Shield of Three Lions (42 page)

Then I thought he must be making arrangements for me to travel with him as a girl. That must be it’t was too dangerous for me to continue my disguise! He needed dispensation from the pope, of course. But would he get it? Yes. For wasn’t Joanna traveling with papal dispensation?

Betimes I worried about Wanthwaite.
Benedicite
, what must my father’s spirit be thinking? ’Twas one thing for the king to find me a husband, another for him to take me as his own lover. Yet I was sure that Richard would honor his word about my castle, now more than ever.

And more Saturdays. All my arguments failed. With slow horror I faced the obvious fact that the king had toyed with me. Kissed me, sugar-talked, almost seduced me, all as a game.
He’d
dallied by the rules, all right, and I’d succumbed like a fool, though I was forewarned. I was hurt, humiliated and ashamed. Of all the fancies I had imagined, this was the only one I’d omitted: that he would forget me! Finally I could no longer dissemble to Enoch and was forced to swallow his tonic, though I discovered by the taste that it was gillyflower juice and feared that this time the foul liquid would make my breasts grow.

When I finally received the king’s order to come back to Messina, I was so deep in my slough of despair that I didn’t want to go.

’TWAS A BITTER CHILL DAY TOWARD the end of February. Enoch and I stared upward at the forbidding wooden tower Richard had constructed called Mategriffon, or Kill-the-Greek. Both of us were reluctant to enter.

“’Tis not an inwiting donjon,” the Scot observed soothly. “A good war engine, for ye see it can be wheeled to a wall for archers to shoot into the enemy’s camp, but a strange place for the king to live.”

“Aye, but no worse than that palace he had before, and possibly there are no rats.”

Whereupon we entered. Inside, pine torches hissed from the
walls, filling the dank space with more acrid smoke than light or heat. Listless knights lounged everywhere, dressed in fustian and furs for warmth, their armor rusting in careless heaps beside them. Sir Roger told us to report to Sir Gilbert on the fourth floor above: the king’s chambers were on the fifth. We climbed a ladder-stair with rope banisters and found the pages in a small chamber at the back of the tower. Sir Gilbert told me with his usual malevolence that I’d been summoned solely because the two new Pisano pages, Antonio and Giorgio by name, didn’t yet know the protocol. I gazed with surprise at the Pisanos for they seemed Sir Gilbert’s choices and I’d thought that the king took a personal interest in his attendants. However, I could make no claim of knowing the king’s ways at this point and the two Pisanos were extraordinarily comely, if a trifle coarse in my opinion.

“Is there some special affair?” I asked Sir Gilbert.

“The French king and his court will arrive soon for an important parley.” He glanced at my tunic. “I hope you’ve bathed recently.”

I refrained from reply. He could see that I was clean and fragrant as a spring flower, and I’d made myself a new woolen tunic of very pale gold edged discreetly in the king’s red. In truth, I wanted to impress my lord,
Deus juva me
, in spite of his ill treatment of me.

I saw him the instant we entered his chambers. He was dressed in white wool trimmed with vair, a gold clasp at his waist, a plain gold crown on his hair which was once again to his shoulders. He was talking to the Archbishop of Rouen and didn’t turn around though my heart pounded so loud in sorrow and yearning that he must hear it. Sir Gilbert shoved me rudely toward a series of trestles so magnificently appointed that I knew that the forthcoming conference was of first importance. The wooden walls were likewise dressed in tapestries and thick furs for both beauty and warmth, but naught could withhold the sea wind which billowed the hangings and swayed the entire structure. At least what heat there was in the tower rose to this room.

Quickly the chamber filled with nobles in King Richard’s train, the Viscount of Château Erald, the Castellan of Bruges, Count John of Seis, Robert of Leicester and many more. All bowed to the king,
exchanged a few words and made room for still others pouring through the door. Sir Gilbert pushed us pages til and fro with wine and cakes while porters brought trays from below, yet with all this activity never once did my eyes leave the king. Several times he turned and each sight of his face tugged my breath as if I were on a gibbet. He had changed, looked more serious, glowed but in a different manner from when he lay on the hummock, more ascetically, aye, that was the word, a white flame in his simple dress and burning expression. Fanfare sounded below and somehow the Norman-English crowded themselves into one side of the chamber to make way for the French. Richard stood on his throne platform alone.

King Philip and his court entered with appropriate flourishes and I trowe that his nobles were as great as Richards, though I recognized only the Duke of Burgundy. King Philip ascended his throne opposite our king and waited for his court to find places, then held out his hand for Richard to kiss as he surveyed his person with insolent eyes.

“I hope, dear brother, that you are fully recovered from your recent scourging.”

I looked at King Richard, startled. Who would dare scourge our king?

“Completely, I believe,” he replied in the deep voice I’d so longed to hear.

“Make a second confession for us, please do,” King Philip teased. “All of Messina wants to know what you meant by
‘peccatum illud,’
and so do I. Come now, you’re among your peers, and we have a brotherly curiosity. To stand naked and confess in public, then to leave us hanging, ’tis not kind.”

Naked? Confession?
“That sin.”
My heart began a foreboding bounce. What had transpired since I’d seen the king? And did it pertain to what we’d done?

“My original statement was perfectly clear,” Richard responded with remarkable calm. “I said that the thorns of my evil lusts had grown higher than my head and there was no hand to pluck them out.”

And I dropped my tray of cakes!

’Twas a dreadful clatter and everyone jumped. For the first time
King Richard’s eyes swept past me though without recognition while Sir Gilbert glowered over me furiously. Immediately I plunged to the floor to pick up the cakes and continued to listen. If he mentioned me by name I swore I’d hold my breath and live no more.

King Philip picked up the thread. “Next time, call on me. Nothing would delight me more than to pluck the thorns of your evil lusts. Of course, I would still demand more details.”

“An refert, ubi et in qua arrigas,”
Richard quipped lightly.

As I crawled under the table for an almond pastry, I translated:
It matters not where and in whom you put it.
It mattered to me! I wondered if Sir Gilbert would notice if I just stayed here, but an exploratory kick from his pointed boot assured me he would. Miserably, I stood again.

“Perhaps,” King Philip conceded with the same edged cynicism, “though we might differ on that point. You should have shrived yourself years ago, Richard, and saved all of us grief. Tell me, what moved you to become a penitent now?”

I gauged the distance between me, the door and Sir Gilbert: if the king pointed to me, I was prepared to dash.

Richards smile illuminated the room. “I confessed in order to prepare for marriage.”

To me!
said my imbecile heart as I reeled giddily, though I knew it must be to Alais, for he’d cut me out of his life in public confession. Hadn’t told me, hadn’t come to see me all this time, while everyone else knew! Sir Gilbert thrust a jeweled goblet into my hands and indicated that I should serve King Philip.

“Don’t bandy words, Richard, I warn you.” I sidled timorously toward Philip’s throne. “Nothing would please me more than your wedding, but I’ll not be mocked.”

King Richard shrugged innocently, but his smile was close to a leer. “I’ve never been more in earnest. I need your release from my vow to marry the Princess Alais so that I may marry the choice of my heart, the Damsel Berengaria of Navarre.”

King Philip sprang to his feet and shrieked, “Never! Never! I’ll see you dead before you desert Alais!”

On each
never
his arm swung wildly the second swing catching
the goblet of wine I carried and flinging it across the space to Richard where it spilled down his white tunic like blood. Neither king noticed the accident but Sir Gilbert yanked me back by my hair and hissed, “This is your last night as page, you fumbling idiot!”
Laudatur, Maria
, thought I, then swallowed the bitter bile welling from my spleen and huddled in the enshrouding billows of the blowing tapestries more forlorn than I’d e’er been in my life!
I am an aging king and you are a nine-year-old page and I love you.
Liar! Liar! The choice of his heart,
Berengaria!

King Philip recovered his poise more quickly than I, but then he was more experienced with the English king. He whirled, talked briefly to Burgundy, then presented a face set in wrath but controlled. “Yes, my spies informed me that Sancho the Wise’s daughter traveled in our direction with your Queen Mother Eleanor. I believe they’ve reached Brindisi now. Am I right?”

Richard nodded. “Awaiting my word to come on.”

“So,” France mocked, “‘the choice of your heart,’ is she? About as convincing as your confession, a paltry princess with neither beauty nor land. And for this union you risk certain excommunication. The interdict. Foolish, false Richard, smitten by passion at last, ready to expire for love in true troubadour fashion. Except that Pope Clement will never release you from Alais.”

Deo gratias
for the French king, his intelligence, his welcome information of Berengaria’s ugliness.

“If your spies had traveled farther north,” Richard responded smoothly, “you would have learned that Pope Clement has just died.”

Philip gasped anew and ’twas instantly plain that this was a coup for England. Our lords watched the muttering French expectantly, slyly witnessing King Philip’s struggle for composure.

“The oath to God holds,” he replied after only a beat. “And in any case, I will not release you! You will marry Alais, or you’ll marry no one!”

Two bishops now whispered to Richard, but he shook them off impatiently. “I will marry Berengaria and you will release me. You know the reasons.” His pleasant tone had become ominous.

Now I prayed that King Philip would not force the issue, for I
saw clearly that I wasn’t yet out of danger, though soothly I didn’t see what Richard had to gain by mentioning me now. However, I understood nothing except that I was betrayed, and that alone made me frantic.

Philip’s voice matched his hard ice-touched eyes. “Take heed that you go not too far, Richard. Some words cannot be forgotten or forgiven.”

Obviously several people knew Richard’s intentions, for he was immediately surrounded by murmuring counselors while the French king sat alone.

“Your last chance, Philip. I will return Alais’s dowry.”

Even that brought no rise from waiting France.

“I cannot marry the French princess because she is not a virgin,” Richard said in cold, measured syllables.

An aspirated moan ran through the room. Not a virgin? Alais? But she was betrothed … Then I remembered the Rules of Love. Doubtless in her long wait for Richard, she’d met some comely knight.

Philip was motionless. “You speak without proof,” he hissed.

Richard countered sharply. “Alais came to our court when she was a child. By the time she was nine, my father King Henry and she were lovers!”

King Henry and Alais! At nine! My present age—supposedly!
Deus juva me
, and my father’d sent me to seek this Old King’s help. Poor Alais! Raped as a child, forever a child in an old lady’s body.

“A lie! An infamous, venal lie!” King Philip shouted at the whole French court went wild in a babble of protest and the ominous clink of swords.

King Richard’s voice rose. “When she was twelve she bore him a stillborn child and still he stayed with her. He imprisoned Queen Eleanor in order to carry on his unholy dalliance.”

His
unholy dalliance! What about Richard’s with me! For that’s what he’d intended, wasn’t it? If I’d borne a child … I staggered and would have dropped another tray if I’d had one. What a dreadful fate!

“If you speak the truth, why did you fight for her?” Philip
blazed. “Why did we join arms to force the marriage? Or did you conveniently discover this affair after the king died?”

“I used Alais to make Henry fight. Think you I would make such a tarnished whore my queen? Think you that I would hurt my own mother more than she has already suffered? And drop that sanctimonious sneer, for you, too, had an ulterior motive in our joint rebellion, to divide and conquer England!”

Now they were both enraged and all I could think of was poor Alais, seduced as a child, ruined at twelve, isolated, hopeless, now a prisoner—and why? Did she ask to go to England? ’Twas easy to shift from this litany to poor
Alix
—and who knew King Richards present purpose with me?

“And now you use her again to avenge that slut you call your mother!” Philip cried. His indigo robes with their subtle
fleurs-de-lis
had made his face seem pale when he’d arrived, but now ’twas a flaming red above a dark blue sea. He wasn’t armed but the Duke of Burgundy stood close, his hand on his hilt.

Richard rose, filled with wrath at the slur on his mother. He towered over France, his heavy voice thick with fury. “The Duchess of Aquitaine, the Queen of England, suffered marriage with your eunuchfather, betrayal by your whore of a sister, imprisonment by my father, but that’s all, with God as my witness. You’ll apologize.”

“How can a child be a whore?” Philip ranted. “An old man in his thirties rapes a nine-year-old and she’s a whore? Only a family of devils could see it so!”

I expected King Richard to at least glance at me now after these awful words which fit us so neatly, to gesture some way that it wasn’t true of us, could never be. But no, he hammered back at King Philip. “That whore hasn’t been a child for the last fifteen years. She seduced a powerful old man, tried to ruin his wife, and by God she made me the laughingstock of Europe! Not even a Frenchman would wed such a trollop!”