“This is my revenge!” he declared.
“What is?” she asked, wondering what on earth it could be, and if it would provoke more trouble.
“An order for the banishment of every one of Thomas’s relatives from England,” Henry said with grim satisfaction.
“But they have done nothing wrong! And there are many of them, women, children, old folk.” Eleanor was appalled.
“About four hundred, I think,” Henry said with some satisfaction. “They will be stripped of all their possessions and deported. Let them beg for their food!”
“Henry, I beg of you, rescind that order!” she pleaded, falling on her knees. “It is cruel, it is vindictive, and it is born purely of unbridled passion, which is unbecoming in a king of your wisdom.”
He stared coldly down at her. “Get up. It’s no use, Eleanor. These tactics are necessary. Thomas is in Rome, beyond my reach, but this should bring him hurrying back. Let him see the consequences of his defiance; let him feel the heat of my anger, and know what it is to be my enemy.”
Eleanor rose to her feet, shot him a withering look, and was about to leave when Henry grabbed her hand.
“I have thought of a way to force Pope Alexander and King Louis to abandon Becket,” he said. “You had better hear about it, as it concerns our daughters.”
“Our daughters?” Eleanor echoed. “How can they be involved? What new scheme is this?”
“I intend to make an alliance with the German Emperor, Frederick Barbarossa,” Henry revealed smugly. “That will put the noses of His Holiness and King Louis out of joint, I can tell you, because our friend the Emperor is Louis’s enemy, and he has supported Alexander’s rival, the antipope Victor. I’ll wager that Louis and Alexander will do anything to stop me from allying with Frederick, and that the very prospect of it will make them shit themselves and drop Becket like a hot cake!”
“But where do our daughters fit into this?” Eleanor asked, wondering if this plan was as foolproof as it sounded.
“I have proposed that the alliance be cemented by two marriage treaties,” Henry explained. “It is my intention that Matilda marry the Emperor’s greatest vassal and ally, Henry the Lion, Duke of Saxony, while Eleanor will wed the Emperor’s young son, Frederick. I have written requesting the Emperor to send his envoys to Rouen to draw up the agreements. I hope to meet them there in February.”
“Are your plans so far advanced?” Eleanor asked, utterly dismayed at this news and at the prospect of losing two more daughters—cherished daughters this time—and furious that Henry had said nothing of this business until now, when he must have been planning it for weeks. “Did you not think to discuss it with me first? They are my children too.”
“I am discussing it with you now,” Henry said. “You of all people know very well that kings marry their daughters for policy. These are advantageous marriages that will benefit us all.”
“You are using our daughters to be revenged on Becket!” Eleanor cried.
“That would be one advantage of the treaty,” Henry admitted, “but there would be many others.”
“I do hope so!” she retorted. “And when are you sending our little girls to Germany? Henry, they are so young! Eleanor is but three.”
“That is to be decided, but it will not be for a while yet,” he told her.
“Then I must be grateful for that small mercy,” Eleanor hissed, and hastened from the room before the tears fell.
She stood her ground all through January and into February. She would not go to Normandy to witness the selling of her daughters in a hopeless cause. She was adamant about that. Henry shrugged and did not bother to argue with her.
“You can stay here in England,” he said.
“I shall go to Winchester with the children,” she told him. “Then perhaps I might travel a little. Shall I act as regent for you?”
“No,” Henry replied crushingly. “My justiciar can act in my absence.”
She hid her distress and wondered—not for the first time—why he was increasingly reluctant of late to allow her any autonomy in state affairs. At one time, he unhesitatingly would have relied upon her to rule in his absence, but that had been before this distance had opened up between them. It had been four years now since she had issued a writ in her own name. It was all Becket’s fault, she believed. Becket had been the sole cause of the discord between them.
“When the treaty is signed, I want you to summon the Great Council to Westminster to confirm it,” Henry commanded her. “I shall then send the Emperor’s envoys to pay their respects to you in England, and to meet Matilda and Eleanor. You will receive them with all honor. I know you will not fail me.” His tone was aggressive.
“You can rely on me,” Eleanor said coolly. “I know how these things are done.”
On the last night before Henry’s departure for Normandy, he came to her bed and took his pleasure of her, little caring whether or not he was welcome. She lay beneath him, wishing she could give him more, but her heart was too bitter against him. She did not like the man he had become, the vengeful, petty man who could use his own daughters to score points against his enemies. She grieved to find his heart closed to her, to have him treat her as an adversary, and, worse than that, a mere chattel he could use at will. It seemed that no one could oppose Henry these days: he would not brook it. You were either for him or against him.
They said their farewells in public the next morning, Eleanor standing by Henry’s great charger with the warming stirrup cup.
“God speed you, my lord,” she said formally.
“Join me as soon as you can,” he said, bending down in the saddle to kiss her hand. Then he wheeled his horse around and was off, clattering through the gatehouse, his motley retinue and cumbersome baggage train lumbering in his wake.
Rouen and Angers, 1165
It was May before Eleanor was reunited with Henry in Rouen, and by then she knew she was pregnant again. He was delighted by the news, but it only saddened her, for this was the first of her children not to have been conceived in love. Yet she supposed the infant would be as precious to her as the others when it arrived.
She was shocked by the change in the Empress. Matilda had aged much in the years since they had last met and was now quite frail and stiff in her joints. Eleanor had brought Richard with her, and the younger Matilda, and had to sternly enjoin them not to behave so boisterously around their grandmother.
The Empress had mellowed with the years. There was little left of the antipathy she had once shown toward her daughter-in-law. Eleanor found it comforting to sit with the older woman and confide her opinions of the quarrel between Henry and Becket, and was gratified to have her own position bolstered by the old lady’s wise views robustly expressed.
“That man has written repeatedly to me, claiming that Henry is hell-bent on persecuting the Church,” she revealed. “Of course, he got no satisfaction from me. I ignored all his letters.”
“It is Henry who worries me,” Eleanor confessed.
“Henry was a fool to advance Becket,” the Empress declared, sipping delicately at her wine cup.
“He is obsessed with him. He will not listen to reason.”
“But Henry is right!” his mother said sharply. “He has good reason to be angry. Becket is a menace, and he appears deliberately to have provoked Henry from the moment of his consecration.” She leaned forward, her faded blue eyes steely beneath paper-thin lids. “This issue of the criminous clerks—it is all wrong, and must be stopped. Becket is a fool to take his stand on that.”