Elizabeth Chadwick - The Summer Queen

Alienor and the Empress exchanged fearful glances. The Empress gave her grandson to his nurse and Alienor hastily dried her feet and donned a pair of soft shoes. Dear God, what if Henry had been taken ill again? What if he had been injured – or worse?

The messenger, wind-blown from his journey and splattered with mud, came forward and knelt to the women. ‘Mesdames,’ he said, addressing both of them, ‘I bring news from my lord the Archbishop of Canterbury.’ He swallowed and gathered himself. ‘King Stephen died of a bloody flux at Dover four nights since …’ He held out a packet bearing the seal of Theobald of Canterbury.

The Empress grabbed it from him and broke it open. The parchment shook in her hand as she read what was written. ‘I have waited so long for this,’ she said, covering her mouth. ‘So very long. I knew the day would come, but now …’ Her chin trembled. ‘Henry was little older than my grandson when I began the fight. All these years … all these long, long years.’ Silent tears spilled down her face.

Alienor was stunned. She had expected Stephen to live for several more years yet – enough time to deal with Toulouse and raise her children in the warmth and joy of the south. Instead, she must turn and face a different prospect. She did not know the English. She did not know their ways or their tongue beyond a few words. She had thought she would come to it when she was Matilda’s age, and that by then she would be ready. She swallowed hard and set her jaw. Within her the quickening child turned and somersaulted. The messenger was still kneeling and she bade him stand. ‘Does my lord know?’ she asked. ‘Have messages gone out to him?’

‘Yes, madam, at the same time I came to you.’

‘Go and find food and refreshment. Take some rest and be ready to ride again when you are summoned.’

‘Madam.’ He bowed and left the room.

The women gazed at each other in the still moments of irrevocable change. The tears were still wet on Matilda’s face, highlighting the broken veins and ravages of advancing years. ‘I have been pushing against this for so long,’ she said. ‘It is like having your shoulder to a wheel and then suddenly the cart draws free, and you stumble into thin air.’ She went to the window, throwing the shutters wide on the grey October afternoon. ‘My son is a king,’ she said. ‘At last, he will wear the crown that was stolen when he was two years old.’

Alienor struggled to absorb the immensity of the news. Once more she would be a queen. When she married Henry they had talked of empires on their wedding night, but his coming into his birthright meant that now it was real.

Alienor accompanied the Empress to give thanks to God in the cathedral at Rouen. Gleaming on the altar was the imperial crown that Matilda had brought from Germany almost thirty years ago – a heavy object of burnished gold set with a mosaic of gemstones of differing colours and dimensions, from emeralds no bigger than a baby’s fingernail to a sapphire the size of a small clenched fist.

‘I would have worn this at my own coronation,’ Matilda said, ‘but now it belongs to my son, and to William in due course.’

Such was the aura of weight and power emanating from the crown that Alienor shivered. It would take a strong man to wear this, and a stronger woman to stand at his side.

As the women left the cathedral, the bells began to peal and were answered by all the churches across Rouen until the sky rang with joyous clamour.

53

Barfleur, 7 December 1154

Standing in a fisherman’s shelter on the harbourside Alienor drew her fur-lined cloak closely around her body and stared out across a sea the colour of a dull hauberk. There was sleet in the wind and the waves were brisk, crested with white foam. Henry’s small fleet rocked at anchor amid a steady traffic of barrels and boxes, chests and sacks that were being borne from hand to hand up the gangplanks and stored on board the vessels. One ship longer than the others, an esnecca with sixty oars, flew a red and gold banner from her mast. Servants were putting the final touches to a pavilion to provide shelter on the crossing. She watched Henry bustling about on deck, checking this, poking into that, making sure that all was to his satisfaction.

They had been stranded in Barfleur for six weeks while the wind blew in the wrong direction and winter storms made the crossing more of a risk than leaving England to its own devices. Now the wind had changed and the seas, while still vigorous, had settled enough to embark. To catch the tide, they needed to be gone within the hour.

A flurry on the quayside announced the arrival of the Empress. She was dressed in full regal splendour as if for the highest court occasion, and the effect was both magnificent and incongruous against the wide seashore and battering weather. The wind flapped her veil and blew her jewel-encrusted gown against her spare, upright body.

‘Madam.’ Alienor curtseyed to her.

The Empress inclined her head. ‘So,’ she said. ‘It is finally time.’ Her jaw was rigid with tension.

Alienor nodded but said nothing. In the weeks that they had been waiting for the weather to turn, Matilda had made it clear she would never set foot in England again. It was a place too full of hard and bitter experience. ‘You have no memories of England,’ she had said to Alienor. ‘It is your turn to go and make them – and may they all be good ones.’ She had not smiled. ‘The people want a new young king and his fecund wife. They want summer out of winter. I am wise enough to know that, and to send the new green shoots into England with my blessing but without my presence.’

Henry returned from the ship, dusting his hands. The wind blustered through his coppery curls and his eyes were narrowed against the sleety wind, showing the creases where one day lines of age would develop. The energy emanating from him was as vigorous and exuberant as the sea. This was his moment and he was seizing it with every fibre of his being.

‘Are you ready?’ he asked Alienor. ‘The tide will not wait much longer.’

‘Yes,’ she said and raised her chin. ‘I am.’

Henry turned to the Empress. ‘My lady mother.’ Kneeling to her, he bowed his head.

She set her hand to his ruffled curls in a tender gesture of benediction, and stooped to kiss him on both cheeks before raising him up. ‘Go with my blessing,’ she said, ‘and return to me an anointed king.’

Alienor knelt too and received the same. ‘God be with you and the child in your womb,’ Matilda said, and her kiss was maternal and warm.

Henry and Alienor joined the esnecca , Henry going first and handing Alienor down into the ship from the gangplank. The fresh smell of the sea was powerful in her nose and the slap of the tide rocked the ship, making it difficult to balance. The horizon was a misty haze.

On the shore, standing at the Empress’s side, Hugh de Boves, Archbishop of Rouen, raised his hands to bless the ship and the endeavour of its passengers, and the last mooring rope was cast off. The rowers took up the oars, wind surged into the sail, and the gap between land and sea widened to a yard of choppy grey water, then ten yards, then a hundred.

Alienor let out a long, cloudy breath as the coast of Normandy grew smaller and the figure of the Empress became a small dark finger on the shore.

Henry drew her against him. ‘Are you well?’ He stroked the curve of her belly, now six months round.

‘Yes.’ She smiled to dispel the anxiety in his gaze. ‘I am not afraid of sea crossings.’

‘But something is troubling you?’

She drew back to look up at him. ‘When you set foot on England’s shore it will be as her rightful king. It is your destiny. You know the land, you know the people; you have lived there and fought for your birthright. England only belongs to me because it belongs to you and I have yet to make it mine in my heart.’ She looked round. They had cleared the harbour and there was nothing in sight now but rough grey water. ‘But I am going into the unknown, and I do it out of the faith I have in you, and for our children, both the born and the unborn.’