We’ve schemed and fought and loved until we are so entangled in hearts and minds that there is no way to set us free. God help us both, Harry, for we will never be rid of each other. Not even death will do that.
From the twelfth-century Annals of Roger de Hoveden:
Queen Eleanor, the mother of the before-named duke, moved her royal court from city to city, and from castle to castle, just as she thought proper; and sending messengers throughout all the counties of England, ordered that all captives should be liberated from prison and confinement, for the good of the soul of Henry, her lord inasmuch as, in her own person, she had learnt by experience that confinement is distasteful to mankind, and that it is a most delightful refreshment to the spirits to be liberated therefrom.
Richard soon met the Archbishops of Rouen and Canterbury and sought pardon for taking up arms against his father after taking the cross. He was then girded with the ducal sword of Normandy on July 20 in Rouen. Two days later he met with the French king near Chaumont and reached terms that would prevent a further delay of their crusade.
In the meantime, Eleanor was very active in England on his behalf. After securing the treasury in Winchester, she rode to London and then began a royal progress through the southern shires. She issued edicts establishing uniform weights and measures for corn, liquid, and cloth, as well as a currency valid anywhere in England. She freed the English abbeys from their obligation to stable and provide for the king’s reserve horses and magnanimously gave these mounts to the monks. She continued to release those imprisoned for offenses against Henry’s harsh and unpopular forest laws, and she allowed those who’d been outlawed under these laws to return, “for the good of King Henry’s soul.” And wherever she went, she demanded oaths of fealty from all free men in the name of Lord Richard and the Lady Eleanor.
Her efforts were so effective that Richard was given a tumultuous welcome upon arriving at Portsmouth on August 13. Two days later he got an equally enthusiastic reception in Winchester and was reunited with his mother, the queen.
Richard was laughing. “You know, Maman, your enemies are going to accuse you of practicing the Black Arts. How else explain how you emerged from sixteen years of confinement still looking so elegant and comely, not to mention having more energy than a kennel full of greyhounds. I hear that between your travels and councils and proclamations, you managed to find time to found a hospital for the poor in Surrey. I assume that upon the seventh day, you rested?”
“Not for long,” she said, laughing, too. “If you want your coronation to be as splendid as I suspect you do, that is going to take a great deal more work.” Sitting beside him in the window-seat, she exercised a mother’s prerogative and reached over to brush his hair back from his forehead. “You were telling me about the meeting with Philippe.”
Richard made a mock-sour face. “I had to bribe him with another four thousand marks, and that in addition to the twenty thousand he extorted from my father at Colombieres, then agree to relinquish my rights in Auvergne and give up two fiefs in Berry. I had no choice, though, not if I hope to depart for the Holy Land ere I am too old to fight. But Philippe is going to be troublesome. It is hard to believe that one came from Louis’s loins. You think he could be a foundling?”
He laughed again; laughter came very easily to them both on this August afternoon. “I have made a good match for Richenza; I do not know why we bothered to change the lass’s name when none of us call her Matilda. I am wedding her to the son of the Count of Perche.”
Eleanor nodded approvingly; she’d be marrying into a highborn family and the marital alliance would strengthen their northeast borders. “And what of John’s marriage to Avisa of Gloucester?” She kept her voice noncommittal; John had arrived with Richard, but she’d yet to have a private moment with him.
“I’ll be in Marlborough ere the end of the month to give the bride away. In addition to the Gloucester estates, I am settling upon him lands worth four thousand a year in the counties of Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, and Somerset. Our father had promised it to him again and again, but not surprisingly, he never got around to actually doing it.”
Eleanor regarded him thoughtfully. “I know you’ve been implacable with the men who abandoned Harry toward the last, dismissing them from your service in favor of those who’d stayed loyal, even seizing the lands of Raoul de Fougeres and Juhel de Mayenne. It is always wise policy to reward loyalty to the Crown, of course. But you seem to have made one exception, are showing John great generosity.”
Richard shrugged. “I can hardly do less for him, Maman. Until I have a son of my own, he is my heir-unless you’d rather I pick Arthur in Brittany. So he must be provided for, but you notice all his new lands are located in England, not Normandy or Anjou. I’d as soon keep the Channel between him and my good friend, the French king.”
“So in effect you are buying John’s loyalty.”
He shrugged again. “Well, my father kept him hanging, too, with little to call his own. So he deserves a chance to show he can be trusted if I play fair with him. And if he proves himself to be unreliable, I’ll deal with it. I cannot say I see him as any great threat. Now Geoffrey…he would have borne watching. But I’m not likely to lose sleep fretting about Johnny.”
He paused to take a sip from his wine cup. “I did not tell you, did I? I am honoring my father’s last wishes, and one of them was to see Geoff as Archbishop of York.”
“And you are going to follow through? Is that wise, Richard? Geoff will not be grateful to you, will never forgive you, and I think you know that.”
“Of course I do. Hellfire, I could buy him the papacy, and he’d still act like I am Saladin. But there are advantages to having him wear a miter. Once he is ordained as a priest, he cannot harbor any illusions about laying claim to my throne. You look dubious, Maman. Geoff is an able man, and an ambitious one. You cannot tell me it has not crossed his mind that William the Bastard was born out of wedlock, too. So I’d as soon he kept his eye upon Heaven’s Crown and not my own. Besides,” he added with a sudden grin, “he is not at all happy about it, so how could I resist?”
He continued to confide his plans, pleasing her with most of them. So far he’d yet to take a misstep. She would have felt better, though, if he were not intending to journey to the other side of the world, leaving his kingdom for God knows how long. “So I mean to name the Earl of Essex as one of my justiciars whilst I am away. Willem is a good man, and if he serves me half as well as he served my father, I will be content. I hear there will soon be a vacant bishopric at Ely, as the current occupant of the see is ailing. Once he goes to God, I will name Guillaume Longchamp in his stead. I intend to give Longchamp Geoff’s chancellorship, too, for I want to make sure that I have men I can trust to watch over my kingdom whilst I am gone. Of course you will be the one I’ll truly depend upon to keep order and quench any rebellious sparks ere they can take fire.”
Eleanor assured him that she would do whatever he asked of her, and he smiled, but then startled her by saying, “You know, Maman, you’ll have to see Johnny sooner or later. He’s as nervous as a treed cat, so why not put him out of his misery and let me get him?”
She hadn’t realized that he’d sensed her ambivalence about John. “You are too sharp-eyed for my own good. Very well, go and fetch him.”
“If you do not mind, I’ll send someone for him. I am a king now,” he joked, “and it is not seemly to be running my own errands.” He got to his feet, but took only a few steps toward the door before he halted. “Do you blame me for my father’s death?”
Eleanor was taken aback. “No, Richard, I do not.” She studied his face intently, and then said quietly, “Do you?”
“No! No, I do not.” But despite the vehemence of his denial, she was not convinced and waited for him to reveal more. “Others do, though,” he said, with enough heat to tell her that this had been preying on his mind. “No one dares say it to my face, of course, but I know what is being whispered behind my back
. There is even talk that when I stood beside Papa’s body, he began to bleed from the nose and mouth. That is not so!”
Eleanor was not surprised by the story, for it was a widely accepted belief that a murder victim would often bleed in the presence of his killer. “That is foolish folklore, Richard. No one of any sense would believe it.”
“I would hope not,” he said brusquely, obviously vexed with himself for paying any heed to superstition. He was not yet ready to let it go, though, shooting her a searching glance. “I did not believe Papa was ill,” he said abruptly. “I was positive he was feigning, that this was yet another of his cunning tricks, and I assured Philippe of that. It was only when he dragged himself from his bed to ride to Colombieres that we saw he’d not been lying.”
“Well, your father gave you reason to suspect his good faith. He was always too clever by half, and it was inevitable that it would eventually catch up with him.”
Richard nodded as if agreeing, but he was gnawing his lower lip. “But I still did not believe he was dying, Maman. It was obvious at Colombieres that he was ailing. I still expected him to recover, though. How did I not see what everyone else did?”
Eleanor smiled sadly. “Sons always find it difficult to see their fathers as they truly are, and how much more true that would be for a living legend like Harry. Now wives rarely have that defect of vision, but I suspect most sons are like you, finding it hard to realize their fathers are mere mortal beings, no longer the all-powerful patriarchs they remember from childhood.”
“So you are saying I was not willfully blind, merely immature,” he said wryly. “Philippe insisted that he give me the kiss of peace. For the first time, I saw how frail he’d become, almost feeble. But then he growled that he asked only to live long enough to revenge himself upon me, and I found myself looking into a hawk’s eyes, fierce and proud and still defiant.”
“Yes,” she said, “according to Will, his spirit burned brightly to the end. It was his body that failed him.”
Richard was silent for a moment. “I truly did not think I had a choice but to do what I did.”
“I know.”
He tossed his head then, as if shaking off the past. “Well, let me get Johnny for you.” He stepped forward, gave her a brief hug, and then strode from the chamber. Eleanor paced as she waited, still not sure what she would say to John. With her other sons, she could argue convincingly that they’d had legitimate grievances, especially in Richard’s case. It was not that easy to absolve her lastborn, for he’d been the best-loved by Henry and his betrayal seemed the cruelest of all.
When John entered the chamber, she saw what Richard meant. His unease was evident. What struck her most forcefully, though, was how young he seemed. At his age, Henry had already made himself England’s king, and Geoffrey and Richard were putting down rebellions in Brittany and Poitou; even Hal had carved out a niche for himself upon the tournament circuit. Why had John not crossed the border from boyhood to manhood by now? She reminded herself this was Harry’s doing, not hers. But she had her own sins to answer for, and she owed a debt, if not to this faithless young prince, to the wounded child he’d once been.
When he greeted her formally and warily, she smiled and held out her hand to him. “We are alone,” she said. “Greet me as your mother, not the queen.” John’s relief was as obvious as his discomfort had been. He came quickly toward her, took her hand in his.
“Mother…I want to explain, to make you understand why-”
“Hush, John,” she said, stopping his words by putting her fingers to his lips. “We need not talk of it.”
The summer heat that had seared France and England did not reach North Wales. August was cool and rainy, but on the day the message arrived from Morgan, the sky was clear of clouds and the manor at Trefriw was dappled with mellow sun. Ranulf regarded his son’s missive with some trepidation. He knew of Henry’s dismal death at Chinon, thanks to his niece Emma. He sensed, though, that this news was not likely to be good. Escorting his wife out into their hillside garden, he seated her on a wooden bench and only then did he break the seal, scan the contents.
Rhiannon waited patiently until he was ready to read it to her. “Morgan is not coming home, is he?” she said at last, and Ranulf nodded before remembering that his wife needed verbal, not visual cues. Passing strange that after so many years of marriage, he occasionally forgot that.
“No, love, I think not. He does not say so, but I expect he will take the cross and accompany Richard to the Holy Land.”
Sitting beside her on the bench, he slipped his arm around her shoulders and read her their son’s letter. They were regretful, but resigned, for they’d realized long ago that Wales was too small to hold their youngest. Rhiannon’s fears were more immediate, her concern for her aging husband, not her adventuresome son. “I suppose…” she began, trying to sound matter-of-fact, not wanting him to hear any echoes of reproach in her voice. “I suppose you will want to go back to England, to attend Richard’s coronation.”
Ranulf did not answer at once, regarding her fondly, this brave woman who’d done so much to heal his wounds, who’d assured him on their wedding night that she understood his loyalties would always be divided, understood that England would always exert a powerful pull upon his soul.
“No, Rhiannon,” he said, “I will not be going back to England. I can grieve for Harry here in Gwynedd. I wish Richard well, but that is Morgan’s world now, not mine. I am home.”
Her smile was luminous. He read Morgan’s letter again for her, and they lingered in the garden afterward, sharing the quiet contentment that had no need of words.
As she rode along Winchester’s High street, Eleanor soon drew a cheering crowd. She smiled and waved before turning into the narrow street that led into the cathedral close. Later that day, she and her sons would be departing the city for Sarum and then Marlborough. This visit to the cathedral of St Swithun’s had been an impulsive one; she was still enjoying being able to indulge her whims as she chose. It amused her that she was being escorted by her erstwhile gaolers, Ralf de Glanville and Sir Ralph Fitz Stephen. Richard had given her the right to punish them if she wished, but she could not blame them for merely obeying Henry’s orders, and in his unobtrusive way, Sir Ralph had done what he could to mitigate the severity of those early years of confinement.
The bishopric of Winchester was presently vacant and so it was the prior of St Swithun’s and his monks who’d gathered in the garth to bid her welcome. When she explained that she’d come to offer prayers for the success of her son’s reign, the prior personally led her toward the west door and then showed unexpected sensitivity by asking if she’d prefer to pray alone.
She would, and leaving her companions outside, Eleanor moved up the nave, pausing briefly at the font of black Tournai marble before turning into the north transept. The small chapel of St Saviour had always been a favorite of hers, for she greatly admired the vibrant biblical scenes painted on the wall above the altar. She noticed now that several of them were looking dull and faded, though. She resolved to give the prior money for their restoration, and then smiled, thinking that she’d not take her privileged life for granted again.
Kneeling before the altar, she said a prayer for Richard’s safety in the Holy Land, and murmured prayers for the repose of Hal and Geoffrey’s souls. Rising, she lit a votive candle, then, for her husband.
“I’ve been doing good for the sake of your soul, Harry,” she said, laughing soundlessly as she imagined his pithy response to that. What a twisted road they’d traveled together. “What is so very sad,” she said softly, “is that it did not have to end like this. We had chances to turn aside, to find our way again. Ah, Harry, we were so well-matched, you and I. If only we could have learned to forgive each other. ‘If only’ and ‘what if,’ fitting epitaphs for both our tombs. Well, you’ll have all eternity to learn to forgive us and yourself. Knowing you, it is likely to take that long, too.”
The candle flicke
red and seemed about to go out, but then it steadied and she smiled again. “At least it was never dull, my darling. And you will be remembered long after we’ve all turned to dust. But so will I.”
The sound of footsteps drew her attention then, and she glanced out into the nave, saw a monk approaching. “Forgive me for disturbing your prayers, Madame, but your son the lord duke has sent a messenger to inquire when you’ll be returning to the castle.”
Eleanor sighed, thinking her husband and son were much more alike than they’d been willing to admit. Like Henry, Richard had no patience for delays, was eager to be on the road. “Thank you, Brother,” she said. “I am coming.” And she walked with a sure step from the shadows of the cathedral out into the sunlit priory garth.
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