by Speer, Flora
Now Lionel sat up too.
“This evidence of your virginity,” he said, indicating the splotches of blood on the sheet between them, “is proof that our marriage was consummated, all that was needed to make it completely legal. I have now fulfilled the bargain made by my father with yours. There will be no next time.”
“I don’t understand.”
“No, I don’t suppose you do.” Lionel looked tired, the ruddiness gone out of his face.
“Most noble marriages are made the way ours was,” Isabel said, “so that husband and wife are strangers when they come together, but they usually manage to live peaceably with each other. Why cannot we? You will need an heir, my lord.”
“If there is a child born of this night’s coupling, well and good. If not, Guy remains my heir.” Then Lionel added, so low she could just hear him, and with an astonishing amount of venom, “That should displease my parents enough, I think.”
She gaped at him, not certain she had heard him aright. Both his parents were dead. Why should he try to displease them now? Why displease them at all? Then the full meaning of his words struck her. This man was refusing to be her husband in fact.
“You have a duty to me!” Isabel exclaimed, insulted anger tearing at her. She would not accept a mere marriage in name. She had done her part, now Lionel owed her more than this cold treatment. It was her right to bear the child who would be the next heir to Adderbury. “You cannot deny me my wifely rights. I will tell my father.”
He caught her golden hair, pulling it hard, hurting her, and made her look at him. Her husband’s handsome face swam before her, blurred and distorted by the tears of humiliation and rage filling her eyes.
“You,” Lionel told her, his voice a dangerous, husky whisper, “will say nothing to anyone of what has happened here tonight, or of what we have said. Do you understand? One word, one murmur, and I will kill you and say it is because you have been unfaithful to me, and I’ll see to it that your entire family, even to distant cousins, suffers disgrace because of you. I can do it. You must have noticed how King William favors me.”
She believed him. She trembled before the barely repressed violence of this terrifying husband of hers. She was too frightened by him to realize that the fury and the pain she was too innocent to see in his eyes were in part directed against himself. She nodded in silent acceptance of his terms. Lionel released her and looked at the stain on the sheet.
“That will separate us,” he said. “You on your side, I on mine. For the next few nights, to avoid offending your father, whose knightly valor I respect, and to make clearer the validity of our marriage, I will sleep here, as any bridegroom would, but I promise I will not touch you again. Afterward, I’ll sleep elsewhere. No one will remark it. Many husbands and wives at this court live separate lives.”
“You will not send me away from court?” she begged, hoping to salvage that much at least of her shattered dreams. She thought she would die if she were to be shut up in a gloomy castle somewhere far from all society.
“No.” Lionel propped himself on one elbow to look appraisingly at her. “You can be more useful to me here. You have a taste for luxury, I think. I remarked your gown and jewels today. I have many gifts the king has given me in recompense for my careful attention to his desires, gifts it would suit me ill to wear in public until my position is more secure. But you, my dutiful wife, could easily display such finery. It would flatter and please the king, and everyone else would think I am a doting husband. Yes, you will stay at court, Isabel. We will make a most amusing pair. If, in the future, you become boring, I can always send you off to Adderbury. For now, I will keep you close by my side, dear wife.” Lionel lay down again and composed himself for sleep.
“Don’t forget to put out the candles,” he said.
Chapter 5
The most surprising thing Isabel discovered about her new life at the English court was that she was not entirely unhappy. Thrown completely on her own resources for the first time in her life, separated from familiar sights and friends, unable to speak freely to her servants any more, she ought to have been miserable. Strangely, she was not. Her girlish dreams of marital bliss with a noble knight were gone, but there were compensations.
Lionel treated her like some fascinating new toy, draping her in golden necklaces and rings and jeweled girdles, and dressing her in rich clothes. Her gowns were made in the latest, slightly laced style, against which priests from their pulpits had thundered denunciations and threats that the ladies wearing such garments were doomed to eternal damnation for corrupting the minds of mortal men. Isabel merely shrugged at clerical displeasure. The new gowns were not uncomfortable, they barely grazed her waist in spite of the laces on either side, and since she was slender and likely to remain so – her one unhappy experience of copulation having no consequences other than a reluctance to try it again – she wore the dresses Lionel chose for her and laughed at more conservative ladies. Lionel liked her to parade her clothes and jewels in public. It was the one way she could please him, and when he was pleased he gave, or rather lent, to her even more luxurious baubles.
Maintaining the public appearance of a normal marital relationship was a strain at first, requiring a good deal of adjustment on Isabel’s part. She had never before had to pretend to be happy, but now she had to choose each word she spoke carefully and guard all her gestures and her facial expressions. She proved to be surprisingly good at dissimulation, never revealing to anyone that there was aught wrong between herself and Lionel.
It was easier after her father left the court to return to Brittany. She said goodbye to him with many tears, knowing she would very likely never see him again and yet glad to have him go. With his sharp, too-familiar eyes gone, she could relax a little. She was certain Sir Fulk was unaware of the nature of the man to whom he had given his beloved daughter, and after Lionel’s threats on their wedding night, Isabel dared not reveal the truth to her father.
From remarks overheard from spiteful courtiers, both male and female, Isabel had quickly discerned her husband’s true relationship to the king. She was horrified and disgusted, but there was nothing she could do about it. Lionel was her lord and master, and she his chattel, and if she confronted him with her new knowledge, he would send her away to Adderbury.
“Sir Lionel no longer sleeps with you. I hear he has his own room now, though gossip says he seldom spends a night there.” That was Lady Aloise, a dark-haired beauty just a few years older than Isabel, whose aged husband, Sir Stephen of Dol, had been an advisor to William the Conqueror. Lady Aloise had stepsons ten years and more older than she was. “Consider yourself fortunate, my dear Isabel. Sir Stephen is virtually useless in bed, but he insists on joining me every night. He snores. At least you are able to rest peacefully.”
Isabel did not know what to say. She had not yet grown accustomed to the outspokenness of most courtiers. In her pious father’s castle, everyone, particularly the womenfolk, had behaved with great decorum.
“You know, of course,” Aloise went on, laughing a little at Isabel’s obvious confusion, “That you need not always lie alone if you do not wish it. Lionel may not care to serve you as a man should, but there are others here who would be most willing, if only you would encourage them a little. Just look around the hall at this very moment, and chose whom you will. Here comes Sir Richard, for example. He thinks you are beautiful beyond compare.” Aloise smiled at the heavy-set, homely man as he passed them on his way to speak to the king, and then smiled more broadly at Isabel’s expression. “Well, perhaps not Sir Richard.”
“I do not want a man.” Isabel would have left Aloise, but she caught Isabel’s arm and held her.
“Don’t go. I thought you liked Sir Richard. You are always so polite to him. Let us be friends, Isabel.” Aloise’s dark eyes probed Isabel’s face. “How strange you are, so bland and pleasant, and yet I think you have secrets. You never show what you are thinking. Was bedding Sir Lionel really so bad?”
“I will not discuss such private matters with you or anyone.” Isabel tried unsuccessfully to free her arm from Aloise’s tight grasp.
“We should not quarrel, Isabel. My husband was a close friend to the old king and still has a good deal of influence with this one. He might be useful to Sir Lionel.”
“You are right.” Isabel linked arms with the woman, and, changing the uncomfortably intimate subject, began chatting lightly about gowns and the silly capers of the king’s jester, but she guarded every word she spoke to Aloise. She knew she could never let down that guard. She had promised Lionel to be silent about their marriage and she would keep her promise.
Isabel threw herself into the riotous Christmas celebrations, attending all of King William’s banquets and numerous hunts, although she did not really care for hunting, especially in very cold weather. She would rather have stayed behind and kept warm by a blazing fire, but she did not want Lionel to be angry with her or think she was boring. She wanted to remain at court, where all was light and luxury and at least presented the appearance of great pleasure, and therefore she exerted every effort to amuse Lionel.
He admired her tall, almost boyish slenderness, and so she ate very little, growing even more slender. She knew she drank too much at the never-ending feasts, but wine gave her ease. She made a game of preferring only the finest Rhenish wines, served in special silver goblets. Lionel was delighted. No one else at court had a wife so knowledgeable about the various foreign wines, who made such a ceremony about serving them, or insisted so prettily that it was all to please her brilliant husband, who had taught her everything she knew on the subject. It set Lionel apart, made him seem special, and when King William joined the game and began making a great fuss about his own wines, the costly Rhenish beverage became all the rage at court.
Isabel knew all of King William’s nobles and their ladies, but she had no real friends, for there was no one in whom she would dare confide. The courtiers were constantly gossiping or inventing new intrigues, and she trusted none of them, not even Aloise, with whom she remained on pleasant terms. Aloise worried her.
“You should be more careful,” Isabel said to her one evening. “You are too free with your smiles and glances. If you offend Sir Stephen and make him jealous, he will send you from court.” Isabel was determined never to offend Lionel in such a way. She felt a chill at the very thought of Adderbury.
“I am not cold like you. I need a man’s attentions,” Aloise replied.
Isabel shook her head in concern. She knew Aloise had lovers. There were few secrets at this court.
“What would you do,” Isabel asked, “if there were consequences?”
“Consequences?” Aloise looked blank for a moment, then understood and began to laugh. “What an innocent you are! There are ways, things one can do to prevent what you call ‘consequences,’ and if they don’t always work, well then, there are certain people who know how to deal with such matters before they become apparent.”
“Aloise, that’s dangerous.” Isabel was thinking of soul as well as body.
“Life is dangerous. And uncertain.” Aloise shrugged. “For men, it is war; for women, lovemaking, for everyone, sickness. I intend to take pleasure in every moment. Who knows what tomorrow will bring? You should take a lover, Isabel.”
“I am content with my marriage.” It was a lie, as Aloise surely knew. Isabel was becoming a good liar. The only person to whom she could speak with even a semblance of honesty was Lionel himself, and she was becoming increasingly dependent upon him and upon the pretense of marital contentment they had created for the world to see. It did not matter whether the world believed them or not, she would defend the illusion with her very life if need be, for bound up in it was all her self-respect and all her newfound, growing ambition. She would not take a lover, but she would do anything else she might to advance Lionel, and thus, herself.
Isabel knew she was changing. As time went on, her concentration on herself and her own daily pleasures became intense. She was frivolous, shallow, and most of all, extravagant. Lionel was pleased.
“You are more entertaining than I had dared to hope you would be,” he told her one day, as she showed him her latest gown. “No, not that necklace, this one. And the other belt. There, that’s much better. You really are quite intelligent, Isabel. I shall be sorry to leave you. I never thought I’d say that about any woman.”
“Leave me? Where are you going?”
“You may as well know, I suppose,” Lionel said. “Everyone will be talking about it by morning, though it was only decided just before I came to see you. Duke Robert has been causing more trouble in Normandy. He wants King William’s men who hold castles in Normandy to do homage to him, rather than to William, who is, Robert says, only a younger brother with a very poor claim to the throne of England. It’s nonsense, of course. The Conqueror clearly stated just before he died that England was to go to William, and Normandy to Robert, and King William cannot allow such an insult to pass unnoticed. We sail for Normandy on Candlemass Day, and I hope to God William puts an end to that unpleasant older brother of his.”
“I will miss you,” she said, surprised to find it was true.
“What, do you care for me, my lady? I think not.” He laughed at her, then looked thoughtful. “There is something you can do for me while I am gone. Isn’t it odd that I trust you? There are few others I can depend upon.”
“I always have your interests at heart, my lord.”
“Say rather that your interest in my position at court coincides with my own. What I am, you are also, my lady. Baroness or countess or perhaps something greater.”
“Just so, my lord.”
“And you have never looked at another man in two whole months of marriage. Considering how most ladies in this palace behave, I find that touching.”
“My one experience of a man did not encourage me to look for more.” The words slipped out without her usual careful consideration before speaking of their non-existent marital relations.
“Be careful, my dear.” Lionel raised a cautionary finger. “Do not irritate me, or it is Adderbury for you.”
Isabel had learned that the best thing to do when Lionel began to be annoyed with her was change the subject.
“You said there is something you wanted me to do for you?” she asked.
“Yes. Guard well my interests here at court while I am gone. I will be with William at all times, and I can keep him, shall we say, inclined in my favor, but there are those who are jealous of me. I need you to protect my back, so to speak, when I ride into battle. Let me know at once should any intrigues against me be started here in England. Particularly watch Ralph Flambard. I do not like that man.”
“I will do my best to keep you informed of everything that happens while you are away,” Isabel promised.
“Of course you will. It is for your benefit, too, my dear.” He smiled his beautiful, false smile and left her.
* * * * *
She did miss him. She almost convinced herself that she cared for him and would welcome him home with open arms and a warm bed. She did not know why she felt that way, unless it was anger at the other ladies who repeatedly made sly comments over her slenderness, meaning her flat belly and un-pregnant state. It was a clever, catty way of hurting her for what was an open secret by now: King William’s deep attachment to Lionel.
“Pay no attention to them,” Aloise advised on the day when a particularly sharp-tongued lady had nearly reduced Isabel to tears. “They say the same things to me, but I don’t care.”
“Of course you don’t,” Isabel snapped. “Your husband is too old for them to blame you. But Lionel – how they despise him!”
“They envy him,” Aloise said wisely. “Were the king a different kind of man, any one of those ninnies sitting there embroidering would gladly throw herself into the royal bed to improve her own and her family’s station. Forget them, Isabel. They are unimportant.”
But Is
abel could not forget. The opinions of those ladies did matter to her. Isabel wished, not for the first time, that it were possible to produce a child without help from a man.
The king and his men were gone for eight months, returning to England in September only to make preparations for war against King Malcolm of Scotland, who in William’s absence had crossed the border into northern England.
Lionel had few kind words of greeting for his wife. Not only had King William made peace with his irascible older brother, but Duke Robert and the youngest royal brother, Henry, with whom William had also patched up a quarrel, had both returned to England with him. With the new closeness among these royal brothers, Lionel felt himself slighted and overlooked.
“Damn them!” Lionel threw his wine cup across the room, barely missing Isabel, who sat at the fireside with her embroidery. Lionel flung himself into a chair across the hearth from her and gave her a petulant look from under his thick golden-brown eyebrows. “After all the things I have done for William, for him to treat me so coldly now! How dare he?”
Guy fitz Lionel calmly picked up Lionel’s cup and returned it to the table, where he refilled it before handing it to the sulky older man.
“Brothers should be on good terms,” Guy said quietly. “As you and I have always been.”
Lionel snorted, gulping at his wine.
Isabel turned speculative eyes on her brother-in-law. Guy had gone to Normandy in the king’s company and had returned much changed. She knew he was not yet quite fifteen years old, but he had begun to look more like a man than a boy. His face was harder, his jaw firmer than when she had first known him. The resemblance to Lionel was striking, but there were already indications that Guy would be even more handsome, his features more finely modeled.
“Guy is right,” Isabel observed. “Lionel, I would advise you not to interfere between princes. Besides, you know how changeable William is. He’ll tire of Henry and quarrel with Robert again soon, and then his affection will light on you once more.”