Thank God, she thought. That was one less thing to worry about.
“Richard has risen against him and driven the French out of Berry,” Henry was saying.
“Then, if Richard is for you, why are you keeping me here?” she blurted.
“I do not trust Richard,” Henry stated, “and, forgive me, Eleanor, but I do not trust you either. When this thing is settled to my satisfaction, I will set you at liberty. Until then you stay here. I have given orders that you are to be afforded every comfort.”
“I wish, for once and forever, that you could put the past behind us!” she burst out. Henry regarded her warily.
“If I cannot, you have only yourself to blame,” he said heavily.
“Henry, it’s been fifteenyears, and in all that time, I have done nothing to your detriment or my dishonor! Doesn’t that prove to you that you need no longer fear me?”
“I can’t help it,” he told her. “I dare not trust anyone now. I am suspicious of my own shadow. You, and our sons, I hold responsible for that. I was betrayed by those whom I trusted most. I cannot forget it.”
“Then there is no help for us,” Eleanor said sadly, rising and walking over to the window, standing with her back to him so he would not see how deeply his words had affected her. “At least say you have forgiven me, even if you cannot forget.” So saying, she turned around and slowly stretched out a tentative hand to him. Henry stood there for a moment, hesitating, then he too reached out, and clasped it in his familiar callused grip.
“I do forgive you, Eleanor,” he said simply. “Forgive me if I cannot forget. I thought I would never be able to forgive even, but I find myself growing old and not in the best of health, and I cannot risk going to my judgment without granting you the absolution that Our Lord enjoins in regard to those who have wronged us.” His grasp on her hand tightened. “I want you to say you forgive me too. I have not been the best of husbands.”
Eleanor was filled with a sudden sense of foreboding, as if this might be her last chance to make things right with Henry—or as right as they could ever be now. “I forgive you, truly I do,” she said, meaning it wholeheartedly.
“My lady,” he answered in a choked voice, and, bowing his head, raised her hand to his lips and kissed it again. The thought came unbidden to her that here they were, two people who had once worshipped each other passionately with their bodies, now reduced to the chaste contact of hands and lips. It was an unbearably poignant moment. What was it about this man, she asked herself, that tied her to him against all reason, when he had done so much to destroy the love she had cherished for him, and she had tried again and again to liberate herself from her thralldom?
Henry recovered himself first, raising sick gray eyes to her. “I will free you as soon as I can,” he said gruffly. “All that remains now is for me to resolve my differences with Philip, by force, if necessary,” he said, swallowing.
Eleanor looked at him fearfully. Having established this new, forgiving rapport with him, with the dawning hope of perhaps a happier reconciliation to come, she could not bear the thought of anything evil befalling him. “You are in no fit state to go to war!” she told him. “Have you looked at yourself in a mirror recently? Henry, what exactly is wrong with you? I know you are not well. Tell me!”
“It’s nothing. A trifle.” He shrugged.
“I’m not blind,” she persisted. “You are in pain.”
Henry sighed. “I have a tear in my back passage,” he admitted. “It bleeds all the time, and festers, as I cannot keep it clean.”
“Then you should not be riding a horse, still less going on long marches,” Eleanor reproved. “Can the doctors do nothing for you?”
“No, they’re useless,” he said, frowning. “I’m sorry, Eleanor, but I have to settle matters with Philip. Then I can rest and give myself time to get better. Don’t look at me like that! I’ll be all right!”
“Then may I at least give you one piece of advice, Henry?” she asked gently. “If you would keep Richard on your side, let him marry Alys without any further delays.”
Henry frowned. “I cannot,” he said at length.
“Why?” she persisted. “Is it because she is your leman?”
He looked like a trapped animal, furtive and wanting to bolt. “You know?” he asked incredulously.
“I have known for some time. Alys told me. I noticed that she was pregnant.” Eleanor paused.
“You knew, and you never said anything?”
“What was there to say, beyond warning you of your great folly and the magnitude of your sin, but I doubt you would have heeded me, of all people.” Her eyes, clear with sincerity, met his. “Henry, we were finished. The days when I lay with you wondering if another woman had enjoyed your body were long gone. I was shocked, yes, but mainly for Richard’s sake—and that silly girl’s. Alys did not come between us.”
“Richard knows,” Henry said.
“The whole world will have to know, if he marries her,” Eleanor warned. “Their union will be incestuous without a dispensation.”
“As ours was,” Henry reminded her. “You had known myfather. I often ask myself if we were cursed as a result. What else could explain all the evils that have befallen us and our issue?”
“The fact that you are descended from the Devil might have something to do with it!” Eleanor smiled. “But Henry, not everything has been touched with evil. Look at the great empire that our marriage created!”
“That too, Eleanor,” Henry said, shaking his head. “It’s been well nigh impossible holding it together; I have worn myself out trying to do so. It has caused nothing but strife and jealousies, and it will go on doing so, mark my words, maybe for hundreds of years even. Any fool should have seen that trying to unite such large domains would bring unique problems of its own, even without a cat like Philip waiting to pounce.”
He looked at the hourglass. “I must go, if I’m to get to Southampton by nightfall.”
“God go with you then, my lord,” Eleanor prayed, knowing that further protests about his health would fall on deaf ears.
“And with you, my lady,” Henry said briskly, and, planting a brief kiss on her lips this time, was gone.
Winchester, 1188–1189
At first the reports that filtered through to England were encouraging. The King was winning—a great victory over the French was almost a certainty! And hot on the heels of that news came Henry’s order for Eleanor to move to the greater comfort of Winchester; yet no sooner had she gratefully settled into her lodgings there, with Henry Berneval fussing about to make sure she had everything she needed, as the King had commanded him, there came the news she had dreaded to hear. Richard had succumbed to Philip’s blandishments and deserted his father.
She wept, she raged at her son’s perfidy. But then she learned of the peace conference at Bonmoulins, where Richard, backed by the French king, had demanded that Henry name him as his heir, give him Anjou and Maine now, and let him marry Alys forthwith, without further prevarication. All reasonable requests, of course, and naturally it made sense for Richard to shoulder the burden of governing some of Henry’s domains, given the King’s state of health. But the stumbling block was, and always would be, Alys.
When Henry had refused, Richard defiantly knelt before Philip and did homage to him for Anjou and Maine; and the French, incensed at the old King’s obstinacy, attacked him and his men and drove them away from the negotiations, against all the laws of chivalry and diplomacy.