The Revolt by Dupont-Monod Clara

Author:Dupont-Monod, Clara [Dupont-Monod, Clara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781529402872
Publisher: Quercus Publishing
Published: 2020-01-15T05:00:00+00:00

HER LIBERATION, YES, “THAT OUR father should liberate our mother and show clemency”, those were my elder brother’s last words. Blood was pouring from his mouth and soaking into the flagstones, but he pronounced them distinctly before his head rolled, and with such intensity that a messenger set off straight away to inform the Plantagenet. Henry was wearing his ring, had pressed the sapphire to his lips. At the threshold of death, he had held fast to noble values: forgiveness and clemency. After turning against me, after affronting me and devastating Aquitaine, he was at last coming back to himself.

I retain only a confused memory of the following days. I hear the bells ringing in anger, the rustle of the linen clothing Henry was wearing at his coronation and will wear in his tomb. He will be buried in Fontevraud Abbey. Faces move past, full of concern: the bishops of Cahors and Agen, the abbot of Dalon, the prior of Rozac, and others whose names I have forgotten. I meet the clear gaze of Philip, the new king of France, whom I knew as a child. I read in his eyes that we will not remain friends. Something is afoot. But now is not the time to worry about it. Now is the time for carousing, for consoling betrayed brothers. I feel Mercadier’s grip as he lifts me from a table and loads me onto his shoulder, crosses the courtyard and drops me onto a bed, while the Plantagenet’s sobs resound throughout the castle.

I am missing my mother. I don’t even know if she has been informed. “She knows,” Mercadier assures me. “Your father sent an emissary to bring her the news.”

And so my father did not go himself to bring her the news of the death of their son.

Matilda arrives from Germany with her husband, the duke of Saxony. I restrain myself from running towards her. She is not smiling. She has just lost a child and is pregnant again. Just like Eleanor, years ago, when William died as she was expecting Matilda.

I press my sister’s hands to my lips. A beautiful young mother in mourning, so like ours. I know so little about her. What do her days look like, what does she read, what are the landscapes she sees when she awakes? But the only thing I say to her is that she should go to England very soon. Our mother needs to see one of her children.

I have much to do. I start by stripping Geoffrey of his castles in Brittany, since he supported Henry in his war against me. I reduce this stupid little brother to nothing. He doesn’t own much anymore and his lords greet him with insults. They say that he organises a tournament every day to forget his humiliation. I hope he ends up trampled by a horse.

Then I take control of Henry’s men. Mercenaries, as always. I select eighty of them, men from the Basque country, as tough as they come, and have them blinded in the public square.

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