Read The Young Lion for Free Online Page A

manner, plaited on the crown of her head, falling at the back to her broad, straight shoulders. A diadem of jewels held her veil in place. She demanded Geoffrey address her as ‘Empress’, and to show her displeasure spoke to him in German, a language he barely understood.
    As she stood now in the chapel glaring at her husband, he thought, if only you were not perpetually, invisibly, armoured in chainmail. He could have loved her, perhaps. But in their years of marriage she had never once surrendered to him. His father-in-law had warned: ‘She’s wilful. You may need coercion.’
    At age fourteen Geoffrey had considered himself well-endowed, but his bride had stared at his erect penis in horror. He blushed. Maybe the Emperor of Germany had equipment much larger than his own. ‘Does it displease you, lady?’ he’d asked.
    ‘Displease me? It’s hideous!’
    He was not yet full grown; she was taller than he, but being male, he was stronger. ‘Am I too … small?’
    ‘Small? It’s too big!’ she’d cried. ‘I don’t want that monstrous thing inside me.’
    ‘Like it or not, it’s going in.’ He rammed his elbow between her breasts, into her chest, and with his free hand guided his penis into his wife. The encounter was so chaotic, hasty and unpleasant it was not until the next morning when he saw the sheets that Geoffrey realised his wife had been a virgin. Her Emperor husband had used a finger, for what reason Geoffrey could never discover from her, only that she felt grievous shame, for all her outward pride as an Empress.
    After a few months he left her. When the Lion threatened war on Anjou if he refused to take her back, Geoffrey calculated his chances as the now seventeen-year-old Count of that provinceagainst one of the greatest warriors and richest kings in Europe. The following summer he returned to marital duty and within weeks Matilda was pregnant.
    But every child he sired on her he sired through force. ‘You make me feel like a dog let in to rut on a bitch hound,’ he complained. He noticed, however, that in violation she experienced a bolt of fear and self-loathing so intense it released her into sweet catharsis. She babbled endearments to him in German, French, even Anjevin. She stroked his face and hair.
    At first he was disgusted that he had to rape his wife to give her pleasure. But he was a reflective young man, and on consideration he felt the kind of compassion extended to a person born blind, or imbecile. By the age of twenty he could ravish her with calm. An understanding sprang up between them: wordlessly they agreed their bed was a stage and what they did on it was unrelated to their daily lives. He tied her wrists together and her legs apart and called her names he would not spit at a pig. Matilda gave birth to son after son after son. And as many daughters.
    While her married life remained for her a shameful secret, her husband had one attribute she could publicly applaud: he knew how to fight. He had taken Normandy from the English and much of the Vexin from France. This was no small achievement, for with Normandy came the estates of earls and barons who had broken their vows to have her as the English monarch. And with the Vexin under the swords of their garrisons, the family controlled the western river trade to France. When she was in a generous mood, Matilda could also admit her husband was well educated. She approved the practical side of his education – for example that he had discovered how to capture the castle of Montreuil-Bellay through his reading of the Roman writer Vegetius Renatus. These matters aside, Geoffrey and Matilda shared only the sting of social condescension and its counterweight, vigorous ambition.
    Standing in the chapel, Matilda repeated: ‘You say he’ll be home in three days?’
    Geoffrey rose up and glared back at her. ‘Correct, my lady.’ Three days was a guess.
    You’re lying, she thought.
    Three days later, at dawn, Geoffrey climbed five