Beloved Enemy (67 page)

The empress, a silver goblet of wine in her hand, arrested it halfway to her lips. “Ignoring my advice not to do so.”

“Your advice is not infallible, Madam.”

“How would you know? It’s been so long since you listened to me.

“Let’s not quarrel.” Henry sipped from his goblet of red wine and made a face. It had recently arrived from Bordeaux and was already turning bitter. “You’ll be interested to know Thomas refused it.”

The empress arched her brows in disbelief. “Refused it? Such cat-and-mouse games on the chancellor’s part don’t fool me for an instant. He’ll ultimately accept the post if you’re still foolish enough to keep it open.”

“You’re probably right.”

“Of course I’m right. By the way, what was that disgraceful business with Thomas and the Rouen drab all about? The ducal palace is not a brothel, and I won’t have you turning it into one.”

“God’s eyes, you sound as prudish as a Cistercian priest. It was just a bit of tomfoolery, a test to see if Thomas practiced what he preached. How did you come to hear of it?”

She gave him a withering look. “When the day comes that I don’t know what goes on in Rouen you can dig my grave and bury me. What reasons did Becket give?”

“For not bedding the whore?”

“Don’t be impertinent. I could have told you he wouldn’t bed her—or anyone else for that matter, if anyone had had the foresight to ask. What reasons did he give for refusing Canterbury?”

Henry shrugged. “None very valid. He was a worldly cleric, he said, as everyone knew, not even a priest if it came to that. He had far too much work to do in the chancery and could not possibly hold both chancellor and Canterbury as well, and so on and so on.” Henry thoughtfully scratched his chin. “He also mentioned that if he became archbishop he feared it might destroy our friendship. Which made no sense at all.”

“Thomas Becket said that? Well! I didn’t think he was so discerning. But of course he’s right.” His mother nibbled on a leg of guinea hen.

Henry frowned. “I don’t see why promoting him to the See of Canterbury should make the slightest difference in our friendship.”

“Yes, well, if you don’t see why, my telling you won’t help, will it?”

There was a brief silence while Henry cursed himself for having been fool enough to broach the subject of his chancellor. He had gone from the cauldron directly into the fire.

“Is it true you’re putting young Henry in his household to be educated and trained by him?” The empress put down the leg of guinea hen.

“Yes. He’s been there some weeks by now.” God’s eyes, was there anything she didn’t know?

“What does Eleanor say about that?”

“I haven’t told her yet, but when she returns to London, if she hasn’t already done so, she’ll know soon enough. Why? You sound as if you think she will object?”

“Why? Why? Sweet Marie, she’s his mother! She has a right to be consulted on the plans for her eldest son’s education! If Geoffrey of Anjou had dared to send you somewhere without first getting my agreement …I don’t say Eleanor will object, only that she should have been asked, or at least told!”

In the back of his mind Henry noted that she did not say “your father” but Geoffrey of Anjou. He tried to remember if she had ever referred to the count as “your father.”

“Sometimes I think there is a female conspiracy in my household against poor Thomas Becket, the brightest jewel in my administrative diadem. You disparage him; Eleanor despises him, even Belle—” he stopped abruptly.

His mother pushed away her trencher of food and fixed him with a level gaze. “Even Belle what? Who is Belle?”

“No one of importance.” Henry could feel himself flushing and quickly downed his wine.

Uncomfortable under his mother’s scrutiny, Henry looked around the hall.

“I am very proud of you, my son.” The empress placed a veined hand over his. “Your accomplishments have exceeded my wildest hopes, and I am the last one to advise you in matters about which I know nothing, but do be circumspect.”

“Point taken.” Henry took her hand and lightly kissed the gnarled fingers.

A servant passed round a silver basin of water and white linen towels. The empress washed her hands and wiped them dry.

“On the other hand, there are some matters upon which I feel very confident in advising you.”

Henry inwardly groaned.

“Thomas Becket,” she continued, “like many a man of humble origin, is highly ambitious. He cannot resist power. You have offered him the most powerful post in England—excepting your own.”

Henry laughed. “Do you, of all people, tell me ambition is restricted to those of humble origins?”

“I’ve told you not to be impertinent.” She paused. “In this matter, my son, heed me. There is a difference between those born to power and those who must fight every inch of the way to achieve it. What I do tell you is, beware of men such as Thomas Becket when they are given too much power.” She began to twist a gold ring set with an emerald stone round and round on her finger.

“At heart, Madam, you are a royal snob. All right. You’ve told me your thoughts on the matter and I’ve listened.” Henry yawned. He was tired of sitting and impatient to be gone.

“Take Becket at his word, that your close friendship will be destroyed if he becomes archbishop.” The empress gazed at him with a troubled expression and sighed. “You court disaster by this folly. I’ve done my best to teach you how to rule, guided you down the path of judgment—with some success, obviously. But in this instance—well, a fool’s bolt is soon shot. In the end, blood will tell.”

The empress’s goblet clattered to the floor. She had pulled the gold ring with the green stone off her finger and was clutching it in her palm. In the deathlike silence that followed what Henry suspected was a fatal slip of the tongue, he could hear his mother’s sharply indrawn breath. For a moment their eyes met; in hers, he saw a reflection of his own grave alarm. Then her lids folded down; her hands clenched into white-knuckled fists.

Watching her fight for control, a variety of thoughts stirred in Henry’s mind. The Empress Maud was approaching her middle sixties. Though her wits remained as sharp as a spear point, she ailed frequently and spent long periods in retreat at Fontevrault. More and more often she spoke of taking the vows of a nun before death claimed her. This worried him greatly. Ever since the unfortunate incident with her grandson at Cherbourg, Henry had meant to have a long talk with her about the past. If, before her demise, his mother had matters on her conscience that needed to be expiated, far better that she unburden herself to him rather than someone else—even her confessor.

Unwittingly she had just presented him with the perfect opportunity. But now that the moment was at hand, Henry found himself curiously reluctant. Did he really want to know the truth? What purpose would it serve? Yet such an opportunity might never come again, and he felt driven to know.

“As you often remind me, Madam, the Normans have always been known for their wily ways and quick wits,” Henry said while he still had the courage. “Geoffrey of Anjou, may God assoil him, however unsatisfactory your relations with him may have been, however reluctant you are to refer to him as my father, was a person of sound judgment, perhaps the shrewdest man I ever knew.” He paused. “To whose blood do you refer?”

The fateful words had been spoken; Henry steeled himself for the answer.

It was an answer he never received. Pale as a ghost, his mother suddenly staggered to her feet, calling for her women.

“I’m unwell—quite faint—unable to continue—I pray you, excuse me—” Several attendants sprang to her side.

Both relieved and frustrated, Henry watched in grudging admiration as she was half-carried from the hall, taking her secrets with her. Old now, scarred by too many battles, and preparing for death, the empress was a cunning campaigner to the last, able to defend herself with all the wiles and weapons of her sex.

Henry, who knew perfectly well he ruthlessly used women for his own interests at every opportunity, had never, ever made the mistake of underestimating the formidable power they could wield. The empress had once told him pigs would fly before any son of hers would get the better of her. At the time, she had been referring to his late brother, Geoffrey, however …

Henry knew he would never reopen the matter. How could he ask his mother, straight out: Was Geoffrey of Anjou my real father? Especially when, in the deepest recesses of his soul, he feared what the answer might be.

His mother, dignified, elegant, and redoubtable, had been a remarkably beautiful woman—one need only look now at the bone structure of her face to see that—but Henry remembered her in the full flower of her russet-haired, pewter-eyed beauty. It was exceedingly difficult, as well as uncomfortable, for him to imagine her in the throes of a wild, all-consuming passion with her cousin, Stephen of Blois. Was he the result of a single night of incandescent desire? Or brief moments of rapture stolen over the years? There was no question in Henry’s mind that his mother must have loved Stephen deeply. Only such a love would have caused her to dishonor her family’s crown and jeopardize the royal succession.

For the remainder of his stay in Rouen, Henry agonized over and over again: Whose son was he?

To have believed yourself the legitimate scion of an acknowledged union between two great houses—Anjou and Normandy, whose roots stretched back hundreds of years—then suspect you might be the secret by-blow of a forbidden love …It was like teetering on the edge of a vast bottomless pit.

Henry left Rouen in mid-December, parting from his mother on amicable but formal terms. He was accompanied on the voyage across the Channel by his cousin William, earl of Gloucester, and his two favorite bloodhounds. The sea was calm until dawn the following day.

From then on it was a rough voyage, typical for December. A brawling wind chased dark clouds across a flint-colored sky and whipped the sea into green-capped swells. The vessel pitched and tossed. While William voided last night’s supper into the sea, Henry, an excellent sailor, rode easily with the rocking waves. He felt an overpowering need to ask someone about the past, someone of his immediate family whose history he shared. But the subject was fraught with potential danger; he must guard himself against revealing his doubts to anyone—even those to whom he felt the closest: Thomas, Eleanor, and Bellebelle.

Henry could hear the sound of the captain shouting orders and the men answering. A scarlet sail bellied wildly in the wind. The prow of the vessel, carved into a dragon shape like the old Viking ships, climbed up a rising wave then shot down the other side like a stooping falcon.

Even the weather could not dispel the doubts that continued to torment him. Henry remembered his first council meeting in London, that disparaging snicker when someone pointed out that Stephen and he had adopted each other as father and son. But even before that, there had been subtle hints—his parents had lived in an atmosphere of mutual dislike and bickering, but underneath his mother’s iron control, Henry had sensed a deep-seated sadness, a sense of loss that was always present.

The ship bucked and twisted; the wind howled. Strange, but he was not afraid. With that sense of destiny strong within him, Henry knew he would survive. In truth, whatever had or had not occurred between his mother and Stephen of Blois, how could it threaten him now?

It couldn’t. He had been an anointed king for seven years; a successful ruler of a vast empire. Who would dare to circulate rumors about his paternity, brand him a bastard? Yet even the whisper of such a rumor could throw the entire succession into jeopardy. His enemies would ruin his mother’s reputation. Taint the House of Normandy with scandal. Provoke uprisings. Cast doubt on his right to have ascended the throne. Perhaps set in motion a move to topple him from power. And to put such a potential weapon into the hands of Louis of France …

A green wave rose up to spray Henry’s face. The shock of the icy water was bracing. Why was he allowing himself to fall prey to idle fancies? There was nothing to be concerned about, except his own fears. And the cure for his fears—groundless though they were—was to ensure that young Henry was crowned as soon as he was old enough. With Thomas as archbishop of Canterbury there would be no problem in crowning him. His demons would be laid to rest.

While the crew shouted excitedly that there was land over the bow, Henry realized that for the first time in his life, he actively resented his mother. As far back as he could remember, he had put her on a pedestal. Now he felt she had betrayed him. It was like a knife thrust into his belly. How could she have—

Of a sudden, the curtains of the past drew apart, and he saw himself when he was fourteen years old, standing in an English wood at dawn, looking up at a comely knight who smiled down at him then tossed him a bag of coins—his safe passage home. That single foolhardy act of generosity had cost King Stephen—and his heirs—the crown. Henry’s jaw clenched; his hands gripped the vessel’s rail. Blood will tell indeed! His mother was wrong; never in his life had he behaved—nor would he ever behave—so foolishly, so outrageously …

Ahead now he could make out the coast; white cliffs surmounted by lowering clouds. The busy port of Dover would soon be in view.

Titles, possessions, the acquisition of wealth, the exercise of power, the crown, kingdoms, even the heirs of his blood were of no account without his lineage. Lineage defined you, gave you an identity. Without it … Desperately, Henry tried to conjure up the red beard and cornflower blue eyes of the man whom he had always believed to be his father, the only father he wanted: Geoffrey of Anjou. But the image that stayed to haunt him was the golden smile and emerald eyes of Stephen of Blois.

I
N THE VILLAGE, PLACID
day followed placid day. Each afternoon when Geoffrey returned from priory school, Bellebelle asked him if he had heard any news of when his father might be coming back to England.

“I don’t know, Maman. The prior says that Father is too busy to return. He’s strengthened all of his castles on the borders of Normandy, repaired castles in Aquitaine, Touraine, and Anjou, and built new ones as well. In England he’s going to rebuild everything with stone.”