The Stolen Queen Page 10

  ‘Lord Hugh knew that King John had certain … tastes,’ Pierre continued, ‘and certain … incapacities. Why do you think there are no children of his marriage with Lady Hadwisa?’

  ‘The king has bastards, like his brothers. Like all kings.’

  ‘Perhaps, but he is older now. And has no legitimate child. Lord Hugh knew that he would want you, knew that in taking you he would give the Lusignans a legitimate grievance to rebel against him. So he arranged it with your Lord Aymer, the betrothal, then the betrayal. The Count of Angouleme thought of nothing except that his daughter would be queen.’

  ‘As I am.’ I would not let him see how the thought of my father using me hurt.

  ‘Or not … the king has not known your bed. It would be an interesting case for a church court, would it not, Sister?’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘Lord Hugh will rise against John, and the men of Normandy will support him. The next heir is Duke Arthur.’

  ‘What of it?’

  ‘You, my dear Sister, are England’s queen. You have been shown to the people, shopped about like a pedlar’s bundle over the countryside, we hear. You will be useful to Arthur’s claim, when you marry him. So you will still be queen of England, and Duchess of Normandy and Aquitaine. And perhaps queen of France, too.’

  My mouth was bubbling with questions, but he held up a hand. His voice was growing colder and colder. ‘I will finish. Now, as you know, the kings of France are related to the Courtenays, as well as the dukes of Brittany. Lord Hugh considers that if Louis of France should … die, then Arthur, as King of England and Duke of Brittany, would have a strong claim.’

  ‘This is madness. I will not hear it.’

  ‘I think you will. You see, Lord Hugh is an adherent of the old religion.’

  At the words, I felt the throb of the scar on my shoulder. I tried to turn away from the images that tumbled into my mind, the horned figure on the rock at Lusignan, the dark man in my wedding bed, the leering face in the green chapel in the wilds of England. I thought I might scream with it, scream and never stop, run mad and they would take me away and lock me up and drug me and I could be done with this, done with this spider’s web of vileness. I could feel it swell and billow inside me like a great wave, all the horror and rage I had quenched inside me during the time of my quietness. I opened my mouth to release it, but no sound came, only a weak little gasp. I breathed, swallowed, tried again, putting as much dismissive contempt into my voice as I could muster. ‘Yes, I know of that. Nonsense. Superstition for peasants. Ungodly and disgusting.’

  ‘No, not nonsense. You know it. Whatever you believe, Isabelle, Sister, Majesty, it has a powerful hold on the people. And you belong, too.’

  ‘I do not! I will not!’

  Pierre turned up his sleeve, the skin of his arm even smoother and paler than that of his face. Our face. I suddenly saw the old woman in the glade, rolling up her foetid rags. The mark was clear on his forearm, just below the elbow.

  ‘The serpent. What of it?’ I was confused.

  ‘Because we are Courtenay, and we are Lusignan. Sister.’

  I wanted to laugh. Finally, I could see what had been plain before my eyes for so long. Not for a moment could I question him. My mother, Lord Hugh, that last time at Lusignan. It had always been like that with them, and I had always known it, I saw now. I had simply chosen not to see.

  ‘But you … we are so fair,’ was all I could manage, absurdly. ‘The Lusignan men are black.’

  ‘Indeed. And the Courtenays are fair. And you are very lovely, Sister.’

  ‘And so are you, Brother,’ I managed to add, scornfully, though I felt faint.

  My mother, my mother … my beautiful, elegant, Maman. And my papa. My round, red-bearded Papa. I was not Taillefer, I was Lusignan, not the warrior’s daughter descended from the enemies of the Norsemen, but a cambion, the offspring of a human and a demon. Melusina’s tail was twined in my veins, too, and for all that Agnes told me there was no such thing as the Devil, how could I believe that when he stood before me, so gentle, so courteous, so handsome? Demons and goblins may have been tales to frighten children, but Pierre and Lord Hugh, fine gentlemen both, one black, the other white, had their dealings with Him. The church forbids it; it is the wickedest sin, incest. That is why marriages in great houses are dissolved, if they are found within the prohibited degrees of the Church.

  ‘But we are not … not?’ I blurted.

  ‘Monsters, Sister? No, we are not. The blood can turn different ways, in the Lusignans. Do you not recall the story of Melusina and Geoffrey Spike-Tooth from your nursery? The blood went another path, there.’

  Why was this man babbling of fairytales? I was distraught, could only think of getting him out of my sight, that I might think.

  ‘What is it that you want from me?’ I asked quietly.

  ‘As I said, Sister. We wish you to marry Duke Arthur, and be queen again, of England and of France, too. Are you not grateful?’

  ‘Grateful? Grateful? This is wickedness, madness! I will not do it. I will not betray my husband.’

  ‘He is not your husband, truly. And you have betrayed him. And think, Sister, think! Not just France and England, Normandy and Brittany, but the Holy Land, too! Our uncle, Peter de Courtenay, will be the next emperor in Constantinople. And you shall be his heiress. And then—’

  ‘You are out of your wits. Or you are a simpleton. You are a puppet to Lord Hugh … a-a dog. He cannot believe such a thing is possible.’

  ‘No, Sister.’ I hated the sibillant slide of that word, in his mouth. ‘I am no puppet. But you? What is it St Paul says, as your priests teach you? “Better to marry than to burn”? You shall marry where Lord Hugh chooses, or you shall burn. You are marked. And now I shall take my leave, Majesty. I am honoured to have been granted a visit with such a gracious queen. My profound thanks.’

  He was bowing himself out, once, twice, three times, and then he rapped on the door for the guard, and was gone.

  How could I not have seen it, when my mother told me the tale of Melusina? How could I have missed it, when she left me at Lusignan? Saturday, the day the witches held their sabbat, the day that Melusina could not be seen … The burning of the abbey … Lord Hugh training me like a blinded hawk, teaching me the pretty ways that would ensnare the king, showing me how to lead and tease him, even as I was myself ensnared. And to have done such things as he had done with his own daughter. His daughter! I think I groaned aloud, for Agnes came to me and placed a nervous hand on my shoulder. I could not bear for her to watch me as I contemplated my mother’s shame. Without raising my head, I motioned her wearily away.

  ‘I will stay alone, tonight, Agnes, do you understand? Send to King John and tell him that I cannot come down, that I am resting before the entry tomorrow. Go, please. Go!’

  When I heard the door close I went to my bed and lay down, my face flat against the linens. I forced myself to follow it through, what my mother had done with Lord Hugh, how they had conspired to cheat my father, and me, and John. What they planned … I did not know I had wept again until I lifted my head, seeing that the room had grown dark, and saw the soaked shadow of my face on the pillow. I dragged myself to the window and pushed the casement open to the stench of the river mud. Just a push and a step, I thought, nothing to me. I could release myself and fall to the stinking ooze and be lost, and surely God would not punish me, for He knew what had been done to me, and that His world would be better without me. Or perhaps we were fiends already, me and my mother and Pierre, gold and white outside and rotten corruption within, like Lucifer’s fallen servants? I had nothing to live for, no child, no real husband, as Pierre had observed, only Agnes’s mute and stupid love, as fond and useless as a lapdog’s.

  I hopped up to the narrow sill, my limbs moving as easily under my gown as if I climbed an apple tree in the garden at Angouleme. One push. One push and I would fly, briefly, as swift and sure as I had once flown with Othon, long ago in the wood
s at Lusignan. Even that word made me writhe with shame now. My palms smarted where I had buried my nails, I clenched them on the wood of the casement, closed my eyes for the last time, clenched my arm muscles—

  ‘Isabelle!’ The clatter of the door, John’s face, flushed with wine, his squat body swaying in the doorway clutching at the lintel for support. Behind him, the shocked faces of my maids. The sight of me had shocked the drunkenness from him, ‘Isabelle! They told me you were ill! Here,’ he stepped firmly across the floor and reached for me. I allowed my body to fall softly against his chest and he buried his face in my hair. The gold Courtenay hair.

  ‘Forgive me, my lord. The room was so close. I just wanted a little … a little air.’

  ‘Open the casements! Bring herbs to sweeten the room. Can you not see that your mistress is unwell?’

  ‘Was I in danger, sir?’ I murmured prettily. ‘Have you rescued me?’

  ‘Oh Isabelle.’ Now it was passed I could smell the wine in his pores, and he stumbled as he set me on the bed.

  ‘Forgive me, my lord. I should never wish to alarm you.’ It made me sick to do it, but I twined my arms around his neck, in full sight of the bustling maids.

  ‘You are very naughty,’ he muttered, delightedly. To my disgust, I could feel his excitement as he held me against him.

  ‘Then naughty girls should sleep,’ I said, making a penitent moue at him, turning up my face for a kiss.

  ‘Indeed. Sleep,’ he slurred, and rolled sideways onto the bed. The maids had not even lit the incense bowls before he was snoring. I was shamed for him.

  ‘Summon the king’s valet and his guard. He will rest here tonight. Look sharp!’

  When, finally, we were alone, I curled myself around my husband’s back, my eyes raw in the thick darkness. There was some comfort in the warmth of him. I tried to match my breaths to the sound of his heart and sought refuge in the sour fumes of his mantle. In a while, I slept, and so we shared our first night as man and wife, in one bed.

  CHAPTER NINE

  THE NEXT DAY, WE RODE IN PROCESSION ACROSS THE new bridge of St Michel, to the island palace of the kings of France. I rode behind my husband in a litter hung with crimson silk, my hair unbound and flowing down the shoulders of the silver dress, my small crown tight on my brow. I had asked Agnes for some rouge to disguise the paleness of my cheeks, and I hoped the shadow of my hair would disguise the hollows beneath my eyes.

  The bells of the great cathedral of Notre Dame were pealing as we came into the courtyard before the palace where, as a great honour, the French king’s seneschal held John’s horse as he dismounted onto a tree stump, traditionally the first step for the kings of France to take upon their homecoming. I thought how absurd it was, the significance men gave to such symbols, as though this tree stump was anything more than a lump of firewood, but I could see from John’s face that he deemed it a tribute to his power, and I pitied him, in his ignorance and his pride. When the men had passed into the hall, Princess Blanche and her ladies came forward to welcome me. As the toes of my slippers touched the ground, we both made deep curtseys, precisely timed so that neither of us should appear to be giving precedence to the other, and then Blanche stepped forward and offered me her hand.

  ‘You are most welcome to the Cité, esteemed Aunt,’ for Blanche was John’s niece, the daughter of his sister Eleanor of England and her Spanish husband, so I was her senior relative, though she was perhaps two years older than me. Her face was round, plain and placid. I had heard the story of how the old, indomitable English queen, John’s mother, had made the last of her long journeys across the mountains to personally select which of her granddaughters should be the next queen of France, and how Blanche’s sister, Urracca, had been passed over in favour of her sibling. I wondered why. Perhaps Blanche was more … biddable? But I could not think of obedience, not today. I complimented Blanche on her elegant white silk mantle, which fell over her blue dress beneath her crown. In turn, she praised my own cloth of silver, and we passed through among our kneeling women exchanging pleasantries, just as I had so often heard my mother do.

  Our husbands were presently held bond by a truce; soon, no doubt, they would once again be at war, as they had been so often, but this was not our business. We were to admire, to praise one another’s girdles and cloaks, to speak of the sweetness of the music and the elegance of the banquet, to arrange our sleeves and trill and coo like so many ornamental birds in an aviary. To be light and gracious and charming and never let it be seen that beneath our elaborate trains, a mere yard of which would have kept a merchant man’s family for a year, lay the blood and muscle and bone that would decide more surely than our husband’s armies what the future of their lands would be. Would Blanche’s son rule one day in the south, or mine? It was unbecoming of me to wonder it, though I wondered whether she thought about it, too.

  As we progressed into the palace, I saw that the conduits in the outer court had been filled with wine so that the people of Paris could celebrate the meeting of the two kings. We passed through a pleasant garden with vines trellised along the walls and plantings of willow, pear and fig trees.

  ‘My grandmother planted those,’ remarked Blanche. ‘They are very fragrant, in season, here in the shelter.’

  I acknowledged her politely, thinking of old Queen Eleanor, of how she had come here when she was a girl of an age with us, to be queen of France before her divorce and marriage to John’s father. The fig branches were crooked and gnarled now, as she must be. Had she planted them to remind her of her lost home in Aquitaine?

  We heard Mass in the chapel of St Nicholas, which looked more like a dragon’s lair than a church, so piled was it with gold ornaments. It seemed hard to believe, among the solidity of such wealth, in the fumes of the incense, and the low murmuring of King Philip’s chaplains in their beautifully embroidered vestments, that my brother believed such things could be easily swept away. I prayed fervently, asking forgiveness for my wickedness at the Louvre the previous evening, asking God for grace and guidance, yet I did not feel any less alone as we rose from our knees and followed the sound of blaring trumpets into the grande salle of the Cité.

  The room was lit with candles, for though the casements with their wooden shutters were open, they were narrow, designed for arrows rather than light and air. The Bourges tapestries shimmered as we took our seats, as though the figures they depicted were real and likely to step down and dance among us. King Philip sat on his throne in the centre of the dais, with my husband to his right and, on a slightly lower throne, the French heir, Blanche’s husband, Louis. We were conducted to our seats, I to the right of the prince, Blanche to the left of John. Lower your eyes as the grace is said, Isabelle, raise them respectfully to your husband when the trumpets sound, lean forward appreciatively as the first course is carried in, to show your pleasure to your host. The hours dragged by, and I passed them by playing myself as a model lady, imagining myself into my role so hard that for some of that endless time I even convinced myself.

  As the first course of venison in verjuice, gingered beef and a flight of roast egrets and herons, their feathers gilded with saffron and their wings sheltering tiny gold cups of cameline sauce, was carried in, I watched the room discreetly. My mother and Pierre were seated at the first table below the royal dais where the most high-ranking magnates of the two kings had taken their places. My mother caught my gaze, rose and made me a low curtsey, which I acknowledged with a dip of my head, no more. If I looked longer at my maman, I knew I should weep. Pierre was seated a little further along, among the French lords, his hair a blazon in the candlelight, his fine profile attracting admiring glances from the women nearby. The servers staggered in with the entremet, a cockatrice, a pig and a capon sewn together, stuffed with bread, egg and suet, surrounded by tiny quails with piglets’ snouts to represent its litter. I smiled at the praises of the guests, but the thing made me sick, I thought it crude and ugly. The cockatrice was followed by peacocks and swan, a h
uge side of ox carried by four men, dishes of wild duck in tarragon and cream seated on nests of pastry. I had to force myself to eat. The pungent spices were overwhelming and the mouths of the men, dripping with fat as they gnawed and swilled, appeared grotesque, a carnival of feasting demons. John was drinking hard, but I noticed that the French king took only a little watered wine as his restless eyes spidered around the room.

  Before the dessert course, it was time for the gift giving. I saw King Philip give a tiny smirk into his beard, knowing what was to come. The doors of the salle were thrown wide, and though, of course, I might not rise from my seat to peer eagerly like the other guests, I could glimpse the crowd at the outer gate and hear the murmurs of surprise and admiration as a troop of acrobats, wearing nothing but wide blue-and-gold-striped pantaloons and outlandish silk turbans pinned to their heads, their faces and torsos blackened with cork, came flipping and tumbling over the rushes. When they reached us, they formed themselves into a tower, five men at the base, four more grasping their shoulders and turning a long, full circle to grasp the elbows of the first, with three more climbing up to balance, shaking with effort, on their upturned feet. Then two more, topsy-turvy, then the last one, who shimmied like a monkey along the flanks of his fellows, a gold scroll clasped between his teeth. When he had attained the precarious summit, he unrolled the scroll and feigned to read, the sweat pouring through his makeup all the while, ‘Majesties: an envoy from the East.’

  The musicians played a strange, wandering, keening tune, and as the tower of men collapsed itself, each of them rolling to a corner of the salle, heads tucked into knees like jewelled scarabs, a monster was led through the doors. Twice as high as the tallest destrier, with short legs, a pendulous body covered in sagging, grey hide, the beast had huge flapping ears and a monstrous snout that waved before it, thicker than a man’s arm. On its back was a litter with a pointed roof, upon which perched a skinny boy, with fat lips, a squashed nose and skin the colour of a bruised plum, truly, not painted, with only a white cloth wound around his limbs. The room fell silent, for as it moved, it was clear the monster was real, not a wooden construction with hidden wheels, but a living thing. Many of the ladies crossed themselves, and though the men kept their right hands on the table, for manners’ sake, I watched their eyes slide to their daggers. Closer and closer the thing plodded. The French king caught my eye, looking perhaps for a sign of fear, but I met his gaze clearly. I saw far worse monsters in my dreams.