Matilda and little Eleanor were particularly taken with a curious stick-backed beast.

“Hedgehog!” Eleanor cried in delight.

“No,” her mother said, “it’s a porcupine.”

They stood watching it rootling about for a few more minutes, then Richard dragged them back to see the lions, shouting, “Raaarr!! Raaarr!” Eleanor smiled lovingly upon him, then her thoughts strayed to her eldest son, whom she still missed painfully. He had remained in Becket’s household, and she had not seen him since February, when she organized a little festival for his eighth birthday. But it fell somewhat flat. He was very grand now, Young Henry, too old to be thrilled by birthday treats, and all too conscious that he was his father’s heir.

The July sun was warm, and when they returned to the Queen’s enclosed garden, a pretty arbor made enchanting with its flowery mead of delicate, heavenly colors, and its laden fruit trees, they were served ale that had been hung in buckets to cool in the moat. There, Henry joined them, fresh from hunting deer in the park. He was feeling particularly pleased with himself, for only the day before, every one of the princes of Wales had come to Woodstock to pay homage to him, following his vigorous suppression of a Welsh uprising in the spring.

When the children’s nurses had taken them back to the manor house to have their supper, Henry and Eleanor sat on a stone bench, basking in the late afternoon haze and talking of his ambitious plans to enforce law and order in his kingdom. This was his cherished project, and he had been working on it from the moment of his accession.

“What worries me the most is the increase in crimes committed by the clergy,” he said. “And the law, as it stands, allows them to get away with it!”

This was a topic long familiar to Eleanor. She had heard him grumble about it many times before. But there was a new determination in his voice when he spoke again. “I intend to put an end to this anomaly,” he declared.

He could never have guessed, she was to think years later, looking back on this summer’s day, how brutally that resolve would impact upon his life.

“It’s wrong, and it must be ended,” Henry went on. “If a lay person commits a crime, they end up in my courts and are punished according to their desserts, and often severely. That is the law of the land, and it is just. I have seen to that.” He got up and began pacing up and down in his usual restless manner. “But anyone in holy orders, even the lowliest clerk, if he commits a crime, be it murder or theft or rape, can claim benefit of clergy and be tried in the Church courts. And you know what that means.”

“The Church is not allowed to shed blood,” Eleanor said.

“Exactly. So it imposes the lightest penalties. Murder a man, and as long as you’ve got a tonsure, you get three Hail Marys! But if you or I were to commit murder, Eleanor, we would be hanged.” Henry’s face was flushed with anger. This issue rankled with him, and had for a long time. She suspected there was only one reason why he had not decided to act until now, and that was because he had not wanted to provoke a quarrel with Becket. Relations between them since Henry’s return to England had been at first wary and then amicable, but increasingly there was a distance between them that had never been there in the past, and she guessed that Henry grieved for what he’d lost, and feared to upset the equilibrium of what remained of the friendship. Even so, either he had become sufficiently vexed by the matter of the criminous clerks, as he called it, to put Becket to the test, or had managed to convince himself that his beloved Thomas really was on his side.

“No, my love, I have decided,” Henry was saying. “All offenders must be tried in the royal courts, without exception.”

He sat down, and Eleanor laid her hand on his. It was becoming increasingly rare for them to share such private moments of tenderness these days. Henry was always too busy with the many cares and duties that went with ruling such vast and far-flung domains, while she, for her part, was preoccupied with the demands of her growing family. And above all that, they existed in a state of truce, skirting around the issues that divided them. It did not make for intimacy.

“Some will see that as an attack on the Church itself,” she said.

“I know that. I expect some resistance. But I am determined to have my way.” His jaw was thrust forward, his gray eyes steely with determination. It would be a brave man who defied him.

——

The next night, he came to her in some anger and distress.

“Thomas defied me!” he raged. “We were in council, and in order to replenish my treasury, which keeps emptying at an alarming rate, I proposed that the profits from revenue collected in the shires by my sheriffs be diverted to the crown. It’s a thoroughly reasonable proposal, but what did my Lord Archbishop do? He opposed it. He defied me openly. He made me look a fool!” Henry was almost shouting.

“What did your barons say?” Eleanor asked gently.

“They supported Thomas. Bastards, the lot of them!” His face was puce.

Eleanor, shaking her head in despair, snuffed some candles, took off her nightrobe, and slipped naked into bed.

“Perhaps my Lord Archbishop wishes to show that he can assert his authority as primate of England,” she suggested, as casually as she could. Privately, she wondered if Becket had gotten wind of the bigger issue that was soon to be made public, and was testing the water to see how much support he might expect to gain.

Henry sat down heavily on the bed and began stripping off his clothes. At thirty, he was still broad-chested and muscular, but he had the beginnings of a paunch, the result of enjoying too much of the good, sweet wines of Anjou.

“Does he indeed? Well, I’ll not let him best me again!” he vowed, and climbed in beside her. “But let us not waste time on Thomas. I came here for another purpose.” Gathering her in strong arms, he kissed her avidly, and she marveled at how her body still had the power to arouse him. She was forty-one now, and there was a light silvering of gray in her still-thick hair. Faint lines ringed her eyes, her lips were not as full as they had once been, and her jaw less defined; her breasts were soft from too many pregnancies, and her stomach rounded. Yet she still knew how to tease and please Henry, and her eager fingers and tongue could always find ways to bring him quickly to the point of ecstasy, as she was proceeding to do now, rejoicing to feel his penis grow instantly hard in her hand, and feeling her own surge of pleasure at his touch. They came together, as they always did, in a mad fervor of passion, and when it subsided, Eleanor lay slick and hot, with Henry’s weight upon her, marveling at how they could still take such joy in each other after eleven years of marriage and seven children.

Presently, Henry fell asleep, his arm flung across Eleanor in its usual position. When he awoke in the small hours, the candle had burned down, and in its dwindling light he lay gazing at his wife, recalling their lovemaking. She was still a magnificent woman, he reflected, and he still loved her. He might make secret trysts with Rohese de Clare—indeed, he was so captivated by her erotic appeal that he could not give her up—but Eleanor had his heart, and often his body, which was something of a marvel to him. When he was with her like this, he could forget for a space how deeply Thomas had wounded him by betraying their friendship. Never in history, he told himself, had a prince done so much for a subject, only to have it cast back in his face. It was as if Thomas was determined to assert his authority above that of his king! Thathe could not—and would not—tolerate. If there was to be a power struggle between them, then so be it. But why should Thomas wish to initiate such a thing, when he owed so much to him, and after they had enjoyed the most enriching of friendships? Dear God, Henry thought, must he keep torturing himself by remembering those heady days when he and Thomas had been close and carefree, heedless of the storms that were swirling threateningly on the horizon? He’d loved Thomas, loved him as a brother, and had believed that Thomas returned that love. It seemed he had been wrong about that, devastatingly wrong. And at the very thought, Henry of England buried his lionlike head in the pillow and wept.