Lady of the English - By Elizabeth Chadwick Page 0,46

baby swelling her womb was a boy this time. She would soon go into confinement for the birth and Geoffrey was glad because it would give him respite from her querulous demands. His patience was wearing thin, but at least her fecundity was proof that his seed was potent.

She stood before him now, one hand on her gravid belly.

Every finger glittered with gold rings and her gown trailed behind her in a mute display of extravagance.

“You cannot go to Compostela,” she pouted.

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Geoffrey had been toying with the idea of a pilgrimage.

The shrine of Saint James at Compostela was one of the holiest places in Christendom and petitioning the saint for guidance appealed to his sense of irony since Saint James held particular meaning for his wife and his father-in-law. Matilda had misap-propriated the hand from the imperial treasury and her father had presented it to Reading Abbey. Geoffrey doubted Saint James would ever lie intact, but then for a saint who had performed a miraculous translation from Jerusalem to Spain, he supposed a few scattered bones did not matter. “Why not?” he replied impatiently. “You will be in confinement, so you will not see me anyway. My soul will benefit from the prayer and my body from the exercise.”

“Sire, you should not go,” said Engelger de Bohun, one of his knights. “Not while you do not have a legitimate heir and the matter of your wife is still in debate.”

“I will not be told my business,” Geoffrey snarled. His

“wife,” he thought bitterly. To his consternation he found he missed her. He needed to be the winner but she had bettered him. He wanted to dominate her and wear her on his arm like a tamed goshawk. He wanted to see the envy in other men’s eyes that he had an empress at his beck and call. Aelis bored him because she was no more than a silly, twittery garden bird with false gaudy feathers, while Matilda was the genuine article. He was caught in a cleft stick. He could not afford to alienate Henry of England by seeking an annulment because when Henry died, a kingdom and a duchy would be his for the taking. He had to accept the bitch back if he wanted power.

Aelis said in a wheedling voice, “At least wait until after your son is born, my lord, or send someone with prayers in your stead.”

Geoffrey shot her an irritated glance and compressed his lips.

His daughter continued to roar and, losing patience, Geoffrey 116

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gestured the nurse to take her away. As the woman left the room with her wriggling, red-faced charge, an usher made his way over to Geoffrey and bowed. “Sire, a messenger is here from England bearing letters from King Henry.”

“Bring him to my solar,” Geoffrey said. “I will see him alone.”

“Sire.”

Clicking his fingers to his favourite hound, Bruin, Geoffrey left his courtiers and his sulking mistress and climbed the stairs to his chamber on the floor above, where he conducted his business. Rolls of parchment and ledgers lined the open shelves.

A book box stood on the tiled floor filled with various volumes both secular and religious. A lectern was placed conveniently in front of a cushioned bench. This was Geoffrey’s sanctuary and reminded him of his father because they had so often worked here together on the business of the domain. Geoffrey had even hung one of his father’s cloaks on a peg near the door, and took comfort from its presence. The messenger carried letters but no verbal communication beyond a formal greeting. Geoffrey dismissed him and gazed at the square of parchment, the seal of England, rendered in brown wax and attached with strips of red and green braid. Eventually he picked up the penknife from the side of the lectern and cut it open. The dog flopped at his side and, with a sigh, rested its nose on its paws.

The usual salute met his scrutiny . Henry by the Grace of God, King of England and Duke of Normandy, greetings. The body of the letter, written by a scribe, was a list of the terms Geoffrey was required to fulfil before Matilda would agree to return to him and they made Geoffrey suck in his stomach. Henry did not know what he was asking even though he ought to. An old man, he thought, doting on his daughter, and thus made foolish. He read the lines again, still more than