Geoffrey had gone to Paris, where he was even now fraternizing mysteriously with that menace Philip, and no doubt plotting some fresh mischief. You never knew with Geoffrey. Reports had it that he was as close as a blood brother to the French king. Eleanor had sometime since picked up on the fact that he was dissatisfied with being merely Duke of Brittany and wanted more. Not so long ago he thought he had Normandy within his grasp. Now he was making noises about Anjou. It was all a great annoyance to the King, and doubtless Philip was relishing abetting Geoffrey in his ambitions. Anything to discountenance Henry!
The Queen sighed. Soon, to her great sadness, she would have to leave this beloved city and travel north, for Henry was bound for England and wanted her to accompany him. They were to lodge for a time at Winchester. She did not want to go. How could she forsake the golden lands of the sunny South to waste the coming summer in a castle that would be forever associated in her mind with her long captivity?
But of course she had, as usual, no choice in the matter.
Winchester, 1186
Eleanor could have cried over the unjustness of it all! The situation with Geoffrey and Philip having become increasingly a matter for concern, she had thought to write to her son, urging him to come to England, where she hoped to talk some sense into him. But Henry intercepted the letter—she had not realized that her correspondence was still subject to the scrutiny of his officers—and his suspicious mind interpreted it as evidence that she was involved in a plot against him. After all, had she not schemed with King Louis, on that earlier, fateful occasion when her sons sought refuge and support in Paris?
Nothing she said could fully deflect Henry’s mistrust. He muttered that he accepted her explanation, but his eyes told a different story. And now she had a new custodian to replace Ralph FitzStephen, whose services had been dispensed with sometime before. She would have liked Ranulf Glanville, but he had been deployed to more pressing duties of state. At least Henry Berneval was an upright, amiable man of little charm or imagination, and he treated her with great deference and kindness; but he was her gaoler, nonetheless, and tailed her, two guards at his heels, wherever she went, even with the King in residence, which he was all that summer.
Eleanor was still smarting from the unfairness of it all when the messenger from France arrived at Winchester and she received a summons to the King’s lodgings. There, she was confronted by an ashen-faced Henry, slumped in his chair, a wine goblet lying in a pool of liquid on the rush matting, where he had evidently dropped it.
Shutting the door on Henry Berneval and his guards, so she could be alone with her husband, she knelt down before him in alarm.
“Henry! What has happened? Is it war? Has Geoffrey allied with Philip against you?”
The King looked at her dully. His eyes were bloodshot; he had been drinking a lot lately. He was quite drunk now, she realized.
“Worse. I know not how to tell you,” he mumbled, slurring his words. “Geoffrey is dead, killed in a tournament in Paris.”
“Oh God!” Eleanor cried. “No!”
A tear slid down Henry’s weathered cheek. He leaned forward and placed one tentative hand on her shoulder in a gesture intended to comfort. She barely noticed it in her distress.
“What happened? Tell me—I must know!” she wept, unable to believe that God had been so cruel as to take yet another of her children to Himself. And Geoffrey, like the Young King, had been but twenty-eight years old. Yet, unlike what happened with the Young King three years earlier, there had been no warning to prepare her, no vision vouchsafed of the bliss that lay ahead for the precious departed. This, in contrast, was a brutal shock.
“He had a fever,” Henry related, his words coming slowly and unevenly, for he too was dazed from the blow, and somewhat befuddled by alcohol. “Even so, he insisted on taking part in that damned tournament, but he was unsaddled in the mêlée and …” He could not go on.
Eleanor could imagine the scene in its full horror: the merciless sun beating down on the jousting ground, the stands packed with baying spectators, the deadly clash of swords, the ferocious, heaving fray of fighting men engaged in frenzied combat, the screams of horses, the cries of the wounded … and her son, her Geoffrey, lying there in the bloodied dust, his body broken and trampled …
It tore her apart, and she moaned in her misery, rocking back and forth on her haunches. Weeping freely, Henry drew her to him, and in that awkward embrace, and the violent tempest of their grief, they drew some small comfort from each other.
When he at last disengaged himself from Eleanor, Henry seemed embarrassed; it was as if he had somehow compromised himself by exposing his raw emotions, or betraying any need for her; as if the fragile truce between them was in danger of being subverted by the acknowledgment of a bond that had long ago been thought severed. But Eleanor did not care. She was too immersed in her sorrow to give much thought to Henry. He had comforted her when she was in desperation: she would read into his kindness nothing more than that. He need not worry.
They sat in the quiet intimacy born of years of marriage as he told her haltingly of Geoffrey’s burial in the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris.
“Philip has sent to offer his condolences and to tell me that he is building him a fine tomb in the choir. The messenger said that Philip was so mad with grief that he had to be forcibly restrained from throwing himself onto the coffin in the open tomb.” He stopped, choked.
“If I had been there, I would have done the same!” Eleanor cried passionately. “Henry, we shouldhave been there.”
“It was too late,” he replied heavily. “The hot weather …” His voice trailed off. “At least God has spared us two sons.” His voice was bitter. “And Constance is pregnant again. There may yet be an heir to Brittany.”
“She must be taking this hard,” Eleanor said, without much conviction.
“I dare say.” Henry’s ravaged face bore a sardonic expression. He knew, as well as she, that Constance would not grieve overly for Geoffrey.
“What will you do?” she ventured to ask. “Will Richard still be your heir?”
“As long as he is faithful to me,” he replied. “I have sent for John to join me. I leave for Guildford tomorrow.”
Henry had sent for his favorite son for comfort. He was abandoning her to her grief. Eleanor could not believe that he could be so selfish and callous. “Let me send for Richard,” she urged. If he could have his favorite, then she had need of hers.
Henry looked at her as if she had lost her wits. “Richard is needed in Aquitaine,” he said dismissively.
Sarum, 1188
Henry had done it at last, the thing he’d always threatened: he sent her back to Sarum, and now he was coming, presumably, to gloat on her predicament.
She supposed she could not blame him. Richard’s long-festering resentment toward his father finally drove him into the open arms of Philip, and the result had been a bloody war, with Henry on one side, backed by John and the bastard Geoffrey the Chancellor, and Richard and Philip on the other.