The Young Lion (41 page)

He wrote:

‘I’ll return to Le Mans to see my Duchess,’ he said to Ranulf. ‘The baby is expected in September.’

In the first week of that month he and Guillaume arrived in Barfleur, bringing with them the sad cargo of Rachel’s coffin. Night after night during the journey home Henry had slept on it; Guillaume had heard him talking to Rachel in Catalan.

At Barfleur the populace came out to greet them with singing and dancing. ‘You are blessed, lord Duke!’ they shouted. ‘Your Duchess gives you a son!’

‘Already?’ he exclaimed.

Eleanor had been seated in the garden at Le Mans playing with the peacocks she had brought from Poitiers. They strutted before her, their shimmering necks twisting this way and that in small jerks as she threw them cake crumbs. When she opened her fan and fluttered it, they flared their tails in response, their gorgeous plumage flashing in the sunshine. Orianne sat beside her, entranced. The peacocks refused to open their tails for anyone but the Duchess and at the sight of strangers would stalk away in attitudes of majestic displeasure, uttering loud, ugly cries. For their mistress they made small chortling noises in the backs of their throats, and fixed their shining black eyes on her and the cake crumbs. Suddenly the Duchess shrieked. Orianne leaped from the bench.

‘My water’s broken!’ Eleanor gasped.

Orianne ran to the stables for someone to fetch the midwives. When she returned Eleanor had collected herself. ‘The baby’s weeks early,’ she said. ‘And a dry birth. Oh, the pain of it.’

‘Midwives in Le Mans are reputed to be very skilled, my lady.’ Orianne helped her indoors, trying to hide from curious eyes the stain of broken waters on the back of Eleanor’s gown. ‘They use a birthing tub.’

‘Run, girl! Get it ready,’ Eleanor said.

Henry rode from Barfleur to Le Mans with baby Geoffrey strapped to his back, the child shrieking with excitement when they galloped. ‘Hang on! Hang onto Papa!’ Henry shouted.

Orianne, her timid face pink, brought the new infant to his father before he entered Eleanor’s apartment. The skin of his small
clenched hands was delicious to touch, fine-grained and without blemish. He was still red, like a newborn, although he was already a week old. Henry sniffed his head and smiled. ‘The perfume of the stars is on him,’ he said. But Orianne could read in his face disappointment that the baby was so small, and did not open his eyes to greet him.

‘Who’s feeding him?’ he asked.

‘A wetnurse.’

Henry grunted. He preferred the way Rachel had done things: fed Geoffrey herself for four weeks before giving him to a nurse. ‘Is your lady wrapped already?’ The maid nodded. ‘No milk for me, then,’ Henry said to Guillaume in Catalan. ‘I was looking forward to tasting it again. Of course my Duchess is …’

His brother nodded. One could not compare an innocent girl of seventeen, as Rachel had been when Geoffrey was born, a woman who had been Queen and already given birth to two daughters.

When they did enter her sleeping chamber, Guillaume thought she was almost melancholy, despite Henry’s falling to his knees at her bedside to thank her for giving him an heir and kissing her tenderly. With the unexpected death of England’s Prince, and its implications for the rebellion, the three of them spent less time discussing the birth and Eleanor’s first son than they might otherwise have done. While they talked she took little Geoffrey into bed, permitting him to play with her hair and suck her fingers. He grew more beautiful by the day, more like Rachel.

‘Do you like your little brother?’ she asked.

Geoffrey peered at the small bundle. A mass of curly black hair was almost all that was visible. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Give him back.’

The adults laughed. Geoffrey looked annoyed, climbed out of bed and ran off to find his nurse.

‘What’ll we call him?’ Henry asked.

‘He should have an English name.’ Eleanor looked at Guillaume.

Henry shouted, ‘William! That’s Saxon for Guillaume.’ The baby woke with a long, plaintive wail but his eyes remained shut tight.

‘Your eponymous nephew is not robust,’ Henry complained when he and his brother left the bedchamber. They ambled in silence until Henry added, ‘I know he was born before time, but don’t you think he looks like a kitten?’

‘Do you refer to his small pointed ears or his long furry tail?’

‘His eyes. They resemble a cat’s when it’s asleep.’

‘We haven’t seen them open yet,’ Guillaume objected. ‘I remember when Papa showed me my new baby brother: you were all orange hair, as hideous as a fox cub. I asked him to return you to the vixen.’

In the chapel they knelt side by side to give thanks for William’s birth, and to pray for the fast recovery of his mother’s strength. After two more days, in which Henry still did not manage to look into the eyes of his newborn son, he and Guillaume left for Rouen.

The rabbi and his wife tore their garments and cried aloud when Henry explained the circumstances of Rachel’s death. All the Jews in the city, about six thousand people, closed their shops and warehouses and walked to the Jewish cemetery for her burial. Henry, Guillaume, Isabella and her daughters followed on foot behind a black horse that pulled the coffin cart. Henry wanted to drape his standard over it as it went through the streets, but the rabbi said such display was forbidden. He allowed Henry to toss the standard on top of the lowered coffin before earth covered it. The widower wept uncontrollably for a few minutes, then drew a deep breath and fixed his gaze on the autumn sky, overcast and monotone, working itself towards rain.

‘She’s with me every waking and sleeping moment,’ he told Guillaume as they returned home. ‘It’s just that I can’t see or touch her. But in the golden frame of dreams, I do. I see her clearly, and hold her in my arms.’ He fell silent. Guillaume watched his features. It was not that Henry looked older than twenty. It was that he was more mature. ‘She warned me there’d be a problem with the new baby,’ he added.

Guillaume frowned. ‘What sort of problem?’

‘She just said “a problem” – but brother, you can see it yourself, can’t you? He’s too small.’

In England, the barons who had fought for Stephen and Eustace waited until the official mourning period was over. Then they descended on the King, urging him to have William anointed Young King.

‘We served you loyally when others deserted to the rebels. The Anjevin will rob us of our lands and castles,’ they said.

Some brought wives and daughters to plead. The women raised their hands on delicate wrists that moved as bonelessly as willow stems. ‘Lord King, ask your brother in France!’ they cried. ‘He’ll tell you how ruthless the Anjevin is.’

But Henry had written to Eustace’s brother-in-law in Paris, expressing to Louis both condolence for the death of the Prince and the hope that, in future, if he, Henry, should be so fortunate as to become England’s monarch, they may become friends.

‘The death of his concubine seems to have improved the character of Normandy,’ Louis remarked to the Seneschal. ‘I could be interested to have him as a friend.’

He was feeling more sanguine than he had in years, for he was in negotiation with the father of his intended queen, a twelve-year-old cousin, Constance of Castile. She was a pretty girl and unlike his first southern bride, looked on Louis as God-like in every attribute: his body, his mind, his heart, his singing voice, even his fingernails filled her with awe. The King had agreed with her father that the marriage not be consummated until she turned fourteen and initially she would be Queen Consort. Meanwhile her adoration was a balm to Louis’s soul. He allowed her to sit on his knee while he stroked her hair, and would sometimes kiss the petal-soft skin of her neck. In the interim the Rumlar, now head of the Guild in Paris, recommended milking maids at least every second day, ‘to encourage the production of seed, Your Highness. An abundance of royal seed, and a young bride, will assure an heir for France.’

The Seneschal, Estienne le Jeun, had learned much since Louis’s defeat during the short war against Henry and Eleanor. Among his lessons was the ruthlessness of princes. He now understood that Eustace had urged Louis to attack when he did, and had fought beside the King, not to help France – as he’d claimed with vehement oaths of love and loyalty – but to spare his own country from the Duke of Normandy.

‘Your Highness, may I suggest that a King William would be more malleable than a King Henry?’

Louis was pensive. He thought, My problem is that Henry has prised open Eleanor’s treasury. She refused to pay one-tenth of what she owed me as a vassal. But Henry has his hands on her silver and gold.

As against that, he reflected, the Anjevin will be confronted with controlling the English barons who remained loyal to
Stephen, plus the ungovernable men of Aquitaine. Both will see him as a tyrant. If they don’t, he’ll fail as King. Or else he’s a political genius.

‘The rebels have tasted the blood of Blois. They’ll treat William as their dinner,’ he replied.

‘Your point, sire?’

‘England’s future now depends on negotiation. France’s wisest course is to remain neutral and act only when a winner is clear.’

So many messengers sailed back and forth across the Channel that during October Henry and Guillaume moved to Barfleur, leaving Eleanor to oversee Rouen, Le Mans and the country in between. By the end of the month Henry had agreed to meet King Stephen face to face in England.

He and Guillaume rode into the old palace of Winchester on the sixth of November, escorted by thirty Norman knights.

The brothers arrived in the courtyard on caparisoned horses, wearing fur cloaks over scarlet tunics, gold boots and gloves studded with gems. It was six years, three months and three weeks since their last visit to Winchester. As they dismounted, attendants ran forward to place a sprig of fresh broom in each of their velvet hats. Instead of the audience hall, they met the King in his private chambers: Stephen, Prince William, Henry and Guillaume, Westminster and Canterbury, were the only ones present except for two scribes. Thomas, Archdeacon of Canterbury, was left pacing a corridor outside. As Henry approached Stephen he immediately knelt, his head bowed. ‘Lord King,’ he murmured.

Cunning as ever, Stephen thought.

‘I present the heir to my throne, Prince William,’ he replied.

Henry stood and looked at the slightly framed young man seated beside his father. ‘Your Highness,’ he said, ‘I hope we become close friends.’

The Prince hesitated. He’d heard stories about the Anjevin that had made him want to run from this meeting, so it was with some confusion he responded, ‘I hope so, too.’ Henry knew William cared nothing for weapons or warfare, only for reading. The new translations of ancient texts now pouring out of Outremer into the academies of France and England he found as exhilarating as a swim in a rough sea, as exciting as a romantic assignation. His mind strummed like the string of a citern, he told friends, when he opened a volume of Aristotle.

Henry turned to Guillaume, who passed him the gift they had brought for the Prince. ‘I’m sure you have many copies of this great text, but I hope one more may not be unwelcome,’ Henry said. He held out to William a manuscript of Phaedo, Greek on one page, Latin on the opposite, its decoration simple and restrained, as befitted the content.

The Prince flushed with delight. ‘In two languages!’ he exclaimed. ‘Nothing could be more welcome.’

‘Or pagan,’ Winchester muttered to the Archbishop.

Canterbury stared at his feet. He knew who had advised Henry on how to disarm the Prince. His Archdeacon could win the confidence of young men the way the Plantagenet could win the affection of a horse. In a single conversation Tom had discovered the Prince’s weakness for ancient texts. ‘Rather droll gift: the dialogue of a man about to be executed,’ he murmured in reply.

The King, who had not read Phaedo, glared first at Henry, then the prelates. ‘Is this suitable reading for my son?’ he asked.

‘It’s fashionable in the academy in Paris,’ Winchester answered. ‘I’m sure, sire, they read it at the college in Oxford, too.’

‘Fascinating,’ Stephen grumbled. He returned his attention to Henry. ‘My baronage and many members of the Church won’t have you,’ he said. ‘They regarded your grandfather as a tyrant, and consider you’ll be no better. So they fight on.’

Henry had anticipated this. ‘Indeed, sire,’ he replied quietly. ‘A war is easy to begin, but difficult to conclude.’ As he spoke his eyes were on William. The King had invited neither Henry nor Guillaume to sit, which Henry considered to his advantage. He stood with shoulders straight, legs slightly apart and relaxed at the knees. It was the first position a youth studied when learning to fight with a sword. The Prince gazed up at him, fascinated. He could barely control a stallion and had never learned to fight with sword, lance, mace or battle-axe. My reputation as a fighter is worth an army, Henry thought.

Stephen realised too late that his beggarly manners had been expensive. His son plucked at his sleeve. ‘Father, may we speak in private?’

Henry, Guillaume and the churchmen withdrew to the other end of the chamber. ‘What’s he saying?’ Henry whispered. ‘Can you tell from his face?’

‘He’s pleading with the King,’ Guillaume replied in Catalan.

Sapphires glinted in Henry’s eyes. Winchester gave him the smallest of smiles, while Canterbury said the rosary and studied his shoes.

At the other end of the room Stephen abruptly stood. He nodded at Henry to approach him, and as he did, held his arms open. His face, Henry saw, was as grey as his hair and he looked to have aged ten years in the same number of minutes.