‘Poor Berengaria!’ said John to Isabella. ‘She had a sad time with Richard. He was a strange man. He didn’t care for women. You wouldn’t have liked that, my Isabella, would you?’
‘Perhaps he would have been different had I been his queen.’
‘Ho. The vanity! Nay, Richard chose his loves from minstrel boys. You know the story of Blondel. I used to wish I’d cut out his tongue before he went singing round the castles of Europe.’
‘You were not fond of your brother?’
‘Fond of Richard, who took the throne from me when my father had promised it to me!’
‘And Richard promised it to Arthur at one time. Poor John, you were hard done by.’
‘Ah, but I came into my own, did I not?’
‘You did.’
‘And secured the greatest prize in the world … snatched it right from under the nose of that Hugh of whom you speak so highly. Why so? What happened that you should grow warm in praise of him? By God, if he ever laid hands on you I’d have him flayed alive.’
She laughed up at him provocatively. ‘Forget not that I was betrothed to him.’
‘And did he take advantage of that? You were a virgin when you came to me, I’ll swear.’
‘Ah yes,’ she said. ‘I was a virgin but a somewhat regretful one.’
‘You mean … you tried to seduce him and he would have none of it?’
‘He is a man such as you could not understand, John.’
‘And you did?’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I did. He thought me too young and would never touch me.’
‘Different from me, eh?’
‘As different as it is possible to be.’
‘And now I have him, Isabella. He is going to be brought to Court and there he will be sentenced to fight a duel, and I shall make sure he is not the victor.’
‘Are you afraid of him?’
‘Afraid of a petty count! What mean you?’
‘That I might like him better than I like you.’
She had gone too far. She had seen the red lights in his eyes.
She ran her lips over his face and murmured: ‘Could you be as foolish as that? Poor Hugh, if he could but hear you now.’
She knew how to rouse him and she did.
There was a slight change in their relationship. She was no longer the child who marvelled at everything that was happening to her; she was taking a great deal of the pomp and luxury, the sexual excitement for granted. She had a will of her own and had never been faced with serious opposition.
She knew though that John was capable of the utmost cruelty. At the moment he wanted nothing but her; yet when he had talked of Hugh and had believed for a moment that she was more interested in her one-time suitor than he wished her to be, there had been such vicious cruelty momentarily unveiled in his expressive face that she had felt a tremor of alarm.
It was pleasant to welcome Berengaria.
‘Poor Berengaria!’ Isabella called her. What a sad life she had had! John joked about her relationship with Richard, when Berengaria had always been watching and hoping, and Richard ignoring her.
She was sad too but she was clearly impressed by Isabella’s startling beauty.
They talked together in Isabella’s apartment and Berengaria said how pleased she was to see John so happily married.
‘It is wonderful,’ said Berengaria wistfully, ‘to know such happiness as you must. It is obvious that the King is deeply enamoured of you. You are so young. Is it possible that you are not yet fourteen years of age?’
‘’Tis true,’ replied Isabella. ‘But I believe I am in advance of my years.’
‘You would need to be – so young and yet a wife. I was much older than you when I married.’
Isabella wondered what she herself would be like when she was Berengaria’s age.
It was pleasant to bask in her admiration. At the same time there was something depressing about Richard’s queen. She was so clearly an unhappy woman and she was too given to talking of the past. She kept bringing John’s sister Joanna into the conversation, and Joanna was dead – had died in childbirth. Apparently she and Berengaria had been great friends.
To talk of women dying in childbirth was not a pleasant topic for a young wife, although John had said that he did not want children yet because they would spoil her body and he liked it as it was.
Berengaria explained to John what a desperate position she was in. She had settled in Le Mans which was part of her dowry but she owned lands in England and she hoped that John would compensate her for these.
John was affable: as always he was ready to promise because he never considered it necessary to honour his promises.
‘My dear sister,’ he said, ‘you may rest assured that I will do everything within my power to help you. Now let us see what I can do. You shall have Bayeux and there are two castles in Anjou which shall be yours. It is only right that they should be. Richard would have wished it,’ he added piously.
Berengaria wept a little. ‘I wish Richard could hear you now,’ she said. ‘I don’t think he thought you would be so good to me.’
‘I am accustomed to being maligned,’ replied John. ‘Of course I was wild in my youth. What man worth his salt is not? But with responsibilities one changes. I have decided to give you a thousand marks a year.’
She kissed his hand and told him Heaven would reward him.
‘For,’ she said, ‘but for you, I should be little more than a pauper and have no alternative but to throw myself on to the mercy of my family. I had considered going to live with Blanche, my sister, but much as I love her I should hate to accept her bounty.’
‘You may trust me to see that you are well provided for,’ said John.
When she left Chinon Berengaria took an affectionate farewell of John and his younger Queen.
‘What will become of her, I wonder,’ said Isabella as they watched her ride away.
‘She will go and live with her sister Blanche of Champagne,’ said John with a smile, who had no intention of giving her what he had promised. Why should he, he reasoned. Let her sister provide for her.
‘Richard was never a husband to her,’ said Isabella. ‘She must have been very miserable.’
John gripped her arms, putting his face close to hers. ‘What would you have done, my desiring and desirable one, had you been married to Richard?’
‘Find lovers,’ she answered promptly.
He laughed, but he remembered that later.
When the day arrived for John to meet the Lusignans in a court set up by the King of France and presided over by him, John failed to put in an appearance.
This was exactly what Philip was hoping for. He had taken advantage of the truce between them and was prepared now to go into action. By not appearing John had given Philip the excuse he needed to go against him. As a vassal of Philip for Normandy he had insulted the King by flouting his wishes.
John, said Philip, must be taught a lesson.
He sent to Brittany asking that Arthur come to him as he would knight him and accept his fealty as Count of Anjou, Duke of Brittany and all the land with the exception of Normandy which was now in the hands of John.
Guy de Thouars, realising that this meant Philip was now prepared to help Arthur against John, most joyfully travelled with his young stepson to rendezvous with Philip.
This was the signal for John’s enemies to rise; and the Lusignans caught up with Arthur at Tours and there pledged to support him in his efforts to take from John not only his Continental possessions but the crown of England as well.
In the Abbey at Fontevraud the aged Eleanor was resting after the strenuous journey to Castile. She could congratulate herself that although it had impaired her health still further yet it had been a success and her granddaughter was indeed married to the son of the King of France. She had never lost sight of the fact that it was in that direction that real danger lay.