The Queen from Provence Read online

  ‘If I can give you all you want … yes.’

  ‘I want a son. I fear people will begin to think that I am barren.’

  ‘Nay, you are so young. My mother was several years before she conceived. Then she had five of us.’

  ‘Perhaps here at Woodstock …’

  ‘Let us pray it may be so.’

  They walked through the maze and back to the palace. Later they hunted in the forest and when they returned, pleasantly tired from the chase, Eleanor dressed herself in a gown of blue edged with miniver and wore her hair in two plaits which hung over either shoulder in a manner which delighted Henry.

  In the hall they feasted. The King and Queen seated at the high table with a few of the most exalted of the party and the rest at the great table with the enormous salter in the centre to divide the company into those deserving respect and those who were considered of lesser degree.

  The Queen had arranged for some of the minstrels she had kept with her to sing to the company. She liked to do this to show the people who so deplored the foreigners she had brought into the country that their performance was superior to anything the English could do.

  It was while the minstrels were singing that the mad priest came into the hall. There was a sudden silence throughout as this man stood there facing them all.

  His clerical garments, which were in disarray, proclaimed him as a priest; and his eyes were wild.

  In the silence, a voice cried: ‘Why ’tis Ribbaud, the priest.’

  Henry stood up. ‘Who knows this priest?’

  The man who had spoken stood up. ‘My lord, I know him. He is the mad priest of Woodstock.’

  Eleanor had reached for Henry’s hand and gripped it tightly for the priest had come to stand before the high table immediately in front of the King.

  Henry looked at the tousled hair and the wild eyes of the man and he said gently: ‘What would you have of me?’

  The priest said in a voice of thunder which echoed about the hall: ‘You have my crown. I am the King of England. Give it back to me. Usurper!’

  Two of the guards had come forward; they gripped the priest by his arms and held him pinioned.

  ‘Why do you make such statements?’ asked Henry still gentle, for he was always sorry for the weak. It was only the strong who made him uneasy; he could feel compassion for those who were afflicted.

  ‘I speak truth,’ cried the priest. ‘I am the King of England. The true King … robbed of his crown.’

  ‘How do you make that out?’ asked Henry. ‘My father was King, my grandfather was King and I am my father’s eldest son.’

  ‘No,’ muttered the priest. ‘You have stolen my crown. I have come to claim it. You will never prosper until you give me back my crown.’

  ‘My lord,’ said one of the guards, ‘what is your wish. What shall we do with this man?’

  ‘Hang him,’ cried a voice from the hall.

  ‘Cut out his tongue,’ said another.

  ‘Nay,’ said Henry. ‘Hold. This man is not to blame. He is a man with an addled brain. Through no fault of his he has been sent into the world so afflicted. It is only a man who knows himself not to be a true king who would fear such as he. I would be merciful. Take him away and let him go free.’

  There was a murmur of amazement as the priest was taken from the hall.

  Eleanor pressed his hand. ‘You are a good man, Henry,’ she said. ‘Few kings would have let him go.’

  ‘My father would have had his eyes put out, his ears or his nose cut off. But then my father was a wicked man. There was no godliness in him. I want these people to understand that although I am my father’s son there was never one less like him than I am. My ancestors, what would they have done? The Lion of Justice would have freed him for he has committed no crime.’

  ‘He has shown disrespect to your person.’

  ‘What he has done is dictated by madness. It was not Ribbaud who spoke but the demons within him. He has gone. Let us forget him. Call for the minstrels.’

  The minstrels sang and it was said in the hall that Henry was a good man and it was sad that he could not be as good a king as he was a man.

  Night at Woodstock was enchanted with the moon high in the sky, shedding its light on the still trees of the forest. Through those trees the King and Queen walked together, arms entwined, down to Rosamund’s Bower haunted by the spirit of the Second Henry whose lust had been at the heart of Rosamund’s tragedy.

  Here they had sported together; here they had played out their secret lives. There was an aura about the place. The spirits of the past brooded there. In these rooms the King’s bastards had been born – the children who, it was said, the King loved better than those he had had by his Queen.

  ‘It is almost as though she is here – sweet Rosamund,’ said Henry. ‘Do you sense that, my love?’

  Eleanor did; poet that she was her fancy was always ready to soar. They walked through the rooms – small by palace standards – charming rooms, with much of the furniture still remaining, for this place which had become known as Rosamund’s Bower had been kept as it was in Rosamund’s day on the orders of Henry II and the care had continued through the reigns of Richard and John until now.

  Eleanor said: ‘Let us stay here a while just ourselves – in Rosamund’s Bower. Here her children were born. I have a notion. There is magic in the air tonight. Something says to me “Stay”. Perhaps here our son would be conceived. Henry, there is some thing which tells me we must stay. It was so strange when that crazy priest stood there. I kept thinking of him. Henry, you were so good to him. You saved him. The saints will reward you … tonight here …’

  ‘What odd fancies you have. But there is a magic in the air tonight.’

  ‘Here that other Henry made love with his mistress. Why should not this Henry make love here with his wife?’

  Henry laughed. ‘Delightful notion,’ he said.

  She sat upon Rosamund’s bed and held out her hands to him.

  He took them, kissed them fervently.

  He said: ‘There is nothing in the world I would not give you.’ She was happy; she was content; she was glad he had been lenient to the mad priest.

  It was past midnight when they wandered back into the palace.

  In their bedchamber was noise and confusion. A babble of voices, a man bound by robes trussed in a corner.

  In the light of the torches the King looked round the room and saw a knife embedded in the straw of the bed he would have shared with Eleanor.

  A guard said: ‘We caught him as he was making away, my lord. And when we came here we saw what he had done. God’s mercy was with you tonight, my lord, for had you been in your bed the madman’s knife would have been buried in your heart.’

  The priest began to shout, ‘I am the true King. You stole my crown.’

  Henry looked at the pale face of Eleanor, the terror in her eyes and he thought of her lying in that bed, covered in blood, dead … beside him. Two of them victims of the madman’s knife.

  ‘This is a dangerous madman,’ he said.

  There was a sigh of relief. It was clear that the guards had feared he might have wished to save Ribbaud’s life yet again.

  ‘Take him to the dungeons,’ said the King. ‘We will decide what to do with him tomorrow.’

  When they had gone he turned to Eleanor and took her into his arms.

  ‘He might have harmed you,’ he said; and a terrible anger took possession of him.

  He had been a fool and seen to be a fool. He had once more shown himself to the world as a weak man. His act of mercy in the great hall might have cost both him and his Queen their lives. It would be whispered of … remembered.

  Eleanor was shivering.

  ‘Have no fear, my love. He shall pay for this. No more mercy for the mad priest.’

  Nor was there. The next day the man was tied to four wild horses and when they rode off in different directions he was torn to pieces.

  Chapter VI
/>   BIRTH OF EDWARD

  The Queen believed that that night there had been a miracle. In Rosamund’s Bower there had come to her the desire to stay there, and so they had while a madman tried to kill them and would certainly have done so if they had been asleep in their own bed. And when she discovered that she was indeed pregnant, she was certain of the miracle.

  This was happiness indeed. There was only one irritation and that was the rejection of her Uncle William and the inability of Henry to force his acceptance at Winchester. Moreover Uncle William was not in very good health which was a great concern to her.

  But the fact that she was to have a child superseded all minor irritations. Henry was beside himself with delight. He agreed with her that there had been a miracle that night and although they could not be absolutely sure that their child had been conceived in Rosamund’s Bower, that mattered little now. It had actually happened.

  Henry cosseted her more than ever. He regarded her with a kind of wonder; he admitted that he had feared they might never have a child but so much did he love her that even that had not made him regret the marriage.

  She became very friendly with her sister-in-law Eleanor de Montfort. Eleanor was herself the proud mother of a boy – Henry – and was therefore knowledgeable about pregnancies, having just emerged from one.

  The Princess was happy in the Queen’s company because she was missing her husband who had gone to Rome to get a dispensation regarding their marriage.

  The two found great pleasure in sitting together stitching and embroidering – and it was their joy to make garments for their children. The Queen dismissed her attendants and set them to work in another chamber so that she and the Princess could talk more intimately.

  They had a great deal in common – two contented wives. The Queen thought it strange that the Princess had found happiness in marrying beneath her when she, the Queen, had found hers in the grandeur of her marriage. She could never have been content, as the Princess was, with the lowering of her status.

  Yet there were compensations she realised. Simon de Montfort was a strong man; a forceful and ambitious man. Could it be that he had married the Princess because she was the King’s sister?

  Henry was a weak man; she knew that. But he made up for his weakness in the strength of his passion for her.

  The Princess talked as they stitched; Simon would be home soon, she believed. It was her fault that he had had to go away. ‘I should never have made that foolish vow,’ she added.

  Then she told the Queen how when she had been very young she thought she would like to go into a convent and Edmund the saintly Archbishop of Canterbury had made her take a vow to embrace the vestal life.

  ‘And you made this vow?’ asked the Queen.

  ‘Well, I did not really take it seriously. I was staying with poor Isabella – Richard’s wife – at the time; and I knew how unhappy she was and I thought: So that is married life. I want none of it. And with Edmund almost forcing me, I suppose I did agree.’

  ‘And then you married Simon.’

  ‘Yes, I married Simon. I was determined to. For me no one else would do … nor any other life. And you see how right I was. I have my little angel Henry now … and soon Simon will be back with his dispensation and that will silence old Edmund.’

  ‘I doubt anything would silence him. What a trial saints can be.’

  The Princess agreed. ‘Oh how fortunate we are in our marriages,’ she cried. ‘I often wonder if you realise it. Henry adores you. In his eyes you are the perfect Queen. He has changed since you came.’

  The Queen nodded in agreement.

  ‘You have made him so happy,’ went on Eleanor the Princess. ‘When I think of Richard’s marriage … Well, that was why I decided I would never marry. Of course I had been married to William Marshal … if you could call that a marriage. I was a child and only sixteen when he died. Perhaps I should have accepted my life if he had lived, but now that I have met Simon I realise what I would have missed.’

  So they stitched and talked and the Queen told the Princess of Richard of Cornwall’s arrival in Provence and how the poem she had written had brought her to Henry’s notice; and the Princess told of poor sad Isabella who had borne six children to her first husband and had given Richard only one.

  ‘Of course he dotes on young Henry. A fine boy he is too. I think Richard loves him more than anything else in the world. He is fond of women though and has a host of mistresses, I hear. Isabella knows it. It breaks her heart. She always said she was too old for him and she was right.’

  So they talked of poor Isabella at length because talking of her brought home to them more clearly their own happy state.

  And while they stitched they each looked into the future. The Princess for the return of her husband with the dispensation from the Pope because of the vow she had carelessly made, and the Queen for the birth of her child.

  Simon returned with the dispensation and the Princess was happy. The Queen had to wait a little longer for her contentment. On a hot June day her child was born in the Palace of Westminster.

  There was great rejoicing throughout the land, for the child was a healthy boy.

  Henry could not tear himself away from the nursery. The child must be brought to him, examined, and embraced. He was overcome with anxiety lest it might not have the best of attention. Nothing must be spared in the rearing of this important boy.

  The Queen pouted and declared he had transferred his affections from her to their son. Seriously he assured her that this was not so at which she laughed and said she shared his adoration for that wonderful little creature who was so entirely theirs and could quite understand his feelings.

  What should they call him?

  There was one name above all others which the King preferred. His greatest hero had been Edward the Confessor – that King who had been more of a saint than a King. Henry had always been a deeply religious man; some of his courtiers had likened him to the Confessor with the comment that it was all very well to be a saint when there was not a kingdom to be governed but that it was kings who made the best leaders, not saints.

  ‘So,’ said the Queen, ‘you would have the child named Edward.’

  ‘That is my wish,’ replied the King.

  So the little Prince was christened Edward, and at his baptism Simon de Montfort, newly returned from Rome, stood as godfather and acted as High Steward.

  London went wild with joy, for the citizens had begun to fear that the Queen was barren. Now they had an heir – a boy – and as was sometimes the case, when a Queen started bearing children she often continued.

  Many presents were sent to the King for the child, but Henry spoilt the occasion by sending back those which he did not consider grand enough and demanding better of the donors, so that they ceased to be free gifts and were an imposition.

  The people grumbled. ‘God gave us this infant,’ they said, ‘and the King would sell him to us.’

  But in spite of that England rejoiced in its little Prince.

  It could hardly be expected that Richard of Cornwall was as delighted with the birth of the baby as some. He, like others, had begun to believe that the Queen was barren in which case he was next in succession to the throne. Now he had been displaced and if the Queen had more children the farther away would be his hopes of the crown.

  He grew more disgruntled with his own marriage, while it was impossible not to admit that this was his own fault. Then he saw his sister and Simon de Montfort revelling in their mésalliance and felt that he was the only one who seemed to be called on to answer for his follies.

  Thus the marriage of Simon and Eleanor had angered him considerably. Henry, he told himself and others, had no right to give his consent to it. Henry was a fool – always so firm in the wrong cause; so weak when he should be strong. One would have thought he would be grateful to his brother, but for whom he would never have had his Queen.

  If he had a chance to discountenance Henry he would seize
it. He liked to prove him wrong and to show how much more wisely he would have acted if he had been in his brother’s place.

  Richard had always had an ear and an eye alert for what was happening on the Continent and he had been wondering for some time how it was that Simon de Montfort had been able to acquire the dispensation with such speed.

  He discovered how it had happened. Those about the Pope were not averse to a little bribery and Simon had bought his way to favour. But Simon was not a rich man, so how had he been able to manage this? The answer soon became clear. He owed debts on the Continent and he had given as his sponsor the name of the King of England.

  The month of August had set in hot and sultry. The churching of the Queen was to take place at Westminster on the tenth day of the month and Simon and his wife came riding into London from Kenilworth on the ninth.

  Richard called a few days earlier to see the King and after he had paid his respects to the Queen and admired the baby he found himself alone with Henry.

  ‘De Montfort stands in high favour with you, brother,’ he said.

  ‘Is he not now our brother?’ replied the King.

  ‘Alas, due to this mésalliance.’

  ‘Perhaps not so. Our sister is happy. And Simon now has the earldom of Leicester.’

  ‘And the confidence of his King … which some might say he does not deserve.’

  ‘Why say you so?’

  ‘I have learned how he so speedily acquired his dispensation. He offered bribes.’

  ‘Well, ’tis done often enough.’

  ‘By those who have the means mayhap. Simon does it in your name.’

  ‘What say you?’ cried the King.

  ‘Oh, he is your brother-in-law now. He uses your name. He is royal. Has he not been accepted into our family? His son could be an heir to the throne. He is proud of this.’

  ‘Heir to the throne! How could that be?’

  ‘A few deaths … That is all.’

  ‘That’s nonsense. But what is this about using my name?’