The Prince of Darkness (18 page)

So they retired early and rose late. The marriage bed was more important than anything during those first weeks.

John said during those days of his honeymoon: ‘I now possess everything that I could desire. The crowns of England and Normandy … and my most cherished possession of all: Isabella.’

One day when he emerged from the bedroom to take dinner which was awaiting his arrival at the table and which was served after midday, he was told that messengers had arrived from Hugh de Lusignan.

‘Hugh de Lusignan?’ he cried. ‘What does that fellow want with me?’ He grimaced. ‘Can it be that it has something to do with the Queen? I’ll send for him when I am ready to see him.’

He went back to Isabella who had risen languorously from the bed and was wrapped in a gown of blue lined with fur, her beautiful hair in disorder about her shoulders.

‘There’s a fellow to see me,’ he said. ‘He comes from Hugh de Lusignan. What insolence to send him.’

‘What does he want?’ asked Isabella.

‘That we have to find out.’ He lifted her face to his and looked into her eyes. Then he slipped the robe from her shoulders and marvelled at her beauty. She studied him through veiled eyes and she was thinking of Hugh who was so tall and handsome, and she was angry with him because he had resisted all the indications she had given him. She wondered briefly what would have happened if he had not.

She was a queen though and it delighted her to be a queen.

John pulled the robe up over her shoulders. He took her hand and pulled her to her feet.

‘I’ll not look at you now, my love, or it will be no dinner for us. I see that. You are more attractive than a thousand dinners.’

He went to the door and called: ‘Bring the Lusignan’s messenger to me now.’

Then he turned to her and drawing her to the bed sat with her upon it. He held her hand pressed against his thigh as the messenger entered.

‘So you come to disturb me when I am engaged with the Queen,’ he said. ‘What is your message?’

‘I come from Hugh de Lusignan, who challenges you, my lord, to mortal combat.’

Isabella said involuntarily: ‘Oh no.’

John pressed her hand. ‘Your master is insolent, my man, and you brave to bring such a message to me. I like not such messages and I like not the people who bring them. Has it
struck you that I might decide to make you so that you could carry no further messages?’

Isabella saw the sweat which appeared on the man’s brow. She remembered him as one of Hugh’s esquires in the castle.

She said: ‘’Tis no fault of his that he brings such a message.’

John smiled. Everything about her delighted him; even her interference. She didn’t want the man punished. Therefore he should not be.

‘Nay,’ said John, ‘the Queen is right. The insolence comes from your master. You but obey your orders. Go and tell him that if he is so eager for death I will appoint a champion to fight with him.’

The man, delighted to get away, bowed his head and John waved a hand to dismiss him.

When he had gone John turned to Isabella. ‘Insolent fellow!’ he said. ‘He would invite me to mortal combat. Does he think that I would demean myself by fighting with him? Nay, he shall have his fight. There’ll be plenty who will be glad to do me the honour.’ He pulled the robe from her shoulder and buried his face against her flesh. ‘Think you he will report to his master that he saw us thus? ’Tis what I trust he will do.’ John began to laugh loudly. ‘Master Hugh will mayhap be more eager than ever for mortal combat when he realises all that he has missed in life.’

There was no responsive laughter from Isabella. She was thinking of Hugh – whose good looks had been such a delight to her – lying cold and still with blood on his clothes. But that would not happen. She felt that in combat it would not be Hugh who was the vanquished.

But she had lost temporarily her appetite both for dinner and sexual excitement.

When Hugh received the message he was filled with fury.

‘The coward!’ he cried. ‘Of course he is afraid of combat. He knows full well what the result of that will be. Does he think I’ll be satisfied with some mercenary captain whom he will pay to take his place? Did you see the King?’ he asked the messenger.

‘Yes, my lord.’

‘And the Queen?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Together?’

The messenger nodded.

‘How looked the Queen?’

The messenger looked puzzled.

‘Contented with her lot?’ suggested Hugh.

‘Yes, my lord.’

Such a child, he thought, and he wondered what would become of her.

He went to his brother and told him that the King had refused to meet him in person.

‘Did you expect him to?’ asked Ralph.

‘No. I always knew he was a coward.’

‘Such men always are. The best thing, brother, is to forget this insult. Find yourself a bride – a good and beautiful woman who will give you sons. There are many who would be happy to mate with the Lusignans.’

Hugh shook his head. ‘No, brother,’ he said. ‘At least not yet. There is one thing I am pledged to do and that is to take my revenge on John of England.’

‘How so?’

‘You ask that? You, a Lusignan, who understand the state of this country. The King of France has entered into a truce with him but it is an uneasy one. The Duke of Brittany – and he has many to support him – believes himself to be the true heir to all that John has seized. Rarely was a crown so precariously poised on any head. I am going to do all in my power to dislodge it. I swear this to you, Ralph, that ere long Normandy will not belong to its present Duke but to the King of France whose vassal I shall be. Richard was a friend to our family. John is an enemy. I shall not rest until I have taken my revenge on this voluptuary who has robbed me of my bride.’

‘Bold words, brother.’

‘And meant, Ralph, meant from the bottom of my heart. You will see.’

Even John had to realise that it was time he was on the move. Moreover, Isabella was ecstatic at the prospect of being crowned Queen of England. She was thrilled at the thought of crossing the sea because she had never yet seen the sea. Her excitement about her new life added zest to John’s days. He began to see things afresh through the eyes of a young girl and he found the experience exhilarating.

Thus they set out on their journey.

They called first at the Abbey of Fontevraud where the Queen Mother received them.

She was enchanted by Isabella. She saw in her son’s young bride something of what she had been so many years ago. A freshness, a youthful outlook on life and that overpowering sensuality which was at the very root of the secret of her power to move John so deeply.

The young girl made Eleanor feel her age more acutely. The journey to Castile had been too much for her and she had been glad to get back to Fontevraud where she could daily visit the graves of her husband, her son Richard and her daughter Joanna.

‘My life is over,’ she told Isabella. ‘Sometimes one can live too long. Perhaps the fates would have been kinder to me if they had taken me when Richard died.’

There were some pleasures left to her, though. Thinking over the past was one; and sometimes she could throw herself back so clearly that everything became as vivid as though it were happening at that moment.

‘Live fully, child,’ she said, ‘that is the secret of it. I used my time … every minute of it; and now I can look back and remember. There were years when I was imprisoned and even then I made the most of every hour.’

She thought a great deal about John and was uneasy doing so. She knew him well and she felt that it had been the greatest tragedy that Richard had died when he did. How ironical it was that, just as he had come home from the Holy Land and had been released from his incarceration at Dürenstein, that wicked man had shot an arrow at him that had killed him, so that there was only John.

She knew what John had done. He had taken Isabella from Hugh de Lusignan by a trick, for they would never have let Isabella go if they had known she was going to the King. Did John think that that would be forgotten? There would be retribution, she knew. Was John, uxorious, living in a state of euphoria, thinking only of bed and Isabella, unable to realise what a storm his actions might well have aroused, or was he simply ignoring this? The Lusignans would be against him. He
might have gained the Count of Angoulême as an ally but that was not much of a gain to be set beside the enmity of the Lusignans. What of the King of Portugal nursing his wounded dignity? And there were Arthur and his mother with her new husband Guy de Thouars, just waiting for a chance to rise. And more important than all, Philip of France. What was
he
thinking at this moment? Laughing no doubt to think how recklessly John was gambling with a kingdom.

But I am too old to concern myself, thought Eleanor. My day is done. And what could I do in any case? I could warn John. As if he would listen! He hears nothing but the laughter of that child of his; he sees nothing but her inviting person and he cannot see the jeopardy in which he has placed himself while he is bemused by dreams of new ways of making love.

She could warn the girl perhaps. Voluptuous she certainly was, and knowledgeable with a knowledge such as her kind were born with. Eleanor knew, for she had been like that herself. But what did Isabella know of the world outside the boudoir?

‘The King is deeply enamoured of you now, but it may well be that he will not always be so,’ Eleanor warned her.

Isabella looked startled. She could not believe that anyone would fail to be in love with her.

‘Men like change, my dear,’ said the Queen.

‘You mean John will no longer love me?’

‘I did not say that. He will always see in you the beauty that you have; it is a beauty which is always there. Age cannot destroy it. You have that sort of beauty, Isabella. I will dispense with false modesty and tell you that I have it. When I married John’s father he was enamoured of me. It was an unsuitable match in many ways. The reverse of you and John,
I was his senior by some twelve years. That did not stop us. We were lovers … even as you are now. But scarcely had the first year of our marriage passed when another woman was carrying his child.’

Isabella drew back in horror.

‘’Twas so. I did not discover it until he brought her child into my nurseries. I never forgave him, and that set up a canker in our hearts … both of us. Our love turned to hate. Now had I been wiser I might have said to myself: It is the way of men. He must go forth to his battles and we were parted, and so he took his women. Had I realised that his dallying with the light women he met on his journeys did not alter what he felt for me, we would not have been such bitter enemies. Perhaps then our children would not have learned to hate him and fight against him. I think a great deal about this now I am old. I go down to his grave and talk to him as though he were there. I go over our life together and say to myself: Ah, had I done this … or that … we might have gone in different directions. We might have been friends instead of enemies, for there was always something between us. Often we called it hate but with people such as we are, love is near to hate. Ah, I see I tire you. You are asking yourself what this old woman is talking about. Why, you say, does she tell me this? Have I not a husband who adores me, who thinks me the most perfect being in the world? Has he not said he possesses all he could desire? Yes, so it was with Henry and with me in the beginning. My child, what shall you do if John betrays you with other women?’

She thought a while then her beautiful eyes narrowed. Then she said very deliberately: ‘I shall betray him with other men.’

Eleanor said gently: ‘I trust it may never come to pass.’