The Courts of Love - Jean Plaidy [83]
“It was hers by right,” he said. “Was she not the daughter of the King? Stephen had no right to take England from her. She should have been Queen.”
“I should have thought the people would have rallied to her,” I replied. “Was it because she was a woman that they turned to Stephen?”
“No. Stephen is as weak as water . . . but he has charm. He is affable. He is approachable. He smiles on them and they like him, in spite of the fact that he is ruining their country. Matilda . . . well, she is a haughty woman. She cannot forget that she was Empress of Germany. The English do not like her manner.”
“Did she not see that she was spoiling her chances?”
“My mother is not a woman to take advice. Her life has not been easy. She was five years old when she was sent to Germany to marry the Emperor. He was thirty years older than she. There she was made much of, spoiled for discipline forevermore: She was unprepared for what was to follow; and when he died and she was brought home, she was twenty-three years old. She clung to the title of Empress—indeed, she still calls herself Empress now and insists that others do. She is a very forceful woman, my mother; and when at the age of twenty-five she was married to my father, she considered him far beneath her. She was ten years older than he, and she despised the boy of fifteen who was descended from the Counts of Anjou—who in their turn were descended from the Devil. Imagine it. Poor Mother.”
“Since she is so forceful, the daughter of a King and the widow of an Emperor, I wonder she did not refuse to marry him.”
“Her father was even more forceful. Matilda wanted the throne, so she was obliged to submit. For years she would have little to do with my father. She despised him and let him know it. Then after about six years she decided to do her duty and I was born. A year after me there was Geoffrey and after him William. So at length she produced the three of us.”
“You are fond of her and were fond of your father too.”
“They both did their best for me, but we boys were brought up in a Court where there was continual strife. I have never known two people to hate each other as they did.”
“Perhaps it has made you strong.”
In turn I told him of my childhood, of those first five years spent in my grandfather’s Court. I told of the jongleurs and their songs which enlivened the long evenings while the fires glowed and the light was dim. I told him of my bold grandfather and Dangerosa, and the miracle which Bernard had conjured up to show my father the error of his ways.
He told me of the beautiful woman who had wandered into his ancestor’s castle and so charmed him that he married her, and how sons were born to her, how she always made excuses why she could not go to church and one day when she was prevailed upon to do so, she was confronted by the Host and suddenly disappeared and was never seen again.
“This is the story which gives rise to the legend,” he said. “They say the woman came from Satan and that we Angevins are the spawn of the Devil.”
“Am I to believe that?”
“You will discover,” he replied.
They were wonderful days which I wanted to go on forever, but of course they could not. He was restless; he had lands to conquer. I should have to wait for these periods when we could be together. I told myself that they would be the more precious because I had to wait for them.
Henry had placed people all over France and England. He said that if one was going to take the right action one must know what the enemy planned. He must have as much information as possible. It was from one of his men that we heard about the reaction to our marriage at the French Court.
Louis had rarely been so startled.
How blind he was! He had seen me with Henry. Had he not noticed that overwhelming attraction between us? Of course he had not. What did Louis know of such