When Eleanor arrived at Windsor Castle for the Christmas court, wondering why Henry had bothered inviting her after their spectacular falling out at Westminster, after which he sent her summarily back to Winchester with not a word of farewell, the first person who came to greet her was Constance, now grown tall and proud, bearing a tiny infant in her arms. Yet her face bore no trace of the serenity and joy of young motherhood; instead, the winged brows were creased in a petulant frown, the wide, bee-stung lips pouting in a disagreeable grimace. Barely had the Duchess of Brittany risen from her curtsey than she was complaining.
“Madame the Queen, I beg of you, go to the King for me. He will not permit me to join Geoffrey in Normandy for Christmas. It’s so unfair!”
“Daughter,” Eleanor enjoined, a touch sharply, “will you not allow me a moment to get my breath after braving these treacherous roads?” She sank thankfully into a cushioned chair. “And first things first! May I not greet my new grandchild?” She held out her arms. Plainly irritated by this distraction, Constance placed the baby in them, then opened her mouth to have her say …
“Oh, you are gorgeous!” Eleanor cooed to the tiny pink and white face blinking up from the swaddled bundle. “Is it a boy?”
“No,” Constance said flatly, smarting with disappointment, for she had been convinced she was carrying an heir to Brittany—and perhaps to more than that, if her own and Geoffrey’s ambitions were fulfilled; she was convinced that her instincts would prove correct in regard to that.
“A little girl! How delightful!” Eleanor baited her, tracing the soft cheek with her finger. “And what is she called?”
“She is named after you, my lady,” Constance said grudgingly, recalling how Geoffrey had insisted, despite her protests.
“I am most touched. How kind!” Eleanor smiled sweetly, and handed the baby back. Immediately, Constance called for the nurse to take her, at which Eleanor deliberately prolonged matters by calling for wine and comfits.
“Now,” she said comfortably, when they were brought, “what’s all this about Geoffrey and Normandy?”
“The King sent him to take charge of Normandy while he himself was in England,” Constance told her, with the air of one throwing down the gauntlet.
Eleanor was surprised. “Indeed,” she managed. Was this some new ploy of Henry’s to discountenance her and Richard? Could it—surely not!—even mean that the King was now grooming Geoffrey to succeed to his empire? One look at Constance’s smug face was enough to tell her that it could—or at least that Constance herself was interpreting it that way, and therefore probably other people as well.
She mastered herself. “And you want to join him there?” she inquired, neatly deflecting the subject in favor of something far less contentious.
“Yes, my lady, that’s why you must go to the King for me!” Constance insisted.
“Must?” Eleanor lifted her eyebrows. “I should have thought that with you so lately delivered and barely up on your feet, braving the conditions out there would be foolhardy. The King has made a very sensible, and considerate, decision in keeping you here. You must rest, child, and then you can join your lord when the weather is improved.”
“But, madame!” Constance protested. Eleanor cut her short.
“That’s enough!” the Queen reproved, raising a hand in warning. Constance scowled at her and subsided.
Henry was remote but polite, Richard studiedly courteous to his father and overly attentive to his mother, John mutinous and foul-tempered. The court held its celebrations in an atmosphere as hostile as it was tense, making a mockery of the holy season of Christ’s birth. Not all the lavish outlay of fine wines, meats, spices, choice fare, and gifts could compensate for the rifts that had opened up within the royal family, and as soon as Twelfth Night had come and gone, Richard hared off south to Poitiers. A day later, with a perfunctory kiss on her hand and a lowering look of dislike, Henry dispatched Eleanor back to Winchester.
Normandy, 1185
Eleanor was glad to leave England. After that mighty earthquake, which had been heard and felt throughout the whole realm and brought the mighty cathedral at Lincoln crashing to the ground in a storm of dust and masonry, she had not felt safe there. Cracks had even appeared in the walls of Winchester Castle. She had lain there at night tormented by fears that the building would collapse over her, crushing her as she slept.
But now she was bound for Normandy, on Henry’s orders, with Matilda and her husband for company. Could it be that the King too was concerned for her safety? She would have liked to think so, but she suspected it was something other than that. And, as so often before, her intuition was right.
No sooner had Henry received her, as coldly as he’d left her all those months before, than he raised the matter of Aquitaine. They were alone in his solar this time; he was not about to risk any more public outbursts of disobedience.
“I have decided that Richard must surrender the duchy to you, Eleanor, and that you will rule it once more,” he said, his tone brooking no defiance.
She sank down wearily into her chair, bone-tired after the long ride, and momentarily defeated. Oh, but he was clever! To offer her the one thing that meant so much to her, the chance to return to her beloved lands after so many long years of exile, and the liberty to rule them as sovereign duchess—but only in return for the dispossession of the person she loved best in the whole world, her lionhearted Richard. It was an exquisitely cruel choice. How her husband must hate her! Yet didshe have a choice? One look at Henry’s face gave her the answer to that.
“And if I refuse?” she challenged.
“Then you go back to Sarum,” he replied brutally. It was like a blow.
“I suppose you will dispossess Richard anyway, whether or not I agree?” she said. At least let Henry bear the guilt for injuring his son, rather than herself.
“No, youwill do it,” the King said. He was being deliberately vengeful.
“Ah, but I will not,” she declared, her old spirit flaring. “You are only doing this to show Richard who is master. How low of you!”
“I think you willagree, Eleanor. You have no choice. You are my wife, and have vowed obedience to me. I could make a public example of you. Already your faithlessness is notorious. You had your way at Christmas, and made me look a fool. You will not defy me again. Now, say you agree to demand Aquitaine back from Richard, or you go straight back to Sarum, and I warn you, you will not be so comfortably accommodated!”
It was at times like these that Eleanor found it hard to reconcile the nasty, brutish Henry of recent years, the Henry who was descended from the Devil, with the Henry who had desired her, who had bedded joyfully with her, bred children on her, and cried out his grief to her, the one person who could console him. It was as if he possessed two souls in his one body, and the one she was dealing with now was certainly not the one to whom she had once jubilantly given her heart and her body. Because her insubordination had rankled so deeply and publicly humiliated him, this ferocious Henry was taking his revenge—she could see it, very clearly. It was his pride, his stubborn pride, that drove him—and his usual talent for walking roughshod over people’s sensibilities. How tragic, though, that they should have come to this—and how tragic that he should no longer have the power to break her heart with his cruelty, and that all that was left of her for him to arouse was her anger and contempt!