis-translated to vierge, the virgin. It sounds similar, but it was hardly a good name for the most dynamic piece on the board, was it, Henry? What blushing virgin could be allowed to unhorse a knight or deprive a bishop of his see as this piece does? On no, you men could not have that! So now, a scant three decades later, what’s it called, Henry?’

  ‘You’re mad.’ The king pulled his cloak together across his chest and then heaved the oaken door open. A guard on the other side went to help and was pushed violently out of the way.

  ‘Am I?’ Eleanor called after Henry. ‘I should be, after thirty years of marriage to you and half of that in prison.’ Before the guard could close the door, she hurled the chess piece at the king. It struck him on the crown of the head where the grizzled hair was thin and fell to the floor.

  Henry turned and gave her a look of such fury that Eleanor thought he was coming back into the room to strike her. The calloused hands that held the reins of state and of the most spirited horses in the kingdom clenched on empty air. His steel-shod heel slammed down on the stone floor, just missing the ivory chess piece which skidded sideways to safety between the feet of a second guard who had remained motionless throughout.

  ‘Now it’s called the queen, isn’t it?’ she shouted.

  Through clenched teeth, Henry growled, ‘You drive me to distraction, you old whore!’

  ‘I haven’t finished,’ she shouted. ‘That piece you cannot crush beneath your heel is now called "queen" after your Queen Eleanor, o husband mine! And why? Because I made the moves no one else in Europe could dream of, divorcing the King of France to marry Count Henry of Anjou and make him King of England and half of France.’

  Eleanor’s voice rose to a scream, pursuing the king’s retreating back along the echoing corridors so that he clamped his hands over his ears to kill the sound: ‘So I made you king, not God, Henry. Remember that until you die, you ungrateful bastard!’

  *

  Jay sat up in bed, her pulse racing. There was perspiration on her forehead and running down the cleavage between her breasts and more moistness between her legs. But the dream from which she had just woken had been no erotic fantasy. The images growing fainter as she stared panicking into the darkness of Merlin’s bedroom were of a chess board violently overturned and her own face bathed in moonlight, with a man hurting her. And in her ears was still the echo of a voice that Jay recognised now. It was the same voice that had shouted, just before the door slammed shut at Canterbury, ‘Damn Becket!’ As the dream faded, she felt Merlin move in the bed beside her.

  Drowsily he asked, ‘You all right?’

  She did not reply but stayed still until his regular breathing told her he was asleep again. A thin strip of light from the corridor was coming under the door. Using it to orientate herself, Jay got quietly out of the bed and returned to her own room, where she was asleep again as soon as she lay down.

  *

  ‘It gives me no pleasure to see you here, Marshal.’ Queen Eleanor spoke coldly. She pursed her lips and looked at the battle-scarred face of William the Marshal. The man she had once thought more handsome than any troubadour now bore on his face and hands the marks of many combats. He held his left arm awkwardly from a wound of years before and walked with a slight limp. Yet he was still, in the words of a king not given easily to praise, ‘the finest warrior in Christendom’ and ‘the only man I trust’.

  William bowed his head and knelt on the cold flagstones before the queen.

  ‘Rise,’ she commanded. ‘I hear that you’re to be my new custodian, so why behave like a page boy? Hypocrisy doesn’t become you, of all people.’ She handed the royal warrant back to him. ‘This makes you the new constable of Salisbury Tower, and thus my keeper.’

  ‘It is an onerous but not an honourable task,’ he said. ‘I’ve little liking for it, Madam, as the king well knows.’

  Eleanor sighed and then, unable to conceal her eagerness, asked, ‘What news from Winchester? What are the new rules the king imposes?’

  ‘You may go out riding each day.’

  ‘Ah,’ she breathed. ‘So Henry’s kept his word. It’s years since I felt a horse beneath me or breathed air that didn’t smell of damp stone.’

  ‘And I’m to accompany you, whenever you set foot outside the castle walls.’

  ‘As my gallant squire, William?’

  ‘As your jailer. Should you escape, my life is forfeit.’

  ‘You’ll live,’ she said dryly, then caught at the chainmail sleeve of his hauberk. ‘And may I have music? The king did promise that too.’

  ‘You may summon troubadours and musicians from France for your pleasure, Madam.’

  Eleanor turned to her lady-in-waiting. Her face was transformed, radiant as that of a woman twenty years younger. ‘Did you hear? We may have music and poetry again. We shall be alive, albeit living in a tomb.’

  ‘One thing I tell you straight,’ the marshal interrupted. ‘I have strict orders from the king’s own mouth. Should these musicians and poets be also spies from Prince Richard – should they be singing for your ears prettily couched messages disguised as songs, for example – they’ll lose both their tuneful tongues and their amorous eyes before I let them quit these shores again.’

  ‘There are no spies,’ said the queen.

  ‘The king says that there are.’

  ‘He hopes there are.’ Eleanor could not resist teasing bluff, honest William. ‘It’s less worrying than the other possibility. What do the people say, William?’ She led him to the window, with the view over the rolling hills to the distant city. ‘Do the loyal townsfolk of Salisbury believe I’m kept informed by spies, or that I can talk to the birds that fly so free?’

  The old warrior met her eyes unflinching. ‘They say you’re a witch, my queen.’

  Eleanor looked up into his eyes. She spoke softly: ‘And what do you believe, old warrior? We’ve known each other three decades, nay more, so speak freely.’

  ‘You’ve travelled to far countries,’ the marshal said, confining himself as always to facts. ‘That you learnt much of the ancient arts from Saracen and Turk, I doubt not.’

  ‘And does that make me a witch?’

  The scarred face relaxed into a smile. ‘If you can escape from my custody,’ he said, ‘then I’ll know you’re a witch and no mistaking it.’

  ‘Touchée.’ Eleanor smiled.

  As he turned to leave her presence, she held him with: �
�I greeted you uncivilly just now, William. Forgive me. It’s not a fault that you are Henry’s loyal servant. If you were my man, you’d serve me just as well.’

  ‘Aye.’ The newly appointed constable of Salisbury Tower lifted his queen’s hand to his lips. ‘And with more joy in one day than in a year of my service to King Henry.’

  Eleanor held him for a moment with her eyes, seeing again the handsome young squire that had been William on the day he won his spurs by saving her from an ambush by a minor noble with aspirations to rape. It had been shortly after the marriage with Henry, when she would have been a valuable prize indeed. Heedless of personal danger, the unbelted squire had drawn his sword and ridden alone straight at the blocking party which included several knights and a small posse of men at arms. Secure in their numerical superiority, they had laughed at the untested youth and let him approach too near. While Eleanor watched, William had fought as though possessed. Sparing no thought for his own safety, he hacked several men to death and put the rest to flight single-handed. It had been a feat of arms for which even so jealous a husband as Henry could not refrain from awarding the knight’s spurs.

  But it was not the public accolade that Eleanor recalled now, rather the scene when they were alone after the ambush. During the combat, her small retinue of followers had fled the field, leaving her and William to confront the danger alone. She had drawn a dagger from her girdle, determined to draw blood before submitting to the inevitable, then quietened her nervous horse and watched the young hero risk his life in a dozen combats, one after the other, until her would-be ravishers were all put to flight.

  Bleeding from several wounds, William had ridden back to her and wheeled his panting, sweating horse round inches from hers. Whatever words they had exchanged meant nothing by comparison with the burning passion in his eyes that said: I would do all this again a thousand times if it would prove my love for you. His passion had been the more arousing for Eleanor because it was unspeakable. In her rich and varied life, many nobles, princes and troubadours had written poems and songs in honour of her beauty, protesting their affections for her, but the look in William’s eye that day had been the yardstick by which she measured all their protestations of love and found them wanting.