A Place Beyond Courage (10 page)
7
Hamstead, Berkshire, August 1133
John entered the bedchamber and moved smartly aside from the door, allowing two attendants to carry out a large coffer and a weapons chest. Aline sat on a bench watching the activity with a wan and miserable face. Her eyes were heavy-lidded and the delicate skin beneath them was shadowed with blue. The last two mornings she had been sick on rising and queasy for much of the day. It was too early to be certain she was with child, but the symptoms were suggestive.
John picked up his thick cloak from the back of the bench. He didn’t need it now while the summer temperature was vying with the inside of a charcoal clamp, but it would be protection against the stiff breeze mid-channel on the sea crossing, and if the court over-wintered in Normandy, it would be essential.
Aline reached for his hand, her eyes liquid with tears. ‘I don’t want you to leave,’ she sniffled.
John mustered his patience. ‘I must. The King commands my presence in Normandy and I have responsibilities to oversee. I can’t leave them to others. God knows, I’ve delegated enough these past two months. I will return when I can.’
Aline looked at him like a kicked puppy.
‘You can cope,’ he said, his tone brusque with irritation because he felt guilty and because she was being a milksop. ‘Other women do. My mother often had to run Hamstead and Tidworth on her own when my father was away at his duties. You can have your own mother to stay if you wish, you know that.’ He withdrew his hand and used it to cast the cloak over his other forearm. ‘Surely you won’t miss me to that extent? If you speak two words when I’m by, it’s a miracle.’
Aline blew her nose on a screwed-up piece of linen. ‘I feel safe when you’re here,’ she said. ‘I feel protected.’
‘You’ll be protected in my absence. There are knights and serjeants enough to garrison my halls and provide escort should you want to travel. The country is peaceful. Who is going to want to harm you?’ He stared at her in growing perplexity.
She bestowed him another drenched look. ‘I know in my heart nothing bad can happen while you’re here. Crossing the sea is dangerous. You think me ignorant, but I know the story of the
White Ship
and how King Henry’s son and all his courtiers were drowned . . . What if there’s a storm?’
White Ship
and how King Henry’s son and all his courtiers were drowned . . . What if there’s a storm?’
John rolled his eyes. ‘Good Christ, I could walk out of here and a roof tile drop on my head and spill my brains, but that’s no reason to skulk in the bower and never venture outside. I’ve been crossing to Normandy and back with the court since I was fifteen years old and I’m still here to tell the tale. God will do what God will do and the rest is in the hands of a skilled captain and a sound ship, both of which I intend employing.’ With an effort, he swallowed his annoyance. They had been married for two months and he had already discovered she was the kind to allow worries to grow out of all proportion to their size. ‘Besides,’ he said, attempting to lighten the moment, ‘I have a gentle, God-fearing wife to pray for my safekeeping. That must count for something.’ He touched her damp cheek. ‘Will you come down to the bailey and see me on my way?’
Biting her lip, she stood up and came around the bench. John took her hand and kissed it. In truth, he thought, it was going to be a relief to return to the court and a different way of life. One could have a surfeit of innocence. Aline was forever taking herself off to church to confess her sins, foremost among them those of fornication and lust. She would grow upset if he wanted her body on a Sunday, or a saint’s day. She was still shy of being naked before him and would look away rather than see him unclad. She preferred the act of procreation to happen in the dark with chemise and shirt separating skin from skin, and to be over as quickly as possible. John had found it quite stimulating at first, with its reminders of adolescent encounters in hedgerows and desperate fumbles behind hayricks with alehouse wenches. Nevertheless, for an experienced courtier whose appetites these days were more sophisticated, the novelty had soon paled. Added to which Aline would lie under him as passive as a warm corpse and not reciprocate even while she made herself available to him, because then she was doing her duty and not sinning.
The sun beat down on the courtyard like a hammer upon an anvil. John looked at the baggage cart with the three cobs harnessed in line and Walchelin the cook sitting on the driving board, whistling tunefully. The knights and serjeants were assembled and quietly waiting John’s word. Everyone knew his place and duty. The buildings basked complacently in the heat. Amid his satisfaction with such order, John felt as if he was stifling too. There had to be more to life. He could manage all this with his eyes closed. He was only marking time.
He turned to Aline. ‘We are going to have more than this one day,’ he told her as his groom brought his horse. ‘This is only the beginning.’ His voice rang with ambition and its cadence wasn’t for her benefit alone. If the spirits of his parents still lingered within these sun-drenched timbers and stones, he wanted them to hear and to know.
‘Yes, my lord,’ she said meekly and gazed up at him with a mingling of worship and uncertainty. Tears still glinted at her eye corners.
He lowered his gaze to her slender waist. ‘With God’s will and good fortune, your part is already in hand,’ he said.
She blushed and suddenly her delightful, shy smile peeped out. John pulled her to him to kiss her in farewell. Her lips were soft, her body supple against his. If only the rest could be like this.
They were still kissing when one of the knights shouted in alarm. John spun Aline behind him and reached for his sword, but the danger wasn’t physical. The knight was pointing skywards where a dark shadow had begun eating into the disc of the sun, creeping over the courtyard turning everything to twilight.
‘Dear God, Holy Virgin Mother!’ Aline wailed, dropping to her knees. ‘It’s the end of the world!’
John’s heart was still pounding in response to the threat of danger, but his rational mind was in control and he was remembering a late-night discussion at court between himself, one of Henry’s chaplains and Grimbald, the royal physician, who was interested in all manner of phenomena. ‘Enough!’ he snapped. ‘I have never seen such a thing before but I have heard of it. It’s an eclipse; it’ll pass over.’
‘But it’s a sign from God!’
He shrugged, simulating more nonchalance than he felt. The twilight was deepening, washing the world in violet and grey ‘What of it? So are rainbows and thunder-storms. ’
Aline gripped his sleeve. ‘Don’t leave me,’ she entreated. ‘Don’t leave me now. We must go to church and pray!’
‘What?’ He gave her an exasperated look.
‘It’s a sign from God. We must go to church and pray or something terrible will happen, I know it will - my lord, I beg you!’ Her eyes were huge with terror. She clasped her other hand to her belly as if shielding the new life within.
John felt her fingers gripping him hard enough to bruise. Others were panicking, crying, falling to their knees and crossing themselves. Through his impatience, he knew she was probably right. He dare not set out until the eclipse had passed. It might indeed be a sign from God - a portent like the hairy star that had brought his grandfather as a young serjeant from Normandy to England, and on Hastings field had begun the rise of his bloodline. He reminded himself that portents which were evil to some were beneficial to others.
The population of Hamstead decamped to the small timber church of Saint Mary, and there knelt with the village priest, the latter exhorting God not to visit any murrains, plagues or ill fortune on his loyal flock. Aline promised a new cross and a silk cover for the altar. John bit his tongue as he thought of the cost and told himself that it would be good for his own status to provide for the church. If it kept Aline busy and happy, so much the better, and it would honour his mother and father too.
The shadow continued to cross the sun, eventually covering it in a perfect dark disc, like the curfew lid on a banked hearth. Rays of light beamed out from behind the black circle. Standing in the church doorway, staring at the frightening, awe-inspiring sight of the flaming corona like a bright iris ringing the pupil of an eye, Aline still half thought the end of the world might be nigh, or that an angel might suddenly appear. Still with her hand upon her womb, she remembered Mary and the annunciation, then worried that such a thought might be blasphemous and dropped it like a hot cake.
Gradually the shadow passed from the sun. Light dazzled on the left-hand side; colours sharpened; the grass became green again and the red returned to John’s tunic and her gown. Weakness and gratitude swept through her at God’s great mercy. John had been right; it had passed over. Her awe for him increased. She knew she made him impatient at times, but he had yielded to her wishes and gone with her and everyone else to pray. She wanted him to stay but knew now the shadow was gone, he would leave. At least she could begin work on the altar cloth. Even if she didn’t have the silk for it in her coffer, she could prick out a design and experiment with a few stitches.
An hour later, when John kissed her in farewell again, she managed not to cry and cling, although she was still terrified that she might never see him again. It was a struggle, but she bade him Godspeed like a proper wife, her only entreaty being that he write to her and tell her he was safe. He assured her that he would. Searching his eyes, she saw they were both the colour and distance of the horizon, and realised with a pang of bereavement that his mind was already far away.
Aline spent the months of her pregnancy sewing the new altar cloth for Saint Mary’s. She ordered new church furniture for the altar from the goldsmiths on Calpe Street in Winchester. John paid for the refurbishment without quibble and, although he was in Normandy, his agents conducted the transactions with smooth efficiency. Letters arrived via his messengers - usually for his stewards and constables, but there was always a small personal note for her and sometimes a gift - a new ring, a silver brooch, a gold cross set with red spinels. Aline had her scribe write back to him, but didn’t know what to say. Apart from expressing her gratitude for the gifts, giving him sparse particulars concerning her pregnancy and detailed minutiae about the improvements to the church, she left it to the scribe to compose the necessary courtly flourishes. His absence meant she had their bed to herself and didn’t have to worry about the sin of lust, although a few times her dreams had betrayed her and she had awoken with a dull melting ache in her pelvis. On those occasions she had gone to confession and done penance, hoping that she hadn’t been the victim of an incubus.
In late February, John paid a swift visit to Hamstead to see to the business of his estates, but since it was Lent, he slept apart from her. Besides, she was in her sixth month and, with her slight frame, already as round as the moon. He told her that the Empress Matilda, who was visiting her father, was also with child. ‘But about a month behind you.’
‘How old is her firstborn?’ she had asked as they sat before the fire in their chamber. For once, after a busy day dealing with matters of estate, John was at ease and content to lounge on the bench beside her, drinking spiced wine and contemplating her burgeoning figure with a satisfied air. Aline savoured the moment while worrying what to talk about to keep him interested.
‘Henry will be one year old next month.’ John studied the wine in his cup. ‘To say the marriage had such inauspicious beginnings, they’re making up for lost time now.’
‘I will pray for her.’
He arched one eyebrow but did not follow up on the remark. ‘The King is very taken with his grandson,’ he said, ‘inasmuch as one can be taken by an infant of that age. I can’t say that I’m struck, but then I’m not kin.’ He smiled at her belly. ‘I dare say I’ll dote on my own.’
Aline flushed and gave him an uncertain smile.
‘I look at him and I wonder if he’ll be our next King,’ he mused. ‘Some men say so, but it’s a perilous long way from cradle to throne and who knows what kind of man he’ll make - apart from a red-haired one.’
Aline didn’t know what to say. Red hair was not a good sign in a man or a woman. It spoke of volatile humours and fickle behaviour. She hoped her own baby wouldn’t be born with it.
‘As to his mother . . .’ John grimaced and tossed the lees on to the fire where they hissed and steamed. The sudden move made Aline squeak with surprise. ‘Well, let us hope men are never called upon to uphold the oath they were forced to swear to her,’ he said, and his words had been the end of the quiet time, for after that he had grown restless and had gone to walk the defensive perimeter of the manor with the dogs.
On a fine morning in early May, Aline went into labour. At the onset of her travail, she was afraid but strangely resolute. The bible said that the pain was a punishment for Eve’s sin, and thus she knew she was fulfilling God’s will by suffering it.
Her mother had come to Hamstead for the confinement, and she rubbed Aline’s back while soothing and distracting her with murmured assurances and endearments. A brisk midwife and her assistant were in attendance, and a wet nurse recommended by Sybire of Salisbury had been engaged.
Although Aline’s build was slight, she was supple, and stronger than her thistledown appearance suggested. The midwife was cheerful and had no qualms. Before noon, Aline was bearing down, pushing with all her might to expel the baby from her womb. The pain was bad, but not unbearable, and by focusing on the blessed Saint Margaret and immersing herself in prayer, Aline managed to block out the higher levels.
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