The Stolen Queen (22 page)

‘Agnes!'

‘Of course. Agnes. Would you have that her last sight on earth, Sister? To open her poor old eyes to my man's knife, before he closes them forever?'

I rushed to the door of my chamber. Sure enough, there he was, in a coat of my brother's Joigny colours, squatting like a gargoyle at the head of my bed, leering at me. He waved the dagger in his hand in insolent greeting, its blade gleaming in the starlight from the casement. I stifled a cry, stepped backwards.
Think, Isabelle, think
.

‘Have him kill her. As you say, she is old. I have no need of her. She will be gone soon, one way or another. You may bid him proceed.'

It was dim in the closet, but my brother's eyes found mine and held them, so long that I no longer knew whose gaze was
whose, so like it was to looking at my own face. I lowered my eyelids, eventually, and tried a small, careless shrug. ‘As I said, Brother, have your man murder the nurse. She is not heavy, the two of you should be able to carry her body. You may float her down the river to Oxford as a gift for the bishop. But I shall not go with you, this night or any night.'

‘Anyone might think you really were a Taillefer. You have courage, Sister. Or indeed a talent for sacrifice – I recall another body, in another river.'

‘I am tired of this discussion. Do as you wish. But it would be more polite, I think, to murder my nurse in the gardens. More discreet, too. I should not wish to have to explain the blood in the queen's chamber. You may leave me.'

He laughed, low in his throat, and reached out a hand towards my face. His knuckle traced the line of my jaw. ‘Such a pity that you consider me your enemy, Sister. I like you so very much. But I cannot leave you just yet. You can save your nurse, though I am impressed to find you so prepared to lose her. Very well. You shall not fly to the sabbat with me tonight, at least. But there is something else we must do.'

‘What?' I hissed. ‘I told you, you tire me. Make up your mind and leave me.'

‘You know what. You know very well.'

I did know. I had known since Rouen, when I had decided to pay my brother to fight for me in the south, knowing that he would encounter Lord Hugh there. I had thought on it when I summoned the witch Susan to me, when she had sent me the draught of which I had taken a few drops in a cup of wine each
day since. It was bitter, and the fumes from the vial made my head swim, but I had swallowed it dutifully in anticipation of this moment. Still, it suited me that Pierre should think me reluctant.

The Lusignans made children with their own. That was what I had missed when my mother had told me the story of Melusina. Count Raymond had killed his uncle with his spear, he had lain with Melusina and the result was two children, one good, one evil. The monster had destroyed the good brother, and that was the warning in the tale. Perhaps Pressine had had another child, with her king in Poitou, a son. Perhaps that son was Raymond of Lusignan, so that the fairy bride was also the Count's sister. My mother had been telling me something quite different than a thrilling legend of magic and fairy fountains, something about what I was, and of what I must beware. That was why she had sent Pierre to me in Paris, since if the Lusignan plan for Arthur failed, there would be another way, the darker way of the old faith. The Lusignans wanted a royal child, well then, they should have one. John could not get a child on me, and since I was queen, since I was never alone, my own brother was the only man I could trust to do it.

Pierre spoke to the man in my chamber. ‘Leave the old woman. Wait at the door. I would be alone awhile with my sister.' He was already loosening his belt as he turned back to me, unhurried, like a long-married man coming to bed to his wife.

‘My sword is there, as you see. And I will put my knife here, on this chest. I trust you will do nothing foolish, Sister. I doubt your lord the king would be so understanding of a man in your chamber a second time.' He put his arms about me and drew
me close. ‘Shall I kiss you, Sister? It can be sweet between us, you'll see.'

His lips were warm, so soft on mine. As his tongue wandered into my mouth I felt a treacherous thud of pleasure deep inside me, even as his grip tightened on my arms and he pushed me to the floor. I pulled back my head. ‘No.'

But the length of him was already on me. He laid a forearm across my throat, almost tenderly, slowly crushing the air from my lungs. ‘You know they call you whore, Sister? John's Whore. For your bed, they say, he lost a kingdom. I would wish to know,' he parted my legs, pushing harder against me, and I could feel that my body betrayed me, even as I struggled against his touch as helpless as an un-nested lark, ‘I would wish to know how my sister bewitched her king. Come. Show me.'

And for a few shameless, helpless moments, I abandoned myself to the throb of my Lusignan blood. He no longer needed to hold me beneath him. When he raised his head at the moment of ecstasy, I saw the horned man behind my eyes, and felt my own pleasure rise to meet my brother's.

And that is how, as the year turned and I wore my crown next to the king at the Christmas court at Windsor, that I was able at last to tell my husband I was with child.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

D
EAR AGNES HELPED MY SON INTO THE WORLD, AND
it was the last duty she performed for me. I named him Henry, for his grandfather. When I had been churched and was able to walk out, I carried his tiny body against me in the meadows of Winchester, where I had taken my chamber, and whispered in his ear that he would be a great king, greater even than his namesake, and that he should take all the lands which were stolen for his mother's cause, and more, and that when he was grown, he should give me back my father's city of Angouleme, and that I would rule it for him. I was glad to have chosen Winchester for the birthing, the long meadows there, plump and green with autumn rain, recalled a little the Angouleme plain where Agnes and I had watched the Lionheart's messenger come, and if she could not be buried in her own place, at least in the abbey of England's old capital she might hear the streams as they played down to the river, and feel the roots of the poppies in summertime as they swayed before an English breeze.

‘Don't be afraid, little one,' she had whispered to me when the first pains came. ‘You see, it has come right, all along. Don't be afraid now, you are so strong. Always such a stubborn child. You can bear this.'

I twisted and writhed on the low birthing pallet in my chamber, struggling to breathe in the thick air of the closed room, heavy with incense from the oratory and the rancid stink of the sheepskins nailed to the casements to keep out the light. Agnes washed my face with rosewater, pulled the bloodied nightgown from my swollen, pulsing body, gripped my hand with her old fingers as hard as ever a crusading knight held his broadsword, and breathed my son into life with the last force of her waning strength. When the baby was washed and swaddled, it was Agnes who brought him to me, her eyes shining in the dim candlelight. ‘It's a boy, little one. You have given England a king.'

And as my baby squirmed blindly to my wet nipple, she took her delight to rest with her, and slipped away that night. Perhaps it should have broken my heart, but I had I not known for some time that I had no heart left to break? As Henry fed, I cried out as my womb sank and sucked inside me, but even amidst that new pain, I felt the mark of my shoulder throbbing, to remind me of what I had done. And I was glad, so glad, that Agnes had died believing that at last, she had kept her promise and cared for me to the end, that we had stayed safe, that her little warrior had lived, and borne a son.

Later, much later, there came news from Ireland of a man who called himself Peter the Fair. He died of quatrain fever in
a monastery there, a handsome lad, they said, with hair as pale and gleaming as white gold. He was known as the son of the English queen, wrote the monk who recorded his passing. The story skimmed its way across the sea, and it was said that the Angouleme queen had taken many lovers to her bed, and given birth to a secret son. They said that John had discovered me in my adultery and hanged my lovers from my own bedstead, but like much that was spoken of me then, it was not true. Whoever poor Peter was, he was no child of mine, for all that he might have been named after my brother. Cuckoos all, my children, true, but my brood of Lusignan bastards knew no ignominy on their birth. Henry, Richard, Joan, Isabelle, Eleanor. God was generous to John Lackland with his children, if nothing else, for all five were beautiful and serenely healthy, with no sign of having been born between the bed and the wall.

Of all my children, Henry was the only one I was permitted to rejoice in. Everyone I had ever loved had been taken from me, even Othon, but on Henry I could pour out all the love that had been thwarted and twisted in me, little dammed streams of hope and joy that I thought had run dry, but had merely been returning to their true course. I will always love him for that, my son. I would have no wet nurse to him, no matter how much my women clucked and said that giving milk was for peasants, and that ladies were not strong enough to feed their children. My breasts were fat and full of sweet milk, I would give it to my baby on my fingertip to encourage him to suckle, and stroke his little downy head, bald as a baby bird's, as he snuffled and grew stronger against me. I would laugh
to see him falling off my breast like a little drunkard, dazed with milk, as happy as a summer bee dizzy with pollen. Henry had two cradles with gilt arms above them, and hangings of blue silk, and four women appointed with no other task than to rock him, but when he was not resting in my arms I liked to have him on my bed, wriggling plumply on a thick square cushion that I could wrap my arms about and doze with him safe within their circle, his milky breath on my face. When he cried I would whisper to him the stories I had invented for Agnes as a child, of Saracens and deserts and monkeys and palaces of pink marble, and I invented new tales, of the wild men of Scotland and Ireland, of giants and dragons, until the sound of my voice soothed him and he let his tiny fingers play happily in the curtain of my hair.

John was delirious with joy. He even took my hand as we watched our son sleep on the day he was christened. A son was a sign that God was pleased with him, however the Pope fumed at Rome against his realm of England. For a time, at least, the discontent among my husband's barons was quashed, now that the kingdom had an heir. He talked of returning to France, of pushing Philip from his borders in Gascony and Poitou and reclaiming the birthright of the Angevins for his boy. So prideful was he that it never occurred to him that his poor squirming over my body could have got no child at all on me. He granted lands to my brother Pierre in recognition of his loyal service. But before Henry was a month old, he left us at Winchester, to resume the wanderings over England, which his ever-restless spirit could not live without.

I was glad to have him gone. With Henry, I remained in the south, circling the royal manors and parks that surrounded London, happy to be alone again with my ladies and my child. My boy travelled in my litter with me as we moved from palace to palace; when we passed through a town I was sure to have the curtains drawn wide, even in the winter weather, so that the citizens should see their prince and remember it. I wanted Henry to hear the voices of his people calling out, ‘God save Him', for a great king must have the love of the people, I told him, and then his men will always ride out for him, and die if they must for his lands. It surprised me to learn that John was not so unpopular among townsfolk as he had been for so many years at his own court. He was known as a firm king, who interested himself in justice and the rights of the small people and saw that his laws were fairly obeyed. Perhaps Henry might learn that from him, it comforted me to think. John was no true warrior, but then Henry had none of his blood. He was Courtenay, and, though I did not care to think it, he was Lusignan. But mostly he was mine, and in my love for him I felt as mighty as the elephant I had once seen at the French king's palace.

My mother knew, of course, that Henry was Lusignan. Lord Hugh had his wish at last, though I was gleeful to think that I had tricked the pair of them. They might rejoice that England would have a Lusignan king, but what use could they make of a power that depended on his being John's son, rather than Pierre's? And when Henry was grown, he would take back not only the Angevin lands, but the Lusignans', too, and they would
have to kneel to him and declare themselves his men if they wanted to hold their castles at all.

I was so happy, so happy just to have my baby's delicate little body close to me that I began to forgive my mother a little more. She had loved me when I was tiny as I loved Henry, and now that I knew the overwhelming depth of that love, I began to think on what she had done, and the terrible pain it must have cost her. I questioned whether I should have the strength to hurt my child, if I believed it was the best thing for him. I had thought I could never survive the guilty agony of what I had done to Arthur, yet besides even that, the thought of hurting Henry was abominably unimaginable.

Perhaps my mother had had no chance to resist Lord Hugh. Perhaps her faith in the old religion was so strong that she believed herself to belong to him, as she could never to my Taillefer father. I began to forget the sabbat at Lusignan, my wedding night at Bordeaux, the torment of Paris. More and more, as I laughed over Henry as he splashed in his little bath, or played, fascinated, with his toes, whose existence always seemed to surprise him, I remembered instead my sweet maman, who sang to me and kissed me when I had tumbled down, who told me that she loved me more than anything in the world. Only now that I had a child of my own, I knew that love, and I softened towards her, for had she not suffered greatly to the best of other's desires, and in so doing to protect herself and her child? I had done terrible, sinful things myself, and I knew I should be capable of even worse if it was to preserve Henry.