by Anne O'Brien
‘I’m amazed you can bear to be without him.’ Henry’s eyes narrowed. ‘Have you heard the gossip? I have.’
‘Of course. They say Bernat is my lover.’
‘And is he? Have you let him do more than hide behind your skirts?’
Oh, I was so cool in my replies. I shocked myself but I would not retreat. ‘Do you think that I have?’
‘I think that you are a law unto yourself, madam!’
‘Such that I would couple with the bastard of a kitchen wench?’
‘You have the reputation for it, madam. Lascivious is the word, I think!’
So he was not of a mind to retreat either. Neither would I expect it. I was not unhappy if Henry was jealous. I stepped up my counter-attack, it being an excellent form of defence, and even bestowed on him a contemptuous smile.
‘Any scandals of my past have at least been with men of birth as good as my own. I do not grovel in the gutter for my pleasure. Unlike you, my lord.’
A thunderous silence.
‘What was the name of your latest slut?’ I asked, silky-smooth. ‘Ykenai? What sort of name is that? A common whore, I understand.’ I considered my next comment, and decided to risk it. ‘And I hear that she has carried you a son.’
Although Henry had stilled, the emotion did not disperse. He watched me, viper venomous. I shivered. ‘You have a sharp tongue on you, lady. Have a care.’
I tilted my chin. ‘Oh, I do. I have every care, my lord. I am the epitome of respectability. My lascivious reputation is a thing of the past.’ I showed my teeth again in a smile. ‘Why would I need a milksop lover when I have you?’
‘Well, at least that is true! Why would you? I think it’s time I reminded you, madam wife!’
He was jealous! Delight sang through me as sweetly as Bernat’s songs as I tracked the easing of the lines around his eyes, the draining of the high colour. Henry was mine. The fury was lessening and with a harsh laugh he was becoming aware of the avid audience of lords and servants alike, mouths open as they took in every word. I did not care. Let them listen to their betters if they so wished.
‘No!’ I stated.
‘No, what?’
‘No, it is not true. I don’t have you. Not often. Hardly ever. What are you going to do about it, Henry?’
‘You’re here now, Eleanor. I’ll show you what I’ll do about it.’
I saw my provocation hit home. Henry raised his hand. I must have flinched. Henry’s eyes widened in horror and his hand dropped away.
‘You thought I was going to strike you! You did, didn’t you? By God, woman!’
‘I have no idea. Your mood is black enough.’
‘I’ve never stuck a woman in my life—’ Henry was speaking in a low voice ‘—and I’m not about to start with you. I’ve killed a fair few men, but I’ll not demean myself striking a woman and, by God, never you!’ The extremity of emotion faded further from the harsh lines of his face as he raised his hand, slowly now, to rub the back of his fingers over my cheek. ‘I’ll not wilfully harm you.’
You might through carelessness, I thought. Not physically, but I think you might hurt me through neglect. But: ‘No, I don’t think you will strike me, Henry,’ I agreed. ‘But how soon before you abandon me this time? An hour? A day? A month? Must I be grateful if you stay in my company for more than a week before your campaigning demands your time? It’s a poor return for marriage, Henry!’
‘God’s bones, Eleanor! I have a war to fight.’
‘So you do. I don’t dispute it. And when you return from your brave, warlike deeds, you welcome me with open arms. Your words are sweet and seductive. Your touch is soft and tender.’ I dropped my eyes from his to his hands that, at this point in our verbal conflict, had gasped my forearms like bands of iron.
‘You want sweet words from me, do you?’
‘I might. Amongst other things.’
‘What other things?’
‘Do you need to ask? It’s been sixteen months since I last saw you. Perhaps you would like to kiss me in greeting.’ The heat of him. It pumped from his skin as if his blood was all flame; his eyes blazed. I braced for another onslaught. ‘I have never been to Rouen before, I came as fast as I could, I am weary and travel-stained, and all you can do is rant and rail at Louis and Eustace and Geoffrey! No “Good day, wife.” No “Welcome to your new home. Allow me to see to your comfort.” No “How I have missed you.”’
‘Eleanor …’
Henry placed his fingers softly on my lips. Then leaned to follow them with his mouth in the most tender of kisses. ‘Eleanor—you drive a man to the brink of control.’
‘I think you get to that point without my help!’
He slid his hands slowly from my arms to my shoulders. Once more his lips touched mine, cool and firm and gentle but with a wealth of promise.
‘I care nothing for Bernat,’ I murmured against his mouth.
Henry’s laugh was lambent after the storm of emotion. ‘I know.’
‘I have come at your command, days of travel when it would have suited me better to remain at Angers and have you come to me. And all you can do is rage and accuse.’ I drew away a little and placed my palm flat on his chest. ‘When I have come and brought you a gift.’ ‘A gift …’
A bubble of laughter welled within me as I saw comprehension touch his eyes and felt the bound of his heart. ‘Have you forgotten, Henry? I know you got the news.’
‘Ah, Eleanor …’
It had gone at last, all of it, the last vestiges of his outrageous anger, as fast and unpredictably as it had arrived, slipping from him, almost as if it might lie in a puddle at his feet, an unwanted mantle cast aside in a warm room. In a typical wayward gesture Henry released me and fell to one knee, as flamboyant as my despised troubadour.
‘Forgive me.’ His eyes were bright as he looked up. His smile was hard-edged with regret as, picking up the hem of my gown, he kissed it despite the dust and grime of travel. ‘You are my love. My anger was never against you.’
‘And my gift?’
‘I claim the gift from you. Where is it?’
‘It is not an it, Henry. It is a he.’
‘A son. My son! Let me see him.’
As Henry stood and took my hand to lock his fingers with mine, as if we had never been at odds, I beckoned Agnes from the doorway. She brought the baby and gave him into my arms.
‘Here he is.’
My son. Our son. I could not disguise my pride in this achievement. I had carried a son, at last. How I had feared that I was truly incapable of a male heir. No matter how confident Henry had been, this anxiety had lived with me throughout my lonely pregnancy with Henry absent and fear of failure strongly present. It had perched at my shoulder like a malicious sprite as I had set my teeth against the agony of giving birth, filling my mind with memories of death. But no longer. Here was my son. My own vindication. Pride and success wove together to fill my heart with love for Henry and for this son. Old enough now at eight months to take notice of his surroundings, he squirmed in my arms and reached out to Henry, so clearly his father. The deep russet hair and striking grey Angevin eyes had once again imprinted themselves. Now those eyes latched onto the heavy ring on Henry’s right hand.
‘This is William.’
I had proved my worth to myself and to Henry.
‘My son. He’s very small.’
‘He is only eight months old! But he’s growing fast.’
Henry surveyed the baby with a mixture of astonishment and trepidation as William reached out for the glittering jewel. Then he laughed softly.
‘Did I not tell you that we would have a son?’ Henry took the child from me with more skill than I ever had in dealing with infants and allowed him to gnaw on the gold shank that had so taken his attention. ‘William, is it? For my great-grandfather, the Conqueror?’
‘For my grandfather. The troubadour. All Dukes of Aquitaine are called William.’
Henry snorted, causing the baby to lo
ok up, eyes wide. ‘I should have known. A good name nonetheless. Let me look at you, William.’ Henry held him up with confident hands. William stuffed his fist into his mouth and kicked against Henry’s chest. ‘Already a fighter!’ Henry laughed. ‘As soon as you can walk, William, I’ll teach you to ride. You’ll ride at my side.’
‘He has a sweeter temper than you.’
‘He doesn’t have my irritations.’ Henry allowed the baby to transfer his gnawing to the leather of his cuff.
‘His teeth are beginning to show,’ I said with an irrepressible delight, quite unlike me.
‘He’s magnificent. What an achievement, my love. Look at that hair.’ Cradling the baby’s head in his hand, he turned to me. ‘Are you well, Eleanor?’
So he had remembered to ask at last. ‘Yes.’
‘You are as beautiful as ever. I regret I was not with you.’
‘I was not sorry,’ I admitted dryly.
‘Forgive my temper. I did warn you.’
‘So you did. Do I have rooms made ready for me in this cold place?’
‘Come with me.’
Depositing William back into Agnes’s arms, Henry swept me off. In his bedchamber—not mine—he kissed me, stripped me and showed me that the months had been as long for him as they had for me.
‘Now we’ve dealt with the priorities …’ his grin was as satisfied as that of a cat with a free run of the dairy ‘ … and much to our satisfaction, I warrant, I’ll tell you where I stand with England.’
Henry knew me well. Of course I would want to know more than his brief letters had given me or his scribbled excuses for a map. He was already out of bed, a plain tunic belted loosely, soft shoes on his feet, a cup of ale in one hand, as he stalked around the bedchamber. On every surface there were signs of his residence, a clutter of untidiness that I had not noticed when he had rushed me over the threshold and into his bed. Rolls and seals and creased documents. A bag spilling coins across the surface of a chest. A cup and plate bearing crumbs from some long-ago meal. A favourite sword that he had half-cleaned. A heap of abandoned clothing not yet put to rights by his squire.
I sat up and clasped my arms around my bent knees, touched when Henry reached to catch up a fur-lined mantle in one hand and cast it over my naked shoulders against the chill. Sometimes he had the power to surprise me. Sometimes, when I was not angry, his sensitivity made my belly liquid with desire.
‘I know you’ve come to terms with Stephen,’ I said. ‘A victory, I suppose.’
‘I have.’ He dropped onto a stool before the fire to inspect and then to gnaw on a piece of previously abandoned fowl. He chewed, licked his fingers and dropped the bones in the flames. ‘Stephen will fight no more. He’s lost the heart for it, certainly with Eustace dead.’ He chose another unidentifiable piece of meat. ‘He’d no wish to face me at Wallingford. Do you know what his men were saying? That God himself appeared to fight for me, so many towns and fortresses fell to me.’ Henry wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘I wasn’t aware of God prompting my decisions but it made Stephen think twice before taking me on. Archbishop Theobald—Stephen’s Archbishop of Canterbury—told him it would be a mistake to join battle with me. For whether I rode for God or the Devil, I was unbeatable. Theobald is my man for sure. He was already whispering in Stephen’s ear that I should be named as his heir.’
‘Which Eustace resented.’
Henry frowned at another chicken leg, but abandoned it, to surge to his feet and pace from one end of the chamber to the other and back again. ‘I can understand Eustace’s anger. What man would wish to be disinherited by his own father? But his retaliation was bloody. Do you know what he did?’ he demanded, as if I ought to know.
I shook my head.
‘He harried a swathe of land along the east of the country. Burning and killing and destroying. His own country, his own people. To lure me into a trap, I expect, if I was fool enough to follow him to bring him to justice. It’s a God-forsaken place, all swamp and river and low-lying land.’ He sank onto the bed beside me, a flicker of anger in his eyes, but it was distant like a low roll of thunder and not to be feared. I said nothing, allowing him to continue. ‘I know I sometimes do things in the heat of fury, but not in cold blood. Not like that. I can’t regret his death.’
‘Thank God for eels.’
‘Yes. I prefer red meat myself.’ His teeth gleamed white as he shrugged off his displeasure. ‘Anyway, the outcome—as I wrote—was that Stephen and I healed our differences at Winchester.’
‘Where you were recognised as Stephen’s heir.’
‘Yes! Not only his heir but his adopted son. Sealed and witnessed by a fistful of worthy bishops and earls. I shall be King of England on his death. I did homage to him and agreed that Stephen should hold the kingdom for the rest of his life, provided that I’m proclaimed King without opposition on his death. I know I’ve to wait out the term of Stephen’s life—but it’s a small price to pay.’
‘All you have worked for.’
I watched the play of emotion on his face. Pride, restless ambition, a sense of fulfilment, and underlying it all, the impatience that still he must wait. Then he lunged and rolled me and the mantle into his arms.
‘This is it, Eleanor. Our empire. And now we have a son to inherit it after I am gone. And there’ll be more. See how bright our fortune shines together.’ He stretched a hand to the side of the bed to scoop up a rolled document from the floor, heavy with seals. The Wallingford treaty. So it hadn’t ended up in the flames. It amused me that he should keep it by him. ‘Here it is. Do you want to read it?’
‘Not right now!’
‘No. Later. For now I think …’ He kissed his way along my throat to nibble at my jaw. I purred soft as a kitten. Victory made Henry very desirable, as long as I could distract him from the next step in his planning, and back to me.
‘One thing, Eleanor.’
Clothing mostly restored, Henry’s mind reverted to a need to make a fast reconnoitre of his possessions. We both knew that Louis would not take news of the birth of the Angevin heir in good heart. Baby William would inherit Aquitaine, thus snatching it from the dower of Marie and Alix. French retaliation was expected. Neither was brother Geoffrey’s strained loyalty to be depended on—he still had Maine and Anjou in his sights as soon as Henry looked the other way.
‘One thing …’ Henry repeated.
Yes, he was uncertain. ‘Only one?’ I attempted a light-heartedness I suddenly did not feel.
Buckling his sword belt, Henry raised his gaze slowly to mine where I sat on the bed to make some semblance of order in the rat’s nest of my hair. All the soft humour of the past hour was suddenly replaced by an unusual hesitancy. His reply jolted me.
‘The child.’
Ah. The child. A boy. And not mine. When I had heard the rumours I had grieved over it; now I knew it for the truth, from Henry’s own lips. Henry’s past was his own affair, as was mine, but still I resented it, for this child had been conceived since our own marriage. I felt anger clench its fist in my throat—but at least he had not hidden it from me, as I kept the memory of my stillborn child in Jerusalem locked tight within me. I swallowed hard against the obstruction—I was in no position to be judgmental.
‘Is he yours?’ I asked. Of course he was!
‘She says so.’ I raised my brows. ‘Some will tell you that she’s gulled me, fooled me into accepting what’s not mine. But I think he is, and Ykenai was never less than honest. I’ve taken him in exchange for a purse of gold to set her up with a house and a chance to change her profession if she so wishes.’ His eyes were stern and direct.
‘Did you love her?’ A woman’s question, full of envy, carefully hidden.
‘No. I was needy.’ A man’s reply, a careless shrug.
‘I don’t like the thought of you with her.’
‘And I don’t like Bernat de Ventadour singing love songs to you!’
‘And so?’
‘Will you tak
e him?’
For a moment I finished braiding my hair, head tilted to consider this.
‘Why should I take your bastard by an ale-house whore?’
‘Because I ask it of you. And because it’s you I love.’
Easy to say. Abandoning my hair, I picked at the soft pelt of the bed cover, hiding my thoughts.
‘He is called Geoffrey,’ Henry informed me. ‘If you can’t find it in you, then I’ll make other arrangements.’
‘What arrangements?’ I knew it sounded cold and uncompromising but in that moment, my body still warm from his, it was hard to forgive him.
‘I don’t know. No—look—I don’t want that.’ I looked up and for the first time saw a shadow of regret chase across his features. ‘Here’s the thing, Eleanor—will you take on his upbringing? He’s a fine lad and deserves the best from me. I can’t leave him with his mother. Will you do it for me, raise him as my son? He’ll not threaten the inheritance of our own children—but I want him. I want recognition of him as mine. Take him, Eleanor!’
I sighed. This would not be a seamless marriage. But still. Better to have the child of Henry’s blood raised under my authority than perhaps used by others with an eye to future power. Bastard children could be a weapon in the right hands. So why not? Geoffrey would be raised with William and the other sons I intended to have.
At the end I could not refuse him.
‘I’ll do it. But if I catch you with the fecund Ykenai, Henry, I’ll crack your skull.’
‘I’ll have to make sure you don’t catch me, then, won’t I?’
With a leer of pure mischief and renewed appetite, he pounced to pin me to the covers. The lacings on his robe were simple to undo.
‘You have a generous soul, Eleanor. Have I told you today how your hair reminds me of the sun shining through autumn beeches in England?’
His kisses were sweet and for now he was all mine, all I could ask for. I was content.
I was pregnant before he left.
Disaster stalks us when we least expect it. Perhaps I should not have been so sanguine, so sure of my future contentment. It was some months before Henry returned. That was not the problem—I think I had at last come to terms with our relationship continuing at a distance. Neither was it Geoffrey, Henry’s son. He had a charm all of his own, he learned to talk early and without cease. No one, not even I, was immune from his childish prattling and his determination to wield the wooden sword—a thoughtless gift from Henry—to the danger of all within reach. No, it was not Geoffrey—I learned to love him as I did my own son. The disaster when it hit was unexpected and beyond my control.
