For the King’s Favor (10 page)

Woodstock, January 1180

Ida stifled a cry as the next contraction seized her in its grip. She had never known such relentless, inexorable pain. The bible said it was Eve’s punishment to bring forth children in suffering, but the knowledge was no comfort as she struggled and called out to the blessed Saint Margaret to help her.

“Almost there, my love, almost there,” crooned Dame Elena, the senior midwife. “You’ve been very brave. Just a little longer. Just a few more pushes. We’ll have this baby birthed while there’s still daylight to see him by.”

Ida pushed and gasped and pushed and, as the contraction subsided, slumped against the bolsters. Her hair was wet with sweat; she was frightened and beginning to think that she couldn’t go on. The women had been saying “just a few more pushes” for what seemed like a very long time.

She stared through the open shutters at a sky heavy yellow with the threat of snow. She wished herself a hundred miles away and in a different time and season, sitting with her mother in the spring sunshine, an unencumbered child, chattering of inconsequential things as she plaited silk ribbons to make a belt. She wished she had never come to court. How excited she had been, thinking it a great adventure, and now she felt like an animal led to the slaughter pen. The next contraction gathered and surged. The midwife’s assistants held her hands and she bore down with gritted teeth and straining tendons and the midwife busied herself between Ida’s parted thighs, giving rapid instructions.

“Ah, the head, the head,” she said. “Don’t push so hard. That’s it, my dear, gently now, gently.” Ida closed her eyes and squeezed the eagle stone in her right hand until her fingers cramped like her womb. Hodierna had given her the token, assuring her that it would help promote an easy birth. The egg-shaped stone with another stone inside it had the ability to ease pain and ensure a smooth passage into the world for the child. If it was working then Ida dreaded to contemplate what giving birth without one was like.

“Here we are, shoulders…arms…What do we have?…Oh, a son, my mistress, a fine boy, just look at him!” The midwife’s voice shone with pleasure as she raised up a squalling, pinkish-blue object marbled in blood and mucus and still attached to Ida inside by a pulsating cord.

Ida stared at the infant in numb shock. She couldn’t believe that this object had just emerged from her body, and even less that it was a living, breathing being—her son. She was too stunned and exhausted to experience any great outpouring of maternal love. All she felt was relief that the pain had eased and that this part of the ordeal was almost over. The woman cut the cord with a small sharp knife and took the infant over to a shallow basin. Placing him in this surrogate womb, she gently lapped water around his little body, cleaning him of the birthing fluids and murmuring to him. Ida listened to his snuffles and cries and felt her heartstrings resonate, but although there was a vibration, for the moment she was too overwhelmed and exhausted to hear the tune. The woman dipped her index finger in a pot of honey and rubbed the baby’s gums. Then she added a tiny dab of salt, making him turn his head and bawl.

“Hush child, hush,” she whispered. “From this day forth you will only know the sweet things in life.” She dried him in a large linen towel, then wrapped him in a soft blanket and bringing him to Ida, placed him in her arms. “Your son, mistress,” she said with a warm smile. “You have worked hard to birth him. Is he not beautiful?”

Ida looked at the little wizened creature resting in the crook of her elbow. His hair was dark and damp and his eyes were of an indeterminate kitten colour. She could see echoes of Henry in the shape of his brows and the curl of his nostrils. His hands were like hers and each one tipped with a minute pink fingernail. Tiny, perfect. Tears gathered at the back of her eyes. She was so tired.

“He’s a fine, healthy babe,” Dame Elena said. “A good strong voice and everything a man should have.” She gave a little chuckle.

Ida smiled, forcing her lips to stretch, even while she wept.

“Ah now, all new mothers cry,” said the good dame. “It’ll pass. You’re a little thing, but you’re strong. Don’t you fret; all’s going to be well.”

The women saw to the delivery of the afterbirth, washed Ida, made her comfortable, and, removing the baby to a cradle at the bedside, left her to sleep.

When she woke, it was dark. The shutters were closed and candles burned in the sconces. A baby’s wail sent a jolt through her aching muscles and cramping womb. This was a new sound in her life and one she had still to assimilate. The cry of her son. She heard a masculine voice, low-pitched and crooning, and, pushing herself up against the bolsters, saw Henry standing at the bedside, the baby in his arms. He had unwrapped the swaddling to look at him, and there was a broad and wondering smile on his face.

Alerted by the rustle of the bedclothes, he turned to her. “You have given me a great gift, my love,” he said. “A son, a new son!” He stroked the small, soft curve of the baby’s cheek. “Hah, he has my nose, do you see?”

Ida managed a smile and a nod, although she felt drained and tears were dangerously close. Her chin dimpled and she clenched her teeth. Henry leaned over the bed to brush her cheek too. “He is a strong, fine baby and he will be a great man. I will make it so, I promise you. I’ll take care of you both. You need not worry about anything.”

The baby’s wails grew in volume and Henry was clearly glad to hand him back to the midwife now that the acknowledging was done. Dame Elena wrapped the infant in his swaddling. “See if he will feed now, mistress,” she said and, with Henry looking on, helped Ida put him to the breast. He rooted for a moment, seeking back and forth, then latched on to her areola and nipple. Immediately his fretting ceased and he began to suck, a small frown puckering his brows. Ida studied him, still unable to believe he had come from her body, his life created out of the sin of fornication. A pang of emotion cramped her loins as she saw his dependent vulnerability.

“I’ve arranged for his baptism at first light tomorrow morning,” Henry announced. “The Countess de Warenne and Eva de Brock will stand as his godmothers, and Geoffrey FitzPeter and the Dean of York will be his godfathers. Your brother will represent your family.” Henry watched the baby suckle. “I thought to name him William for my great-grandfather.”

“As you wish, sire,” Ida said, thinking it as good a name as any.

Henry smiled. “It is fitting. My great-grandsire was born out of wedlock too, but by his own endeavours and God’s judgement, he became a duke and then a king. Our son might not be a prince, but he is royal-born and he will be raised to know it.”

Ida wanted to weep and she wanted to laugh. Her feelings tilted wildly between elation and despair, yet she knew that for her own sake and that of the snuffling bundle in her arms, somehow she had to find the strength to keep her balance.

***

Ida rested her son in the crook of her arm and laughed as she watched him reach for the end of her plait and the blue silk ribbon securing it. Here in the domestic quarters she had dispensed with the head covering she wore in the public areas and it gave her a feeling of freedom, and girlhood not quite vanished. The baby had recently nursed at her breast. His napkin had been changed and he was alert and ready to play. Ida smiled at him and was rewarded by a gummy smile in return that melted her being with fierce, tear-stinging love. The adoration had not been immediate. Although she had fed and nursed him in the days following his birth, she had still been stunned and weepy, struggling with a welter of emotion, but on the fifth day, bending over his cradle, his eyes had been open, they had met hers, and it was as if the cord that had been severed at birth had been miraculously reattached. She had felt the maternal tug deep inside her body.

When she lifted him and settled his little body against her heartbeat, she had felt the resonance. It didn’t matter how his conception had come about, he was still hers.

A look of immense concentration on his face, the baby succeeded in grasping her plait and Ida laughed with pride at his dexterity for he was only just three months old.

She was cooing over him, telling him what a clever boy he was, when Henry arrived fresh from a ride out, his cloak snagged with burrs, his hose muddy, and his cheeks wind-burned. Ida picked William up and curtseyed. Gesturing her and the other women in the chamber to rise, Henry strode across the room to join her.

“How’s my young man?” He poked William gently in the chest. The baby crowed and waved his arms, making Henry laugh.

“He does very well, sire,” Ida said. “He’s reaching for things and looking round all the time. All the women say how quick he is.”

“To be expected, given his parentage.” Henry grinned and cast Ida a speculative glance. “You look well,” he said. “Very well indeed, my love.”

She saw his gaze drop to her breasts and was glad she had fastened her brooches after feeding William. “I am, sire,” she said and felt her cheeks blaze.

He laid his hand to her plait, grasping it, running his thumb over the twists of hair, the man taking greedily what his son had been offered in gentle play. “I would have you in my chamber again,” he said. “Now…”

Ida’s blush deepened. She was aware of the other women studiously looking the other way; pretending they saw nothing. She had been churched forty days after William’s birth and since Henry had not summoned her to his bed, she had begun to think he was no longer interested. Indeed, she had allowed herself to become complacent, wrapped up in the baby as she was. “I…I am still feeding our son,” she said. “It is a sin for a woman to lie with a man when she is giving suck, the Church says so.”

“Give him to a wet nurse,” Henry said brusquely. “There is no reason why you should continue to feed him yourself. I want you in my bed, or do you no longer answer to me there?”

Ida swallowed. She was a pawn to be moved at Henry’s whim. He had said he would care for her and their son, but it was conditional. “Sire, I do answer to you,” she said, “but I thought you were no longer interested.”

He gave a short smile. “No, just biding my time. Your concern for the child is a credit to you, but he will be all right at the pap of a wet nurse.”

Feeling hollow inside, Ida gave her son to Hodierna. The older woman laid her hand over Ida’s in a gesture of sympathy and support. “You’re stronger than you think,” she murmured, almost as if bestowing a blessing. “Be as water. Flow around things, find your own path. A boulder will crush and a sword will cut, but the river will wear out stone and rust steel to powder.”

Henry’s impatience continued in his chamber, where he scarcely bothered to pull the bed curtains for privacy before he was upon her. Nor did he remove his clothes or hers, but fumbling wool and linen aside with small grunts of effort, took himself in hand and thrust into her. Ida arched at the first hot shock of the intrusion, but then steeled herself to passive compliance. It was almost a year since he had lain with her and when she thought of starting it all again, she felt as if a dark cloud was descending over her life.

Henry was swiftly to business and swiftly finished so that Ida felt like a hen trodden by a barnyard cockerel. Gasping, he rolled off her and Ida closed her legs and pulled her skirts down, trying to ignore the hot seep between her thighs. She felt used and soiled—like a whore indeed. She wondered why he had wanted her specifically for such a deed when any of the court prostitutes could have serviced him thus. Perhaps it was an act of reclamation.

He sat up and looked at her, his chest still heaving from his exertions. “You have a woman’s body now,” he said, and she thought it sounded almost like an accusation. His right hand followed his words over her breast, waist, and hips.

“Did I not have one before, sire?”

He shrugged. “It was less…experienced of life.”

“Because it had not yet carried a life.” It wasn’t only her body that had changed, she thought. Her character had altered too as the innocent girl became the more wary and knowing woman. She wondered if Henry’s rushed lovemaking had been about chasing after that girl and trying to catch what was already gone.

He asked her to rub his shoulders and as she settled behind him, she noticed there was new grey in his hair. The father of her child was not a young man.

Henry sighed and began to relax under her manipulation. “No one does this as well as you,” he said. “Ah, that’s good.”

“Not even Christabelle?” she asked with a smile in her voice, referring to the court whore who had been his most frequent partner during her pregnancy and confinement.

He made an amused sound. “Do I hear jealousy?”

“No, sire, what point would there be? A king will do as he pleases.”

“If only that were true.” He fell silent after that and Ida did not attempt to make conversation as she used the moment to ponder her own thoughts. She did not intend to hand her son over to a wet nurse, and if that was defiance and against God’s law and Henry’s wishes, then so be it. Hodierna had told her that a woman who was suckling a child very seldom had a flux or became pregnant, so it was another method of preventing conception. The notion of defying Henry had been beyond her before William’s birth. Henry might treat her like a pawn, but she was coming to realise that if she was to have any say in her own life, she had to become a player herself, not a piece moved hither and yon at another’s behest. But being a player involved some serious thinking. Before one could make a move, one not only needed to know the rules of the game, one had to know strategy and how to play to win.

***

“Normandy again.” Juliana studied her son. “When do you sail?”

“A week’s time,” Roger replied. He was visiting his mother at her dower retreat at Dovercourt. Doves fluttered around her feet, pecking at the grain she was scattering for them. April sunshine gleamed on new grass stems and the air smelled fresh and green. The manor basked in the first true warmth of the year, the wooden roof shingles making small ticking noises, as if the house was gently stretching and contracting unseen limbs.