The Stolen Queen (29 page)

Among the newly loyal vassals who arrived to pay their respects to John were several of whom I had slight recollections. Grizzled now, they had fought beside my Taillefer father years ago, and though it was their sons now who would ride out against Philip, they still held their lands and presided in their halls in appanage. They thanked me for sending Pierre and the mercenary troops from Rouen. They had been hard pressed by the French, and I made great use of my seal, granting the revenues of mills and manors, so they should be bound to their countess when the time came to fight once more. They spoke courteously to me of my mother, and of the beauty of the countryside around my city, complimenting me on the news of my children and the fineness of my entertainments, the sort of light, pleasant remarks that were suitable for ladies. Some of them had brought their wives, stolid women in unfashionable dresses, whose wide hips and square, stub-fingered hands spoke of an attachment to the soil which a couple of generations of rank had not yet bred
out. As we sewed and walked and prayed together, I wondered about them, these country ladies who seemed so placid. Where did they fly in their dreams? Were their husbands among the naked creatures who disported with my mother in the moonlight? Or were they themselves members of the old faith, brewing witch's grease in their kitchens alongside soap and candles? As another year turned and I looked out on the loveliness of the reawakening countryside, I thought that all which seemed so certain in the business of the great, the elaborate courtesies, the scented wine, the delicate gowns of my ladies and the sweetness of the minstrels' songs was only so much coloured ink on a flimsy scrap of parchment, an overlaying of brightness and order beneath which the land itself moved immutably in a very different rhythm, one of blood and death, the feral screams of wild things in the night, the frenzied writhing of storm-whipped trees and the slow tug of river tides, so that all the trappings of my restored state seemed to me as empty and foolish as a child's playthings, a collection of spangled baubles heaped like fool's treasure beneath the mocking gaze of the horned man, who was the only true king of this quiet country.

It came as it had come once before, on another spring day, so long ago. I was walking with my ladies in the garden above the river, which gushed and frothed with meltwater between the banks, a clear day in March with a huge empty sky bright above the Poitevin plains. The road beneath the town was busy with market carts and couriers, I could hear their harness jangling above the duller tread of the horses on the still-soft winter mud, when among them I saw a mule, fat as a cardinal
with baggage slings, plodding with bowed head among the smart rapping trot of the liveried messengers. I was no longer a child. I did not shriek and point and dance with anticipation, but inside my blood was leaping, for he had come – the silk man had finally come.

I had a page summoned to my side and spoke to him quietly. I turned the fur trim of my cloak along the walk, and continued conversing with my ladies, though all the while my eyes sought that fly-patch of beast and man, humming and buzzing at the edge of my vision. And later, when he had refreshed himself and washed, and spread out his marvels in my chamber for my ladies to finger and goggle over, I took up a length of silk in my hands, a green so dark it was almost black, as a fir tree against a snowy sky, and drew him into my closet.

To me, he looked just the same. Those same pale eyes, dancing with the light of my once-imagined city. The same coppery, weatherworn skin. I wondered how he saw the changes in me, and how he liked them. I bade him sit and he did so with a calm and modest familiarity that spoke achingly to me of our long acquaintance, and of how different it might have been.

‘I have not seen you since the French king's feast at Paris,' I began. ‘I hope you continue well.'

‘God has been kind to me, Majesty.'

‘Which one? Yours, or mine?'

He smiled, ‘I am afraid I do not follow your words, Majesty. I am only a merchant. Will it please you to choose among my poor things today? I have a piece meant for the queen of Sicily, but does Majesty choose to see it first? It is stitched—'

‘With the hands of elves in the caverns beneath the glaciers of Persia,' I broke in. ‘I know. And your wares are as beautiful as ever. I shall be glad to take something. But there is one thing, you may recall, that you gave me last time we met. I am afraid it was … mislaid. I would have another.'

‘Majesty?'

‘Red, I remember. A very particular piece.'

He continued to regard me quietly, only a tautening beneath his sharp cheekbones indicated his curiosity. ‘And this piece? Another gift from your lady mother, perhaps?'

‘Perhaps. I find myself in urgent need of it. I have received a request from my mother, of the gravest kind. It concerns her business, that is, my family's business, with the Holy Land. I take it that you understand me now?'

‘I had known of some such thing,' he answered carefully, ‘when Majesty's brother was with you that time at Paris. When you received the first gift.'

‘To which I have been true ever since,' I replied. I stepped to the door of my closet and asked the maid to close it. ‘I am choosing surprises!' I laughed gaily, news that as the wood swung shut against my back I heard being relayed to the ladies in the chamber, who clapped and giggled approvingly. ‘Give them whatever they ask,' I said carelessly. ‘Tell them each I chose their silk specially. You will not have to journey so far as Angouleme this winter.'

‘Your lady mother will be disappointed.'

‘I doubt it,' I whispered, allowing my gown to fall loose on my shoulder and fishing in my bosom for the strings of
my chemise. ‘She has more important matters than gowns in mind.'

I turned so that he could see my bare flesh, smooth and sleek again after a winter of hot baths and rich food. I reached over my shoulder and traced the thin line of the scar with my fingertips, slowly, that he might mark it with his eyes. When I was sure he had seen, I adjusted my gown and turned to him. His eyes remained fixed to what he had seen, like a cat enthralled and dizzied with a sunbeam.

‘And now,' I said, ‘let me explain to you what it is that I need.'

He smiled, not his wheedling pedlar's grin, but a true smile. His hand was already scrabbling beneath his cloak, but I stayed him.

‘I have no need to see it. I know that it is there, and why.'

‘Then please, Majesty. Let me know your command.'

And so, some few nights later, I found myself doing what I had sworn I should never do, fastening on the red garter which glowed like a brand against the pale skin of my thigh. My hair was simply braided under my hood. I wore a loose gown and a chemise that laced at the front. I picked up the looking glass that had been my gift to myself from the silk man's cargo. How I had longed for such a thing when I was a girl! I smoothed my skin in its silvery sheen, pinched my lips and cheeks to bring the blood beneath.

‘You look beautiful this evening, Sister.' Pierre was waiting for me in the passage. He was too clever to let his triumph show in his face.

‘Thank you. I am grateful to you, Pierre.'

‘For a simple compliment? We are in Poitiers. Ought I not to make a trouvère verse on your complexion?'

‘For your patience, Brother. I have tried it sorely. It has taken me such an unforgivable time to know what I am.'

‘And what you shall be, Sister.'

‘Indeed. And what Henry will become, in his turn.'

Pierre gave an ugly smirk, the only moment in all that we had been through together when that perfect mask slipped. ‘With God's help.'

I curled my own lips in a smile of contempt. ‘Quite. With God's help.'

‘Come. We are on the king's business, after all.'

*

Pierre had two horses saddled in the courtyard. He helped me to mount, then swung himself into the saddle and walked to the gatehouse. The guards bowed respectfully as the queen and the Lord de Joigny passed through. The night was cold and clear, the moon a Saracen scimitar above the city.

‘Is it far?' he called as we turned onto the Paris road and pushed the horses to a trot, then a canter.

‘Our mother's message said just a few miles. Along the river, until we come to the tower. They wait for us there.' There had been no such message, but Pierre was so eager to believe it, it seemed a shame to disappoint him.

‘Then let us fly.'

I had not galloped a horse for so long, I wondered if my limbs had lost the memory of it, but my hands and legs were as sure
as ever. The euphoria was the same too, the same reckless joy in speed and sinew, of sharp air in my lungs and the sweet warmth of horseflesh. Pierre rode well, of course, but I found I could match him and for a short time as we raced along abreast under the stars, I did feel once again that we flew, as one body, surging through the night. I even closed my eyes for a while, squeezing gently but allowing the horse to find his pace, and remembered Othon, and Tomas, and riding out with Arthur, and allowed the tears to fall from my tightened eyelids, a burning cold in the wind on my face, until the sadness left me and I bared my teeth in the darkness with a savage pleasure.

‘Here?'

I pulled myself awake from the daze of the gallop and drew hard on the rein. ‘I believe so.' I had passed Pierre, who waited behind me on the road, the silhouette of a guard tower defined by the gleam of moonlight on his hair. ‘Forgive me!' I laughed.

‘Come now.'

We walked the horses along a narrow path towards the tower, then dismounted and led them past the empty structure towards the riverbank. Ahead I could make out the glow of a fire. ‘This way.'

The place might have been the same hollow where I had first dreamed, or thought I dreamed, of the horned man. Fire, rock, water, moonlight. It might have been my mother who stepped from her cloak, her gown, her chemise, who unbound her hair so that its colour mingled with the flames that caught the red noose on her leg. And she who might have turned to her son, to my brother, and held up her arms so that the silver light caught the
delicate veins in her wrists, as though to twine her lover through her blood and trawl him into her heart.

Somewhere behind the rock began the slow thud of a drum, and I began to move to its rhythm, curving my hips and raising my hands, inviting Pierre to dance.

‘But where?' he whispered, his moon-paled face confused.

‘Come, Brother,' I smiled. ‘Come, dance. They will be here. And He will be here too. Come.'

Pierre fumbled at his clothes, first unfastening his sword belt and letting it drop, then his surcoat, shirt, hose, until he was naked as I. As he stepped towards me, I watched the lean lines of muscle on his torso stir beneath the skin and caught the smell beneath his arms, musky and high. I embraced him, filling myself with the scent of him, then turned away, twisting my back and thighs against his body as we began to circle the fire. The drum beat faster, and we kept time, describing an orbit like the celestial bodies that circle the earth, around and around. I felt my own limbs prick with sweat, and glancing down, saw that Pierre was ready for me.

‘Now,' I whispered. ‘We must summon Him now.' I lay on the bare ground with my head towards the fire, and slowly parted my legs. When he was with me, I gripped my thighs tightly around his hips and rolled us over, so that I sat astride him, his face now illuminated by the flames. I began to move, pushing my weight down hard upon him and allowing my lips to part. It was the first time I had feigned pleasure with Pierre. The drumming had stilled, to a steady double beat, the twinned sound of our bodies moving together as I carried Pierre with
me, and as his pleasure came upon him I saw a shadow over my shoulder and saw that Pierre had seen it too, his eyes rolling back in stupid ecstasy. I scrambled his body from mine and we turned once more together, prostrating ourselves before the horned man, who stood above us, the leather mask of his face descending into the hides that covered him, the antlered head gleaming like birch bark in the glow of the flames. The drum had ceased now. As we waited in silence, I threw a swift glance to the tumbled heap of Pierre's clothes. How far? Ten yards, twelve? Pierre saw the movement of my head, and I wondered whether he knew what was to come, or whether he would die enraptured, in the presence of his god.

But he did not see Gilbert step out from behind the rock, or the long blade of the dagger behind his heart, nor, when he had fallen forward with a gasp no louder than the whistle of a candle, did he see the horned man pull off his hide face and stand staring over my nakedness.

‘Hand me my cloak,' I asked the silk man. When I was covered, I stooped over my brother's body, already cooling where it lay away from the flame. Gingerly, I closed his startled eyes.

‘It is as my mother wished,' I intoned solemnly, for the benefit of my listeners. ‘A great sacrifice.'

The silk man began to sing, and Gilbert joined him, a high, quavering melody that hung in the air not unlike a psalm. I heard them out. I no longer scorned them. We served the same ends, they and I, and after all, our methods had not proved so very different, in the end. I did not even despise Gilbert, whose loyalty had been bought for a palmful of gold. As he hymned
his dead master, I searched in my heart for remorse at all I had brought about, remorse, or pity, or fondness even, an echo of the shameful passion I had always felt in Pierre's arms. But I was done with thought, with reflection. Thinking had almost destroyed me in body and in mind, and I wanted no more of it. The old way, the way of other creatures, did not know thought any more than it knew regret. It sought only its own existence, and if it failed, it gave up life, as Pierre had done. I could not hate him for what he had done to me any more than a squealing rabbit, tearing off its own limbs in the snare, could hate the hands that set the wire. Perhaps I even understood him. I had not had him killed for revenge any more than my mother had tormented me out of cruelty. It was simply the way the old ways worked, taking what they needed without thought or remorse. My boy would rule, and do so freely, the last and only difference between Pierre's desires and my own. And then I saw that I had been thinking, after all, dreaming in the crackle of the fire and the night breeze, and that both men were staring expectantly at me. I stood straighter and stepped over my brother's body to retrieve the rest of my garments.