The Young Lion (26 page)

‘I’ll get Mama from Rouen,’ Guillaume said.

‘No. You stay with me and Papa. I’ll send a post-rider.’

A physician arrived when it was already night. ‘It’s nothing, my lord,’ he said. ‘Your father is tired. He’s thirty-eight. He needs rest.’

The man was perched on the sleeping platform. Henry jerked him to his feet. ‘Tired, I grant you. Rest, I grant you. Thirty-eight
is nothing! His father lived to seventy. His great uncle, in the cloister, reached more than eighty. I tell you: he’s ailing. Do you have no physic for him?’

‘He has no fever,’ the physician said.

‘He has no fever
yet
,’ Henry said. ‘You are to stay here tonight, in case he becomes feverish.’

When he and Guillaume returned to lie beside their father he remained taciturn. ‘What ails you, Papa?’ Henry asked.

Geoffrey turned his big head and gave his slow, wolfish smile. ‘Something incurable.’

‘The Queen,’ Guillaume murmured.

Geoffrey nodded. ‘When I saw her today, so beautiful, so youthful, so full of vitality and hope, I knew it was immoral to encourage her to believe she and I could ever be together. I can’t give her the life she deserves. I have neither the means nor the prestige …’ He let the sentence ebb into the darkness of the candlelit room.

Henry said, ‘Papa! You can’t decide you’ll die from a broken heart!’

‘Why can’t I?’ Geoffrey snorted. ‘Better men than I have died from the disappointments of love. They get themselves killed in battle, or in the hunt, or in a tournament. It’s not the wound you see that slays. It’s the invisible wound within.’

Henry took his father’s hand. ‘Papa! There’s nothing wrong with you! The physician said so. You’ve got to see me sitting on the throne of England!’

‘I will. I will,’ Geoffrey smiled.

Guillaume had rolled off the sleeping platform and was pacing the chamber. ‘Sing something,’ his father said.

While Guillaume fetched his lute, Geoffrey said, ‘My heart hurts. It began to hurt in the palace when I saw Eleanor and decided I could never hold her in my arms again.’ His full lips curled in an ironic smile. ‘You know what, Henry? I don’t think
she ever really loved me. She loves the excitement. She loves the idea of lovers kept apart by fate. I don’t think she knows what love is. I was foolish to ask you to marry her. For God’s sake, don’t even think of it. She’s the most dangerous woman in Europe.’

Which is what made her so fascinating to you, Henry thought bitterly. Neither of them referred to the Church’s condemnation of Eleanor for inciting Louis to war against Champagne, during which he burned to death more than a thousand people who’d taken refuge in the church of Vitry. Bernard of Clairvaux had proven the only man capable of controlling the wild young Queen. It was almost ten years ago, but the scandal of Vitry was remembered.

Geoffrey sighed and stroked his son’s hand. ‘Once you’ve got the throne of England you can choose any heiress you like … Anyway, go to sleep. I’ll be fit to ride tomorrow. I want to reach Le Mans.’

When Guillaume returned and began to sing, Geoffrey breathed more deeply and the pallor left his cheeks. Henry lay beside him again, his body pressed hard against his father’s. ‘Take my strength, take my strength, Papa,’ he murmured. Geoffrey was asleep.

Geoffrey’s spirits rallied next morning. When the wall around their chateau came into view he waved his hat at it. Le Mans was less humid than Paris, and the chateau was on a slight hill where it enjoyed a view of the countryside around it and a light, cool breeze. Henry and Guillaume walked beside their father up the stone staircase to the sleeping chambers, each steadying an elbow. ‘I’m alright. I’m fine,’ he said. But as soon as he entered the chamber he collapsed onto the bed without removing his boots.

Henry summoned the family physician, who arrived and sat beside his father. Geoffrey had once taken him hunting in the ducal forest, and among the man’s most prized possessions were the antlers of a stag taken that day.

He felt the Old Duke’s pulses, looked into his eyes and at his tongue and lay his head against his chest. ‘Cough,’ he said. He asked Geoffrey to piss into a flask, which he took to the unshuttered window to examine for colour and smell. ‘Your humours seem in good working order.’ He pulled back the sheet to look at Geoffrey’s ankle and foot. ‘I think I’ll poultice it with seaweed,’ he added. Brown seaweed from the Normandy coast was famous for its curative powers. It was collected and dried, and when needed soaked in hot, boiled water. Sometimes a pinch of it, powdered, was used in half a cup of water as a drink.

Henry escorted the physician downstairs. ‘Who bandaged his foot?’ the physician asked.

‘A squire. What does it matter?’

‘Whoever did it neglected to wash the wound in clean water.’

‘It was clean river water.’

‘River water must be boiled for a wound. And your father rode for hours with a boot over his ankle.’

Henry’s face contorted with rage. ‘You’re telling me he must lose his foot! Well, men get by with one foot. It happens all the time. Even I know how to cut off a foot.’

The physician made no answer.

Henry muttered, ‘Stay. I want my brother to hear you.’

When Guillaume arrived Henry said, ‘The master says Papa will lose his foot.’

The physician cleared his throat. ‘With respect, lord Duke, that is not what I said.’

‘What do you say, master?’ Guillaume asked.

‘Your father has an infection that may develop into blood poisoning.’

Henry flung himself against the doorway, beating his fists on it, screaming. Guillaume wrenched him upright and for the first time in their lives he struck Henry across the face.

‘Now is not the time for one of your fits of self-pity, brother!’

Henry collapsed into his arms. ‘May the Saviour help us! May the Madonna have mercy on us!’ he whimpered.

‘Maybe they do,’ the physician murmured.

‘Who will cut off Papa’s foot?’ Henry asked.

‘Let’s wait and see if the seaweed poultice works,’ the physician said. He continued to stare at the ground. He knew the look of men who were weary of life. ‘Maybe we can save it. In Chartres the monks have a medicinal drink that will ease his suffering in the event we do have to take his foot. Father Bernard may give me some.’

‘He said I was born of the Devil,’ Henry said. ‘So presumably Papa was part of that plot.’

‘We’ve all heard the story. Nevertheless, Bernard is a strange man. His meanings are often difficult to fathom.’

‘Brother,’ Guillaume said softly, ‘you must cancel the invasion of England.’

Henry looked as blank as a sheep. ‘The what?’ he asked.

‘You cannot invade England while Papa is so ill.’

Henry grunted. ‘Of course. I’ll put it off until next year. Fetch the Seneschal. And …’

He couldn’t be bothered finishing the sentence.

The physician rode hard to Chartres, hoping to arrive before the hour of compline, after which no man could speak until the cycle of morning prayers began. But when he dismounted before the cathedral the monks were already singing the fourth psalm.

In disappointment, he wrote a note and sent it in to Father Bernard, asking for an audience when possible.

He sat on a bench at the back of the cathedral, which had recently been rebuilt after its eighth or ninth fire, and waited. He fell into a light doze as he listened to the chanting and only became aware something had changed when he felt a cool energy flowing up his arm. He blinked awake and turned to see Father Bernard himself had left the choir of the cathedral to sit beside him. Silently, he motioned the physician outside.

‘You’ve come for medicine for one of the Dukes? The father or the son?’ Bernard asked.

‘The father.’

Even in the dim light the veins on his temples and wrists were visible. His pale skin stretched across the bones of his skull with so little flesh beneath it his body appeared almost translucent.

‘You shall have it.’

The physician could feel rather than see that Father Bernard was gazing at him, waiting for more information either from him or from whatever spirit it was that spoke to him. ‘I hear the boy has changed his family name to Plantagenet. That is his correct name. He has been blessed to discover it. Very few in this world know their true names.’

The physician was lost.

‘The vegetative energies are exceptionally strong, are they not?’ Bernard added. ‘We look around ourselves and everywhere we see the energy of trees and plants. What did the Saviour say? “I am the true vine.” One abandons a building for a year or so and what happens?’

‘Vines, grass and trees …’

‘Exactly,’ the holy man cut him off. ‘The vegetative force.’ He beckoned a monk. ‘Go to the infirmary and fetch a cask of medicine. A full cask.’

‘It will require a cask?’ the physician asked. A cask indicated not the severing of a foot, but of a leg.

Bernard’s thin hand was warm and the physician could feel its every bone. ‘Dear physician,’ he said, ‘human plans are clumsy. God’s plans are subtle. But we are loved. All of us. Saints and sinners alike.’ He paused. ‘I find that hard to understand. Day and night I pray for my spiritual pride to abate and grant me comprehension.’

The physician thought he saw a smile cross the skeletal face. ‘I believe the struggle to grasp God’s love of sinners keeps me alive.’

The failure of the second crusade weighs heavily on him, the physician thought. He may wonder if God’s love extends to Turks.

The young monk returned with the cask of medicine.

‘You may sleep here for the rest of the night,’ Bernard said. ‘You won’t be needing this medicine for a day or so.’

Isabella and the rest of the family arrived the next morning. They had ridden much of the night, Rachel insisting she was well enough to travel, although Isabella noticed that on one occasion she paused to vomit.

Guillaume held his sister and Rachel back while Isabella entered the bedchamber. Geoffrey was propped on pillows with a sheet covering his wounded foot. His body felt slightly hot. Isabella lifted the sheet to look at the poultice.

‘I want to lie with you,’ Geoffrey said.

They were the same age, thirty-seven. Isabella had borne him eight children – two had died – and had been his closest friend since they were thirteen. Her body was lean and long-muscled and her skin as brown as a nut where the sun touched it. There were lines of laughter around her eyes. Her breasts had shrivelled to little more than dark brown nipples. ‘Your sweet raisins,’ Geoffrey called them. As she stretched herself beside him, Geoffrey felt his heart pierced with love for her. The decades vanished. A special current of gratitude ran through him: gratitude to Isabella for her love for so many years; gratitude to heaven for the spectacular gifts of his eldest sons; the potential in his younger children; and for the hundreds of beautiful and not-so-beautiful women he had loved. He felt gratitude that he had been a duke.

‘I want to lie with you,’ he repeated.

She could see he was too weak. ‘You promise not to get me with child?’ she asked coquettishly.

For a moment his eyes lit with their amused, worldly hauteur. ‘I promise nothing, woman.’

As Isabella caressed him he realised he far preferred her hand and limbs to Eleanor’s. It struck him as ironic that plainer women were usually more delightful in bed than beauties. He wondered if, despite her beauty, in time, he would find Eleanor repulsive. In bed, she was entirely selfish; his only role was to give her pleasure. It was half the reason he so adored her: meeting her demands made him feel as bold and irresistible as the leopards on his standard.

Isabella spent almost an hour beside him before rising and getting dressed. It was still so hot that she and the other women wore nothing but robes of white linen and on their feet sandals of plaited straw and string. When Isabella had dressed and swept her hair up with combs, Geoffrey told her there was something serious he needed to discuss.

‘It’s about Henry,’ he said. ‘While we were in Paris I observed the Queen with your dear friend, Matilda. It was an odd spectacle: like watching two knights sizing each other up for strength and skill and deciding, prudently, not to fight. That’s how they eyed each other.’

Isabella nodded. She had long suspected Eleanor was the woman with whom Geoffrey was in love.

He paused to see if she understood where his thoughts were heading.

She smiled for him. ‘If the Queen can secure a divorce, you want Henry to marry her?’

‘No! I absolutely do not! Matilda may want it, because then she can refuse to pawn her jewels for the war. She’ll insist Henry use Eleanor’s revenue if she’s his wife.’

Isabella had spent many hours in conversation with Baron Richard de Cholet, who had shared with her his views of the royal lady. Isabella had learned that the Queen was accustomed to power; that she loved the exercise of her own will. What frustrated her was that the French court kept her under strict control.

‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘Eleanor is still married. Henry and Rachel adore each other. The little boy is healthy. She’s expecting another baby in February …’

‘He’s cancelled his plans to invade England this year,’ Geoffrey said.

‘He wants you there when he’s crowned.’

She was about to add something soothing when she noticed he was asleep. She lifted the sheet from his leg and looked once more at the bandage over the poultice. A thin red line had begun to creep above it, no more than the length of a fingernail.

By the time the physician returned that afternoon the red line was as long as a finger. He ordered the poultice changed and gave Geoffrey a sip of the medicine from Chartres.

‘Blessed by your old friend, Father Bernard,’ he said.

‘It’s disgusting! Can’t I have wine?’

An hour later, when the red line looked slightly longer, the physician had an idea. He removed the poultice and gingerly poured droplets of the medicine onto Geoffrey’s ankle. The slash from the horse’s shoe was now an open wound and his foot had reddened down to his toes.

‘I refuse to die of gangrene,’ Geoffrey said. ‘If the foot turns black and begins to stink, you’re to bring me a sword and I’ll die like a Roman.’

‘It’s merely inflamed, lord Duke,’ the physician said. ‘No sign of gangrene.’

An hour later he checked again. The red line seemed to have stopped, although his foot was still red. The physician held a conference with Henry, Guillaume and the women.

‘The infection appears to abate,’ he said.

‘I’ll build an abbey to give thanks,’ Henry said. ‘I’ll dedicate it to St Luke.’

The physician remained silent. It was Rachel, schooled by her father in careful analysis of Biblical phrases, who understood the man’s well-chosen words: the infection
appears
to abate. She clapped a hand across her mouth to stop herself saying what she could see the physician thought. When Henry looked at her she said, ‘The baby jumped.’

At midnight the physician, who slept in a cot in Geoffrey’s chamber, shook Henry awake.

Henry disentangled his thighs from Rachel’s who woke too. ‘You stay!’ he ordered her. ‘Think of our baby.’ She lay with her heart pounding, unable to return to sleep.

Henry woke Guillaume, asleep in a further corner of the chamber, his arms wrapped around the mother of little Guillaume.

‘Will I fetch Isabella?’ Henry asked.

‘Not yet,’ the physician said.

When they entered Geoffrey’s chamber they were astonished to see him sitting up and drinking from a cup. The physician had ordered thirty candles lit so they could see as well as possible. Geoffrey’s face was pink.

‘Papa! Are you drunk?’ Henry asked.

‘I intend to be, very soon,’ Geoffrey said. ‘More lights in here than a church at Easter. It’s blinding.’

‘You’re as hot as an oven,’ Guillaume muttered.

‘But I feel cold,’ Geoffrey said. He had a fur clutched around his shoulders.

The physician pulled back the sheet. The red line ran from his ankle to halfway up his thigh. Geoffrey looked down at it and gave an ironic smile.

‘You see, darling boys: I’m done for. By the time you get an axe to chop off my leg, you’ll have to chop off my groin as well. I’ve never known a man to live with half a groin.’

The physician nodded. ‘Lord Dukes, I’ll speak honestly. You, my noble patron, have another few hours of mental lucidity. After that I can only predict that your mind is likely to wander and your speech will become incomprehensible. It’s important for you now, lord Duke, to tell your sons your will.’ He withdrew.

Guillaume and Henry sat beside their father who shivered uncontrollably while perspiration ran down his cheeks. His hair hung around his face in hanks of yellow string.

He said, ‘Guillaume has all his inheritance already, directly from me, and from his mother. I cannot cede him any of our provinces. You, Henry, have Normandy and Maine. When you take England, I want you to cede Anjou and Maine to Young Geoffrey. Little William should enter the Church. You are to arrange appropriate marriages for the girls.’

Henry nodded.

‘Will you vow to me for Young Geoffrey?’

‘No,’ Henry said. ‘I need the territory myself.’

‘But it is my will. You must give it to him.’ Geoffrey looked at his son and realised he was defeated. ‘I die unhappy,’ he murmured. Henry’s expression did not soften. Geoffrey changed the subject: ‘I now have a special request to make of you boys. You must keep it secret from Isabella and Matilda.’