The Rain Maiden Page 2

  Hugh Capet was crowned king in 987 and ruled for nine years. His character evidenced significant qualities which would appear again and again in the personalities of the best of the direct Capetians: patient determination, sagacity, passionate instincts bridled by reason, and a certain personal humility. Hugh wore his crown only once: on the day of his coronation.

  Hugh quickly consolidated his position as king and secured a future for his line by having his son Robert crowned heir apparent. But despite Hugh’s foresight and gift for administration, his power remained nominal. The royal demesne at the time consisted of only some four hundred square miles around Paris. (Despite the territorial ambitions of several of Hugh Capet’s successors, the kingdom of France and its importance did not increase appreciably until Philippe-Auguste came into the full flower of his political genius.)

  The mid-eleventh century found France’s aspirations for growth inhibited by the power of the great fiefs which encircled it: Normandy, Brittany, Burgundy, Champagne, Anjou, Aquitaine and Flanders. A great-great-grandson of Hugh Capet was the first of his family to make a serious move in subjugating the surrounding political entities of the continent. Louis VI (called “Le Gros,” for he was hugely fat) was an energetic and successful soldier but he failed miserably when he fiddled in Flemish politics and attempted to foist a Norman cipher upon them after the horrendous murder of Charles the Good had deprived the Flemings of a count. Louis the Fat did have some good instincts, however; his last act as king was to marry his shy young son to the heiress of the richest region on the continent: the Aquitaine. Thus, he affixed its wealth and power to the French crown.

  This Louis (the Seventh, called “Le Jeune”) became King of France in 1137, shortly after his marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine. Unlike his vigorous father (and pitiably unsuited to the harsh potentialities of his office) sweetfaced Louis made the fatal error of falling in love with his beautiful young wife, allowing himself to be manipulated by her for many years. His emotional servitude might have lasted a lifetime but for two circumstances: Eleanor’s youthful caprices evolved into mature adulteries; and the children she bore him were daughters. Thus, in 1152, mild-mannered Louis Capet finally asserted himself and contrived to divorce his wife.

  A strong duality persisted within the character of all the Capet men: cool-headed rationalism, and a flawed sense of spiteful revenge. Applied judiciously these traits tended to balance one another. In the matter of Louis and his marital difficulties, it was clearly a case of spite outdistancing reason. When he divorced Eleanor he had reconciled himself to losing the Aquitaine. He would have done better to consider who would be the next husband to inherit it… .

  By the second half of the twelfth century the primary juggernaut forestalling French power was an English king, Henry II, the greatest ruler in the western world since Charlemagne. He was a brilliant tactician, a wise diplomat, a clever negotiator, a bold and original thinker, and his power bestrode Christendom.

  Henry came to the throne in 1154 after the death of his uncle, King Stephen. From his mother he had inherited his right to rule England and the duchy of Normandy; from his father the counties of Anjou and Maine. Henry’s parents were two of the more remarkable figures of the twelfth century and his own personality reflected their image. Matilda (“Maud the Empress”) was a virile, headstrong, decisive woman. Daughter of Henry I of England, widow of the German Emperor of the same name, she had married Geoffrey, Count of Anjou—a generation younger than herself and the handsomest man in the western world. Geoffrey’s glib charm cloaked a crafty, conniving, brutally tempestuous disposition. He and Matilda loathed each other, but sexually and politically they were well matched. It was from this seething union that one of the legendary figures in English history, Henry Plantagenet, had his beginning.

  After her divorce from Louis, Eleanor—beautiful, rich, accomplished, and now charmingly available—was sought after in marriage by many men. But she had already secretly decided who her next husband would be. She had fallen in love with him even before her separation from Louis when, as a seventeen-year-old, he had come with his father to Paris. In May of 1152, already carrying his child, Eleanor of Aquitaine married young Henry Plantagenet, the Count of Anjou. Two years later she was Queen of England.

  Within five years of her marriage to Henry, Eleanor had borne him four sons. In Paris, Louis—wed for a second time—still had no male heir. The present and future power of England over France seemed assured. French law forbade a female ruler, and the Capetian dynasty seemed doomed to extinction through the direct line.

  It seemed to be. but it was not. A great deal happened in the years between Eleanor’s remarriage (1152) and the death of Louis VII (1180). The marriage of Eleanor and Henry, begun in smug indifference to public opinion, deteriorated explicably in the mass of contradictions which had made it so tantalizing at the outset, as the decade-plus age difference between them began to show. Eleanor found that she could not manage Henry the way she had her first husband, and Henry quickly removed her from any means of trying. Even her beauty and feminine charms lost their sway with a husband who bedded every attractive female within his reach. Eleanor’s love for Henry soured into bitter invective and she eventually coerced her three oldest sons into rebellion against him.

  There was another setback for Henry involving the credibility of his character. The ignominy surrounding the persecution and murder of his one-time best friend, Thomas Becket of Canterbury, tarnished Henry’s reputation as a just king and caused a severe rift with Rome. Henry was forced into the humiliating submission of public penance by the Church. After a marginally successful subjugation of Ireland he returned to public prominence.

  In the meantime Eleanor had once more imposed her will upon Louis. Together with her ex-husband and her oldest sons she incited open revolution against Henry. Though he managed to quell the rising (and imprison his wife) Henry was forced to turn over more territorial and financial largess to his sons than he found comfortable. Tension caused by the rebellion was the onset of a total collapse of loyalty between the king and his sons.

  The most shattering defeat to English hopes of future domination over France had come eight years earlier on a steamy summer night in late August when Louis Capet’s third wife gave birth to his long-awaited heir. This child—christened Philippe—was the “Dieu-Donne” (God-given), the miracle of Louis’s old age and answer to his ceaseless prayers. In recognition of this, Paris rejoiced day and night for weeks.

  Philippe (later to be called “the Conqueror” and self-styled Auguste) took power upon his father’s illness in the fall of 1179. He was only fourteen, but unlike any other fourteen-year-old alive. He had long before set his sights upon a plan of conquest surpassing anything conceived of by earlier Capetian kings. His dream was to rebuild the Frankish empire in the model of Charlemagne’s great state. But far more precious to Philippe was his secret pledge to visit revenge upon Henry Plantagenet for his mastery over Louis. Henry was aging—time was on Philippe’s side. Eagerly he awaited the time when he might undo his father’s rival.

  Yet Philippe faced one monumental stalemate of a far more immediate nature. His resourceful mother, Adele of Champagne, had four equally ambitious brothers who were all highly placed in the realm. Theobold, Henri, William, and Stephen stood together with their sister as an indomitable wall between young Philippe and his hope of independent rule. There were also the brothers of his father, two of them—Robert of Dreux and Peter of Courtenay—both eager to exert their own prestige and authority over their nephew upon Louis’s death. There were hungry male cousins too, both of the Capetian and Champagnois lines—all older than Philippe, all desirous of edging ever closer to the vessel of ultimate power.

  This was the tangled set of circumstances which frustrated Philippe Capet. Amongst his relatives—mother, uncles, cousins—he had not one friend. Resentful of their intrusion, the boy devised a plan of his own with the aid of a most unlikely ally.

  Philip d’Alsace
, Count of Flanders and Vermandois, was the most famous knight in all the world. Handsome, learned, a patron of art and literature, a skilled sportsman, fearless in battle and elegant in manners and dress, he had recently added further glory to his name by fighting the Infidel in the Holy Land. His enormous political importance in the Flemish territories of the north put him in a unique position of power. The county of Flanders was an Imperial fief, but Philip d’Alsace also served as confidant, ally, and occasional arbiter to the monarchs of France and England.

  It was much to his misfortune that Flanders was merely a county and not a kingdom, for if any man on earth deserved a king’s crown it was he. In all aspects of public and personal accomplishment he was without peer. (There was a bit of gossip about Philip, avidly quoted in his lifetime, which showed the color of his personality: that he spoke French better than the King of France-German better than the Emperor—Italian to rival the Pope’s—Latin better than a prelate—and even a smattering of rude English, picked up in the brothels of London.)

  He became Count of Flanders in 1168, taking over from his father, the redoubtable Thierry of Alsace, who had retired to a monastery to repent his sins. Philip’s first act upon his investiture was to marry his youngest sister Margot to Count Baldwin of Hainault, a territory which lay at the southern edge of Flanders. Even at a time when such marital alliances were commonplace throughout civilization, this was a most felicitous arrangement. Together Baldwin and Philip consolidated a cultural, commercial, and industrial renaissance within the Flemish territories, and successfully promoted their own interests. When Philip d’Alsace left for the Holy Land in 1177, placing the business of governing in care of his capable brother-in-law, Hainault and Flanders were the richest territories in Europe.

  The Flemish genius for craftsmanship and financial acuity surpassed that of any other European people. Their cities were models of urban industrial organization: clean, commercially efficient, adaptable to future growth and change. Even the newest styles in architecture from France were swiftly recreated by the builders of the north as town halls and churches in Ypres, Lille, Ghent, Mons, and Valenciennes rose in the Gothic image.

  A primary source of Flemish wealth and western trade superiority was their comer on the wool and textile industries. Brought from England, the wool was worked in Flemish mills and exported throughout the known world. Cotton, linen, and expensive samite cloth provided a further source of trade revenue. Since these industries were virtually owned by Baldwin and Philip, they profited handily. Also, heavy taxes levied against the merchant classes and the petty nobility allowed the two counts to swell their war treasuries and thus retain their personal power which was tantamount to that of any Christian king on earth.

  But Philip d’Alsace wanted more. Having charmed his way into the circle of King Louis of France, he had managed in recent years to supplant the influence of the king’s own relatives; of Adele and her kin; even that of Maurice de Sully—the Bishop of Paris—who was Louis’s close friend and adviser. When Philippe Capet was coronated in the autumn of 1179 it was Philip of Flanders who carried the golden sword of State in the procession. Now, with Louis’s death imminent, Flanders edged himself ever closer to the boy Philippe’s side, anticipating the most dramatic powerplay of a lifetime. It was this scheme which brought him to Mons and the chateau of his brother-in-law Baldwin of Hainault in March, the Year of Our Lord 1180… .

  PART I

  March, 1180

  MARGOT was peevish. She paced back and forth across the rich carpet, the chatelaine at her slender waist glinting like a filament in the sun from the window behind her. The four children had been sent upstairs to bathe and dress for dinner. The table was being laid in the banquet hall. The serving girls were cutting basketsful of fresh flowers from the garden beyond the orchard. But Margot waited, suspense tickling every nerve of her body.

  An hour ago her brother had arrived unannounced from Paris, boasting of the “great news” which he would reveal at dinner. And then, without further explanation, he had gone with Baldwin to the smaller reception hall and closed the door, leaving Margot alone with her curiosity.

  Engrossed, distracted, she started as Edythe plodded up behind her, balancing a tray. Irritation flooded over her and she glared at the girl. “How many times have I told you not to sneak up behind people that way!” Margot snapped. “Don’t carry things to the hall through here. Use the kitchen passage.”

  Edythe stood awkwardly in the center of the room. She was a mild-faced girl with a crippled foot which caused her to limp. Margot—elegant and vain—hated deformity. Her own children: Isabel, Baldwyn, Sibylla and Henry were as beautiful and perfectly formed as their parents. This girl (who was a few years older than Isabel) was a foundling whom Margot would have sent away years ago but for the fact that Isabel enjoyed her company; and the indulgent Baldwin gave Isabel her way in all things. There was some doubt concerning Edythe’s parentage: born of a whore who had slept with half the nobility in Hainault including Baldwin, she was as likely his daughter as anyone else’s. That insult, plus Edythe’s physical handicap, was loathesome to Margot, who never lost an opportunity to taunt the hapless girl. “Don’t stand there like the pitiful cripple you are,” she chided. “Take the tray in and then go upstairs and help Isabel dress her hair. My brother will be anxious to see her. She’s been out in the field all day with Sibylla and it will take forever to make her presentable.”

  Edythe nodded and shuffled toward the kitchen leaving Margot to stand, sulky and alone, her pretty mouth drooping. Idly she toyed with the keys that dangled at her waist. Were they going to talk forever? She stared across the room toward the closed door.

  While Margot waited, Flanders toasted his brother-in-law with a cavalier hoist of his wine cup. They had exchanged pleasantries and Flanders had detailed events of his journey north. Philip d’Alsace delighted in setting the scene for his triumphs. Knowing this, Baldwin waited patiently.

  They were two very different men who had forged a friendship of necessity. Both were aristocrats, equally fitted in statecraft and war; cultured, educated, capable men—patrons of literature, chivalry and the arts; proud Flemings of a noble heritage, intent upon retaining Flemish power within Europe and counterbalancing the social weight of England, France, and the Empire. In these talents and designs they were alike. In character they couldn’t have been more dissimilar. Baldwin was complex, sensitive: a soldier with the instincts of a mystic. Flanders was ruthless. Charming in company, he could be the hardest man on earth when opposed.

  Baldwin had always played the subordinate role in their relationship. He admired his brother-in-law, but disliked the cunning shrewdness Philip wore like a blazon. Baldwin was always a little distrustful of him, and today he felt uneasy about Philip’s sudden appearance to discuss “this most weighty matter.”

  Flanders refilled his cup and tossed Baldwin a knowing smile. “And now my brother, I have such news as you have never heard. …”

  Baldwin regarded his guest with trepidation. Philip was a sly one. There was always a trick or two lurking behind his amber eyes, a jest ready at the end of his clever tongue. Baldwin lifted his own henap and drank from it before asking cautiously, “What is this great news?”

  Quick as he said it, Flanders replied, “I have betrothed your eldest daughter to young Philippe Capet of France.”

  Baldwin choked, swallowed, then tried with difficulty to seize up the remnants of his composure. His words tumbled out between unbelieving lips. “You have seen fit to speak in my place for Isabel? You have betrothed her? But she is already spoken for! We have all sworn an oath that she marry young Harry of Champagne in four years’ time. You know this.”

  With manly grace Flanders sank into a chair. His fine lips pursed in a sneer, he scoffed, “Oh. Baldwin, you are unbelievably short-sighted. An oath! What is that? It is nothing we cannot break. Who would marry his daughter to a count who could marry her to a king? Expand the boundaries of your imagination, Baldwin.
We have something very promising in this. Be willing to take the chance. For yourself—and for me.”

  Baldwin’s shock had paled to uneasiness but he was still regarding Philip with questioning eyes. “Surely my friend this time you have meddled in areas even too dangerous for your lack of discretion. You are, as ever, several leaps ahead of me but I can chart your reasoning. You have undertaken to manage Philippe and you feel that by marrying him to Isabel you shall have even greater say in his future.”

  Flanders retorted with a smile. “There is more, but I think you have pretty much hit the heart of it.”

  “God’s breath,” Baldwin exclaimed in honest amazement. Both men drank in silence for a few moments. Finally Baldwin asked, “Have you forgotten that Philippe is not yet king? Old Louis still lives and while he lives he is the king. You yourself are pledged to him in friendship …”

  “.. . and as Philippe’s political guardian,” Flanders reminded him. Then with a wave of his hand he explained, “Louis’s illness has made him incapable of ruling regardless of how long he lives. His time is short. The greatest favor I can do him now is to help the boy.”

  Baldwin gave Philip a look of scoffing cynicism. “Do not mince words with me. I know you too well to be easily duped. It is not Louis you wish to help, or the boy—only yourself.”

  “And you, Baldwin.”

  The Count of Hainault shook his head in dismay. “This is risky business. There is more involved here than you seem to notice. Have you forgotten Queen Adele?”

  Flanders laughed derisively. “That bitch! She and her covey of ambitious brothers would be the willing ruin of France if they had their way. Louis himself cautioned me to uphold his son’s right to rule against that quintet of Champagnois.”