Lady of the English - By Elizabeth Chadwick Page 0,38

boy piped up from among the group of children, and was hastily shushed by his nurse.

Henry turned to look at him. “I have not decided yet,” he said. “That is a tale for another day.” 95

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Twelve

Angers, Anjou, Summer 1129

G eoffrey was drunk again. Matilda clenched her fists as she listened to him roistering with his companions in the antechamber. She tried to ignore him and to keep her life separate from his, but he refused to leave her in peace. He was always swaggering about, showing her up, belittling her in front of his cronies. Recently his behaviour had deteriorated as she remained barren despite his taking her every day that she wasn’t menstruating or that wasn’t banned by the Church. He would hit her and bellow when she tried to discuss the business of ruling with him. With his father now king of Jerusalem, Geoffrey was count of Anjou and had no intention of sharing his power with a wife, especially one who saw fit to argue with him and contradict him.

He staggered into the chamber, a wine cup sloshing in his hand, his cheeks flushed, and his eyes glazed. He had grown again in the year since their marriage and broadened out. The bones of his face were more prominent and masculine, but the expression cladding them was still that of a petulant adolescent.

“You will curtsey to me because I am your lord and husband,” he slurred at her when she did not rise from her seat in the window embrasure.

Rage and defiance welled up within her. “You are a foolish LadyofEnglish.indd 96

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boy,” she retorted with contempt, “and I do not bow my head to infants.”

“And you, madam, are a hag too old for child-bearing,” he sneered. “Or perhaps you do not quicken because your mannish attitudes prevent you from being a full woman. And I am saddled with this travesty!”

“No more of an abomination than me being made to wed an idiot who is as far beneath me as a pile of dung under the sky,” she flashed back.

Geoffrey lurched over to her and struck her back-handed across the face. Matilda welcomed the sting of the blow as it spread across her cheek, because it confirmed her feelings about him. “You unman yourself,” she scorned him. “You may be my husband, but you will never be my lord and master and you will never amount to anything more than a scrawny cockerel on top of your little midden heap! I shall never yield to you, never!”

“By Christ, you bitch, you will!” He struck her again and she leaped to her feet and struck him back with the full force of all her misery and frustration. The sound of the blow was a sharp crack. The edge of one of her rings caught the corner of his eye. He gasped and recoiled, cupping his face, and then lowered his hand and looked at the blood on his fingers.

“By God, you have gone too far!” He seized her arm and began to beat her with his fists, pummelling into her with all of his own young man’s rage, made the more potent for his being drunk. At first she fought back, kicking him, raking him with her nails, drawing blood, but he was stronger and faster.

He knew where to land his blows to make them count and he felled her, and then kicked her in the ribs as she lay on the floor until she could barely breathe and the world closed into red darkness around her. She was barely aware of him dragging her to the bed. The awful thought blossomed that he was going to rape her in front of his cronies. His wine-sodden breath sobbed 97

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in and out of his lungs as he unfastened his belt and proceeded to tie her hands around the foot of the bed. “You will learn to do as you are told!” he panted. With a final kick to her ribs, he strode to the door and flung it wide so that all the court could see her. “No one is to help her or touch her or talk to her!” he snarled. “Do you hear? No one, or they shall be dealt the same treatment!” He shoved his way through them, cuffing at the blood trickling down his face. People made way for him, some with expressions of deep shock on their faces, but many nodding with approval.