The Lion Rampant Read online

  About the Author

  Blanche d’Alpuget’s early novels arose from travel she did in her twenties in Western Europe and England and from living five years in South East Asia. Her first, Monkeys in the Dark, is set in Indonesia in the violent aftermath of a military takeover. Turtle Beach is set in Malaysia during the Vietnamese refugee crisis of the late 1970s. It was made into a feature film. Winter in Jerusalem is set in Israel in 1983–84 as the first war against Lebanon gathers strength.

  White Eye is set in Australia and Thailand and is about the danger of biological plagues. Her novels were described as ‘witnesses to history’. In the second part of her writing career she has turned to historical fiction. The Young Lion is the first of four novels set in France and England in the 12th century and traces the lives of two of medieval history’s most fascinating characters, Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine. It was chosen as one of the best books of 2013. The Lion Rampant is its successor. Her fiction and non-fiction, including the biography, Robert J. Hawke, have won many awards and been translated into Japanese, French, German and Chinese.

  THIRD ADVENT

  PUBLISHER

  Third Advent Pty Ltd ABN 80 003 754 890

  www.blanchedalpuget.com

  First published in Australia in 2014

  Copyright © Blanche d’Alpuget 2014

  The right of Blanche d’Alpuget to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000.

  This work is copyright. Apart from any use permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  NATIONAL LIBRARY OF AUSTRALIA CATALOGUING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA:

  AUTHOR: d’Alpuget, Blanche, 1944–

  TITLE: The lion rampant / Blanche d’Alpuget ; Jody Lee, editor ; Graham Rendoth, designer.

  ISBN: 978-0-9925273-1-0 (eBook)

  SUBJECTS: Historical fiction; Great Britain – Fiction; France – Fiction.

  DEWEY NUMBER: A823.3

  EDITOR Jody Lee

  PROOFREADER Ella Martin

  DESIGN & PRINT MANAGEMENT Reno Design R34006 / renodesign.com.au

  DESIGNER Graham Rendoth

  FRONT COVER IMAGES iStock Photo / Diana Hirsch

  AUTHOR PHOTOGRAPH Simon Bernhardt

  Digital edition distributed by Port Campbell Press

  www.portcampbellpress.com.au

  Conversion by Winking Billy

  DRAMATIS PERSONAE

  MAIN PLAYERS

  HENRY II, King of England, Duke of Normandy and Aquitaine, son of Geoffrey the Handsome, Duke of Normandy (deceased)

  ELEANOR, Queen of England, former Queen of France, Duchess of Aquitaine, wife of Henry

  EMPRESS MATILDA, Henry’s mother, widow of the Emperor of Germany, widow of Geoffrey, Duke of Normandy

  LOUIS VII, King of France, Eleanor’s ex-husband

  KING STEPHEN of England, ‘The Usurper’ (deceased)

  PRINCE EUSTACE, Crown Prince of England (deceased)

  THEOBALD, Archbishop of Canterbury

  THOMAS OF LONDON, also known as Thomas Becket, Archdeacon of Canterbury

  RICHER DE L’AIGLE, a degenerate baron

  HENRY BLOIS, Bishop of Winchester, brother of King Stephen

  WILLIAM DE WARENNE, Earl of Surrey, son of King Stephen

  ISABEL, Countess of Surrey, wife of William de Warenne

  GILBERT FOLIOT, Bishop of Hereford

  GUILLAUME, Henry’s brother, illegitimate son of Geoffrey and his concubine Isabella

  ROBERT DE BEAUMONT, Earl of Leicester, royal justiciar

  RICHARD DE LUCY, royal justiciar, a baron

  ERASMUS, Greek philosopher and physician

  AELBAD, alias Richard, scribe for Thomas of London, previous linguist and code-breaker for Prince Eustace

  DOUGLAS, Scottish highland warrior and a Merlin (shaman)

  WALTER CLIFFORD, an upstart castellan

  MARGARET CLIFFORD, his wife

  ROSAMUND (JOAN), daughter of the Cliffords

  EARL RICHARD DE CLARE, also known as Strongbow, Earl of Pembroke

  EVELINE DE CLARE, his sister

  PRINCE OWAIN, most powerful of the Welsh leaders

  PRINCE ARIANWYN, Prince Owain’s son

  PRINCE CADWALADR, Prince Owain’s brother

  PRINCESS ALAW, Prince Cadwaladr’s daughter, beloved of Guillaume

  HENRY OF ESSEX, hereditary bearer of the royal standard

  HODIERNA, wet nurse to Prince Richard, his ‘second mother’

  ORIANNE, Queen Eleanor’s personal maid

  BERNARD VENTATOUR, Aquitaine troubador

  BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX, mystic, builder of Chartres Cathedral (deceased)

  THE ROYAL CHILDREN

  GEOFFREY, Henry’s eldest child, an illegitimate son from his ‘first wife’ Rachel

  WILLIAM, Eleanor’s first-born son

  CROWN PRINCE HENRY

  PRINCESS MATILDA

  PRINCE RICHARD

  PRINCE GEOFFREY

  NATIONAL GUARDIANS IN THE SPIRIT WORLD

  SAINT DENIS, Guardian of France

  SAINT GEORGE, Guardian of England

  CHAPTER ONE

  One autumn morning when sunshine had burned the sea mist away and the outside air grew heavy with the scent of apples, the Duchess of Aquitaine looked from a window and saw the crew of a fishing smack arrive at the gatehouse of Rouen Palace. Guards with halberds demanded to know their business. When allowed access, the men trudged up a path towards the entrance reserved for villeins. Eleanor understood immediately – across the Channel King Stephen was dead. Her young husband would be the next ruler of England. At each weary scrape of the men’s clogs against the stones of the path, her heart leapt. Wild southern music rang in her soul. At last, revenge! she thought. One’s mind moves with images as swiftly as angels’ wings.

  She snatched her infant son from his nurse to carry him to the arrow-slit window. ‘Mama will be a queen again, chou-chou. You, Willi, will be the English Crown Prince.’

  It was more than a year ago and ten days’ ride away, but it seemed like an instant; the shouts of joy from her midwives when they lifted from the birthing tub a mass of raw, red flesh. ‘A boy!’ they’d cried. ‘Duchess, you have a son!’ She’d grabbed him, slippery as a fish and herself as wet as one, the cord connecting them still throbbing. Finally the triumph of an heir!

  In thirteen years of marriage to her first husband she’d given birth to two girls. Courtiers and ambassadors had derided her as ‘France’s useless Queen’, ‘Old Shoe’, ‘The Heirless Lady’, ‘Sterile Duchess from Aquitaine’.

  ‘You will drink bitterness, but the fruit of your body will populate the noble houses of Europe. Your name will be remembered for a thousand years,’ her grandmother had prophesied. For more than a decade the prophesy had tormented her.

  ‘Willi, you are the beginning of my fortune foretold,’ she’d whispered. ‘The day dawns for us to repay the King of France and the Parisian court.’

  Back on that blessed summer morning in her own palace in Poitiers, bathed and dressed in a bedchamber gown, Eleanor had taken from the arms of a nurse her first male child.

  They gazed into each other’s eyes with adoration, an infant conceived in his mother’s trance of ecstasy.

  A light knock had announced the arrival of the physician. He observed the Duchess beholding her infant as if he were a god. When she glanced up her expression changed.

  In the doorway a sun-bronzed, middle-aged, mid-sized

  man vacillated, waiting for an invitation to enter. Abruptly he turned aw
ay and she heard him call to a midwife in his foreign-accented French, ‘Woman, where’s the placenta and the cord? I need to examine both.’ Some minutes later he returned holding a wooden box and again waited in the doorway.

  ‘Your punctiliousness irritates me,’ Eleanor said. She knew he worshipped her but her curiosity about men’s feelings was blunted from years of fawning and lies. She remained undismayed that her second husband, Henry, Duke of Normandy, seemed as indifferent to her as she was to him. They had married for power. Unfortunately he was aware of her relationship with his late father. On their wedding night her new young husband had indulged in a frenzy of rut, as if ravishing her would dissolve the ghost of his dead sire. Towards morning she’d thought, ‘This boy’s too young for me.’ At the time, Henry was nineteen. She was thirty. He wanted to get her with child on their wedding night, but her courses were due and within a week he was gone, back to his concubine then off to war against the King of France.

  ‘Master Erasmus, you may approach. Everyone else may leave.’ Three midwives, a nurse, two ladies in waiting and her personal maid, Orianne, filed from her chamber as Erasmus, clutching the wooden box, approached her bed.

  Erasmus, to whom everyone, noble and commoner, accorded the title ‘Master’, was both physician and philosopher, born in a distant province of Greece. He spoke many languages and he astonished the aristocracy of northern Europe with learning he brought from the courts of Byzantium and Baghdad. At the small guild of masters and students in Paris, young monks listened to him with mouths open, looking as stupid as fish. Senior prelates’ lips drew thin. Everything Erasmus said was new, strange and logically irrefutable. When he had first arrived at the French capital his hair was long and greasy. He was now well barbered, his neat beard flecked with grey. He had attended Eleanor as Queen of France and was a favourite with King Louis, who would summon him to the palace to argue philosophy with bishops. After her divorce she wrote to Erasmus asking him to attend her in Aquitaine. The Master had found it politic to say he needed to travel to Rumalia on family business.

  On the morning she had given birth his bronzed cheeks were grey from fatigue. All night he had paced outside her bedchamber while midwives and ladies ran back and forth with cloths and buckets of heated water.

  ‘You’re as dark as a Turk,’ she said as she looked up again from the child at her breast. Eleanor treated him like any other household servant. It would have astounded Erasmus to know that in her heart she held him to be a man of perfect humanity, ennobled by kindness and wisdom, as pure in soul as a true monk. He was worthy of her love.

  Soon after her marriage to Henry, the young Duke had remarked in his casual, amiable manner, ‘Everyone’s heart needs the nourishment of love, Cousin. I can’t give it to you. I have too little time.’ And scant inclination, she’d reflected. ‘As long as you’re discreet and put no cuckoo in the Plantagenet nest …’

  ‘All I am is a womb for making heirs.’

  ‘You’re unjust to yourself, and to me, lady. You’re beautiful, you’re accomplished, you’re an adornment to our House.’

  What you mean, Henry, is that I’m very rich.

  When she was Queen of France, Master Erasmus had played chess to divert her fears of giving birth to another daughter. In Poitiers he spent hours reading the verses of a poet, a Greek like himself. His fluent tongue translated without hesitation the story of a great war in which gods fought beside mortals in a conflict over a stolen queen. In the long, warm, southern evenings Eleanor had fallen into an enchantment with the heroes Erasmus brought to life, their magical armour, their cunning, the king whose city walls towered, impregnable to the Greek besiegers camped on the beach below. Sometimes he told her stories of his homeland; how as a youth he swam in the jewel-bright Aegean. At those moments she gazed at him in a way that made his heart thunder.

  Approaching the bed he asked, ‘May I?’

  Eleanor pulled her robe aside. Erasmus held a square of white cloth over her other breast then pulsed the nipple rhythmically, as if with his lips, until milk sopped the cloth. She handed the baby to him. He carried him to a chair beneath a large, unshuttered window and laid the baby across his lap, pushing a corner of milky fabric between the twitching lips.

  His fingers were haptic. He could tell if a leg were bruised or a muscle torn merely by touch. He murmured to the newborn as his hands and eyes examined first its head, then its limbs, the tiny curled petals of its fingers and toes, its crinkled pod of genitals, the length of purplish cord hanging from its navel. Deftly he tied a knot and severed the inch left over. He lifted the baby to his ear to listen to its chest. When he returned it to her, water glazed his eyes. ‘He’s perfect in every respect.’

  She took the bundle in silence. They stared at each other. With the rising August sun the bedchamber was heating as if in time with the beating of a drum. The room grew so still that, two floors below, the hum of bees working the lavender and roses in the garden drifted up to them.

  ‘Appearances can be deceptive, especially at this tender age.’ He swallowed.

  They had been speaking quietly, but switched from French to Latin, a language that the servants, sure to be listening outside, did not understand. The infant fastened himself back to Eleanor’s breast and the exquisite sensation of his suckling pumped heat into her vagina. She thought back to the night that, to her, would always be the Angel’s first visit.

  An ethereal being had been listening to the magic of the stories Master Erasmus told the Duchess in the glow of autumnal twilight. Like them, it had revelled in the scent of pine rising from the garden. At length it drifted in on the beams of a full moon that shone through the uncovered windows. Her bed turned to silver and there the Angel rolled languorously on its back, like a cat on a strip of warm grass. One night, when the moon was waxing again, the Duchess felt the Angel reappear, sliding down the moonbeams towards her open window. She ordered her maid out of the bedchamber and told Erasmus to undress her. ‘Remove your clothes,’ she said. ‘All of them.’ She invited him to stretch his flank against her silky flesh. ‘You may stroke me,’ she said.

  His hands felt a body as strong as a woman from the washing shed. The Duchess rode daily, in gowns tailored to give her freedom of movement. Out hunting she often chose a stallion. The physician’s hands caressed the long muscles of her thighs but she forbade him to penetrate her. She forbade his fingers and tongue to enter her secret crevices. She permitted him to suck her nipples, she allowed him to lick her. He could stroke and lick her anywhere, so long as her body remained closed to him. While he did everything she permitted he murmured words of adoration.

  As the moon burgeoned, the Angel returned a third time. It confided to the Duchess in its strange, light voice, ‘A spirit son awaits in the unseen world. He craves to enter your womb.’ She was lying skin-to-skin with Erasmus on the silver bed. Slowly, as if in a trance, she turned and pushed him onto his back. Her hands pinned his shoulders to the mattress. In a swift movement she mounted him, riding so hard he gasped ‘No! I can’t …!’ He’d wept with remorse. ‘My heart was bursting,’ he had said.

  She held the shaft of his shrinking penis in her small, strong hand. ‘This heart?’ She drifted her palm across the glisten of its still-swollen knob.

  ‘And the one inside my chest.’

  Immediately afterwards they had resumed caution when, each night and sometimes in the afternoon, they again lay skin-to-skin in her bedchamber. When she panted to Erasmus that his work was done he spilled his seed into squares of silk that her maid, Orianne, would wash.

  But now, on this hot morning, they beheld with joy the result of that night nine months earlier when a being from another world – as Eleanor insisted – had driven her to madness. ‘An angel brought an angel,’ she said. ‘A son perfect in every respect.’

  Inwardly Erasmus groaned. He had no belief in angels.

  ‘You’re to say the child is a month premature.’

  His dark eyes rested on her. ‘The mi
dwives are experienced. I’ll tell them he’s premature, but I doubt—’

  ‘You must convince them.’

  ‘It’s difficult to convince people who’ve seen the truth – and they have, in the placenta.’ He touched the small wooden box.

  She frowned. Henry’s permission to take a lover had been given before his concubine was murdered. Unhinged with grief, beset with melancholy and rage, the Duke suddenly turned to his wife for comfort. ‘Please find it in your heart to love me, Eleanor,’ he’d pleaded. ‘As your husband I’m filled with pride in your beauty, your wit, your courage. Your noble lineage. You were born to be a queen. I’ll make you a queen again.’

  Thanks to the Angel, she was already five months pregnant when this conversation took place. The leonine head in her lap shook with the sobbing of a little boy. ‘And you’re making a baby for me.’

  ‘I’ll make many babies for you, Henry,’ she’d whispered.

  ‘The midwives don’t know when Henry was with me,’ she told Erasmus.

  ‘That’s a blessing.’ In a quieter voice he added, ‘A temporary one.’

  Eleanor speared him with a glance. ‘If my husband discovers my first son came through you, you fear he’ll kill you?’ Her smile was sardonic. ‘I have no fear. If he tries to kill my darling, I’ll insist he kills me too.’ As she gazed at the tiny sleeping face her breath caught in her throat. ‘I’ve prayed since I was first married, when I was fourteen years old, for God to give me a son. He’s made me wait more than half my life.’ A tear rolled down her cheek onto the silky black hair.

  Erasmus quivered as he watched the woman who had driven the King of France almost insane with jealousy, confusion and disrespect. To witness his goddess weep over the head of the infant he’d sired pierced his heart. You have experienced the taste of divinity, a voice whispered to him. Your philosophy cannot undo it. But in two beats his faculty of reason surged back with a jolt. A few years from now nobody will believe this boy is the son of the Duke of Normandy.