only hope was in not conceiving, because then the marriage could be annulled. Her laundry maid, Osa, had told her the necessary steps to take to avoid conception.
The women had brought her to the great chamber where the marriage was to be consummated. Matilda gazed at the fine, big bed with its clean linen sheets and embroidered covers, and at the painted chests and rich brocade hangings. Her women had earlier set out her ivory combs, her pots of unguents, and her jewel and trinket boxes. Perfumed smoke twirled from a small brazier burning frankincense and bark, but she only felt nauseated. Holy and magnificent surroundings only served to point up the ugliness of what was happening to her.
Adeliza was nodding with approval as she looked round.
“You can make yourself a very pleasant chamber here,” she said. “All will be well.”
“So you keep saying,” Matilda said shortly. “Are you trying to convince yourself too?”
Adeliza recoiled for an instant but swiftly rallied. “You must give your husband a chance at least. Come now. Drink some of this hot wine and let me help you disrobe.” Matilda suffered Adeliza’s ministrations with a clenched jaw.
She wanted to strike her away but knew it would be unfair to vent her anger on her stepmother, who was as powerless as she 85
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was. Neither of them had a choice, but Adeliza was the better at adapting.
Matilda stared at the wall as the women removed her red silk wedding gown and gold belt; the gilded slippers and golden hose with brocaded garter ties edged with pearls; her crown of golden flowers; her veil; the ribbons wound through her braids.
All of it was carefully hung up or put away, leaving her standing barefoot in a plain chemise with simple ties at the throat. Like a virgin, she thought as the women combed down her hair until it lay like a dark-brown waterfall to her hips. A woman stripped of her power, no longer an empress, but a sacrifice. “I need to visit the latrine,” she told the assembled women and crossed the room to the small dark chamber set in the thickness of the wall.
Hidden in there by Osa, under the piles of moss and squares of rag for wiping purposes, was a small vial of vinegar. Biting her lip, Matilda took a piece of moss, tipped the vinegar over it, and, having pulled up her chemise, squatted and inserted the swab as high up into her female passage as she could, just as Osa had told her to do. It would prevent conception, the laundress said. There was always a danger that the man might find out, but it had a reasonable degree of success if a woman wanted to avoid pregnancy—and was certainly better than putting parsley leaves under his pillow or wearing a charm of weasel’s testicles around one’s neck.
Task accomplished, Matilda returned to the women. She could smell vinegar on her fingers and went to splash her hands in the laver, and then anointed her wrists with rose-scented unguent.
“Are you all right?” Adeliza eyed her with concern.
“Yes.” Matilda nodded stiffly. Behind her, the women fussed with the bed, freeing the hangings from their hooks and turning down the covers. Matilda climbed between the sheets, pulled her chemise straight, and accepted a cup of wine from Adeliza.
Was it better to be drunk or sober? she wondered.
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The groom arrived in a rowdy jostle of companions and Matilda began to feel queasy. Geoffrey wore a plain white shirt, the equivalent of her chemise, and was still dressed in his hose and braies with a fur-lined cloak clasped across his breast.
Matilda prayed for him not to remove his clothes because she didn’t want to see his narrow white boy’s body.
Geoffrey’s companions were laughing uproariously and unsteady on their feet. Two of them swung each other around in an impromptu dance, legs flicking, heel and toe. Matilda clenched her jaw, determined to be regal in the face of this adolescent buffoonery. One young man removed the crown of flowers from his head and, dancing over to the bed, set it slantwise on her dark hair. She hesitated, torn between adjusting it to stay, or dragging it off and hurling it across the room. Adeliza leaned to take it from her, the smile on her face now set like stone.
“This is a circus!” Matilda hissed at her. “Are you still going to tell me that it will be all right?”
“All