The Stolen Queen (25 page)

‘Sister, you shock me,' he drawled. ‘Brawling with the servants while your husband's city burns? Hardly queenly conduct.'

I was limp against him, panting. In full view of Aliene, who remained prone on the floor, he insolently dipped his head to my throat and traced my collarbone with his tongue.

‘Or were you missing something else, Sister?'

I had no strength left to strike him for the outrage. I glanced towards Henry, who still slept on. ‘Get her out of my sight. Now!'

Pierre released me and stooped towards Aliene. Her neck showed red weals where I had grasped it. Good. He helped her tenderly to her feet and smoothed her gown, holding out his hand for the garter, and then he whispered something into her ear. She made me a dazed curtsey and staggered from the room, feeling for the doorframe as though intoxicated. I seated myself next to Henry and fussed with his nightshirt, covering him with his linen sheet and woollen blanket, stroking his tumbled hair from his face. He stirred, but did not wake. I rested my lips a moment against his warm brow, breathing him until I had recovered my countenance. ‘When did you return?' I asked Pierre.

‘Today. It is an important night, Sister. Imbolc The time between the winter solstice and the summer. You ought to have paid better attention to your old nurse.'

‘And this? That girl?'

‘Your son is one of our own. As are you, however much you deny it. It was time.'

‘I will not have it.'

‘What will you do, Sister? Have you heard the people outside?'

‘There is unrest. The comet has disturbed the people. They are angry with the king.'

‘And why?'

Always this slow drawing out with him that I hated so much, the agonizing drip of his knowledge, filtered like amber through pine bark. I always felt like a child with Pierre, stumbling to catch up. I did not know why the people were angry. I had paid so little attention to John's business of late.

‘The taxes? The bishops? The war in France? For God's sake, tell me clearly!'

‘Come. They shall tell you themselves.'

He guided me, unresisting, towards the casement, reached up to unbolt the shutters. Henry's room lay on the city side of the palace, and with the sharp air that rushed in came the sound of shouts and the smell of smoke. I glanced anxiously towards the bed where my son lay.

‘Listen,' instructed Pierre.

At first, I could make nothing out amidst the babble of voices and the thud of rushing feet. Somewhere a horse was shrieking wildly, perhaps a stable was burning. I had a sudden vision of Othon, rearing in panic. And then I caught my name: ‘Isabelle', ‘the queen, the queen!'

‘They are calling for me.'

‘They want you.'

‘Why?' I breathed, pushing my hair back from my face. ‘Please, Pierre. Tell me what is happening.'

‘They blame you. It was unwise, Sister, that merciful business of yours with the witch. Susan, wasn't it? They blame you for all the evils the king has visited on them. They called you whore, and now they call you witch.'

‘But why? The people love me. I have heard them, when we pass through the streets? I give them charity. They bless me. I am their queen, the mother of their prince! I have done nothing.'

‘Yet they seek a source for their discontent. Much easier to blame their queen, the foreign slut, than their true-born English king.'

‘Does John know of this?'

‘He has ears.'

‘This is your doing. You are conspiring with that-that Angouleme bitch!'

‘Very good, Sister, very good. It does not suit me to have you at court at present, or to see you recover your husband's favour. So touching, those little entertainments. And so now the citizens of London are calling on the king to put you aside. The comet is a sign of God's displeasure towards England. They are afraid.'

‘I will not leave my son.'

‘Oh you will, Sister. You will.'

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

T
HE DAY AFTER THE MOON TURNED TO BLOOD, IT
seemed that the sun had lost the heart to rise over London. Like clouds of slut's wool billowing from a beaten blanket, great clouds of wet mist rolled up the Thames to Westminster, where they met the hanging wood smoke of the rioters' burnings. The mist and the smoke crept stealthily into our lungs like death's own fingertips. Even in the palace, where torches had burned all night and the fireplaces were stoked high, there was a tangible humour in the air, as though the fear and suspicion borne on the comet's tail were made solid. We were a house of spectres, and in the streets the market carts rolled against the corpses of dead men, their vitals blistering in the cold.

I was to become a spectre, too. I had lain awake all night in my chamber, frantically passing over in my mind the names of anyone I might call upon to help me. Not my mother. The king of France? Even if I were to succeed in sending a messenger, claiming our kinship and seeking his royal protection, it should be days before he received my appeal. William Marshal was a
good man, but he had not attended the Christmas court and I had no notion of where he might be. Among my women there were good Christian ladies, whose husbands had castles and manors where I might seek shelter, but which of them could I oblige to take the risk of harbouring me? I was queen, and therefore I was powerless if the king's displeasure was fallen upon me. I was property. I could enter a convent, I thought wildly, as I had once feigned I wished to do. I could ride for Winchester, where I had birthed my boy, but John's disputes with the Pope, so far as I understood them, would not encourage any abbot to further anger his king. And if I entered a convent, I should be shut away from the world, and never see my boy come into his own. I wondered on Hal of Lusignan. He would be lord of the castle, now. Could I trust Hal? I, who had witnessed his shame? Perhaps he had forgotten our childish misliking of one another? But I was being foolish: he would never forgive, even if I could fly to him over the sea and the Poitou hills like Melusina herself.

I expected John to summon me the next morning. Would Aliene tell him that her lover's wife had attacked her? Or would the aldermen of London already have made suit, calling on the king to give up his wife to keep the peace? But no page came with any message, and there was no sign of John, or of Pierre, or of Aliene. I spent the day sewing with my women in my great chamber, my presence suppressing the gossip that shivered through that cloying air. My maids were respectful as ever, but I knew that as soon as I left them their tongues would be flying swift and sharp as their needles. We ate dinner and supper in the hall, once more a court of women as the barons had followed
John downriver to the Tower to meet with the justices over the riot. Before I retired, I visited the nursery and asked that the children should be bathed. The nursemaids looked askance at such a request, did I not know of the dangers of washing in the wintertime, but I had never had any patience with such filthy English customs, and less so, now. I wanted to see my babies' bodies, smooth and clean and flushed with warm water, to see that Aliene, wherever she was gone, had left them at least unmarked. I watched the children at their baths, and we ate a dish of raisins together, counting out rhymes with the stalks on the brim of the platter, and I helped each of them into their nightshirts, warmed before the fire. I heard their prayers, and blessed them, and returned to my chamber to sit out the night hollow eyed in the darkness. I should not have done so if I had known then that I would never see Henry again.

*

I was wakened from a restless doze by the sound of hooves in the palace yard. All through the first hours of the day I heard them, a gathering, urgent rhythm that sounded a counterpoint beneath the slow rituals of my rising, my dressing, my prayers. As my maids sponged my face and hands with rosewater, as they handed my shift and laced me, as they combed my hair and fitted my mantle, as I knelt and turned the leaves of my breviary, I listened for them, and heard grooms calling and the sound of spurs on stone. When I had sent my chaplain away and taken some milk with honey, I sent to the chamberlain's rooms to discover the news. While I waited, I sent to the buttery to
ensure that the guests, whoever they were, were served. Even while my heart scratched in my throat as brittle as a bird's nest, I tried to move as slowly and graciously as if the king of France himself were leading me out to dance. Perhaps those men had ridden through streets where my name was being proclaimed as a witch at street corner crosses, perhaps even now my husband was having faggots piled for me in the Tower yard, but I should be a queen still. The mist and the smoke of the riots had dissipated, but we were old acquaintances, death and I, and I was not afraid.

The visitors were the sheriffs of the counties close to London, ridden in on the king's command. Many of them must have been on the road all night. When John finally summoned me to the council chamber, some time after noon, they knelt to me as I passed, some with their hands to their breasts, and if I had not known better it should have lifted my heart to see them so loyal, so good, so willing. John handed me courteously to my chair and I remained next to him as he received each of the sheriffs in turn, charging him to keep the peace after the disturbances in London, and directing him to the treasury for funds. One by one, the men made their bows and departed, so as each left I felt the dryness in my throat ease a little, the stiffness in my smile relax. Until the last of them rose from his knees. A huge man, a good two heads taller even than I remembered Lord Hugh, his massive shoulders straining his muddied surcoat. His face looked oddly small, smooth and pink, with close set periwinkle eyes. He looked like a cunning pig, I thought, a forest boar with a coarse tuft of fair hair and dimples where his tusks should be.

‘Terric!'

It was not John who spoke, but Pierre, entering the council room with familiar ease, behind him, between two liveried servants, Aliene. She was no longer the haunted, frenzied creature I had caught on the night of the comet. Her hear was braided and modestly covered in beautiful ivory lace. My lace, a New Year's gift from the wife of a Marcher baron. She wore a soft gown of blue wool and a cherry-coloured velvet cloak with a gold fur trim. Quite the lady. At least she had the sense not to look in my face.

‘Majesty,' the gross man was lowering his bulk before John's throne, then turning and inclining his head towards Pierre, ‘My Lord de Joigny.'

‘My lady.' It was the first time John had addressed me since the evening of the riot. ‘May I present Terric, Sheriff of Berkshire.'

‘Known as Terric the Teuton,' put in my brother conversationally, as lightly as though we were gathered for a hunting picnic. I inclined my own head half an icy inch.

‘My lady is in danger,' John announced, in a similar tone. Had they repeated this, practised this scene like players before a fair? Was Terric to be my perfect knight, carrying me away to an enchanted tower?

‘I hope you will keep my dear sister closely, Terric,' put in Pierre. ‘The king's Majesty entrusts you to keep her from harm.'

‘You have my word, Majesty, my lord.' His voice, like his face, sat curiously with his bulk, thin and reedy, his tongue thick on the English words. Did they not speak English in Berkshire?

‘Then I bid you farewell, my lady.' John rose, and bent to kiss my cheek. His face had a crazed look of malice as he came close. I smelt wine on him, and something else. Something black and strong, like a sleeping draught, like poppy gum. His breath was foul with it. ‘I hope you will prove obedient, Isabelle,' he whispered.

‘As ever to your command, my lord,' I managed.

And then Terric took my arm and the strength of his grip belied his attempt at a pleasant smile. I was his prisoner, as clear as if he had bound shackles about my wrists. As I walked with him down the length of the hall, I turned back to send one last, imploring look to John. If any of my old power over him remained, I begged God, let him feel it now. But he did not even catch my eye, his head was thrown back and Aliene's hand rested on his brow as she seated herself calmly in the queen's chair beside him, as though she were born the daughter of a great lord, not some brat out of a Poitou cowshed.

‘Godspeed, Sister,' whispered Pierre. And then the guards banged the door of the council chamber behind me as sure as a prison cell.

Terric escorted me first to my chamber, whence my maids, all but one, were gone. I barely recognized her face, she was an underservant, a trimmer of candles and a holder of fire baskets. She trembled as she held up a dark gown and a heavy furred travelling cloak, and her fingers were clumsy with my gloves and slippers.

‘What is your name?' I asked.

‘Hilda, Majesty.'

‘Hilda, please,' I had little of value on me, my jewel caskets would be gone, I knew there was no sense in sending her to the garderobe. But my girdle had a silver clasp, ‘take this and—'

And what? What should she do with it? The girl shook her head miserably. She could not pity one such as I, nor could she understand. I sighed and refastened the girdle around my waist. Perhaps the silver clasp might be of use to me, wherever I was going.

*

I saw Corfe in the February dusk, as the closed plain litter in which I had travelled from London was hauled, the horses straining up the last of a line of steep chalk hills. Terric insisted I travel with the curtains drawn, which I had been glad of for four icy days on the road, but now I twitched the leather aside and stared greedily at the massive stone wall, surrounded by a banking of timber. Terric's own horse, as huge as his master, plodded in front of me, only four grooms and a page completed our party. On the road, Terric had given out that I was a widow, travelling privately, and I had not sought to contradict him, though the wretched, verminous inns where we had broken our journey were like nothing I had ever seen before, even when I had ridden on campaign with John. I could not eat the greasy bowls of pottage, beans and barley swimming in rancid bacon fat, which were offered to me, nor could I sleep on the straw-filled ticking where I was expected to rest without even a maid to lie next to me. I thought wistfully of the hot honest sweat of Othon's flank, which had made my pillow before Mirebeau.
That had been no bed for a queen or a countess either, but it had been nothing like the squalor which John now imposed upon me. Terric was respectful, though he did not kneel to me, procuring heated water for me to wash and thin white wine to accompany the hateful pottage, and I did not fear him, yet. But I saw that I could not hope to beguile him into friendship with me, even had I bent to try. He was immutable as a moss covered rock, a lump of humanity, not a man.