The Stolen Queen (5 page)

So with each cut, I hardened my heart a little against my mother, though I did not know it then. I did not mention the strange wound, either. I told myself that I must have been scratched on a May bush, and that it would heal. But in the last days before my mother's going, I could not sleep. When I closed my eyes I would see the horned man reaching down towards me in the vagrant light of the flames, and I woke sweated and twined in the bedclothes, calling for Agnes. But when she came, it was as I had seen her on May night, naked, with her hair tumbled about her face, and I came truly awake and screamed so loud that the guards rushed in, all the way from Lord Hugh's chamber with their axes raised. My mother appeared, dreamy in her nightshift with a cloak thrown over, but when she knew that I was safe she scolded me.

‘It was only a bad dream, Maman. Did you think a Saracen assassin had climbed into the castle?' I was trying to please her,
to make her smile with the memory of our stories, but the look my gentle mother gave me was sharper than any pagan's dagger and she berated me for shrieking like a silly child.

‘You are betrothed now. Learn how to conduct yourself, Isabelle. You will stay in your room tomorrow. I shall send my confessor to pray with you.'

I would not weep in front of her, I bit my lip proudly and held the tears in, but when she left I hurled myself back on the bed and cried silently until the whole room seemed to shake with my misery. What had happened? Where had my mother gone?

When it came time for her to travel to Angouleme I took leave of her formally, thinking of nothing but holding my spine as erect as a poplar as I curtseyed to the ground and wished her a safe journey. I kept my eyes there while she was helped into the litter, but when she called my name I lifted my head as eagerly as a puppy, and from where I stood below the leather curtains I glimpsed the pale flesh of her leg where her light summer gown had become trapped in one of the litter's poles. As a maid moved to free it, I saw a red garter tied beneath her knee, but my mother wore no stockings that day.

‘Isabelle?'

‘Yes, Lady Mother?' She settled into the litter, pulling her skirts tight about her and reached down to stroke my cheek. ‘Maman.'

‘This is very hard, little one. Remember the story of Melusina, and her mother Pressine? Sometimes … sometimes mothers have to do difficult things. Things that their children might not
understand, things that seem … unkind. But I love you, Isabelle. Remember that I love you. Remember that.'

I was not to see my mother again until the day I married. I wanted to climb into her arms and beg her to take me with her, but I stood there sullenly, as stupid as a toad, and in a moment she sighed and turned her face away and signed for the litter to move off. I watched her until she was out of sight, winding down the steep slope beyond the curtain wall, but I did not wave or call my love after her. When the sounds of the horses died away the maids turned and curtseyed deeply to me, for with my mother gone I was the first lady of Lusignan. I acknowledged them coldly, for was that not what it meant to be a lady? I should be as aloof as the queen of France, my cousin, so that no one should guess how the pain of my mother's departure twisted inside me a coil of pain that burned in my flesh as sure as the serpent engraved there.

CHAPTER THREE

T
HAT WAS THE DAY WHEN I BEGAN TO GROW UP. IT
was not until both my parents had left me that I truly understood that I should not be going back to Angouleme for a long, long time. I tried to make a painting in my mind, like the coloured stories on church walls, to fix my city there forever. Before I slept in my new room at Lusignan, after I had said my prayers, I would screw my eyes up tight and figure it behind them, the sounds of the men heaving loads from the barges at the river port, the bells of the abbey and the convent, which never chimed the canonical hours at quite the same time, the ancient carving in one of the towers where a man's leg stuck out strangely as though there was a figure imprisoned in the stone. I knew that the leg had belonged to Clovis, the first king of all France, who had been wounded in one of the many battles my city had withstood. In memory, I listened for the waterwheels of the mills and the strange singing that came on Fridays from the little building where the Jewish merchants, with their odd tall hats, had made their church. I painted our river, the Charente,
in all its seasons, from the low, heavy floods of winter to the
onde allegre
of the springtime rapids. It felt very grand to me that I could bring peace through my betrothal, even if it meant marrying the dreadful Hal, but if I was to be a Lusignan lady I would keep Angouleme inside me, guarding it like a dragon's hoard.

From the moment my mother left Lusignan, I became as docile a bride-in-waiting as Agnes could wish. I no longer scampered about the gardens, muddying my slippers and tearing my gowns. Agnes was no longer obliged to struggle after me as I played at crusading, or tend my scratches when I fell out of an apple tree. I asked her to twist up my fair braids into two prim knots behind my ears and, though I was not yet married, I instructed the maids to sew me short linen coifs to cover my hair. After hearing Mass each morning with the household we would take a quiet walk along the castle's perimeter then sit quietly over our sewing in the boudoir that had been my mother's while Lord Hugh's chaplain read aloud to us. I saw the maids nodding but sometimes the plain shirts we stitched for the poor had little flowers of blood on them where they pricked their fingers to keep awake. I remained alert and upright, only raising my eyes now and then to the clerk when I thought his droning might be something particularly holy. In fact, I could barely make out a word of the Latin and sewing bored me so much I should happily have given all my own fine clothes to the poor if it spared me having to make for them but I could see how pleased Agnes was with the good example I was setting, and I dearly wanted to please her, for she was all I had left of Angouleme.

At least, I dearly wanted to please her during those hours. I sensed rather than knew it, but it seemed to me that men could divide themselves as neatly as a cook quartering an apple. Lusignan swarmed with secrets, with whispered conversations between Lord Hugh's squires, messengers arriving late in the night, a parchment concealed in the chaplain's sleeve, a keening bare-chested man, his back ragged with lashes, whom I saw through my window being dragged through the inner courtyard between two guards as Lord Hugh walked grim faced before him. A little later, as I watched, he returned, rinsing his hands in a ewer and stripping off his bloodied shirt so that the sun gleamed on the pelt of dark hair that covered his back.

In my new, quiet, modest role as Lusignan bride, I learned that a sober countenance and a quiet step were excellent disguises for gleaning knowledge and, I learned, by watching and listening and minding my needle, that the Angevin lands were gravely contested, that the English counties of Anjou and Maine had been declared for the French king and that Arthur of Brittany was planning to claim his uncle's throne. I learned that Lord Hugh was feared, and that he was considered ruthless and greedy for power but, subtle as the serpent he wore at his throat, neither John nor Philip knew which way he would turn his fealty. Yet to me, Lord Hugh remained as cool and courteous as the day I had drawn blood from his son's hand. When we dined or listened to the musicians in the solar he seemed always entirely self-possessed, as though the creeping armies of the two kings, whose men seeped towards one another over
the lands of France like rivulets of flood water, were of as little concern to him as the gossiping of the castle washerwomen. So if men could be one thing, and seem another, then why could not I?

Lord Hugh was fond of me, I knew it. He liked what he called my ‘pretty ways': how I would rub my cheek against his sleeve and curl up like a kitten in his lap. He admired the grace of my posture and the elegance of my gowns and told me that his son would be a lucky man to have such a beautiful girl as a wife. When he was occupied I was invisible, but in the rare hours he spent at Lusignan he liked me beside him and I studied to please him, learning the Occitan songs he liked from his lutenist or asking him grave questions about the history of his lands, listening to the answers with my head cocked to one side, bright-eyed as a fledgeling. One hot evening in July, I told his steward that I thought Lord Hugh should like to dine outdoors and had trestles brought into the walled garden so that we could eat chilled almond soup and sweet orange-fleshed melons in the shade. I forced the maids to brave the mosquitoes in the river meadows to pick trefoil and bryony – they grumbled about the mosquitoes that bit – and scatter the yellow and purple blossoms over the white tablecloth. I mixed Lord Hugh's wine myself and attended him as dutifully as I should have my own father.

‘Very charming, Isabelle. We might be fairies at a hunting party, eh?'

‘I should like to go hunting, Lord Hugh. I should learn to ride, should I not?'

‘Quite right, I'll enquire. We'll find you a nice quiet palfrey, we don't want to scare Agnes.'

I wriggled into his lap and twined my fingers around the serpent brooch. ‘I don't want a nice quiet palfrey, Lord Hugh, I want a real horse.'

He drew back his head and looked at me, blinking as though he suddenly saw me for the first time. ‘Yes,' he answered slowly. ‘I expect that you do.'

‘So may I?'

‘What about your chaperone?' he whispered in my ear so that I felt his lips warm and dry against my skin. ‘I can't see fat old Agnes heaving herself onto my destrier!'

‘She doesn't have to come,' I teased back. ‘And if you wish it, my lord, what can she object to?'

‘Then you shall have a real horse, Lady Isabelle. And you shall learn to ride.'

He fluttered his fingers in an elaborate courtesy and I giggled, prettily, because that was what he expected. And in a few days he gave me Othon.

Often, in the evenings after supper, Lord Hugh's Aquitaine musician would recite romances for the company; plaintive stories of sighing knights who pined for beautiful ladies. I had never paid them much mind, preferring those tales of magic and adventure that my papa had sometimes told me. When I first saw Othon, he seemed to come from one of those stories. He was a bay gelding much too big for me with huge black eyes, Lusignan eyes, and the prettiest white blaze on his nose. From the way he lowered his head as I stepped up to the mounting
block and the delicacy with which he snuffled a palmful of hay from my hand I could see that he was a very intelligent horse but from the flare of his nostrils and the strength of his hindquarters I saw, too, that he was wild when he chose it. ‘I shall call him Othon,' I declared.

‘What kind of a name is that?' asked Agnes. She had consented to my learning to ride but she was not pleased.

‘A very good old name, Agnes,' I said haughtily. I didn't say that it was a pagan name, or that I remembered it from my papa's stories of the Norsemen who sailed down from their icy kingdoms to conquer France hundreds of years ago. The Taillefers, my family, had defeated the Norsemen. The stories of the Norsemen spoke of a magical horse, the best among gods and men. A steed that ran between the earth and the sky with mysterious signs carved into his bridle.

‘Is he a suitable horse for a lady?' Agnes asked the groom who held Othon's bit. I caught his eye.

‘Very suitable, madame,' he replied courteously, his face grave.

‘And your name?'

‘Tomas, madame.'

‘Very well, Tomas. You may begin Lady Isabelle's lesson.'

From the moment Tomas handed me into the saddle, I knew that I didn't need to learn. I had pretended to have a horse of my own for years, riding broomsticks and branches, to Agnes's despair, for was I not a Courtenay and a Taillefer? It was in my bones. I knew it as soon as I squeezed my knees against Othon's flank and felt him settle beneath my weight.
I knew how to hold the rein just so as not to hurt his delicate mouth. I knew how to listen through my sinews to the rhythm of his blood. I leaned forward to whisper in his ear, ‘Just a little time. We must be quiet, Othon. And then we shall fly, you wait and see.'

So for several afternoons, Tomas walked us around the yard under Agnes's measuring eye, calling out instructions and pretending to correct my posture and my handling of the bit. I could see how impressed he was with the way I rode, and that made me want to be even better. As we dutifully turned circles and figures of eight, I let my mind loose as I had not done since my mother left, dreaming of tournaments where I would disguise myself as a knight and charge down the list, unseating the famous champions of France, and then, tearing off my helmet, I would reveal that I was Isabelle, the finest horseman in France. King Philip would be astonished, the musicians would make poems about us, and I would wear the queen's favour in my braids. I would lead our men in battle and bring peace to our lands, and Hal Lusignan would beg for the favour of being my squire.

My splendid dreams ended with a bump. Othon had thrown me, and I lay in the schooling ring, with sawdust all over my face. I jumped up before I had my wind back, desperate to show Agnes that I wasn't hurt, but she was already bustling towards me.

‘Isabelle! Oh Isabelle! You are too bold!' She petted me while she scolded, and though my eyes burned with tears, they were of rage, not pain nor fear. How dare Othon behave so rudely? I
rubbed my face and saw old Tomas laughing at me, which made me angrier than ever.

‘They can feel it, my lady, if you are too proud. He was just showing you who's master.'

‘He is my horse!'

‘Indeed. But if you take your whip to him he won't respect you. Old creatures, horses. Look at him now.'

I stepped up to Othon and rubbed his soft nose. He was pulling naughtily at some fronds of weed that overhung the ring, showing me that he didn't care. Tomas was right: it was I who had been rude.