Captive Queen (50 page)

   Christmas had arrived. Eleanor was keeping the festival with Henry at Chinon, and their three oldest sons had been invited. The King greeted her with unexpected warmth and one of his bearlike hugs, and complimented her on her rich attire. It was the green Byzantine robe she had worn in the years of their passion, when the mere sight of her dressed in her finery had been sufficient to inflame his desire, but he seemed to have forgotten all that.

She had learned not to let herself get upset at his fitful interest in her; they were, after all, meant to be separated. She soon saw that, for all his bonhomie, put on for the season, Henry remained preoccupied with his own private demons and was impatient with everyone, and she suspected that he was building up to yet another confrontation with the Young King.

“I summoned Young Henry back from Paris,” he told her. “My spies warned me that Louis was cozening him to demand his share of my dominions. I put a stop to that immediately!”

“I am glad that our son is coming here,” Eleanor said, trying tactfully to convey to Henry that there was more to this situation than a power struggle. “I have not seen him for many months. And Marguerite has always been like a daughter to me.”

But the Young King did not come. He sent word to say that his friend, Eleanor’s warlike troubadour Bertran de Born, had invited him to his castle at Hautfort, whither Young Henry had extravagantly summoned all the knights in Normandy named William to feast with him.

Henry exploded. “God’s blood! Is there no end to the cub’s stupidity? Of all the pointless, frivolous things to do! What is he thinking of? And as for Bertran de Born, as you should know, he is a dangerous troublemaker.”

“Henry.” Eleanor laid a calm hand on his shoulders and looked directly into his purple-veined face. “Our son indulges in frivolous and pointless pursuits because you force him to. His whole life is frivolous and pointless. You have made him a king, yet you allow him no kingly power, so the whole exercise was in vain. You keep him short of money and curtail his pleasures; you insist on appointing all the members of his household. You even dictated when he could sleep with his wife, who has been ripe for the marriage bed these past two years, as we both know. Henry, before it is too late, let him be the king he wants to be. Then he can prove his true worth. He needs to cut his teeth before he can rule an empire.”

The King stared at her as if she were mad, and shook her off angrily. Then she realized that he was looking beyond her, and she turned to see Richard and Geoffrey standing there. By the looks on their faces, they heard what had been said.

“Mother is right,” said Richard defiantly. “Why will you not give us any power, Father? I am Duke of Aquitaine and Geoffrey is Duke of Brittany, but they are empty titles.”

“Richard speaks truth, Father,” asserted Geoffrey.

“Shut up!” snapped Henry. “You’re only fourteen—what do you know? Are you all in this against me?”

“In what?” Eleanor inquired. “A conspiracy? How could you think that, Henry? I am looking to the future, and doing my best to prevent a rift between you and our sons. I believe they have a just grievance.”

“Yes, we do!” Richard and Geoffrey echoed.

Henry faced them, a man at bay. “It is written that every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation, and I cannot risk that happening. I have built up my empire, domain by domain, and I have spent most of my life fighting to hold it and keep it intact. One day, thanks to me, it will be your inheritance.
One day
. But if I now give England, Normandy, Anjou, and Maine to Henry, Aquitaine to you, Richard, and Brittany to Geoffrey, what will I be left with? I might as well retire to Fontevrault and become a monk!”

“We ask only that you share your power with us, Father, and give us some proper responsibilities,” Richard said.

“No,” Henry told him. “You are yet young and inexperienced. There will be time enough for that when you are older.”

“Henry, when you inherited Normandy, you were eighteen, only a year older than Young Henry is now,” Eleanor reminded him.

“Yes, but I did not consort with troubadours, or feast with unworthy knights just because they bore a name that took my fancy. I had to grow up quickly, in the midst of a civil war, and I learned early on to fight in the field and pit my wits against my mother’s adversaries. Thanks be to God, our sons have never had to deal with such difficulties.”

“Even so, you have overly protected them,” Eleanor retorted. “Now you must let them be men and stand on their own feet, and give them cause to be thankful to you. Heaven knows, their demands are not unreasonable.”

“I beg leave to differ. The courier who brought Young Henry’s message was my own man. He had heard the cub boasting that he ought by rights to reign alone, for at his coronation, my reign, as it were, had ceased.”

Eleanor’s sharp intake of breath pierced the stunned silence. The two boys looked at their feet, knowing themselves defeated by their brother’s thoughtless stupidity.

“That is the kind of poison that your Bertran de Born has been dripping in my son’s ear,” Henry snarled. “I wonder where he got the idea.”

“Not from me!” Eleanor cried hotly. “That is unjust! How could you think it?”

“You always take his part.”

“That is because you refuse to see things his way.” She was in a ferment, past caring if she offended or upset him. “And now, clearly, it is too late. It is you who have brought us to this pass, Henry. You can never admit that you are wrong. Look at what happened in Aquitaine. It’s the same with your vassals all over the empire. They complain that you are too heavy-handed, too authoritarian. That’s exactly what is wrong with your treatment of your heirs, and I will not stand by and see it!”

Henry hit her, hard, across the mouth. “That’s enough!” he roared.

“Mmmm!” she cried in pain, clapping her hand to her bleeding lips. This could not be happening, she thought. Henry had been that rarity among husbands: only once before had he used violence on her, the time she unwisely taunted him about Becket—and that had been only a slap. Thus his lashing out at her now, and drawing blood, was shocking in the extreme. It was bad enough that he had struck her—worse still that he had done it in front of their sons.

Richard’s hand had flown to his dagger, and Geoffrey, equally outraged, sprang to comfort their mother. Henry glared at Richard.

“I am your king, and your father, to whom you owe all honor and obedience,” he said menacingly. “Lift one finger in anger against me and you commit treason, which I will punish accordingly, whether you be my son or no.”

“You hit my Lady Mother,” Richard replied through gritted teeth. “You are no father of mine.” And, leaving Henry glowering and muttering threats, he helped Geoffrey assist Eleanor to her bower, where her horrified damsels ministered to her wounds.

“There is no moving Father,” Richard said dejectedly.

It pained Eleanor to speak, and the pain in her heart was greater still—Henry had raised his hand to her; she still could not believe it—but she forced herself to clarify things for her boys. “There is more to this than his obduracy,” she mumbled through her cut lip. “He cannot see or comprehend what is happening right under his nose. He sees his word as law and expects it to be obeyed.” She sighed, fighting back tears. She must remain strong, for no one else would champion her sons’ cause.

“You are aware that your father and I have lived apart for some time,” she said gently. “That was our mutual decision. We had had our differences, yet we remained friends and allies. Today, that has all changed, for I will not have my children cheated of their rights. Plainly, we are in one camp, and your father is in another. That makes us enemies, although it grieves me to say it. But I promise you now, all of you, including Young Henry, that I will fight for your rights, and I will make the King see sense!”

“Will there be a war?” Geoffrey asked eagerly. He was desperate to prove himself in battle. But Richard’s face remained grave; a year older, he had realized the true implications of the rift. Eleanor could guess what he was thinking—they were that close.

“Your father said that a kingdom divided would be brought to desolation,” she mused. “Well, he has this day divided his kingdom, and if it all ends in desolation, he must bear the responsibility. By his stubbornness, he has laid himself open to the thing he most dreads. But I will not let it happen; there is too much at stake, for he is putting this empire we have built at risk. I have always been a true, loyal wife and helpmeet to my lord, but I will not stand by and see my sons treated unjustly. He is wrong, utterly wrong, and we must make him face that.”

Then her voice turned wistful, less strident. “This saddens me more than I can say. There should not be discord between father and son, or husband and wife. It is against the natural order of things.”

“What wonder if we lack the natural affections of mankind?” Richard laughed humorlessly. “We are from the Devil, and must needs go back to the Devil!”

   What could she do to force Henry to his senses? Dare she write to Louis? It had been so long. Yet something told her that he would welcome her intervention. There was no doubt he was of the same mind, although for different motives. She wanted justice for her sons, and for them to enjoy their right to a share of their father’s power; Louis wanted Henry’s empire disunited. He too had evidently read the Scriptures.

But what exactly did the Young King want? Was it sovereign authority, even if that meant the overthrow of his father? If so, then what she was contemplating was dangerous in the extreme. At its best it was rebellion—at its worst, treason.

She must talk to her oldest son as soon as she could and find out what was in his mind. If it were indeed Henry’s ruin, then she must try to talk some sense into the Young King. In the meantime—it could not hurt, surely—she would write to Louis, parent-to-parent, as it were, and confide to him her concerns. One word from him, threatening the peace that Henry had worked so hard to negotiate, might be all it would take …

And there was another thing. Louis was her overlord; she had every right to appeal to him for aid against her enemies. And, by his insupportable acts, Henry had now made himself her enemy. She herself had not created this terrible situation. She had been trying all along to find a peaceable solution.

Putting quill to parchment, she found her thoughts drifting hopefully back through the years to a young man with long yellow hair who had been so pathetically eager to please her …

45

   When Eleanor next saw Henry, he made no reference to what had passed between them; nor did he refer again to the rift with his sons. Yet he could not have failed to notice the frigidity of her manner toward him, or that she shrank from his touch. It seemed he no longer cared what she thought of him.

His striking her had changed everything. There was nothing unusual in a husband beating his wife, of course: it was a man’s right, and she knew of many women who had to endure such chastisement. She also knew of several churchmen who wanted to limit the length of the rod that was used, but they had been dismissed as eccentrics. No, the issue here was that, in lashing out and wounding her, Henry had brutally demonstrated that his respect for her, and his love and regard, had died—and he had let her sons see that.

And something had died in her too. She could no longer bear to be in his presence.

He had insisted on her traveling south with him to Limoges, where he was to host a week of lavish banquets and festivities in honor of the betrothal of the Lord John to Alice of Maurienne. The guests of honor were to be Alice’s father, Count Humbert, the Kings of Aragon and Navarre, and the Count of Toulouse. Richard was to be present, as Duke of Aquitaine, and Henry had summoned the Young King from Hautfort; Geoffrey he had sent back to Brittany. Divide and rule, Eleanor thought cynically.

And that was how the great baggage train of the Plantagenets came once more to be wending its cumbersome way south through the Angevin territories. It was February, and cold, when they left Chinon, but Limoges, when they arrived, was mild, and the town was
en fête
. Although her heart was frozen, Eleanor mentally girded her loins and donned her most sociable mask, conducting herself as charmingly and wittily as ever toward her august guests. She warmed to the flattery of the Spanish kings, and reveled in the blatant regard of the black-haired Count Raymond of Toulouse, with whom, many years earlier, she and Henry had once been at war, each claiming that Toulouse belonged to them. Although Raymond had won the day, it seemed that he cherished no hard feelings toward his former aggressor. She wickedly hoped that Henry had seen him flirting outrageously with her. At fifty-one, it was balm to her broken heart and scarred lips to luxuriate once more in a man’s frank interest.