Beloved Enemy (60 page)

“We will never again have this chance,” she said. “We will have lost Toulouse forever.” That dull, pious Louis should have been the cause of this loss was like gall and wormwood in her heart.

“We? We? I never wanted it!” Henry shouted. “
You
wanted it,
you
gulled me into it! This whole thing was your idea from first to last. Did I not say right from the start that this was a foolhardy venture?”

Eleanor was taken aback. So he did remember where the idea had originated—when it suited him. He
had
said the venture was foolhardy, but not with any great seriousness, as she recalled.

Henry threw his sword on the ground, kicked several shields across the floor, then stomped out of the pavilion. Thomas followed on his heels, still urging him to continue the siege. Outside, she could hear raised voices as Henry and his chancellor got into a heated argument, the only serious breach between them that Eleanor could remember.

Although Henry was hungry for power, she had long suspected that he had no real taste for bloodshed or war, preferring to win by other means, if possible. Even worse than the loss of Toulouse was the fact that it should be Louis who had shown her husband to be less than invincible. It was the first visible chink in Henry’s armor.

Five months later, back in Poitiers, Henry pounded the table with an iron fist. Silver bowls rattled and the salt cellars fell over. “Raze the viscount’s castle.”

Eleanor gasped aloud. “Henry, you cannot mean—”

“Oh, but I do mean,” he said, raising his voice so it could be heard by everyone seated in the great hall of the Maubergeonne Tower on this unseasonably warm evening in late February. “I said raze the castle and I mean just that.”

A tense silence fell over the assembled crowd of Aquitainian vassals, barons, and prelates. Six Norman knights seated at the high table immediately rose to their feet.

“God’s eyes, not this instant, you hotheads.”

The knights resumed their seats.

“But this lord has not deserved such treatment,” Eleanor said. Her heart hammered against her ribs as she strove to keep her voice steady, her demeanor calm. “You have already ejected him from his lands at Thouars.”

Henry, his face set, did not reply. She saw his eyes rove distastefully over the platters of boiled carp, pike, roasted wildfowl, pheasant, and partridge. He plunged his dagger into a silver bowl set in the middle of the high table, and speared a piece of fish awash in a thick sauce. He gazed at it suspiciously, then sniffed it, like a wary hound nosing at a carcass.

“I don’t care for the smell of this.”

“All the fish on the table were freshly caught this morning or yesterday. Those stewed lampreys were just made.”

He threw the offending piece of eel to a foraging hound. “I won’t touch lampreys, Nell. You know that.”

Henry’s grandfather had died as a result of eating stewed lampreys. Of course she knew that Henry refused to eat the dish. How could she have neglected to remind the steward? Like everything else she had done since leaving Toulouse, she could not seem to put a foot right.

“I’m sorry, Henry. It slipped my mind.”

He nodded, finally cutting himself a leg of wildfowl cloaked with fried parsley.

“My dear, please,” she said, picking up the threads of their discussion. “Won’t you listen to reason?” Aware of every eye fixed upon them, Eleanor lowered her voice. “Such an act against the viscount will only create more strife among my vassals.”

“
Your
vassals, Madam? I thought they were mine.”

How could she have been so tactless? “
Our
vassals, naturally.”

Eleanor’s stomach plummeted. He was going to continue being difficult, as he had been ever since they had left Toulouse. In truth, whenever they made a progress through Aquitaine, Henry was apt to be difficult, but this time he seemed compelled to exercise his authority with increasing force—as though trying to prove something to himself after having backed down before Louis of France. Although, despite her initial objection she had not continued to reproach him, Eleanor knew he sensed her withdrawal. It was unjust, perhaps, and not deserved, but she couldn’t help it. Henry had allowed Louis of France to get the better of him and his golden luster had slightly dimmed. Now he was making Aquitaine pay for it.

In Limoges, where they had just spent the better part of a week, he had made the young baronial heir his ward, then turned over the reins of administration to two Normans. Didn’t he understand that appointing outsiders to important posts only reinforced her vassals’ opposition? In Bordeaux he had accepted the homage of her vassals to himself and their sons, Henry and Richard, then taken hostages to guarantee the vassals’ fidelity, a clear sign of how little he trusted them.

Visits to her duchy were infrequent, which caused Eleanor much sorrow; on the other hand, Aquitaine always proved such a source of friction between herself and Henry that perhaps it was just as well. There had been a time when she hoped they might live for long periods of time in her beloved domains. But it was now painfully evident that she would never be able to live in Aquitaine with Henry.

“More strife hardly seems possible considering the disorders that constantly beset Aquitaine,” Henry continued. “England, Normandy, and Anjou are under my control.
Your
duchy alone continues to be a source of unrest.” He finished chewing the wildfowl and began to pick his teeth with the point of his knife. “My policies, my reforms—everything I’ve done with great success in other parts of my realm—is unsuccessful here. Every region in Aquitaine is suspicious of every other region. The Gascons mistrust the Poitevins; the Poitevins look down on the folk of Limoges, and so on. No one part of Aquitaine agrees with any other part.”

Was this any different from how the Welsh felt about the English, or how the English regarded the Scots? Eleanor wished she dare say what was in her heart: There is one thing everyone in Aquitaine does agree on—their resentment of you and your attempts to curtail their independence.

How many times had she told him that, since time out of mind, the dukes of Aquitaine had tried to institute a central form of control over the turbulent duchy—all to no avail. Again and again she had urged a loose rein, a benign presence, a willingness to allow authority to rest with the local lords—this was the only way. But now, smarting under his recent lack of achievement, Henry refused to listen.

“Not to mention those that don’t agree with the doctrine of Holy Church, Sire,” said Thomas Becket. “Heresies run rife here. Provençal society in particular is a breeding ground for every spiritual plague imaginable.”

Eleanor bristled. This was Bernard of Clairvaux and Abbé Suger all over again. “What exactly do you mean by that? Aquitainians are all Christians. A few minor deviations here and there do not mean they worship the devil.”

“Minor deviations?” The chancellor sent her a withering look. “One is either a true believer in the Faith, a heretic, or an infidel. Arabs, Jews, and Cathars abound in this duchy. The Albigensians, some of whose leaders, I understand, are actually women—” he glanced pointedly at Eleanor—“make many converts, I’ve heard, even among the nobles. What says Holy Writ? ‘He who is not with me is against me.’ ”

Henry shrugged dismissively. Although Eleanor suspected that despite his apparent disdain for religious matters Henry strongly favored orthodoxy, he was not of a mind to suppress heretical cults or persecute Arabs or Jews so long as they did not openly oppose his policies.

“The Cathars and others do not pose a threat, Henry,” she said quickly, ignoring Becket.

“I never said they did. But your vassals do. God’s eyes!” He glowered. “You ask
me
to listen to reason. Do your vassals behave reasonably?”

She could not deny that all too frequently they behaved either like witless dolts or reckless barbarians.

“Henry, I realize what you are trying to do here and I support your efforts, you know I do. But to bring all these disparate elements under one central authority will take time. These nobles and their ancestors have done as they pleased for three hundred years. It is bred in the bone. I beg of you, do not move hastily.”

Henry glanced at her. She gave him a winning smile while her eyes implored him. After a moment he sighed impatiently and stuck his knife into the wood of the table; the blade quivered back and forth.

“All right. All right!” He looked around the table and threw up his hands. “I ask you, how can you deny a woman anything when she looks at you like that?” There was a murmur of tentative laughter. “The castle will not be razed—at this time.”

Eleanor let out her breath in a long sigh, knowing she dared not argue further now. At least she had bought her vassal a reprieve. Not that the arrogant fool deserved it.

Down the table there was a discreet cough. “Ah, Majesty, if I may remind you?” Thomas Becket slid his eyes sideways toward Eleanor. “This vassal of the queen’s,” he emphasized the word queen’s, “this vassal has long been a troublemaker in the duchy. It might be well to recall that he sided with your late brother, when Geoffrey attempted to rebel against you.”

“By God, that’s right! I’d forgotten.”

“If you fail to make an example of him it will be said you are no longer master here. After Toulouse, Sire, it would be unwise …”

“You’re right, Thomas.” Henry fixed Eleanor with a hard look. “The viscount’s castle must be razed, Nell. There’s an end to it.”

Eleanor saw a brief smile cross the chancellor’s face. At this moment her hatred of him was so intense she almost choked on the carp she was chewing. Thomas Becket, without whose advice Henry would not make any important decision, was a constant intruder, his dark shadow continually falling between herself and her husband, deliberately sowing discord between them.

Eleanor had come to terms with the dominating influence of Henry’s mother, but this friendship with Becket was altogether different. The empress, however grudgingly, fully acknowledged Eleanor’s role in Henry’s life. But in his covert way, as in the matter of the Pipe Roll and now, not to mention countless others, Thomas sought to undermine and exclude her.

Although, on occasion, Eleanor was still able to influence Henry, she could never control him as she had Louis, even without Becket. She was wise enough now to know that she had as much chance of harnessing a thunderbolt. When Eleanor remembered her early conversation with Master André before her marriage, how, in their innocence, they had both thought she could mold the young duke, she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

The bitter truth was that, thus far, she had gained neither the influence nor power that was her due. In principle she was supposed to be
regalis imperii participes,
a sharer in the kingship. In truth, she was given the illusion of power but none of the substance. These same thoughts which had occurred to her in England kept returning again and again with increased intensity.

England, of course, was not hers. But Aquitaine was another story. Here she was still duchess-regnant, and her authority should reign supreme. Of course she had spent the last five years bearing children; yet that aside, if it weren’t for Chancellor Thomas Becket, Eleanor felt she might have achieved an almost equal position without poaching on Henry’s prerogatives. Neither Abbé Suger nor even Bernard of Clairvaux had proved so redoubtable a rival. She picked up her goblet of wine then arrested it halfway to her lips. A chill ran down her spine. Rival? Why did she always fall back on that bizarre choice of word? As though Thomas were an actual contender for Henry’s affections. Like the unknown Bellebelle.

The royal party was due to leave Poitou the following day. For the first time, Eleanor was anxious to be gone. She could no longer bear the reproachful glances of her vassals and knights, no longer endure the feeling of helplessness that oppressed her in the overwrought atmosphere of Poitiers.

Later that evening her uncle Ralph de Faye, seneschal of Aquitaine, came to the chamber where Eleanor had just finished putting Richard and Henry to bed.

“The Plantagenet is becoming more high-handed each time I see him,” Ralph said.

“It is the chancellor’s fault this time, not Henry’s.” Her uncle always referred to Henry as “the Plantagenet,” no matter how many times Eleanor corrected him. “Sometimes I wonder if I haven’t lost my duchy altogether. My marriage, my children, my crown—I have paid a great price for them, Uncle.”

Ralph took her hands in his. “You can never lose Aquitaine, for that would be like losing your very soul. In truth, you have done remarkably well balancing the duchy, your motherhood, your responsibilities, and your husband—your love for him still burns as brightly as ever?”

“Brighter.”

“Well, that is something—for you. It was not too long ago that if someone had told me the frivolous, spoiled coquette of Aquitaine would become the woman of substance you now are—I would not have believed him.” Ralph shook his head. “And the Plantagenet cares as well, though he attempts to hide it with his overbearing manner. At first I thought he had married you only to possess the duchy, but over time I’ve come to see there’s far more to it than that.”

Ralph strode over to the bed and gazed down at the sleeping faces of her two sons. Eleanor followed him.

“What do you mean?”

“I am not sure myself. Only, perhaps, that to a man like the Plantagenet, love is an adversary to be conquered, not a pleasure to be courted and enjoyed.” He shook his head. “Idle words. They mean nothing.”

Eleanor brushed a golden ringlet from Richard’s creamy brow. “Since Toulouse Henry has certainly been more hostile—” She stopped. The incident with the Empress Maud and the wild talk of crowning young Henry passed through her mind.

Even before Toulouse Henry had not been himself, she realized, behaving with more antagonism, even falling into one of his wild rages in Le Mans over nothing at all. She had to confide in someone. It was no longer possible to keep her thoughts and feelings contained. Eleanor hesitated. Ralph de Faye was not the most trustworthy of men but he had proved loyal to her and to his post. If she did not speak she would go from her wits.