For the King’s Favor (5 page)

The marshal banged his rod on the door, then opened it and ushered her before him into the chamber, his hand firmly but gently at her back, propelling her forward. “Sire, the lady Ida de Tosney.”

Seated on a settle-bench before the hearth, Henry glanced up from a sheaf of parchments loosely stitched together at the top. “Ah,” he said and beckoned to Ida with the hand not holding the documents. “Come, mistress, sit with me.” A nod and a glance were enough acknowledgement to dismiss his marshal who bowed quietly from the chamber. Ida’s gaze flew around the room, but there were no servants; no other guests. She was alone with the King. With great reluctance, she came to perch on the end of the bench and folded her hands in her lap. She wondered if the documents he was perusing were concerned with her wardship. Perhaps he was reminding himself of what she had in dower.

Henry gave her a long look that dissolved her stomach. Setting the documents aside, he rested one arm along the back of the bench and stretched out his legs. She saw that the toes of his boots were scuffed. “There is no need to be afraid of me,” he said. “I won’t hurt you.”

“No, sire.” She pressed her knees together.

He chuckled softly. “You don’t believe me, do you? Your lips say one thing and your eyes are filled with all that you deny…No, don’t look down. You have beautiful eyes, brown as hazelnuts.” He leaned forward and stroked her cheek with his forefinger. “And skin like the petal of a rose.”

“Sire, I…” She tried not to recoil.

“I know what you are thinking. You don’t want to be here, do you?”

Ida swallowed, afraid of saying the wrong thing. She struggled to make her mind work through the paralysis of fear. “The lord marshal said you wanted to talk to me about my wardship?”

“Ah, your wardship.” His hand had moved down to play with her braid. “You are an heiress, Ida. You will have suitors aplenty, keen to get at your lands and take a healthy young wife on which to breed their sons, hmm?”

She flushed at his barnyard forthrightness. “I do not know, sire.”

“Oh, not at the moment, you do not. You have scarcely arrived at court, but soon they will come, and they will be eager. Ralph de Tosney was a man of standing, and your mother was a Beaumont.” He moved his fingers reflectively up and down her braid, but always travelling lower until he reached the tassel at the end which was level with her breast. “You have lands; you have youth, and beauty and innocence. A prize indeed and one I am minded to keep for myself.”

Ida’s gaze widened. She tensed to spring to her feet. “Sire, you would ruin me.”

Henry gave a lazy smile. “Indeed I would, for all other men after me, my dear, but not in the sense you mean. My attention will make you an even greater prize in the eyes of those vying for my wealth and favour.” He indicated a rock-crystal flagon standing on a coffer. “Pour us some wine, there’s a good lass.”

She was glad to escape to the task but her hands were shaking and it was difficult not to spill the wine which was as red and dark as vein-blood. She was aware of Henry’s scrutiny and it made her want to cross her arms over her body.

When she returned to him, he stood up and set his hand over hers. “You would not make a good cup-bearer in the hall,” he said with amusement.

Ida’s chin wobbled. Henry took the wine from her, set it down on a chest, then turned back to her. “Ah, here now, lovely, don’t cry, don’t cry. Hush. It’s all right. I won’t hurt you, I swear I won’t. I only want to…” The last word trailed off as he unpinned the round brooches closing the neckline of her gown and pushed the garment off her shoulders. Then he unplucked the ties of her chemise and did the same again, so that she stood before him, naked to the waist, shivering.

“Sweet,” he said. “So young and innocent and sweet. You do not know what you do to me…”

***

Ida lay in Henry’s bed, her limbs upon scented cool linen, her body covered by soft clean sheets and a coverlet of wine-red silk embroidered with a peacock design. Tears leached from beneath her lids and she swiped them away on the heel of her hand. There was a burning pain between her legs and a dull ache in her pelvis.

Henry sat on the bed, gazing at her with heavy, sated eyes and tenderness in his expression. “Come now,” he said. “No tears. It wasn’t so bad, was it?”

Ida swallowed. “No, sire,” she whispered. The deed itself had been strange and uncomfortable, but she had set her teeth, told herself that this was the King and she had no choice but to obey his will. She had endured and she was still alive—in body at least.

“Then why do you weep? It is a great honour I do you, sweeting. You are like a bride to me; the King’s virgin bride, hmm?” Gently he pushed a strand of thick brown hair away from her face.

“But to me, it seems like dishonour,” Ida found the courage to whisper. “People will look at me and call me whore. My good name is gone. I will not come to my husband a virgin.” She swallowed against the painful tightness in her throat and tears spilled over her lids.

“Ah, sweetheart, no!” Henry gathered her in his arms and brushed her wet face with the side of his thumb. “No one will think that of you. You are mine. You are the King’s, and the King only ever has the best. If anyone dares to cast a wrong glance or missay you, I will have them horsewhipped, but it will not happen, I promise you. Your worry is to your credit, but it is needless. I look after those who are mine to me. You will hold your head high and be proud.”

He made her sit up and brought her wine with his own hands, poured out like blood from the flagon. Then he took a ring from his coffer—not one of the gauds he had been distributing earlier in the day to all and sundry, but a fine piece of jewellery set with a balas ruby the size of a large man’s thumbnail. “Wear this for me,” he said. “And thus people will know the value I set on you, and that you are mine.” He placed it on her heart finger, where a wedding ring should go, and then he kissed her cheek and her mouth.

Feeling the wiry softness of his beard and the slightly damp imprint of his lips, she shuddered.

“Ah, Ida, your power is not knowing you have it,” he said.

When she had finished the wine, he helped her to dress, rolling her silk stockings back up her legs, tying her garters, kissing the soft inside of her thighs above the fastenings and below the smears of blood and semen. He gave her a collar of ermines to wear at her throat as another symbol of his royal possession.

“There,” he said, stroking the fur and then her neck. “That will keep you warm for me until our next meeting.”

Ida was unaware of leaving his chamber, of putting one foot in front of the other as the marshal returned her to the women’s chamber. Goda and Bertrice fussed around her, but she stood like a stone beneath their ministrations and would not speak. All she wanted to do was sleep, to shut out the world and descend into oblivion where she didn’t have to think or feel.

Windsor Castle, September 1176

Four days later, having been summoned by the King twice more, Ida began her flux, and was utterly relieved that Henry’s seed had not taken root. Bertrice, who was knowledgeable about such things, told her to rinse her woman’s passage in vinegar before she went to Henry because it discouraged conception. Ida knew that preventing pregnancy was a sin but in fornicating with the King she was already beyond a state of grace and the notion of quickening with a child filled her with fear and shame.

At first she was wary about leaving her chamber, thinking that everyone would be staring at her with the word “whore” on their lips, but the attention she received although speculative was mostly sympathetic. A few glances were admiring; occasionally there was pity. The King’s officials treated her with deference. If there were smacked lips and knowing gestures, no one did so to her face or in her presence. She was the King’s mistress; she wore his ring on her finger, his ermine at her throat, and, as Henry had said, his interest in her was a bright halo of protection.

More gifts from Henry came her way. Rich cloth for gowns, dainty gilded shoes, hose of the sheerest silk, ribbons, rings, and brooches. Henry liked to have her sit in his chamber of an evening, where she would embroider, or weave braid on her small loom, and he would watch her with an indulgent smile. Having something on which to focus, something she could do well, helped Ida to overcome her anxiety, and Henry seemed to find contentment just by having her there as a background comfort. He liked her to massage his shoulders or rub his feet and sing to him. Often she would receive the summons to his chamber and all he would want was the consolation of company and a soft feminine presence that did not demand intellectual concentration. On the occasions he did want to bed her, Ida submitted to his demands, compliant, if not eager. Becoming accustomed to what he expected and what to expect herself, her apprehension diminished. As familiarity grew, she was even a little gratified to feel the power of being the pleasure-giver.

Ida even began to feel a certain affection for Henry. He had an endearing way of rumpling his hair when he was thinking, and since she frequented his private chamber late at night, she saw the vulnerabilities he did not expose to the court. Some months before taking Ida to his bed, his mistress Rosamund de Clifford had died in childbirth and the baby with her. Henry was reticent on the matter, but from the bleak and painful little that he said, Ida understood that her death had left a hole in the fabric of his life that no one was ever going to fill. She herself was a pale substitute—a faint flicker of warmth to ease the coldness in the void.

As her position became established, supplicants began offering her bribes to intercede with the King on their behalf and gain his ear. Ida was shocked and astonished the first time a merchant presented her with a length of scarlet silk and asked her to help him build up a clientele among members of the court. Not knowing what to do, but deciding that honesty would serve her best, Ida took the fabric and showed it to Henry, who laughed aloud and, kissing her, told her what a darling she was.

“Keep the silk,” he chuckled, “and recommend him, because it will make more patronage for you, and you deserve a reward for your freshness and honesty!” Wrapping a coil of her hair around his knuckles, he added, “Whatever you are given, though, always bring it to me and tell me who gave it to you and what they want in exchange. Let me decide what is to be done.”

Ida nodded, feeling relieved and pleased. She had negotiated her way through a new and difficult situation and, to judge from Henry’s response, had done the right thing.

In early March, six months after her presentation to Henry, the court settled again at Windsor. On the cusp of spring, winter launched a rearguard assault. A bitter north-easterly wind hurled flurries of sleet against the tightly closed shutters and extra candles had to be lit to banish the gloom. Sitting in a window seat, glad of the sable-lined mantle covering her gown, Ida played dice-chess with Henry’s youngest son, John, who had recently turned eleven years old. He was a quick, intelligent child with a vibrant smile and a misleading air of innocence masking sly cruelty. He couldn’t be trusted; he was apt to cheat in order to win, which was why people were reluctant to play with him. He had cornered Ida in the window seat before she could make her escape. Ida didn’t like John, but she did feel sorry for him and it was not in her nature to rebuff a child. Queen Eleanor his mother was under house arrest at Salisbury for her part in fomenting the rebellion of three years ago, and John seldom saw her. His brothers were already grown men with their own entourages and concerns and, as the lastborn child, his inheritance was an uncertain one.

Looking up, having cast his dice and made his move, John’s hazel glance followed the progress across the chamber of a sombrely dressed woman with two young men trailing at her heels.

“Gundreda, dowager Countess of Norfolk, and her sons, come to pay their respects to my father,” John announced. A sardonic gleam, older than his years, kindled in his eyes. Politics and intrigue were as much a part of him as his father’s build and his mother’s colouring. Bred into him, blood and bone.

Ida glanced across. “You know them, sire?” The Countess Gundreda was her second cousin, but she had never met or spoken to her.

John shook his head. “Only of them. They attempted to speak with my father earlier this morning but he was too busy. I heard her trying to wheedle John Marshal into letting her past the ushers, but he refused.”

Ida remembered hearing that Gundreda’s husband, Earl Hugh Bigod, had died in Flanders. The rumours several months ago about him taking the Cross had been true but, despite his oath, he had never set foot beyond Saint-Omer, his health being too poor. His widow wore hard lines between nose and mouth corner and her eyes were full of watchful suspicion. Her older son was about the same height as Henry, with a pale complexion. A yellow beard fuzzed a prominent jaw, and he had the same wary gaze as his mother. The younger one, dark of hair, slouched in his wake, his belly hanging over his tunic like a lump of dough.

“I don’t think my father will be very interested in her,” John said with a sneer. “Not unless she’s got something good to bargain. She’s got a face to curdle milk and a body like a sack of turnips.”

Ida pressed her lips together and didn’t give John the pleasure of a shocked response, because that was what he wanted. She threw the dice, moved her piece, and put him in a difficult position. He scowled at her and she knew she had committed the error of not letting him win. Where Henry would have laughed and called her a clever girl, John narrowed his eyes. “Still,” he said, “at least you won’t have to worry; you’ll still be my father’s favourite mattress, I’m sure.” He swept the pieces to one side of the board so that no trace of their former positions remained, rose to his feet, and stalked off with the air of someone who owned the world.

Seething with fury and humiliation, Ida carefully returned the pieces to their casket. Whatever hurts in his own life he was compensating for, he had no right to say those things to her. She would not stoop to John’s level and carry tales to Henry, who would likely laugh anyway and call them no more than a boy’s impudence, but she vowed that from now on she would avoid the youth whenever possible and feel sorry for him no longer.

“May I join you, mistress?”

Looking up, Ida found herself being addressed by the dowager Countess of Norfolk. Her sons were no longer at her side, but had drawn off to talk to some other young men and warm themselves at the hearth.

Ida rose and curtseyed, then sat down again, making room for her kinswoman. “The lord John told me who you were.” Swallowing her anger, she concentrated on her companion.

“Did he?” Gundreda’s nostrils flared. “News travels fast.” Her nose was arched at the bridge and the skin was shiny as if the bone was about to break the surface. Her lips were thin and dry, her cheeks showed fine thread veins. Defying the slow ruin of the years, her eyes were a rare, clear green, like window glass, and would have been beautiful if the expression in them had not been so bitter.

A few months ago Ida would have blushed with chagrin, but she had grown a thicker skin since then. “I am Ida de Tosney, the King’s ward. We are kinswomen through my mother, I believe.”

Gundreda inclined her head. “I am pleased to make your acquaintance, although I do not know your family, even if I have heard of them. You have a brother, do you not?”

“Yes, my lady. In wardship too, but in Normandy. I haven’t seen him in several years,” she added with a wistful pang.

“Let us hope he has less trouble claiming his inheritance than I and my sons,” Gundreda said acidly.

“I am sorry for your loss,” Ida murmured into the taut silence, seeking the right thing to say but unsure of her ground. “I pray God will succour you.”

Gundreda of Norfolk gave her a pinched look. “It is not God’s succour I need but the King’s—and his justice.”

“I am sure both will hear you, my lady.”

“I am the dowager countess, you would think so.”

Ida noticed how Gundreda’s hands imprisoned each other in a tight grip, left over right. Her thumb rubbed repetitively over a heavy gold ring on her wedding finger and the tension in her clenched jaw made visible hollows in her cheeks. Concerned, Ida set aside her sewing and personally fetched her kinswoman a cup of wine rather than summoning a servant.

“They say your husband died having taken the Cross.” She tried to offer comfort as Gundreda thanked her for the drink and sipped. “Surely he is in heaven now.”

“The whereabouts of my husband are of no interest to me.” Gundreda’s tone was glacial. “He was a bastard from the start of our marriage to the end and if his eternal home is hell, then may he rot there in torment. What does concern me is my dower and the inheritance due to my sons. It is too easy to cheat widows, heiresses, and wards out of what is theirs by right.” She glanced towards the young men by the fire.

“I hope you will be successful, my lady.” Ida was inwardly shocked by Gundreda’s corrosive attitude. How could anyone speak in such a fashion of another person?

A severe-featured man with a greying beard was looking in their direction. His mantle was lined with squirrel fur and his tunic was the expensive blue-black of over-dyed woad. Ida did not know Roger de Glanville well, although she recognised him. He was one of the officials serving the administrative side of the court. An older brother, Ranulf, was employed in a similar capacity, and a younger one was the castellan of Henry’s keep at Orford.

“My lawyer,” Gundreda said. “You will excuse me.”

Ida watched her go to the man and speak to him, before leaving the room with her hand on his sleeve. The quality of the gesture made Ida thoughtful. Gundreda’s sons followed, reminding Ida of hounds trailing after their owner. The older one flashed her a glance in which she saw speculation mingled with what she now recognised as a predatory glimmer. It was unsettling, but she no longer blushed at such looks. Six months of dwelling in the eye of the court had taught her a great deal about men and about herself.

***

Two days later, Ida was in the hall when the Countess approached her again. This time Gundreda’s lips wore a forced smile and her eyes were as hard and bright as peridots.

“Have you been able to see the King, madam?” Ida asked politely.

Gundreda nodded. “Master Glanville has spoken to him at length on behalf of me and my sons.” She glanced towards her offspring, who were occupied with some new acquaintances they had made among the squires. Ida looked too. The older one’s shoulders were thrown back and his chest was puffed out like a cockerel’s as he boasted about something or other.

Gundreda shifted position so that she was hemming Ida into the corner, cutting her off from the hall. It was a dominant, almost masculine ploy, and disquieted Ida. “I have heard,” Gundreda said, “that you have a certain—shall we say—influence with the King?”

Ida’s cheeks burned. “My lady, whoever told you so is mistaken. I have no influence with the King at all.”

Gundreda arched her brows. “I have it on good authority that he dotes on you and you are one of his favourites.”

“People always exaggerate,” Ida said.

“Even so, there must be a grain of truth in the gossip; there always is.” Gundreda sighed and suddenly looked worn out rather than intimidating. “You were kind to me earlier. I would not impose on your goodwill and kinship, but if you can find it within you to help me, I ask you to intercede on my behalf. I only want what is mine by right of law. As another woman, I hope you will understand.”

Ida looked down at her hands, at her trimmed pink nails and the gold rings Henry had given to her. Her initial thought was that if the lands were Gundreda’s by right, she would receive them, but she knew now from bitter experience that life was not fair. Gundreda of Norfolk had to fight for her advantage with whatever weapons came to hand. “I will tell him,” she said. “But I have no influence upon his decisions—truly.”

“Even so, I am grateful. I will not forget.” Gundreda leaned forward, kissed Ida on both cheeks with her dry, cold lips, then left. Soon afterwards, a servant approached Ida and presented her with an exquisite wooden box, enamelled with scenes from the miracle of Saint Edmund in rich colours, including the vastly expensive vibrant blue of ground lapis. “My mistress the Countess of Norfolk begs you to receive this gift as a token of her esteem,” the man said.

“Thank your mistress and tell her that I esteem her too,” Ida replied with formal courtesy. Feeling a frisson of unease, she sprang the lock with the small bolt key provided and opened the lid. Framed in swirls of gleaming red silk was a silver-gilt goblet patterned with a design of oak leaves. Amethysts as dark as blackberries glowed around the base, their power protecting from poison whoever drank from the cup. Ida suspected that both the box and the cup were valuable beyond anything she was going to be able to do for Gundreda.