“I never pass up an opportunity to discountenance Louis, you know that, Eleanor!” Henry grinned, lightening the atmosphere a little. “But I did have hopes of one day annexing France to my domains. All dashed now, of course—if that boy lives. So we rattle Louis now, while planning for the future. His son will need a wife someday, and it would be to my advantage, and that of my heirs, to have an English queen on the French throne.”
“It is a wise plan,” Eleanor had to concede.
He nodded. “I think so. And as I haven’t changed my mind about the alliances I have negotiated for Matilda and Eleanor, I will be putting this little one forward as the future Queen of France. It will be a great destiny for you, sweeting,” he murmured, smiling down at the baby.
“Well, I can only hope that the French court has livened up a bit by the time she gets there,” Eleanor said, her tone still tart.
“She will liven it up, I make no doubt. She has her mother’s charm, I can see it.” He was placating her, she knew it.
“Charm availed me little at Louis’s court,” she sniffed, unwilling to bend. “But it would be a great match, and it could bring a more stable peace between England and France.”
“No doubt the princes of Europe are all rubbing their hands in glee in the hope of securing such a rich matrimonial prize for their daughters as the new heir to France,” Henry observed wickedly. “But I think we have a strong advantage. I can always dangle the Vexin as a carrot!”
“They said Louis was overjoyed to have a son at last,” Eleanor recalled, remembering how, strangely, she had felt so pleased for her former husband when she was brought the news. He had waited an unconscionably long time—and she herself had failed him in the one thing that mattered. Now his prayers had been granted, and she was glad. “There were great rejoicings, I heard. Much will be expected of this little prince. Already they are calling him Philip Augustus, like the old Roman emperors.”
“I heard he was named after the month he was born, and that he’d been nicknamed ‘the God Given’,” Henry said. “Well, I hope, for his sake, he doesn’t take after his father with names like that! He’ll have to live up to them!”
He handed the baby back to the nurse, picked up his goblet, drained it to the dregs, and reached for the flagon.
“Well, I will have one more cup of wine, and then I will change my clothes and slough off the dust of the road and go greet my beloved barons of Anjou.” He poured the red liquid. Eleanor watched, wondering if they would ever again be close enough to get beyond the pleasantries and generalities.
“Is there any news of our friend the Archbishop?” Henry asked, his flippant tone not quite masking his obsessive interest.
“Yes, but it’s not good,” Eleanor told him. “He is still living in the abbey at Sens, and still threatening to excommunicate you. It is said that he is angered by the Constitutions of Clarendon.”
Henry scowled. “He should get over it and accept that change is necessary. My patience is wearing thin.”
It’s about time, Eleanor thought, but she forbore to say anything; she hesitated to disrupt this uneasy peace between them. So she just smiled and called for the nurse again, asking her to bring the other children to greet their father.
Henry came to her bed that night and paid the marriage debt. At least, that’s what it felt like, a duty to be done. Never before had he seemed so uninvolved when making love to her. She lay there afterward, sleepless and in turmoil, suspecting that what she’d long dreaded had come to pass: that he no longer loved her, and all that was left to them was a marriage of convenience, which fulfilled the purpose for which it had been made. Her personal feelings were not supposed to matter, when one looked at the wider picture. But they did, oh, they did!
She looked at Henry’s sleeping back, its solid form white and shadowy in the moonlight that flooded the room through the tall window. It had struck her anew, when she first saw him on his return, how manly he looked in the strength and vigor of his maturity; a little thicker about the girth, true, but still a muscular bull of a man, broad-chested and leonine of feature. How she loved and wanted him! She could not help herself. Of all the men she had known—and known in the biblical sense—none could touch him. Yet she feared he was hers no more. Her pillow was sodden with her tears.
Chinon, 1166
The court was staying at the Fort St. George, Henry’s magnificent castle of Chinon, which straddled a high spur above the River Vienne, when both the King and Queen sickened. Eleanor knew very well what was causing the familiar nausea: she was pregnant for the eleventh time, made fruitful with the seed planted that tragic night at Angers, the night when she realized that she had lost Henry in all the ways that were most important to her. Since then, matters had not improved between them, and now it seemed that there was an unbreachable distance. They still observed the courtesies, and they talked like civilized beings; he had frequented her bed on several nights, but it was like coupling with a stranger. She knew he sensed her withdrawal from him, a retreat less tactical than instinctive, born of the need to protect herself. She told herself that love was not essential in a royal marriage: she was Henry’s wife and queen; she was Eleanor, Duchess of Aquitaine, Queen of England, Duchess of Normandy, Countess of Anjou and Maine. She was undefeatable, a match for any light-of-love to whom her lord might take a passing fancy. She dared not let the facade drop; she must think of herself as invincible.
Henry appeared not to be troubled by her studied amenity; she believed he welcomed it, for it absolved him of any need to put things right. There was no point in him trying to do that if his heart wasn’t in it. She did not want him to play a role for her: she needed his honesty, but she was damned if she would probe for it, for she feared to provoke any painful revelations. But now, here she was, pregnant with his child once more, another reason why the pretense that all was well must be maintained. And she must tell him her news.
She came upon him in their solar as he sat stitching a tear in his hunting cloak, and sat beside him on the wooden settle, struggling to suppress the rising bile in her throat. The thought of the coming months depressed her: she was weary of childbearing, had suffered it too often. She was forty-four, and she’d had enough. This, she vowed, would be the final time.
“I am to have another child, Henry,” she announced quietly. He paused in his mending.
“You are not pleased,” he said.
“If I spoke the truth, no. However, it is God’s will, and I must make the best of it. But I pray you, let this be our last child.” She looked at him as she spoke, but he would not meet her eyes. “You understand my meaning,” she persisted, her heart breaking. She had the horrible, sinking feeling that she was closing a door forever—and perhaps closing it prematurely.
Henry did not answer. The needle flew in and out.
“Henry?”
“It’s your decision,” he said.
“Do you care?” she ventured, thinking that she might as well be dead, and knowing she was about to shatter the fragile equilibrium between them.
Now he did raise his head and look at her. His eyes were guarded, his expression unreadable. There was a slight flush on his bristled cheeks; was it anger? That would be something … Surely he would not agree, uncomplaining, to what she asked. As her husband, he could insist on claiming his rights—and who knew, a miracle could happen and they might recapture the joy they had shared. She would endure ten more pregnancies for that, if he would just intimate, by one word, that he still wanted her.