Eleanor Of Aquitaine (37 page)

On June 11 a deep fog enshrouded the mount and the valleys of the Sarthe and its tributary Huisne.
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It was impossible to get the bearings of the approaching forces or to measure their strength. Guillaume le Maréchal , pushing up the Huisne with a few reconnoiterers, learned that an army of French was creeping under cover of the mist along the river whose streams separated it from Le Mans, not more distant than an arrow's drive. Richard well knew the fords, the avenues of access to and retreat from the old capital of the Angevins, which he had explored from childhood. He was now bringing the Capets to its weakest gate. The reconnoiterers took counsel whether or not to tell the king, and it is significant of their despair that they decided nothing could be gained by dealing him that blow.

"What a pity," said Geoffrey of Brûlon to the marshál, "that Emenidus had not such a messenger as you. You would have been useful to him." It was an allusion in the midst of ruin to the romance of Alexander in which Henry and his barons had delighted in the prosperous days before the queen had spread the vogue of the Arthurian romance. Even now the knights laughed.

Issuing from the south gate, Henry ordered his men to break the bridge over the Huisne, drive spiles in the ancient fords, scatter sharp stones in the bed of the stream. During this proceeding the fog lifted and he himself beheld the pavilions in which the French had passed the night spread along the edge of the wood where he was accustomed to hunt, only a few yards from the river. At this sight Henry turned to Guillaume as to one who should wake him from a nightmare and permitted himself to be led back within the walls. There they stayed all night, watching and waiting. The next morning they heard mass at daybreak. A strong feudal instinct possessed the king. He could not believe they would attack his person. He disarmed his bodyguard and with his son John went forth in his "cotte de linge." It was well that they had set the day ahead with early mass, for there along the Huisne the French, sounding the stream with their lances, had found an abandoned ford and were crossing below the spiles pell-mell for the south gate. Cries rose in the city.

"Here, here. Now God help the marshál'"

A melee began in which Guillaume took a heavy toll of Poitevin barons pressing on the gate. In the meantime Stephen of Tours, Henry's seneschal, fired the suburbs on the eastern slope of the mount to destroy cover for the besiegers But a veering wind sucked the flame along the wall. It rose with billows of smoke and roaring leapt the ramparts, catching eagerly in many places at once. The denizens of the
faubourg
fled in panic from their blazing thatches Passing through the quarter to stay the fire, the king and Guillaume came upon a woman weeping bitterly as she dragged her household gear into the street The marshal, "always piteous by nature," as became a
preux chevalier
nurtured in the court of Poitiers, himself dismounted to help the woman. He seized a feather bed smoldering on the under side, and the smudge, penetrating his helmet, forced him to take it off. While thus delayed, the fire pressed on their heels. Seeing the quarter of his capital seething with flame, Henry challenged heaven.

"Christ," he cried, "why should I honor Thee, who takest from me all I hold most dear on earth, who sufferest me to be thus shamefully beset by that stripling traitor."

With his household rallied by Guillaume, he left the north gate and took the road at a gallop for Fresnay, pausing only to destroy bridges and block fords in his wake.

The French meantime from their pavilions on the Huisne waited for the fire to do its work. Inside the walls the citizens toiled, not comprehending the strife, to defend their blazing roofs. Their count, who had sworn never to desert the city of his predilection; the king, who in a lifetime of conflict had never turned his back upon a challenge to his power, had fired the mount and taken to the road, the Count of Poitou and his train in hot pursuit. The intolerable feuds of the Angevins. From the devil they came; to the devil they might go.

Turning for a last look at the mount reeking against the brazen June sky, Henry vented his bitterness.

"The citv I have loved best on earth, the city where I was born and bred, where my father lies buried, where is the body of Saint Julian, this, O God, to the increase of my shame, Thou has reft from me I will requite as best I can. I will assuredly rob Thee of the thing Thou prizest most in me, my soul."

Out of a cloud of dust behind their flight there came galloping knights with Richard in the lead. Guillaume fell back from the king's rear, turned upon them, and interposed his lance. The startled Count of Poitou faced his old master at arms.

"By the feet of God Maréchal, ," he cried, "do not kill me. I wear no hauberk."

"May the devil kill you, for I will not," shouted the marshal, at the same moment driving his lance into the count's horse so that it fell and Richard plunged to the ground. By this feat Guillaume saved the king from capture, perhaps from death. At night Henry reached Fresnay, fifteen kilometers from Le Mans, so worn with fatigue and chagrin that he refused to undress, but lay with Geoffrey the Chancellor's cloak upon him. Somewhere in the melee John had disappeared.

A major part of Henry's following, supposing he would take the same course, struck northward from Le Mans to Alencon in the heart of Normandy, where both succor and a means of flight were more secure. Thither Guillaume and Geoffrey the Chancellor went to bring them back with all possible recruits. They were two weeks evading the ambush of the French along the roads Henry had been expected to follow from Maine. In the meantime, struggling painfully, the English king made his way with a handful of his men to his invincible treasure castle of Chinon in Anjou, and there he lay suffering from an old sore freshly envenomed by the killing ride from Le Mans. There he heard disquieting rumors. In the fortress of Chinon they made a little pretense of gaiety to cheer the king when Guillaume returned from Normandy. But the feint was apparent.

"Maréchal," said Henry, "did you hear, as you passed over the road, that the King of France has taken my city of Tours?"

"Sire, the bold Capetian does you much injury It is even so."

Hard upon this confirmation of bad news came an embassy from Philip Augustus in the persons of Philip of Flanders and that spokesman of the house of Champagne, the Archbishop of Reims, to summon the King of England to an interview near Tours. Henry's counselors urged him to make an attempt to retrieve his lands. Dismissing all but the knights of his banner, he journeyed painfully to Columbières and there lodged with the Templars.

"Maréchal," he said, on reaching his hostel, "a cruel pain, beginning in my heel, has spread through my feet and legs My whole body is on fire."

Guillaume saw indeed that the king's countenance flushed and darkened. They stretched him on a bed to await the conference.

The next day the King of the Franks summoned the Plantagenet king to appear before him. He heard that Henry, his vassal, was very ill, had eaten nothing, could neither stand nor sit. But Richard assured Phillip that the king was at his old tricks, plying a ruse. Stung by the taunt from his son, Henry rose from his bed with a supreme effort.

"Only end this thing," he cried, "I will yield anything to get away. But one day, I swear, if I live, I will recover my lands."

When he appeared at the parley, even Philip was moved by his aspect. Less brutal than Richard, he begged a folded cloak and invited Henry to sit upon it. But the king scorned his pity. He would, as had always been his custom at parley, keep his horse.
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He desired to know what they wanted of him, and why they had cut off his lands. He then learned that he had been summoned, not to treat of peace, but to hear a sentence pronounced upon him. He must first renew his homage to the King of France, which he had renounced by the fallen elm of Gisors. He must cede Poitou, Normandy, Maine, Anjou, and Tourame to Richard and call upon his barons on both sides of the Channel to swear homage to his son for all the possessions the latter claimed. He must pay Philip a heavy indemnity for his expense in the conquest of Berry in which he had taken from Henry the castle of Chateauroux. Philip and the Count of Poitou would hold all the castles they had lately seized, or if the King of England preferred, the Norman Vexin, as surety for the performance of these acts. As for Alais, Henry would commit her at once to five knights of Richard's choosing, so that the count might have his bride upon his return from crusade. Ah yes, they had all been going to Jerusalem. Where was John?

There was a silence during which all bent upon Henry's answer to this call for his abdication. Suddenly a clap of thunder leapt from the clear sky. For whom this omen — the victors or the vanquished? Still in silence the kings fell apart, when a second clap, louder than the first, startled the company. Henry reeled and but for the support of his men, would have fallen from his horse. He murmured acceptance of the terms, asking only that a written list of all those who had deserted him should be prepared. When Richard advanced to receive from his father the kiss of peace, Henry breathed fiercely in his ear,

"May God not let me die, until I have avenged myself on you as you deserve."

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No friend hath death
      (Mort n a ami
)

Guillaume le Maréchal
, III,

Though worn with pain and utterly depressed by his losses, Henry had not accepted the idea of ultimate defeat. He was surprised beyond measure at the sweeping and relentless conditions imposed upon him. It was the climax of his woe that his own son had compassed the first humiliation he had ever known. They bore him back to Chinon in a litter and on the way he cursed the day he had been born, called upon heaven to curse his sons and himself. The Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of Hereford, who accompanied him, besought him in vain to retract his dreadful words. But when he reached his stronghold above the Vienne and looked down upon the busyness of the town, the tranquil windings of the river and the bridge he had built leading down to Poitou, he was seized with compunction. He asked to be taken to the fortress chapel and there yielded a confession, was absolved, and received communion.

But no medicine could be found for the malady that possessed his body. Groaning he awaited the list of those who had deserted him, which Roger Malchael had stayed behind to obtain in Tours. When Roger unfolded the parchment to read, his breath failed.

"Sire, may Christ help me," he faltered, "for the first name that is written here is the name of Count John, your son."

The king's countenance flushed.

"Is it true that John, whom I loved beyond all my sons, and for whose gain I have suffered all this misery, has forsaken me?"

The unnatural prognostication of the fresco of eaglets in the palace of Winchester had been fulfilled. Henry turned his face to the wall.

"It is enough," he said, "no need to read the others. Let the rest go as it will. I care no more for myself nor for aught in this world."

His muttering then grew incoherent, but the bystanders gathered scraps of his thought.

"Shame, shame," he muttered, "shame on a conquered king."

It was the son of his youth, no scion of the disastrous Poitevin, who administered the small human comforts at the last. It was Geoffrey the Chancellor who propped the king's head upon his breast and fanned from his face the flies that swarmed and buzzed in the July heat; who, when moments of consciousness returned, soothed him with words of affection; who strained his senses to gather his father's dying thoughts.

"Dearest son," whispered Henry, "whatever a son could show of filial faith and gratitude, you have shown. God grant that I may requite you as the best of fathers should. In all my fortunes you have shown yourself a son with natural affection."

"Your health and prosperity," returned the chancellor, "are all I ask, and if God will preserve these, I shall desire nothing more."

It was to Geoffrey that Henry gave as token the Plantagenet signet ring with the leopard upon it which he wore as he started for Jerusalem.

Henry died in his Angevin treasure castle, but as at the death of William the Conqueror in Rouen, no suitable regalia for his burial could be found. His retainers had rifled his personal apparel. Some trappings were levied here and there, a sword, a cloak, a makeshift scepter. For crown a fillet of gold embroidery from some woman's gear was bound upon his brow. In Chinon the first night his household kept his wake. The place in Grammont which he had once designated for his burial he had renounced after the death of the young king. There were disorders and disaffections in Le Mans, which was the necropolis of his Angevin forebears. They made shift to bury the king in the nearby y of nuns in Fontevrault. It was the place where fourteen years before he had tried to immure the seditious queen. As in the case of the young king, when the poor gathered at the bridge for the funeral alms, none was forthcoming. The nuns came out processionally to meet the cortege of their patron, kept a wake for him all night, and received his body honorably in their choir.

To Fontevrault the Count of Poitou came for the entombment of the king. Like Henry himself at the death of the young king, Richard so controlled himself that none could say with what emotion he gazed upon the dead. Kneeling courteously, he remained before the bier for the space of a paternoster. At that moment, to the horror of the bystanders, blood burst from the nostrils of the king and oozed to the floor.
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It was as if from another world the dead king renewed the curse he had uttered on the road from Tours. But unperturbed by the maledictions of a ghost, the Count of Poitou sped from the burial in the crypt of the nuns and hastened away to the treasure castle of Chinon.