When Louis read Henry’s letter announcing his plan to attack Toulouse and requesting his approval, the King of France burst into tears. He sought the arms of his wife. ‘I’ve been duped,’ he wept. ‘My young brothers, the Bishop of Beauvais and Count Robert of Dreux both warned me that on tour in Normandy I was bitten by a fox. I’ve appointed that fox Seneschal of France.’
‘He has my baby!’ Constance cried.
He turned his gentle eyes on her. Beneath each one a groove ran down to the narrow black beard that followed the edge of his jaw ‘You and I will make another child, a big, healthy prince.’
She nodded meekly. ‘To conceive a boy I believe I must have spasms,’ she murmured.
‘Who told you that?’
‘The midwives and the wet nurse.’
‘They’re of low rank. Perhaps they need spasms. A royal baby comes to us from God. Not … spasms.’ His face had flushed. Eleanor demanded I give her spasms. ‘What do you require for these nervous movements to occur?’
‘I don’t know,’ she murmured. ‘I don’t know how a wife has spasms so her womb drinks up her husband’s seed to make a son.’
‘I’ll make inquiries with my physician.’ He sniffed back tears. Betrayed by Henry. Now this wife, so sweet and docile, demands I do disgusting things. I was warned that all women beneath their outer beauty are one in evil. He prayed, ‘May sweet young Constance not lose her modesty and become a harlot.’
He summoned his sister, his brother-in-law, Raymond Count of Toulouse, and their children to abandon their own Christmas Court and attend his in Paris. Raymond ordered his wife, ‘You’re to convince him with all your wiles that this time he must fight for Toulouse. He married us to keep Toulouse from the claws of the Harlot. Although Henry terrifies him, it should be within even your meagre capacity for persuasion that Toulouse must be kept from the House of Aquitaine.’
Constance, the King’s sister, was Raymond’s senior by about a decade. Both knew their marriage was illegally within the bounds of consanguinity and that Louis, aware of this himself, had decided to flout Church law for political expediency.
‘Lady, let me show you something.’ On a length of parchment he sketched a map. When the drawing was as complete as he could make it he demanded, ‘What do you see?’
Constance crossed herself. ‘All the rivers …’ she murmured.
‘Exactly! The mouth of every great river in France will be under the control of Aquitaine and Plantaganet. Do you know what that means?’
She shook her head.
‘Silver and gold flows into their treasuries. Rivers of silver and gold. And what does an ambitious prince do with such wealth?’
Constance crossed herself again. She did not want Raymond to hit her. Sometimes he hit her ‘because you look like a sheep’. On other occasions it was, ‘I’ve told you that robe is unbecoming’.
She replied quietly, ‘In England the great Merlin prophesied that there would succeed to the throne a lion of justice at whose roar the castles of Gaul and the standards of the islands would tremble, that in his days gold would be extorted from the lily and the nettle and silver would flow from the hooves of oxen.’
‘You babble nonsense from a pagan soothsayer?’
She backed away from his raised palm.
As she left the chamber she added, ‘Everything the Merlin prophesised is coming to pass. Henry has forced the King of Scots to give up his richest territories, while gold flows from the lily of France to his treasure houses.’
‘If he wins Toulouse he’ll seize the throne of France, you ugly sow!’ her husband shouted. ‘You won’t be the King’s sister anymore. You’ll be the vassal of Henry Plantagenet.’
Once the joy of the Nativity was over, the mood of Christmas in Paris descended into a formality that grew increasingly oppressive. Eleanor, bred to rule, had run festivities with the panache of a general directing a victorious army. Louis realised his second wife’s youth, her lack of confidence and dulled spirits made her an unsuitable hostess for a Christmas Court. He ordered his sister to share her bed, ‘to cheer up my little Queen’.
The first night they lay side by side Queen Constance told her sister-in-law, ‘I asked Louis why we must give Henry our baby. He said, “It’s politics. You’re too young to understand. Do you imagine your mother was happy to give you into my care before your first bleeding?” I objected, “But Louis, I was eleven years old when my parents sent me to you. Our Princess is still an infant.” He advised me to pray for acceptance in my heart. He said I was becoming unwomanly.’
‘Do you want to be Queen?’ Constance asked.
‘Not anymore.’
‘Would you prefer to see Eleanor of Aquitaine on the throne of France?’
‘The Harlot!’
‘She’s not a harlot. She was kind to me when I lived in England and missed my homeland. She wrote me cheerful and amusing letters.’
‘If her husband were King of France he’d have no need of my baby. Would he give her back?’
Constance sighed. ‘Henry is acquisitive of things of value and royal blood is of value equal to sacred relics. So, think again. Do you want to remain the Queen?’
The girl’s expression became glum. ‘We’re all imbued with love of praise,’ she mumbled. ‘I’d lose praise if I lost my crown. No baby. And no praise. My life would be empty.’
‘Indeed. You’d possibly be a widow. So, sweet sister, let us put our minds together. If Henry attacks Toulouse, Count Raymond can’t defeat him. Louis can’t defeat him either. Together they can’t defeat him. I speak no ill of my brother, but merely a truth known to all; Louis is not a warrior. He’s old-fashioned. He believes campaigns must be fought by cavalry who owe knight duty to the crown. Henry does not. His power is the barrels of silver pennies he spends on mercenaries. He boasts, “I can rely on them to fight because they fill their stomachs with my pennies. Knights! Half of them are layabouts with the courage of mice, waiting around for their fathers to die.”’
‘So Toulouse shall be conquered for Aquitaine?’
‘It appears so,’ the Countess conceded. ‘My husband may be killed. If Louis fights beside him, at the worst, so may he. He told me he feels he must defend your husband to guard his nephew.’
The Queen began to cry. ‘Louis has no confidence in me as a wife. He doesn’t believe I can give him an heir for France. He’s even told me he intends to adopt your son if our next child is a girl.’
‘That’s thoughtful of my brother,’ Constance muttered.
She lay back on the silk sheets, soft furs laid over them for warmth. A fire blazed at the far end of the chamber under the chimney Eleanor had installed when she returned from Outremer. Constance remembered nights she had lain on this bed with Eleanor in the days when Eustace was still alive and she expected to be the next English Queen. On those long, exciting evenings of conversation Eleanor would say, ‘There has to be another way! I know I can’t provide an heir for France. Louis and I are wasting our lives in this futile marriage. But I’ll go to hell before I’ll barter Aquitaine for a divorce.’
At length Constance of Toulouse said to Constance, Queen of France, ‘I think there’s another way, sister. A husband rarely listens to his wife, as by now I hope you understand. He’ll listen to someone else’s wife with much more attention.’
The girl’s eyes gained some light. ‘You want me to speak to Count Raymond?’
Constance nodded. ‘He’s closer to your age than to mine. You’re very pretty, my dear, whatever you may believe. Take him by the hand – as Queen you may do so without incurring condemnation – and look into his eyes. Your own are lovely. Raymond has a weakness for women with dark brown eyes.’ When she explained ‘the other way’, the girl began to tremble.
One early spring day in the city of Bordeaux, in a fine house in a vineyard that overlooked long, curving rows of vines sprouting new leaves, Thomas Becket began his final preparations for becoming a knight. His armour had been constructed over weeks, as carefully tailored to his height and limbs as if it were a garment of silk. He found the helmet extraordinarily uncomfortable and three times insisted the armourer recast it ‘so it doesn’t pinch my ears’. When it was lowered onto his head and the visor pulled over his nose he shouted, ‘I can’t see! The eye slits are too narrow’. ‘Any wider, sir, and you’ll be in danger from a lance,’ the armourer replied. Becket spent half an hour walking back and forth in the largest chamber of the house, trying not to stumble over the furniture as he peered through the eye slits. Satisfied at last, he pushed the visor up and ordered a servant, ‘Bring my weapons and shield.’ The man exchanged a glance with others in the chamber. ‘Do as I say!’ the Chancellor commanded. The son of a baron with whom Thomas had been practising for his tournament to become a knight, cleared his throat. ‘It’s unlucky, sir, to bring weapons and a shield indoors. May I suggest …?’ He helped Becket down the steps to the mounting block where a groom held the reins of his destrier. ‘By the Virgin! This is uncomfortable,’ he said as his peered down at his iron-shod feet, trying to poke them into the stirrups.
On a field to the north, beside the River Blay, his adversary, a knight from Anjou, lounged on the ground, waiting. Beside him were the King and a group of courtiers and ladies seated on bear furs laid on a slight rise that overlooked the tournament ground. The challenger was late. All around them the air was busy with small birds, sticks clutched in their beaks, rushing back and forth to the trees planted as windbreaks.
‘Laggards!’ Henry shouted at the birds. ‘You should have built your nests by now.’ Some had and were already brooding. A shout went up from men galloping towards the waiting group.
‘He arrives!’
The waiting knight scrambled up and ran to his horse, mounting as nimbly as a dancer.
As a sign of favour Henry, who was seated on a chair – the only chair – stood to welcome the Chancellor. His face burst into a grin at the magnificence of Becket’s armour, so highly polished sunshine bounced in blinding flashes from its surface. Becket reined in his horse before the King.
‘May I do you honour, Sire.’
Henry smiled amiably. ‘I’m sure you will, Thomas. I have total faith in your capacity.’ He pulled a black and white checked handkerchief from his sleeve, raised it then flashed it down. ‘Begin!’ he roared.
As Becket’s stallion galloped forward he told himself, ‘I hold the lance exactly as Henry instructed me.’
Like a frog jiggling the handle of a spoon, the King thought. He shouted, ‘Bec! Glory awaits you!’ The Chancellor’s lance hit the edge of the other man’s shield. His opponent flew sideways, de-horsed. His Highness cheered, everyone clapped and Becket flipped open his visor for the crowd to admire his laughing face.
‘That man fell off on purpose,’ Richard said.
Henry muttered, ‘I paid him to.’ He turned, an eyebrow raised, at his Remembrancer. ‘I know it. The other knights know it. But how do you know? You can’t fight.’
‘I’ve been learning to fight and wield a sword, Highness.’
The King frowned. ‘Since when?’
‘Since we travelled through Wales.’
Henry grunted. ‘You’ll ruin your handwriting.’ There was no time to continue the conversation because already a squire had run to help the Chancellor dismount. The King strode forward and embraced him. He turned to the small group whom he’d gathered for the spectacle. ‘My lords and ladies, I present our new knight, Sir Thomas of London.’
There was more applause. Becket bowed. ‘I hadn’t realised how easy it would be,’ he remarked. ‘Of course, without your training, Henry …’
‘Now you’ve proved yourself, my dear Tom, I’d leave fighting to ruffians like me. Your genius is planning and organisation. And collecting silver pennies.’
‘But it was thrilling!’ Becket persisted. ‘I want to fight another round against him.’
‘I forbid it,’ Henry said. ‘You’re taller than he. In a second tourney you could break his neck. We need all our necks for Toulouse.’
‘As you wish, Henry.’ Becket pushed his lips forward for a kiss, but his helmet was too bulky for them to connect. Henry kissed his forefinger and pressed it against the Chancellor’s mouth. Becket darted out his tongue to lick it. Almost imperceptibly Henry grimaced.
It was a clear blue season in Aquitaine, the vast territory where he and Eleanor had spent the months since Christmas. His wife had requested Ventatour to join their cavalcade and Henry, who rather liked the man and loved his singing, had agreed. Each night during their progress the troubadour serenaded the royal couple and their friends, weaving into his songs snippets of amusing gossip from the day behind them. Throughout their progress there had been many letters back and forth between Henry and Louis, their tone cooling with each exchange. ‘How can you, my brother, advise me against a course of action that you yourself undertook?’ Henry made the same point, each time differently phrased, in letter after letter. Louis continued to protest that Toulouse should be left in peace. A whining tone entered his missives, which grew cold, short and finally stopped.
‘Has he given up?’ Henry asked Hamelin on the eve of Pentecost, as they lay down together to sleep. It was a fortnight since royal mail had arrived from the Ile de France.
‘You’ve frightened him,’ Hamelin said.
‘I didn’t intend to.’
‘Unfortunately, urged on by Eleanor and the Chancellor, you’ve overplayed your game. You’ve hit him on the head with logic. What’s happened to your sensibility?’
‘Since when was going to war a matter of sensibility, Bullfrog? You can’t sing and you’ve lost your brains.’
‘Plus an eye,’ Hamelin added. ‘Don’t forget I see with only one eye.’
‘One-eyed idiot.’ Hamelin rolled on his side, ready to sleep, but Henry would not let him. ‘We need a story, brother. There’s gossip. I can tell from the expressions of the royal guards they suspect the truth. The Chancellor seethes with curiosity. I’ve caught him staring at you. I want to be able to bring you back to court in a respected position.’
‘I’m happy to be your house churl,’ Hamelin mumbled. ‘Let the Chancellor seethe a while. He’ll know me eventually.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘There’s more to that man than you care to see.’
‘But Old One-eye can see it, eh?’ Henry poked his forefinger into his brother’s ribs but could elicit nothing more.
The next day, as soon as Pentecost was over, God’s peace would end and the fighting season could begin. In his own quarters in the château where the King waited for the rest of the army to arrive, Becket celebrated with three other men who had arrived for the coming war.
‘Sir Thomas!’ they chorused. ‘Lord Chancellor! Archdeacon! Knight!’
‘And lover!’ Becket added, his pretty chipped tooth gleamed in the light of the many candles they’d lit for the festivity. The children had already undressed. ‘Look at those glorious creatures! Angels.’
‘We need music,’ someone said.
‘I’ll sing!’ Sir Thomas of London declared. His voice was strong; his friends sang the bawdy choruses. Their celebration went on until just before dawn.
The Chancellor was asleep, one arm flung over his boy when a house churl tapped on his door. Becket gave the child a push. ‘Go and see what it is,’ he said. It was another letter from Theobald, asking him, ‘with all the love I have for you’ to return to England as soon as he could. ‘I grasp the thread of life only so I may gaze upon your dear face once more,’ the Archbishop wrote.
Thomas gritted his teeth. He blasphemed. ‘I’m in charge of seven hundred knights, and we’re preparing for war!’ He glared at the catamite.
‘Can you make a quick trip, sir?’
‘No I can’t!’ He glared at the child again. ‘You stink. Go and bathe.’
When the boy returned his master was once more, compulsively, checking his list of allied forces. He read aloud, ‘Count of Barcelona, husband of the Queen of Aragon and therefore equal to a King; disaffected vassals of the Count of Toulouse, including the viscount of Béziers and Carcassone, and William of Montpellier; King Malcolm of Scotland and his enormous retinue of warriors. I had to arrange forty-five ships for them to cross the Channel; Prince Something Unpronounceable of Wales; William, Count of Boulogne, Earl of Surrey, the younger son of King Stephen and therefore a prince. Other magnates and barons of England, Normandy, Anjou, Brittany and Aquitaine … You realise, chou-chou, this is all my work? I’ve written the letters. I’ve milked the Jews for money until they beat themselves on the head and squealed to the God of Abraham. I’ve taxed Bishops, who are purple with rage and asserting that a tax on the Church is unprecedented. Which it is.’ He paused to laugh. ‘I’ve sent emissaries here, there and everywhere. Our monarchs, meanwhile, make royal progresses around their domaines, charming their subjects, holding banquets and hunting parties, all graciousness, while vassals pay them homage. Now, who have I left out?’
‘King Henry?’ the boy whispered.
The Chancellor, seated at a writing desk, spun round to stare at him. ‘I left Henry off the list.’ He began to laugh again. ‘How strange is that!’
‘Very strange, sir.’ The boy inclined his head to his shoulder coquettishly. Becket absentmindedly ruffled his hair.
‘The oracle told me something odd,’ he mused. ‘I didn’t understand it when she told me. I still don’t. But it was something to do with the absence of our King. Is that not …?’ He was so puzzled he was not sure what he thought and left the question incomplete.
Hamelin had told Henry the Chancellor’s ambition for the success of the campaign against Toulouse caused him such anxiety he was consulting a soothsayer. ‘She charges him a weight of silver and demands he visits her at difficult hours, in disguise. Sometimes he goes dressed as a woman. The hag cuts the head off a cockerel before she’ll prophesy for him.’
‘I take it she’s a fraud.’
‘Half,’ Hamelin replied.
‘Which half would that be, brother?’
Hamelin laughed, all his even white teeth on show in his clean-shaven face. ‘The other half.’
‘The army is too big,’ Henry grumbled. ‘I should have paid more attention to what Tom was doing. My progress with Eleanor through her domains could have waited.’
Military forces from England had landed along the coast of France, since all the coastal provinces belonged to either Henry or Eleanor. Men from Normandy, Brittany, Maine and Anjou travelled south on foot or on horse. The grand army gathered in Poitiers, where Pentecost was observed, then made swift progress through Perigord to the county of Quercy, where it conquered its principal city of Cahors. The mercenaries climbed a steep hillside at night to break into the mighty castle of the Count of Castelnaud, a vassal of Raymond of Toulouse. Henry had the Count put in irons and moved into his red-walled castle from where he directed operations for several weeks. When he moved out he left it garrisoned with his most fearsome knights from Anjou and a small group of Brabant mercenaries. The very word, ‘Brabant,’ turned faces pale.
In Poitiers, on hearing news of the victory Eleanor spun with joy. ‘Quercy! Cahors! Château Castlenaud! I’ve always loathed that Count. My father and my grandfather, from whom all those treasures were stolen after the first Crusade, rejoice in heaven!’ Ventatour wrote a hymn of thanksgiving that he sang in the cathedral the following Sunday. The Viscount of Béziers, who hated Raymond of Toulouse, raised a successful rebellion in the eastern Toulousain. Eleanor wrote, ‘Husband, you bring honour to the House of Aquitaine, and love to my heart.’
Henry called his most senior men together. ‘One never launches into war unless compelled to do so,’ he said. ‘In Brittany last year I took a few towns, sufficient for reason to dawn in Conan’s mind. He came forward and paid me homage. Now he’s a Duke. That, dear comrades, is our desire for Toulouse; that Count Raymond turns his face to the north and then to the west, sees our might and quails before it. However well he protects the heart of his territory, we have men and supplies sufficient to besiege him until his subjects are reduced to walking skeletons.’
By the first week of July a huge cloud of dust rose to the summer sky, so thick that inhabitants inside the pink walls of Toulouse discerned within the cloud no more than flashes of light bouncing off polished iron. Thousands of marching feet, human and animal, made the ground rumble. The countryside was in deep green leaf, especially luxuriant beside the wild and beautiful Garonne that flowed from the mountains of the south. The army marched along its banks and, where there was flat land, spread out across it. Knights watered their horses in the river, foot soldiers refreshed themselves by wading into shallow pools and splashing about. ‘The Garonne and its tributaries worry me,’ Henry said to his justiciar. He’d left de Beaumont in England as Regent, but brought de Lucy with him. ‘We need to deny Raymond water,’ he said. ‘Are our engineers capable?’
Becket rode on the other side of the King. ‘Henry! Why don’t you ask me? I organised the engineers with precisely that question in mind. Of course they’re capable. Raymond won’t have a drop to drink.’
The King nodded without bothering to look round because Hamelin had told him that today a messenger would come. Through the flickering light cast by trees along the riverbank Henry was keeping his focus on the path ahead. On a slight rise a rider appeared. Henry saw him before anyone else.
‘I seek The King of England,’ the rider shouted in French.
Henry galloped past the Count of Barcelona and King Malcolm of Scotland. He pulled up in front of the messenger.
‘King Louis wishes to parley, Highness.’ The messenger turned his horse. Henry signalled the army to halt and cantered after him towards Toulouse, still thirty miles distant. Before they caught sight of the pink city walls the messenger veered left into a grove of pine trees where the air was fragrant from resin and cooled by the pines’ dense foliage. Henry was alone. Louis, wearing a small crown, had half a dozen men with him, all helmeted, all mounted, all armed. Which one of you is Raymond? Henry wondered. His own face was bare, wreathed in a smile.
‘My brother Louis!’ he shouted. Still mounted, he held his arms aloft. His only weapons were his sheathed sword and a dagger inside his tunic. I could be dead in two minutes.
Almost imperceptibly Louis returned his smile. ‘Henry,’ he murmured. ‘I’m glad you’ve come alone.’
A French knight helped his monarch dismount. Louis pointed at Henry and the knight, whose face was hidden by his visor, performed the same service for the English King.
Their embrace was formal. ‘Let’s sit beneath that tree,’ Louis said.
Henry had decided not to speak until he could fathom what was in Louis’ mind. Usually it was child’s play, but today Henry felt uneasy. After a few moments he realised he had no intuition of the presence of the Guardian. He allowed his eyes to roam around Louis’ dark hair in case he could sense St Denis. A faint shimmer of colour near Louis’ neck made Henry flinch. It was enough to break his decision to remain mute. ‘I feel, brother, the Guardian of France accompanies you.’
Louis gave a slight nod. ‘Where is England’s Guardian today, Henry?’ he asked.
Henry grinned as if Louis were jesting with him. ‘Good question!’
‘And your answer?’
‘I have none.’
‘Perhaps he wishes you not to fight.’
Henry drew back. ‘Would you care to elaborate?’
‘None of us wants war. I suggest an entente.’
‘If Raymond will pay homage to the Duchess of Aquitaine, there’ll be no reason for war. An entente would be excellent until the terms of homage are arranged.’ He paused. ‘Is your brother-in-law among those men who accompany you?’ Louis nodded. ‘Would you care to ask him now if such a solution is acceptable to him?’ Louis began to lever himself off the ground. Henry leapt to his feet to help him.
‘I’m not a cripple,’ Louis snarled. He strolled back towards the now unmounted group of men. They crowded around him like bees, but watching their movements, Henry worked out which was Count Raymond. His voice was raised and he seemed agitated. After a few minutes Louis returned to the tree at a leisurely pace. ‘He’s young and easily excitable,’ he remarked as if commenting on the weather.
‘He said no?’
Louis nodded. ‘But I’ll persist. I’ve told him many times already that you and I are legally bound by our children’s engagement and also our treaty of amity and mutual protection. But …’ He stared off into the distance, his mind suddenly elsewhere. Henry felt the awful calm of a Presence.
He jumped up again. ‘I rely on you, brother Louis,’ he boomed. The interruption to Louis’ connection with the Presence made the French King startle. A flash of anger crossed his face. ‘Our army will not progress to Toulouse,’ Henry continued. ‘But as you know, brother, one cannot keep fighting men waiting too long. Please tell Count Raymond his time for a decision is limited.’
Louis’ exquisitely barbered black moustache hid much of his upper lip. Henry noted the lip draw tight. Momentarily the monarch flashed his teeth like an angry dog. They embraced formally once more and knights helped them remount at precisely the same moment.
The King of England trotted back towards his army, relaxed and smiling. Becket cantered forward to be first to speak to him. ‘Does Louis ask for a truce?’
‘You look frantic, Tom.’
‘You’ve no idea how hard I’ve worked for this campaign. I’m the architect. I designed it for war. Does Louis ask for a truce? If so, we’ve won!’
Henry shrugged. ‘Yes. And no.’
‘What do you mean?’ Becket demanded. His voice was too loud. Henry waved a hand at him to lower it.
‘Don’t shush me!’ the Chancellor screeched.
‘And don’t forget who I am,’ Henry replied quietly.
‘You’ve gone behind my back! You swine!’ Becket didn’t see the blow coming. He stayed mounted only by grasping his pommel with both hands. ‘You struck my face in front of the army!’
His own face unmoving Henry replied, ‘Look down.’ He held the bridle of Thomas’s horse in his left hand. The Chancellor looked down. A dagger pointed at his liver.
‘What are you doing?’ he whispered. He began shaking all over.
‘Reminding you of your station, Bec. And of mine.’ As deftly as he’d drawn the dagger, Henry resheathed it. ‘Now, shall we begin our conversation again?’
‘I-I-I’m going to v-v-vomit!’ The Chancellor leaned sideways and threw up.
‘Hmmm,’ Henry said. He looked at the vomit in case, like Rosamund, he could see the spirit of some creature in it, something that lived inside Becket. He saw nothing but muck. Maybe Hamelin will know. ‘There was a wasp on your cheek,’ he continued amicably. ‘My slap was to spare you from a painful sting.’
The Chancellor was still pale from the shock of the blow across his face. ‘Y-y-yes. A wasp. Y-y-you slapped me to kill the wasp.’
The King glanced down again and drew back. In the mess Becket’s stomach had thrown out a wasp struggled to free itself. ‘Look!’ he pointed. ‘There’s the wasp.’
The Chancellor saw it. His face turned from white to red. His lips turned into a fish’s mouth and he crumpled into tears. ‘I thought you … I thought …’
‘There, there,’ Henry said. He patted his shoulder. ‘Bend forward and give me a kiss.’ The Chancellor snatched his hand, kissed it, and as delicately as a child kissed the King’s cheek. ‘Good Tom-tom,’ Henry crooned. ‘Happy again?’
Becket nodded.
‘Well, step your horse back so mine can turn around and we’ll ride over to those trees where I’ll tell you what Louis said.’ He continued to observe the Chancellor’s breathing, waiting for it to return to a normal rhythm.
When they reached the trees he said, ‘We don’t touch the city of Toulouse. Yet. Instead we devastate the neighbourhood. There are several fine castles within a few miles. There’s Belcastle, less than half a day to the north-east. There are les Châteaux de Bruniquel, just to the south. We begin with them.’
‘Louis suggested that?’
‘Not precisely. But he needs arguments to persuade Raymond to surrender. Destruction of a man’s territory and his friends’ property is usually persuasive.’
By now the Chancellor was grinning. ‘When do we attack?’
‘Now,’ Henry said. ‘In half an hour our rearguard could be at the castle we passed yesterday, the Château de Ceneviers. Every town we encounter, we burn, unless they come out with the flag of surrender.’
The Chancellor let out a wild yell. ‘To war!’ he shouted. He turned his horse and galloped back to the army.
Henry broke a small branch from a tree and trotted back to the vomit where, leaning from the saddle, he pushed the leaves down to the wasp. The insect crawled onto them.
‘Look at the venomous beast,’ he said, holding the branch for men to see his reason for striking the Chancellor’s face. When enough had nodded he flicked the insect to the ground where his stallion killed it with a stamp of its hoof.
They sacked the first of the castles that afternoon.
That night scouts brought news to the royal tent that in the city of Toulouse Louis himself had taken charge of defence. Henry summoned de Lucy. The justiciar did not hesitate. ‘You must withdraw.’
‘I can’t lose face so quickly.’
‘Our army is unwieldy. I repeatedly told Becket he was assembling hammers to swat flies. He insisted he was acting on your authority. And the Queen’s.
Henry gritted his teeth. ‘He overdoes everything. If I say ten, he thinks one hundred. An army that’s too large is as difficult to handle as one too small.’
‘Quite so, Henry, you took your eye off the game. You’re the field marshall. Not…’ The justiciar’s loathing for the Chancellor made the name stick in his throat.
Henry nodded, glum. ‘I was trying to improve my relations with Eleanor. They have been strained the past couple of years. I was trying to make her feel … I don’t know what she wants to feel. But she was so happy riding with me through her territory, her vassals rushing out to call greetings and shower her with love each day.’ He added modestly, ‘She does take pride in me, you know. She chose my clothes for each public event. She kept calling to her subjects in langue d’oc, “How handsome is my husband, the King of England,” and they’d call back, “He should be King of France. And you should be Queen again!”’
The justiciar grimaced. Unfortunately, that is exactly what Eleanor wants, he thought. ‘We’re in a fix, Henry. With luck, Louis or Raymond will make a mistake that gives you the excuse to attack Toulouse.’
‘Nothing short of an assault on the Queen would justify that.’
‘I suppose that’s correct,’ de Lucy sighed.
Henry muttered, ‘Even if it were suggested to Louis, he has neither the forces, the wit nor the courage to attempt it.’
Next morning he called together his senior commanders including his adopted brother, William of Warenne, Earl of Surrey. He invited them to be seated and to take a drink. ‘There’s been an unwelcome development.’ As he explained it every man’s face was stricken with dismay.
‘Does anyone have a suggestion?’
They murmured and shuffled their feet but none could decide what to do, for nobody had anticipated that King Louis would come in person to the aid of Toulouse. Only yesterday he had presented himself as a mediator. To attack the sacred person of the King of France was a grievous problem for almost all of them, Henry especially. While he was King in England, as Duke of Normandy and Seneschal of France he was Louis’ vassal. He worried that a few of the hotheads, Beziers and Montpellier, for example, were so enraged against Toulouse they’d risk the ignominy of an attack on the French monarch. Malcolm of Scotland and the Count of Barcelona owed Louis nothing and could attack him with impunity. But as head of the army the scandal would fall on Henry’s head. The Chancellor was perched on the edge of his chair, compulsively tearing at the skin around his fingernails. Henry’s eyes moved from the tense faces of the leaders to Hamelin, who had remained in the plain grey robe of a house churl.
‘What about you, young man?’ he asked. A question put to a servant during a war meeting was so contradictory the company took it as a joke. Noblemen laughed, but their faces froze when Hamelin’s voice rumbled from his throat. Henry noted they held their breaths, anxious and excited like people waiting for a beheading.
‘Sire, I would suggest you raid the royal demesne to draw King Louis away from Toulouse. However, you risk retaliation against Normandy by the King’s brothers, Beauvais and Dreux.’
There was silence. An Earl whispered, ‘From his voice I’d say that house churl has four testicles.’
‘I’d wager eight.’
Henry looked from face to face. ‘Not a bad idea,’ he said in a tone of surprise. ‘The good sense one finds in the lower ranks. I don’t relish the thought of Normandy ravaged by the Bishop of Beauvais, the Count of Dreux and probably the Count of Evreux. But I can deal with them. Meanwhile …’ he smiled around, ‘let’s pillage!’
There were shouts of laughter and all except King Malcolm drank another cup of wine.
William of Warenne sidled up to Henry. ‘Brother, that young house churl with the streak of white hair?’
‘His name is Hamelin. He’s of my blood.’
William nodded. ‘For a moment I would have sworn on a bible he was our dear Guillaume returned to life.’
Henry wrapped the Earl in an embrace. ‘Brother, Guillaume died in the forest of Woodstock. Heaven sent me this young man to comfort my heart for his loss.’
‘He’s unusually forthright for a house churl.’
‘A bastard of my papa.’ Henry shrugged. ‘A certain esprit. An inherent élan.’
‘Indeed. I’d like to speak to him. He appears most intelligent.’
Henry felt abashed. ‘William, I cannot say more just yet. As soon as I’m able I’ll bring him to court in his true colours, in the leopards of Anjou.’
The candid eyes of the other man who could be King of England looked deep into Henry’s crafty face. ‘Brother, I have a confession.’
The King waited.
‘On the day of my father’s funeral in Faversham, my uncle, the Bishop of Winchester, suggested to me that were you, Henry, to stumble …’
Henry placed a finger across William’s lips. ‘Let’s not speak of treachery,’ he said.
William’s eyebrows shot up. ‘You were aware of the plot against you?’
Henry nodded. The Earl brushed tears from his eyes. ‘I’m ashamed I ever listened to him.’
‘You were a boy of seventeen. Your good manners compelled you.’
William frowned. ‘But how could you know this? You weren’t even in England on the day of my father was buried.’
Can I tell him Hamelin told me of the plot? Of course not. ‘You forget Baron Pontefract, the would-be regicide, was among the plotters that day.’
William nodded. ‘I’d forgotten Pontefract.’
In a flat voice Henry said, ‘Under torture he confessed.’
At night he and Hamelin lay, side by side, fifty miles from the city of Toulouse. Day after day the great army ravaged the treasures of the province. They took castles, burned forests and villages, orchards and fields of ripe crops. Henry forbade the burning of religious buildings. Before towns were put to the torch, their inhabitants were ordered to flee. The King fretted, ‘The army is monstrous. A small number of men do all the fighting; the others hang about bored, restless and thieving. I shouldn’t have allowed Bec to take charge. He did so well with his embassy to Paris he’s convinced magnificence is all. What he knows about warfare would fit on the head of a fly.’
‘He rides around in front of the knights like a Roman Emperor,’ Hamelin observed. ‘But he never developed the muscles in his shoulders one needs to fight. When he unsheathes his sword he waggles it like a girl waving a scarf. Real knights laugh at him.’
‘Shut up!’ Henry said. ‘D’you think I’m blind?’
‘Just stupid.’
There was a long silence. At length Henry asked, ‘Brother, why am I stupid with Bec? I’m not stupid with other men. But with him, although he infuriates me, his bouts of obsequiousness disgust me as much as his brazenness, his dishonesty, his stealing from the realm …’
Hamelin sighed. ‘We live beneath heaven,’ he replied.
‘I’m master of my destiny. Not the stars.’
His brother shrugged. ‘That was not what I said, Henry. Your interpretation has failed to catch my meaning.’
Henry turned to look at him but Hamelin’s long eyelids, slightly rounded at their centre and shiny like the waxy petals of certain flowers, were closed. His breathing was slow. Henry jabbed his ribs. ‘Wake up! You’ve got to talk to me.’
‘I’m just meeting with Alaw. Leave us alone.’
Henry ignored this. ‘Somehow, I must force Louis to break our treaty of amity and mutual support,’ he said.
‘Louis considers you’ve broken it already.’
‘I’ve done no such thing! I’ve been open with him. I wrote to him time and again that I wanted to achieve the same thing he had wanted – to return Toulouse to the House of Aquitaine.’
‘It seems to have slipped your memory that sixteen years ago the King of France was lord of Aquitaine. Of course he wanted it returned to Eleanor back then.’
Henry was not listening. ‘What troubles me is that Louis, who’s as nervous as a coney about warfare, is showing strength of purpose he never showed before. He doesn’t budge from Toulouse. He’s put himself in harm’s way, but refuses to fight. That’s an intelligence he’s not revealed before. Some subtle mind advises him.’ His voice became petulant. ‘It’s dishonourable. He should fight or leave the field of battle.’
‘Les dames,’ Hamelin mumbled. ‘Toujours les dames.’
‘Why didn’t you warn me?’ Henry demanded. The southern night was hot, airless and noisy with the chirruping of crickets.
Although the royal tent was large it was pitched on a broad plain from which the smoke of burnt crops infiltrated its cracks, along with mosquitoes. The brothers were naked but clasped a sheet up to their noses against the insects.
Hamelin laughed. ‘Brother, this war was conceived by your Queen, championed by your Chancellor who wants to be recognised as equal to the King, and it unfolds …’ His sigh was so deep Henry felt alarmed.
‘Unfolds what?’
‘Problems between England and France. Between Plantagenet and Capet,’ Hamelin replied in a dreamy voice. Forty years of warfare. Followed by one hundred years of war. A mountain of corpses, that is what I see. ‘The dream of the embalmer’s daughter begins to unfold a deeper meaning.’
‘Don’t mention that hateful dream!’
‘Well, shut up and go to sleep before the mosquitoes keep us awake all night.’ He pulled the sheet over his head.
That same hot evening fifty miles away inside the palace of Toulouse, King, Count and Countess smelled the ruin of their property. Already a thousand people had sought asylum inside the city’s walls. Louis issued an edict that the populace was to eat only one meal a day and to pray every four hours for the invaders to withdraw. He and Raymond stood behind the highest ramparts at dawn and dusk, gazing in horror at the devastated countryside.
When they descended Louis declared for the tenth time, ‘I feel dishonoured. I should fight. And so should Raymond.’
The narrowed eyes of their wives stared back at them. ‘Louis, you’re winning,’ his sister said. The Countess repeated as she had each day, and each day had been proved correct, ‘Henry won’t mount a direct attack on you. You’re his overlord. He can’t risk setting such a dangerous example to his own vassals. Nor will he, by stealth, attempt to take you prisoner and ransom you. That would be an equally disastrous example.’
‘He’d get a good price for me,’ her brother replied sulkily.
Constance stamped her foot. ‘Louis! To have you as his prisoner would be as bad as a direct attack. No King is without enemies. Henry maintains his strength by robbing his antagonists of courage. They fear his ferocity. Other enemies fear to break the laws of honour and tradition that forbid attack upon a king. Henry fears to do that to you.’
Louis would never have agreed with her had not the Guardian of France appeared to him each night in visions. St Denis stood with his head tucked under his arm, blood streaming from the stump of his neck. Louis would wake announcing to his wife, ‘This is meant to be. St Denis guards me and Toulouse.’
‘So we’re prisoners in this palace,’ he grumbled to the two Constances, ‘because Henry Plantagenet is afraid of me.’ He gave a ghostly laugh.
‘He recognises the situation is a stalemate. But he has to mollify the English Queen by persisting a little longer,’ his sister answered.
‘By the saints I hate that woman,’ Raymond announced.
Louis nodded morosely. ‘It’s her doing. Always her!’
By August the gigantic army from Scotland was falling ill from heat, mosquitoes and upset stomachs. For those used to the south it was not especially hot, but for the Scots the summer sun was unbearable. Their skins turned purplish red and shredded off in thin, white strips. King Malcolm came to Henry asking permission to withdraw. Since his conversation with Douglas about the physical frailty of the young Scottish king, Henry’s attitude to Malcolm had softened. He looked hard at his nephew and saw lines of pain beneath the beads of perspiration that swelled and burst to run in rivulets down his face. ‘Go with my blessing, dear Malcolm,’ he said. ‘You’ve shown both honour and courage in voyaging so far in a cause that is not yours, but mine. If ever, in future, you need a friend you’ll find one in me.’
‘Thank you, Uncle.’
‘I’d love to cheer you up for the losses you’ve suffered. You’re not married yet. Could I offer you my services as a marriage broker? I could find you a lovely, rich countess in Normandy. Or England. Or from somewhere else. A girl tender and fragrant to hold in your arms at night and soothe your heart.’
Malcolm shook his head with a soft, sad smile. ‘I’m not ready to be married, Uncle.’
He knows he’s done for.
The Chancellor was inside the tent during this conversation. When the young King left he paced back and forth, making a sound of disgust in his throat. ‘Scots!’ he said. ‘Their reputation for courage is spurious. A few mosquito bites, an upset digestion, and they’re all crying like babies wanting to go home. I hired forty-five ships to sail them to France. Now, look at that ninny.’
‘I do look at him. And I see a brave monarch,’ Henry replied evenly. ‘He’s lost two hundred men to fever. He’ll lose another hundred before he reaches the safety of home – and all for no reward but a few bags of loot. He could have asked leave at the beginning of the month and I would have granted it.’
Becket spun round. ‘You don’t want to fight, do you? You want me to fail!’
The only other person in the tent was Hamelin.
‘I want a conversation in private,’ the Chancellor continued. ‘I want that house churl to leave.’
Henry turned to Hamelin. ‘You’re not to leave,’ he said. ‘My Chancellor is overwrought. He’ll calm down in a moment.’
‘I will not calm down!’ Becket shouted.
The flames that shot from Henry’s eyes jerked Thomas’s mouth shut. After a moment the Chancellor began pacing back and forth again.
Henry gave a sour grin. ‘You look like one of the wild animals you keep caged at Woodstock,’ he remarked. ‘I wonder which one? Lioness? Bear? Estrich bird?’
‘Laugh at me!’ Becket shrieked. ‘You’ve always laughed at me behind my back. Why should you stop now? Now you’re losing the biggest war in your life! The war I prepared so meticulously for you. Handed victory to you on a golden plate! You’re throwing it away without a fight, out of insane, ancient superstitions about the traditions of royalty! Royalty my arse! You’re frightened to attack a city with walls. Henry, the Great—’
The King strode from his tent.
Hamelin remained at his station, calmly observing the Lord Chancellor.
‘And who the hell are you, pretty boy? If you’re a house churl, I’m the Pope. I heard what you said in that first war meeting. Churls don’t speak like that.’
‘How do they speak, Chancellor?’
The deep pitch of his voice jolted Becket. ‘Get out!’
‘This is the royal tent. I serve His Highness. I don’t take orders from you.’
‘How dare you!’ Becket stepped forward, his hand moving to the sword on his hip. Suddenly he found himself lying on his back.
‘Treason!’ he gasped. ‘You, villein, laid violent hands upon the Lord Chancellor of England.’
Hamelin smiled. ‘I defended myself, Bec.’
‘You dare call me Bec?’
‘It would seem so,’ the giant voice rumbled.
The Chancellor stood and straightened his garments. ‘I know what you are, Whatever Your Name Is. You’re a spy!’
Hamelin smiled. ‘You could call me that.’
‘The King’s spying on me!’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘I don’t care what you think, you … You … I feel dizzy.’ He staggered towards a chair but fell to the floor before he reached it.
Hamelin watched him with curiosity. He’d been told he had this power, but never before had he used it. It was extraordinarily easy, just a thought clearly directed.
When Becket opened his eyes he found his head cradled in the stranger’s lap.
‘Who are you?’ he croaked. ‘You’re so handsome. I can barely take my eyes off you.’
‘I’m the King’s half-brother.’
‘You look the same as Guillaume, although you’re much younger. And something’s happened to your hair.’ He lapsed into unconsciousness again. Hamelin rubbed a spot behind his ears and Becket woke, blinking. ‘Did you say you’re related to His Highness?’
‘Henry’s bastard brother. I was banished for a long while and I’m not yet accustomed to civilised company. Henry is reintroducing me. Slowly.’
The Chancellor struggled to sit up. ‘Why were you banished?’ he whispered.
‘Murder.’
Becket nodded, his expression as attentively serious as if he were questioning a sheriff about royal levies. ‘Murder,’ he murmured, nodding to himself. ‘As soon as I saw you I knew there was something notable about you.’
Hamelin stood and pulled the Chancellor to his feet. ‘You seem in a receptive mood. May I give you a piece of advice, Bec?’
Thomas pushed out his lower lip at the insult of the stranger’s address, but he inclined his head in a nod. His mind was already racing with excitement about the gossip he’d have with his friends.
‘You’re not listening,’ Hamelin said. His voice brought Becket to attention.
‘I am. I’m listening.’
‘Don’t overplay your game,’ Hamelin said.
The Chancellor had recovered his sense of importance. His tone was acid. ‘Thank you, young man. Or should I say, young murderer? Excellent advice. I think I first heard it from my mother as a ten-year-old boy.’
Hamelin’s smile was placid. ‘But one day you’ll remember it.’
Becket stalked towards the tent flap that the murderer-churl held open for him. As he reached it he turned and spat on Hamelin’s foot.