A WEEK LATER, SURROUNDED by a dense fog, Maud stood at the ship’s rail eagerly awaiting her first glimpse of land. As the ship bobbed in the swells, she suddenly pitched forward, clutching the rail for support. From behind her a hand reached out to grasp her shoulder.
“Careful,” said Stephen’s voice in her ear, his hand steadying her.
A green wave reared up to shower her with spray and she gave a little shriek, then wiped the fine mist from her face. “Oh, thank you.”
“I was hoping to find you alone for a moment,” Stephen said. “Do I imagine it or have you been avoiding me since our last discourse on the bridge?”
“My time has really not been my own,” Maud said, which was certainly true, as her father and Robert had claimed almost all her attention on the leisurely ride to the coast.
But in truth she had also tried to avoid being alone with her cousin, uncomfortable at her immediate response to his physical presence, as well as distrustful of him since Aldyth’s reminder that he was married. She had no intention of being an easy conquest for this man who, Aldyth had warned her, need only crook his little finger for a woman to do his bidding.
“I understand,” Stephen replied. “As long as I have done nothing to offend you.”
Maud realized that he had not removed his hand from her shoulder and that she had no wish for him to do so.
“On the contrary, you have been most kind and thoughtful.” She looked up to see Stephen regarding her with an expression of amusement. So he knew perfectly well that she had been avoiding him.
“It doesn’t matter now,” he said. “We’re together and soon you’ll see your first sight of England in fourteen years. The fog should break any moment.”
The ship rode the swells like an unbridled colt and Maud was rocked back on her heels. When Stephen caught her in his arms she resisted for a moment, glancing quickly around to see if anyone observed them. But the dawn mist had wrapped them in a soft gray cocoon, and they were isolated from prying eyes. Maud could hear the crew running up and down the deck, their disembodied voices calling to one another, the flap of the ship’s sails being furled, and the boom creaking. But she could see nothing.
A brisk wind sprang up. The hood of Maud’s brown cloak flew back from her head and russet strands of hair lashed at her cheeks and forehead. Stephen tightened his arms around her and she let herself relax against him. His face touched the side of her head, and Maud could feel his breath warm and quick against her temple. A sweet surge of excitement swept through her body; her eyes dropped to his hands clasped around her waist. They were large, with strong, square fingers, covered with a fine brush of honey-colored hair. She had a sudden shocking impulse to move them up to her breasts, then flushed to the roots of her hair, stunned that she should even think of such a thing, for no one had ever touched her there before. Mortified, she pushed away his hands and leaned against the rail. She would rather be buffeted by the turmoil of wind and wave than by the turmoil of his touch.
“Look,” he whispered.
As the wind blew away patches of mist, Maud caught a sudden glimpse of towering white cliffs surmounted by a manned fortress. Within moments she and Stephen were surrounded by members of her party, pointing their fingers and exclaiming at their first sight of England. Aldyth wept unashamedly to see her native land once more.
Maud wished her German ladies could have made the voyage with her, for she had told them so much about her homeland, but the King had insisted they were unsuitable and packed them off to Germany. In England she would be provided with Norman ladies, he assured her, as befitted her new station in life. Intrigued, she had asked her father what that might be and received only an enigmatic smile in return.
The vessel surged forward on an incoming tide and Dover harbor came into view.
“Welcome home, Cousin,” Stephen said with a smile.
As her heart leapt in response, Maud realized she was no longer the despondent woman who had resisted coming to England only six weeks ago. Now, despite her uncertainty about the future, she felt poised on the threshold of a new adventure.
After resting in Dover for twenty-four hours, the King’s entourage left for Windsor the following morning. Flanked by Stephen on one side and Robert on the other, Maud felt expectant as a child. The royal procession made its way down Watling Street, the old Roman road that ran all the way through Canterbury and London as far north as Chester. The road wound through narrow cobbled streets lined with wooden houses, past fortified walls and well-tended yellow fields where villeins gathered in the harvest. In the distance she could see the green curve of wooden downs.
Everywhere Maud looked there was evidence of peace and prosperity. From time to time they passed other travelers: a group of black-robed clerics on foot making a pilgrimage to Canterbury, a shepherd driving a flock of sheep, a line of carts headed in the direction of the coast carrying a load of wool for export to Flanders. Then a party of women riding alone to market caught her attention. Their pannier baskets were piled high with squawking trussed chickens, bunches of wine-colored beets, balls of pale green lettuce, and stalks of green and white scallions.
The procession came to a halt while the King greeted the women, questioned them in detail about their produce, tested the chickens for plumpness and, with a pinch on the rump of the prettiest girl, sent them giggling on their way.
“These women ride unguarded?” Maud asked in surprise.
“The roads are safe,” Robert replied, “since our father enforces the peace with harsh laws. Robbery and violence are punishable by mutilation and blinding. Wait,” he cautioned at the look of revulsion on Maud’s face. “Do not be so quick to judge. It’s the King’s boast that in his land a maid carrying a bag of gold can walk the whole day through in perfect safety. How else would that be possible?”
Maud could not think of a suitable rejoinder, though she felt there must be a less cruel way to maintain law and order. In silence she watched Stephen point out castles and great estates held by the King’s barons, acres of fertile meadows, well-stocked pastures, and orchards heavy with fruit. Every so often the King would stop and greet a landowner overseeing the work in his fields.
“My father is truly interested in this man’s fief?” Maud asked Stephen, watching a burly Norman answering her father’s questions.
The King listened attentively, nodded his head, then summoned one of his clerks to note down the man’s words on his wax tablet.
“Of course,” Stephen replied. “I’ll wager my uncle can tell you how many pigs this man has running loose in his fields, if his herd of goats increased since last year, and whether his field of barley failed or prospered.”
“I’ve never seen a ruler behave thus,” Maud said, amazed. “The Empire was rarely at peace. The Emperor was either warring with the Pope or putting down one insurrection after another. He never had the time to talk to his subjects in this manner.”
“Our father dearly loves order and would rather keep the peace than make war,” Robert told her. “That’s why his kingdom prospers.”
This was a revelation to Maud. She had always, even as a child, considered her father a tyrant, but what she was witnessing this morning hardly fit that image. Apparently there was another side to him. Whatever personal animosity she felt, it was evident she must respect him as a king.
The remainder of the day passed all too swiftly.
Dusk was approaching, the blue sky streaked with rose and purple shadows.
“Our journey’s end,” Stephen said. “Unfortunately.”
He gave her a lingering look that sent a shiver through Maud’s entire body. Reluctantly, she forced her eyes away.
A Norman castle, set high on the west bank of the Thames, rose slowly out of the river mist. Windsor. Maud leaned forward in the saddle.
“Does it look familiar?” Robert asked.
Her heart full of memories, Maud nodded. The outer walls were just ahead now and the procession slowed. There was a crowd of well-wishers outside come to greet the King. For one unguarded moment Maud found herself looking for her mother. Suddenly, without a word, Stephen spurred his horse forward and rode on ahead. A woman in a white tunic and blue mantle, a coronet of flaxen braids crowning her head, appeared out of the crowd. She smiled and waved. Maud caught her breath. Sweet Marie, it was not possible—a scream was torn from her throat, she dropped the reins, and quickly covered her mouth with her hands.
“What in God’s name—” Alarmed, Robert’s hand gripped the sword swinging by his side. His eyes quickly scanned the crowd.
Maud pointed a trembling finger at the woman. “My mother,” she whispered, her face ashen. “It’s my mother!”
“Your mother?” Robert stared at her as if she had gone mad. He looked again at the crowd, then laughed in relief. “By the Mass, now I understand. We never thought to tell you how much your Cousin Matilda resembles her aunt, the late queen. That’s the Countess of Boulogne and Mortain, Stephen’s wife.”
The shock of that initial impact stayed with Maud as she made her entry into the courtyard of the castle, teeming with grooms, stewards, and servitors, and through the rushed ablutions of preparing for the evening meal. It was not until she was seated at the high table in the great hall that she had a chance to draw breath and observe Matilda at close quarters. All she knew about Stephen’s wife was that she was the only child of her mother’s older sister, and heiress to the Count of Boulogne.
Still clad in Our Lady’s colors of blue and white, Matilda had undone her hair which now fell in two silver-gilt braids to her waist. Her face was naturally grave, Maud noted, like her own mother’s had been, and although she was only two years older than herself, its fragile prettiness had already begun to fade. She had a small rosebud mouth and soft blue eyes which frequently cast adoring glances at her husband. Closer to view, her resemblance to the late queen, thank heaven, was less startling.
Having now recovered from her first reaction, Maud felt an overwhelming relief. Stephen’s wife was no beauty and therefore no real threat to her. The treacherous thought shocked her and immediately she felt consumed by guilt. Throughout the evening meal Matilda, obviously delighted to meet her cousin, chatted away like a gentle little wren. Maud barely heard a word as she was desperately trying to avoid Stephen’s gaze. The harder she tried the more compelling was the need to look at him. Every time their eyes did meet the air between them crackled like summer lightning, making her blood race even as it increased her sense of guilt. It seemed impossible that Matilda would not notice, but she remained oblivious, which somehow made matters even worse.
Mercifully, the meal was soon over and Maud was able to escape to her own quarters in the castle.
The next morning Aldyth told her Stephen and his wife had gone.
“Gone?” For a moment she could not take it in. “Gone where?”
“To London, where they live,” said Aldyth. “Together, if I may remind you. With their children.” She raised her brows and gave Maud a pointed what-did-I-tell-you smile.
Maud hoped her disappointment did not show. After all, she had no right to expect her cousin to remain at Windsor. Where Stephen was concerned she had no rights at all, she thought in despair, remembering how Matilda had looked at her husband.
“Why should that be of any concern to me?” she asked, determined to put him out of her mind. The sooner she stopped thinking about a man she could never have, the better off she would be.
“Why indeed. I have eyes in my head, if others do not,” Aldyth continued. “Far too intimate, you and the Count of Mortain, and—”
Maud tried to close out the accusing voice as she looked around her chamber, having been too exhausted to do so last night. With a pang she realized she was in her mother’s old solar, which the new queen had thoughtfully vacated in honor of her visit. Yes, there were the prie-dieu, the gold and scarlet hangings, worn and threadbare now, but achingly familiar. Even the blue coverlet was the same.
“What a turn the Countess Matilda gave me,” Aldyth was saying now. “Not only does she look like your mother, but has a similar nature as well, I’m told. A very saint they say, and devoted to her husband, who is far from being a saint, let me tell you. What I’ve heard about that one!”
“I’m not interested in servants’ gossip,” Maud retorted. “We only arrived last night yet already you seem to know all the scandal.”
“Naturally, I make it my business to know what goes on. What says the old saw? ‘Forewarned is forearmed.’”
Maud made a face. “Well, you can keep your hints and warnings to yourself.”
Aldyth, hands on hips, fixed Maud with a stern eye. “Hints and warnings is it? What I’m trying to tell you, plain as plain, is that it would be the height of wickedness to cause the Countess of Boulogne, your own cousin, mind, a moment’s unease.”
Maud colored as she pulled on her clothes. “Naught has occurred that would cause her a moment’s unease.” She forced a laugh. “Really, you make too much of—of nothing.”
“I’m relieved to hear it.” But Aldyth did not sound convinced.
Later, when Maud went down to the great hall, she found that Brian and Robert had also left at daybreak to return to their own lands. She was alone with her father, his queen, and the castle mesnie. She hadn’t yet met her new stepmother, a woman some months younger than herself, and was extremely curious to see what she was like.
In the early afternoon, Maud went riding with several grooms, reacquainting herself with the castle grounds and all her old familiar haunts. For the first time in some years she thought of her twin brother, William, remembering how hard she had tried to win his affection, receiving only hatred and envy in return. Though she did not miss him, still it was strange to be at Windsor without him, and she was reminded of the last time she had seen him, the day she left for Germany. Guiltily, Maud recalled how she had knocked her brother to the ground, provoking her father’s comment that she should have been the boy, and how he had then given her the crown to hold. What an odd sequence to remember, she thought, shivering, before retreating from the uncomfortable memory.
As she continued to explore the grounds Maud wished Stephen were with her. Yet at the same time she was relieved that he was gone. Without the impact of his physical presence, her cousin seemed much less of a threat to her peace of mind.
When Maud returned to the castle late in the afternoon, a page was waiting on the steps with a message that the King wished to see her. Aldyth and her new attendants, four Norman noblewomen, helped Maud change clothes, replacing her old riding garb for a gown and tunic of dove gray, set off by an ivory-colored headdress. The page led her down the passage and left her at the open door of a large chamber.
“Come in, come in,” boomed her father, seated in a wooden armchair, his booted feet stretched out in front of a charcoal brazier.
Inside, the chamber was hung with a huge tapestry in red and blue colors depicting Christ in Majesty surrounded by angels. In the center of the room stood a loom. Two women beat down scarlet wool to a tight warp, while another carded it. Her new stepmother sat on a tapestry-covered bench before the loom; when Maud entered she rose to greet her.
At this, her first sight of Queen Adelicia, Maud was struck dumb, trying to remember what the Emperor had told her about her stepmother: The daughter of the Duke of Louvain, she had wanted to become a nun when King Henry married her four years ago. The Emperor claimed she had the reputation of being the most beautiful woman in Europe. The trouvères vied with each other to sing her praises, declaring that “no fairer maid than she was ever seen on middle earth.” They dubbed her Alix La Belle and the name had stuck.
The most significant thing about her father’s second wife, of course, was the fact that she had failed to produce an heir. As providing a son was the only reason King Henry had married her, what kind of life must the poor woman lead, Maud wondered, her heart going out in sympathy to the hapless woman who was, easily, the loveliest creature she had ever seen—and the most unhappy looking.
Set in the perfect ivory oval of her face, the Queen’s liquid brown eyes, haunting as a doe’s, looked as if they would overflow with tears at any moment. Her mouth, the color of a crushed rose, trembled like a child’s. She had removed her white headdress and waves of thick hair, the color of yellow buttercups in spring, rippled down her back. She was dressed in a pure white gown and tunic confined at the waist by a girdle of wrought gold. Her only ornament was a jeweled ring and a tiny gold cross descending from a gold chain around her delicate neck. No joi d’amour, Maud thought, could do justice to such fragile loveliness. She brought to mind the fragrance of spring flowers, the serenity of a cloudless May sky.
“I wish to thank you, Madam, for letting me stay in your solar,” Maud said.
“Not at all, my dear,” the Queen said in a soft, slight lisp. “Please call me Alix. You’re in a strange land—despite it once having been your home. I felt the solar would be familiar to you, reminding you of your sainted mother—”
“Yes, well, sit down, Daughter,” the King interjected, giving his wife an impatient glance. He indicated a cushioned stool.
Alix seemed to shrink into herself. With a fearful look at the King, she resumed her seat at the bench and, picking up a basket of scarlet and blue wools, began to sort through them with trembling white fingers.
She is terrified of him, Maud realized, wanting to rush to the Queen’s defense but not quite sure how to do so. Why had her father married this woman? Maud wondered. Alix’s passive manner and tranquil air definitely brought to mind the cloister rather than the throne. Strange that the King, a lusty, powerful man, should have married two women destined for the convent, and more suited to such a life. A strained silence fell over the chamber. The King was regarding her with a look of speculation in his eyes, causing Maud to shift uneasily on the stool.
“I have something to tell you both,” he said abruptly. “At my Christmas court, three months hence, I shall have a very special announcement to make. All nobles in England and Normandy will be ordered to attend. Even the King of Scotland has been invited.” With a smile of satisfaction, his eyes lingered on Maud. “You two are the first to know.”
He waited a moment, as if expecting her to ask a question, but she only gave him a cool stare, although she knew instantly that the announcement concerned her. Despite her intense curiosity Maud felt it beneath her dignity to beg for information. She knew she was behaving childishly but every encounter with her father set her teeth on edge, compelling her to behave with an insolent defiance that she made little effort to conceal. The fact that this seemed only to amuse him irritated her the more.
The Vespers bell rang. With a yawn, King Henry rose to his feet. “Let us attend the service.”
He left the chamber, followed by the two women. At the door, Maud paused to let Alix precede her. The Queen hesitated for a moment.
“As a former empress you should walk before me,” she murmured. “I’m sure your father would wish it.”
“I doubt the King cares one way or the other as long as we both dance to his tune,” Maud muttered with a dark look at her father’s retreating back.
With a little gasp, Alix’s eyes widened in shock. Maud seized her soft white hand. “Never mind. We’ll walk together as equals, side by side, contra mundem.”
Alix gave her a frightened smile but allowed herself to be led along the passage, down the winding staircase to the chapel. I shall have to teach this gentle creature some spirit, Maud decided, lifting her head proudly as she avoided the royal pew and sat by herself. Whatever her father had in store for her, she thought grimly, she would not go to it like a sheep to slaughter but like a knight to battle.