“That’s neither here nor there,” Henry interrupted impatiently. “What matters is that I retain control of those properties that are rightfully mine, as your lord. Young Philip is dangerous; he has grandiose ideas about expanding the might of France. He has his eye on my empire. Were he to gain possession of these lands, we’d have French troops infiltrating Normandy and … well, you can imagine the rest. I have my hands full as it is, trying to keep my domains under control.”
“I see your point,” Eleanor conceded. “It would indeed be foolhardy to give Philip what he wants. So what can I do for you?”
Henry looked at her with admiration. She was actually willing and ready to cooperate with him, after long years of being bitterly at odds, fighting, quarreling, and worse. And Eleanor marveled that they were sitting here discussing politics much as they had in the old days—the early days. This was surely one of the best aspects of her new freedom, this being restored to the center of affairs.
“I want you to visit those domains, each in turn,” Henry said. “I want it to appear that you are reasserting your rights to them. Show yourself friendly to the local lords, grant charters and privileges, endow churches, found markets—you know the kind of thing that wins hearts.”
“You want me to do all this?” she asked in wonderment. “I, who was so lately your prisoner? You trust me to do it?”
“There is no one else who can,” Henry said, and grinned, and in that moment his guard fell. The grin faded and in its place there appeared on his care-worn features a look of such anguish that it nearly broke Eleanor to see it.
He reached out his hand to her, the movement jerky and tentative. His face was a grimace of agony.
“Help me, Eleanor!” he muttered, his voice strangled. She rose without hesitation and grasped that outstretched hand, pressing it to her lips, her ready tears salting it, her own need for consolation welling urgently. “I did not ask you here just to discuss Normandy,” Henry gasped. “I asked you because there is no one else I can turn to, no one else who loved him as I do.” And with that, he clasped his arms about her waist, buried his head in her belly, and howled like a baby.
When the storm of weeping had passed, and Eleanor felt she had no more tears left in her, they were gentle with each other, sitting quietly in the candlelight, sipping the restorative wine and talking without rancor of the events that had led them both to this place.
“Henry, I long to see our other children,” Eleanor said suddenly.
He turned his ravaged face to hers and took her hand. “I knew you would want to,” he told her. “They are here. I summoned them for the purpose. Come, you will be reunited with them now.”
As he led her downstairs to the lower chambers, Eleanor feared that she could not cope with so much grief and joy in such a short span of time. She was to see her children, at last, after so long! They were here—and Henry had bidden them come specially to see her. She felt a little light-headed with emotion and anticipation. Would they have changed? How would they react to seeing her? And—most crucial of all—did they still love her? She was in anguish to know.
When she entered the princes’ lodgings hand in hand with Henry, three young men and a young woman rose at once and bowed low. For a confused moment Eleanor hardly recognized any of them, and then she knew them all for her own—much older, of course, and grown to adulthood, but still her children, those she had left to her, and still inestimably loved.
In an instant they were embracing and kissing her, overjoyed to be reunited with their mother, and there were, inevitably, more tears, but happy ones this time. How, she thought, could she ever have doubted their love for her?
“Let me look at you all!” Eleanor cried in delight, as Henry watched them, a wry smile on his face. With the conversation flowing excitedly, she could not take her eyes off Richard, now a magnificent golden giant of almost twenty-six who towered above everyone else. “My great one!” she breathed, all his cruelties and depredations forgotten; she had long since convinced herself that reports of them had been greatly exaggerated, and that it was his father who had really been to blame. She was thrilled to find that in manhood, Richard had such natural authority and presence, and seeing him so powerfully built and charismatic, she did not doubt that his reputation as a warrior equal to Mars was well deserved. He was a born leader, who clearly had the ability to prove himself superior to all others.
Geoffrey, a year older, had not fulfilled his earlier promise of maturing into a handsome man. The only dark-haired one of her sons, he was short of stature and blunt of feature, and his bearing lacked a certain princely grace. But his fair words to his mother belied his appearance; she had always known that this son was blessed with acute intelligence and mental agility, and yet … and yet, she also had a stronger impression than ever that there was a darker Geoffrey, a devilish Geoffrey that lurked only a little way beneath the clever and urbane front that he presented to the world.
She could not believe that John, the youngest of her children, was the young man who had now grown as tall as his brothers, who seemed still to treat him as a child to be humored, while Henry behaved toward John with affectionate indulgence. Indeed, the light seemed to shine from his eyes whenever he looked on the youth, an obvious irritation to Richard and Geoffrey. Eleanor could detect a certain jealousy … It was evident that despite their outward bonhomie, these three sons of hers would always be rivals.
John was courteous to her, yet held himself more aloof than the rest. She could not blame him for that. She suspected that he resented her for having effectively abandoned him at Fontevrault in his infancy; she perceived in his conversation—the diffident conversation of a young man who thinks he knows everything—a certain antipathy toward the Church, which she guessed might have had its roots in his early experiences. Yet she knew that she could never explain to John why she had left him in the care of the nuns. Such things were better put firmly behind them all and consigned to the past. If we allow the past to blight our lives, we will never make a success of this reunion, she told herself again. At least she could look on John, with his dark red curls and his strongly built body, which so favored his father’s, with warmth now, and actually care about what happened to him, as became a natural mother. That was a significant blessing.
She rejoiced to see Matilda; it was a special delight to be reunited with this daughter she had thought never to set eyes on again, although nothing—nothing—could equal the joy she felt at seeing Richard after all the hard, cruel years of separation; and her cup was full when Matilda summoned a nurse, who escorted into the room a procession of seven little Saxon children to greet their grandmother—the first of her grandchildren that Eleanor had ever seen. One of the girls, she was touched to hear, had been named in her honor. She bent and hugged the sturdy little boys, Otto and Henry, lifted the baby Lothar into her arms, and made much of the pretty daughters, especially Richenza—who told an amused Eleanor that she would really rather be called Matilda while she was in England—then there was Gertrude, Ingibiorg, and tiny Nell, her namesake.
She looked on Matilda’s brood with pride, while reflecting that it was sad that none of her other children had been similarly fruitful. The Young King’s son had died, as had Joanna’s and Eleanor’s firstborn. So far there was no whisper that Geoffrey’s Constance, who had now joined the gathering and was fawning possessively over her husband, might be enceinte, and Richard and John were as yet unmarried. Both were betrothed, of course, but, John being only sixteen, it was Richard’s situation that perturbed the Queen more than anything. So far she had encountered neither sight nor sound of the Princess Alys. Was it true that Henry had at one time meant to marry her himself? If so, he had abandoned the idea years since, for she had never heard any more of it. When the opportunity arose, she promised herself, she would tactfully raise the matter of Richard’s marriage with Henry. It must take place soon.