Daughter of the Last King, page 29
part #1 of Conquest I Series
After a week, I managed to secure his agreement for Amelina to join me and it was a great relief to see her come through the door of my chamber. ‘I see from your looks that you have not fared badly,’ she said. She marvelled over the jewels and gowns Henry had given me, at my sumptuous chambers and my splendid Norwegian hawk sitting on her perch in my bedroom with her jesses, her silver chain and tinkling bells. ‘Can you sleep with that thing staring at you?’ Amelina asked, pulling a face.
I laughed. ‘She’s hooded at night time.’
‘Thank goodness! She looks like she wants to eat me, to grip me with those yellow talons and peck at my tender parts with that fierce hooked bill.’
‘Lots of people want to peck at your tender parts!’ I teased her. We looked at the raptor gripping the perch with its tethered claws. Her downy white belly was streaked with fine black lines, contrasting with the dark feathers of her back, head and folded wings. She watched us with round yellow and black eyes, her head swivelling precisely as she followed Amelina’s movements around the room. ‘Tell me, Amelina, how is Gerald?’
‘Distraught. I think he truly loves you, Nest.’
I was still furious with Gerald, but her description of his state prompted me to send him a curt letter. ‘Sir Gerald,’ I wrote, ‘I send you a brief note to reassure you that I am well and, as you told me, well-treated. I hope that you will take ease in that. Nest ferch Rhys, spouse to Gerald FitzWalter.’
‘It’s a little spiteful,’ Amelina commented.
‘He deserves a little spiteful at least.’
* * *
A large number of huntsmen and staff attended Henry. His fewterer took care of his pack of thirty hounds: a mix of greyhounds, mastiffs, alaunts, spaniels, setters and lymers. His falconer took care of his gerfalcon and peregrines. Other staff cared for the menagerie of exotic animals that bayed and howled most extraordinarily at the dawn of every new day and sent their pungent alien scents in whiffs across the courtyard. Unlike a wife who would have to take responsibility for a household, I found a mistress had to do nothing – except, of course, keep her lover happy. We took a midday dinner, entertained by musicians, and then a siesta, when I did not get much sleep. Henry saw the older courtiers in the morning for business and the younger courtiers in the afternoon for more leisurely activities including hawking, picnics and archery in the surrounding woodlands. Henry was skilled at tracking and Warenne nicknamed him Stag’s Foot in jest.
Elizabeth visited me frequently to see how I did. ‘Well, Nest,’ she said, ‘here at Woodstock we can be ourselves. Are you not a little bit in love with Henry? Isn’t Henry’s court a great deal more fun than the queen’s? You are a queen here!’
It was often difficult to read Henry’s feelings since he kept his true self well protected. Sometimes he feigned anger with his courtiers, using this and procrastination as defences against their constant importuning. He knew how to manipulate the hopes and fears of men and women. I saw that he could be calculating, determined and ruthless, his hatreds and friendships maintained to extremes. In love with him? I could not say that, but certainly I was endlessly fascinated by him, addicted to him as a drunkard hugs his bottle of wine to himself.
Haith was as cheerfully friendly to me as always, but I was angry with him and eventually had to confront him. ‘So you knew too at my wedding to Gerald that it was a sham and you were all laughing at me.’
He looked appalled. ‘I knew nothing at wedding. I swear it. Are you alright, lady? Want me to get you out of here. I can hide you in Flanders. Just say a word.’
I shook my head. ‘I’m alright. I’m just angry at the deceit, but of course it is Henry and Gerald who deserve my anger, not you. My apologies.’ I looked down at the dusty ground.
There was a small stone with one side cut and gleaming like amber. Haith moved it with the toe of his boot closer to my shoe. ‘Anytime to Flanders,’ he said. ‘Just say it.’
I looked into his face. ‘I thought you were like Henry’s brother.’
‘I am,’ he said, ‘but brother is not always a good lad, and lady has my heart.’ He grabbed at his chest, staggering. ‘Where’s it gone?’ He palpated the breast of his tunic comically. He was ridiculous. I had to laugh. ‘Lady is like magical mermaid for us all! Singing, singing to all us men on sea of life,’ he called out as I turned from him, still laughing.
I was still smiling at Haith’s pantomime as I pulled my riding gloves from my hands and pushed my way through the doors of the king’s chambers. Henry was seated with Meulan and Elizabeth. They rose at my entry and greeted me. I went to Henry, and he took my hands and kissed them. ‘Good ride? Join us, darling.’ A servant poured a beaker of wine for me and I took a seat beside him.
‘Bellême is allied with Duke Robert again. William de Mortain has left England, abandoning his huge estates here, to join the duke’s court,’ Meulan said, continuing a report that had begun before my arrival.
‘Mortain is a fool as huge as his lost estates,’ Henry said.
‘Indeed, your grace. Curthose is backed into a corner. The ineffectiveness of his rule in Normandy is talked and complained of everywhere. Our diplomacy with the neighbouring rulers in Maine, Anjou and Flanders has isolated the Duke.’
‘Good. Then all is primed. We will ship to Normandy before too long. The administrators have been collecting heavier taxes in England this year in preparation. We will have ample resources for the army and provisioning.’
* * *
My birthday was approaching, and I had told Henry that I was born at half past midnight. I had been asleep some hours the night before my anniversary when he shook me gently awake. I looked blearily at him. ‘You’re dressed?’
‘Wake up, my love.’
Beyond Henry, Amelina hovered with a big grin on her face. ‘What is it?’
‘It’s your birthday,’ Henry whispered into my ear, kissing my neck. ‘So up you get, sleepy head.’ He pulled me upright.
The night was fully dark beyond the window. ‘But it’s the middle of the night!’ Despite my complaining, Amelina got me dressed and then Henry picked me up, laughing, and carried me to a horse that Haith was holding waiting for me. The four of us made the short ride to the bank of the river Glyme.
‘What’s going on?’ I asked Henry, fully awake now. The night was hot and sultry, a half moon gave slivers of light on the pathways and stones. He lifted me from the horse and led me by the hand down the bank to a small boat that was moored there. Haith and Amelina loaded several baskets into the boat and we all stepped in. ‘A midnight row?’
Henry put his fingers to my mouth. ‘Hush, you are waking the fishes with your constant questions. Wait and see.’
I subsided into silence, enjoying the regular slap and slow pull of the oars through the dark water as Haith rowed us downriver to a small island in the middle of the stream. Amelina busied herself dangling bottles of wine on strings over the edge of the boat into the water, keeping them cool.
On the island they had set up a fairy bower with candles and glittering tapestries spread on the ground and Amelina and Haith unpacked a sumptuous picnic. I thought Henry would command Amelina and Haith to withdraw, but instead the four of us sat together eating, drinking and laughing. ‘Happy birthday, my love,’ said Henry, kissing the tips of my fingers tenderly.
‘Happy birthday, Nest,’ said Amelina and Haith, raising their beakers to me.
* * *
After nearly three intense months together at Woodstock, Henry left me in late August to cross the British Sea and take a decisive campaign to his brother. Even Henry’s smaller, travelling court here at Woodstock was an enormous undertaking. His master marshal had four deputies who managed the complex logistics of moving the court. Henry said I was not to return to Gerald during his absence but rather commanded me to stay in his household at Woodstock, and I was very glad of that. I did not wish to have to confront the hypocrisy of my marriage, and in any case, I regarded Henry now as more or less my husband.
* * *
from Gerald FitzWalter’s Day Book
* * *
Rouen, All Saints, November 1104
I have what I want, and yet I do not have what I want. I have only myself to blame, caught in the net the king threw so skilfully over me. I am an utter fool for I glimpsed her love and my own happiness so briefly and now I have lost them completely. She is his, and it is my fault.
I am with the king in Normandy, where he has been sometimes campaigning against and sometimes negotiating with his brother Duke Robert. Now that I have met the man and spent time in close proximity with King Henry, I see even more clearly the folly the Montgomerys committed in choosing to support the older brother. The king’s stratagems prevail everywhere. William de Mortain, who continues loyal to Curthose and unruly to the king, is disseised of his lands in England, and the king’s nephew, Stephen de Blois, is awarded Mortain’s estates.
The king has promised to reward me for my loyalty (which I suppose includes gifting him my wife) but I see no sign of that as yet. Nothing he can give me can compensate for what I have lost in losing Nest.
Duke Robert has come to terms with King Henry and all works in the king’s favour. I am out of my element, away from Wales. Though my blood is Norman, this is my first time in the duchy, seeing as I was born in Windsor. It feels like an alien world and I long to return to the Welsh coasts and dream that Nest is there with me, but I may never see her again. I write but she does not reply and she will never love me now. I cannot bear to look at the king and yet I have to steel myself to it daily. He rubs my nose in his ownership of her, and keeps me close where he can look at my humiliation, although we do not speak of it, of course. There is murder in my heart, regicide, but that would not bring me to Nest or to Wales. I am sick with longing for both.
* * *
Henry returned to me at the end of November in 1104. An owl had been a regular visitor, frequenting a branch close to the window of our bedchamber. There was a full moon and the owl’s shadow was projected huge onto the floor. I gestured to it. ‘The owl welcomes you home, Henry, as do I.’
‘Perhaps in taking the throne I have allowed myself to be manipulated by my own vanity,’ he said to me one night as we lay naked on the great bed together and he caressed my loosened hair, ‘but there is no way back and I enjoy the work when it goes well and when it does not, I have you, Nest, to console me. My lovely Nest with your flashing blushes and your delightful constellations of dimples, freckles and moles.’ He touched his finger softly to the myriad tiny brown marks on my arms and the few on my neck. Somewhere in him I thought there was a small overlooked boy who needed to please, to be loved, for his capacities to be noticed.
‘You’re tickling me, Henry!’
At times I felt like a fish out of water surrounded by his subtle, practised courtiers, a fish I named in my own head The Gauche as I tried not to blunder and flounder.
I found myself terrified by the depth of the love I was growing for him, as if that love was a deep hole where I teetered on the very edge, afraid I might hurtle into that compelling void.
* * *
Just before Christmas, we travelled downriver to the court at Windsor. Queen Matilda barely acknowledged my existence, no doubt aware I had become Henry’s latest conquest, and I was relieved to see that Gerald was not at court. I supposed he remained at Moulsford, unable to confront with his own eyes the outcome of his deception. Henry made light of a second warning of excommunication he received from the pope, but he was anxious about it, worrying how to contend with it alongside his plans to take Normandy from his brother. I knew he would soon need to talk it over with me when he could steal time away from the queen.
At Windsor, I had expected to share Henry with his wife, but my illusions of being his only beloved mistress were shattered when I saw Henry first with Ansfride and then with Sybil Corbet. My heart plummeted as I stood across the room, watching the way he stroked a stray curl from Ansfride’s cheek and then how he surreptitiously caressed Sybil’s arm in a conspiratorial manner. I recognised those moves. I had felt them in my own body. I was bitterly disappointed to find myself sharing him with these mistresses and perhaps with others besides. When Elizabeth came to see me, I gripped her arm and hissed at her, ‘Are you sleeping with him? Have you?’
‘No! You fool!’ she said. ‘Calm down. You’re bruising my arm. Henry and I are the best of friends, but we have never found it to our liking to engage with each other in that way. You have no competition from me. Besides, if Warenne found I was sleeping with Henry, I swear he would kill him, king or no. He wants me to leave my husband.’
I let go of her arm. ‘I’m sorry. Forgive me. I am rendered insane by it all. Will you? Leave your husband?’
‘No. It would not be the honourable course, but he asks me over and over.’ She considered me. ‘You have no options here, you know.’ I said nothing. ‘You wait for him to return to you. You behave proudly, as if you are unaware of those others. He will return to you. He is very faithful in his way.’
‘Faithful! Like a sultan with a harem.’
She shrugged. ‘Well, do you still want him?’
I heaved a sigh. ‘Yes, the saints help me. I hate him and love him in equal measures. I am hungry for him.’
‘Then …’ she rolled her eyes at me. ‘Don’t you think you have a lot more to offer him than Ansfride who is getting on a bit now, than Sybil who is an inane child, or even than his pious queen who thinks that since she has birthed his heir she need no longer suffer her duties as a wife?’
‘You’re right. But I won’t humiliate the queen. I won’t allow Henry to do so. And I’ll not compete for him, like some common harlot.’
Taking Elizabeth’s advice and using Amelina’s flair for dressing me, I waited patiently for Henry to notice I was better looking, more noble, more cultured, more interesting and more necessary to him than any other woman. After a few days, it was me he sought out surreptitiously night after night.
‘Sorry!’ he told me. ‘I can’t be cruel to Ansfride and Sybil, you see. I’m just letting them down gently.’ I was fully sceptical about that but nevertheless smiled my forgiveness, moving my chess piece to take his pawn. ‘Beaten soundly,’ he said, lifting my hand and licking my palm with a naughty smile.
* * *
After the Christmas court, we returned to Woodstock, but in February of 1105 Henry received news that FitzHamon had been captured and imprisoned in Bayeux. Henry was anxious to rescue him and set off with his entourage to muster an army at Romsey so that Woodstock was abruptly emptied. He would be away for several months at least.
Soon after Henry left, I found I was carrying his child and sent word to him. I felt extraordinarily tired but knew from my attendances on Sybil that I would feel better in the months to come, after the early stage had passed. One Sunday morning when all the parishioners filed into the church for mass, I remained outside on a bench, at first feeling too nauseated to enter and then when I felt better again, making a decision to stay outside in the sunshine. The muffled sound of the hesitant singing of the first hymn filtered out to me through the closed doors. It might have been good to be singing in there, but this morning I needed to drink in the air, all of it, that great expanse of blue sky that arched over the church and its lush hillocky graveyard with its scatter of vivid flowers. I took a gulp of that air, that high blue above the church and laughed aloud, alone with just the graves to hear me. Throwing my head back, stretching my arms along the back of the bench so that I could see only blue, blue, I opened my mouth as if I were singing that sky into existence. I was going to bear the king’s child. I was going to have a child. Laughing quietly to myself, I dropped my head forward again and looked anew at the church. I felt as if a blindfold had suddenly been removed and I was seeing everything with newly washed eyes. It was the most ridiculous church I had ever seen, with an astonishingly ornate doorway that was far too much for the humbleness of the rest of the building and its small village setting. Quite incongruous. That doorway would have looked fine on a cathedral, but here on this tiny village church there was something hysterical about it, hysterically funny. I laughed again, imagining the ambitious young stonemason who had put that vainglorious, that glorious doorway on this tiny church.
* * *
To my dearest Nest, Lady of Wallensia, from Henry, king of the English, greetings and affection. What joyful news from my delightful wasp! Seeing a messenger approaching and discerning that the letter was yours, I began to read it ardently since the writer is so dear to me. Never do I receive a letter from you, but immediately we are together. The measure of my joy is so great at your news that I cannot read your letter with dry eyes. I beseech you to inform me frequently how you do.
I embrace you with an unbounded love and beg God’s clemency that you might be safely delivered of your precious freight. I commend you to Abbot Faricius, who will take the greatest care of you both.
I desire your lovely self to know I have long held you close in my heart. If it should please you to send to me, who loves you beyond what I can say, some token of your love, I should value it more highly than the whole world. If there is anything you would like to have, I beg you not to delay informing me of it through the bearer of the present letter. You are the one possessor both of my body and of my mind. With straining neck and fixed eye I long to follow you and your little burden on your progress to Abingdon. I yearn for you in your absence and yet I burn in your presence. Your sweet name is without ceasing on my lips. I sigh for love of you. Every excellence of mind and body adorns you. Not with me is my heart, but with you and if not with you, nowhere for without you it cannot anywhere exist. We have enjoyed carnal pleasures together from love and not from lust and now here is the fruit of our love.
