The Winter Crown (58 page)

Alienor read the latest letter in her chamber by the open window. The October air was mild and balmy, giving the lie to the calamitous news at which she was staring. The rebel Earls of Leicester and Norfolk had fought a battle and suffered a major defeat at Fornham Saint Genevieve, near Saint Edmund’s shrine. The Earl of Leicester had been seized together with his wife, who had been with him at the battle and captured wearing a hauberk. She had cast her gold rings into the swollen River Witham rather than let her captors loot them from her fingers.

Alienor’s heart sank. Ever since the failure of the talks at Gisors, she had been considering quitting Poitiers to join her sons in France. They had urged her to do so because Henry was at Chinon and poised to strike down into Aquitaine with his Brabançons. She could not depend on the loyalty of her own barons. Some would stand firm, but others would seize the opportunity to tear free of their feudal oath and increase their territories at her expense.

Alienor bit her lip. She could go to Henry and try to put out the fires on the burning bridges between them, but the notion of facing him as a supplicant filled her with revulsion. She could ride to Paris and try to persuade her sons to make peace with their father, but if they would not conciliate at Gisors, she doubted she would succeed. Or she could ride to Paris, make an alliance with Louis and fight Henry to the bitter end. Three choices, all with their own poisonous barbs. Where was peace? Where were grace and tranquillity? Whatever decision she made, she was damned.

Undecided, but knowing she could not remain in Poitiers, she summoned her household and gave the order to pack the baggage for a journey north.

‘Where are we bound, madam?’ asked Saldebreuil de Sanzay. His hair, once as black as polished jet, was badger-streaked, and his lively dark eyes were surrounded by seams of hard experience.

Alienor frowned. ‘I have not decided yet; I will know when I come to the crossroads.’ But she wondered if she would. Since none of her options were palatable, she might just stay at the intersection, suspended between choices.

Saldebreuil raised his brows. ‘And you are taking a full baggage train?’

‘I shall go as I choose and it will not be as a pauper,’ she said regally.

‘Indeed not, madam. Even clad in naught but the clothes you stand in, you would never be that,’ he replied with a gallant bow. ‘But I should know how to prepare.’

She tapped her forefinger against her lips while she considered. It was impractical to take everything. She would pack the portable items she could not bear to leave for Henry’s mercenaries should he seize Poitiers. Her father’s chair, a wall hanging stitched by her mother, the contents of the treasury, the painted glass in the ladies’ chamber at the top of the Maubergeonne Tower. She would send the items to Fontevraud for safekeeping and Henry would not touch them there.

He had already stripped her of so many precious things and trampled them underfoot. Her standing as Duchess of Aquitaine, her place as a rightful consort and powerful queen. All given to men raised from the dust and in some cases the gutter. She knew he had it in him to be rid of her, and as she pondered Saldebreuil’s question, she realised that in truth she had no choice but to side with her sons.

‘The full baggage to Fontevraud,’ she said. ‘For which you will need carts. I shall ride with sumpter horses only.’

Alienor walked around the environs of the palace, bidding farewell to the fabric of her life. As a girl of thirteen she had left Poitiers for Paris, but on that day she had been the future Queen of France and royal consort, not a refugee in search of succour and sanctuary. Her heart was dull with pain; she had travelled so far for so very little.

Here was the Maubergeonne Tower where her grandmother had dwelt as her grandsire’s mistress. The room was bare, the window glass carefully removed with its lead tracery wrapped in cloth and packed in one of the panniers. The wind whistled through gaps in the apertures, now covered by waxed linen. If she listened hard enough she could hear the echo of voices and laughter. At the side of her vision, she could see her grandmother reclining on her bed draped in a loose scarlet robe, her lips stained by the juice of the sweet dark cherries she was eating as she listened to the beguilement of troubadours. Alienor was aware of her childhood self, playing hide and seek with Petronella, discovering the nooks and crannies, the special, secret places of the Maubergeonne. And years later Petronella sneaking away from the hall to be with her French lover in this very chamber. The echoes of anger and betrayal, lust and bloodshed were powerful here; this was more a place of shadows than light. Alienor shivered on the threshold as she turned for one last look and wondered if she would ever return.

Her escort waited in the courtyard, the palfreys and sumpters harnessed and ready, panniers packed and saddles uncovered. Alienor stroked the nose of her dappled mare, taking comfort from the palfrey’s hay-scented breath and soft muzzle. With a brisk nod she accepted Saldebreuil’s boost into the saddle. Once settled, her crimson gown arranged, she drew on a pale-leather hawking glove and had her falconer hand Blaunchet to her. The gyrfalcon flapped twice and then settled on her wrist, talons gripping the glove. Inspired by the bird’s fierce look and her firm weight, Alienor raised her head and looked towards the gate with regal pride. She nodded the command and Saldebreuil saluted, swung into his saddle and led the troop away from the palace, banners rippling against a deep blue sky sown with flying leaves of autumn gold. Alienor departed Poitiers in full and magnificent array, a triumphal parade, never a retreat.

That first day, they covered twenty miles to Châtelleraut where they spent the night. Alienor woke at dawn to the sound of the wind hurling rain against the shutters. Reminded of autumn days in England, she rose and dressed for the next leg of the journey. The weather suited the moment. Yesterday had been one of defiance as she left Poitiers, the proud Duchess of Aquitaine with her banners flying and her white gyrfalcon on her wrist. This morning that fire had died and she was faced with the cooling embers and ashes of reality.

Going to the hawk perch near the window, she set Blaunchet on her wrist and fed her small gobbets of rabbit meat. Stroking the falcon’s gleaming breast feathers, looking through the distorted window glass at the driving rain, she wished she could soar high and free.

‘Madam, I doubt we shall make thirty miles today unless the downpour eases,’ Saldebreuil said gloomily as they broke their fast on hot wheat frumenty mixed with dried fruit and spices.

‘We shall just have to do our best and push on from that,’ Alienor replied. ‘We endured much worse when travelling to Jerusalem, you and I.’

Saldebreuil gave her a wry look. ‘We were twenty-five years younger then.’

‘Well then, we have experience under our belts, and the conditions are better because we know the terrain. We are not yet in our dotage.’ She eyed him with amused irritation. Her constable hated the rain as much as a cat and it always put him out of humour.

‘Madam, you will never be in your dotage, but I am not so sure about myself,’ Saldebreuil answered. ‘But I shall do my best to keep up.’

A drenched messenger arrived with the news that scouts from Henry’s army had been sighted reconnoitring to the north and that Brabançon raiding parties from Chinon had fired at least two villages.

‘Then we must be swiftly away and on the alert,’ she said. After another glance at the foul weather, she discarded yesterday’s riding gown for male attire of thick hose and stout boots under a full cloak and a hood of waxed leather. Hardly the dress of a queen, but they needed to make good progress, rain or no rain.

In the courtyard, Alienor mounted her mare and prepared to ride. Blaunchet was confined to a draped cage on one of the packhorses. Today the mood was one of brisk business, devoid of festivity.

The party travelled as swiftly as the muddy roads allowed, scouts trotting ahead to check the route. The wind dropped and the rain eased to a steady drizzle. Saldebreuil hunched over his saddle, head down like a moulting owl. Alienor retreated into herself and continued to ponder what she was going to do. If her sons did defeat their father, what would happen to him? They could hardly imprison Henry; to do that to an anointed king, their own father, was untenable. Send him to Outremer? Henry’s own grandsire had been of Henry’s years when he began a new life as King of Jerusalem. But she could not see Henry accepting that as an alternative, even if he had sworn to go there. That was for show, not reality. If they made a peace treaty, whatever concessions were hammered out would not hold, because Henry never kept his word – or only for as long as he needed to, and he would immediately seek to grab the upper hand again. He would not stop until he was dead, and that in turn made her feel dead.

The autumn afternoon darkened and the rain continued to fall, eventually penetrating cloaks and working its way through tunics and linens to set a damp chill in the flesh until Alienor was shivering.

Through the rainy gloom she saw sudden movement ahead on the road: the glitter of ring mail and a flash of colour on a shield. Saldebreuil shouted a warning and her men scrabbled for their weapons. Suddenly Alienor found it difficult to breathe. She turned her mare to spur her back the way they had come, but her bridle was caught by her knight Guillaume Maingot.

‘I think it best if you stay, madam,’ he said, the rain dripping off the nasal bar of his helm. ‘You could become lost in the woods or your horse might throw you.’

His eyes were expressionless and steely and she felt a cold blade of shock slice down her spine. ‘You traitor!’ she spat. She tried to wrench her mare away and the horse reared, forelegs flailing. Maingot held on hard as the knights who had been blocking the road advanced and encircled. Another of her coterie, Porteclie de Mauzé, closed in on her other side, ensuring she was trapped.

Ambushed, outnumbered, unable to flee, Alienor’s troop had no choice but to surrender. Maingot led Alienor’s mare forward to the commander of the knights who had ambushed them. Dull grey light shone on helms and rivet mail. Alienor swallowed bile. A further handful of her trusted household guard had joined the other troop, and she realised how badly she had been duped and betrayed. They had just been waiting their moment.

‘Madam, I am Thierry de Loudon,’ her captor announced with a courtly but perfunctory bow. ‘I have come to escort you to shelter and safety forthwith by order of the King.’

However she responded, Alienor realised she would be like a cat spitting at a pack of dogs. They could tear her to pieces at their whim. ‘And where would that be?’ she demanded, retreating into regal hauteur.

‘We are taking you to Chinon, madam. The King awaits you there.’

She felt as if she had been pierced by a shard of frozen crystal. ‘What was it worth?’ she asked Guillaume Maingot scathingly. ‘What did he promise you to betray me? Lands? Power? How much did you sell your honour for, my lord? Thirty pieces of silver?’

He gave her a hard look in which there was neither guilt nor shame, but perhaps a glint of defiance. ‘It is not about honour, madam, it is about survival. What use am I to future generations if I squander myself like those men in your entourage who will be taken and tortured or thrown out of their patrimony? Better to be rewarded and put in a strong position. If others would rather die, then that is their choice.’

‘I hope you rot in hell for this,’ she hissed.

‘I must take that chance, but it may be that God intended me to bring you here and I am doing His will.’

Alienor pressed her lips together and looked straight ahead, saying nothing, because he might be right and she did not want to think along that path.

It was full dark when they rode into Chinon and still raining. Alienor was pulled down from her horse and taken within. She stood dripping, shaking with cold and suppressed emotion in the hall where she had been accustomed to give peremptory commands from the high dais. Her captors hemmed her around and she glared at them with contempt. Where did they think she was going to run? She knew they were going to imprison her but whether in the oubliette or the tower remained to be seen.

She had been in this situation before, as her former husband’s captive when she had desired to remain in Antioch with her uncle and to end the marriage. Louis’s henchmen had abducted her by force. Her treatment then led her to be terrified now, but she kept her head up and her spine rigid, showing her captors no sign of fear. Even so, she was weak with relief when they brought her to a chamber high up near the battlements.

The room was icy and bare of furnishings but, as she entered, servants arrived with a straw-stuffed mattress, a blanket, a piss bucket, a jug of wine and a small loaf. The darkness was illuminated by a shallow cresset lamp, only three of its dozen depressions lit with oil. There was neither a hearth nor a brazier in the room to provide heat and the smell of damp was pervasive.

‘Madam, you will rest here until the King is ready to see you.’

It was pointless to say they had no right to keep her here; no one was going to listen. ‘Then at least grant me water to wash,’ she said, ‘and dry clothes from my baggage. Or does the King desire me to be brought before him sick with the ague that will surely consume me if you leave me here like this?’

‘I shall see what can be done, madam,’ de Loudon said with distant courtesy and, with his companions, left the room, locking the door behind him in a deliberate jingle of keys. Alienor shivered and rubbed her arms, but that only pressed her damp garments against her flesh. Although no one had manhandled or insulted her, she had not seen a single glance of compassion or support among her captors, and their expressions, when not neutral, were filled with hostility. She was truly surrounded by her enemies.

She had spent so much time here with her children. This fortress had sheltered her as a home and been a place of refuge, but now these walls entombed her and were perhaps her last sight on earth. From home to prison cell to death chamber in one fell swoop.