The Young Lion (3 page)

‘Certainly,’ Henry replied. He turned to the courtiers and addressed them loudly and clearly in Latin, a tongue he spoke perfectly. ‘On my mother’s side I have no title but FitzEmpress and, as such, am the son of the legitimate heir to this throne,’ he began.

He declares war on Prince Eustace
. The whisper slid from mouths like vipers slithering from holes. The chamber felt tight.

‘On my father’s side, I am son of the Count of Anjou and Maine and Duke of Normandy. My father has dispossessed many of you of your estates. You broke your sacred oath of fealty to the great King Henry. You vowed to him not once, but three times, to accept my mother as his heir.’ He stared at them, unflinching. Suddenly his face flared with anger and he burst into French, a language all of them understood. ‘Faithless vassals! Oath breakers!’ he shouted. ‘Dishonour on you! Nothing is sacred if vows to the King are overturned! You invite chaos. You’ve brought the disaster of civil war on your own heads!’

The uproar was so loud bishops and some elderly earls had to cover their ears. Stephen signalled to the palace guards who stood around the hall. They crashed halberds against their shields to call for silence.

‘So, my nobles: how do you vote on the request from this creature who brings such disgrace upon his ancestral house? Do we give him gold?’ the King asked.

‘Get him out of England!’ people shouted.

‘He’s from the devils of Anjou! It was prophesied!’

From the door Eustace called, ‘Ransom him! Make his parents pay to get him out of irons.’

Stephen beckoned to the prelates. Canterbury and Winchester rose and although they loathed each other, walked in a measured,
brotherly pace towards the throne. ‘Your advice?’ Stephen murmured. The Bishop of Winchester was the King’s brother and the second-richest man in England. He had once supported his cousin Matilda – for despite her sex, she was the true heir and in some earlier times sex had been no bar to the throne. But he had turned against her when her domineering temperament revealed itself: she’d set up in Winchester a German court, with German formality. The Archbishop of Canterbury, however, was still firmly of the Matilda faction. Political differences aside, these princes of the Church were of one mind diplomatically.

‘He’s too young to punish or ransom without bringing dishonour on yourself, Highness,’ Winchester said. ‘I’m sure he calculated his risk in coming here today on that basis. He’s shrewd, it seems.’

‘Give him the gold,’ Canterbury urged. ‘You’ll appear magnanimous.’

‘My Crown Prince sees this as our opportunity for a final victory over Matilda. If we put the FitzEmpress in irons we can make the condition of his release surrender of her claim to the throne,’ Stephen whispered.

‘Harming the boy does not guarantee an end to the war, sire. Until now his father has declined to join Matilda in her struggle for England. But he may fight for his son,’ Canterbury said. ‘As we saw when he took Normandy, Geoffrey of Anjou is ruthless and skilled in the arts of war. And he is now very rich.’

Winchester noticed that the sceptre trembled in his brother’s hand. How heavy a stolen sceptre weighs, he mused. Stephen Blois was not even a count at his birth and virtually penniless, but he was a nephew of the Lion. King Henry had treated him with majestic generosity and given him an education and vast tracts of land. ‘I shall explain to Prince Eustace our reasoning,’ Winchester said.

They returned to their seats and stared at the rushes on the floor; their deacons followed their example. Henry noticed one
elegant young man look at him with a slight smile, a courageous act, given the hostility of the court.

‘Approach me,’ Stephen said.

As Henry stepped up to the throne, the King grasped the front of his dirty tunic and in a voice that only the two of them could hear said, ‘You’ll get your gold, Anjevin. But if you ever set foot in my realm again you’ll get more than a bloody eyebrow.’

Henry replied in the same quiet voice, ‘And if you think, Usurper, that Eustace will inherit your crown, think again.’ He gave a small, formal bow. ‘Thank you for the gold.’ He turned to the courtiers and lifted his voice. ‘Your monarch is both gracious and merciful,’ he said. ‘May God bless you all.’ He crossed himself, obliging everyone in the chamber to do the same.

‘The disingenuousness!’ Winchester hissed to a deacon. The whole world knew that Anjevins would as soon rob a cathedral as attend Mass in one.

A hubbub of jeering ushered the young men from the audience chamber. Courtiers jostled them. Henry felt an unseen hand slip something inside his belt. He looked around but so many pairs of eyes were fixed on him – bishops, deacons, knights, ladies – it was impossible to know from whom the something came. In the hot sunshine of the courtyard he fished inside his belt for whatever was there. It was a small, scented rectangle of parchment that said,
For love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave
. He sniffed it and handed it to Guillaume.

‘I’ve read this before,’ his brother said.

‘Catullus? Ovid?’

Guillaume shook his black curls.

‘Martial?’

They laughed. ‘Remember how we had to bribe that hypocrite of a Latin master we had for a few weeks? I gave him a white goshawk,’ Henry said.

‘I gave him a bitch hound in pup … Anyway, Martial’s bawdy and this is …’

Henry punched him on the shoulder. ‘Ha! It’s romantic. I’ve won a lady’s heart.’

Guillaume looked at him from the edge of his dark brown eyes and smiled. When it came to girls there was no competition between the brothers: Guillaume always won. He was two years older, taller, of unblemished beauty, and his singing was like an angel’s. At home he wore luxurious fabrics and fine jewels. He had no title but everyone addressed him as ‘lord’. Henry went about in a sheepskin cut so short it scarcely covered his backside. Sometimes strangers took him for a servant.

On Eustace’s orders, the guards had confiscated Henry’s destrier and put his saddle and bridle on a lop-eared palfrey mare. Henry checked the saddlebags. The gold was there.

‘Take my horse,’ Guillaume said. ‘I’ll ride a mare.’

Henry shook his head, and they trotted down to the charred and wretched town where people laughed at the sight of a man not from the clergy riding a mare. Inside a tavern they each drank four cups of ale, grimacing at the taste. The commander of the mercenaries Henry had assembled sat watching from a bench. His weapons and fighting kit, along with theirs, were hidden inside carpenters’ sacks. He, Henry and Guillaume had passed themselves off as artisans come to England to look for work rebuilding the war-shattered towns. It was their explanation as to why they could barely speak English.

When his thirst was quenched Henry strolled to the bench and took a seat beside the commander, who opened his sack for the bags of gold.

‘M’lord, you’ve got more hide than a herd of cows,’ he said. ‘We had a wager the King would put you in irons.’

‘You all wagered against me?’

‘Not me, of course, m’lord.’

Henry looked at him, nodding slowly, smiling. The commander had a lovely, flaxen-haired daughter. ‘So you owe me a share of your winnings?’

The mercenary grabbed him in a hug. ‘You’re a winner!’ He kissed Henry on both cheeks. ‘I’ll fight for you any day, FitzEmpress.’

‘Pay the men and let’s get drunk,’ Henry said.

That evening, after they had slept a few hours and sobered up, the brothers enticed two girls from the midsummer dance to come with them into a barn. As usual, the prettier one chose Guillaume. After a while Henry said in Catalan, ‘I want to swap. Tell yours I’m a famous French knight in disguise and I want her.’

‘You swine,’ Guillaume said. ‘

I’ll show her the sapphire ring to prove it.’

Next morning they pulled straws from each other’s hair and slipped into the bright summer light. They headed south for the coast. At length Henry asked, ‘Did you feel as humiliated as I did, begging Stephen for gold?’

‘Of course.’

‘The magnates and barons said terrible things about our family. Especially Papa.’

‘Where I was standing I heard even more than you. They spoke French, rather than English or Latin, to make sure they injured me.’

It had been an ignominious four months. For want of foresight and siege equipment, Henry’s army had not won a single battle. One by one his noble young companions had deserted him and sailed home until there were only he and Guillaume – and the mercenaries waiting for their pay. Henry lowered his forehead to the mare’s coarse black mane and wept. ‘I can’t do it,’ he said to his brother. ‘I’ll never be the leader my grandfather was. I’ll never be King.’

‘Eustace is terrified of you!’

‘But he’s Crown Prince, and he has the backing of France.’

And the backing of the people, it seemed.

Reaching the coast, Henry and Guillaume discovered the truth of the old saying: ‘The monarch has a long hand.’ A hostile crowd of labourers waited for them with curses and bags of rotten eggs and fruit. Henry leaped to the ground and, sword in hand, hair flying, rushed at the crowd. Guillaume protected his back.

The crowd spat at the brothers while backing away from their swords. Villeins took quick jabs at them with fingers and elbows, but no artisan dared strike with a sickle, a fist or a hammer: the young foreigners moved with the wild, wilful purpose of magnates determined to have their own way. Although not full-grown, they topped by half a head most of those harassing them. After a few minutes the villeins gave up.

Henry fixed his eyes on the blue water beyond the seawall and strode towards the boat that would sail them home. An old woman plucked at his sleeve then ran in front of him. She had once been handsome but now the flesh drooped on her bones. She thrust something bulky against his stomach, staring into his face. In perfect French she said, ‘In memory of the Beloved Lion,’ then darted back behind him, screeching in English. Whatever she said made the crowd hoot with derision. Fishermen waiting on the wharf stared down at their clogs.

Over the din, Guillaume picked out the sound of a silver voice more beautiful than any he had heard before. It was a song, in English, that mocked them, sung by a barefoot urchin who bowed graciously to the clapping crowd. How odd for an urchin to bow like a page, Guillaume thought. He memorised the melody.

Intent upon the red cloth bundle he was holding, Henry had not noticed the urchin or paid much attention to the song. He vaulted over the gunwale of the fishing smack, still clutching the
woman’s odd gift. The fishermen, who spoke both English and French, turned their faces away. ‘What did she say?’ Henry asked.

‘I’d throw that rag away, sir,’ one answered. ‘Bad luck to have a filthy thing like that on the boat.’

Henry began to blush. He was at the point of tossing the thing overboard when he glanced up and saw the woman standing near the wharf staring after him. She had spoken of his grandfather with such respect he could not believe what the fisherman inferred. A white corona of gulls keened above them. The sea was a bright sparkle of blue and the wind so fine their sail drooped. The oarsmen began a shanty to keep the rhythm of their stroke. Henry turned his back on England and slowly unfolded the cloth, a rectangle of linen, dyed scarlet. At its centre thousands of stitches had created a golden lion. The body was in profile, the head turned to roar. Henry felt the tumult inside him rise to an unbearable pitch.

‘Stretch it out,’ he said to Guillaume.

His brother held it. At the distance of a yard, the creature’s fierce eyes pierced Henry so deeply he felt he was flying to another world. The Lion spoke to him. But its words were like pearls of light that shimmer on water then vanish, and after a moment he didn’t know what they had said – but he knew he had sailed to England, risked his life, suffered defeat, disgrace and humiliation for this instant, for this moment when a zephyr lifted the veil from his senses and somehow changed his life. But for what purpose? The change was at such a depth he did not know.

Shame ruled him. He had shamed the Lion by his military failure and his stupidity.

‘You keep it,’ he said to Guillaume.

His brother refolded the standard and stowed it in silence in his kit-bag.

In Rouen, a fisherman sailed upriver with a letter addressed to the Duchess of Normandy. When her husband saw the seal of King Stephen, he took the letter himself and walked off a few paces to read it. It was short:

‘Is there a reply?’ the fisherman asked.

The Duke shook his head, gave the man a coin, and entered his apartment. He flung himself on his bed and wept. Geoffrey was not a man who valued time spent in church, but after weeping he went to the castle chapel and prayed. He did so in the old style, standing, arms raised to heaven. Tears streamed down his broad, high cheekbones. He loved his many children. He loved immoderately his most difficult and vulnerable child, Henry. Matilda had poured into this boy all the fear, rage and resentment she felt for her father – and a mute, yearning, tender devotion.

She and Henry lived with the lonely desperation of a parent and child whose love for each other is hidden beneath a mountain of anger.

The Duke knew all this, and knew there was nothing he could do about it. He prayed so long his tears dried and he sank to his knees. His wife found him kneeling on a cushion.

‘What’s happened to Henry?’ she demanded.

‘He is well. I pray for his safe crossing.’

‘I don’t believe you,’ she said. ‘You never pray unless you’re worried. Where is he?’

‘He returns to us. He’ll be home in three days.’ Geoffrey stood and swept his long fingers through his blond hair, dragging it away from his eyes.

Scoundrel, his wife thought. There was little about her husband that pleased her. Not his magnificent bearing, nor his eye for elegance and beauty, nor the art treasures he collected, not even the way he played the lute. Especially she disliked the fact that he was of the Foulques clan. When her father told her the identity of the second husband he had arranged for her, she tore her hair. ‘Anjevins are thieves, barbarians and priest killers!’ she had wailed. ‘And he’s of the Foulques! Foulques the Black murdered two wives.’

‘He discovered his second wife riding a shepherd,’ the Lion replied irritably. ‘I have a border dispute with Anjou. This will end it. The Anjou lad is fertile. He already has a son. You need a fertile husband, after that …’

The Lion could not bring himself to utter the name of her first husband, a man who had Matilda in his bed from the age of twelve to twenty-four and had produced nothing. Not even a miscarriage. His plan to encircle France had spent itself between those sterile sheets: his legacy now depended on Matilda and the youth from Anjou. He knew the boy had seduced the wife of a baron when aged only thirteen. The story reminded the King of his own younger days. ‘They say he’s charming,’ he added with a smile.

For his part, Geoffrey Foulques was dismayed at being married off to a woman eleven years his senior, reputed to be as haughty as a pharaoh. She was tall, with large, intelligent eyes of slate-blue. She wore her light brown hair in the German manner, plaited on the crown of her head, falling at the back to her broad, straight shoulders. A diadem of jewels held her veil in place. She demanded Geoffrey address her as ‘Empress’, and to show her displeasure spoke to him in German, a language he barely understood.

As she stood now in the chapel glaring at her husband, he thought, if only you were not perpetually, invisibly, armoured in chainmail. He could have loved her, perhaps. But in their years of marriage she had never once surrendered to him. His father-in-law had warned: ‘She’s wilful. You may need coercion.’

At age fourteen Geoffrey had considered himself well-endowed, but his bride had stared at his erect penis in horror. He blushed. Maybe the Emperor of Germany had equipment much larger than his own. ‘Does it displease you, lady?’ he’d asked.

‘Displease me? It’s hideous!’

He was not yet full grown; she was taller than he, but being male, he was stronger. ‘Am I too … small?’

‘Small? It’s too big!’ she’d cried. ‘I don’t want that monstrous thing inside me.’

‘Like it or not, it’s going in.’ He rammed his elbow between her breasts, into her chest, and with his free hand guided his penis into his wife. The encounter was so chaotic, hasty and unpleasant it was not until the next morning when he saw the sheets that Geoffrey realised his wife had been a virgin. Her Emperor husband had used a finger, for what reason Geoffrey could never discover from her, only that she felt grievous shame, for all her outward pride as an Empress.

After a few months he left her. When the Lion threatened war on Anjou if he refused to take her back, Geoffrey calculated his chances as the now seventeen-year-old Count of that province
against one of the greatest warriors and richest kings in Europe. The following summer he returned to marital duty and within weeks Matilda was pregnant.

But every child he sired on her he sired through force. ‘You make me feel like a dog let in to rut on a bitch hound,’ he complained. He noticed, however, that in violation she experienced a bolt of fear and self-loathing so intense it released her into sweet catharsis. She babbled endearments to him in German, French, even Anjevin. She stroked his face and hair.

At first he was disgusted that he had to rape his wife to give her pleasure. But he was a reflective young man, and on consideration he felt the kind of compassion extended to a person born blind, or imbecile. By the age of twenty he could ravish her with calm. An understanding sprang up between them: wordlessly they agreed their bed was a stage and what they did on it was unrelated to their daily lives. He tied her wrists together and her legs apart and called her names he would not spit at a pig. Matilda gave birth to son after son after son. And as many daughters.

While her married life remained for her a shameful secret, her husband had one attribute she could publicly applaud: he knew how to fight. He had taken Normandy from the English and much of the Vexin from France. This was no small achievement, for with Normandy came the estates of earls and barons who had broken their vows to have her as the English monarch. And with the Vexin under the swords of their garrisons, the family controlled the western river trade to France. When she was in a generous mood, Matilda could also admit her husband was well educated. She approved the practical side of his education – for example that he had discovered how to capture the castle of Montreuil-Bellay through his reading of the Roman writer Vegetius Renatus. These matters aside, Geoffrey and Matilda shared only the sting of social condescension and its counterweight, vigorous ambition.

Standing in the chapel, Matilda repeated: ‘You say he’ll be home in three days?’

Geoffrey rose up and glared back at her. ‘Correct, my lady.’ Three days was a guess.

You’re lying, she thought.

Three days later, at dawn, Geoffrey climbed five storeys to the uppermost turret of the ducal palace of Rouen and stationed himself at the spot from which river traffic sailing in from the sea was most easily seen. Beside him were his two finest archers. The three men squinted into the mist that hung above the Seine.

‘M’lord, what are we looking for? How big a ship?’

‘Quite small, I think. A fishing boat, perhaps.’ May he be alive, Geoffrey prayed. May he not have lost an eye. Or a limb.

‘There’s one!’

Geoffrey’s vision was good but he could see nothing. His archers had the eyes of hawks.

‘There are people waving at us!’

‘Where?’

‘There, lord. Just two hundred yards away. I can see …’

‘What!’

‘Someone waving to you. He’s waving a piece of cloth.’

‘It’s a … red flag! M’lord, there’s a funny animal on the flag.’

‘It’s a horse,’ the other man said.

‘Can’t be! Legs are too short.’

‘It’s a gold horse.’

‘Man, your eyes have gone! It’s a lion.’

‘A lion?’ The Duke, taller than all his vassals, put his arms around their shoulders. ‘Can you see anyone’s face?’

They squinted with the concentration of taking aim.

‘Lord Guillaume, sir! He’s waving at us. And the Young Duke is beside him!’

Geoffrey was down the stairs and galloping to the town wharves before the ship had berthed.

He embraced Henry then Guillaume. ‘Go home to your mother,’ he said to Guillaume. ‘I’ll deal with you later.’ Turning to Henry, he shouted, ‘If you ever do anything like that again, I’ll kill you.’

Henry was too surprised to speak.

‘Where’s your destrier?’ his father demanded.

‘Stephen confiscated him,’ Henry mumbled.

The Duke made a noise of disgust. ‘Where’s your great-grandfather’s ring that you took from your mother’s apartment without asking permission?’

Henry fished out the leather pouch from inside his tunic. ‘Why didn’t you send me money when I begged for it?’ he burst out.

This was the opening to a conversation Geoffrey had dreaded. He did not reply.

‘And you sent word to Earl Robert, telling him not to help me!’ The fury of injustice gathered in Henry’s face.

‘Correct.’

‘I was fighting for my mother! But you and she would leave me to die in England!’

The Duke gave an angry smile. ‘We knew you’d find a way out. You’ve got more tricks than your mother’s monkey.’

‘But what if I hadn’t?’ Henry persisted.

His father rounded on him. ‘You whine like a ten-year-old. If you don’t stop, I’ll thrash you like a ten-year-old.’

From the castle Matilda watched her eldest child ride home on the back of his father’s horse. Perched on her shoulder Hambril, her monkey, rubbed his small round head against her hand as she stroked him to calm herself.

‘Where’s your destrier?’ she asked Henry as soon as they walked inside.

‘He had an accident,’ the Duke replied.

‘I didn’t ask you. Henry, where’s the destrier your father gave you for your birthday?’

‘He hurt his leg.’

‘I know when you’re lying. Answer me truthfully!’ she said and stamped her foot.

The turbulence between the Duchess and her impetuous son distressed the household, even the monkey, who jumped to the ground as Matilda’s anger rose. Geoffrey excused himself and gave Hambril a swift, surreptitious kick. Everyone, except Matilda and Hambril’s paramour, a languid black-and-white cat, hated the monkey.

‘Where did you get the money to go haring off in the first place?’ his mother continued.

‘I borrowed it in town.’

‘You went to the Jews! Fourteen years old and already in debt to them! They kill Christian boys for their blood, don’t you know that?’

‘That’s rubbish, Mother. I asked Uncle Robert when I saw him. He said it was a story some English merchants made up to avoid paying a debt.’

‘Oh really? For your information, the Jew was tried, convicted and burned!’ She was almost shouting.

‘That doesn’t mean he was guilty,’ Henry muttered, but his mother was not listening. He took a step towards her and put his arms around her waist. He was already her height. She allowed him to hold her a moment, then pushed him away.

‘Come, baby, come to Mama,’ she said to Hambril. The monkey leaped to her shoulder and bared his small brownish teeth at Henry, hissing at him.

‘I spent two days with Uncle Robert,’ Henry said. ‘He asked me to give you a message: “What is said, is true.”’

Unexpectedly, his mother gave a sob. Her illegitimate half-brother, Robert Earl of Gloucester, was the one man she loved unreservedly. For ten years he had led the fight for her right to the English throne, but recently the war had not gone well. His son had defected to Stephen and rumours swirled that Earl Robert was dying of a broken heart.

‘We’re beaten. The Usurper has won. England was my dowry but it’s been stolen for all time. You’ll never be King.’

Henry’s face burned. Through the uncovered windows of Matilda’s apartment they could look down on the town, the wharves and warehouses along the river, and beyond the river to fields of flax and wheat, orchards, a forest and plains that stretched all the way to the Île de France, that scrap of land to which everyone of significance west of the Rhine owed homage.

The Normandy apple trees had flowered and now their fruit was setting. The scent of apple blossom that for six weeks each year perfumed Rouen like Eden’s garden was replaced by smells of ripening grain and grass heating in the sun.

‘My dowry!’ Matilda wailed. Her eyes were lustrous with tears. ‘Now you know, Henry, why your father has never respected me, why he runs to other women,’ she said. ‘I lost my dowry. Your father would have been King Consort …’

‘Mother, Mother. You …’ She could put him in a turmoil in minutes. ‘Sit down, Mother,’ he said.

A servant brought cider, coarse bread and cheese: it was past breakfast time but too early for dinner, and Henry was hungry because the food on the fishing boat was horrible, and he’d had to hold Guillaume’s head while he was seasick.

He ate in morose silence.

‘My life is ruined,’ Matilda went on. Henry wanted to comfort her, to say, ‘I missed you. I was frightened, I thought Prince Eustace would have me put in irons.’ But instead he wrapped his arms around her waist again and laid his head on her breast.

‘What are you doing?’ she demanded. ‘You’re too old for that nonsense.’

He drew back, threw the rest of his cheese on the platter and stood up. ‘I’m going to see the new puppies,’ he said.

‘Puppies! We’re defeated after fighting ten years for justice, for myself and for you to reign after me, and all you can think of is puppies! You should know the bitterness of being born into this world as a woman, Henry.’

His dark blue eyes were as hard as his grandfather’s. ‘I do,’ he said. ‘You never let me forget it.’ He walked out.

Geoffrey was seated on a stone bench reading, enjoying the feeling of sun on his broad back. ‘We’ll go to the kennels,’ he said. ‘We’ve some fine new deer hounds and sixteen wolf-hound pups.’

Henry had to lengthen his stride to keep abreast with his father, who had nothing more to say to his son. As they approached the kennels the hounds – more than two hundred of them – began emitting long, musical cries of excitement. They leaped from their wooden platform, a living flood pouring over the lip of a dam.