The Young Lion (12 page)

‘Where’s the Greek?’ he asked.

The captain handed him Xena’s note.

‘She can write?’

‘We think it’s a female hand, sir.’

‘Any other notes?’

‘We found this beneath the mattress. It’s in some language …’

‘It’s in fucking langue d’oc, that’s what it’s in,’ the Seneschal said. ‘This is the Queen’s hand, and her mother tongue. What’s the translation?’

‘We haven’t …’

‘Take it to a troubadour! There’s a score of the parasites hanging around the servants’ quarters. Fornicating or drunk.’

While he waited for a translator the Seneschal had three maids who groomed the Queen’s bedchamber brought in. They were older women, some of them employed in the palace since childhood.

‘Sit down,’ he ordered them.

They looked one to the other. ‘We’re not allowed to sit in the Queen’s apartment,’ one said.

‘You are if I tell you to.’

The Baron remained standing, pacing back and forth in front of them. He gave a flick of his arm to the guards, including the captain, to leave the apartment, then he dropped the iron bar over its double doors. He continued pacing in silence, every so often shooting a menacing glance at the women. He was waiting until he smelled fear.

At length he asked, ‘Which of you will be the first to tell me what marks you observed in the Queen’s bed?’

They looked at each other. Even they were aware of the stench coming from their bodies.

‘Must I take you downstairs?’

They understood.

‘We saw fluids,’ one said at last.

‘What date?’

‘During December and the Christmas Court, sir.’

‘Of course it was during December and the Christmas Court! I don’t expect you to remember what happened before the Queen went to Outremer. Was it after Christmas Eve, perhaps? Or after Christmas night?’

Another woman said, ‘Both, sir.’

‘And before that?’

The woman who had spoken first said, ‘There were other times …’

‘Perhaps following the victory parade through Paris?’ the Seneschal prompted.

She nodded.

The women were less frightened, he observed, now they were talking. ‘What else did you find?’ Their faces shuttered. Estienne stopped pacing. ‘I have to tell you why I’m questioning you. On nights when the Queen lay with the King in her bedchamber, somebody stole jewels from the King’s apartment. On nights when the Queen lay with the King in his apartment, somebody – the same man, we presume – stole jewels from her apartment. And performed disgraceful acts in Her Highness’s bed.’

They gasped, then sighed with relief that they were not under suspicion of a crime. One smiled.

‘So what was it that you found beside fluids?’

‘Hairs, sir.’

‘On a pillow?’

They nodded.

‘Were they unusual?’

‘We were surprised, because Their Highnesses’ hair is dark, and these hairs were gold or flaxen.’

‘That,’ the Seneschal said, ‘is what I expected. It tells me who the thief is.’ He paced up and down, but spun suddenly. ‘Where are they? One of you has kept the hairs, haven’t you?’

He could see from their blank faces they had not. ‘You can leave. You’ve been loyal and faithful servants. Tell no one I’ve questioned you.’ He gave each woman a coin.

When he unbarred the door for them he found the guards’ captain waiting outside with a dishevelled young troubadour. ‘Pulled him off a laundry maid,’ the guardsman said.

The Seneschal took the captain inside the apartment while the troubadour waited in the corridor. ‘Gather our ten fastest horses and men. They ride for Normandy within the hour. I believe the Duke has abducted the Queen’s maid. She could well have … information.’

The captain hesitated.

‘What is it?’

‘Sir, the maid could also be floating in the Seine. There was a man in the Queen’s closet. He used her privy.’

Estienne clapped his shoulder. ‘Excellent, Augustin. If we look immediately we may find the body before it sinks. But get those riders off immediately.’

He did not invite the troubadour to enter the apartment. ‘What’s this poem, boy?’ he asked.

In his lazy southern drawl the troubadour read out:

‘Did you write it?’

‘Nup.’

‘Is it the work of one of your colleagues?’

‘Doubt it.’ The troubadour yawned. ‘It’s not very …’

‘Not very what?’

‘Complicated. Look at the metre – blah, blah, blah, blah. Blah. Anybody could write this. It’s a prayer, more than a poem.’

‘What’s this at the top of it?’

‘A dedication.’

‘To whom?’

‘Fucked if I know. God, I think.’

The Seneschal glared at him. ‘Get back to your rutting, lout.’

The troubadour whistled as he sauntered down the stairs.

The dedication said:
For my beloved G
.

‘How dare you!’ the Queen said. She stood at the entrance to her apartment looking at the shambles within. She turned, ‘Louis! Look what they’ve done to my clothes! Where’s my maid?’

The King frowned. ‘Estienne?’

The Seneschal took him aside, whispering to him what had transpired since yesterday. As he had no evidence, he did not mention the Duke’s hair found on the Queen’s pillows. He handed Louis the letter written by Xena, and the poem in langue d’oc.

Louis read the letter first. ‘She discovered the trapdoor while looking for a thimble?’ His voice rose with incredulity.
‘Nobody’s found it in more than three hundred years.’ He glanced after Eleanor, who had run across her bedchamber and stepped through the shattered door to the closet. ‘You suspect the maid lay with Normandy? This letter does not make it clear who the man was.’

‘I suspect Normandy.’

Louis turned to the guards’ captain. ‘You have been extraordinarily lax! The Queen’s life could have been in danger.’

He strode to the broken door. Eleanor could feel her heart pounding and knew blood was mounting to her hair roots. All the windows of her apartment were uncovered. The sky was grey but it was broad daylight and beneath her white headdress her face was scarlet. Louis’s expression was furious.

‘Translate this for me,’ he said, handing her the poem. She did so, but omitted the dedication. Eleanor herself had taught him her language when they were first married.

Louis said, ‘It’s dedicated, I see, to “my beloved G”.’

‘It is indeed,’ Eleanor replied. Her glance was downcast; she clasped her hands together.

‘Who is G? To whom have you written with such yearning love? Such surrender?’

‘The Angel Gabriel,’ Eleanor whispered. ‘I prayed to Gabriel to send us a son – as it was he who announced to the Virgin that she was bearing a son. I put the prayer beneath my mattress, hoping that after you and I had lain together the angel would bring an heir for France to my womb.’ She began to sob.

Louis was speechless. He crossed himself and muttered, ‘May I be forgiven.’

‘For what?’ Eleanor gasped between sobs.

‘For the evil thought that possessed me. I thought this was a love poem, written to a man.’

‘Oh, Louis. No!’

‘Clean up this mess,’ he ordered as he guided her out of her apartment into his own.

The King’s apartment was much larger than the Queen’s. It had many chambers and dark corners. He locked the door and walked off, leaving her standing in the anteroom. When he returned he was bare-chested and holding something she could not quite see. She gasped when he handed it to her.

‘I can’t!’ she said.

‘You must. The impurity in me prevents you from conceiving. You must!’

The scourge was so heavy she had to step back three paces and hold it with both hands to wield it properly.

Through the door of the King’s apartment the Seneschal and the captain of the guards could hear the Queen screaming at him, and Louis shouting prayers to God. ‘After this, he’ll lie with her,’ Estienne said. ‘Tell the kitchen to prepare dinner for them. They’ll be hungry.’

He and the captain waited outside the royal apartment napping and talking quietly until dusk drew on. They realised the monarchs would probably spend the night together, and could even be asleep by now.

As he was about to leave the Seneschal remembered something. ‘How did you know a man used her privy?’ he asked.

‘There was the print of a man’s boots, with some straw and dung from the stables. He washed his hands and face in there. We found cloths with mud, blood and horsehair on them. And some hair.’

‘What colour?’

‘Copper red.’

‘Red! You say red?’ The thought struck him like lightning: not the father, but the son! Pissing in her privy! Washing his face and hands in there!

He himself would never have the effrontery to enter that private, royal space. The fury he felt against the Queen and her Anjevins stung like the bite of wasps. Every grievance in his life flew out of him. I’ll exterminate them, he promised himself. The whole rotten tribe.

The thought calmed him. ‘You know, Augustin,’ he said to the captain, ‘if we fail to catch them in the next few days – whether they’ve taken the Greek with them or killed her – we’ll get them soon enough. The fifth of March is the date. On that day, France takes back the Vexin. And takes Normandy.’ For the first time in more than a day, he laughed.

The captain swiftly calculated that the fifth of March would be a moonless night, but wondered if there were another reason for the date. Estienne read the query in his face.

‘It’s the day after the son’s seventeenth birthday, when Geoffrey Foulques hands the duchy to young Henry. They’ll all be drunk from celebrating.’

The tavern where Henry, Geoffrey and Guillaume stayed was across the river from the school of Notre Dame and a haunt for European students. The three men, gowned as students and all with a strong command of Latin, passed as scholars seeking the new ideas and ancient wisdom from Greece and Rome that had set intellects on fire throughout the crusader lands. ‘Thought and knowledge have been reborn,’ men told each other. They worshipped Aristotle as a god.

The Anjevins kept to themselves as much as possible. The tavern-keeper inquired about the long wooden box in their room. ‘Our books,’ Geoffrey smiled.

Early on the morning of the Feast of Epiphany, Guillaume had ridden with Henry to St Denis and waited outside the abbey. They returned to the tavern in silence, arriving well before dark.

‘I should change my tunic,’ Henry muttered. Guillaume said nothing. Henry shrugged. ‘No point, I suppose.’

‘Just put the gown over it and wash your hands,’ Geoffrey said.

Henry strode to his father. ‘Before I do, kiss Hamelin goodbye.’ He rubbed one bloodied hand then the other down his father’s
face. ‘You can enjoy the smell again later, sweet and fresh. Or perhaps I’ll drown her in the Seine.’

‘We have to make a decision,’ Guillaume said. ‘I’ll steal the horses, Henry will kill the maid …’

‘If you broke her neck it might be better,’ Geoffrey interjected.

‘Father, what’s better about having your neck broken rather than your throat cut? You must explain that to me one day.’

Geoffrey sat staring at the fire. When his sons left he found a looking glass and wiped the blood from his nose and forehead. From ecstasy to hell, he thought. On Christmas night Eleanor had breathed into his ear, ‘Get me with child!’

Before it was dark, Henry and Guillaume had walked to the palace. Geoffrey had described how to find the correct pillar in the stables, and the code of knocks for Xena to open the trapdoor. When they arrived at the gates they announced themselves to the guards in Latin. They were, they said, clerks of a bishop whose horse had gone lame on his way to the Epiphany feast. They asked if they might enter and borrow a mount. The guardsmen were cheerful from the spiced wine issued at Christmas and waved them through. The brothers embraced at the back of the Queen’s stable, taking care not to frighten the Arabian mare who slept in there. Then Henry clenched his dagger between his teeth and climbed up the pole.

He said to Xena, ‘I’ll cause you no pain. But the Seneschal and the inquisitor will torture you. And under torture you’ll tell them everything. You’ll even invent stories about the Queen that’ll make her sound more wicked than she is –’

‘She’s not wicked,’ Xena said.

‘Alright, she’s not wicked. But the Seneschal needs an excuse to confiscate her dowry, because if she manages to persuade the
bishops to grant her a divorce, her dowry must be returned to her. The Baron will want proof of adultery so he can legally strip her to poverty. What’s more, if she doesn’t soon produce an heir for France, my guess would be that she’ll suddenly “die of fever”. That’s what happens to sterile queens when stubborn kings won’t divorce.’ He stopped, his smile sardonic. ‘My father is a tree that bears abundant fruit. Your lady was wise in her choice of lovers.’

‘My lady is in love with him!’ Xena objected.

‘Xena, you can be in love. Troubadours can be in love. Merchants can be in love. Even knights can be in love. But love is unsuitable for monarchs. It interferes with the exercise of power.’

‘The King is in love with the Queen.’

‘That is exactly his problem.’ Henry’s temper was rising. I should never have started talking to you, he thought. Now it’s even harder.

‘You don’t really want to kill me, do you?’ she asked softly.

‘Nobody could ever want to kill you.’ His voice was husky.

He bent to his right boot and from it pulled out a leather sheath. Inside was a long-bladed knife. ‘Lombardis call this Cupid’s Arrow. It reaches the heart more quickly than any other weapon.’

He put his hands on her shoulders and pushed her to the floor until she was kneeling.

‘What’s sacred to you?’ he asked.

‘My family,’ Xena whispered.

‘Vow!’ he said. ‘Say, “I vow by my sacred family I’ll never allow myself to be captured alive.”’

She repeated the words.

Henry handed her the stiletto. ‘You hold it like this, under your left breast, between the fifth and sixth ribs. Then give a strong, fast push with the full force of both hands. Adieu! Have you got riding boots?’

She nodded.

‘Hide it inside your boot.’

He gave her his cloak and threw his student gown over his bloodied tunic.

When they slid down the pole into the back of the stable Henry glanced around for Guillaume, but there was no sign of him nor of the grey mare. I hope he took the mare, Henry thought. The girl can ride her.

The rain continued.

The cloak was too long for her.

‘Just hold it up as if you’re keeping it out of the mud. And take longer steps. You’re a man.’ He carried the bundle of her belongings, tied in a cloak they’d snatched from the floor of the closet.

In the rain few people, mounted or on foot, paid attention to pedestrians. The guardsmen, half drunk now, did not put their heads into the wet to look at Henry and Xena.

They ran across the bridge to the other island, then crossed the river again and in a dark laneway, stopped. Henry whistled a song Xena had heard the knights sing as the army made its way home. Shortly a loud whistle answered him. Henry said, ‘Straight ahead, then left.’

When Geoffrey saw that Xena accompanied Henry he beckoned him out of earshot of the students who were crowded inside the tavern to escape the weather. ‘Are you mad?’ he exclaimed in Catalan. ‘Why didn’t you do what you promised? We’ll never escape!’

‘One murder in cold blood is enough for me, Father. We’ll take her to Normandy.’

Guillaume hissed. ‘Brother, they’ll be pursuing us a few hours from now. A woman can’t ride hard enough. And we haven’t got enough horses.’

‘You two piss off then,’ Henry said. ‘I’ll take her myself.’

The Duke said to Guillaume, ‘Go to the stables and get another horse. Another two. All the grooms are inside the tavern trying to keep warm.’

‘My brother, who appears so calm and elegant, is the best horse thief north of wherever you come from,’ Henry said to Xena.

‘I had a cousin who stole horses,’ she replied. ‘He, too, was quiet and polite.’

Why does that make her eyes fill with tears, he wondered.

Guillaume returned a few minutes later. He and Henry carried the wooden box down from their room.

‘Have a piss and empty your bowels if you can,’ Henry told Xena, ‘because we’re not stopping. You’ll ride the mare.’

On the outskirts of the city they pulled up for a few minutes. Guillaume opened the wooden box and tossed his father and Henry their swords. They had light armour for their chests and leather helmets. They each clipped an axe to their belts. Guillaume threw the box under a tree, turned the pack-horse around to face Paris, and gave it a whack on the rump. The rain had stopped.

Xena had no idea of the direction in which they rode. It was almost full moon but mostly they had to depend on the horses’ vision in the dark and they rarely rode faster than a trot, their own shadows and those of trees falling across their path. After an hour they were deep in a forest where leaves were so thick on the earth the horses’ hooves made a swishing noise. Several times Xena felt some other presence and saw black fans rush silently across the pale-moon sky. A tiny metallic scream followed as the owl snatched a mouse. She drew alongside Henry, ‘Are there wolves in this forest, sir?’

‘Wolves. Bears. On the open land there were lions, centuries ago, but they were slaughtered in the Roman circuses. The lovely thing about this forest, Xena, is that there are no Frenchmen in it.’

Ten French knights with ten extra horses had just left Paris.
They carried torches and after an hour had covered almost twice the distance their quarry had in the same period.

Geoffrey, Henry and Guillaume signalled to Xena it was time to change mounts. The men worked in silence, expertly unsaddling and re-saddling the horses. Henry and Guillaume knelt and laid their ears against the ground. They nodded to each other.

‘Can you stay on a horse if it gallops?’ Henry asked Xena.

‘As a child I could.’

‘You’ll remember,’ he said. In Catalan he asked Guillaume, ‘How many of them, do you think?’

‘Eight or ten, plus extra horses.’

‘I figure they’re five leagues behind us.’

‘They haven’t seen us yet, or they’d be riding faster.’

‘That,’ said Henry, ‘is our one chance. Don’t tell the girl.’

Xena thought she saw pairs of green eyes in the dark. She was relieved they remounted so quickly. ‘Where are we?’ she asked.

‘Soon we’ll cross the border and we’ll be in our country,’ Henry said. ‘Keep up with me. You must keep up!’

He spurred his horse and broke into a canter. The Duke and Guillaume began riding faster too, because now there was the slightest lightening of the sky and they could just discern a path through the forest.

‘Gallop!’ Henry shouted. ‘Release the mare.’ He snatched the bridle lead from Xena’s hand and slashed it with his dagger. The three men cut the leads on their spare horses. All eight animals began to run as a herd. The men wore spurs; Xena did not. But she could stand for a gallop and her mount, feeling her weight lift from his back, stretched himself. The Arabian surged alongside him, then rushed in front of the herd. ‘I hope she knows where we’re going,’ Henry called to Guillaume. They had about a league of treeless, open ground to cross.

Xena could feel the stallion fade beneath her. He was sweated up and foam blew from his mouth onto her face. ‘Not long, not long,’ she urged him. It was light, although not yet dawn.

The Duke and Guillaume, riding ahead, slowed to a canter.

‘Around that bend, behind those trees, we’re at the border!’ Henry called. ‘Don’t look back.’

They slowed to a trot as they entered the stand of trees. Some of them were ancient, their bare limbs so high Xena had to crane her neck to see their tops. A huge elm stood at the centre of the grove and close to it, nibbling at what little greenery she could find, was the Queen’s Arabian mare. ‘Keep moving,’ Henry said. Guillaume whistled to the mare who raised her head and trotted after them. A few yards beyond the ancient tree the men pulled up. ‘That tree marks the border,’ Henry said. ‘For centuries the Kings of France and the men of Normandy have parleyed there.’

She gazed up at it; it was so old and sacred it seemed to touch the sky. ‘Perhaps heaven reaches down through the tree, to replenish earth,’ she said.

‘Your speech is poetic,’ Henry remarked. His voice had an inflection of curiosity. ‘God and man once more conjoined? By a tree?’

She nodded, unheeding, awe-struck by the elm tree.

‘You can look round now,’ Henry said.

Xena gasped. Halfway across the open stretch of land French cavalry galloped towards them.

Henry, Guillaume and Geoffrey dismounted and ripped off their leather helmets, shaking out their hair. Xena put her hand to her head to adjust her veil, but it was gone. Her mass of black ringlets fell past her shoulders to the centre of her back. She gasped and tried to cover her hair with her hands.

Guillaume said, ‘Henry, she’s lost her veil. Don’t stare at her. What can we give her?’

‘A leather helmet?’

Studying the ground as he walked, Guillaume handed her Geoffrey’s helmet. She was able to hide much of her hair inside it. ‘I must look stupid,’ she said.

‘You do,’ Henry replied cheerfully.

‘You’re an arsehole,’ Guillaume said in Catalan.

The French knights slowed, then stopped. A troop of more than a hundred mounted men were advancing from the other side of the elm forest.

‘Our Vexin garrison,’ Henry said. ‘It has a watch tower.’

The French yelled insults and shook their swords in the air. One had Xena’s veil on the point of his lance. His companions slashed it to shreds, before they turned and set off, back the way they had come.

‘They would’ve caught us if you couldn’t gallop,’ Henry said. Does he mean he would have stopped for me? Xena wondered. We would have both been killed.

‘We can eat soon,’ he was saying. ‘I’m so hungry I could eat a whole litter of piglets.’ He turned to her. ‘But I’ll give you one.’

‘I don’t like animal flesh,’ she said.

He grunted. ‘How about a fish?’

‘Fish would be good. And milk. I like goats’ milk. Do you have that in your country?’

‘We’ve got everything,’ Henry said. ‘It’s a land of milk and honey.’

He’d lost interest in the topic of food. His mount ambled beside hers. He leaned towards her ear. ‘How is it,’ he asked, ‘that you can write backwards and forwards?’

Her face flushed.

‘Everyone where I was born, in Antioch, can write backwards and forwards,’ she said.

‘Don’t lie to me, girl,’ he said. ‘It’s ungrateful. Are you a spy for the Empress of Byzantium? Is that why she gave you to the Queen?’

‘No! I am not!’

Henry ignored her answer and changed the subject again. ‘That elm tree that marks the border – Charlemagne slept beneath it.’ He raised an eyebrow, questioning if the name meant anything to her.

Xena thought, What does it matter now? I’m his prisoner.

‘Was that before or after he defeated the Moors?’ she asked.

Henry chuckled. ‘What a clever Greek girl you are. Writes backwards and forwards. Knows history … You’re full of surprises, Xena.’

He spurred ahead to join his father and brother who were already embracing the men from their garrison.

On the eighth of January the King decreed a month of mourning for the death of Abbot Suger. Marital intercourse was not permitted during the mourning period. Thank God I don’t have to oblige him for a few weeks, the Queen thought. Late that same night she heard that Geoffrey and Xena had escaped. She went to the royal chapel to give thanks.

Louis was already there, surrounded by monks, so she knelt at a distance from him. In the clouds of incense, amid the chanting, he did not notice her presence. But as he left the chapel he saw her and came over.