by Anne O'Brien
What better place for William than the kingdom he would one day rule?
‘I’ll come,’ I said, ‘but I don’t see why you need me. Agnes would have done the job just as well.’
With his hand around mine, first smoothing out my fingers, Henry all but dragged me along. ‘You’re half-frozen. You should have more care of yourself and the child. And since when were you going to pass authority on your appearance to the decisions of your tiring woman?’
I did not understand. ‘Appearance?’ My steps faltered, except Henry gave me no choice but to trip over his heels.
‘Well, I expect you’ll have something to say on what you wear for your coronation!’ Impatience made him clasp my hand even tighter and bustle me along.
I stopped and dug in my heels. Which brought him to a halt at last.
‘What’s wrong now, Eleanor?’ A snap of intolerance when his whole world was waiting for his attention. ‘We haven’t time, whatever it is. I want to be on my way by dawn.’
‘Am I not staying here as Regent?’ I asked carefully.
‘Do you want to?’
‘I thought you would need me to stay.’
He frowned. ‘Did I say that?’
‘No.’
‘Then what’s …? Ah! You thought I’d leave without you, didn’t you?’
‘Yes.’
He was facing me, hands biting into my arms through the heavy cloth and fur of my cloak. ‘It will be the most important day of my life when they put that bloody crown on my head. I want you with me. Beside me.’ ‘Oh.’
He shook me gently. ‘Eleanor, sometimes you are nothing more than a foolish woman!’
‘How was I to know? You left me before.’
‘But not this time.’ And he was pulling me along again. ‘We’ll be crowned together and this child will be born in England. Does that satisfy you?’ Not waiting for an answer, he swung me against him, his arm around my shoulder, my back to the fortress wall. ‘We won’t always be together. You know that. Our life is not made for comfort and our own personal choice of how we live it. Our birth makes us subject to higher things.’ His kiss was hard and sure. ‘But for this momentous achievement, the crown of England, my own birthright, we will stand together.’ He kissed me again. ‘Do you agree?’
‘Yes.’
Always partings. Always differences. How clearly he saw things. And so did I. I knew it and accepted it.
‘Always remember this moment, Eleanor, standing on the wall at Rouen with the world at our feet. It’s ours to take, our empire to hold and rule, our line of inheritance to create through our children.’ He smoothed his hand over my rounded belly in a proprietorial gesture. ‘And never forget this. I love you.’ He lifted my chin. ‘Look at me. You’re very quiet—always a cause for suspicion in a woman!’ He growled a laugh. ‘What do you have to say that I won’t like?’
‘Nothing!’
‘Then tell me what I will like!’
All my anxieties had vanished. I was cold and damp and ungainly but I had never been more content than I was within the shelter of Henry’s arm on the walls of Rouen.
‘My heart is yours,’ I informed him. There! I had said it at last!
‘Excellent.’
‘And I love you too.’ Why had I found it so difficult?
‘I know you do. So you should. And you’ll come to England with me.’
‘Yes.’
‘Which reminds me.’ Before I could react to his deplorably smug assertion that he’d always known I had more than a passing affection for him, we were almost running down the steps, but Henry’s arm was firm and supportive around my waist. ‘Did you hear what the courier had to say about Louis? He’s taken a new bride. The Castile girl, Constance. They were wed at Orleans early this month.’ ‘Oh.’
I think I was taken aback. I knew Louis would wed but it was still a strange thought.
‘Louis in alliance with Alfonso of Castile,’ Henry continued. ‘D’you suppose it’s to bolster his strength against my waxing moon of glory?’
I laughed. Louis’s marriage meant nothing to me after all. ‘I’m sure of it. Unfortunate girl! I’ll offer up a Mass for her survival through a lifetime of intense boredom. And that she puts Louis out of his misery and manages to bear a son.’
Henry’s eyes rested, briefly, on my face but I had no difficulty in meeting his speculative gaze, which was entirely too sharp and knowing. He nodded his head.
‘Louis was never good enough for you. I’m better. I’ve always said that.’
And pushing me inside the door of the keep, Henry was already marching in the opposite direction towards the stables.
‘One more thing.’ He paused, turned his head. ‘I won’t take that maggot from Ventadorn with me to England.’
‘Why not?’
‘And have him mooning over you? By God, I won’t. And he can’t sing a rousing tune to save his life. I’ll leave it to you to tell him. If I set eyes on him I might just wring his neck for decamping without leave.’ So he would decide whether my troubadour travelled with me or not, would he? He saw the glint in my eye. ‘Will you argue the point?’
I thought about it. And thought better of it.
‘No, I’ll not argue.’
‘Good. He’d have my men crying into their ale for unrequited love. Now, go and do it, my love …’
I think he’d already forgotten me but my heart was light and I went to oversee the packing of my travelling chests, trying to decide how to tell my troubadour that his dear love was abandoning him. Henry’s word was law.
Upheaval greeted me in my rooms. What to take? How to choose between one gown and the next? Shoes with or without gold embroidery. Mantles with or without ermine trim. In the end I took them all. And as an afterthought, ten warm undershirts. As Henry said, who knew what I might need and England was a cold country.
Queen of England?
I liked the thought.
EPILOGUE
Nineteenth day of December, 1154:
Westminster Abbey, London.
IT IS so cold. I clench my jaw against it and try to forget my first impressions of this city that will be my home for at least some parts of every year. All dirty snow banked beside the roads, compacted ice to trap the unwary, the layered filth and excrement of a city under stress, and the Thames frozen over. However much I might yearn for Aquitaine, this is where I must be when Henry demands it. That much I know.
The vast space above my head intimidates me with its dark gloom, the air keen in my nostrils with the slice of a hunting knife, despite the brazier some thoughtful soul has placed beside me. Every time I take a breath my lungs wince, even though two of my undershirts are stretched across my girth. My exhalation puffs out in white mist, as it does from every baron of England who has had the sense to present himself here today. Any lord who has chosen to absent himself on the pretext of ill health or bad weather—well, I don’t envy his next interview with his new overlord. It might just be at the point of a sword.
Henry Plantagenet has come to claim his own. And I have come with him.
I can barely feel my feet. My fingers are red and raw with the cold as I fist them inside my mantle. I’m paying a heavy price for being here. Chilblains with their irrepressible itch. But nothing—nothing!—can spoil this day.
To my left in the shadow of a squat pillar stands Aelith, who seems to have made her life with me permanent in her widowhood, even to coming to England with me. I am not sorry. I enjoy her company when Henry—as he invariably is—is distracted. She watches in solemn support as she has done since that day when we waited together for Louis Capet to arrive in Bordeaux to claim his bride. My attention is caught. Beside her my fifteen-month-old son squirms in Agnes’s grip and whimpers. I sense the start of a storm. He’s too young for this but I would have him here. He may not remember, but I will tell him how he saw his mother and father crowned King and Queen of England. And then the storm is averted for young Geoffrey reaches up his hand and distract
s my son with an impish smile over some shared mischief. Geoffrey is a good boy.
Archbishop Theobald of Canterbury approaches with solemn pomp. His broad face is beaming in satisfaction in getting what he wanted for England. I slide a glance to Henry. All I see there is red-hot impatience for this to be over, but for once carefully banked. Henry knows the importance of this, the impression he must make.
Behind us stretches a month and more of endless waiting at the port of Barfleur, a month of tempest, gales and violent seas that kept us penned like sheep for market. Until Henry could wait no longer. He was no sheep but a predator—and as restless as one of the caged lions I had seen in Byzantium. I smile a little as I recall.
‘We’ve been here a month,’ he had all but shouted, stabbing his finger in accusation at no one in particular.
‘We are all aware of that,’ I had remarked calmly, although his frustration had driven me to distraction.
‘And over there—I could almost spit the distance!’ He jabbed the finger in the general direction. ‘Over there is England, six weeks without a king. Who knows what mischief’s afoot with me shackled here by one bloody tempest after another?’
‘There’s nothing you can do. They know you’ll come when you can.’
He flung down the book that had kept his attention for all of five minutes. ‘I’ll risk it. I’ll go tomorrow, no matter what.’ He marched to the door, shouting orders as he went.
I had expected this, but still it lapped around my heart, a rising tide of fear.
‘Henry—don’t! Remember the White Ship,’ I called after him. That terrible tragedy, the irreplaceable lives lost. When Henry the First had lost his only son, William, casting the country into bloody civil war because the barons would not accept a woman, Henry’s mother, Matilda. Was I to lose him to the sea, as that first Henry had lost the light of his life? I could not bear to lose Henry to the waves.
‘Bugger the White Ship!’ he shouted back.
But at the door he spun on his heel and marched back towards me again. With hands cupping my elbows, he lifted me to my feet from my huddle beside the fire, so that my needlework fell to the floor, where it found its way under his boots.
‘I’m going tomorrow, and you won’t change my mind. But you’ll not come with me. Not yet. Too dangerous.’ He eyed my figure dubiously.
Not go? Oh, no! I would not allow this. I had not come so close to be left behind now. I had not tolerated Henry’s furious impatience over the past weeks—whilst I stitched impotently at a panel for an altar cloth, not caring if it was even completed—to be sent home meekly to Rouen or Angers or even Poitiers. Yes, I was afraid of the storms and wallowing seas but nothing would stop me from sailing with him.
‘I won’t be left behind, Henry.’
‘Eleanor …’
‘If you’re going to England, so am I.’ Agnes and Aelith, a critical audience, exchanged knowing glances, probably wagering on the outcome. Henry saw the exchange and reacted in a predictably male manner.
‘Out!’ Henry ordered. And they did.
As soon as the door was closed: ‘By God, Eleanor! You’re in no fit state to travel.’
‘You invited me to accompany you.’ ‘That was before the delay. Look at you! You’re as round and full as an egg!’ I barely opened my mouth to deny this unflattering picture. ‘You’re not going to be difficult about this, are you?’
I raised my chin. I was going to be very difficult. ‘I’m going with you, Henry, even if I give birth on the damned ship.’
Henry was not impressed. ‘Hear me, Eleanor. You’re not going.’
‘I’ll hire my own ship if I have to! I’ll sail alone!’ Pray God I wouldn’t be driven to it.
‘I’ll lock you up in this miserable fortress if that’s the only way I can keep you safe.’
‘Show me a prison door that can’t be unlocked with a handful of gold!’ ‘Eleanor! By God!’ ‘Don’t shout at me!’ ‘I am not shouting!’ ‘I will not let you leave me here!’
The outcome hung in the balance. I punched Henry not so lightly on the shoulder with my clenched fist.
‘God help me!’ Now he did shout. I expect Aelith and Agnes could hear from where they were doubtless eavesdropping outside the door.
‘I expect He will. But I’ll help you more. You need me, Henry.’ I would give no quarter.
‘Do I need a bad-tempered, opinionated woman who can’t follow a plain order even to save her own life?’
‘Yes. If you go to England, Henry, then so do I, by one means or another. It’s as simple as that.’
I felt the moment the balance tipped in my favour.
‘Ha! You are a trial to me, Duchess Eleanor.’
I tilted my head with a little smile and waited in silence.
‘A stubborn, capricious woman. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.’ The tension eased into a suspicion of a grin and Henry’s fingers relaxed their grip. ‘If Louis was stupid enough to take you crusading, I suppose I must take you a short journey to England.’
‘And you, of course, are not stupid.’
‘No. By God, I’m not. I know I need you with me. We have a performance to make, my love. And we will play it to the hilt.’
No sentimentality here. Off he went to chivvy and organise. The embroidery was beyond repair.
So I suffered one of Henry’s diabolical campaigns: twenty-four hours of storm-tossed, freezing-cold misery in the Esnecca, Henry’s sea snake, a war galley as wickedly predatory as Henry himself and with no degree of comfort, followed by a makeshift lodging with vermin and lice in the old Saxon palace on the south bank of the Thames at a God-forsaken place called Bermondsey. And that dubious accommodation only after a flying visit to the Royal Treasury at Winchester where the barons did homage. Quaking like a bed of reeds in a high wind they were, all of them with astonished eyes on their new king who had made a miracle crossing of the Channel, like an avenging angel sent by God to sort out the sins of a weary, war-torn country. But they were all wary. There was not one of them there who did not know what had happened at Limoges.
Not one hand or one voice was lifted against us.
‘I’ll chop off any hands that wield a sword in my presence,’ Henry had snarled at the first opportunity. Perhaps that had something to do with their acquiescence, on top of the rumour of his reaction when he had first set foot in the palace of Westminster, where we had thought to make our residence. Vandalised and stripped by Stephen’s supporters, it was beyond words.
Yet Henry found them.
‘God’s eyes! Do they live like hogs in a sty?’ And this from the man who thought nothing of wrapping himself in a cloak to sleep on the floor alongside his men when on campaign. Who would not always comb his hair from one day to the next unless reminded. ‘Has no one seen fit to make to ready for us? I want food and warmth for my wife. Now! Not in an hour’s time! Who’s in charge of this misbegotten place? I’ll string up his guts for the ravens to eat …’
No, we were not opposed by any dissenting voice.
And here we are, six days before the feast of the Nativity.
Our filthy travel garments are now gone and our robes are of silk and brocade and gauze. Rich embroidery decorates hem and sleeve, overall furred with ermine. Resting on my shoulders beneath my cloak is Melusine’s Byzantine collar. I think, whatever her antecedents, she would have enjoyed this moment despite the drear surroundings that enhance none of the fire in the heart of her opals. Today they are dull and grey, gloomily sullen and unresponsive as I touch them with frozen fingers. I shiver. Thank God I brought the undershirts with me. I wrap the mantle discreetly around me, masking the fact that I am well into my eighth month, carrying Henry’s child.
Archbishop Theobald anoints Henry’s head with holy oil. Then mine. It trickles on my scalp, uncomfortably cold with a greasy unpleasantness as Henry’s new vassals stand and stare with speculative eyes and hands clenched on sword belts, their expressions masked beneath heavy beards. What a backwater
of civilisation this is, worse than Paris. These Anglo-Normans are as uncultured and crude as the Franks: no wit, no charm, no romance and badly turned out. Neither have they any love for the art of the troubadour, although if I have to be fair in my judgement, a score of years of war and devastation are enough to beat romance out of any man.
God and his angels slept, so they say.
‘How fortunate we are.’ Henry turns his mouth to my ear. ‘I worked and fought for this moment—but it takes the hand of the Almighty to bring it to fulfilment.’
‘Lives are cheap,’ I reply.
I had almost lost him. And it was death that had brought us here. Some long in the past, one very recent, altogether a string of them without which Henry would never have made good his claim. Prince William drowning in the White Ship all those years ago. Eustace choking on a pot of eels. And Stephen dead, only a year after the truce at Winchester.
‘We will live for ever!’ Henry chuckles. ‘Or at least until you’ve given me a brood of sons to follow in my footsteps.’ His hand curves over mine, over my belly.
Theobald holds the Crown. A Crown commissioned by the Conqueror in imitation of the imperial crown of Charlemagne. Heavy, jewel-encrusted, it fits well on Henry’s head. Great-grandfather to great-grandson. Henry is still, not a muscle twitching. It is as if he holds his breath, not one hair out of place, not a snagged thread, not an unlatched lace or fastening, not even a grubby hem. The long tunic, all crimson and gold, elegantly lapping over embroidered under-tunics, is a statement of power. Jewelled gloves in white kid replace his usual hunting gauntlets. His boots are polished. I doubt I’ll ever see him as tidy again.
