So he died violently as he had lived and the nightmare which he had created passed with him.

When Philip brought the news to Blanche, they rejoiced together.

‘Now matters will run smoothly,’ said the King. ‘Louis will be crowned and we shall settle down to peace.’

‘But what of his sons? I believe there are two of them.’

‘Boys … nothing more.’

Blanche was thoughtful, thinking that if by some chance Philip and Louis both died and her own Philip, aged seven, was suddenly King, would she stand by and let a foreigner take the crown? Indeed she would not. She would have him crowned without delay.

Then she thought of Isabella whom she had met briefly soon after her marriage. Languorous, sensuous and very beautiful she had been then. Was she still? She had married John and had seemed to feel few regrets for Hugh, and when one considered the handsome, upright lord of Lusignan and John, surely any woman would have preferred Hugh?

The fact was that although John was dead, there remained Isabella. Would she stand aside and allow Louis to be crowned in place of her son?

She mentioned this to Philip, who shrugged it aside. ‘Isabella!’ Philip laughed. ‘If the tales one hears about her are true it would seem she would be more concerned with her lovers than her son’s inheritance. You know she was more or less John’s prisoner. He hung her lovers over her bed, so they say, which is characteristic of him. I do not think we need concern ourselves with Isabella.’

‘I have a strange feeling,’ said Blanche, ‘that we shall always have to concern ourselves with Isabella.’

‘Nay,’ replied Philip. ‘God is clearly with us.’ He was sober thinking of the price God had asked for his help. Take Ingeburga back. Well, he deserved the luck of being asked to come to England and John’s dying at precisely the opportune moment. Philip was sure that God had set the comely nun in John’s path and put the idea into the monk’s head to poison him.

But it was Blanche’s deduction which proved correct.

Isabella was concerned with her son. Isabella was a very ambitious woman and she was not going to have her rights thrust aside for a foreigner.

Moreover she had two strong men beside her, William Marshal and Hubert de Burgh.

In a short time after John’s death young Henry was crowned and it became clear that those barons who had invited Louis to come and rule them had only wanted to be rid of John. God had removed him and now they would have their rightful king on the throne and if he was but a boy of nine he had strong loyal men beside him.

It was obvious that Louis was no longer welcome in England. He had a choice. He could remain and fight a bloody war, and such a war fought away from home on foreign soil would be an almost certain failure – or he could go home.

He chose the latter.

So the English adventure was over. There was a young king on the throne and as strong men were there to support him, law and order was restored to England. True, John had lost most of his possessions on the Continent (‘And we must keep it so,’ said Philip) but at the time there was nothing to be done.

And while Louis had been away Blanche had given birth to another child – another boy to delight his grandfather.

He was called Robert.

Three boys in the nursery. That was a number to make a king happy.


* * *

While Philip was exulting in the possession of his three grandsons, tragedy struck the nursery. The eldest and the King’s namesake, who had been out hunting in the best of health one day, on the next was too sick to leave his bed.

At first it had seemed some indefinable childish ailment but as two days passed and the child developed a fever there was anxiety for his health and doctors were called from all over the kingdom.

The King sat by his bed with Blanche and Louis, and anxiously they watched together, but the child who had seemed so full of health and high spirits did not rally.

‘What more could I have done?’ Philip demanded. ‘I gave up Agnes, I took back Ingeburga.’ A cold fear came to him. Was God asking him to live with her as her husband? Oh no! That was asking too much. God could not be so cruel. And while he tormented himself he watched his beloved namesake die.

There was deep mourning at court. Young Louis was the important one now. He was a fine upstanding little fellow, a child of whom a King could be proud – but then so had Philip been. Alive and well one week and dead the next! It looked like the hand of an avenging God, for no one could suggest for a moment that the child had been poisoned.

As though in compensation Blanche almost immediately became pregnant and in due course gave birth to another boy. She wanted to call him Alphonso after her father, but this was not a French name. However, Philip was so delighted that there should be another boy in the nursery that he agreed providing the French form of the name – Alphonse – was used. He was delighted, he said, that she showed how deeply she cared for her father that she wished her son to be called after him.

Philip admitted to himself that few kings could be as content with their heirs as he was with his. He thought of his beloved Richard Coeur de Lion – who had had none – and Henry, Richard’s father, who had watched his sons – one by one – turn against him.

Louis would never do that. He could say without reservation that in Louis he had the best of sons. He remembered how, long ago, he had forbidden him to ride into the tourneys and not once had Louis disobeyed him; although the decree had put him into a difficult situation and might secretly have earned him the name of coward in some quarters.

Louis, Robert, Alphonse and then John all following each other and taking as little time as possible to do so. Four healthy grandsons. How Philip gloated! God could not have been displeased after all.


* * *

News reached the Court of France which astonished all those who heard it. Queen Isabella, widow of King John, had arrived in Lusignan with her daughter Joan who was betrothed to Hugh de Lusignan, but having set eyes on Isabella he had decided to marry her instead.

Philip laughed heartily.

‘I remember her well. When John made off with her they called her the Helen of the thirteenth century. To see her was to understand why. I believe quite a number of men were completely bewitched by her. John certainly was. As for Hugh de Lusignan he waited all these years for her. But I doubt not that he has married trouble.’

‘I doubt it not either,’ said Blanche.

Philip looked sideways at his daughter-in-law. She would be remembering her meeting with Isabella; and she would feel that natural antipathy to her which he supposed most women would feel towards one who must put them all in the shade.

He wondered whether Isabella had lost any of that allure. He doubted it. Women like that kept it to the end of their days and the fact that Hugh had taken her instead of her young daughter suggested that she still retained that potent power to attract men.

Blanche was uneasy yet she could not understand why the thought of Isabella’s being near should make her so. She had felt an inexplicable revulsion when they had met and in spite of what most people would think, it had nothing to do with envy of a blatant ability to attract men.

‘I trust Hugh will be happy with her,’ she said to Louis.

‘He has never married and it is almost as though he waited for her, so he must be sure of his feelings.’

‘I would suspect that she brought her daughter to Lusignan with the idea of marrying the bridegroom herself.’

Louis did not really believe that was possible, but then he was a very innocent man.

When news came to the court that Hugh refused to send her daughter back to England until Isabella’s dowry was sent out, the comment was that this would be Isabella’s doing. For all his valour Hugh was a quiet man.

‘Depend upon it,’ said Philip, ‘she will lead him by the nose.’

‘I wonder how she likes being the wife of a count when she has been a queen,’ murmured Blanche.

‘I’ll wager you she does not like it at all,’ said Philip.

‘Then,’ replied Blanche, ‘the chances are that she will attempt to do something about it.’

‘What can she do?’ asked Philip. ‘She married him of her own free will. She is back to what she would have been if John had not seen her riding in the forest. At least Hugh won’t hang her lovers over her bed.’

‘It is to be hoped that she will not take any and be satisfied with her husband.’

Philip shrugged his shoulders and Blanche’s uneasiness persisted.


* * *

For some time Philip had been plagued by the Albigensians against whom, because they were in the South of France, the Pope had commanded him to campaign. To go into battle with them was going into battle for the Church and it was an opportunity for a man to receive a remission of his sins where, before this sect has arisen, he would have to make the long, tedious and dangerous journey to the Holy Land to achieve the same purpose.

The Albigenses, so called because they lived in the diocese of Albi, were a people who loved pleasure, music and literature; they were by no means irreligious, but they liked to indulge in freedom of thought. Their great pleasure was to discuss ideas and examine doctrines and the Pope, recognising in this a danger, sent men of the Church to preach to these people and point out the folly and the danger of their discourse. The result was what might have been expected. The preachers were listened to at first and when it was discovered that they had not come to develop ideas but to prevent the discussion of them, were ignored.