Devil's Consort (98 page)

I laughed. How refreshing to be addressed like a man, rather than a weak woman to be banished from all matters of policy. And it took my mind off the sharp stab of hurt that Louis should use my daughters against me. I would not let Henry see it—but perhaps he did—and found time amidst the logistics of war to prove his possession of me. He might talk to me man to man, but in bed I was all woman to him.

‘Louis’s got more sense than I gave him credit for.’ His mind reverted to the immediate as soon as his appetite—and mine—was slaked and his heartbeat beneath my cheek returned to its normal steady thump. ‘When we have a son, Eleanor, my love, he’ll get Aquitaine and your daughters will lose it. By shackling the Champagne lads to his daughters, Louis has given
them every incentive to put a sword though my gut before I can impregnate you.’

‘Then I’d better pray they’ll fail,’ I retorted dryly, not entirely pleased with my role in this bid for power. ‘And that your efforts to procreate are rewarded.’

‘You don’t need to pray, dear heart.’

After another spectacular display of masculine energy, Henry took his troops and abandoned his new wife.

‘Come and pray with me,’ I invited Aelith.

‘For what in particular?’

‘That Louis’s habitual fever when faced with stiff opposition sends him home before they can come to blows on the battlefield.’

‘And Henry’s safety.’

‘That goes without saying.’

I prayed harder than I’d ever prayed in my life, and commissioned a window to be placed in the cathedral to commemorate my marriage. There Henry and I, depicted in a mosaic of vividly hued glass, a blast of colour as strong as his will and mine, knelt in solemn adoration, in perpetuity, to present the gift to St Pierre. I knew Henry would not object. He might even admire it if he returned to Poitiers and stayed with me long enough to notice it.

The progress of war reached me third or fourth hand and caused me little anxiety. It was a brief and rapidly concluded affair. When Louis, as expected, led an army into Normandy, Henry advanced to meet him, which
immediately put Louis, fever-ridden, into retreat. With fast revenge in mind, Henry went on to lay waste to the Vexin, snatching up two of brother Geoffrey’s castles, only leaving the last through shortage of time—and leaving Geoffrey hopping mad but ineffectual. After that, nothing was left bar the shouting. Louis succumbed to his righteous fever, signed a truce and fled to Paris—my prayers were answered. Geoffrey begged some sort of forgiveness, which Henry accepted with sardonic humour and little faith that he meant it. The Champagne contingent skulked below their battlements and Eustace retired to his lair in England.

A tidy little campaign, all in all.

What had Roger of Sicily said? Henry Plantagenet was going far.

My new husband might be going far, but his route never seemed to find its way in my direction. I sat at the High Table in Henry’s palace in Angers, where I had moved my household at Henry’s request as a good wife should—I did not even have my beloved Poitiers for consolation. Still he did not come. So the succulent dishes congealed neglected before me, and I listened with a heart that ached for the loss of love and adoration, the thwarted aspiration to worship at the feet of the unattainable. Inspired by the sweet songs of my troubadours, of course. Nothing whatsoever to do with ever-absent Henry.

* * *

Plangent chords. The lute sang in the hands of a master of the craft. The angelic voice wrapped its pure notes around my heart.

Heart-wrenching words. They touched my need and I almost wept with the sentiment, if I transposed she to he. For Henry left me. Frequently. Lengthily. How could he do that, and I a bride? And I was bereft.

He managed two weeks with me after our wedding. Then a miraculous four months at the end of the year when we made a progress through Aquitaine to introduce him to my Aquitanian vassals as their new lord. Winter months when sun filled my heart and Henry was of a mind to be understanding of my barons, who resented an Angevin ruling over them—although not as much as they had resented Louis.

During all that time, Henry had kept an affable smile and friendly approach to my vassals who were at best suspicious, at worst hostile to a new lord who might
bleed them dry to fund an invasion of England. He hunted and hawked with them, drank a vast amount of ale with them and wooed them to his side. I was impressed.

And then we came to Limoges.

If I recalled the events in Limoges in blood-red detail, so would the inhabitants of that prosperous little town, one of my own.

We had pitched our tents and pavilions outside the newly constructed city walls, prior to our making a formal entry to greet the burghers who would make their oath of allegiance. That day, after celebrating Mass, we would feast and mark our arrival in informal manner with the great and the good, the wealthy burghers and clerics. A meal was served, platters and dishes carried in from the camp kitchen, wine was poured liberally, minstrels sang. We travelled in style despite the inconvenience of canvas in wet or windy weather. Our guests from the city were seated along the board to toast our union and our felicitous arrival. Henry, deep in conversation with one of the worthy burghers, picked up his knife.

And stared. So did I as I followed his preoccupation, and saw what Henry saw.

The platters on the trestle were few, their contents spare. I counted the dishes: no more than a dozen and all of a humdrum nature. A stew of coney with onions. Fish that might have been salmon. A thick pottage of cabbage. Beside me, Henry’s stare turned to a glower.

I beckoned to a servant. ‘Are there no roasted meats? Send in the rest, if you will. This is no formal banquet …’

‘There is no more, lady,’ he croaked.

Henry skewered our steward with a glance. ‘Send in the cook, if you please.’ The soft accents did not correspond with the tightening of his lips, the white shade that settled around his mouth.

The cook, a portly man of rare reputation and skill in my kitchens, bowed low, and lost no time in the telling, hands raised in apology. ‘How can I show my skills when I don’t have the wherewithal, my lord? The burghers of Limoges have failed to provide me with the customary supplies due to their liege lord. This is all we have.’

Henry’s eyes travelled along the table to search out the Abbot of Saint-Martial, who sat in self-regarding splendor, the jewels on his fingers winking.

‘Explain, sir.’ Although unnervingly mild, the demand hung in the air.

‘We fulfilled the letter of the law, my lord.’ The Bishop had a terrible smugness. I trembled for him.

‘Whose law?’

‘Our feudal duty to our lord, the Lady Eleanor. Supplies are due from us for her comfort and sustenance.’ Unfortunately the abbatial lips curved into the smallest of smiles. ‘When the Lady is lodged within the city walls.’

‘What?’ Henry’s voice grew softer still. He leaned forward, the better to hear.

‘Since the Lady Eleanor is domiciled in a tent, not in the castle, and thus outside the walls, we are not duty bound …’

He was foolish enough to make no attempt to hide the calculated intransigence. I was taken aback by such defiance, such arrogance, such a calculated challenge to Henry as his new overlord. It was also no less a slap in my face. I opened my mouth to reply, to demand the feudal service due to me, but Henry stilled me with a hand on my arm. His other hand grasped a knife from the board as if he would consider burying it in the costly robes of the Abbot.

‘Would you care to repeat that?’ Henry invited.

‘We are not duty bound …’

The Abbot got no further. With an upward and downward stroke with his arm, as if he were a blacksmith beating out a horseshoe, Henry hammered the knife to the hilt in the top of the table, snarling an order, the steward leaping to obey.

‘You will not insult my wife. You will not neglect your feudal obligations. Summon my military commander!’

A brief conversation ensued—or rather a barrage of instructions to which the commander nodded brusquely. ‘Do it!’ Henry growled, got to his feet and set his hands to the white cloth that covered the table.

‘No!’ I managed in horror, gripping hard to anchor the cloth.

It would have been like stopping the encroachment of a military force in full attack. With white-lipped fury, Henry dragged the cloth and its burden toward him. The feast, such as it was, was swept to the floor.

‘Out!’ he ordered, only to seize a handful of the Abbot’s chasuble before he could make it to the door. ‘Oh, no, you don’t.
You’ll
come with me. You’ll witness this … And you’ll be afraid.’

And I stood in frozen shock as I watched the first assault on the impressive, newly-constructed walls of the city of Limoges that began as soon as Henry could buckle on his mail and snatch up his weapons.

The offending structures were razed to the ground, the arches of the new bridge over the river destroyed. No one dared stand in Henry’s path. Or not many, and they paid a high price. And when it was over?

‘There, my lord Abbot.’ Henry smiled at the trembling cleric, who had been hauled out of his lodgings to view the aftermath, and clearly feared that he might be the next on my lord’s list for revenge. ‘No abbot, no burgher, not even a beggar in the streets can use the city walls as an excuse to withhold from me or the Lady what is due to us.’

And as fast as it had descended, the storm was past. Henry abandoned his prey and flung his gauntlets down beside me where I sat in my pavilion, hooking his toe
around a stool and sitting in one smooth movement as if nothing were amiss.

‘I’m hungry.’

‘It’s your own fault. You threw what there was to eat on the floor. A very respectable salmon as I recall …’

‘In a good cause.’ His smile was rueful, charmingly apologetic, typically Henry. ‘I don’t suppose you could find me something to eat …?’

We all learned to treat Henry Plantagenet with discretion at Limoges. This blazing, immoderate exhibition of temper was yet another facet to the man who was my husband and who I loved beyond reason.

As for the rest, my recollections were sweet. Hunting and hawking in crisp autumn days. Nights enclosed in our own private domain in a haze of pleasure. A time when I had to hoard the bright memories against the coming of drought. For after those four months—nothing. Only endless weeks of vast distance between us and infrequent news. I clung to the memories, like beads on a gossamer thread that could be snapped at any moment if not handled with care. Or like a Book of Hours full of precious jewelled icons to be taken out, lingered over, treasured. Or wept over in private.

I might admit it to no one—but I did all of those.

Oh, I missed him. Through sixteen long months we were apart when Henry took an army to England. Sixteen months! It was unbearable. The news of battles, sieges, skirmishes, the terrible weight of ignorance. For much of the time I had no idea whether he was alive or
dead. The arrival of every courier might bring me news that I was widowed.

Was this to be my marriage?

I feared his features were growing dim in my mind as every night I struggled to piece together the stormy eyes and dominant nose. The lips that could snarl or smile or kiss into insensibility. Was this to be the rest of my life, loneliness interspersed with occasional breathtaking flashes of joy? Did I love him? If love was missing him, thinking of him, sleeping and waking with his presence beside me, then I was doomed. I would never be dependent on a man, but I missed him so, and when necessity kept me close within my palace the time hung heavily.

I sighed.

As if he sensed my melancholy, the troubadour, new to my court, sank to one knee, dark eyes fixed on my face as his fingers stirred the lute to life once more.

I smiled my pleasure at these verses written personally for me, expressing all the hopeless devotion of a man for a high-born lady. I smiled until Aelith nudged me back to reality.

‘If you smile at him like that, you’ll find him locked
in one of Henry’s dungeons faster than he can tune his lute.’

‘What?’

‘Eleanor … he has a reputation!’

I looked at the young man who still knelt, eyes shining on me in abject adoration. Bernat de Ventadorn had attached himself to my court when Henry and I had made our progress through the south, and I was not disappointed in his talents.

‘He’s in love with you,’ Aelith whispered.

‘But I am not in love with him.’

‘He thinks you are!’

‘He does not! It’s the role of the troubadour to worship his lady.’

‘That’s not worship. That’s lust. Romantic, perhaps, but lust nonetheless.’

I looked at him. Handsome, certainly, with fine features and a sweep of dark hair, a tall, lithe figure that carried the clothes of the troubadour with elegance. But I had not considered him as a lover. Is that what people might think? Is that what Henry would think?

Ridiculous! Talented he may be, but Bernat was the illegitimate by-blow of an archer, got on a willing kitchen maid. Yet others had found him attractive, for he had come to me with the reputation of seducing the wife of his previous patron.

I sighed again. What woman would not enjoy a handsome man singing her praises in such a manner?

The problem was that Bernat sang the words and sentiments I would have liked Henry to address to me. There was no romance in Henry. Yes, he wrote to me often, sending me news, keeping me abreast of the troubled politics across the sea. Surreptitiously I pulled the latest from within my sleeve and read the rapid script that was now so familiar.