CHAPTER XIX
The Year 1120
King Henry’s Castle at Caen
The little white dog looked up at its mistress adoringly as she read the “Romance of Reynard the Fox” aloud. The shady corner of the garden, away from the bustle of the castle grounds was her favorite place.
Marie heard footsteps approaching. She looked up, smiling when she saw William. As always, he was impeccably dressed, resplendent in a purple tunic and pale leggings. The prince had little time for her, but she loved him just the same.
“Milord,” she said gaily. “I am so happy to see you.”
The prince sat down on a bench facing her. “I only have a moment, Marie. I just wanted to see how you are doing.”
Marie wondered what had brought on her husband’s sudden concern for her welfare.
“I am well, William. Is everything all right?”
He nodded. “Fine. Fine.”
Marie reached across and touched his hand. “What is it, William?”
“Well, Mathilde tells me I have been neglecting you.”
She did not respond. He looked into her eyes guiltily. “Marie, I do not mean to neglect you. It has never been my intention to cause you pain. Perhaps my sister is right, and I have not been a very good husband.”
Marie’s heart fluttered with hope at his words. “Oh, William,” she said, “you cannot know how much it means to me to hear you say that. I thought you found me repulsive.”
William laughed. “Silly girl.”
She blushed.
“You are a lovely girl, Marie, but let me speak frankly if I may. I have had my duty thrown up to me all my life, and part of that duty included marrying you. I had no desire to become anyone’s husband. I cannot feel affection or desire simply because it is demanded of me.”
He might as well have struck her in the face.
“I do not mean that to be cruel. The fact is we are strangers, you and I. And Mathilde has made me see that I have been remiss in not making an effort to get to know you.”
“Perhaps if you made such an effort you would like me,” Marie said softly. “Truly, I want to be a good wife to you, William, and a good queen when the time comes. I speak boldly when I say I love you, yet those should be the easiest words for a wife to say to her husband. And I do, William. In spite of everything that has happened, I love you. If only I could know that you felt the same.”
William sighed. “Well good then. I am glad we had this chat. I must be going now.”
Marie rose, put her hand on his shoulder and pushed him back down onto the bench. She paced back and forth, her dog at her heels. “You cannot really think a moment’s chat will fix everything between us, can you, William?”
He stared at the ground.
“Where are you going today?” she asked. “Can you not bear to spend a day with me? Would you not play me a game or two of chess on the beautiful board which was fashioned especially for our wedding gift? You said yourself we need to get to know one another. How can we do that if I never see you?”
“I already have plans. I am going hawking with some of the lads. I just do not have time right now, Marie.”
“Take me with you then. I have never been hawking. You can teach me.”
William laughed. “You would hate it Marie. You would want to make pets of the birds’ prey, and you would be distressed to see the kill. The dogs would be distracted by your insistence on playing with them, even though you know that hunting dogs are not little toys like that one hiding behind your skirts. No. Taking you hawking is not a good idea at all, my dear.”
“How would you know what distresses me, Milord, when you hardly even know me?”
“I need to spend time with my friends, Marie. After our sport we shall go to the tavern, and that is no place for a princess of the royal house. You are a lady who has no taste for spirits, and there is nothing worse than being the only one sober in the company of drunks.”
“Why can you not go hunting some other time and spend the day with me instead?” she pouted.
“I told you, Marie, I have already promised my friends. It would not be a good time for you.”
Marie felt her temper rise. “What would be a good time for me? I am so lonely being abandoned in this bloody castle.”
William looked surprised to hear her swear.
“I thought when we married I would become mistress of our home, but here I cannot even make the gardener fulfill a simple request. Everyone either ignores me or treats me like a child. Meanwhile, you are off having fun all day. It is not fair, William.”
William looked at her blankly. “Is this that famous Angevin temper of yours? But, Marie, when we get to England we will have our own castle, and you will be mistress there. We will no longer live in my father’s house. That should make you happy. You know, you are alluring when your cheeks are scarlet. Your eyes are quite striking when you are angry. I never noticed before what an odd color they are, rather like a cat’s eyes.”
Marie stamped her foot. “Oh! You are the most awful man sometimes.”
“I do not mean to be awful.”
She drew a deep breath. “When will you return, William?”
The prince shrugged. The little dog tried to jump up on his lap. He shooed it away.
“If I drink too much, I shall stay at the inn tonight with the lads.” William smirked. “I usually do drink too much.”
“Do you think I do not know what that means? Do you think I do not know that you prefer harlots to your own wife? I hear how people whisper and make fun of me behind my back. What is wrong with me?” Marie cried. “Why do you not find me pleasing as a wife?”
“Your grief at my every parting has become quite boring, Marie. I really do not know what you want from me.”
“What I want from you is my right as your wife. I want you to make a child on me. Milord,” she sighed, her eyes stinging with tears that she struggled to blink away, “it is for our love I mourn. Before it could ever be born our love has turned to pain, and it rends my heart. Am I really nothing but a business arrangement to you? I think you love your sister Mathilde more than you love me.”
“Perhaps after our lives have grown long I will have learned to love you,” William said coldly.
“Why do you not love me, husband? What is wrong with me?”
He looked into her eyes with a sudden intensity. “Blast it all! The fault lies with me, wife, not with you. I do not know why I cannot love. All the women in my life always say they love me, yet I feel nothing for them. They give my body pleasure, yet my heart feels nothing. What is love, Marie, for I am damned if I know.”
Marie saw the sadness in his eyes. She longed to reach out and comfort him.
“I thought I was in love once,” he said, “but I was mistaken, for it was easy to leave her.” William shrugged. “Who cares about love, anyway? Long life matters more.”
She looked down at him. “I feel sorry for you, William. Long life can never recompense for love.”
The dog barked at a proud white peacock that strutted past the rainbow of blossoms in the garden. The bird looked at the dog disdainfully, continuing on its way.
The prince looked puzzled. “You are such an odd girl, Marie. I do not always understand the riddles of your mind. I cannot fathom your reasoning.”
“Reason cannot be kept in love, husband. But I would be content just to know I had your loyalty.”
“My loyalty? You are my wife. One day you will be my queen. There are women who would kill to walk in your pretty little shoes.”
She shook her head sadly. “Better a poor man’s loyalty if sense and worth are in that man. A peasant’s love gives greater joy than that of a king or prince who holds in his heart no loyalty.” Marie knelt before him, taking his hand in hers. “Perhaps I would not be so lonely if I had a baby, William. I miss my little brothers and sister so.”
“What a child you are,” William said.
“I am old enough to know that you have to sleep in my bed if I am ever to have a child of my own. If you cannot love me, at least give me babies.”
“I do not mean to be cruel to you, Marie. I just want to have fun. Forgive me. Perhaps I do have to learn how to be a husband, as my sister said. I seek the normal diversions every man seeks. I need some time. I promise you, when we get to England and all this business with the duchy is done, I will make it up to you. I will have you with child by Christmas. Only let me have a little fun before I must leave Normandy, for I shall miss this land which is my heart’s home.”
She raised her lips to his, hoping she would kindle his passion with a romantic kiss. He drew back. Only take me in your arms and ravish me here in the garden, Marie thought. But she could never voice that desire to her husband.
The prince rose, bowed formally, kissed her hand, and left her side. The dog jumped up on the bench, and she scooped him into her arms, burying her face in his fur, letting her tears flow.
“Oh what shall I do,” she moaned. “If I could but undertake some difficult labor, surely my troubles would be far away from my thoughts.”
Her eye fell on the book she had been reading. An idea began to take shape in Marie’s mind. Her stories were her only escape. What if she found a good story or song to translate from Latin into French?
No, she thought. That has already been done by greater minds than mine.
The dog licked the tears from her face. She smiled and began to sing softly a lay of the trouveres.
“Most gentlemen take great delight
In hunting bold Reynard the fox,
‘Twas by Gaffer Ghylls I did lie,
Where I lived upon fat geese and ducks,
‘Twas by Gaffer Ghylls I did lie,
Not thinking so soon I should die.”
“I have it!” she cried. “The Romance of Reynard the Fox has been written down and preserved, like the fables of Aesop. But no one has ever written down the songs of the trouveres, which have been composed for memory’s sake. They tell the tales of real adventures, gossip and events set by poets to music and sung to generations. Why let them fade into obscurity? No one has ever yet written them down.”
Marie raised the dog to her eye level, kissing it happily on its wet nose. The dog squirmed in her hands. She clutched it to her breast.
“How many castles are there, and how many wives and maidens live lives of lonely desperation within their walls, like I? Surely I must not be alone in my circumstances. We are a silent sisterhood, but I would wager our numbers are many. All too seldom the trouveres come to relieve our monotony with the charm and magic of their songs, but a book can be there any time day or night within one’s reach. Perchance other women like me would find comfort as I do in reading. Maybe they would like to escape into the lovely world the trouveres sing of in their lays.”
The dog barked as if in agreement.
“Why should books be only for prayers? Why indeed should they be only for kings or nobles?”
Marie resolved that she would put the tales she knew by heart to rhyme and write them down to preserve the lyrics and the stories. It would be a labor of love. She would dedicate her endeavor to the honor of the noble king who had been so kind to her, her father-in-law, Henry the First of England.
“My own lady-in-waiting and dressmaker ridiculed me for wanting to write,” Marie said bitterly. “They made me feel ashamed. But why should I be ashamed of this dream? The world is changing faster with each passing day. I believe that one day even common people will discover the joy and comfort of the written word and maybe by then someone will have found a faster means of making books. It must be so. If the possibility does not exist, why would God put the thought in my mind? What care I if there are no women writers? I shall be the first.”