The Stolen Queen (15 page)

July turned towards August, and, finally, John ordered that we move on towards Chinon. It was a joy, at least, to be riding in the clear air, among the scents of the grass and the hedgerows, but if the king's household thought they might at last be riding to confront the rebels, they were wrong. John drank all day in the saddle, swigging from a gold-chased horn, and when we pitched camp each evening he had to be helped from his horse. He then staggered around, barking and countermanding orders until his tent was pitched and he tumbled onto his bed in his boots. I followed his swaying progress along the white roads, decorously mounted on a side-saddle, ashamed even to lift my
face to the bands of grubby farmers who paused in their work, incurious as cattle, to watch their king pass by.

William Marshal, one of the greatest of my husband's English magnates, took charge of our progress, sending out the purveyors and working with the clerks, as John was barely capable of speech by noon. He treated me with great courtesy, as though he alone knew that John's unmanly doting on me was none of my doing, and though I was grateful for his attempts at kindness, my pride throbbed at what he might imagine the king did to me when the curtains of our bed were drawn. For John insisted that I lie with him each night now, as I had done since Paris, and I was torn between revulsion at his clammy, clumsy fumblings beneath my shift, and the hope that he might make me truly his wife now, and save me at least from Pierre's threat that our marriage was invalid. My only comfort on the journey was Othon's body, plodding dutifully beneath me, but I felt his frustration, his need for flight, and so many times I came close to throwing my legs astride, touching him with my heels and letting him run us both far away, leaping the white-flowered hedges, until we had fled this moving prison and could be alone again in the forest.

With a day's ride left before we reached Chinon came the news that Lord Hugh had made his move. Eleanor, the old queen, had left her retired doting at the abbey of Fontevraud and bravely ridden south, towards Poitiers, to do what her lineage as Duchess of Aquitaine still could for the English cause there. The post rider who brought the message to our camp might have been as soused as his king, so dazed and reeling was he after the effort of
his flight; his horse was fit for dog meat. He was too exhausted to rise from his knees, coughing through the dust of the road in his throat as he gasped out his news. Lord Hugh and Duke Arthur had approached Queen Eleanor at Mirebeau, near Poitiers, and aimed, it seemed, to take her hostage. The cunning old queen had managed to stay them several days with courtesies, but now she was imprisoned in the keep, and Mirebeau was besieged.

Before my eyes, I watched John transfigure himself. As the poor man croaked out his message, John was calling for his coat of mail and his men-at-arms fastened on their swords. The whole camp was swarming like a beehive, fires being kicked out, horses saddled, my own tent vanishing into a cart like a kerchief in a jongleur's sleeve. For once, John ignored me. I had to hover at his elbow as he shouted commands to Marshal to send to the garrison at Chinon to muster. I trotted between them, trying to make them listen to me, but they paid me no mind. I knew why Lord Hugh was trying to take the old queen. It would have been a clumsy feint had we been playing at chess.

‘Please, my lord.'

‘Not now, Isabelle.'

‘Please, don't go. It's a trap. They are using your mother as bait,' I warned.

‘She is my mother. I have no choice. Go to your ladies now, I will be quite safe.'

‘It's you they want to capture, my lord, not her. Your lady mother is a lure.'

‘Isabelle! I said, not now. What can you know of this? Go!' He had never spoken so harshly to me, and as soon as the words
passed his lips, I saw his face soften with remorse. I scrunched my dust-rimed eyelids together to try to force out a few tears, and gave him my most loving look. Gently, I slipped my palm into his, letting him feel how small and soft it was.

‘Then I want to go with you.'

He dropped a kiss on my brow. I hated my own anxious countenance then, even as I feigned, hated myself for arousing his tenderness. ‘My love, you cannot.' He looked away down the road, calculating. ‘As it is, we'll have to ride like the Devil.'

‘I can ride as fast as any man.'

‘Isabelle, I forbid you.'

‘If I am alone with my ladies, who will defend me? The king of France might have an army on the road in pursuit of me right now. It could be part of their plan, I will be safer at least with you, my lord.'

He hesitated, still calculating. I showed him the face I wore when I played with his hair in the firelight, the face that made him groan and press me to him and scramble at my flesh in the dark. ‘Do not forbid me, my dear lord. I have not asked anything of you for so long. Please.'

I didn't wait for his answer. I ran away, back to where my tent had been moments before. Agnes was hustling the maids into a cart, all of them fretting and squeaking as usual. ‘Find Tomas,' I ordered. ‘Then you will accompany the maids to Chinon.' I held up my hand, the pearl the king had given me on our betrothal warm on my finger. ‘Any messenger who comes to you must bear this. Pay no mind otherwise. Promise me, Agnes. Now, find Tomas.'

I couldn't help feeling joyful. As Tomas threw me up onto Othon's back, my gown indecently hitched up behind, I inhaled the scent of his impatience and buried my face in his neck. ‘See, I promised you, didn't I? We will have our dream, at last.'

There was no time for the scuttling priest to bless us. The king's household knights were already hidden in a dust cloud at the far point of the horizon. I had no whip, no spurs, no sword, no flat helm, I might have been a little girl again, playing at Crusaders, but Othon sprang forward at the gentlest touch of my heels, and for eighty miles of delirious flight, we were warriors. I might not be Taillefer, true, but I would ride at my lord's side, and we would take Queen Eleanor, and I should be safe.

For each of those miles, I knew the happiness and purity of purpose of being a man. There was no thought except the movements of Othon's flanks beneath me, the steam of his sweat, the dust of the white road in my eyes, fixed between the rein and his hooves, scouring always for the stone that could throw us to our death, until my fingers and thighs were reduced to one function, tensed only to ride, careless of what we should find at Mirebeau so long as, by miracle, we arrived in time. Action cancelled out thought, cancelled out everything except the drum of hoof beats and the occasional warning cries of the riders ahead. I was transported, fevered with the chase, and when we paused, during those eight and forty hours of hard riding, it was only to gulp ecstatically from a canteen, to splash my face with water, to cover myself in a cloak and slump deliciously against Othon's heaving flank for an hour or two of black sleep before I turned my screaming body once again into the saddle. If the men of my
husband's
familia
were astonished to see their queen filthy and dishevelled, riding astride and alone and as swift as the best of them, they only showed it in curt nods of appreciation. I was a queen, was I not? And queens are magical. It was glorious. I felt equal among them, me, Isabelle, and if I ever truly loved John it was in those hours, when he forged ahead in the vanguard, high on his mount's shoulder, looking every bit the king his brother the Lionheart had been.

Queen Eleanor had just enough time to dispatch the messenger to her son before immuring herself in the keep at Mirebeau. The Lusignan troops, two hundred and fifty knights and their sergeants, had pursued her first to Fontevraud, and then, finding she had fled, sped to the little walled town below the castle. They were encamped beneath the curtain with Duke Arthur, Lord Hugh and my old fiancé Hal among them. Queen Eleanor, eighty years old and shut up with a few ladies, could do nothing but pray. I wondered to what.

It was early evening on the last day of July when we reined in, the citadel in sight. There was barely time for speech, let alone ceremony. My husband's regalia were far back in the train from Le Mans, so he pulled his own light crown from his saddlebag and stumped it on his head like a baker at a bread oven before he had even dismounted. I slipped down, handed Othon to Tomas and walked bandy-legged to his side, silently twining my hand into his own. He squeezed it gently but was already calling for William des Roches to come forward. Des Roches, the seneschal of Anjou, had been Arthur's man, but had declared for my husband earlier in the summer. The two men washed their hands
perfunctorily and then squatted on the ground, sucking at tepid wine, waving away hastily gathered platters of dried meat and cheese. Since John did not dismiss me, I sat down too, though my backside was so sore that I too scrambled into a delighted squat, keeping my eyes low lest they notice me. The Poitevins were confident of taking Eleanor, des Roches explained, sketching quickly with a stick in the ground how they had stopped all the gates of Mirebeau but one with earthworks.

‘Can we get in?'

‘I can lead you, Majesty, yes. But I have a request, if you would be so gracious as to hear it.'

I could feel John's temper on edge, the closed-in tension of the flight building to explode. I laid a calming hand on his dusty sleeve, hard with mail beneath the stained linen.

‘My mother is within, and you speak to me of requests, man?'

‘I must. Duke Arthur is with the Lusignans. I will lead your men into the citadel, but in return I ask that I be given charge of him if he is taken. I was his man, once.'

I held my breath.

‘Very well, you shall have keeping of this foolish boy,' John agreed. ‘When?'

‘In the morning.'

My husband rose slowly, des Roches waiting on his knees.

‘Have you a man to take charge of the queen?'

‘The queen, Majesty?'

Des Roches had simply not noticed me. I watched his face change as he observed the filthy urchin in her stained, ragged gown clutching his master's hand.

‘Majesty, forgive me.' He scrambled an obeisance, but I waved him off.

‘There is no need to waste a man on me, Lord des Roches. The Lusignans will not harm me. I will be safe next my husband.'

John turned to me, astonished. ‘Isabelle, it is impossible. You cannot.'

I lowered my voice, ‘My lord, you need every man we have. I cannot wait alone; there are no women with us. If I am captured, who shall answer for me? You said I could not ride with you, and yet here I am. I will not be an impediment, I shall stay quiet behind until it is done. And I will be company for your lady mother, if it should fail.' I smiled up at him, and added, ‘I am certain that they will not harm me. And I am a Taillefer, am I not? I will be quite safe.'

‘You are my wife.'

I played my last card, leaning close to him so that no one else could hear. ‘And I have borne you no child, yet. You can take more wives. I am not afraid.'

‘Bless you then, Isabelle.'

I left them, and went to find Tomas.

*

At dawn the next morning, we were ready. It was Lammas day, the second anniversary of my wedding. I was nearly fourteen. Grumbling and sceptical, Tomas had found me a page's hauberk which dangled heavily to my ankles, a barrel helmet and a grubby surcoat with the royal arms. I used his knife to slash a tear in my ruined gown and rip the skirt around the
hem, enough to protect me as a woman, but close enough to ride in the fray. I remembered what I had done to my betrothal gown and imagined Agnes's horrified face if she could see me. Though she could not scold me now for behaving like a hoyden. We decided I should leave my hair down for safety, too, and only close the helm to protect my face if I was close to the fighting. Othon was given a mail cotte and even a
champron
, with winged steel to protect his cheeks. I told him he looked splendid. I was giddy with joy. If I met Hal, we'd see who was the stupid girl, now, at last. For once, I brushed Othon down myself, as merry as a stable lad, and curled up next to him to pass the short night between exhausted drowsing and quick shocks of anticipation. We had no fires, lest they be seen from the citadel, but the summer night was hot, and I was weary and comfortable, one hand on Othon's belly, the other never leaving my precious helmet.

It was not until we rode out in the first yellow-grey light that I saw what it meant to fight. Even at first, I still believed it a sort of magnificent game. The king had given Tomas instructions to keep close, we were to make straight for the citadel once we were inside the walls, and if we could, make our way to Queen Eleanor. We walked our horses slowly across a bridge and around the white walls of the little town. The king's bowmen fired on the scouts on the walls; some of them toppled, but they were far away, as insignificant to my eyes as thrushes tumbled in a merlin's claws. For those moments, the hum of the bows seemed to be the only sound in the world, the arrows' flight stretching arcs of silvery silence between the men within and
those without. The eerie stillness was shattered by a crash as though the cloudless summer sky had cracked in half.

The king's infantry had improvised a battering ram from a poplar trunk; they had been hacking at it all night. Twenty of them ran it up and began beating at the unstopped gate. I thought of the knights mustering in readiness behind the walls. Othon was desperately flighty, pawing and twisting under me, for the first time I had to struggle to keep him in check. Des Roches's earth map had showed a narrow street beyond the gate, opening into a square. The men were divided into three groups. The van, with John at its head, would make directly for the citadel, straight up through the lanes of the town. Two flanks would divide and circle the castle, fighting their way round to the rear of the keep. Tomas and I were to ride in the van. The infantry heaved and strained, relaying their strength around the trunk, aware that their king's eyes were on them. Each blow on the gate was a taunt to Lord Hugh's men inside.