The Young Lion (18 page)

Henry said to his father and brother, ‘We must all fulminate at each other. You shout at me, Papa. And I’ll shout at you, and Guillaume and I will shout at each other.’

‘With pleasure,’ Geoffrey said. In Catalan he suddenly yelled, ‘Henry, you’re your own worst enemy! I’ve been negotiating with King Louis in good faith, but your insupportable rudeness –’

Henry broke in, ‘Damn you, Father! I don’t trust Louis as far as I can piss. He’s a schemer who sends money to England to keep Stephen in power. And he’s a useless warrior, while you and his wife are rutting like monkeys –’

Geoffrey’s face turned red with rage and he leaped to his feet, his fist raised to strike Henry. ‘Never say that again! I won’t forgive you! I, I …’

Guillaume kicked Henry so hard under the table he yelled with shock.

‘That’s my cut leg!’ He added quickly, ‘I apologise, Papa. I deeply apologise. Please forgive me.’

‘We’ll all calm down,’ Guillaume said.

He took his father and his brother by the hand. For a minute or so the three sat in silence, hands joined, heads bent.

Henry looked up. ‘We’ve got to keep arguing.’ He poked Guillaume in the chest. ‘Don’t you think, Father,’ he said in a belligerent voice, ‘I did a fantastic job with the Seneschal’s head? Whack! One whack.’

‘I was appalled.’ Geoffrey was still angry over the insult to Eleanor. ‘You planned that all along, without telling me. We could have ransomed him. His wife has more jewels than the Queen of Sheba.’

Henry was not paying attention, still exulting in his defeat of the Seneschal. ‘I took off his head like Douglas with that Saxon!’ he yelled. His eyes were ablaze with excitement.

At the other end of the tavern the French had stopped their conference to watch them.

‘Barbarians,’ Louis said. ‘Listen to the tone the boy uses with his father. If I’d ever spoken to my father like that …’ He sighed, thinking again about Estienne.

Henry shouted at Geoffrey and Guillaume, ‘You two should be in a nunnery! You squat down to piss.’ He banged his fist on a trestle.

‘They seem to be reaching agreement,’ Louis said. ‘Shouting, kicking, pushing …’

Henry muttered, ‘We’ve got to keep talking. Just another few minutes. Papa, say something pleasant to me.’

Geoffrey said, ‘In spite of everything, I love you. I wish I knew what was going on.’

‘What’s that noise?’ Guillaume asked.

‘Ignore it,’ Henry muttered. Then he slowly shook his head at Geoffrey. In a clear, strong voice, in French, he said, ‘I regret to tell you, Father, I cannot accept such terms.’

He rose. Geoffrey and Guillaume glanced at each other, shrugged, and rose also. The three walked at a measured pace back towards the King. The Anjevins bowed. ‘Your Highness,’ Geoffrey said, ‘we cannot agree to your demands.’

Without a word Louis turned his back on them.

The Anjevins pulled on their armour and helmets, gathered their swords and walked out.

When he heard their footsteps fading Louis said, ‘The young scoundrel doesn’t realise we’ve got a second trebuchet and a thousand infantry in reserve. Prince Eustace will lead his knights from Boulogne tomorrow. Tonight our climbers will scale the north-west wall.’ For the first time he gave a faint smile. Around the trestle they had used as a negotiating table the French exchanged glances of amusement.

Outside, suddenly, there was shouting.

‘What’s going on?’ Louis demanded.

Almost immediately a man entered, a look of horror on his face. ‘The building is surrounded with Norman crossbowmen, Highness! And they’ve stolen Jason!’

‘They’ve broken our truce!’ Louis shouted. ‘They’ve broken the truce!’

It took the cool head of the Count of Reims to calm him. ‘They have, indeed, Lord King. But their crossbowmen will kill us all.’

The man who had brought news said, ‘Their orders are to keep Your Highness in here for another two hours.’

‘Can we break out?’ Louis demanded.

‘Not against crossbows at short range.’

‘Can we pay them?’

‘We can try.’

‘Try!’ Louis said. ‘They’re all mercenaries.’

But as the Count of Reims walked purposefully out of the tavern towards the crossbowmen whose weapons were aimed at the door, all heard the uproar coming from above the town.

Henry was riding Jason through the French ranks, standing in the stirrups, his head uncovered and his sword aloft. ‘Men of France!’ he shouted. ‘I’ve captured your King! I ride his horse as proof of what I say!’

A cry went through the French army. ‘They have King Louis!’

The French and Norman archers on the edges of the battlefield leaped to their feet, snatching arrows as they rose. ‘I’ll get him through the neck,’ a French archer said. The Normans took aim at him. Henry wheeled the horse to put himself between the French bowmen and their field marshal.

‘Men of France, lay down your arms! I have your King! I ride his horse!’ Henry roared.

The field marshal shouted, ‘It’s a trick! They were negotiating! Fight on, men of France!’

But the French army was staring at the Duke of Normandy, his red hair flying, riding their monarch’s gorgeously caparisoned horse. Henry was close enough to the field marshal to grab the bridle of his destrier. ‘You’ll get Louis’s head from me,’ he shouted in his face. ‘France has no heir.’

The field marshal flung open his visor, his eyes white with shock. ‘You threaten regicide?’

‘You attacked without provocation. Louis broke the sacred trust of overlord. I can kill him!’ Henry shouted back. ‘You’ll have anarchy in France!’

The field marshal panted in torment.

But he turned to the archers and gestured to them to lay down their weapons, then likewise the knights and infrantrymen.

‘Your weapons and horses are forfeit to Normandy!’ Henry roared. ‘I command you lay down arms. Knights, dismount.’

Riding behind him, Guillaume and Geoffrey repeated the order, which the Normandy forces took up as a chant. ‘Lay down your arms! Dismount!’ hundreds of voices shouted. To the field marshal Henry said, ‘Give me your sword. Give it to me immediately.’

As their field marshal handed his sword to Henry the rest of the army began tossing their weapons to the ground. In the stillness and silence that spread across the battlefield the sullen clank of iron
falling on iron and the panting and groaning of knights as they dismounted were the only sounds. The field marshal prepared to get down from his horse. His face was set hard but tears streamed down his cheeks. For a moment Henry looked with attention at the sword he had just received. Its hilt was gold embedded with lapis lazuli.

‘Is this an heirloom?’ he asked.

‘My grandfather brought it back from Jerusalem.’

Henry returned it to him. The field marshal sobbed, ‘I’m utterly disgraced.’

‘Come now,’ Henry said. ‘I won by a trick.’

The field marshal, on foot now, looked up at Henry. ‘You know, my great-grandfather fought beside Foulques the Black … You won by a trick?’

‘Yes. It doesn’t matter how I did it. I still won.’ He took the reins of the field marshal’s horse and tossed them to a Norman knight.

As he rode beside Guillaume across the drawbridge he said, ‘They’ll burn the city tonight. Or tomorrow.’

‘Can we prevent them?’

‘Not a chance,’ Henry said. ‘We’re outnumbered ten to one.’

‘You said five!’ Guillaume objected.

‘Five sounded better,’ Henry replied. He turned to his brother and laughed.

Louis burned Rouen and nine other towns and villages along the frontier, but none completely because people rushed from their refuges to defend their property. Stronger men drove off the arsonists with pitchforks, hammers and long-handled axes. French infantrymen who’d kept daggers hidden killed some, but the inhabitants of Normandy and the Vexin met little resistance once they showed they were prepared to fight. As their courage rose, so did their sense of triumph and their admiration for the new Duke. Although their dwellings were lost, they had won a victory against an oppressive overlord.

Xena, Isabella and her daughters watched from above the parapet as the roof of Isabella’s home turned to a sea of flames. Their house and the cathedral were the two largest buildings in Rouen, both made of stone. ‘We’ll re-thatch it,’ Isabella said, ‘and hope the roof beams have held.’

By the following afternoon Louis’s army was marching south. Casualties had been reasonable: each side had lost about thirty men killed and several times that many wounded, but French cavalry losses were higher than those of Normandy and the forfeiture of their arms and warhorses was calamitous. The four captured magnates would remain as Henry’s guests until ransom money was paid. The two Anjevin counts were to go as Louis’s
captives to Paris. As was customary, the King allowed them to bid farewell to their liege, a protocol Henry also permitted his captives.

A few days after the battle, when the pain from their bruises and cuts was easing, Henry and his prisoners went hunting together, the French delighted by the abundance of game in Normandy. ‘Had I known how good your hunting is, I’d have fought harder,’ the Baron of Argenteuil told Henry.

Geoffrey was happy the Anjevin counts were going to Paris since one was a trusted friend and spoke langue d’oc. The Old Duke – still the Duke, as far as Louis was concerned – was more alarmed by Normandy’s military losses than Henry was. Had the King not fallen into the trap of a negotiation after the shock of losing his Seneschal, Geoffrey believed, France would have won through its strength of numbers. Two hundred extra infantry and some additional cavalry had been sailing upriver at the very moment Henry stole Louis’s horse.

Without telling Henry, he arranged a conduit for bargaining with France. Baron Richard de Cholet was to convey to Louis that Henry would cede half the Vexin in exchange for a treaty of non-aggression and the King’s recognition of Henry as Duke.

Father and son had argued many times about war strategy and tactics, always arriving at the same impasse: Geoffrey believed in the possibility of defeat. Henry, cautious when preparing for battle and anxious to avoid it if he could, once war was inevitable, became incandescent with one idea: I will win.

In parting from Cholet, Geoffrey gave him a pair of gloves of fine scarlet leather fashioned for small hands. ‘Only if you can deliver them without danger,’ he said.

None of the women in the upper chamber saw their men for four days after the battle. During that time Xena and Maria bathed in hot water and washed their hair repeatedly until the tallow stink rinsed out. Servants laundered their clothes and polished their shoes. But confinement drove them mad. They organised races around the parapet walkway and up the turret stairs. Celine, mother of the older Henry and daughter of a mercenary commander, won almost all their competitions. Xena took out the tiny implements, the sponges, pumice stones and cloths impregnated with fine sand that she had brought from Constantinople. She plucked the women’s eyebrows, polished their nails, buffed the skin on their heels, and with two threads twirled quickly together stripped hair from their legs and under their arms. She said, ‘I can also take it from …’

‘I will! I’m brave!’ Celine announced.

Isabella draped a cloth over the Madonna’s face and her own, but the rest of the women were transfixed, watching how it was done. Celine squealed, more with the thrill of novelty than from pain. She had her father’s iron nerves.

A week after their confinement began, Geoffrey, Henry and Guillaume pounded up the stairs to see them. The men burst into the chamber with shouts of excitement. Servants panted behind them bearing furniture and delicacies for a feast. Such an uproar of embracing and laughter and exclamations over the women’s beauty filled the air, Xena wondered if Matilda herself might hear them. Guillaume’s eye was purple. Henry’s leg had a bandage of herbs, and he limped. Geoffrey’s head was wrapped in linen over the wound on his forehead. They tossed the children in the air, then Guillaume took his girl by the hand and led her to the nearest turret. The Henry mothers, Celine and Adele, did not seem put out when, after a perfunctory hug and a kiss to their foreheads, he left them to be with Xena. He took her outside behind a parapet
not far from where they could hear Guillaume making love in the stairwell.

‘When?’ Henry asked.

Xena shrank back. She gave a pant of anxiety. ‘I don’t know if I can.’

He lifted her onto the wall, putting them on eye level. ‘I fought every minute with you in my heart. I had the fire of a lion in me. I was fighting for you! You alone! I was in ecstasy.’ He stood back, looking at her. ‘It’s irrevocable,’ he said.

What’s irrevocable, she wondered. Then she realised: in his mind I’m his booty. He’s won me, through courage.

She could not convey what she felt: that he overwhelmed her, that the men she’d grown up with would never touch the doubleheaded axe she’d one day seen him swinging at an imaginary head. ‘I’ve never known a man so rough and brutish, but so utterly to cherish,’ she murmured. ‘You kill people. For some reason you’re still wholesome to me.’ She looked abashed. ‘Your body smells beautiful,’ she added.

‘You love me, Xena!’ he exulted. He kissed the inside of her wrist; he covered her neck with kisses. She wanted to pull away but behind her was a drop of two hundred feet. Between kisses he said, ‘There’s good news. Mother’s leaving tomorrow or the day after. Say you love me.’

‘I love you,’ she murmured.

‘Give me your mouth.’

When their kiss ended Xena felt she had awoken from a deep sleep. ‘When?’ she asked.

He dropped his head against her shoulder and she felt tears running down her neck. ‘Soon. Soon. I weep with happiness.’

Inside the chamber dinner was served. At last, after so many meals taken sitting on the floor, the women could sit on stools at a table. The men described the battle to them, Henry’s trick with
the crossbowmen and their new wealth in horses and arms. ‘I’m out of debt,’ Henry said. ‘Paid every sou I’ve owed for four years. And my Jews love me more than ever – their warehouses burned down, but they were empty and they saved all their ships.’

They drank a toast, and another. Then two more. Celine could drink like a man and urged them to keep up with her. They banged their bowls on the table after each toast – until Isabella ordered the servants to stop pouring wine and whispered they were to find wetnurses to feed the babies. Celine left to nap on a floor mattress. The other mothers joined her.

‘Thank God!’ said Geoffrey. ‘I thought she’d drink me under the table.’ Xena had noticed earlier in the meal he was less triumphant than his sons. ‘Louis refuses to recognise Henry as Duke,’ he said, ‘because my darling boy refuses to give him the Vexin.’

Xena, intoxicated with Henry and tipsy from wine, said, ‘I can suggest a solution.’ The others stopped chattering. ‘You could do a double trade. We call it “pushing down”. First, trade the Vexin for the dukedom. So Henry becomes Duke. Then trade with Louis for the Vexin. My uncle, who sold horses, used to do that. It takes a while, but you’ll end up with the dukedom and the Vexin.’

‘I told you!’ Henry said. ‘Xena’s brilliantly clever. Didn’t I tell you, Guillaume?’

‘Many times,’ Guillaume said.

Geoffrey, always cautious in Isabella’s presence not to betray how he first met the girl, listened carefully. ‘You’re from the Greek merchant class, Xena,’ he said, ‘and indeed, merchants are often wiser than we of the baronage when it comes to these issues –’

‘We should marry them,’ interjected Guillaume. Geoffrey gave him a kick under the table.

‘– but the Vexin is the neck on which Paris sits as the head. He who controls it can strangle France. What have we got that Louis wants, for which he’d trade it?’ Geoffrey asked.

‘Only Anjou, Maine, Normandy – and England next!’ Henry said.

Xena ignored Henry and persisted: ‘The Vexin could become a dowry. Louis has a daughter.’

‘He’s betrothed her to a creepy little count,’ Henry said.

Guillaume said, ‘If he has another daughter, Henry, you could offer him Young Geoffrey. Or little William, and get the Vexin back as dowry. Just as Xena says.’

Henry began to pay close attention. ‘I hear,’ he said casually, ‘the Queen of France
is
with child again.’

Xena marvelled at the straight faces the men kept, although Guillaume turned pale and mute.

‘When’s it due?’ Geoffrey asked. He sounded bored.

‘September. I wager it’s another girl.’

‘Why do you wager that?’ Isabella asked. She had picked up an undercurrent of tension in the conversation. Her tone was sharp.

‘That marriage is cursed,’ Henry and Guillaume answered in unison.

‘Blood’s too close,’ Guillaume added. ‘Despite what the Pope says.’

‘It’s not that close.’ Isabella turned to Henry. ‘You, for example, are closer in blood to the Queen than Louis is. That’s why Father Bernard forbade a marriage between Henry here and Eleanor’s daughter.’

Henry and Geoffrey both took sharp breaths and looked sideways at Xena.

‘What?’ said Xena.

‘I’d just won Normandy,’ Geoffrey replied in a casual tone. ‘It seemed like a good idea to end warfare between our house and the Capets. But Father Bernard, as Isabella says … Louis is her fifth cousin. Henry’s her fourth.’

‘So what are you, Papa?’ Henry asked.

‘Fourth. Fifth. I’ve forgotten,’ Geoffrey mumbled.

Henry muttered an oath. Xena, seated next to him and holding his hand under the table, suddenly screamed. ‘Something’s bitten my shoe!’ A small, demonic face glared from beneath the tablecloth.

The men were on their feet as fast as hounds to a hare, two to one door, Henry to the other. As Guillaume and his father reached their door a tall young man stepped inside.

‘Do join us, dear boy,’ Geoffrey said. ‘I think you know everyone here. Except, perhaps …’ He looked at Xena. Like all the women inside, she had her hair uncovered, for they were
en famille
. Black ringlets framed her broad cheekbones and fell in profusion over her shoulders halfway to her waist.

‘My niece from Catalonia, the Baronesa Manuela,’ Isabella said.

‘The Baronesa Manuela,’ Geoffrey the Younger repeated slowly, as if to memorise her name. ‘I had no idea the young ladies of Catalonia are so beautiful. I thought Lady Isabella must outshine them all.’

Geoffrey said, ‘And this, Manuela, is the Empress’s second son, whom she graciously named after me.’

‘How do you do?’ Xena offered stiffly, in Latin.

The boy picked up her hand and bowed over it, his back perfectly straight. His manners were as formal as the stiffest imperial courtier in Paris, but his small greenish-grey eyes did not leave her face. Yellow hair fell to his shoulders in elegant spirals that Xena recognised as curled by a valet. He wore a tunic the colour of red grapes, and round his slender hips a jewelled gold belt. She felt as if her own face had turned as red as his tunic.

‘I wondered at your accent,’ he said, in French.

Guillaume and Henry peered down the stairwells, watching for more visitors. They sauntered back to the table and eyed Young Geoffrey with distaste.

‘I’ll shove that monkey up your arse,’ Henry said.

Hambril had rushed to a corner where he cowered, his eyes darting from one person to another. He seemed in a frenzy of malevolent confusion, calculating which of them to bite next. He ducked and weaved his small round head and made gibbering noises.

The chamber fell silent.

‘Do sit down,’ his father invited.

The youth smirked and answered in Latin. ‘No thank you, Father. I fear I’d spoil the celebration with your family.’

He strolled from the table towards the young mothers, two of whom he chucked under the chin. All three glared at him. With a nod to the rest of the company he turned and left the way he had come. Hambril galloped after him then leaped to his bony shoulder.

‘I’ll kill that animal,’ Henry said.

‘The one with a tail, or the one without?’ Celine called from her resting place.

‘We’ll have another cup of wine,’ Isabella announced.

Geoffrey said to Xena, ‘The boy is very caught up with certain churchmen. He’s at an impressionable age and we fear they are …’

Henry finished his sentence, ‘… turning him into a spy for France.’

That night Maria lay on the floor bedding beside Xena. For a while they held hands. ‘Are you in love with Henry?’ Maria asked.

Xena sighed. ‘He’s so beautiful. Inside.’

Maria said, ‘Young Geoffrey is insanely jealous of Henry. He’ll do anything to cause him trouble.’

‘Like what?’

‘If he discovers Henry’s in love with you, he’ll try to do something to you.’

‘Henry won’t let him,’ she murmured.

‘It’s a sign of true love you trust Henry so much,’ Maria whispered. But Xena was already asleep.

The men, including the whole garrison, attended a victory Mass in the castle chapel before the Empress set out for Barfleur in a coach. She was vigorous enough to ride but a coach, although uncomfortable, was more impressive. Its curtains displayed the white unicorns of Scotland, which Matilda considered more refined than her father’s roaring lion. Three years earlier, when Henry had returned from his misadventure in England and insisted the lion was to be his own standard, she had argued with him. Matilda maintained that since she was entitled to use the unicorn, and King David had knighted Henry, it was proper for him to adopt that creature for his coat of arms. ‘Until you actually do something,’ she’d said.

‘When I do,
I’ll make the lion rampant
!’ he’d shouted at her.