Chapter 12: Achambered

No, I was not achambered with my dear friend, the snoring Hugh, nor my old friend and priest mentor Father Andrew, who married my Lady and me to one another before the assembly earlier tonight of family and friends. I am in our own chamber, with my new bride, Elinor, my Lady, my lover, my new best friend, my wife. We speak long into the night, entwined in the alternate excitement and comfort of sweet, romantic love, with a little pain and a lot of ecstasy, fulfilling joy and eager experiments in seeking understanding of the differences and the samenesses of our bodies and those feelings that arise to give us pleasure in our joining.

We are one in our hopes for the future and conjoined in our desire for children to grow and fill our joyous lives together. Elinor has run estates before and she will escort me around our continental possessions first. She has no direct claim on Gervaise’s properties in Flanders nor those rude estates he inherited in Lancashire and Cambridgeshire, but those possessions that have no clear heir will be confiscated by the Crown of England for Gervaise’s acts of treason, says her father, and thereafter charged in trust with both Elinor and I.

“Tomorrow we will work out a scheme by which we will visit all of the places on Rebecca’s list of our combined assets. She will accompany us as we visit these places, she is astute in her observations as what we can easily manage between us, with your new duties and bringing up a family, and what would be better sold off or leased out.”

“So, do we both have to swear allegiance to Charles in Flanders again?”

“Aye, and be prepared to tell him more stories of our trip to the Caen dungeon and our mighty bluff with King Henry at the stronghold at Falaise. You know, sweetheart, that everywhere I went, in whatever country I was in these recent years, I would hear troubadours singing of the love story of ‘Will and Alwen’, or sometimes it was the ‘Song of the Archer and his Lady’, where the heroes in the song both fired darts into the breast of the King her father’s would-be assassin, even in places where they knew not that I was the Archer’s Lady in the song?”

“So you were constantly reminded of us and my family, that has become our family as one now?”

“Aye, constantly, but I was resolved to never bother you by my presence or my feelings for you. Even Rebecca, who was in constant communication with you and I, knowing exactly where you were, said nothing after the first couple times when she noticed me wince at the mention of your name.”

“And Gervaise seemed ambivalent about us.”

“Aye, it seems he would have allowed us to be together, if it were to his advantage, but I knew your sensibilities would have rebelled against such a sordid arrangement, as would I. We both know now that Gervaise was never kidnapped but was actually the ringleader of the rebellion, pretending to support William Clito, who was probably yet another of his many lovers, in his bid for the Dukedom of Normandy and the Crown of England through me as the daughter of my father. I think that is what he was pretending to do back in 1121, when trying to tempt out into the open any would-be rebels, he was identifying them for his future use and then hoped to manipulate them into accepting me as Queen and Gervaise as my Consort, once all other claimants were eliminated. The attempt by my father to annul the marriage, earlier this year, made him show his hand before he was truly ready to carry out his plan.”