“My lady, I can but praise your courage in meeting this great sorrow with such staunch faith,” he replied. “I am humbled by the way you have fathomed the mystery of the dream, and by the discernment and strength with which you are bearing your son’s death. May God comfort and console you.”
“Thank you,” Eleanor said simply, suddenly feeling grief welling like an unquenchable tide within her. “I would be alone now, by your leave. Come back later. I will be ready to hear what happened to my son.”
After he was gone, the tears came flooding. Young Henry might be in Heaven, and exulting in its eternal glories, yet he was gone from her on this Earth, and never more would she see his handsome face, or hold him in her arms. Her calm had deserted her. She cursed Henry for keeping her from her son for ten wasted years. She had never seen him grown to full manhood, and now never would. And Henry had treated him so unjustly, promising him power, yet always keeping it tantalizingly out of reach. If the Young King had turned out feckless, quarrelsome, and ruthless, Henry had made him so. She could not but remember that dear little boy with the angelic golden curls, playing with his wooden horses and his toy dagger. What hopes she’d had for him! And now they were all come to dust, as was he.
Her grief went very deep. Always, she knew, she would be tortured by the memory of this beloved son.
“He had fought his father and brothers,” Agnell began. “He even shot twice at the King when the royal troops were drawn up before Limoges. He sent a messenger to apologize and explain that it had been an accident, but it was widely bruited about that he secretly lusted for his father’s death.”
Where did we fail, as parents, that our son should be driven to that? Eleanor asked herself in remorse. She closed her eyes in misery.
“The King stopped his allowance,” the archdeacon went on, “and of course the Young King ran out of money. He and Duke Geoffrey began sacking and looting monasteries and shrines, and holding villages to ransom. He became a leader of outlaws and excommunicates. I hesitate to tell you this, but only last month he and his men desecrated the holy shrine at Rocamadour and stole the altar treasure and the famous sword of Roland, as the horrified pilgrims looked on.”
She could not bear to think that her son had been such a monster. Yet if he had been past all redemption, why had God vouchsafed her that dream? Was it to show that His forgiveness was boundless? Had Young Henry truly repented at the last?
“Then the Young King’s life was suddenly cut short,” Agnell recounted. “He fell violently ill with dysentery and a fever. They carried him to a house in the town of Martel, and, he being in extremis, the Bishop of Agen was summoned hastily, to whom he made fervent confession of all his sins.”
Eleanor sent up a silent prayer of thanks.
“His case being hopeless, he asked that his father the King be summoned. But as the King told me himself, he suspected a trap, so he sent the Young King a message expressing the hope that when he had recovered, they would be reconciled. And with it he sent, as token of his forgiveness, a sapphire ring.”
Agnell’s eyes met Eleanor’s. A sapphire ring!
“I never knew Henry to wear such a ring,” she said, marveling, “yet I saw it in my dream, as clearly as I can see you now.”
“He had taken it from his treasure; it belonged to the first King Henry.”
“Truly, I am astonished,” she told her visitor. “If I had thought before that my dream was sent by God, then I am utterly convinced of it now, for how could I have known about that ring?”
“The ways of God are indeed mysterious and wonderful,” Agnell declared.
“I feel a little better now,” Eleanor said, her voice gaining strength. “I think I can bear to hear the rest.”
“There is not much more to tell, my lady. At the end, the Young King was so overcome with remorse for his sins that he asked to be clothed in a hair shirt and a crusader’s cloak, and laid on a bed of ashes on the floor, with a noose around his neck and bare stones at his feet, as became a penitent. As he lay there, his father’s ring was brought to him, and he begged that the King would show mercy to you, his mother, whom he had held so long in captivity, and he asked all his companions to plead with your lord to set you at liberty.”
His last thoughts had been for her, his mother. With his dying breath he had asked for her to be freed. Eleanor’s heart was full. She could not speak.
“He gave up his spirit later that evening,” the archdeacon concluded. “The end was very peaceful.”
“He was only twenty-eight,” Eleanor murmured, choked.
“Young in years, but full of time when measured by the experiences of his life,” Agnell observed. They were silent for a few minutes.
“Henry must bitterly regret not going to him when he lay dying,” Eleanor said at length. “Tell me, how did he take the news of his death?”
“He was inconsolable, my lady. He threw himself on the ground and pitifully bewailed the loss of his son. He was so distraught that his secretary, in some alarm, was moved to reprove him for his excess of grief.”
Eleanor found herself inexplicably wanting, needing, to comfort Henry. This was our son, flesh of our flesh, bone of our bone, she thought desperately; we conceived him in love and joy, and we should mourn him in love and compassion. We should be sharing our grief together. Alas, it was clearly not to be. If Henry had wanted to heal the breach in the hour of their terrible sorrow, he would have come here. There was no point in torturing herself.
“Good Father, where has my son been laid to rest?” she inquired.
“His body has been interred by the high altar in the cathedral at Rouen, clothed in his coronation robes. His entrails lie, at the King’s request, at the monastery of Grandmont, which, regrettably, the Young King had recently sacked. I am happy to say that the brethren received them in the spirit of forgiveness.”
Eleanor knew Grandmont well. It was one of Henry’s favorite monastic foundations. He had spoken of being buried there himself one day.
There was no doubting, she told herself later, as she knelt in prayer, forcing herself to face the facts, that the Young King’s death would leave Henry more secure, and Richard the undisputed ruler of Aquitaine and, now, of course, heir to England. Agnell had told her that on hearing of the tragedy at Martel, the rebels immediately disbanded and fled. So Richard, her Richard, would have all except Brittany when Henry died. Maybe, in the end, the eagle wouldrejoice in her third nesting.
She prayed for her daughter-in-law, the widowed Marguerite, now bereft and childless. No doubt Henry would want to keep his hands on the Vexin, her dowry, although Eleanor doubted that King Philip would be happy about that. At least Marguerite was young and likely to marry again; her life lay mostly ahead of her. Unlike me, poor prisoner, Eleanor thought mournfully. I am sixty-one, and my autumn is upon me. What is there left to me?
A letter came for her from a grief-stricken Bertran de Born; renowned troubadour that he was, for all his treacherous soul, he had couched it in picturesque and evocative language that moved Eleanor deeply, for it evoked the spirit of her native land and sang to her grief. “Youth stands sorrowful,” he wrote. “No man rejoices in these bitter days. Death, that mortal warrior, has harshly taken from us the best of knights.”
The parchment fell to the floor. Eleanor could read no further.
Sarum and Normandy, 1183