The Stolen Queen Read online

  To Kate Williams.

  Contents

  Part One

  Introduction

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Part Two

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  PART ONE

  INTRODUCTION

  IN THE TIME WHEN I WAS STILL A CHILD, IT SEEMED to me that my father’s city of Angouleme was an island, a floating city gathered in the folded waves of the Charente Plain. From harvest until Easter, the fields that stretched below the ramparts were bleak, wind-scoured, pitted here and there with lonely clumps of juniper that I would make-believe were rocks where mermaids might sing, wriggling up from the froth of chalky soil which tipped the winter rains into a silvery net of tiny streams. I had not seen the sea, then, but on bright days when my nurse Agnes would take me to walk in the garden I would scramble up on the wall and claim I could spy it, a tinsel ribbon at the edge of the horizon, and I would make poor stout Agnes puff along after me as I played at being a pirate princess, defending my kingdom against dragons or the wicked hordes of heathen soldiers, pulling up the beach in their black-sailed ships, vicious scimitars glinting deep in their beards, clutched in gold-tipped pointed teeth. Agnes grumbled that it was no game for a young lady, and why couldn’t I sit nicely under a rosebush and attend to my needlework like a Christian child, but I argued rudely that was I not a Courtenay and a great lady besides, and that serpents and infidels were very much my business. Agnes had nothing to say to that.

  My mother’s people were a crusading family, royalty from Outremer, the kingdom across the sea where the bravest knights of Europe fought in the bloodstained desert to preserve Christendom from the wicked wiles of Saladin. When I was big I was going to take ship at Italy and cross those deserts myself and live in a pink marble palace with a hundred courtyards full of fountains and a troop of monkeys with gold collars to bring me pomegranates and sherbets made with jasmine syrup and mountain ice. Agnes said monkeys were nasty beasts, she was sure, full of fleas and worse, and that she had no intention of getting on a ship and then where would I be in my pink marble palace with no one to mind me? So then I would sit quietly, to please her, and pretend to study my missal, but in a while my eyes would wander up through the wide sky above my father’s house to the façade of the cathedral, alive with its tumble of stone flowers and beasts, and my sensible wool cloak would turn to mail across my back so that I could feel its dusty weight, and the sharp wind that whipped up from the river below the city would be full of the scents of saffron and incense and the cupolas at the corners of my grandfather’s church would shimmer in a mirage, becoming the towers of the Holy City itself … until the bells rang for the tenth hour and I had to snatch up my book and run to wash my hands as Agnes called me to dinner.

  I was playing there, up on the walls, the day the silk merchant came. April, and the waters of that fancied ocean beneath me were turning from grey to the palest golden green.

  ‘Look, Agnes, he’s here, he’s here!’

  Childhood has a different calendar, I think, not marked by the feasts of the Church or the regular shift of the seasons but by the smaller, more personal rhythms of a world of which we are still the centre. For me, the new year began when the new sunlight softened merciless Poitou wind and I began to watch for the silk merchant on the road from the south. He was Venetian, from that city that really did float on water, where all the wealth of the East was gathered to be floated along canals the colour of the silk man’s strange aqua eyes. I loved to hear my mother tell me of Venice, the Crusader’s gateway, from where the men of her own family, the Courtenays, had set out to fight the heathen, where mysterious ladies waited in gold-panelled rooms, combing out their hair in pearl looking glasses, with the silk sleeves of their gowns trailing all the way to the ground. My mother had a looking glass, and if I was very careful she might sometimes allow me to peep at myself in it. She said that in Venice the light was conjured into so much glass that the whole city shimmered like a vast mirror, a vision of Heaven at the edge of the world.

  Even Agnes was excited to see him, looking carefully round to see that none of my father’s grooms were nearby before hoisting her skirts, showing a glimpse of blue cloth stocking, to climb up beside me. She put her arm around me as we watched, and I remember her smell, the lavender in her linen under the darker odour of her winter gown, mixed with the olive oil of the Castile soap she used to scrub us with in the bathhouse.

  I pointed along the road to where the silk man’s mule laboured like a fat bluebottle through the swampy hollows left by the winter floods. ‘Look, there he is!’

  ‘I see him, Isabelle, yes. I see him, little one.’

  If I had listened, perhaps I would have caught something different in her tone, but I was too excited to care.

  ‘But there’s someone else, Agnes, look!’

  I felt her stiffen beside me, a sudden tension in her gentle arm, and she looked round wildly for a moment until her eyes dropped back to the road, and seeing that the second rider was alone, she let out her breath and hugged me closer.

  ‘What’s the matter, Agnes?’

  ‘Nothing, my treasure. I wonder who that is?’

  The Poitou roads are almost impassable in the wintertime. Our supplies and messages came up the river on barges. It was not until the world dried out that the time came for the men to move out for the campaigning season. It was too early for there to be anything to fear from the road, even I knew that. Agnes was always worrying. I peered as far as I dared over the worn stone, my feet dangling in the air behind me. The horseman was gaining on the mule, I could see the red and gold of his surcoat through the splattering of road mud. He was riding crazily, paying no mind to the treacherous ground, his body hunched high over the straining shoulders of his mount so that I could imagine the poor beast’s sides slick with sweat and blood from the cruel spurs. He came up behind the silk man and the mule skittered clumsily from his path, I heard a shout of protest as the packs were pelted with dirt. I wanted to giggle, but Agnes would not have liked me to laugh at another’s misfortune, so I made my face solemn and said that I hoped the poor silk man’s wares were not spoiled.

  ‘Still, he must be important. He will be coming for my father.’ I felt proud as I said that, knowing that my father was the most important man in his county of Angouleme and La Marche. Aymer Taillefer, Count of Angouleme, as the heralds called when he entered the cathedral for Mass, one of the greatest vassals of Philip, king of France. My father’s people had held our lands since the time of our ancestor, the Emperor Charlemagne. They had fought the Norsemen when they ventured into this part of France, and the meadows beneath their city were full of iron, my father said, from their swords and from their blood. Our name meant ‘iron cutter,’ after the Count of Angouleme who had sliced a Norse chieftain in half to his waist, cleaving his helmet and breastplate with a single great blow of his sword. The Taillefers belonged to Angouleme, and Angouleme to us, and one day this high city would be mine, for I was my father’s heiress.

  ‘Come away now, Isabelle.’

  ‘No! I want to see.’

  ‘The silk man will be here s
oon,’ she coaxed. ‘We can go to the kitchens and see about some food for him. And then you can choose your gown.’

  I struggled out from under her arm. ‘No, I want to stay here. Look, they’re opening the gates!’

  ‘You’ll fall, you foolish child! Come back, now.’

  Reluctantly, I let her lead me down to the kitchen buildings but not before I had jumped three times from the wall into her waiting arms. And then we were in the kitchens, where I was rarely allowed to go, and all the cooks and scullions bowed through the smoke and steam and said ‘my lady’, which I liked very much, and we picked out a cold duck and some soft manchet bread for the silk man, and I grandly ordered some spiced wine for my visitor and was given a piece of pink marchpane to suck, so that altogether I forgot about the messenger so eager was I to see the silk that Agnes would sew into my birthday gown.

  *

  I waited and waited in my mother’s room, where we would always look at the fabrics together, but even after the silk man had unloaded his wares and washed and eaten and prayed, my mother did not come. I fidgeted with the hangings on her big carved bed and poked in the rushes with my toes and made a nuisance of myself until Agnes snapped at me and told me to sit quiet.

  ‘But Maman said she would come! She always comes. Why is she late?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Well, send to find out then,’ I said imperiously, so Agnes spoke to one of my mother’s maids, who had gaggled in the doorway, as eager as I to see the cloths and slippers and ribbons. In a while she slipped back and whispered in Agnes’s ear.

  ‘Maman says you can start without her, Isabelle. She’s very busy, and you’re a big girl now. Old enough to choose your own gown.’

  I thought about crying. It wasn’t fair. My mother always looked at the silks with me and told me stories about where they came from and it wouldn’t be the same without her. Still, the maids were watching, and Agnes’s face was tight with something I didn’t recognize, and I knew that she minded for me and that I should behave graciously.

  ‘Very well.’ I took a deep breath and motioned my hand to the silk man as I had seen my mother do. ‘You may show us what you have brought. We will see if it pleases us.’

  I caught a giggle from one of the maids and glared at her. She bobbed a curtsey and said, ‘Excuse me, my lady.’ I felt better. I clapped my hands, trying to feel as happy as I had last year, and the year before.

  ‘Come along then!’

  For a moment the girls hung back, but then they fell upon the opened packs like a flock of pigeons, pecking and exclaiming, running rainbows through their fingers and holding up the jewel-coloured cloths to their faces. I pointed to a heavy red as it slithered to the floor. ‘Where does this come from?’

  The silk man’s skin was dark like old leather, but I thought I could see that city of sparkling water and glass in his curious eyes. I liked the long lilt in his voice when he spoke, the slim suppleness of his vowels, poking through our language like the slender prow of a boat. ‘From Venice, my lady. My city.’

  All the same, the red was too weighty and sombre, like something a priest would wear.

  ‘Show me another.’

  He pulled out a length of golden orange, holding it up to the light so that the colours danced, then spread it across my knees so I could make out the delicate blue embroidery, a shadow pattern of foliage.

  ‘This is from the meadows of Anatolia, my lady. The women there labour for years on a single piece of cloth. It will be as though your skirts are a field of flowers.’

  Agnes looked disapproving. ‘You may set that aside for my mistress. It is too fine for a child.’

  I didn’t mind. It was beautiful but it was not my birthday gown. The maids had gathered beneath the casement exclaiming over a piece they held between them but when I looked again I was puzzled, for it seemed there was nothing in their hands.

  ‘That one,’ I demanded.

  Agnes often reprimanded me for my eagerness, for poking and snatching, breaking things or making them grubby, but when I saw the silk the maids were carrying I held myself back, afraid to touch it. I had never seen anything so beautiful. The tissue was so fine it might have been a lady’s skin; the veins on the girls’ hands were visible beneath it. It was not quite white and not quite silver, densely woven like damask, but it seemed as light as a cloud. It was definitely something that a mermaid would wear.

  ‘Please, where does this come from?’

  ‘Oh this, my lady? This is not for sale.’

  I thought I knew all his merchant’s tricks, like when Agnes took me to the fair on Lady Day and the stallholders pretended they had nothing to spare because they knew we were rich. I thought I would pretend to be patient. ‘But please, tell me where it is from.’

  ‘This silk is from Persia, my lady. There is nothing like it for sale from Naples to Paris. And it is a gift, a gift for the queen of France herself.’

  ‘Really? For the queen?’

  ‘For Queen Agnes, yes. She was a princess of Dalmatia, you know, which is a Venetian territory. Her Majesty will value this greatly, so you see I cannot sell it, even to such a pretty little lady as you.’

  ‘Is that so?’ It was my mother’s voice. The silk man folded himself into a bow so tight I thought he would spring back like a spinning top, and the maids’ gowns rustled as they bent deep curtseys, but I rushed into her arms.

  ‘Maman, Maman, here you are! I knew you’d come! Look at this, Maman, he says it’s for the queen!’

  My mother squeezed me so tightly that I was lifted off the floor and she buried her lips in my neck, kissing me until it tickled while I rubbed my nose into her shoulder.

  ‘How much?’ she asked.

  ‘But Maman, it really is for the queen, we can’t buy it!’ I explained.

  ‘Do you like it, little one? Shall you have it for your birthday gift from me?’

  I hesitated. I wanted it, of course I wanted it, but there was something about it that made me afraid. It was a costume for a pink marble palace, like something from a story that I didn’t quite want to come true. When I looked at it, it made me feel lonely.

  ‘Won’t the queen be angry, Maman?’ I hesitated.

  My mother smiled. ‘I daresay the queen has plenty of Eastern silks to choose from. And this is white, the colour the queens of France wear for mourning, you know. Perhaps she will not like it, just now.’

  As my mother spoke I saw Agnes’s eyes seek her face. She raised her eyebrows, questioning; my mother replied with a barely perceptible nod.

  ‘So you would have it, then, my darling?’

  ‘Of course, thank you Maman, oh, thank you!’ I tried to hop with happiness, to show my mother I was delighted but there was a strange cold feeling inside me, and as the silk man moved to lay the cloth on my mother’s bed I hated how its lightness stirred in the breeze from the casement, like a living thing. A shroud, I thought, a creeping shroud that would swallow me up and suffocate me. I wanted him gone, I wanted to choose another gown, anything, yellow or blush or green, I didn’t care, but I smiled and held my mother’s arm as the silk man bowed his way out to the strong room where my father’s clerk would mark the silk on the tally sticks. The maids fluttered out, exclaiming over their ribbons and kerchiefs.

  And then, when we were alone, my mother told me slowly and sadly that King Richard of England was dead, and that I was to be married. I was nine years old.

  CHAPTER ONE

  MY MOTHER HAD TOLD ME THE TALE OF MELUSINA many times. ‘There was a king,’ she would always begin, ‘who loved his wife very much. When she died, he raved in his grief, and his only consolation was found in the forest, where he hunted for hours every day, exhausting his horses as he tried to ride away his tears. One day, the sorrowful king had outrode his groom and squire and found himself alone in a strange part of the forest. He heard trickling water, which reminded him that he was very thirsty, so he stopped at the spring to refresh himself. As he stooped over the clear
water, he heard a woman’s voice, singing.’

  My mother would change to the langue d’oc here, the language of the musicians, to sing the words the king heard. Sometimes she sang from one of my favourite songs, ‘He alouete, Joliete, petit t’est de mes maus,’ putting the words in the mouth of the beautiful fairy, Pressine, who waited by the well for the king.

  ‘And then, as he saw her, the king’s aching heart was healed. In time, Pressine became his wife. When it was time for her to give birth, Pressine told the king that he must not come near her, and she was delivered of three baby girls, Melusina, Meliore and Palatine.’

  ‘Did she love them, Maman?’

  My mother would kiss me on the nose. ‘Very much but not as much as your maman loves you, little one.’

  Then the story told of how the king, hearing of the births, rushed to congratulate his wife, breaking the rule she had given him, and Pressine said sadly that he had not kept his promise to her, and that she must leave his castle at once. And then a great storm blew, with clouds like ink and rain so thick the sun disappeared, and when the storm had gone, so had the queen and her daughters.’

  ‘Where did they go?’

  ‘To the Lost Island, where no one but the fairies has ever been. But each day, the queen carried her daughters to the peak of a mountain, where they could look down upon their father’s lands, and she would tell them that they might have lived there, and been happy, except that he had broken his word.’

  ‘Was she sad?’

  ‘Very sad, my darling. But she had to keep to the fairy law,’ Mother would explain.

  Melusina was the most beautiful of the three fairy princesses, and the most curious (‘who was she like, little one, I wonder?’). When she was grown up, she asked Pressine what it was that her father had done. When she heard of how he had spied on her mother and defied her, Melusina decided to punish the king. She stole away from the Lost Island into his lands, and there she used a spell – remember, she had fairy blood – that imprisoned the king and all his barons inside a stony mountain cave. When Pressine discovered this, she was angry, in turn, for she loved her husband still, and longed for him, despite his error, and punished her daughter with another spell – a curse. Every Saturday, Melusina would turn into a serpent, and this would continue until she found a man to marry her who would agree never to see her on that day.